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1 III, COM Pi I 1 I WO*KH Of-

THE COMPLETE WOKKS OF

FOREWORD BY HARRY HANSEN

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, N.Y.

ISBN: 0-385-00961-5

1903, by John Wanamaker; 1902, by Brandur's Magazine; 1903, by William Sydney Porter;

1904, 1907, by Associated Sunday Magazine; 1903, by The Pilgrim; 1909, by Hampton's
Magazine, Inc.; 1910, by Semi-Monthly Magazine Section.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

One day when the century was young O. Henry was dining with several
friends at Mouquin's, a New York restaurant favored by theatrical and
writing folk. Will Irwin was there, a tall, lean reporter for the New York
Sun, and Irvin S. Cobb, who had come East from Paducah a few years
before and had just moved from the Sun to the payroll of the New York
World. Eager to learn how O. Henry wrote, Cobb— who told me this
anecdote — began asking him where he found his plots. "Oh, every-
where," replied O. Henry. "There are stories in everything." He picked
up the bill of fare, on which the dishes of the day were typewritten.
"There's a story in this," he said. And then he outlined substantially the
tale called "Springtime £ la Carte,"

That was 0. Henry's way, to seize on something commonplace, part
of the routine of living, and associate it with one of his favorite subjects,
the experience of two lovers, kept apart in the maze of a great city, united

VI FOREWORD

by a providential accident— and a trick of storytelling. It is not one of
O. Henry's best; it puts a strain on one's willingness to accept coinci-
dence, but it contains the longing and expectant hope and victory over
frustration that endeared his stories to the thousands who have found
them moving, entertaining, and memorable. O. Henry is a master of
make-believe, who puts a romantic glow over everyday living. By draw-
ing characters who are wistful when lucky and brave in adversity, he an-
swers the eternal demand for a good story.

When O. Henry died in 1910 at the age of forty-seven his friends-
editors who had bought his stories, reporters who had shared his walks
in mean streets— pieced together the fragmentary record of his experi-
ences and tried to find an explanation for his contradictory character. His
courtesy and resignation had touched their hearts; they remembered how
he alternated between procrastination and fits of feverish industry, and
how he had literally burnt himself out meeting his obligations close to
magazine deadlines. They found that experience had shaped all his writ-
ings, had supplied the settings for his stories and the dominant note that
man was a plaything of fate, the victim of strange circumstances. They
also learned that a man whose nature was easygoing, if not slipshod, had
fought manfully to establish himself as a writer after the most tragic per-
sonal experiences.

O. Henry was born William Sidney Porter, in Greensboro, North Car-
olina, September n, 1862, and in later life signed himself Sydney Porter.
His education stopped at fifteen, but his aunt, who had a private school,
stimulated his reading and storytelling. Bill Porter worked five years in
his uncle's drugstore— since advertised locally as the O. Henry Drug
Store. Bill's mother had died of tuberculosis when he was three, and he
was a pale, anemic lad when he was taken to a sheep ranch in Texas,
There he became acquainted with cowboys and heard about desperadoes
and cattle thieves. Two years later, in 1884, he went to Austin, where he
worked in a real estate office, sang in a church choir, and for four years
was occupied as a draftsman in the General Land Office. He liked to
draw and his associates thought Bill Porter had the makings of a cari-
caturist.

In Austin tragedy struck, and struck repeatedly. Porter married a
young woman whose parents had died of tuberculosis, and who was to
meet the same fate a number of years later. Their first-born died, but
their second child, Margaret, grew to maturity and survived her father.
Porter's attempt to build up a small humorous weekly failed* He ob-
tained a job as a teller in a bank, which his biographers, Robert H. Davis
and Arthur B. Maurice, who wrote The Caliph of Bagdad, called "an as-
tonishing bank, run with astonishing laxity." When irregularities were
found in Porter's accounts, a shortage of less than a thousand dollars, he
lost his job with the bank and went to Houston, where he worked for a

FOREWORD Vll

time on the Houston Post. When, a few years later, the federal authorities
ordered him to stand trial, he left via New Orleans for Honduras. A little
over two years later the illness of his wife called him back to Austin, and
he faced federal prosecution.

Apparently Porter made no effort to defend himself. His flight to
Honduras counted heavily against him, although he lived in Austin
nearly a year before he was tried. He was found guilty and served a few
months over three years in the Columbus, Ohio, Penitentiary. In the
prison he worked as a drug clerk, had considerable freedom of move-
ment, and could even walk about the city. He had attempted a few
stories before, but it was in Columbus that he began seriously to write,
and to store up what the inmates told him. It was there also that he was
supposed to have picked up the name O. Henry from a prison guard
named Orrin Henry, though Porter never gave a clear explanation of its
origin.

O. Henry had contributed "Whistling Dick's Christmas Story" to
McClures in 1899, and "Georgia's Ruling" to the OutlooJ^ in 1900, and
had written ten other stories while in prison, including "A Blackjack
Bargainer," "The Enchanted Kiss," and "The Duplicity of Hargraves."
For three months he lived in a shabby bedroom in Pittsburgh and sent
manuscripts to New York editors. Ainslee's Magazine offered to guar-
antee him a regular income if he would move to New York, and in the
spring of 1902 he came. What followed is a fabulous story of success. In
less than eight years O. Henry became the most widely read storyteller
in the country. Readers were enchanted with the romance that he found
in drab boardinghouses and forgotten streets. They shared his pity for
little people and savored his nostalgia for what might have been, and
they were delighted when his surprise endings routed misfortune. In
Cabbages and Kings (1904) appeared his stories about Central America,
which had a certain degree of unity because a young editor named Witter
Bynner persuaded him to write an opening and a closing sketch for them.
In his second book, The Four Million, he collected stories about New
York. Other tales appeared in The Trimmed Lamp (1907), Heart of the
West (1907), The Voice of the City (1908), Roads of Destiny (1909),
Options (1909), Strictly Business (1910), Whirligigs (1910), and in three
books issued after his death: The Gentle Grafter, mostly yarns about the
suave swindler Jeff Peters, based on what O. Henry had heard in prison;
Rolling Stones; and Waifs and Strays. A number of unsigned stories
taken from the files of the Houston Post and thought to have been writ-
ten by O. Henry were published in 1936, but they are of indifferent qual-
ity and not positively identified as his.

Some of O. Henry's shortest stories are also among his best. This in-
cludes several that appear to have been well planned. "The Gift of the
Magi" is based on his favorite use of coincidence, but the tender spirit

V1U FOREWORD

of mutual sacrifice imparts a special glow. "The Furnished Room" is told
with the economy of language that marks the master, and portrays not
only the effect of the city on the lonely and disheartened, but the unfeel-
ing practicality of those who look solely to their own security, as in the
case of the two landladies. "The Last Leaf" has qualities that make it
memorable, but it might have been a better work of art if the solution
had not been completely spelled out. More ambitious storytelling is
found in "A Municipal Report," which was written to answer a challenge
by Frank Norris. Norris had declared that there were only three "story
cities" in the United States—New York, New Orleans, and San Fran-
cisco. "Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo — or, let us say, Nashville,
Tennessee," wrote Norris. So O. Henry placed his tale of unconventional
Southern chivalry in Nashville, without, however, awakening any un-
usual interest in the city itself, while Norris, as if to test his theory, wrote
The Pit about Chicago.

A story that has enjoyed great popularity and even influenced the
stage is "A Retrieved Reformation," which lives in the annals of the
theater as Alias Jimmy Valentine. Jimmy's name has become a synonym
for a light-fingered burglar who can crack the combination of a bank
vault. Many refer to him as the man who filed down his finger tips to
open the safe, but O. Henry's Jimmy used tools. The story first appeared
in 1903. It belongs to O. Henry's crisp, hurried manner of storytelling,
a series of brief incidents, with a sentimental snapper at the end inviting
sympathy for a guilty man who has done an unselfish deed in rescuing
a child.

The story grew out of an incident that took place at the Columbus,
Ohio, prison. There are two versions of its origin. Al Jennings, the train
robber who repented and "went straight" after serving a term in Ohio,
originally met Porter in Trujillo, Honduras. He relates that while he was
in prison a locked safe full of incriminating documents in a publisher's
office was opened by a bank robber named Price who was escorted
from the prison, and who filed down his fingers to the quick to make
them sensitive to the movement of the tumblers. This convict was a tough
character who was later killed in prison. Another witness, a prison doc-
tor, identified Jimmy Valentine as Jimmy Connors, who had been sen-
tenced for blowing up a post-office safe. Connors was day drug clerk in
the hospital, and Porter was night drug clerk; the two men often talked
together. The inference is that O. Henry built his plot out of Price's ex-
perience and made Valentine look like the more gentle Connors. O.
Henry explained later that he did not make Jimmy file down his fingers
because he did not wish to offer his readers anything unpleasant. His
point of view is in strong contrast to that prevailing among many writers
of thrillers today.

O. Henry received $250 for the story and six years later sold the dra-

FOREWORD IX

matic rights to George C. Tyler for $500. Tyler wanted him to write the
play, but O. Henry refused and declared himself completely satisfied
when Tyler turned the writing over to Paul Armstrong. Armstrong re-
ceived over $100,000 in royalties out of it. The play was the hit of its
season and became the forerunner of a long series of "crook plays," in
which the character who commits a crime mitigates his offense by a hu-
mane act or by disclosing a weakness that his audience shares. This does
not imply that Alias Jimmy Valentine was the first of its kind, for actually
the amiable villain, so necessary to motion picture plots, has a history
that goes back to Robin Hood, But its success invited imitation. It must
be conceded that O. Henry hurried through the tale, which needed
very little adaptation to turn it into a tense melodrama, with a tug at
the heart.

Shortly before Alias Jimmy Valentine was produced O. Henry and
Franklin P. Adams had written a libretto for a musical play called Lo,
based on O. Henry's story, "To Him Who Waits." It had been per-
formed fourteen weeks in the Middle West. Possibly the toil entailed in
the writing discouraged O. Henry from dramatizing "A Retrieved Ref-
ormation." The next year, however, O. Henry, who had moved to Ashe-
ville, North Carolina, offered to write a new play if Tyler would advance
him money so that he could come to New York and work in secret. Tyler
sent him "something like $1,200" in all. When next he received word
from O. Henry, the author was down with pneumonia in a New York
hospital. "I never saw him again" said Tyler, "and the great American
play, The World and the Door was never written."

O, Henry's stories are marked with the manners of the decade in
which they appeared, but this has not diminished their appeal to popu-
larity. The clothes people wear have altered; the emotions that move
them remain the same. But the New York in his stories is today a period
piece. It bears evidence of manners and economic conditions that belong
to the past. A young author looking for stories- can still rub elbows with
the unemployed on the Bowery, but the two-cent cup of coffee will be
hard to find. No working girl feasts royally on veal chops and fritters
at a cost of twenty-five cents, plus a ten-cent tip. Nor do young women
move in throngs on lower Sixth Avenue as they go to work in the depart-
ment stores where the phrase "Meet me at the Fountain" originated. The
huge buildings still stand, but the retail center has moved uptown.

O. Henry has written the forlorn little working girl of the shops in-
delibly into American fiction. But for him she might not have been re-
membered. Even when he pictures her as unable to recognize the
genuine from the spurious article, as in "While the Auto Waits," he
describes her with sympathy. Dulcie of "An Unfinished Story" has his
complete approval when she dodges an evening out with a designing
male, though O. Henry is not certain that she will win the next battle.

FOREWORD

Fortunately the little Dulcies no longer stand behind the counters all day
long for six dollars a week. No longer does the city take for granted that
they are the likely prey of men who can offer them a square meal and
an evening amid the bright lights. The roue has gone, and with him
went the stage-door Johnnie and midnight lobster suppers with
champagne after the show. Today the salesladies and the chorus girls
can buy their own dinners and choose their own entertainment.

When Robert H. Davis and Arthur B. Maurice wrote their biography
of 0. Henry they lamented because some of the streets and haunts that
had captivated him had lost their tinsel glamour. Fourth Avenue, they
surmised, would no longer appeal to a man of 0. Henry's imagination.
The Bowery no longer "blazed with light," and Sixth Avenue retained
nothing of the "evil glory" of Satan's Circus. Union Square and Madison
Square had changed— even the Greenwich Village that 0. Henry knew
had been cut open by wide thoroughfares. They seem to approve a static
condition that literature does not recognize. To many the most pictur-
esque period of Greenwich Village was that of 1910-30, following 0.
Henry's death. Those who reached New York when the brownstone
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel typified an era of elegance may regret the pres-
ence of a tall office structure on its site, but it is possible that young
writers of the future will tell with awe of their first glimpse of the Em-
pire State Building.

Like Edgar Allan Poe, 0. Henry is now one of the legendary char-
acters of New York. He was a kindly, considerate man, who liked to
walk about the city at night, studying faces and inventing stories about
them. "I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lampposts and
newspaper stands," he said. He fled from publicity, and enjoyed most a
quiet meal with a friend who knew the value of silence. Robert H. Davis,
the editor who knew him well, said of him: "He was a childlike in-
dividual, absolutely without guile, and at times utterly helpless. I always
had the feeling that had he possessed the slightest powers of resistance
the illness to which he surrendered would have been defeated. . , .
Were all other records lost, from the forty-odd titles against the definite
New York background, a future historian might rebuild a grotesque and
alluring city, that would somehow be the city of that decade from 1900
to 1910, echoing its voice, expressing its moods,"

Harry Hansen

CONTENTS

Foreword

BOOK

THE FOUR MILLION

7
ii

24
28

37
42

Tobin's Palm 46

The Gift of the Magi 49
A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

Between Rounds 53

The Skylight Room 58

A Service of Love 62

The Coming-Out of 68

Maggie 72

Man About Town 76
The Cop and the Anthem

An Adjustment of Nature 81

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

The Love-Philtre of Ikey

Schoenstein

Mammon and the Archer

Springtime a la Carte

The Green Door

From the Cabby's Seat

An Unfinished Story

The Caliph, Cupid and the

Clock

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Xll

CONTENTS

88
91

The Romance of a Busy 96

Broker 98

After Twenty Years 103
Lost on Dress Parade

By Courier

The Furnished Room

The Brief Debut of Tildy

BOOK

HEART OF THE WEST

109 Hearts and Crosses 211

1 18 The Ransom of Mack 222

123 Telemachus, Friend 229

128 The Handbook of Hymen 233

137 The Pimienta Pancakes 238

144 Seats of the Haughty

154 Hygeia at the Solito 243

165 An Afternoon Miracle 252

174 The Higher Abdication 259

189 Cupid a la Carte

202 The Caballero's Way

The Sphinx Apple

The Missing Chord

A Call Loan

The Princess and the Puma

The Indian Summer of

Dry Valley Johnson

Christmas by Injunction

A Chaparral Prince

The Reformation of

Calliope

BOOK

THE GENTLE GRAFTER

267
272

277
282

287
292

The Octopus Marooned 296

Jeff Peters as a Personal 301

Magnet 305

Modern Rural Sports 310

The Chair of Philanthro- 315

mathematics 324

The Hand that Riles the 337

World 347
The Exact Science of Mat-
rimony

A Midsummer Masquerade
Shearing the Wolf
Innocents of Broadway
Conscience in Art
The Man Higher Up
A Tempered Wind
Hostages to Momus
The Ethics of Pig

BOOK

ROADS OF DESTINY

355 Roads of Destiny

372 The Guardian of the Ac-
colade

379 The Discounters of Money

384 The Enchanted Profile

389 "Next to Reading Matter"

400 Art and the Bronco

408
421
429

438
444

451
461

Phoebe

A Double-Dyed Deceiver
The Passing of Black Eagle
A Retrieved Reformation
Cherchez la Femme
Friends in San Rosario
The Fourth in Salvador

CONTENTS

Xlll

469 The Emancipation of Billy 516
477 The Enchanted Kiss
487 A Departmental Case 529

496 The Renaissance at

Charleroi 536

507 On Behalf of the Manage- 544

ment

Whistling Dick's Christ-
mas Stocking
The Halberdier of the
Little Rheinschloss
Two Renegades
The Lonesome Road

BOOK

CABBAGES AND KINGS

551 The Proem: By the Car- 609

penter 616

554 "Fox-in-the-Morning"

560 The Lotus and the Bottle 628

568 Smith 634

576 Caught 641

584 Cupid's Exile Number 646

Two 657

588 The Phonograph and the 665

Graft 671

597 Money Maze 677

604 The Admiral

The Flag Paramount

The Shamrock and the

Palm

The Remnants of the Code

Shoes

Ships

Masters of Arts

Dicky

Rouge et Noir

Two Recalls

The Vitagraphoscope

BOOK

OPTIONS

680
689
698
707

715

724

73i
739

"The Rose of Dixie" 747

The Third Ingredient 755
The Hiding of Black Bill 764

Schools and Schools 773

Thimble, Thimble 780

Supply and Demand 786

Buried Treasure 794

To Him Who Waits 801

He also Serves

The Moment of Victory

The Head-Hunter

No Story

The Higher Pragmatism

Best-Seller

Rus in Urbe

A Poor Rule

BOOK

SIXES AND SEVENS

81 1 The Last of the Trouba- 839

dours 844
820 The Sleuths

824 Witches' Loaves 847
827 The Pride of the Cities

831 Holding Up a Train 850

Ulysses and the Dogman

The Champion of the

Weather

Makes the Whole World

Kin

At Arms with Morpheus

XIV

CONTENTS

854
859
863

87I

881
890
892

901

941
944
957

967

973
983

992

998

1005

1012
1015
1021

A Ghost of a Chance 904
Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

The Door of Unrest 908

The Duplicity of Hargraves 91 1

Let Me Feel Your Pulse 914

October and June 925
The Church with an Over-

shot-Wheel 928

New York by Camp Fire 931

Light 936

The Adventures of Sham-
rock Jolnes

The Lady Higher Up
The Greater Coney
Law and Order
Transformation of Martin
Burney

The Caliph and the Cad
The Diamond of Kali
The Day We Celebrate

BOOK

ROLLING STONES

The Dream 1026

A Ruler of Men 1029
The Atavism of John Tom

Little Bear 1033

Helping the Other Fellow 1042

The Marionettes 1044

The Marquis and Miss 1045

Sally 1046
A Fog in Santone

The Friendly Call 1048

A Dinner at 1049

Sound and Fury 1051

Tictocq 1058
Tracked to Doom

A Snapshot at the President

An Unfinished Christmas

Story

The Unprofitable Servant

Aristocracy Versus Hash

The Prisoner of Zembla

A Strange Story

Fickle Fortune or How

Gladys Hustled

An Apology

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Queries and Answers

1061
1062
1063
1064
1064
1065
1065

1066

1094

1104

BOOK gjj

The Pewee
Nothing to Say
The Murderer
Some Postscripts
Two Portraits
A Contribution
The Old Farm
Vanity
The Lullaby Boy

BOOK

POEMS

1066
1067
1068
1068
1070
1080
1090

Chanson de Boheme

Hard to Forget
Drop a Tear in This Slot
Tamales
Some Letters
An Early Parable
The Story of "Holding Up
a Train"

The World and the Door
The Theory and the
Hound

WHIRLIGIGS

1 1 ii The Hypotheses of Failure
1 121 Galloway's Code

CONTENTS

1127 A Matter of Mean Eleva-
tion

1134 "Girl"
1138 Sociology in Serge and

Straw

1144 The Ransom of Red Chief
1152 The Marry Month of May
1156 A Technical Error
1161 Suite Homes and Their

Romance

1165 The Whirligig of Life
1170 A Sacrifice Hit
1174 The Roads We Take

1177 A Blackjack Bargainer
1 1 88 The Song and the Sergeant
1 1 93 One Dollar's Worth
1198 A Newspaper Story
1201 Tommy's Burglar
1205 A Chaparral Christmas

Gift

1209 A Little Local Color
1213 Georgia's Ruling
1223 Blind Man's Holiday
1238 Madame Bo-Peep, of the

Ranches

BOOK ]J_]]_ THE VOICE OF THE CITY

1253 The Voice of the City
1257 The Complete Life of John

Hopkins

1261 A Lickpenny Lover
1266 Dougherty's Eye-Opener
1270 "Little Speck in Garnered

Fruit"

1274 The Harbinger
1278 While the Auto Waits
1282 A Comedy in Rubber
1285 One Thousand Dollars
1290 The Defeat of the City
1295 The Shocks of Doom
1299 The Plutonian Fire
1304 Nemesis and the Candy

Man

1308 Squaring the Circle
1312 Roses, Ruses and Romance
1316 The City of Dreadful

Night

1319 The Easter of the Soul
1323 The Fool-Killer
1329 Transients in Arcadia
1333 The Rathskeller and the

Rose

1337 The Clarion Call
1343 Extradited from Bohemia
1348 A Philistine in Bohemia
1352 From Each According to

His Ability
1357 The Memento

BOOK

THE TRIMMED LAMP

1365 The Trimmed Lamp 1391

1374 A Madison Square Arabian 1396

Night
1379 The Rubaiyat of a Scotch 1401

Highball

1383 The Pendulum 1404

1387 Two Thanksgiving Day 1411

Gentlemen

The Assessor of Success

The Buyer from Cactus

City

The Badge of Policeman

O'Roon

Brickdust Row

The Making of a New

Yorker

XVI

CONTENTS

1415 Vanity and Some Sables

1419 The Social Triangle

1424 The Purple Dress

1428 The Foreign Policy of

Company 99

1433 The. Lost Blend

1437 A Harlem Tragedy

1441 "The Guilty Party"

1446 According to Their Lights

1451 A Midsummer Knight's
Dream

1455 ^ne Last Leaf

1460 The Count and the Wed-
ding Guest

1464 The Country of Elusion

1471 The Ferry of Unfulfilment

1474 The Tale of a Tainted
Tenner

1478 Elsie in New York

BOOK

STRICTLY BUSINESS

1484 Strictly Business 1552

1493 Tne Gold That Glittered 1564

1499 Babes in the Jungle 1569

1503 The Day Resurgent 1575

1508 The Fifth Wheel 1582

1517 The Poet and the Peasant 1593

1521 The Robe of Peace T597

1525 The Girl and the Graft 1604

1529 The Call of the Tame 1614

I533 The Unknown Quantity 1623

1538 The Thing's the Play 1627

1543 A Ramble in Aphasia

A Municipal Report
Psyche and the Pskyscraper
A Bird of Bagdad
Compliments of the Season
A Night in New Arabia
The Girl and the Habit
Proof of the Pudding
Past One at Rooney's
The Venturers
The Duel
"What You Want"

WAIFS AND STRAYS

1632 The Red Roses of Tonia 1666

1639 Round the Circle 1668

1643 The Rubber Plant's Story 1670

1646 Out of Nazareth 1674

1656 Confessions of a Humorist 1677

1663 The Sparrows in Madison 1680
Square

Hearts and Hands

The Cactus

The Detective Detector

The Dog and the Playlet

A Little Talk About Mobs

The Snow Man

BOOK ]J.

Til IE FOUR MIILJLION

TO BIN S PALM

Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for
there was four dollars between us, and Tobin had need of distractions.
For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since
she started for America three months before with two hundred dollars,
her own savings, and one hundred dollars from the sale of Tobin's in-
herited estate, a fine cottage and pig on the Bog Shannaugh. And since the
letter that Tobin got saying that she had started to come to him not a bit
of news had he heard or seen of Katie Mahorner. Tobin advertised in
the papers, but nothing could be found of the colleen.

So, to Coney me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn at the chutes
and the smell of the popcorn might raise the heart in his bosom. But
Tobin was a hard-headed man, and the sadness stuck in his skin. He

2 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

ground his teeth at the crying balloons; he cursed the moving pictures;
and, though he would drink whenever asked, he scorned Punch and Judy,
and was for licking the tintype men as they came.

So I gets him down a side way on a board walk where the attractions
were some less violent. At a little six by eight stall Tobin halts, with a
more human look in his eye.

" 'Tis here," says he, "I will be diverted. Ill have the palm of me hand
investigated by the wonderful palmist of the Nile, and see if what is to
be will be."

Tobin was a believer in signs and the unnatural in nature. He possessed
illegal convictions in his mind along the subjects of black cats, lucky num-
bers, and the weather predictions in the papers.

We went into the enchanted chicken coop, which was fixed, mysterious
with red cloth and pictures of hands with lines crossing 'em like a
railroad centre. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyp-
tian Palmist. There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks
and beasties embroidered upon it. Tobin gives her ten cents and extends
one of his hands. She lifts Tobin's hand, which is own brother to the hoof
of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether 'tis a stone in the frog or
a cast shoe he has come for.

"Man," says this Madame Zozo, "the line of your fate shows "

" 'Tis not me foot at all," says Tobin, interrupting. "Sure, 'tis no beauty
but ye hold the palm of me hand."

"The line shows," says the Madame, "that ye've not arrived at your
time of life without bad luck. And there's more to come. The mount of
Venus — or is that a stone bruise ? — shows that ye've been in love. There's
been trouble in your life on account of your sweetheart."

" 'Tis Katie Mahorner she has references with," whispers Tobin to me
in a loud voice to one side.

"I see," says the palmist, "a great deal of sorrow and tribulation with
one whom ye cannot forget. I see the lines of designation point to the let-
ter K and the letter M in her name."

"Whist!" says Tobin to me; "do ye hear that?"

"Look out," goes on the palmist, "for a dark man and a light woman;
for they'll both bring ye trouble. Ye'll make a voyage upon the water very
soon, and have a financial loss. I see one line that brings good luck.
There's a man coming into your life who will fetch ye good fortune. Yell
know him when ye see him by his crooked nose/'

"Is his name set down?" asks Tobin. " 'Twill be convenient in the way
of greeting when he backs up to dump off the good luck."

"His name," says the palmist, thoughtful looking, "is not spelled out by
the lines, but they indicate 'tis a long one, and the letter V should be in
it. There's no more to tell. Good-evening. Don't block up the door."

" *Tis wonderful how she knows/' says Tobin as we walk to the pier.

TOBIN S PALM 3

As we squeezed through the gates a nigger man sticks his lighted segar
against Tohin's ear, and there is trouble. Tobin hammers his neck, and
the women squeal, and by presence of mind I drag the little man out of
the way before the police comes. Tobin is always in an ugly mood when
enjoying himself.

On the boat going back, when the man calls "Who wants the good-
looking waiter?" Tobin tried to plead guilty, feeling the desire to blow
the foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found him-
self discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change
during the commotion. So we sat, dry, upon the stools, listening to the
Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits and
less congenial with his misfortunes than when we started.

On a seat against the railing was a young woman dressed suitable for
red automobiles, with hair the colour on an unsmoked meerschaum. In
passing by Tobin kicks her foot without intentions, and, being polite to
ladies when in drink, he tries to give his hat a twist while apologizing.
But he knocks it off, and the wind carries it overboard.

Tobin came back and sat down, and I began to look out for him, for
the man's adversities were becoming frequent. He was apt, when pushed
so close by hard luck, to kick the best dressed man he could see, and
try to take command of the boat.

Presently Tobin grabs my arm and says, excited: "Jawn," savs he, "do
ye know what we're doing? We're taking a voyage upon the water."

"There now," says I; "subdue yeself. The boat'll land in ten minutes
more."

"Look," says he, "at the light lady upon the bench. And have ye forgot-
ten the nigger man that burned me ear? And isn't the money I had gone
— a dollar sixty-five it was?"

I thought he was no more than summing up his catastrophes so as to
get violent with good excuse, as men will do, and I tried to make him un-
derstand such things was trifles.

"Listen," says Tobin. "Ye've no ear for the gift of prophecy or the mir-
acles of the inspired. What did the palmist lady tell ye out of me hand?
Tis coming true before your eyes. 'Look out/ says she, 'for a dark man
and a light woman; they'll bring ye trouble.' Have ye forgot the nigger
man, though he got some of it back from me fist? Can ye show me a
lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat falling
in the water? And where 's the dollar sixty-five I had in me vest when we
left the shooting gallery?"

The way Tobin put it, it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction,
though it looked to me that these accidents could happen to any one at
Coney without the implication of palmistry.

Tobin got up and walked around on deck, looking close at the passen-
gers out of his little red eyes. I asked him the interpretation of his move-

4 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

moats. Ye never know what Tobin has in his mind until he begins to
carry it out.

"Ye should know/' says he, "I'm working out the salvation promised by
the lines in me palm. I'm looking for the crooked-nose man that's to bring
the good luck. 'Tis all that will save us. Jawn, did ye ever see a straighter-
nosed gang of hellions in the days of your life?"

'Twas the nine-thirty boat, and we landed and walked up-town through
Twenty-second Street, Tobin being without his hat.

On a street corner, standing under a gas-light and looking over the ele-
vated road at the moon, was a man. A long man he was, dressed decent,
with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists
from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same
time, and I heard him breathe hard like a horse when you take the sad-
dle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.

"Good-night to ye," Tobin says to the man. The man takes out a segar
and passes the compliments, sociable.

"Would ye hand us your name," asks Tobin, "and let us look at the
size of it? It may be our duty to become acquainted with ye."

"My name," says the man, polite, "is Friedenhausman— Maximus G.
Fr iedenhausman. "

" 'Tis the right length," says Tobin. "Do you spell it with an V any-
where down the stretch of it?"

"I do not," says the man.

"Can ye spell it with an V?" inquires Tobin, turning anxious.

"If your conscience/' says the man with .the nose, "is indisposed toward
foreign idioms ye might, to please yourself, smuggle the letter into the
penultimate syllable."

" 'Tis well," says Tobin. "Ye 're in the presence of Jawn Malone and
Daniel Tobin."

" 'Tis highly appreciated," says the man, with a bow. "And now since
I cannot conceive that ye would hold a spelling bee upon the street cor-
ner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large?"

"By the two signs," answers Tobin, trying to explain, "which ye display
according to the reading of the Egyptian palmist from the sole of me
hand, yeVe been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble
leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in
the boat, besides the financial loss of a dollar sixty-five, all so far fulfilled
according to Hoyle."

The man stopped smoking and looked at me.

"Have ye any amendments," he asks, "to offer to that statement, or
are ye one too? I thought by the looks of ye ye might have him in
charge."

"None," says I to him, "except that as one horseshoe resembles another
so are ye the picture of good luck as predicted by the hand of me friend.

TOBIN S PALM 5

If not, then the lines o£ Danny's hand may have been crossed, I don't
know."

"There's two of ye," says the man with the nose, looking up and down
for the sight of a policeman. "I've enjoyed your company immense. Good-
night."

With that he shoves his segar in his mouth and moves across the street,
stepping fast. But Tobin sdcks close to one side of him and me at the
other.

"What!" says he, stopping on the opposite sidewalk and pushing back
his hat; "do ye follow me? I tell ye," he says, very loud, "I'm proud to
have met ye. But it is my desire to be rid of ye. I am off to me home."

"Do," says Tobin, leaning against his sleeve. "Do be off to your home.
And I will sit at the door of it till ye come out in the morning. For the
dependence is upon ye to obviate the curse of the nigger man and the
blonde lady and the financial loss of the one-sixty-five."

" 'Tis a strange halluncination," says the man, turning to me as a more
reasonable lunatic. "Hadn't ye better get him home?"

"Listen, man," says I to him. "Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever
was. Maybe he is a bit deranged on account of having drink enough to
disturb but not enough to settle his wits, but he is no more than follow-
ing out the legitimate path of his superstitions and predicaments* which
I will explain to you." With that I relates the facts about the palmist lady
and how the finger of suspicion points to him as an instrument of good
fortune. "Now, understand," I concludes, "my position in this riot. I am
the friend of me friend Tobin, according to me interpretations. Tis easy
to be a friend to the prosperous, for it pays; 'tis not hard to be friend to
the poor, for ye get puffed up by gratitude and have your picture printed
standing in front of a tenement with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in
each hand. But it strains the art of friendship to be true friend to a born
fool And that's what I'm doing," says I, "for, in my opinion, there's no
fortune to be read from the palm of me hand that wasn't printed there
with the handle of a pick. And, though ye've got the crookedest nose in
New York City, I misdoubt that all the fortune-tellers doing business
could milk good luck from ye. But the lines of Danny's hand pointed to
ye fair, and I'll assist him to experiment with ye until he's convinced ye're
dry."

After that the man turns, sudden, to laughing. He leans against a cor-
ner and laughs considerable. Then he claps me and Tobin on the backs
of us and takes us by an arm apiece.

" 'Tis my mistake," says he. "How could I be expecting anything so fine
and wonderful to be turning the corner upon me? I came near being
found unworthy. Hard by," says he, "is a cafe, snug and suitable for the
entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let us go there and have a drink while
we discuss the unavailability of the categorical."

So saying, he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and

6 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

ordered the drinks, and laid the money on the table. He looks at me and
Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the segars.

"Ye must know," says the man of destiny, "that me walk in life is one
that is called the literary. I wander abroad be night seeking idiosyncrasies
in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye came upon me I
was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction with the chief
luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art: the moon but a
tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private opinions, for, in
the business of literature, the conditions are reversed. Tis me hope to be
writing a book to explain the strange things I have discovered in life."

"Ye will put me in a book," says Tobin, disgusted; "will ye put me
in a book?"

"I will not," says the man, "for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet. The
best I can do is to enjoy ye meself, for the time is not ripe for destroying
the limitations of print. Ye would look fantastic in type. All alone by me-
self must I drink this cup of joy. But, I thank ye, boys; I am truly grate-
ful."

"The talk of ye," says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and
pounding the table with his fist, "is an eyesore to me patience. There was
good luck promised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit like
the bag of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the wind
blowing through a crack. Sure, now, I would be thinking the palm of me
hand lied but for the coming true of the nigger man and the blonde lady
and "

"Whist!" says the long man; "would ye be led astray by physiognomy?
Me nose will do what it can within bounds. Let us have these glasses filled
again, for 'tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well moistened, they being sub-
ject to deterioration in a dry moral atmosphere."

So, the man of literature makes good, to my notion, for he pays, cheer-
ful, for everything, the capital of me and Tobin being exhausted by pre-
diction. But Tobin is sore, and drinks quiet, with the red showing in his
eye.

By and by we moved out, for 'twas eleven o'clock, and stands a bit upon
the sidewalk. And then the man says he must be going home, and invites
me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks
away where there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron
fences. The man stops at one of them and looks up at the top windows
which he finds dark.

" Tis me humble dwelling," says he, "and I begin to perceive by the
signs that me wife has retired to slumber. Therefore I will venture a bit
in the way of hospitality. Tis me wish that ye enter the basement room,
where we dine, and partake of a reasonable refreshment. There will be
some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle or two of ale. Ye will be wel-
come to enter and eat, for I am indebted to ye for diversions."

The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the
proposition, though 'twas sticking hard in Danny's superstitions to think
that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good fortune
promised by the palm of his hand.

"Step down the steps," says the man with the crooked nose, "and I will
enter by the door above and let ye in. I will ask the new girl we have in
the kitchen," says he, "to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before ye go.
Tis fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just landed three
months. Step in," says the man, "and I'll send her down to ye."

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was
in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer
and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with
the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three
times Delia counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next
day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little
couch and howl. So Delia did it. Which instigates the moral reflection
that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominat-
ing.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first
stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per
week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word
on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go,
and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.
Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period
of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now,
when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked
blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest
and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came
home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged
by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Delia,
Which is all very good.

Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder
rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walk-
ing a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas
Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had
been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty

8 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had
calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jirn. Her
Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for
him. Something fine and rare and sterling— something just a little bit near
to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you
have seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person
may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips,
obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Delia, being slender, had
mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass.
Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within
twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full
length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in
which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had
been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Delia's hair. Had
the Queen of S.heba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Delia would have
let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her
Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all
his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his
watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Delia's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like
a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself
almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and
quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two
splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a
whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered
out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All
Kinds." One flight up Delia ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame,
large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie,"

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Delia.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at
the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Delia.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else.
There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of
:hem inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design,

THE GIFT OF THE MAGI 9

properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious
ornamentation — as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The
Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like
him. Quietness and value — the description applied to both. Twenty-one
dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents.
With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the
time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it
on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a
chain.

When Delia reached home her intoxication gave way a little to pru-
dence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and
went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love.
Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends — a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls
that made her look -wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at
her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second
look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could
I do — oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back
of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late, Delia doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat
on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then
she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent
prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered:
"Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and
very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two — and to be burdened
with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of
quail. His eyes were fixed upon Delia, and there was an expression in
them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor
surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she
had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar
expression on his face.

Delia wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair
cut off and sold it because I couldn't have lived through Christmas with-
out giving you a present. It'll grow out again — you won't mind, will you?
I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. 'Merry Christmas!'
Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-^what a beautiful,
nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not
arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

10 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

"Cut it off and sold it," said Delia. "Don't you like me just as well, any-
how? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Delia. "It's sold, I tell you— sold and
gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you.
Maybe the hairs on my head were numbered," she went on with a sud-
den serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you.
Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Delia.
For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential
object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—
what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the
wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not
among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the
table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think
there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could
make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may
see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an
ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine charge to hysteri-
cal tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the
comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs— the set of combs, side and back, that De!h
had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure
tortoise shell, with jewelled rims— just the shade to wear in the beautiful
vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had
simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession.
And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the
coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look
up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And then Delia leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly
upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a re-
flection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to
look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want
to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands
under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a

A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE II

while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the
money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men — wonderfully wise men — who
broughts gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving
Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, pos-
sibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I
have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children
in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures
of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said
that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and
receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are
the magi.

A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE

At midnight the cafe was crowded. By some chance the little table at
which I sat had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it
extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.

And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a
theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear
of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers
instead of cosmopolites.

I invoke your consideration of the scene — the marble-topped tables, the
range of leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies
dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of
taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largess-loving garfons,
the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the
melange of talk and laughter — and, if you will, the Wurzburger in the
tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch
to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk
that the scene was truly Parisian.

My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard
from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new "attraction"
there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversa-
tion rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great,
round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it
seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table d'hdte
grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from
continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high seas
with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain
bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland.
Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki.

12 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you
dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled
you into the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling
you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila
cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed. You
would have addressed a letter to "E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth,
Solar System, the Universe," and mailed it, feeling confident that it would
be delivered to him.

I was sure that I had found at least one true cosmopolite since Adam,
and I listened to his world-wide discourse fearful lest I should discover
in it the local note of the mere globe-trotter. But his opinion never
fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to cities, countries, and conti-
nents as the winds or gravitation.

And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought
with glee of a great almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world
and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is
pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and that "the men that
breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem
as a child to the mother's gown." And whenever they walk "by roaring
streets unknown" they remember their native city "most faithful, foolish,
fond: making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond/' And
my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I
had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of
birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his
whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon.

Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Cog-
lan by the third corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me
the topography along the Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a
medley. The concluding air was "Dixie," and as the exhilarating notes
tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of
hands from almost every table.

It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be wit-
nessed every evening in numerous cafes in the City of New York. Tons
of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have
conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to caf^s
at nightfall. This applause of the "rebel" air in a Northern city does puzzle
a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years* generous
mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans
race track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas
citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South
rather a "fad" in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left
forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh,
certainly; but many a lady has to work now — the war, you know.

When "Dixie" was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up

A COSMOPOLITE IN A CAFE 13

from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his
soft-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the
vacant chair at our table and pulled out cigarettes.

The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us men-
tioned three Wurzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired young man
acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened
to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had.

"Would you mind telling me," I began, "whether you are from "

The fist of E. Rushmore Coplan banged the table and I was jarred into
silence.

"Excuse me," said he, "but that's a question I never like to hear asked.
What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by
his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey,
Virginians who weren't descended from Pocohontas, Indianians who
hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with
silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yan-
kees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New
Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a
one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be
a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section."

"Pardon me," I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one.
I know the South, and when the band plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I
have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special
violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either
Secaucus, N. J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the
Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by in-
quiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with your own — larger
theory, I must confess."

And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became
evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves.

"I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mysteriously, "on the top of
a valley, and sing too-ralloo-ralloo."

This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.

"I've been around the world twelve times," said he. "I know an Esqui-
mau in Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw
a goat-herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast
food puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and an-
other in Yokahama all the year around. I've got slippers waiting for me
in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell *em how to cook my
eggs in Rio Janeiro or Seattle. It's a mighty little old world. What's the
use of bragging about being from the North, or the South, or the old
manor house in the dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak,
or Fairfax County, Vav or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll be a better

14 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres
of swampland just because we happened to be born there."

"You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite/' I said, admiringly. "But it
also seems that you would decry patriotism."

"A relic of the stone age," declared Coglan, warmly. "We are all
brothers— Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians and the people in
the bend of the Kaw River. Some day all this pretty pride in one's city or
state or section or country will be wiped out, and we'll all be citizens of
the world, as we ought to be."

"But while you are wandering in foreign lands," I persisted, "do not
your thoughts revert to some spot — some dear and "

"Nary a spot," interrupted E. R. Coglan, flippantly. "The terrestrial,
globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the poles, and
known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound
citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a
gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag about their drainage
canal. I've seen a Southerner on being introduced to the King of England
hand that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that his
grand-aunt on his mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkinses,
of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by
some Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he came
back to Kabul with the agent. 'Afghanistan?' the natives said to him
through an interpreter. 'Well, not so slow, do you think?' 'Oh, I don't
know,' says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab driver at Sixth
Avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not tied down to
anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rush-
more Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere."

My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought he saw
some one through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left
with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Wiirzburger without
further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the sum-
mit of a valley.

I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the
poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and I believed
in him. How was it? "The men that breed from them they traffic up and
down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown."

Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his

My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict
in another part of the cafe. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons
E. Rushmore Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in terrific battle.
They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and
men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunette
screamed, and a blonde began to sing "Teasing."

My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth

BETWEEN ROUNDS 15

when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying
wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting.

I called McCarthy, one of the French gardens, and asked him the cause
of the conflict.

"The man with the red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got
hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply
of the place he come from by the other guy."

"Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the world— -a cos-
mopolite. He "

"Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy,
"and he wouldn't stand for no knockin5 the place."

BETWEEN ROUNDS

The May moon shone bright upon the private boarding-house of Mrs.
Murphy. By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will
be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heyday,
with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and
buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort
agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder;
hand-organs, fountains and pinochle were playing everywhere.

The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boarding-house were open. A group of
boarders were seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German
pancakes.

In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her
husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat went into Mrs.
McCaskey.

At nine McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe
in his teeth; and he apologized for disturbing the boarders on the steps as
he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width
Ds.

As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the
usual stove-lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words.

Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the
breast of his spouse.

"I heard ye," came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apolly-
gize to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails of
their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-
line without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,s and I'm sure it's that long from
rubberin' out the windy for ye and the victuals cold such as there's money
to buy after drinkin' up yer wages at Gallegher's every Saturday evenin',
and the gas man here twice to-day for his."

l6 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

"Woman," said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair,
"the noise of ye is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness
ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of society.
'Tis no more than exercisin' the acrimony of a gentleman when we ask
the dissent of ladies blockin' the way for steppin' between them. Will ye
bring the pig's face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?"

Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was some-
thing in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of
her mouth went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall
of crockery and tinware.

"Pig's face, is it?" said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of
bacon and turnips at her lord.

Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow
the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with sham-
rocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread
pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by
her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she replied
with a well-aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid the
battle, according to courses, should have ended.

But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent table d'hdter. Let cheap Bohemians
consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make that faux pas. He
was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his experi-
ence. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their equiva-
lent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash-basin at
the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time.
She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to
bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream down-
stairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary
armistice.

On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was stand-
ing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.

" Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again," meditated the police-
man. "I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married folks
they are: and few pleasures they have. Twill not last long. Sure, they'll
have to borrow more dishes to keep it up with."

And just then came the loud scream below stairs, betokening fear or
dire extremity. "Tis probably the cat," said Policeman Cleary, and
walked hastily in the other direction.

The boarders on the steps Were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance
solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to analyze
the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy's little boy,
Mike, was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy —
two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling
to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos,

BETWEEN ROUNDS 17

truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, millinery, and
their hands came together in sympathy. The two old maids. Misses Walsh,
who complained every day about the noise in the halls, inquired immedi-
ately if anybody had looked behind the clock.

Major Griggs, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and
buttoned his coat. "The little one lost?" he exclaimed. "I will scour the
city." His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said : "Go,
Ludovic!" in a baritone voice. "Whoever can look upon that mother's
grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone." "Give me
some thirty or — sixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children
sometimes stray far. I may need car-fares."

Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest
step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow
up the article about the carpenter's strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the
moon: "Oh, ar-r-Mike, f r Gawd's sake, where is me little bit av a boy?"

"When'd ye see him last?" asked old man Denny, with one eye on the
report of the Building Trades League.

"Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, "'twas yisterday, or maybe four hours
ago! I dunno. But it's lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin' on the
sidewalk only this mornin' — or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with
work, 'tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over from
top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven "

Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers.
They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom;
they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath
the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Per-
haps a different simile would have been wiser. Still, nobody should take
offence. We would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient claws.

No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the
straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the
ways are so steep and strange.

Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into
Billy's place. "Gimme a rye-high," he said to the servitor. "Haven't seen
a bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around
here anywhere, have you?"

Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. "Think of that
dear dear little babe," said Miss Purdy, "lost from his mother's side —
perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds — oh, isn't
it dreadful?"

"Ain't that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "Say I
start out and help look for um!"

"Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, "you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you
are so dashing — so reckless — suppose in your enthusiasm some accident
should befall you, then what "

l8 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one
finger on the lines.

In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window
to recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of
his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the
salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below,
and thrust their heads out of the window.

" Tis little Mike is lost " said Mrs. McCaskey, in a hushed voice, "the
beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!"

"The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the win-
dow. "Why, now, that's bad enough, entirely. The childer, they be dif-
ferent. If 'twas a woman I'd be willing for they leave peace behind 'em
when they go."

Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm,

"Jawn," she said, sentimentally, "Missis Murphy's little bye is lost. Tis
a great city for losing little boys. Six years old he was. Jawn, 'tis the same
age our little bye would have been if we had had one six years ago."

"We never did," said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact.

"But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this
night, with out little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres
at all."

"Ye talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. "'Tis Pat he would be
named, after me old father in Cantrim."

"Ye lie!" said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "Me brother was worth
tin dozen bog-trotting McCaskey s. After him would the bye be n&Jnaed."
She leaned over the window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and
bustle below.

"Jawn," said Mrs. McCaskey, softly, "I'm sorry I was hasty wid ye."

"Twas hasty puddin', as ye say," said her husband, "and hurry-up
turnips and get-a-move-on-ye coffee. Twas what ye could call a quick
lunch, all right, and tell no lie."

Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his
rough hand in hers.

"Listen at the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. " Tis an awful
thing for a bit of a bye to be lost in this great big city. If 'twas our little
Phelan, Jawn, I'd be breakin' me heart."

Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around
the nearing shoulder of his wife.

" Tis foolishness, of course," said he, roughly, "but I'd be cut up some
meself if our little — Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there never was
any children for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and hard with ye, Judy,
Forget it."

They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted
below.

THE SKYLIGHT ROOM 19

Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, ques-
tioning, filling the air with rumors, and inconsequent surmises. Mrs.
Murphy plowed back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down
which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went.

Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-
house.

"What's up now, Judy?" asked Mr. McCaskey.

" Tis Missis Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. "She says
she's after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of linoleum under
the bed in her room."

Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly.

"That's yer Phelan," he shouted, sardonically, "Divil a bit would a Pat
have done that trick. If the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the
powers, call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangy
pup."

Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with
the corners of her mouth drawn down.

Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed.
Surprised, he upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment, where
the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils
seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece.

"By the deported snakes!" he exclaimed. "Jawn McCaskey and his
lady have been fightin' for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis
could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm."

Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.

Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs.
Murphy was about to lock the door for the night.

THE SKYLIGHT ROOM

First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlors. You would not
dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits
of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would
manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor
nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such
that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your
parents, who had neglected to train you up in one of the professions that
fitted Mrs. Parker's parlors.

Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second-floor-
back at $8. Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the
$12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of
his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs.

20 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

Mclntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with
private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still
cheaper. .

I£ you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr.
Skidder's large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder's room was not
vacant He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every
room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After
each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would
pay something on his rent.

Then— oh, then—if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand
clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed
your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be
cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word "Clara," she would
show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the colored maid,
would escort you up to the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight,
and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor space in
the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or
storeroom.

In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser.
Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin.
Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a
well— and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight
you saw a square of blue infinity.

"Two dollars, suh," Clara would say in her half-contemptuous, WE-
Tuskegeenial tones.

One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a type-
writer made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very
little girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had
stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me!
Why didn't you keep up with us?"

Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlors. "In this closet," she said,
"one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal "

"But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist," said Miss Leeson, with a
shiver.

Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that
she kept for those who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led the
way to the second-floor-back.

"Eight dollars?" said Miss Leeson. "Dear me! I'm not Hetty if I do
look green. I'm just a poor little working girl. Show me something higher
and lower."

Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the
rap on his door.

"Excuse me, Mr. Skidder," said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile

THE SKYLIGHT ROOM 21

at his pale looks. "I didn't know you were in. I asked the lady to have a
look at your lambrequins."

"They're too lovely for anything," said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly
the way the angels do.

After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-
haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserted a small,
roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features.

"Anna Held'll jump at it," said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet
up against the lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an
aerial cuttlefish.

Presently the tocsin call of "Clara!" sounded to the world the state of
Miss Leeson's purse. A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stair-
way, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and mut-
tered the menacing and cabalistic words "Two dollars!"

"I'll take it!" sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron
bed.

Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home
papers with handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter.
Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps
of the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended
for a skylight room when the plans were drawn for her creation. She was
gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr. Skid-
der read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, "It's No
Kid; or, The Heir of the Subway."

There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss
Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Long-
necker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, "Well,
really!" to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss
Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked
in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat
on the middle step and the men would quickly group around her.

Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part
in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And especially Mr,
Hoover, who was forty-five, fat, flush and foolish. And especially ^ very
young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to
leave off cigarettes. The men voted her "the funniest and jolliest ever,"
but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable.

I pray you to let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the footlights
and drops an epicedian tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the
pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpu-
lence. Tried out, Falstaff might have rendered more romance to the
tone than would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may

22 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

sigh, but he must not puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men
remanded. In vain beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch belt.
Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off
Helen herself; Hoover, forty-five, flush, foolish and fat is meat for perdi-
tion. There was never a chance for you, Hoover.

As Mrs. Parker's roomers sat thus one summer's evening, Miss Leeson
looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh :

"Why, there's Billy Jackson! I can see him from down here, too."

All looked up — some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about
for an airship, Jackson-guided.

"It's that star," explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger.
"Not the big one that twinkes — the steady blue one near it. I can see it
every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson."

"Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker. "I didn't know you were an
astronomer, Miss Leeson."

"Oh, yes," said the small star gazer, "I know as much as any of them
about the style of sleeves they're going to wear next fall in Mars."

"Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker. "The star you refer to is Gamma,
of the constellation Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and
its meridian passage is "

"Oh," said the very young Mr. Evans, "I think Billy Jackson is a much
better name for it."

"Same here," said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Long-
necker. "I think Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any
of those old astrologers had."

"Well, really!" said Miss Longnecker.

"I wonder whether it's a shooting star," remarked Miss Dorn, "I hit
nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday."

"He doesn't show up very well from down here," said Miss Leeson.
"You ought to see him from my room. You know you can see stars even
in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the
shaft of a coal mine, and it makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond
pin that Night fastens her kimono with."

There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable
papers home to copy. And when she went out in the morning, instead of
working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the
drip of cold refusals transmitted through insolent office boys. This went
on.

There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker's stoop
at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the restaurant.
But she had had no dinner.

As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance.
He asked her to marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an
avalanche. She dodged, and caught the balustrade. He tried for her hand,
and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she went

THE SKYLIGHT ROOM 23

up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder's door as he
was red-inking a stage direction for Myrtle Delorme (Miss Leeson) in
his (unaccepted) comedy, to "pirouette across the stage from L to the side
of the Count." Up the carpeted ladder she crawled at last and opened the
door of the skylight room.

She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron
cot, her fragile body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that
Erebus of a room she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and smiled.

For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and con-
stant through the skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk
in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing
the star that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually, named. Miss
Longnecker must be right: it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassio-
peia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma.

As she lay on her back, she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time
she got two thin fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to
Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply.

"Good-bye, Billy," she murmured, faintly. "You're millions of miles
away and you won't even twinkle once. But you kept where I could see
you most of the time up there when there wasn't anything else but dark-
ness to look at, didn't you? . . . Millions of miles. . . . Good-bye, Billy
Jackson."

Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked at to the next day, and
they forced it open. Vinegar, and the slapping of wrists and burnt feathers
proving of no avail, some one ran to 'phone for an ambulance.

In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging, and the
capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident,
with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps.

"Ambulance call to 49," he said, briefly, "What's the trouble?"

"Oh, yes, doctor," sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there
should be trouble in the house was the greater. "I can't think what can be
the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It's a
young woman, a Miss Elsie — yes, a Miss Elsie Leeson. Never before in my
house "

"What room?" cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker
was a stranger.

"The skylight room. It "

Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of sky-
light rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker fol-
lowed slowly, as her dignity demanded.

On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer
in his arms. He stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue,
not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips
down from a nail. Ever afterwards there remained crumples in her mind

24 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

and body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor
said to her.

"Let that be/' she would answer. "If I can get forgiveness for having
heard it I will be satisfied."

The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of
hounds that follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the
sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead.

They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in
the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was : "Drive
like h — 1, Wilson," to the driver.

That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning's paper I saw a little news
item, and the last sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld
the incidents together.

It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman

who had been removed from No. 49 East Street, suffering from

debility induced by starvation. It concluded from these words:

"Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case,
says the patient will recover."

A SERVICE OF LOVE

When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and
show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a new
thing in logic, and a feat in story-telling somewhat older than the great
wall of China.

Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West pulsing
with a genius for pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town pump
with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed and
hung in the drug-store window by the side of the ear of corn with an un-
even number of rows. At twenty he left for New York with a flowing
necktie and a capital tied up somewhat closer.

Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine-tree
village in the South that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat

for her to go "North" and "finish." They could not see her £ , but that

is our story.

Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music
students had gathered to discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's
works, pictures, Waldteuf el, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong,

Joe and Delia became enamored one of the other, or each o£ the other,
as you please, and in a short time were married — for (see above), when
one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

ASERVICEOFLOVE 25

Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome
flat— something like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the
keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each
other. And my advice to the rich young man would be—sell all thou hast,
and give it to the poor— janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with
your Art and your Delia.

Flat-dwellers shall indorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happi-
ness. If a home is happy it cannot fit too close— let the dresser collapse and
become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the
escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let
the four walls come together, if they will, so you and your Delia are
between. But if home be the other kind, let it be wide and long— enter
you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape
Horn and go out by the Labrador.

Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister — you know his fame.
His fees are high; his lessons are light— his high-lights have brought him
renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstock — you know his repute as a
disturber of the piano keys.

They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every —
but I will not be cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was
to become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentlemen
with thin side-whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another
in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to become familiar
and then contemptuous with Music, so that when she saw the orchestra
seats and boxes unsold she could have sore throat and lobster in a private
dining-room and refuse to go on the stage.

But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat — the
ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh,
light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions — ambitions interwoven each
with the other's or else inconsiderable — the mutual help and inspiration;
and — overlook my artlessness — stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at

II P.M,

But after a while Art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some switch-
man doesn't flag it. Everything going out and nothing coming in, as the
vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Herr Rosen-
stock their prices. When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.
So, Delia said she must give music lessons to keep the chafing dish bub-
bling.

For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening
she came home elated.

"Joe, dear," she said, gleefully, "I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest
people. General— General A. B. Pinkney's daughter— on Seventy-first
Street. Such a splendid house, Joe— you ought to see the front door! By-
zantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw any
thing like it before.

26 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

"My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's a
delicate thing — dresses always in white; and the sweetest, simplest man-
ners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three lessons a week; and, just
think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit; for when I get two or three
more pupils I can resume my lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth
out that wrinkle between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice supper."

"That's all right for you, Dele," said Joe, attacking a can o£ peas with
a carving knife and a hatchet, "but how about me? Do you think I'm
going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high
art? Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell papers or
lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or two."

Delia came and hung about his neck.

"Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as
if I had quit my music and gone to work at something else. While I
teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily
as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr, Magis-
ter."

"All right," said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable dish.
"But I hate for you to be giving lessons. It isn't Art. But you're a trump
and a dear to do it."

"When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard," said Delia.

"Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park/' said Joe.
"And Tinkle gave me permission to hang two of them in his window. I
may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them."

"I'm sure you will," said Delia, sweetly. "And now let's be thankful for
Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast."

During all of the next week the Larrabees had an early breakfast* Joe
was enthusiastic about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in
Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled, praised and
kissed at 7 o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o'clock
when he returned in the evening.

At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly
tossed three five-dollar bills on the 8 x 10 (inches) centre table of the 8 x 10
(feet) flat parlor.

"Sometimes," she said, a little wearily, "Clementina tries me. I'm afraid
she doesn't practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often.
And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get monoto-
nous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know
him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the
piano — he is a widower, you know — and stands there pulling his white
goatee. 'And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers progress-
ing?' he always asks.

"I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing room, Joe! And
those Astrakhan rug portieres. And Clementina has such a funny little
cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting at-

ASERVICEOFLOVE 2J

tached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney's brother was
once Minister to Bolivia."

And then Joe, with the air of Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a
two and a one — all legal tender notes — and laid them beside Delia's
earnings.

"Sold that watercolor of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he an-
nounced, overwhelmingly.

"Don't joke with me/' said Delia— "not from Peoria!"

"All the way. I wish you could see him, JDele. Fat man with a woolen
muffler and a quill toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and
thought it was a windmill at first. He was game, though, and bought
it anyhow. He ordered another — an oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight
depot — to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess Art is still
in it."

"I'm so glad you've kept on," said Delia, heartily. "You're bound to
win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before.
We'll have oysters to-night."

"And filet mignon with champignons," said Joe. "Where is the olive
fork?"

On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his
$18 on the parlor table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark
paint from his hands.

Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless
bundle of wraps and bandages.

"How is this?" asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but
not very joyously.

"Clementina," she explained, "insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her
lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. The
General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish,
Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't
in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great
lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And
the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen. Pinkney! — Joe, that old man nearly
went distracted. He rushed downstairs and sent somebody — they said the
furnace man or somebody in the basement — out to a drug store for some
oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now."

"What's this?" asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some
white strands beneath the bandages.

"It's something soft," said Delia, "that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you
sell another sketch?" She had seen the money on the table.

"Did I?" said Joe; "just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot
to-day, and he isn't sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a
view on the Hudson. What time this, afternoon did you burn your hand,
Dele?"

28 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

"Five o'clock, I think," said Dele, plaintively. "The iron— I mean the
rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen,
Pinkney, Joe, when "

"Sit down here a moment, Dele," said Joe. He drew her to the couch,
sat beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.

"What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?" he asked.

She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stub-
bornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but
at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.

"I couldn't get any pupils," she confessed. "And I couldn't bear to have
you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big
Twenty-fourth Street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up
both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl
in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the
way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. YouVe not angry,
are you, Joe? And if I hadn't got the work you mightn't have sold your
sketches to that man from Peoria."

"He wasn't from Peoria," said Joe, slowly.

"Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe—
and — kiss me3 Jo&— and what made you ever suspect that I wasn't giving
music lessons to Clementina?"

"I didn't," said Joe, "until to-night. And I wouldn't have then, only
I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon
for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I've
been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks."

"And then you didn't "

"My purchaser from Peoria," said Joe, "and Gen. Pinkney are both
creations of the same art— but you wouldn't call it either painting or
music."

And then they both laughed, and Joe began:

"When one loves one's Art no service seems "

But Delia stopped him- with her hand on his lips. "No," she said—
"just 'When one loves.'"

THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE

Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall
of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to
attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give and Take —
or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltz-
ing, you must work in Rhinegold's paper-box factory. Still, any Clover
Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single

THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE 29

dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the paper-box girl that
he affected; and few strangers could boast of having shaken a foot at the
regular hops.

Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-
handed style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna
McCarty and her "fellow." Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the
factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy
Burns take her by Maggie's house every Saturday night so that her
friend could go to the dance with them.

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall
of the association in Orchard Street was fitted out with muscle-making
inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to
engage the police and rival social athletic organizations in joyous combat.
Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hops with the
paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient
screen. For sometimes the tip went 'round, and if you were among the
elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as neat and
satisfying a little welter-weight affair to a finish as ever happened inside
the ropes.

On Saturdays Rhinegold's paper-box factory closed at 3 P.M. On one
such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Mag-
gie's door Anna said, as usual: "Be ready at seven sharp, Mag, and Jimmy
and mell come by for you."

But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful
thanks from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high
poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth, and
almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye.

"Thanks, Anna," said Maggie; "but you and Jimmy needn't bother
to-night. I've a gentleman friend that's coming round to escort me to the
hop."

The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and
beseeched her. Maggie Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive
Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or a moonlit
bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it?

"You'll see to-night," saicl Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first
grapes she had gathered in Cupid's vineyard. "He's swell all right. He's
two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-to-date dresser. I'll introduce
him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall."

Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that
evening. Anna's eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch
the first glimpse of her friend's "catch."

At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her
triumphant eye discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful
Jimmy*

30 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

"Oh, gee!" cried Anna, "Mag ain't made a hit— oh, no! Swell fellow?
well, I guess I Style? Look at 'urn."

"Go as far as you like," said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. "Cop
him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push.
Don't mind me. He don't squeeze all the lines, I guess. Huh!"

"Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I'm glad for Mag. First
fellow she ever had. Oh, here they come."

Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a
stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the
faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average Give and Take
athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he
bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover Leaf Club
pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its
prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its preservation
from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the
association who would bind a paper-box maiden to his conquering chariot
scorned to employ Beau Brummell airs. They were not considered honor-
able methods of warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat straining at its
buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the super-
eminence of the male in the cosmogony of creation, even a calm display
of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in the gentle tourneys of
Cupid — these were the approved arms and ammunition of the Clover
Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, the genuflexions and alluring poses of
this visitor with their chins at a new angle.

"A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O'Sullivan," was Maggie's formula of
introduction. She led him around the room, presenting him to each new-
arriving Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique
luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten
with its first mouse.

"Maggie Toole's got a fellow at last," was the word that went round
among the paper-box girls. "Pipe Mag's floor-walker" — thus the Give and
Takes expressed their indifferent contempt.

Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with
her back. She felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrific-
ing partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and
diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the re^
luctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her chum
to walk over his feet through a two-step.

But to-night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sul-
livan was a victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her
first butterfly flight. And though our tropes of fairyland be mixed with
those of entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from the
rose-crowned melody of Maggie's one perfect night.

The girls besieged her for introduction to her "fellow." The Clover

THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE 31

Leaf young men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms
in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and
bespoke her for the dance.

Thus she scored; but to Terry O'Sullivan the honors of the evening fell
thick and fast. He shook his curls; he smiled and went easily through the
seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open
window ten minutes each day. He danced like a faun; he introduced
manner and style and atmosphere; his words came trippingly upon his
tongue, and — he waltzed twice in succession with the paper-box girl that
Dempsey Donovan brought.

Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and
could chin the bar twice with one hand. He was one of "Big Mike"
O'Sullivan's lieutenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared
to arrest him. Whenever he broke a pushcart man's head or shot a member
of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and Literary Association in the
kneecap, an officer would drop around and say:

"The Cap'n'd like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye
have time, Dempsey, me boy."

Rut there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains
and black cigars; and somebody would tell a funny story, and then
Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the six-pound
dumbbells. So, doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across Niagara
was a safe terpsichorean performance compared with waltzing twice with
Dempsey Donovan's paper-box girl. At 10 o'clock the jolly round face
of "Big Mike" O'Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes upon the
scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and
handed out real perfectos to the delighted boys.

Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. "Big
Mike" looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and de-
parted.

The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls.
Terry O'Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in
blue to her partner and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted
him in the middle of the floor.

Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused
nearly every one to turn and look at them— there was a subtle feeling
that two gladiators had met in the arena. Two or three Give and Takes
with tight coat sleeves drew nearer,

"One moment, Mr. O'Sullivan," said Dempsey. "I hope you're enjoying
yourself. Where did you say you lived?"

The two gladiators were well matched. Dempsey had, perhaps, ten
pounds of weight to give away. The O'Sullivan had breadth and quick-
ness. Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of mouth, an in-
destructible jaw, a complexion like a belle's and the coolness of a cham-

32 BOOK I THEFOURMILLION

pion. The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control over
his conspicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law written when the
rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too incom-
parable to divide pre-eminence. One only must survive.

"I live on Grand," said O'Sullivan, insolently; "and no trouble to find
me at home. Where do you live?"

Dempsey ignored the question.

"You say your name's O'Sullivan," he went on. "Well, 'Big Mike' says
he never saw you before."

"Lots of things he never saw," said the favorite of the hop.

"As a rule," went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, "O'Sullivans in this dis-
trict know one another. You escorted one of our lady members here, and
we want a chance to make good. If you've got a family tree let's see a few
historical O'Sullivan buds come out on it. Or do you want us to dig it out
of you by the roots ? "

"Suppose you mind your own business/' suggested O'Sullivan, blandly.

Dempsey's eye brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as
though a brilliant idea had struck him.

"I've got it now," he said, cordially. "It was just a little mistake. You
ain't no O'Sullivan. You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for not
recognizing you at first."

O'Sullivan's eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy
Geoghan was ready and caught his arm.

Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the
club, and walked rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other
members of the Give and Take Association swiftly joined the little group,
Terry O'Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of Rules and Social
Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and c&nducted him out
through the same door at the rear.

This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf members requires a
word of elucidation. Back of the, association hall was a small room rented
by the club. In this room personal difficulties that arose on the ballroom
floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of nature, under the
supervision of the Board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a fight
at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members guaranteed
that.

So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the Board done their pre-
liminary work that many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the
fascinating O'Sullivan's social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She
looked about for her escort.

"Smoke up!" said Rose Cassidy. "Wasn't you on? Demps Donovan
picked a scrap with your Lizzie-boy, and they've waltzed out to the
slaughter room with him. How's my hair look done up this way, Mag?"

Maggie laid a hand on the bosom of her cheese-cloth waist.

THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE 33

"Gone to fight with Dempsey!" she said, breathlessly. "They've got to
be stopped. Dempsey Donovan can't fight him. Why, hell— he'll kill
him!"

"Ah, what do you care?" said Rosa. "Don't some of 'em fight every
hop?"

But Maggie was off, darting her zig-zag way through the maze of
dancers. She burst through the rear door into the dark hall and then
threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat.
It gave way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scene—
the Board standing about with open watches; Dempsey Donovan in his
shirt sleeves dancing light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern
pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O'Sullivan standing
with arms folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without
slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream —
leaped in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was
suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright stiletto that he
had drawn from his bosom.

The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms
of the Give and Take Association! Such a thing had never happened be-
fore. Every one stood motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked
the stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian who has
come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning.

And then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth.
Dempsey and the Board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at
O'Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his
head in the direction of the door. "The back stairs, Giuseppi," he said,
briefly. "Somebody '11 pitch your hat down after you."

Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot
of red in her cheeks, down which slow tears were running. But she
looked him bravely in the eye.

"I knew it, Dempsey," she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their
tears. "I knew he was a Guinea. His name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in
when they told me you and him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always
carries knives. But you don't understand, Dempsey. I never had a fellow
in my life. I got tired of comin' with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I
fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan, and brought him along. I
knew there'd be nothin' doin' for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I'll
resign from the club now."

Dempsey turned to Andy Geoghan,

"Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window," he said, "and tell 'em
inside that Mr. O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to
Tammany Hall."

And then he turned back to Maggie.

J4 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

"Say, Mag," he said, "111 see you home. And how about next Saturday
light? Will you come to the hop with me if I call around for you?"

It was remarkable how quickly Maggie's eyes could change from dull
o a shining brown.

"With you, Dempsey ?" she stammered. "Say— will a duck swim?"

tf AN ABOUT TOWN

Ihere are two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about
i mystery. So I began to inquire.

It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases.
&nd then I began to ask why a mattress is made in two pieces. This
serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded like
i conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of construction
was designed to make lighter the burden of woman, who makes up
beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why, then, they were
not made in two equal pieces; whereupon I was shunned.

The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was
enlightenment concerning the character known as A Man About Town.
He was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have
a. concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we
can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental picture of John Doe that is as
clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; he wears a brown vest
and a shiny black serge coat. He stands always in the sunshine chewing
something; and he keeps half-shutting his pocket knife and opening it
again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever found, take
my assurance for it, he will be a large, pale man with blue wristlets show-
ing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes polished within
sound of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere about him tur-
quoises.

But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man
About Town, was blank. I fancied that he had a detachable sneer (like
the smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all. Where-
upon I asked a newspaper reporter about him.

"Why," said he, "a 'Man About Town' is something between a
rounder' and a 'clubman/ He isn't exactly — well, he fits in between Mrs.
Fish's receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn't — well, he
loesn't belong either to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan
Galvanized Iron Workers' Apprentices' Left Hook Chowder Association,
don't exactly know how to describe him to you. You'll see him every-
vhere there's anything doing. Yes, I suppose he's a type. Dress clothes
:very evening; knows the ropes; calls every policeman and waiter in

MANABOUTTOWN 35

town by their first names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen deriva-
tives. You generally see him alone or with another man."

My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this
time the 3126 electric lights on the Rialto were alight. People passed, but
they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me unscathed.
Diner, heimgangers, shop-girls, confidence men, panhandlers, actors,
highwaymen, millionaires, and outlanders hurried, skipped, strolled,
sneaked, swaggered, and scurried by me; but I took no note of them. I
knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had served. I wanted my
Man About Town. He was a type, and to drop him would be an error —
a typograph — but no! let us continue.

Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the
Sunday paper gratifies. The sections have been separated. Papa is ear-
nestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an
open window, and bending — but there, there! Mamma is interested in try-
ing to guess the missing letters in the word N — w Yo — k. The oldest girls
are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a certain young man re-
marked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer in Q., X. & Z. Willie,
the eighteen-year-old son, who attends the New York public school, is
absorbed ia the weekly article describing how to make over an old shirt,
for he hopes to take a prize in sewing on graduation day.

Grandma is holding to the cosmic supplement with a two-hours/
grip; and little Tottie, the baby, is rocking along the best she can with the
real estate transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is
desirable that a few lines of this story be skipped. For it introduces strong
drink.

I went into a cafe to — and while it was being mixed I asked the man
who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as soon as you lay it down what
he understood by the term, epithet, description, designation, character-
ization or appellation, viz.: a "Man About Town."

"Why," said he, carefully, "it means a fly guy that's wise to the all-
night push — see? It's a hot sport that you can't bump to the rail any-
where between the Flatirons — see? I guess that's about what it means."

I thanked him and departed.

On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle
gently against my waistcoat pocket.

"Would you mind telling me," I asked her, "if you ever meet with the
character commonly denominated as *A Man About Town* during your
daily wanderings?"

"I think I know whom you mean," she answered, with a gentle smile.
"We see them in the same places night after night. They are the devil's
body guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they are,
their commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a few
pennies from their wickedness to the Lord's service."

She shook the box again and I dropped a dime into it.

36 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

In front o£ a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing
from a cab. He seemed at leisure; and I put my question to him. He
answered me conscientiously, as I was sure he would.

"There is a type of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered.
"The term is quite familiar to me, but I don't think I was ever called upon
to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an
exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a hopeless
case of the peculiar New York disease of wanting to see and know. At
6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the conventions
of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places
where he does not belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jack-
daw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the town from
rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester Street to Harlem until you
can't find a place in the city where they don't cut their spaghetti with a
knife. Your 'Man About Town* has done that. He is always on the scent
of something new. He is curiosity, impudence, and omnipresence. Han-
soms were made for him, and gold-banded cigars; and the curse of music
at dinner. There are not so many of him; but his minority report is
adopted everywhere.

"I'm glad you brought up the subject; I've felt the influence of this
nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never thought to analyze it before. I
can see now that your 'Man About Town' should have been classified
long ago. In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models; and the
orchestra plays 'Let's All Go Up to Maud's' for him, by request, instead
of Handel. He makes his rounds every evening; while you and I see the
elephant once a week. When the cigar store is raided, he winks at the
officer, familiar with his ground, and walks away immune, while you and
I search among the Presidents for names, and among the stars for ad-
dresses to give the desk sergeant."

My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence. I
seized my advantage.

"You have classified him," I cried with joy. "You have painted his
portrait in the gallery of city types. But I must meet one face to face. I
must study the Man About Town at first hand. Where shall I find him?
How shall I know him?"

Without seeming to hear me, the critic went on. And his cab-driver
was waiting for his fare, too.

"He is die sublimated essence of Butt-in; the refined, intrinsic extract
of Rubber; the concentrated, purified, irrefutable, unavoidable spirit of
Curiosity and Inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils
when his experience is exhausted he explores new fields with the in-
defatigability of a "

"Excuse me," I interrupted, "but can you produce one of this type? It
is a new thing to me. I must study it. I will search the town over until I
find one. Its habitat must be here on Broadway/'

THECOPANDTHEANTHEM 37

"I am about to dine here," said my friend. "Come inside, and if there
is a Man About Town present I will point him out to you. I know most
of the regular patrons here."

"I am not dining yet/' I said to him. "You will excuse me. I am going
to find my Man About Town this night if I have to rake New York
from the Battery to Little Coney Island."

I left the hotel and walked down Broadway. The pursuit of my type
gave a pleasant savor of life and interest to the air I breathed. I was glad
to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified. Leisurely and with
something of an air I strolled along with my heart expanding at the
thought that I was a citizen of great Gotham, a sharer in its magnificence
and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige.

I turned to cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and then
I took a long, pleasant ride with Santos-Dumont.

When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said
aloud: "Hasn't it passed yet?"

A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my
brow that was not at all fevered. A young doctor came along, grinned,
and handed me a morning newspaper.

"Want to see how it happened?" he asked, cheerily. I read the article.
Its headlines began where I heard the buzzing leave of! the night before.
It closed with these lines :

" Bellevue Hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not

serious. He appeared to be a typical Man About Town."

THE COP AND THE ANTHEM

On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily. When wild
geese honk high of nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow
kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in
the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.

A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind
to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his
annual call At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the
North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the in-
habitants thereof may make ready.

Soapy's mind became cognizant of the fact that the time had come for
him to resolve himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to
provide against the coming rigor. And therefore he moved uneasily on
his bench.

The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them
were no considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern

38 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

skies or drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island was
what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and con-
genial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the
essence of things desirable.

For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters.
Just as his more fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to
Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble
arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time was
come. On the previous night three Sabbath newspapers, distributed be-
neath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the
cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient
square. So the Island loomed big and timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned
the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents. In
Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was
an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which
he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple
life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered.
If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit re-
ceived at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every
bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensa-
tion of a private and personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a
guest of the law, which, though conducted by rules, does not meddle un-
duly with a gentleman's private affairs.

Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accom-
plishing his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleas-
antest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant; and then,
after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar
to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest.

Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level
sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up
Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered
together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm, and the
protoplasm.

Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest up-
ward. He was shaven, and his coat was decent and his neat black, ready-
tied four-in-hand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on
Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected
success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the
table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck,
thought Soapy, would be about the thing— with a bottle of Chablis, and
then Camembert, a demi-tasse and a cigar. One dollar for the cigar would
be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme
manifestation of revenge from the cafe management; and yet the meat
would leave him filled and happy for the journey to his winter refuge.

THECOPANDTHEANTHEM 39

But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter's eye
fell upon his frayed trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands
turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the sidewalk
and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.

Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted
Island was not to be an epicurean one. Some other way of entering limbo
must be thought of.

At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed
wares behind plate-glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took
a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running
around the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his
hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.

"Where's the man that done that?" inquired the officer, excitedly.

"Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?"
said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one greets good fortune.

The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men
who smash windows do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They
take to their heels. The policeman saw a man halfway down the block
running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy,
with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pre-
tensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and
atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy
took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table
he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then
to the waiter he betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were
strangers.

"Now, get busy and call a cop," said Soapy. "And don't keep a gentle-
man waiting."

"No cop for youse," said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and
an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan cocktail "Hey, Con!"

Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched
Soapy. He arose joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens, and beat the
dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed
very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away
laughed and walked down the street.

Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo
capture again. This time the opportunity presented what he fatuously
termed to himself a "cinch." A young woman of a modest and pleasing
guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest
at its display of shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the
window a large policeman of severe demeanor leaned against a water
plug.

It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated

40 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

"masher." The refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the
contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he
would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure
his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle.

Soapy straightened the lady missionary's ready-made tie, dragged his
shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat at a killing cant and sidled to-
ward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden
coughs and "hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the
impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher." With half an eye
Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young
woman moved away a few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed at-
tention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her
side, raised his hat and said:

"Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?"

The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had
but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his
insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the
station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand,
caught Soapy 's coat sleeve.

"Sure, Mike," she said, joyfully, "if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd
have spoke to you sooner, but the cop was watching."

With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy
walked past the policeman overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to
liberty.

At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in
the district where by night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows and
librettos. Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry
air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful enchantment had
rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic
upon it, and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in
front of a transplendent theatre he caught at the immediate straw of
"disorderly coduct."

On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of
his harsh voice. He danced, howled, raved, and otherwise disturbed the
welkin.

The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked
to a citizen.

" 'Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin' the goose egg they give to the
Hartford College. Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them
be."

Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a police-
man lay hands on him? In his fancy the Island seemed an unattainable
Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.

In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at a swing-
ing light. His silk umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapy

THECOPANDTHEANTHEM 4!

stepped inside, secured the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The
man at the cigar light followed hastily.

"My umbrella," he said, sternly.

"Oh, is it?" sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. "Well, why
don't you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don't you call
a cop ? There stands one on the corner."

The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a pre-
sentiment that luck would again run against him. The policeman looked
at the two curiously.

"O£ course," said the umbrella man— "that is—- well, you know how
these mistakes occur— I—if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excuse me— I

picked it up this morning in a restaurant If you recognize it as yours,

why — I hope you'll "

"Of course it's mine," said Soapy, viciously.

The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall
blonde in an opera cloak across the street in front of a street car that was
approaching two blocks away.

Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements.
He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered
against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted
to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king who could
do no wrong.

At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter
and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison
Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park
bench.

But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was
an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-
stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered
over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem.
For there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him
transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.

The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians
were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves — for a little while the
scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the
organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it
well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses
and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.

The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences
about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul.
He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the
degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base
motives that made up his existence.

And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel

42 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

mood. An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with
his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make
a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken posses-
sion of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet: he would
resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering.
Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. To-
morrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work.
A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find
him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the
world. He would

Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the
broad face of a policeman.

"What are you doin' here?" asked the officer.

"NothinV said Soapy.

"Then come along/' said the policeman.

"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court
the next morning.

AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE

In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been sold for
$5,000. The painter was a young scrub out of the West named Kraft, who
had a favorite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an unquenchable
belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His theory was
fixed around corned-beef hash with poached egg. There was a story be-
hind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a fountain-pen.
The idea of Kraft — but that is not the beginning of the story.

Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at
Cypher's on Eighth Avenue. I say "took." When we had money, Cy-
pher got it "off of" us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in,
called for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence
in Cypher's sullenness and smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless
soul he was either a prince, a fool, or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten
desk, covered with files of waiter's checks so old that I was sure the
bottomest was one for clams that Henry Hudson had eaten and paid
for. Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III and the goggle-
eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the win-
dows of his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses,
I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his
film. Now and then we paid up back scores.

But the chief thing at Cypher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She was
a grand example of Kraft's theory of the artistic adjustment of nature. She

AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE 43

belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of scrapping, or
Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled and in bronze she
might have stood with the noblest of her heroic sisters as "Liver-and-
Bacon Enlivening the World." She belonged to Cypher's. You expected
to see her colossal figure loom through that reeking blue cloud of smoke
from frying fat just as you expect the Palisades to appear through a drift-
ing Hudson River fog. There arnid the steam of vegetables and the
vapors of acres of "ham and," the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel,
the screaming of "short orders," the cries of the hungering and all the
horrid tumult of feeding man, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing
winged beasts bequeathed us by Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent
way like some great liner cleaving among the canoes of howling savages.

Our Goddess of Grub was built on lines so majestic that they could be
followed only with awe. Her sleeves were always rolled above her elbows.
She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and dropped
us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she
was of such superb Evehood and simplicity that she mothered us from
the beginning. Cypher's store of eatables she poured out upon us with
royal indifference to price and quantity, as from a cornucopia that knew
no exhaustion. Her voice rang like a great silver bell; her smile was many-
toothed and frequent; she seemed like a yellow sunrise on mountain tops.
I never saw her but I thought of the Yosemite. And yet, somehow, I could
never think of her as existing outside of Cypher's. There nature had
placed her and she had taken root and grown mightily. She seemed happy,
and took her few poor dollars on Saturday nights with the flushed
pleasure of a child that receives an unexpected donation.

It was Kraft who first voiced the fear that each of us must have held
latently. It came up apropos, of course, of certain questions of art at
which we were hammering. One of us compared the harmony existing
between a Haydn symphony and pistache ice cream to the exquisite
congruity between Milly and Cypher's.

"There is a certain fate hanging over Milly," said Kraft, "and if it over-
takes her she is lost to Cypher's and to us."

"She will grow fat?" asked Judkins, fearsomely.

"She will go to night school and become refined?" I ventured, anx-
iously.

"It is this," said Kraft, punctuating in a puddle of spilled coffee with a
stiff forefinger. "Caesar had his Brutus — the cotton has its bollworm, the
chorus girl has her Pittsburger, the summer boarder has his poison ivy,
the hero has his Carnegie medal, art has its Morgan, the rose has its "

"Speak," I Interrupted, much perturbed, "You do not think that Milly
will begin to lace?"

"One day," concluded Kraft, solemnly, "there will come to Cypher's
for a plate of beans a millionaire lumberman from Wisconsin, and he will
marry Milly."

44 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

"Never!" exclaimed Judkins and I, in horror.

"A lumberman," repeated Kraft, hoarsely.

"And a millionaire lumberman!" I sighed, despairingly.

"From Wisconsin!" groaned Judkins.

We agreed that the awful fate seemed to menace her, Few things were
less improbable. Milly, like some vast virgin stretch of pine woods, was
made to catch the lumberman's eye. And well we knew the habits of the
Badgers, once fortune smiled upon them. Straight to New York they hie,
and lay their goods at the feet of the girl who serves them beans in a
beanery. Why, the alphabet itself connives. The Sunday newspaper's
headliner's work is cut for him.

"Winsome Waitress Wins Wealthy Wisconsin Woodsman.'*

For a while we felt that Milly was on the verge of being lost to us.

It was our love of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature that in-
spired us. We could not give her over to a lumberman, doubly accursed
by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her
voice modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee
of a tree murderer. No! In Cypher's she belonged — in the bacon smoke,
the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone
china and rattling casters.

Our fears must have been prophetic, for on that same evening the wild-
wood discharged upon us Milly's preordained confiscator — our fee to ad-
justment and order. But Alaska and not Wisconsin bore the burden of
the visitation.

We were at our supper of beef stew and dried apples when he trotted
in as if on the heels of a dog team, and made one of the mess at our table.
With the freedom of the camps he assaulted our ears and claimed the fel-
lowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house. We embraced him as a
specimen, and in three minutes we had all but died for one another as
friends.

He was rugged and bearded and wind-dried. He had just come off the
"trail," he said, at one of the North River ferries, I fancied I could see the
snow dust of Chilcoot yet powdering his shoulders. And then he strewed
the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts
of the returned Klondiker, and began to prate to us of his millions.

"Bank drafts for two millions," was his summing up, "and a thousand
a day piling up from my claims. And now I want some beef stew and
canned peaches. I never got off the train since I mushed out of Seattle,
and I'm hungry. The stuff the niggers feed you on pullmans don't count.
You gentlemen order what you want."

And then Milly loomed up with a thousand dishes on her bare arm —
loomed up big and white and pink and awful as Mount Saint Elias — with
a smile like day breaking in a gulch. And the Klondiker threw down his
pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall halfway, and stared at her.

AN ADJUSTMENT OF NATURE 45

You could almost see the diamond tiaras on Milly's brow and the hand-
embroidered silk Paris gowns that he meant to buy for her.

At last the bollworm had attacked the cotton — the poison ivy was reach-
ing out its tendrils to entwine the summer boarder — the millionaire lum-
berman, thinly disguised as the Alaskan miner, was about to engulf our
Milly and upset Nature's adjustment.

Kraft was the first to act. He leaped up and pounded the Klondiker's
back. "Come out and drink," he shouted. "Drink first and eat afterward."
Judkins seized one arm and I the other. Gaily, roaringly, irresistibly, in
jolly-good-fellow style, we dragged him from the restaurant to a cafe,
stuffing his pockets with his embalmed birds and indigestible nuggets.

There he rumbled a roughly good-humored protest. "That's the girl for
my money," he declared. "She can eat out of my skillet the rest of her
life. Why, I never see such a fine girl. I'm going back there and ask her
to marry me. I guess she won't want to sling hash any more when she sees
the pile of dust I've got."

"You'll take another whiskey and milk now," Kraft persuaded, with
Satan's smile. "I thought you up-country fellows were better sports."

Kraft spent his puny store of coin at the bar and then gave Judkins and
me such an appealing look that we went down to the last dime we had
in toasting our guest.

Then, when our ammunition was gone and the Klondiker, still some-
what sober, began to babble again of Milly, Kraft whispered into his ear
such a polite, barked insult relating to people who were miserly with their
funds, that the miner crashed down handful after handful of silver and
notes, calling for all the fluids in the world to drown the imputation.

Thus the work was accomplished. With his own guns we drove him
from the field. And then we had him carted to a distant small hotel and
put to bed with his nuggets and baby seal-skins stuffed around him.

"He will never find Cypher's again," said Kraft. "He will propose to
the first white apron he sees in a dairy restaurant to-morrow. And Milly
— I mean the Natural Adjustment — is saved!"

And back to Cypher's went we three, and finding customers scarce, we
joined hands and did an Indian dance with Milly in the centre.

This, I say, happened three years ago. And about that time a little luck
descended upon us three, and we were enabled to buy costlier and less
wholesome food than Cypher's. Our paths separated, and I saw Kraft no
more and Judkins seldom.

But, as I said, I saw a painting the other day that was sold for $5,000.
The title was "Boadicea," and the figures seemed to fill all out-of-doors.
But of all the picture's admirers who stood before it, I believe I was the
only one who longed for Boadicea to stalk from her frame bringing me
corned-beef hash with, poached egg.

46 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

I hurried away to see Kraft. His satanic eyes were the same, his hair
was worse tangled, but his clothes had been made by a tailor.

"I didn't know," I said to him.

"We've bought a cottage in the Bronx with the money," said he. "Any
evening at 7."

"Then," said I, "when you led us against the lumberman — the — Klon-
diker — it wasn't altogether on account of the Unerring Artistic Adjust-
ment of Nature ?"

"Well, not altogether," said Kraft, with a grin.

MEMOIRS OF A YELLOW DOG

I don't suppose it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a
contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many others have
demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves in remunera-
tive English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal
story in it, except the old-style monthlies that are still running pictures of
Bryan and the Mont Pelee horror.

But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece, such as
Bearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger, talk
in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's spent most of his life in a cheap
New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen underskirt (the one
she spilled port wine on at the Lady Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't
be expected to perform any tricks with the art of speech.

I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown.
The first thing I can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket at Broad-
way and Twenty-third trying to sell me to a fat lady. Old Mother Hub-
bard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine Pomeranian-Ham-
bletonian-Red-Irish-Cochin-China-Stoke-Pogis fox terrier. The fat lady
chased a V around among the samples of gros grain flannelette in her
shopping bag till she cornered it, and gave up. From that moment I was
a pet — a mamma's own wootsey quidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you
ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a flavor of Camembert cheese
and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and wallop her nose all over you, re-
marking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of voice: "Oh, oo's um
oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums?"

From pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur
looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my
mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that
Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It
took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square
Garden for the Siberian bloodhound prize.

MEMOIRSOFAYELLOWDOG 47

111 tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New
York, paved with Parian marble in the entrance hall and cobblestones
above the first floor. Our flat was three — well, not flights — climbs up. My
mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things— 1903 an-
tique upholstered parlor set, oil chromo of geishas in a Harlem tea house,
rubber plant and husband.

By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with
sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked?— well, tou-
cans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the
dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the
lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line
to dry. And every evening while she was getting supper she made him
take me out on the end of a string for a walk.

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd
never marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on
the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with the iceman,
reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of
malt extract, orie hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into
the flat across the air-shaft— that's about all there is to it. Twenty minutes
before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the
house, fixes her rat so it won't show, and gets out a lot of sewing for a
ten-minute bluff.

I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in my corner
watching that fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and had pipe
dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old
ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would
pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver and kiss me
on the nose— but what could I do ? A dog can't chew cloves.

I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We looked so
much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shook the
streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of
last December's snow on the streets where cheap people live.

One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look
like a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he
wouldn't have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard play Mendels-
sohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:

"What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She
don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that
would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of
Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick,
and bid the blues begone."

The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelli-
gence in his face.

40 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

"Why, doggie," says he, "good doggie. You almost look like you could
speak. What is it, doggie — cats."

"Cats! Could speak!

But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humans were denied the speech
of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which
dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tan ter-
rier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening, but he always
came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the
black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation.

"See here, Wiggle-and-Skip," I says, "you know that it ain't the nature
of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public. I never saw one leashed
to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like to lick every other man
that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up
as an amateur prestidigitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it?
Don't tell me he likes it."

"Him?" says the black-and-tan. "Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy.
He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out he's as shy as the man on the
steamer who would rather play pedro when they make 'em all jackpots.
By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't care whether the thing
on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I've lost two inches of my tail
trying to sidestep those swinging doors."

The pointer I got from that terrier — Vaudeville please copy — set me to
thinking.

One evening about 6 o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and
do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what
she called me. The black-and-tan was called "TWeetness." I consider that
I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still "Lovey"
is something of a nomenclatural tin can on the tail of one's self-respect.

At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian
in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for
the doors, whining like a dog in the press despatches that lets the family
know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook.

"Why, darn my eyes," says the old man, with a grin; "darn my eyes if
the saffron-colored son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me in to take a
drink. Letnme see — how long's it been since I saved shoe leather by keep-
ing one foot on the foot-rest? I believe I'll "

I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour
he kept the Campbells coming. I sat by his side rapping for the waiter
with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never
equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight
minutes before papa comes home.

When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread
the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like

THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN 49

a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw
it into the street.

"Poor doggie," says he; "good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more. ?S
a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car
and be happy."

I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man's legs happy
as a pug on a rug.

"You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser," I said to him — "you moon-
baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can't you see that I don't
want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and
the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with
the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all
out and be pards forever more?"

Maybe you'll say he didn't understand — maybe he didn't. But he kind
of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking.

"Doggie," says he, finally, "we don't live more than a dozen lives on
this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that
flat any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; and that's no flattery.
I'm offering 60 to i that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a
dachshund,"

There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the
Twenty-third Street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give
thanks that prehensile claws had been given to them.

On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a cur-
rant bun:

"Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains."

But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my
ears until I howled, and said:

"You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-colored son of a
door mat, do you know what Fm going to call you?"

I thought of "Lovey," and I whined dolefully.

"I'm going to call you 'Pete,' " says my master; and if I'd had five tails I
couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.

THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN

The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and
First Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest.
The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac,
scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for pain-killer it will not give you a
bonbon*

The Blue Light scorns the labor-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It

50 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

macerates its opium and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To
this day pills are made behind its tall prescription desk — pills rolled out
on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and
thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round paste-
board pill-boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-
plumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough
drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside.

Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend
of his customers. Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy
is not glace. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a confes-
sor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learn-
ing is respected, whose occult widom is venerated and whose medicine is
often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikey's corniform, be-
spectacled nose and narrow, knowledge-bowed figure was well known in
the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and notice were much
desired.

Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's two squares away. Mrs.
Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain
— you must have guessed it— Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his
thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure
and officinal — the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey
was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his
backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being,
calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outwide he was a
weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes
stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and valerianate of
ammonia.

The fly in Ikey's ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was Chunk
McGowan.

Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about
by Rosy. But he was no out-fielder as Ikey was; he picked them off the
bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and customer, and often
dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with
iodine or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along
the bowery.

One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat,
comely, smooth-faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool.

"Ikey," said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat oppo-
site, grinding gum benzoin to a powder, "get busy with your ear. It's
drugs for me if youVe got the line I need."

Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidence
of conflict, but found none.

"Take your coat off," he ordered. "I guess already that you have been
stuck in the ribs with a knife. I have many times told you those Dagoes
would do you up."

THE LOVE-PHILTRE OF IKEY SCHOENSTEIN 5!

Mr. McGowan smiled. "Not them," he said. "Not any Dagoes. But
you've located the diagnosis all right enough—it's under my coat, near the
ribs. Say! Ikey — Rosy and me are goin' to run away and get married to-
night."

Ikey's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding
it steady. He gave it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile
Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom.

"That is," he continued, "if she keeps in the notion until the time
comes. We've been layin' pipes for the getaway for two weeks. One
day she says she will; the same evenin' she says nixy. We've agreed on
to-night, and Rosy's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole days.
But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm afraid she'll stand me up
when it comes to the scratch."

"You said you wanted drugs," remarked Ikey.

Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harassed — a condition opposed to
his usual line of demeanor. He made a patent-medicine almanac into a
roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger.

"I wouldn't have this double handicap make a false start to-night for a
million," he said. "I've got a little flat up in Harlem all ready, with chrys-
anthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I've engaged a
pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at 9.30. It's got to come
off. And if Rosy clon't change her mind again!" — Mr. McGowan ceased,
a prey to his doubts.

"I don't see then yet," said Ikey, shortly, "what makes it that you talk
of drugs, or what I can be doing about it."

"Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit," went on the uneasy suitor,
bent upon marshalling his arguments. "For a week he hasn't let Rosy step
outside the door with me. If it wasn't for losin' a boarder they'd have
bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $20 a week and she'll never regret flyin'
the coop with Chunk McGowan."

"You will excuse me, Chunk," said Ikey. "I must make a prescription
that is to be called for soon."

"Say," said McGowan, looking up suddenly, "say, Ikey, ain't there a
drug of some kind — some kind of powders that'll make a girl like you
better if you give 'em to her?"

Ikey's lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlighten-
ment; but before he could answer, McGowan continued:

"Tim Lacy told me he got some once from a croaker uptown and fed
'em to his girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace-high
and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her. They was married in
less than two weeks."

Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than
Ikey was could have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine

52 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy's territory
he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure.

"I thought," went on Chunk, hopefully, "that if I had one of them
powders to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it might brace her
up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she
don't need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coach-
ing than they are at running bases. If the stuffll work just for a couple
of hours it'll do the trick."

"When is this foolishness of running away to be happening?" asked
Ikey.

"Nine o'clock," said Mr. McGowan. "Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy
goes to bed with a headache, at nine old Parvenzano lets me through to
his backyard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I go un-
der her window and help her down the fire-escape. We've got to make it
early on the preacher's account. It's all dead easy if Rosy don't balk when
the flag drops. Can you fix me one of them powders, Ikey?"

Ikey Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly.

"Chunk," said he, "it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceutists
must have much carefulness. To you alone of my acquaintance would I
intrust a powder like that. But for you I shall make it; and you shall see
how it makes Rosy to think of you."

Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a powder
two soluble tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia. To
them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the
mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this powder would
insure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to the sleeper. This
he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid
if possible, and received the hearty thanks of the backyard Lochinvar.

The subtlety of Ikey's action becomes apparent upon recital of his sub-
sequent move. He sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the
plans of Mr. McGowan for eloping with Rosy, Mr. Riddle was a stout
man, brick-dusty of complexion and sudden in action.

"Much obliged," he said, briefly, to Ikey. "The lazy Irish loafer! My
own room's just above Rosy's. I'll just go up there myself after supper and
load the shot-gun and wait. If he comes in my backyard he'll go away in
a ambulance instead of a bridal chaise."

With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheus for a many-hours deep
slumber, and the blood-thirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned,
Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed, upon discomfiture.

All night in the Blue Light Drug Store he waited at his duties for
.chance news of the tragedy, but none came.

At eight o'clock in the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey started
hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle's to learn the outcome. And, lol as he stepped
out of the store who but Chunk McGowan sprang from a passing street

MAMMON AND THE ARCHER 53

car and grasped his hand — Chunk McGowan with a victor's smile and
flushed with joy.

"Pulled it off," said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. "Rosy hit the fire-
escape on time to a second, and we was under the wire at the Reverend's
at 9.3054. She's up at the flat — she cooked eggs this mornin' in a blue ki-
mono— Lord! how lucky I am! You must pace up some day, Ikey, and
feed with us. I've got a job down near the bridge, and that's where I'm
heading for now."

"The — the — powder?" stammered Ikey.

"Oh, that stuff you gave me!" said Chunk, broadening his grin; "well,
it was this way. I sat down at the supper table last night at Riddle's, and
I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself, 'Chunk, if you get the girl get her
on the square — don't try any hocus-pocus with a thoroughbred like her.*
And I keeps the paper you give me in my pocket. And then my lamps
fall on another party present, who, I says to myself, is failin' in a proper
affection toward his comin' son-in-law, so I watches my chance and dumps
that powder in old man Riddle's coffee — see?"

MAMMON AND THE ARCHER

Old Anthony Rockwall, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rock-
wall's Eureka Soap, looked out the library window of his Fifth Avenue
mansion and grinned. His neighbor to the right — the aristocratic clubman,
G. Van Schuylight Suffolk-Jones—came out to his waiting motor-car,
wrinkling a contumelious nostril, as usual, at the Italian renaissance
sculpture of the soap palace's front elevation.

"Stuck-up old statuette of nothing doing!" commented the ex-Soap
King. "The Eden Musee'll get that old frozen Nesselrode yet if he don't
watch out. Til have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer
and see if that'll make his Dutch nose turn up any higher."

And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the
door of his library and shouted "Mike!" in the same voice that had once
chipped off pieces of the welkin on the Kansas prairies.

"Tell my son," said Anthony to the answering menial, "to come in
here before he leaves the house."

When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his
newspaper, looked at him with a kindly grimness on his big, smooth,
ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and
rattled the keys in his pocket with the other.

"Richard," said Anthony Rockwall, "what do you pay for the soap that
you use?"

Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He

54 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

had not yet taken the measure of this sire of his, who was as full of
unexpectedness as a girl at her first party.

"Six dollars a dozen, I think, dad."

"And your clothes?"

"I suppose about sixty dollars, as a rule."

"You're a gentleman," said Anthony, decidedly. "I've heard of these
young bloods spending $24 a dozen for soap, and going over the hundred
mark for clothes. You've got as much money to waste as any of 'em, and
yet you stick to what's decent and moderate. Now I use the old Eureka —
not only for sentiment, but it's the purest soap made. Whenever you pay
more than 10 cents a cake for soap you buy bad perfumes and labels. But
50 cents is doing very well for a young man in your generation, position
and condition. As I said, you're a gentleman. They say it takes three gen-
erations to make one. They're off. Money'll do it as slick as soap grease.
It's made you one. By hokey! it's almost made one of me. I'm nearly as
impolite and disagreeable and ill-mannered as these two old knicker-
bocker gents on each side of me that can't sleep of nights because I bought
in between 'em."

"There are some things that money can't accomplish," remarked young
Rockwall, rather gloomily.

"Now, don't say that," said old Anthony, shocked. "I bet my money on
money every time. I've been through the encyclopaedia down to Y look-
ing for something you can't buy with it; and I expect to have to take up
the appendix next week. I'm for money against the field. Tell me some-
thing money won't buy."

"For one thing," answered Richard, rankling a little, "it won't buy one
into the exclusive circles of society."

"Oho! won't it?" thundered the champion of the root of evil. "You tell
me where your exclusive circles would be if the first Astor hadn't had the
money to pay for his steerage passage over?"

Richard sighed.

"And that's what I was coming to,*' said the old man, less boisterously.
"That's why I asked you to come in. There's something going wrong
with you, boy. I've been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess
I could lay my hands on eleven millions within twenty-four hours, besides
the real estate. If it's your liver, there's the Rambler down in the bay,
coaled, and ready to steam down to the Bahamas in two days."

"Not a bad guess, dad; you haven't missed it far."

"Ah," said Anthony, keenly; "what's her name?"

Richard began to walk up and down the library floor. There was
enough comradeship and sympathy in this crude old father of his to draw
his confidence.

"Why don't you ask her?" demanded old Anthony. "She'll jump at you.
You've got the money and the looks, and you're a decent boy. Your hands

MAMMON AND THE ARCHER 55

are clean. You've got no Eureka soap on 'em. You've been to college, but
she'll overlook that."

"I haven't had a chance," said Richard.

"Make one," said Anthony. "Take her for a walk in the park, or a straw
ride, or walk home with her from church. Chance! Pshaw!"

"You don't know the social mill, dad. She's part o£ the stream that turns
it. Every hour and minute of her time is arranged for days in advance. I
must have that girl, dad, or this town is a blackjack swamp forevermore.
And I can't write it — I can't do that."

"Tut!" said the old man. "Do you mean to tell me that with all the
money I've got you can't get an hour or two of a girl's time for yourself?"

"I've put it off too late. She's going to sail for Europe at noon day after
to-morrow for a two years' stay. I'm to see her alone to-morrow evening
for a few minutes. She's at Larchmont now at her aunt's. I can't go there.
But I'm allowed to meet her with a cab at the Grand Central Station to-
morrow evening at the 8.30 train. We drive down Broadway to Wallack's
at a gallop, where her mother and a box party will be waiting for us in
the lobby. Do. you think she would listen to a declaration from me during
that six or eight minutes under those circumstances No. And what
chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is
one tangle that your money can't unravel. We can't buy one minute of
time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer. There's no
hope of getting a talk with Miss Lantry before she sails."

"All right, Richard, my boy," said old Anthony, cheerfully. "You may
run along down to your club now. I'm glad it ain't your liver. But don't
forget to burn a few punk sticks in the joss house to the great god Ma-
zuma from time to time. You say money won't buy time? Well, of course,
you can't order eternity wrapped up and delivered at your residence for a
price, but I've seen Father Time get pretty bad stone bruises on his heels
when he walked through the gold diggings."

That night came Aunt Ellen, gentle, sentimental, wrinkled, sighing,
oppressed by wealth, in to Brother Anthony at his evening paper, and
began discourse on the subject of lovers' woes.

"He told me all about it," said Brother Anthony, yawning. "I told him
my bank account was at his service. And then he began to knock money.
Said money couldn't help. Said the rules of society couldn't be bucked for
a yard by a team of ten-millionaires."

"Oh, Anthony," sighed Aunt Ellen, "I wish you would not think so
much of money. Wealth is nothing where a true affection is concerned.
Love is all-powerful. If he only had spoken earlier! She could not have
refused our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. He will have no oppor-
tunity to address her. All your gold cannot bring happiness to your son."

At eight o'clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold
ring from a moth-eaten case and gave it to Richard.

56 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

"Wear it to-night, nephew," she begged. "Your mother gave it to me.
Good luck in love she said it brought. She asked me to give it to you when
you had found the one you loved.5'

Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest fin-
ger. It slipped as far as the second joint and stopped. He took it off and
stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he
'phoned for his cab.

At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gabbing mob at eight
thirty-two.

"We mustn't keep mamma and the others waiting," said she.

"To Wallaces Theatre as fast as you can drive!" said Richard, loyally.

They whirled up Forty-second to Broadway, and then down the white-
starred lane that leads from the soft meadows of sunset to the rocky hills
of morning.

At Thirty-fourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and
ordered the cabman to stop.

"I've dropped a ring," he apologized, as he climbed out. "It was my
mother's, and I'd hate to lose it. I won't detain you a minute — I saw where
it fell."

In less than a minute he was back in the cab with the ring.

But within that minute a crosstown car had stopped directly in front of
the cab. The cab-man tried to pass to the left, but a heavy express wagon
cut him off. He tried the right and had to back away from a furniture van
that had no business to be there. He tried to back out, but dropped his
reins and swore dutifully. He was blockaded in a tangled mess of vehicles
and horses.

One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up com-
merce and movement quite suddenly in the big city.

"Why don't you drive on?" said Miss Lantry impatiently. "Well be
late."

Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested
flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and street cars filling the vast space
where Broadway, Sixth Avenue, and Thirty-fourth Street cross one an-
other as a twenty-six inch maiden fills her twenty-two inch girdle. And
still from all the cross streets they were hurrying and rattling toward the
converging point at full speed, and hurling themselves into the straggling
mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers' imprecations to the clamor.
The entire traffic of Manhattan seemed to have jammed itself around
them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that
lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a street blockade of the porportions
of this one.

"I'm very sorry," said Richard, as he resumed his seat, "but it looks as if
we are stuck. They won't get this jumble loosened up in an hour. It was
my fault. If I hadn't dropped the ring we "

MAMMON AND THE ARCHER 57

"Let me see the ring," said Miss Lantry. "Now that it can't be helped,
I don't care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway."

At ii o'clock that night somebody tapped lightly on Anthony Rock-
walPs door.

"Come in," shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressing-gown, reading
a book of piratical adventures.

Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a gray-haired angel that had
been left on earth by mistake.

"They're engaged, Anthony," she said, softly. "She has promised to
marry our Richard. On their way to the theatre there was a street block-
ade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it.

"And oh, Brother Anthony, don't ever boast of the power of money
again. A little emblem of true love — a little ring that symbolized unend-
ing and unmercenary affection— was the cause of our Richard finding his
happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to recover it. And be-
fore they could continue the blockade occurred. He spoke to his love and
won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money is dross compared
with true love, Anthony."

"All right," said old Anthony. Tm glad the boy has got what he
wanted. I told him I wouldn't spare any expense in the matter if "

"But, Brother Anthony, what good could your money have done?"

"Sister," said Anthony Rockwall. "I've got my pirate in a devil of a
scrape. His ship has just been scuttled, and he's too good a judge of the
value of money to let drown. I wish you would let me go on with this
chapter."

The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily as you who read
it wish it did. But we must go to the bottom of the well for truth.

The next day a person with red hands and a blue polka-dot necktie,
who called himself Kelly, called at Anthony RockwalTs house, and was
at once received in the library.

"Well," said Anthony, reaching for his check-book, "it was a good bilin'
of soap. Let's see — you had $5,000 in cash."

"I paid out $300 more of my own," said Kelly. "I had to go a little above
the estimate. I got the express wagons and cabs mostly for $5; but the
trucks and two-horse teams mostly raised me to $10. The motormen
wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops struck me hard-
est— $50 I paid two, and the rest $20 and {25. But didn't it work beautiful,
Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady wasn't onto that litde out-
door vehicle mob scene. I wouldn't want William to break his heart with
jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either! The boys was on time to the frac-
tion of a second. It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley's
statue."

"Thirteen hundred— there you are, Kelly," said Anthony, tearing off a

50 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

check. "Your thousand, and the $300 you were out. You don't despise
money, do you, Kelly?"

"Me?" said Kelly. "I can lick the man that invented poverty."

Anthony called Kelly when he was at the door.

"You didn't notice," said he, "anywhere in the tie-up, a kind of a fat
boy without any clothes on shooting arrows around with a bow, did you?"

"Why, no," said Kelly, mystified. "I didn't. If he was like you say,
maybe the cops pinched him before I got there."

"I thought the little rascal wouldn't be on hand," chuckled Anthony.
"Good-by, Kelly."

SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE

It was a day in March.

Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening
could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat dry, and likely to consist
of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following para-
graph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extrav-
agant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without
preparation.

Sarah was crying over her bill of fare.

Think of a New York girl shedding tears on the menu card!

To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were
all out, or that she had sworn ice-cream off during Lent, or that she had
ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett matinee. And
then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed.

The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he
with his sword would open made a larger hit than he deserved. It is not
difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice any one
try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a
dozen raw opened that way?

Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon
far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold and clammy world within. She
knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography
just let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to
stenog, she could not enter that bright galaxy of office talent. She was a
free-lance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying.

The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah's battle with the world
was the deal she made with Schulenberg's Home Restaurant. The restau-
rant was next door to the old red brick in which she hall-roomed. One
evening after dining at Schulenberg's 40-cent, five-course table d'hdte
(served as fast as you throw the five baseballs at the colored gentleman's

SPRINGTIME A LA CARTE 59

head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written in an al-
most unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that
if you were not careful you began with a toothpick and rice pudding and
ended with soup and the day of the week.

The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the
menu was beautifully typewritten with the viands temptingly marshalled
under their right and proper heads from "hors d'oeuvre" to "not responsi-
ble for over-coats and umbrellas."

Schulenberg became a naturalized citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left
him she had him willingly committed to an agreement, She was to furnish
typewritten bills of fare for the twenty-one tables in the restaurant — a new
bill for each day's dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often
as changes occurred in the food or as neatness required.

In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to
Sarah's hall room by a waiter — an obsequious one if possible — and furnish
her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for Schu-
lenberg's customers on the morrow.

Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg's patrons
now knew what the food they ate was called even if its nature sometimes
puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was
the main thing with her.

And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring
comes when it comes. The frozen snows of January still lay like adamant
in the cross-town streets. The hand-organs still played "In the Good Old
Summertime," with their December vivacity and expression. Men began
to make thirty-day notes to buy Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam.
And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in the
clutches of winter.

One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom; "house
heated; scrupulously clean; conveniences; seen to be appreciated." She
had no work to do except Schulenberg's menu cards. Sarah sat in her
squeaky willow rocker, and looked out the window. The calendar . on the
wall kept crying to her: "Springtime is here, Sarah— springtime is here,
I tell you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures show it. You've got a neat figure
yourself, Sarah — a — nice springtime figure— why do you look out the win-
dow so sadly?"

Sarah's room was at the back of the house. Looking out the window
she could see the windowless rear brick wall of the box factory on the
next street. But the wall was clearest crystal; and Sarah was looking down
a grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with rasp-
berry bushes and Cherokee roses.

Spring's real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must
have the flowering crocus, the wood-starring dogwood, the voice of blue-
bird—even so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of the retiring

60 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the Lady in Green to their
dull bosoms. But to old earth's choicest kind there come straight, sweet
messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall be no stepchildren
unless they choose to be.

On the previous summer Sarah had gone into the country and loved a
farmer.

(In writing your story never hark back thus. It is bad art, and cripples
interest. Let it march, march.)

Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to
love old Farmer Franklin's son Walter. Farmers have been loved and wed-
ded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was
a modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cow house, and he could
figure up exactly what effect next year's Canada wheat crop would have
on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon.

It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and
won her. And together they had sat and woven a crown of dandelions for
her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms
against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet there, and walked
back to the house swinging her straw sailor in her hands.

They were to marry in the spring — at the very first signs of spring,
Walter said. And Sarah came back to the city to pound her typewriter.

A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A
waiter had brought the rough pencil draft of the Home Restaurant's next
day fare in old Schulenberg's angular hand.

Sarah sat down to her typewriter and slipped a card between the roll-
ers. She was a nimble worker. Generally in an hour and a half the twenty-
one menu cards were written and ready.

To-day there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The
soups were lighter; pork was eliminated from the entrees, figuring only
with Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring per-
vaded the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hill-
sides, was becoming exploited with the sauce that commemorated its gam-
bols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was dimuendo con
amore. The frying-pan seemed to be held, inactive, behind the beneficent
bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled; the richer puddings had van-
ished; the sausage, with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered
in a pleasant thanatopsis with the buckwheats and the sweet but doomed
maple.

Sarah's fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream. Down
through the courses she worked, giving each item its position according
to its length with an accurate eye.

Just above the desserts came the list of vegetables. Carrots and peas, as-
paragus on toast, the perennial tomatoes and corn and succotash, lima
beans, cabbage — and then

SPRINGTIME!LACARTE 61

Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some
divine despair rose in her heart and gathered to her eyes. Down went her
head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled a dry accom-
paniment to her moist sobs.

For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next
item on the bill of fare was dandelions — dandelions with some kind of
egg— but bother the egg!— -dandelions, with whose golden blooms Walter
had crowned her his queen of love and future bride— dandelions, the
harbingers of spring, her sorrow's crown of sorrow — reminder of her
happiest days.

Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer this test: Let the Marechal
Niel roses that Percy brought you on the night you gave him your heart
be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes at a Schulen-
berg table d'hdte. Had Juliet so seen her love tokens dishonored the
sooner would she have sought the lethean herbs of the good apothecary.

But what witch is Spring! Into the great cold city of stone and iron a
message had to be sent. There was none to convey it but the little hardy
courier of the fields with his rough green coat and modest air. He is a true
soldier of fortune, this dent-de-lion — this lion's tooth, as the French chefs
call him. Flowered, he will assist at love-making, wreathed in my lady's
nut-brown hair; young and callow and unblossomed, he goes into the
boiling pot and delivers the word of his sovereign mistress.

By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But,
still in a faint, golden glow from her dandelion dream, she fingered the
typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in the
meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to
the rock-bound lanes of Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle
and jump like a strike-breaker's motor car.

At 6 o'clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the type-
written bill of fare. When Sarah ate she set aside, with a sigh, the dish of
dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass
had been transformed from a bright and love-indorsed flower to be an
ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished.
Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring
herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as ornaments, the first spir-
itual banquet of her heart's true affection.

At 7.30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel: the man in the
room above sought for A on his flute; the gas went a little lower; three
coal wagons started to unload — the only sound of which the phonograph
is jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By
these signs Sarah knew that it was time for her to read. She got out "The
Cloister and the Hearth," the best non-selling book of the month, settled
her feet on her trunk, and began to wander with Gerard.

The front 4oor bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard

62 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

and Denys treed by a bear and listened. Oh, yes; you would, just as she
did!

And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped
for her door, leaving the book on the floor and the first round easily the
bear's,

You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her farmer
came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left
for the gleaners.

"Why haven't you written— oh, why?" cried Sarah.

"New York is a pretty large town," said Walter Franklin. tcl came in a
week ago to your old address. I found that you went away on a Thursday.
That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it
didn't prevent my hunting for you with police and otherwise ever since!"

"I wrote!" said Sarah, vehemently,

"Never got it!"

"Then how did you find me?"

The young farmer smiled a springtime smile.

"I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening," said
he. "I don't care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at
this time of the year. I ran my eye down that nice typewritten bill of fare
looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned
my chair over and hollered for the proprietor. He told me where you
lived."

"I remember," sighed Sarah, happily. "That was dandelions below cab-
bage."

*Td know that cranky capital W 'way above the line that your tfjpe-
writer makes anywhere in the world," said Franklin.

"Why, there's no W in dandelions," said Sarah in surprise.

The young man drew the bill of fare from his pocket and pointed to a
line.

Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon.
There was still the rayed splotch in the upper right-hand corner where a
tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of
the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had
allowed her fingers to strike strange keys.

Between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item:
"DEAREST WALTER, WITH HARD-BOILED EGG."

THE GREEN DOOR

Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten
minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar while you are ch6os-

THE GREEN DOOR 63

ing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of
vaudeville. Suddenly a hand is laid upon your arm. You turn to look into
the thrilling eyes o£ a beautiful woman, wonderful in diamonds and Rus-
sian sables. She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot but-
tered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of, scissors, snips off the second button of
your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, "parallelogram!" and
swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder.

That would be pure adventure. Would you accept it? Not you. You
would flush with embarrassment; you would sheepishly drop the roll and
continue down Broadway, fumbling feebly for the missing button. This
you would do unless you are one of the blessed few in whom the pure
spirit of adventure is not dead.

True adventurers have never been plentiful. They who are set down
in print as such have been mostly business men with newly invented
methods. They have been out after the things they wanted — golden fleeces,
holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true adventurer
goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A
fine example was the Prodigal Son — when he started back home.

Half-adventurers — brave and splendid figures — have been numerous.
From the Crusades to the Palisades they have enriched the arts of history
and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a prize
to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tierce
to deliver, a name to carve, a crow to pick — so they were not followers of
true adventure.

In the big city the twin spirits Romance -and Adventure are always
abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roam the streets they slyly peep
at us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why,
we look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to
our gallery of intimate portraits; in a sleeping thoroughfare we hear a
cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead
of at our familiar curb a cab-driver deposits us before a strange door,
which one, with a smile, opens for us and bids us enter; a slip of paper,
written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of Chance;
we exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection, and fear . with
hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a sudden souse of rain — and
our umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the Full Moon and first
cousin of the Sidereal System; at every corner handkerchiefs .drop, fin-
gers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the
mysterious, the perilous changing clues of adventure are slipped into our
fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them! We are grown
stiff with the ramrod of convention down our bapks. We pass on; and
some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our
romance has been a pallid thing >of a marriage or two, a satin rosette
kept in a safe-deposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator.

64 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer. Few were the evenings on which
he did not go forth from his hall bedchamber in search of the unex-
pected and the egregious. The most interesting thing in life seemed to
him to be what might lie just around the next corner. Sometimes his will-
ingness to tempt fate led him into strange paths. Twice he had spent the
night in a station-house; again and again he had found himself the dupe
of ingenious and mercenary tricksters; his watch and money had been
the price of one flattering allurement. But with undiminished ardor he
picked up every glove cast before him into the merry lists of adventure.

One evening Rudolf was strolling along a cross-town street in the older
central part of the city. Two streams of people filled the sidewalks— the
home-hurrying, and that restless contingent that abandons home for the
specious welcome of the thousand-candle-power table d'hote.

The young adventurer was of pleasing presence, and moved serenely
and watchfully. By daylight he was a salesman in a piano store. He wore
his tie drawn through a topaz ring instead of fastened with a stick pin;
and once he had written to the editor of a magazine that "Junie's Love
Test," by Miss Libbey, had been the book that had most influenced his
life.

During his walk a violent chattering of teeth in a glass case on the side-
walk seemed at first to draw his attention (with a qualm) to a restaurant
before which it was set; but a second glance revealed the electric letters
of a dentist's sign high above the next door. A giant negro, fantastically
dressed in a red embroidered coat, yellow trousers and a military cap,
discreetly distributed cards to those of the passing crowd who conse@fed
to take them. ?

This mode of dentistic advertising was a common sight to Rudolf.
Usually he passed the dispenser of the dentist's cards without reducing his
store; but to-night the African slipped one into his hand so deftly that he
retained it there smiling a little at the successful feat.

When he had travelled a few yards further he glanced at the card
indifferently. Surprised, he turned it over and looked again with interest.
One side of the card was blank; on the other was written in ink three
words, "The Green Door." And then Rudolf saw, three steps in front of
him, a man throw down the card the negro had given him as he passed.
Rudolf picked it up. It was printed with the dentist's name and address
and the usual schedule of "plate work" and "bridge work" and "crowns,"
and specious promises of "painless" operations.

The adventurous piano salesman halted at the corner and considered.
Then he crossed the street, walked down a block, recrossed and joined
the upward current of people again. Without seeming to notice the negro
as he passed the second time, he carelessly took the card that was handed
him, Ten steps away he inspected it. In the same handwriting that ap-
peared on the first card "The Green Door" was inscribed upon it. Three

THE GREEN DOOR 65

or four cards were tossed to the pavement by pedestrians both following
and leading him. These fell blank side up. Rudolf turned them over.
Every one bore the printed legend of the dental "parlors."

Rarely did the arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf
Steiner, his true follower. But twice it had been done, and the quest
was on.

Rudolf walked slowly back to where the giant negro stood by the case
of rattling teeth. This time as he passed he received no card. In spite of
his gaudy and ridiculous garb, the Ethiopian displayed a natural barbaric
dignity as he stood, offering the cards suavely to some, allowing others
to pass unmolested. Every half minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible
phrase akin to the jabber of car conductors and grand opera. And not
only did he withhold a card this time but it seemed to Rudolf that he
received from the shining and massive black countenance a look of cold,
almost contemptuous disdain.

The look stung the adventurer. He read in it a silent accusation that he
had been found wanting. Whatever the mysterious written words on the
cards might mean, the black had selected him twice from the throng for
their recipient; and now seemed to have condemned him as deficient in
the wit and spirit to engage the enigma.

Standing aside from the rush, the young man made a rapid estimate of
the building in which he conceived that his adventure must lie. Five
stories high it rose. A small restaurant occupied the basement.

The first floor, now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The
second floor, by the winking electric letters, was the dentist's. Above this
a polyglot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dress-
makers, musicians, and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk
bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the regions of domesticity.

After concluding his survey Rudolf walked briskly up the high flight
of stone steps into the house. Up two flights of the carpeted stairway he
continued; and at its top paused. The hallway there was dimly lighted
by two pale jets of gas — one far to his right, the other nearer, to his left.
He looked toward the nearer light and saw, within its wan halo, a green
door. For one moment he hesitated; then he seemed to see the contu-
melious sneer of the African juggler of cards; and then he walked
straight to the green door and knocked against it.

Moments like those that passed before his knock was answered measure
the quick breath of true adventure. What might not be behind those
green panels! Gamesters at play; cunning rogues baiting their traps with
subtle skill; beauty in love with courage, and thus planning to be sought
by it; danger, death, love, disappointment, ridicule — any of these might
respond to that temerarious rap.

A faint rustle was heard inside, and the door slowly opened. A girl not
yet twenty stood there white-faced and tottering. She loosed the knob and

66 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

swayed weakly, groping with one hand. Rudolf caught her and laid her
on a faded couch that stood against the wall. He closed the door and took
a swift glance around the room by the light of a flickering gas jet. Neat,
but extreme poverty was the story that he read.

The girl lay still, as if in a faint. Rudolf looked around the room ex-
citedly for a barrel. People must be rolled upon a barrel who — no, no;
that was for drowned persons. He began to fan her with his hat. That
was successful, for he struck her nose with the brim of his derby and she
opened her eyes. And then the young man saw that hers, indeed, was the
one missing face from his heart's gallery of intimate portraits. The frank,
gray eyes, the little nose, turning pertly outward; the chestnut hair, curling
like the tendrils of a pea vine, seemed the right end and reward of all his
wonderful adventures. But the face was woefully thin and pale.

The girl looked at him calmly, and then smiled.

"Fainted, didn't I?" she asked, weakly. "Well, who wouldn't? You try
going without anything to eat for three days and see!"

"Himmel!" exclaimed Rudolf, jumping up. "Wait till I come back."

He dashed out the green door and down the stairs. In twenty minutes
he was back again kicking at the door with his toe for her to open it. With
both arms he hugged an array of wares from the grocery and the res-
taurant. On the table he laid them — bread and butter, cold meats, cakes,
pies, pickles, oysters, a roasted chicken, a bottle of milk and one of red-
hot tea.

"This is ridiculous," said Rudolf, blusteringly, "to go without eating.
You must quit making election bets of this kind. Supper is ready." He
helped her to a chair at the table and asked: "Is there a cup for the tea?"
"On the shelf by the window," she answered. When he turned again with
the cup he saw her, with eyes shining rapturously, beginning upon a huge
dill pickle that she had rooted out from the paper bags with a woman's
unerring instinct. He took it from her, laughingly, and poured the cup
full of milk. "Drink that first," he ordered, "and then you shall have some
tea, and then a chicken wing. If you are very good you shall have a pickle
to-morrow. And now, if you'll allow me to be your guest we'll have
supper."

He drew up the other chair. The tea brightened the girl's eyes and
brought back some of her color. She began to eat with a sort of dainty
ferocity like some starved wild animal. She seemed to regard the young
man's presence and the aid he had rendered her as a natural thing — not
as though she undervalued the conventions; but as one whose great stress
gave her the right to put aside the artificial for the human. But gradually,
with the return of strength and comfort, came also a sense of the little
conventions that belong; and she began to tell him her little story. It
was one of a thousand such as the city yawns at every day — the shop girl's
story of insufficient wages, further reduced by "fines" that go to swell the

THE GREEN DOOR 67

store's profits; o£ time lost through illness; and then of lost positions, lost
hope, and — the knock of the adventurer upon the green door.

But to Rudolf the history sounded as big as the Iliad or the crisis in
"Junie's Love Test."

"To think of you going through all that," he exclaimed.

"It was something fierce," said the girl, solemnly.

"And you have no relatives or friends in the city?"

"None whatever."

"I am all alone in the world,, too," said Rudolf, after a pause.

"I am glad of that," said the girl, promptly; and somehow it pleased
the young man to hear that she approved of his bereft condition.

Very suddenly her eyelids dropped and she sighed deeply.

"I'm awfully sleepy," she said, "and I feel so good."

Rudolf rose and took his hat.

"Then I'll say good-night. A long night's sleep will be fine for you."

He held out his hand, and she took it and said "good-night." But her
eyes asked a question so eloquently, so frankly and pathetically that he
answered it with words.

"Oh, I'm coming back to-morrow to see how you are getting along. You
can't get rid of me so easily."

Then, at the door, as though the way of his coming had been so much
less important than the fact that he had come, she asked: "How did you
come to knock at my door?"

He looked at her for a moment, remembering the cards, and felt a
sudden jealous pain. What if they had fallen into other hands as adven-
turous as his? Quickly he decided that she must never know the truth.
He would never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient
to which she had been driven by her great distress.

"One of our piano tuners lives in this house," he said. "I knocked at
your door by mistake."

The last thing he saw in the room before the green door closed was her
smile.

At the head of the stairway he paused and looked curiously about him.
And then he went along the hallway to its other end; and, coming back,
ascended to the floor above and continued his puzzled explorations. Every
door that he found in the house was painted green.

Wondering, he descended to the. sidewalk. The fantastic African was
still there. Rudolf confronted him with his two cards in his hand.

"Will you tell jcne why you gave me these cards and what they mean?"
he asked.

In a broad, good-natured grin the negro exhibited a splendid advertise-
ment of his master's profession.

"Dar it is, boss," he said, pointing down the street. "But I 'spect you is
a little late for de fust act."

68 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

Looking the way he pointed Rudolf saw above the entrance to a theatre
the blazing electric sign of its new play, "The Green Door."

"I'm informed dat it's a fust-rate show, sah," said the negro, "De agent
what represents it pussented me with a dollar, sah, to distribute a few of
his cards along with de doctah's. May I offer you one of de doctah's cards,
suh?"

At the corner of the block in which he lived Rudolf stopped for a glass
of beer and a cigar. When he had come out with his lighted weed he but-
toned his coat, pushed back his hat and said, stoutly, to the lamp post on
the corner:

"All the same, I believe it was the hand of Fate that doped out the way
for me to find her."

Which conclusion, under the circumstances, certainly admits Rudolf
Steiner to the ranks of the true followers of Romance and Adventure.

FROM THE CABBY S SEAT

The cabby has his point of view. It is more single-minded, perhaps, than
that of a follower of any other calling. From the high, swaying seat of his
hansom he looks upon his fellow-men as nomadic particles, of no account
except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu, and you are
goods in transit. Be you President or vagabond, to cabby you are only a
Fare. He takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your vertebra and sets you
down.

When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with legal
rates you come to know what contempt is; if you find that you have left
your pocketbook behind you are made to realize the mildness of Dante's
imagination.

It is not an extravagant theory that the cabby's singleness of purpose
and concentrated view of life are the results of the hansom's peculiar con-
struction. The cock-of-the-roost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable
seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Help-
less, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat
in a trap — you, before whom butlers cringe on solid land — and must
squeak upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to make
your feeble wishes known.

Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant; you are contents. You
are a cargo at sea, and the "cherub that sits up aloft" has Davy Jones's
street and number of heart.

One night there were sounds of revelry in the big brick tenement house
next door but one to McGary's Family Cafe. The sounds seemed to
emanate from the apartments of the Walsh family. The sidewalk was

FROM THE CABBY*S SEAT 69

obstructed by an assortment of interested neighbors, who opened a lane
from time to time for a hurrying messenger bearing from McGary's, goods
pertinent to festivity and diversion. The sidewalk contingent was engaged
in comment and discussion from which it made no effort to eliminate the
news that Norah Walsh was being married.

In the fulness of time there was an eruption of the merry-makers to the
sidewalk. The uninvited guests enveloped and permeated them, and
upon the night air cose joyous cries, congratulations, laughter, and un-
classified noises born of McGary's oblations to the hymeneal scene.

Close to the curb stood Jerry O'Donovan's cab. Night-hawk was Jerry
called; but no more lustrous or cleaner hansom than his ever closed its
doors upon point lace and November violets. And Jerry's horse! I am
within bounds when I tell you that he was stuffed with oats until one of
those old ladies who leave their dishes unwashed at home and go about
having expressmen arrested, would have smiled — yes, smiled — to have
seen him.

Among the shifting, sonorous, pulsing crowd glimpses could be had of
Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds and rains of many years; of his
nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny of million-
aires and by contumacious fares; of his brass-buttoned green coat, admired
in the vicinity of McGary's. It was plain that Jerry had usurped the func-
tions of his cab, and was carrying a "load." Indeed, the figure may be
extended and he be likened to a bread-wagon if we admit the testimony
of a youthful spectator, who was heard to remark "Jerry has got a bun."

From somewhere among the throng in the street or else out of the thin
stream of pedestrians a young woman tripped and stood by the cab. The
professional hawk's eye of Jerry caught the movement. He made a lurch
for the cab, overturning three or four onlookers and himself — no! he
caught the cap of a water-plug and kept his feet Like a sailor shining up
the ratlins during a squall Jerry mounted to his professional seat. Once
he was there McGary's liquids were baffled. He seesawed on the mizzen-
mast of his craft as safe as a Steeple Jack rigged to the flagpole of a sky-
scraper.

"Step in, lady," said Jerry, gathering his lines.

The young woman stepped into the cab; the doors shut with a bang;
Jerry's whip cracked in the air; the crowd in the gutter scattered, and the
fine hansom dashed away ,'crosstown.

When the oat-spry horse had hedged a little his first spurt of speed Jerry
broke the lid of his cab and called down through the aperture in the voice
of a cracked megaphone? trying to please:

"Where, now, will ye be drivin' to?"

"Anywhere you please," came up the answer, musical and contented.

"'Tis drivin' for pleasure she is," thought Jerry. And then he sug-
gested as a matter of course:

70 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

"Take a thrip around in the park, lady. Twill be ilegant cool and fine."

"Just as you like/' answered the fare, pleasantly.

The cab headed for Fifth Avenue and sped up that perfect street. Jerry
bounced and swayed in his seat. The potent fluids of McGary were dis-
quieted and they sent new fumes to his head. He sang an ancient song of
Killisnook and brandished his whip like a baton.

Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the cushions, looking to right
and left at the lights and houses. Even in the shadowed hansom her eyes
shone like stars at twilight.

When they reached Fifty-ninth Street Jerry's head was bobbing and his
reins were slack. But his horse turned in through the park gate and began
the old familiar nocturnal round. And then the fare leaned back, en-
tranced, and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odors of grass and leaf
and bloom. And the wise beast in the shafts, knowing his ground, struck
into his by-the-hour gait and kept to the right of the road.

Habit also struggled successfully against Jerry's increasing torpor. He
raised the hatch of his storm-tossed vessel and made the inquiry that cab-
bies do make in the park.

"Like shtop at the Cas-sino, lady? Gezzer r'freshm's, 'n lish'n the music.
Ev'body shtops."

"I think that would be nice," said the fare.

They reined up with a plunge at the Casino entrance. The cab doors
flew open. The fare stepped directly upon the floor. At once she was
caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of lights
and colors. Some one slipped a little square card into her hand on which
was printed a number— 34. She looked around and saw her cab twenty
yards away already lining up in its place among the waiting mass of car-
riages, cabs, and motor cars. And then a man who seemed to be all shirt-
front danced backward before her; and next she was seated at a little table
by a railing over which climbed a jessamine vine.

There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted a
collection of small coins in a thin purse, arid received from them license
to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing it all— the
new-colored, new-shaped life in a fairy palace in an enchanted wood.

At fifty tables sat princes and queens clad in all the silks and gems of
the world. And now and then one of them would look curiouvsly at
Jerry's fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the kind
that is tempered by the word "foulard," and a plain face that wore a
look of Itive of life that the queens envied.

Twice the long hands of the clocks went round. Royalties thinned
from their alfresco thrones, and buzzed or clattered away in their vehicles
of state. The music retired into cases of wood and bags of leather and
baize. Waiters removed cloths pointedly near the plain figure sitting al-
most alone.

FROM THE CABBY'S SEAT 71

Jerry's fare rose, and held out her numbered card simply:

"Is there anything coming on the ticket?" she asked.

A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she should give it to
the man at the entrance. This man took it, and called the number. Only
three hansoms stood in line. The driver of one of them went and routed
out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to the captain's
bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare entered, and the cab
whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park along the shortest homeward
cuts.

At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized
upon Jerry's beclouded mind. One or two things occurred to him. He
stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his phonographic voice,
like a lead plummet, through the aperture:

"I want to see four dollars before goin' any further on th' thrip. Have
ye got th' dough?"

"Four dollars!" laughed the fare, softly, "dear me, no. I've only got a
few pennies and a dime or two."

Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oat-fed horse. The clatter of
hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity. He
shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut viciously
with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and everchanging
oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a late truck driver,
crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he knew his recourse,
and made for it at a gallop.

At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up. He
flung wide the cab doors and tumbled heavily to the ground.

"Come on, you," he said, roughly.

His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain
face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station. A gray-
moustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and the cabby
were no strangers.

"Sargeant," began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tones
of complaint. *Tve got a fare here that "

Jerry paused. He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow. The fog
set up by McGary was beginning to clear away.

"A fare, sargeant," he continued, with a grin, "that I want to introduce
to ye. It's me wife that I married at ould man Walsh's this evening. And
a devil of a time we had, 'tis thrue. Shake hands wit th' sargeant, Norah,
and we'll be oS to home."

Before stepping into the cab Norah sighed profoundly.

"I've had such a nice time, Jerry," said she.

72 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

AN UNFINISHED STORY

We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of
Tophet are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that
God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst
we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing
hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of ortho-
doxy.

There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free
imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may
talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both
Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare
not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish
my theme — chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited
field of pretty Polly's small talk.

I had a dream that was so far removed from the higher criticism that
it had to do with the ancient, respectable, and lamented bar-of -judgment
theory.

Gabriel had played his trump; and those of us who could not follow
suit were arraigned for examination. I noticed at one side a gathering of
professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind;
but it seemed there was some trouble about their real estate titles; and
they did not appear to be getting any of us out.

A fly cop — an angel policeman — flew over to me and took me by the
left wing. Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits
arraigned for judgment.

"Do you belong with that bunch?" the policeman asked.

"Who are they?'* was my answer.

"Why," said he, "they are "

But this irrelevant stuff is taking up space that the story should occupy.

Dulcie worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging, or
stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other little trinkets such as they keep
in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcie received six dollars per
week. The remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody else's
account in the ledger kept by G^ — Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend
Doctor Well, then, in the Ledger of Primal Energy.

During her first year in the store, Dulcie was paid five dollars per week.
It would be instructive to know how she lived on that amount. Don't
care? Very well; probably you are interested in larger amounts. Six dollars
is a larger amount. I will tell you how she lived on six dollars per week.

One afternoon at six, when Dulcie was sticking her hat pia within an

AN UNFINISHED STORY 73

eighth of an inch of her medulla oblongata, she said to her chum, Sadie
—the girl that waits on you with her left side:

"Say, Sade, I made a date for dinner this evening with Piggy."

"You never did!" exclaimed Sadie, admiringly. "Well, ain't you the
lucky one? Piggy's an awful swell; and he always takes a girl to swell
places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman House one evening, where
they have swell music, and you see a lot of swells. You'll have a swell time,
Dulce."

Dulcie hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks
showed the delicate pink of life's— real life's— approaching dawn. It was
Friday; and she had fifty cents left of her week's wages.

The streets were filled with the rush-hour floods of people. The electric
lights of Broadway were glowing— calling moths from miles, from leagues,
from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend
the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved
on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors' homes, turned and stared at
Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them. Manhattan, the night-blooming
cereus, was beginning to unfold its dead-white, heavy-odored petals.

Dulcie stopped in a store where goods were cheap and bought an imi-
tation lace collar with her fifty cents. That money was to have been spent
otherwise — fifteen cents for supper, ten cents for breakfast, ten cents for
lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings; and
five cents was to be squandered for licorice drops — the kind that made
your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long. The licorice was an
extravagance — almost a carouse — but what is life without pleasures ?

Dulcie lived in a furnished room. There is this difference between a
furnished room and a boarding-house. In a furnished room, other people
do not know it when you go hungry.

Dulcie went up to her room — the third-floor-back in a West Side brown-
stone-front. She lit the gas. Scientists tell us that the diamond is the hard-
est substance known. Their mistake. Landladies know of a compound
beside which the diamond is as putty. They pack it in the tips of gas-
burners; and one may stand on a chair and dig at it in vain until one's
fingers are pink and bruised. A hairpin will not remove it; therefore let
us call it immovable.

So Dulcie lit the gas. In its one-fourth-candle-power glow we will ob-
serve the room.

Couch-bed, dresser, table, washstand, chair — of this much the landlady
was guilty. The rest was Dulcie's. On the dresser were her treasures — a
gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickle
works, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass
dish, and a cluster of artificial cherries tied with a pink ribbon.

Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener,
William Muldoon, the Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini.

74 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

Against one wall was a plaster of Paris plaque o£ an O'Callahan in a
Roman helmet. Near it was a violent oleograph o£ a lemon-colored child
assaulting an inflammatory butterfly. This was Dulcie's final judgment in
art; but it had never been upset. Her rest had never been disturbed by
whispers of stolen copes; no critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infan-
tile entomologist.

Piggy was to call for her at seven. While she swiftly makes ready, let
us discreetly face the other way and gossip.

For the room, Dulcie paid two dollars per week. On week-days her
breakfast cost ten cents; she made coffee and cooked an egg over the
gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings she feasted royally
on veal chops and pineapple fritters at "Billy's" restaurant, at a cost of
twenty-five cents— and tipped the waitress ten cents. New York presents
so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. She had her lunches
in the department-store restaurant at a cost of sixty cents for the week;
dinners were $1.05. The evening papers — show me a New Yorker going
without his daily paper! — came to six cents; and two Sunday papers — one
for the personal column and the other to read — were ten cents. The total
amounts to $4.76. Now, one has to buy clothes, and

I give it up. I hear of wonderful bargains in fabrics, and of miracles
performed with needle and thread; but I am in doubt. I hold my pen
poised in vain when I would add to Dulcie's life some of those joys that
belong to woman by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, natural, inactive
ordinances of the equity of heaven. Twice she had been to Coney Island
and had ridden the hobby-horses. 'Tis a weary thing to count your pleas-
ures by summers instead of by hours.

Piggy needs but a word. When the girls named him, an undeserving
stigma was cast upon the noble family of swine. The words-of-three-
letters lesson in the old blue spelling book begins with Piggy's biography.
He was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the mag-
nanimity of a cat. , . . He wore expensive clothes; and was a connoisseur
in starvation. He could look at a shop-girl and tell you to an hour how
long it had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than
marshmallows and tea. He hung about the shopping districts, and prowled
aroud in department stores with his invitations to dinner. Men who
escort dogs upon the streets at the end of a string look down upon him.
He is a type; I can dwell upon him no longer; my pen is not the kind
intended for him; I am no carpenter.

At ten minutes to seven Dulcie was ready. She looked at herself in the
wrinkly mirror. The reflection was satisfactory. The dark blue dress,
fitting without a wrinkle, the hat with its jaunty black feather, the but-
slightly-soiled gloves— all representing self-denial, even of food itself—-
were vastly becoming.

Dulcie forgot everything else for a moment except that she was beauti-

ANUNFINTSHEDSTORY 75

ful, and that life was about to lift a corner of its mysterious veil for her
to observe its wonders. No gentleman had ever asked her out before.
Now she was going for a brief moment into the glitter and exalted show.

The girls said that Piggy was a "spender." There would be a grand
dinner, and music, and splendidly dressed ladies to look at and things to
eat that strangely twisted the girls' jaws when they tried to tell about
them. No doubt she would be asked out again.

There was a blue pongee suit in a window that she knew — by saving

twenty cents a week instead of ten in— let's see Oh, it would run into

years! But there was a second-hand store in Seventh Avenue where

Somebody knocked at the door. Dulcie opened it. The landlady stood
there with a spurious smile, sniffing for cooking by stolen gas.

"A gentleman's downstairs to see you," she said, "Name is Mr. Wig-
gins."

By such epithet was Piggy known to unfortunate ones who had to take
him seriously.

Dulcie turned to the dresser to get her handkerchief; and then she
stopped still, and bit her underlip hard. While looking in her mirror she
had seen fairyland and herself, a princess, just awakening from a long
slumber. She had forgotten one that was watching her with sad, beautiful,
stern eyes — the only one there was to approve or condemn what she did.
Straight and slender and tall, with a look of sorrowful reproach on his
handsome, melancholy face, General Kitchener fixed his wonderful eyes
on her out of his gilt photograph frame on the dresser.

Dulcie turned like an automatic doll to the landlady.

"Tell him I can't go," she said, dully. "Tell him I'm sick, or something.
Tell him I'm not going out."

After the door was closed and locked, Dulcie fell upon her bed, crush-
ing her black tip, and cried for ten minutes. General Kitchener was her
only friend. He was Dulcie's ideal of a gallant knight. He looked as if
he might have a secret sorrow, and his wonderful moustache was a dream,
and she was a little afraid of that stern yet tender look in his eyes. She
used to have little fancies that he would call at the house sometime, and
ask for her, with his sword clanking against his high boots. Once, when
a boy was rattling a piece of chain against a lamp post she had opened
the window and looked out. But there was no use. She knew that General
Kitchener was away over in Japan, leading his army against the savage
Turks; and he would never step out of his gijt frame for her. Yet one look
from him had vanquished Piggy that night. Yes, for that night:

When her cry was over Dulcie got up and took off her best dress, and
put on her old blue kimono. She wanted no dinner. She sang two verses
of *Sammy." Then she became intensely interested in a little red speck
on the side of her nose. And after that was attended to, she drew up a
chair to the rickety table, and told her fortune with an old deck of cards.

76 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

"The horrid, impudent thing! " she said aloud. "And I never gave him a
word or a look to make him think it!"

At nine o'clock Dulcie took a tin box of crackers and a little pot of
raspberry jam out of her trunk and had a feast. She offered General
Kitchener some jam on a cracker; but he only looked at her as the sphinx
would have looked at a butterfly— if there are butterflies in the desert.

"Don't eat if you don't want to," said Dulcie. "And^ don't put on so
many airs and scold so with your eyes. I wonder if you'd be so superior
and snippy if you had to live on six dollars a week."

It was not a good sign for Dulcie to be rude to General Kitchener. And
then she turned Benvenuto Cellini face downward with a severe gesture.
But that was not inexcusable; for she had always thought he was Henry
VIII, and she did not approve of him.

At half -past nine Dulcie took a last look at the pictures on the dresser,
turned out the light and skipped into bed. It's an awful thing to go to bed
with a good-night look at General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the
Duchess of Maryborough, and Benvenuto Cellini.

This story doesn't really get anywhere at all. The rest of it comes later
—sometime when Piggy asks Dulcie again to dine with him, and she is
feeling lonelier than usual, and General Kitchener happens to be looking
the other way; and then

As I said before, I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd of pros-
perous-looking angels, and a policeman took me by the wing and asked
if I belonged with them.

"Who are they?" I asked.

"Why," said he, "they are the men who hired working-girls, and paid
'em five or six dollars a week to live on. Are you one of the bunch?"

"Not on your immortality," said I. "I'm only a fellow that set fire to an
orphan asylum, and murdered a blind man for his pennies."

THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK

Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, sat on his favorite bench
in the park. The coolness of the September night quickened the life in
him like a rare, tonic wine. The benches were not filled; for park loungers,
with their stagnant blood, are prompt to detect and fly home from the
crispness of early autumn. The moon was just clearing the roofs of the
range of dwellings that bounded the quandrangle on the east. Children
laughed and played about the fine-sprayed fountain. In the shadowed
spots fauns and hamadryads wooed, unconscious of the gaze of mortal
eyes. A hand-organ—Philomel by the grace of our stage carpenter, Fancy-
fluted and droned in a side street. Around the enchanted boundaries of the

THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK 77

little park street cars spat and mewed and the stilted trains roared like
tigers and lions prowling for a place to enter. And above the trees shone
the great, round, shining face of an illuminated clock in the tower o£ an
antique public building.

Prince Michael's shoes were wrecked far beyond the skill of the care-
fullest cobbler. The ragman would have declined any negotiations con-
cerning his clothes. The two weeks' stubble on his face was gray and
brown and red and greenish yellow— -as if it had been made up from
individual contributions from the chorus of a musical comedy. No man
existed who had money enough to wear so bad a hat as his.

Prince Michael sat on his favorite bench and smiled. It was a diverting
thought to him that he was wealthy enough to buy every one of those
closed-ranged, bulky, window-lit mansions that faced him, if he chose. He
could have matched gold, equipages, jewels, art treasures, estates and
acres with any Croesus in this proud city of Manhattan, and scarcely have
entered upon the bulk of his holdings. He could have sat at table with
reigning sovereigns. The social world, the world of art, the fellowship
of the elect, adulation, imitation, the homage of the fairest, honors from
the highest, praise from the wisest, flattery, esteem, credit, pleasure, fame
— all the honey of life was waiting in the comb in the hive of the world
for Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, whenever he might
choose to take it. But his choice was to sit in rags and dinginess on a
bench in a park. For he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of life, and, find-
ing it bitter in his mouth had stepped out of Eden for a time to seek
distraction close to the unarmored, beating heart of the world.

These thoughts strayed dreamily through the mind of Prince Michael,
as he smiled under the stubble of his polychromatic beard. Lounging thus,
clad as the poorest of mendicants in the parks, he loved to study humanity.
He found in altruism more pleasure than his riches, his station and all
the grosser sweets of life had given him. It was his chief solace and satisfac-
tion to alleviate individual distress, to confer favors upon worthy ones
who had need of succor, to dazzle unfortunates by unexpected and be-
wildering gifts of truly royal magnificence, bestowed, however, with wis-
dom and judiciousness.

And as Prince Michael's eye rested upon the glowing face of the great
clock in the tower, his smile, altruistic as it was, became slightly tinged
with contempt. Big thoughts were the Prince's; and it was always with
a shake of his head that he considered the subjugation of the world to the
arbitrary measures of Time. The comings and goings of people in hurry
and dread, controlled by the little metal moving hands of a clock, always
made him sad.

By and by came a young man in evening clothes and sat upon the third
bench from the Prince. For half an hour he smoked cigars with nervous
haste, and then he fell to watching the face of the illuminated clock above

78 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

the trees. His perturbation was evident, and the Prince noted, in sorrow,
that its cause was connected, in some manner, with the slowly moving
hands of the timepiece.

His Highness arose and went to the young man's bench.

"I beg your pardon for addressing you" he said, "but I perceive that
you are disturbed in mind. If it may serve to mitigate the liberty I have
taken I will add that I am Prince Michael, heir to the throne of the
Electorate of Valleluna. I appear incognito, of course, as you may gather
from my appearance. It is a fancy of mine to render aid to others whom I
think worthy of it. Perhaps the matter that seems to distress you is one
that would more readily yield to our mutual efforts."

The young man looked up brightly at the Prince. Brightly, but the per-
pendicular line of perplexity between his brows was not smoothed away.
He laughed, and even then it did not. But he accepted the momentary
diversion.

"Glad to meet you, Prince," he said, good humoredly. "Yes, I'd say
you were incog, all right Thanks for your offer of assistance— but I don't
see where your butting-in would help things any. It's a kind of private
affair, you know — but thanks all the same."

Prince Michael sat at the young man's side. He was often rebuffed but
never offensively. His courteous manner and words forbade that.

"Clocks," said the Prince, "are shackles on the feet of mankind. I have
observed you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant,
its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those of
a bunco steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me
entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and cease to order your
affairs by that insensate monitor of brass and steel.*'

"I don't usually," said the young man. "I carry a watch except when
I've got my radiant rags on."

"I know human nature as I do the trees and grass," said the Prince,
with earnest dignity. "I am a master of philosophy, a graduate in art, and
I hold the purse of a Fortunatus. There are few mortal misfortunes that I
cannot alleviate or overcome. I have read your countenance, and found in
it honesty and nobility as well as distress. I beg of you to accept my
advice or aid. Do not belie the intelligence I see in your face by judging
from my appearance of my ability to defeat your troubles."

The young man glanced at the clock again and frowned darkly. When
his gaze strayed from the glowing horologue of time it rested intently
upon a four-story red brick house in the row of dwellings opposite to
where he sat The shades were drawn, and the lights in many rooms shone
dimly through them.

"Ten minutes to nine!" exclaimed the young man, with an impatient
gesture of despair. He turned his back upon the house and took a rapid
step or two in a contrary direction.

THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK 79

"Remain!" commanded Prince Michael, in so potent a voice that the
disturbed one wheeled around with a somewhat chagrined laugh.

"I'll give her the ten minutes and then Fm off," he muttered, and then
aloud to the Prince: "111 join you in confounding all clocks, my friend,
and throw in women, too."

"Sit down," said the Prince, calmly. "I do not accept your addition.
Women are the natural enemies of clocks, and, therefore, the allies of
those who would seek liberation from these monsters that measure our
follies and limit our pleasures. If you will so far confide in me I would
ask you to relate to me your story."

The young man threw himself upon the bench with a reckless laugh.

"Your Royal Highness, I will," he said, in tones of mock deference.
"Do you see yonder house — the one with the three upper windows
lighted? Well, at 6 o'clock I stood in that house with the young lady I am
— that is, I was — engaged to. I had been doing wrong, my dear Prince — I
had been a naughty boy, and she had heard of it. I wanted to be forgiven
of course — we are always wanting women to forgive us, aren't we, Prince?

"'I want time to think it over,' said she. 'There is one thing certain;
I will either fully forgive you, or I will never see your face again. There
will be no half-way business. At half-past eight,' she said, 'at exactly half-
past eight you may be watching the middle upper window of the top floor.
If I decide to forgive I will hang out -of that window a white silk scarf.
You will know by that that all is as was before, and you may come to
me. If you see no scarf you may consider that everything between us is
ended forever.' That," concluded the young man, bitterly, "is why I have
been watching that clock. The time for the signal to appear has passed
twenty-three minutes ago. Do you wonder that I am a little disturbed, my
Prince of Rags and Whiskers?"

"Let me repeat to you," said Prince Michael, in his even, well-modulated
tones, "that women are the natural enemies of clocks. Clocks are an evil,
women a blessing. The signal may yet appear."

"Never, on your principality!" exclaimed the young man, hopelessly.
"You don't know Marian — of course. She's always on time, to the minute.
That was the first thing about her that attracted me. I've got the mitten
instead of the scarf. I ought to have known at 8.31 that my goose was
cooked, I'll go West on the 11.45 to-night with Jack Milburn. The jig's up.
I'll try Jack's ranch awhile and top off with die Klondike and whiskey.
Good-night— er — er— Prince."

Prince Michael smiled his enigmatic, gentle, comprehending smile and
caught the coat sleeve of the other. The brilliant light in the Prince's
eyes was softening to a dreamier, cloudy translucence.

"Wait," he said solemnly, "till the clock strikes. I have wealth and power
and knowledge above most men, but when the clock strikes I am afraid.
Stay by me until then. This woman shall be yours. You have the word of

80 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

the hereditary Prince of Valleluna. On the day of your marriage I will
give you $100,000 and a palace on the Hudson. But there must be no
clocks in that palace— they measure our follies and limit our pleasures. Do
you agree to that?"

"Of course," said the young man, cheerfully, "they're a nuisance, any-
way— always ticking and striking and getting you late for dinner."

He glanced again at the clock in the tower. The hands stood at three
minutes to nine.

"I think," said Prince Michael, "that I will sleep a little. The day has
been fatiguing."

He stretched himself upon a bench with the manner of one who had
slept thus before.

"You will find me in this park on any evening when the weather is
suitable," said the Prince, sleepily. "Come to me when your marriage day
is set and I will give you a check for the money."

"Thanks, Your Highness," said the young man, seriously. "It doesn't
look as if I would need that palace on the Hudson, but I appreciate your
offer, just the same."

Prince Michael sank into deep slumber. His battered hat rolled from
the bench to the ground. The young man lifted it, placed it over the frowsy
face and moved one of the grotesquely relaxed limbs into a more comfort-
able position. "Poor devil!" he said, as he drew the tattered clothes closer
about the Prince's breast.

Sonorous and startling came the stroke of 9 from the clock tower. The
young man sighed again, turned his face for one last look at the house
of his relinquished hopes — and cried aloud profane words of holy rapture.

From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk a waving,
snowy, fluttering, wonderful, divine emblem of forgiveness and promised
joy.

By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, home-hurrying, unknowing
of the delights of waving silken scarfs on the borders of dimly-lit parks.

"Will you oblige me with the time, sir?" asked the young man; and the
citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his watch to be safe, dragged it out and an-
nounced:

"Twenty-nine and a half minutes past eight, sir."

And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made
further oration.

"By George! that clock's half an hour fast! First time in ten years I've
known it to be off. This watch of mine never varies a "

But the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer
a fast receding black shadow flying in the direction of a house with three
lighted upper windows.

And in the morning came along two policemen on their way to the
beats they owned. The park was deserted save for one dilapidated figure

SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE 8l

that sprawled, asleep, on a bench. They stopped and gazed upon it.

"It's Dopy Mike," said one. "He hits the pipe every night. Park bum
for twenty years. On his last legs, I guess."

The other policeman stooped and looked at something crumpled and
crisp in the hand of the sleeper.

"Gee!" he remarked. "He's doped out a fifty-dollar bill, anyway. Wish
I knew the brand of hop that he smokes."

And then "Rap, rap, rap!" went the club of realism against the shoe
soles of Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna.

SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE

The Rubberneck Auto was about ready to start. The merry top-riders had
been assigned to their seats by the gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk
was blockaded with sightseers who had gathered to stare at sightseers,
justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon by
some other creature.

The megaphone man raised his instrument of torture; the inside of the
great automobile began to thump and throb like the heart of a coffee
drinker. The top-riders nervously clung to the seats; the old lady from
Valparaiso, Indiana, shrieked to be put ashore. But, before a wheel
turns, listen to a brief preamble through the cardiaphone, which shall
point out to you an object of interest on life's sightseeing tour.

Swift and comprehensive is the recognition of the white man for white
man in African wilds; instant and sure is the spiritual greeting between
mother and babe; unhesitatingly do master and dog commune across the
slight gulf between animal and man; immeasurably quick and sapient are
the brief messages between one and one's beloved. But all these instances
set forth only slow and groping interchange of sympathy and thought be-
side one other instance which the Rubberneck coach shall disclose. You
shall learn (if you have not learned already) what two beings of all
earth's living inhabitants most quickly look into each other's hearts and
souls when they meet face to face.

The gong whirred, and the Glaring-at-Gotham car moved majestically
upon its instructive tour.

On the highest, rear seat was James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri,
and his Bride.

Capitalize it, friend typo — that last word — word of words in the epiph-
any of Ufe and lave. The scent of the flowers, the booty of the bee, the
primal drip of spring waters, the overture of the lark, the twist of lemon
peel on the cocktail of creation — such is the bride. Holy is the wife;
revered the mother; galliptious is the summer girl^-but the bride is the

82 BOOK! THEFOURMILLION

certified check among the wedding presents that the gods send in when
man is married to mortality.

The car glided up the Golden Way. On the bridge of the great cruiser
the captain stood, trumpeting the sights of the big city to his passengers.
Wide-mouthed and open-eared they heard the sights of the metropolis
thundered forth to their eyes. Confused, delirious with excitement and
provincial longings, they tried to make ocular responses to the mega-
phonic ritual. In the solemn spires of spreading cathedrals they saw the
home of the Vanderbilts; in the busy bulk of the Grand Central depot
they viewed, wonderingly, the frugal cot of Russell Sage. Bidden to ob-
serve the highlands of the Hudson, they gaped, unsuspecting at the up-
turned mountains of a new-laid sewer.

To many the elevated railroad was the Rialto, on the stations of which
uniformed men sat and made chop suey of your tickets. And to this day
in the outlying districts many have it that Chuck Connors, with his hand
on his heart, leads reform; and that but for the noble municipal efforts of
one Parkhurst, a district attorney, the notorious "Bishop" Potter gang
would have destroyed law and order from the Bowery to the Harlem
River.

But I beg you to observe Mrs. James Williams — Hattie Chalmers that
was — once the belle of Cloverdale. Pale-blue is the bride's, if she will; and
this color she had honored. Willingly had the moss rosebud loaned to her
cheeks of its pink — and as for the violet! — her eyes will do very well as
they are, thank you. A useless strip of white chaf — oh, no, he was guiding
the auto car — of white chiffon — or perhaps it was grenadine or tulle — was
tied beneath her chin, pretending to hold her bonnet in place. But you
know as well as I do that the hat pins did the work.

And on Mrs, James Williams's face was recorded a little library of the
world's best thoughts in three volumes. Volume No. i contained the belief
that James Williams was about the right sort of thing. Volume No. 2 was
an essay on the world, declaring it to be a very excellent place. Volume
No. 3 disclosed the belief that in occupying the highest seat in a Rubber-
neck-auto they were travelling the pace that passes all understanding.

James Williams, you would have guessed, was about twenty-four. It will
gratify you to know that your estimate was so accurate. He was exactly
twenty-three years, eleven months and twenty-nine days old. He was well
built, active, strong-jawed, good-natured, and rising. He was on his wed-
ding trip.

Dear kind fairy, please cut out those orders for money and 40 H. P.
touring cars and fame and a new growth of hair and the 'presidency of
the boat club. Instead of any of them turn backward — oh, turn backward
and give us just a teeny-weeny bit of our wedding trip over again. Just an
hour, dear fairy, so we can remember how the grass and poplar trees
looked and the bow of those bonnet strings tied beneath her chin — even

SISTERS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE 83

if it was the hat pins that did the work. Can't do it? Very well; hurry up
with that touring car and the oil stock, then.

Just in front of Mrs. James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and
a straw hat adorned with grapes and roses. Only in dream and milliners'
shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed
with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doc-
trine that millionaires were things about which we should be concerned.
Between blasts she restored to Epictetian philosophy in the form of pepsin
chewing gum.

At this girl's right hand sat a young man about twenty-four. He was
well built, active, strong-jawed, and good-natured. But if his description
seems to follow that of James Williams, divest it of anything Cloverdalian.
This man belonged to hard streets and sharp corners. He looked keenly
about him, seeming to begrudge the asphalt under the feet of those upon
whom he looked down from his perch.

While the megaphone barks at a famous hostelry, let me whisper you
through the low-tuned cardiaphone to sit tight; for now things are about
to happen, and the great city will close over them again as over a scrap
of ticker tape floating down from the den of a Broad Street bear.

The girl in the tan jacket twisted around to view the pilgrims on the
last seat. The other passengers she had absorbed; the seat behind her was
her Bluebeard's chamber.

Her eyes met those of Mrs. James Williams. Between two ticks of a
watch they exhanged their life's experiences, histories, hopes and fancies.
And all, mind you, with the eye, before two men could have decided
whether to draw steel or borrow a match.

The bride leaned forward low. She and the girl spoke rapidly together,
their tongues moving quickly like those of two serpents — a comparison
that is not meant to go further. Two smiles and a dozen nods closed the
conference.

And now in the broad, quiet avenue in front of the Rubberneck car a
man in dark clothes stood with uplifted hand. From the sidewalk another
hurried to join him.

The girl in the fruitful hat quickly seized her companion by the arm
and whispered in his ear. That young man exhibited proof of ability to
act promptly. Crouching low, he slid over the edge of the car? hung lightly
for an instant, and then disappeared. Half a dozen of the top-riders ob-
served his feat wonderingly, but made no comment, deeming it prudent
not to express surprise at what might be the conventional manner of
alighting in this bewildering city. The truant passenger dodged a hansom
and then floated past, like a leaf on a stream between a furniture van and
a florist's delivery wagon.

The girl in the tan jacket turned again, and looked into the eyes of
Mrs. James Williams. Then she faced about and sat still while the Rubber-

84 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

neck auto stopped at the flash of the badge under the coat of the plain-
clothes man.

"What's eating you?" demanded the megaphonist, abandoning his pro-
fessional discourse for pure English.

"Keep her at anchor for a minute," ordered the officer. "There's a man
on board we want— a Philadelphia burglar called Tinky' McGuire. There
he is on the back seat. Look out for the side, Donovan."

Donovan went to the hind wheel and looked up at James Williams.

"Come down, old sport," he said pleasantly. "We've got you. Back to
Sleepytown for yours. It ain't a bad idea, hidin' on a Rubberneck, though.
I'll remember that."

Softly through the megaphone came the advice of the conductor:

"Better step off, sir, and explain. The car must proceed on its tour."

James Williams belonged among the level heads. With necessary slow-
ness he picked his way through the passengers down to the steps at the
front of the car. His wife followed, but she first turned her eys and saw
the escaped tourist glide from behind the furniture van and slip behind
a tree on the edge of the little park, not fifty feet away.

Descended to the ground, James Milliams faced his captors with a
smile. He was thinking what a good story he would have to tell in Clover-
dale about having been mistaken for a burglar. The Rubberneck coach
lingered, out of respect for its patrons. What could be a more interesting
sight than this?

"My name is James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri," he said, kindly,
so that they would not be too gready mortified. "I have letters here that
will show "

"You'll come with us, please," announced the plainclothes man.
" Tinky' McGuire's descriptions fits you like flannel washed in hot suds.
A detective saw you on the Rubberneck up at Central Park and 'phoned
down to take you in. Do your explaining at the station-house."

James Williams's wife^-his bride of two weeks— looked him in the face
with a strange, soft radiance in her eyes and a flush on her cheeks, looked
him in the face and said:

"Go with rem quietly, Tinky/ and maybe it'll be in your favor."

And then as the Glaring-at-Gotham car rolled away she turned and
threw a kiss— his wife threw a kiss— -at some one high up on the seats of
the Rubberneck.

"Your girl gives you good advice, McGuire," said Donovan. "Come on
now."

And then madness descended upon and occupied James Williams. He
pushed his hat far upon the back of his head.

"My wife seems to think I am a burglar," he said, recklessly. "I never
heard of her being crazy; therefore I must be, Ajad if I'm crazy, they
can't do anything to me for killing you two fools in my madness."

THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER 85

Whereupon he resisted so cheerfully and industriously that cops
had to be whistled for, and afterwards the reserves, to disperse a few
thousand delighted spectators.

At the station-house the desk sergeant asked for his name,

"McDoodle, the Pink, or Pinky the Brute, I forget which,'* was James
Williams's answer. "But you can bet I'm a burglar; don't leave that out.
And you might add that it took five of 'em to pluck the Pink. I'd espe-
cially like to have that in the records."

In an hour came Mrs. James Williams, with Uncle Thomas, of Madison
Avenue, in a respect-compelling motor car and proofs of the hero's inno-
cence—for all the world like the third act of a drama backed by an auto-
mobile mfg. co.

After the police had sternly reprimanded James Williams for imitat-
ing a copyrighted burglar and given him as honorable a discharge as the
department was capable of, Mrs. Williams rearrested him and swept him
into an angle of the station-house. James Williams regarded her with one
eye. He always said that Donovan closed the other while somebody was
holding his good right hand. Never before had he given her a word of
reproach or of reproof.

"If you can explain,'' he began rather stiffly, "why you "

"Dear," she interrupted, "listen. It was an hour's pain and trial for you.
I did it for her — I mean the girl who spoke to me on the coach. I was so
happy, Jim— so happy with you that I didn't dare refuse that happiness
to another. Jim, they were married only this morning—those two; and I
wanted him to get away. While they were struggling with you I saw him
slip from behind his tree and hurry across the park. That's all of it, dear
—I had to do it/'

Thus does one sister of the plain gold band know another who stands
in the enchanted light that shines but once and briefly for each one. By
rice and satin bows does mere man become aware of weddings. But bride
knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes
comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.

THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER

Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, al-
lowed a look of mild interest and suprise to visit his usually expression-
less countenance when his employer briskly entered at half-past nine in
company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy "Goad-morn-
ing, Pitcher," Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were intending to
leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of letters and telegrams
waiting there for him,

86 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was
beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forewent the
pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets, or lock-
ets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to luncheon.
Her dress was gray and plain, but it fitted her figure with fidelity and
discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-green wing of a
macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were
dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peach-blow, her expression a happy
one, tinged with reminiscence.

Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morn-
ing. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her desk
was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once she moved
over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of her presence.

The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy
New York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs.

"Well-— what is it? Anything?" asked Maxwell, sharply. His opened
mail lay like a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen gray
eye, impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently.

"Nothing," answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile,

"Mr. Pitcher," she said to the confidential clerk, "did Mr. Maxwell say
anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer?"

"He did," answered Pitcher. "He told me to get another one. I notified
the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning.
It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chew-
ing gum has showed up yet."

"I will do the work as usual, then/' said the young lady, "until some
one comes to fill the place." And she went to her desk at once and hung
the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed
place.

He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker
during a rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthro-
pology. The poet sings of the "crowded hour of glorious life." The bro-
ker's hour is not only crowded, but minutes and seconds are hanging to
all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms.

And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to reel
out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the desk telephone had a chronic attack
of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him over the
railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger boys ran in and
out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the office jumped about
like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's face relaxed into something re-
sembling animation.

On the Exchange there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms
and glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were repro-
duced in miniature in the broker's offices. MaxwelL shoved his ckair

THE ROMANCE OF A BUSY BROKER 87

against the wall and transacted business after the manner o£ a toe dancer.
He jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk to door with the trained
agility of a harlequin.

In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became
suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding
canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a
string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver
heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these ac-
cessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her.

"Lady from the Stenographer's Agency to see about the position," said
Pitcher.

Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and ticker
tape.

"What position?" he asked, with a frown.

"Position of stenographer," said Pitcher. "You told me yesterday to
call them up and have one sent over this morning."

"You are losing your mind, Pitcher," said Maxwell. "Why should I
have given you any such instructions ? Miss Leslie has given perfect satis-
faction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as long as she
chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam. Countermand
that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don't bring any more of 'em
here."

The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself independ-
ently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed. Pitcher seized
a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the "old man" seemed to
get more absentminded and forgetful every day of the world.

The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor
they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell's customers
were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as
swift as the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were imperilled,
and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate, strong machine
—strung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate, and never hesitating,
with the proper word and decision and act ready and prompt as clock-
work. Stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, margins and securities—
here was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for the human
world or the world of nature.

When the luncheon hour drew near there came a slight lull in the up-
roar.

Maxwell stood by his desk with Jiis hands full of telegrams and mem-
oranda, with a fountain pen over his right ear and his hair hanging in
disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the be-
loved janitress, Spring had turned on a little warmth through the waking
registers of the earth.

And through the window came a wandering— perhaps a lost—odor—

88 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

a delicate, sweet odor of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment immov-
able. For this odor belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and hers
only.

The odor brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world
of finance dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next room-
twenty steps away.

"By George, 111 do it now," said Maxwell, half aloud. "I'll ask her
now. I wonder I didn't do it long ago."

He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to cover.
He charged upon the desk of the stenographer.

She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek,
and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her
desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen
was above his ear.

"Miss Leslie," he began, hurriedly, "I have but a moment to spare. I
want to say something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven't
had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love
you. Talk quick, pleaise— those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of
Union Pacific."

"Oh, what are you talking about?" exclaimed the young lady. She rose
to her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed.

"Don't you understand?" said Maxwell, restively. "I want you to marry
me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute
when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling me for the 'phone
now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you. Miss Leslie?"

The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome
with amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then
she smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about
the broker's neck.

"I know now," she said, softly. "It's this old business that has driven
everything else out of your head for the time. I was frightened at first.
Don't you remember, Harvey ? We were married last evening at 8 o'clock
in the Little Church around the Corner."

AFTER TWENTY YEARS

The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The im-
pressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few. The
time was barely 10 o'clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with a taste
of rain in them had well nigh depeopled the streets.

Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and
artful movements, turning now and then to cast his watchful eye adown

AFTER TWENTY YEARS 89

the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight
swagger, made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity
was one that kept early hours. Now and then you might see the lights
of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the
doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed.

When about midway of a certain block the policeman suddenly slowed
his walk. In the doorway of a darkened hardware store a man leaned,
with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. As the policeman walked up to
him the man spoke up quickly.

"It's all right, officer," he said, reassuringly. "I'm just waiting for a
friend. It's an appointment made twenty years ago. Sounds a little funny
to you, doesn't it? Well, I'll explain if you'd like to make certain it's all
straight. About that long ago there used to be a restaurant where this
store stands — 'Big Joe' Brady's restaurant."

"Until five years ago," said the policeman. "It was torn down then."

The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light
showed a pale, square-jawed face with keen eyes, and a little white scar
near his right eyebrow. His scarfpin was a large diamond, oddly set.

"Twenty years ago to-night," said the man, "I dined here at 'Big Joe'
Brady's with Jimmy Wells, my best chum, and the finest chap in the
world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two brothers,
together. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I
was to start for the West to make my fortune. You couldn't have dragged
Jimmy out of New York; he thought it was the only place on earth. Well,
we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years
from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be or from
what distance we might have to come. We figured that in twenty years
each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortunes made,
whatever they were going to be."

"It sounds pretty interesting," said the policeman. "Rather a long time
beween meets, though, it seems to me. Haven't you heard from your
friend since you left?"

"Well, yes, for a time we corresponded," said the other. "But after a
year or two we lost track of each other. You see, the West is a pretty big
proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But I know
Jimmy will meet me here if he's alive, for -he always was the truest,
stanchest old chap in the world. He'll never forget. I came a thousand
miles to stand in this door to-night, and it's worth it if my old partner
turns up."

The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch, the lids of it set with
small diamonds.

"Three minutes to ten," he announced. "It was exactly ten o'clock when
we parted here at the restaurant door."

"Did pretty well out West, didn't you ?" asked the policeman.

90 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

"You bet! I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a kind of plod-
der, though, good fellow as he was. I've had to compete with some of the
sharpest wits going to get my pile. A man gets in a groove in New York.
It takes the West to put a razor-edge on him."

The policeman twirled his club and took a step or two.

"I'll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to
call time on him sharp?"

"I should say not!" said the other. "I'll give him half an hour at least.
If Jimmy is alive on earth hell be here by that time. So long, officer."

"Good-night, sir," said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying
doors as he went.

There was now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen
from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir
in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars turned
high and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store the man
who had come a thousand miles to fill an appointment, uncertain almost
to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar and waited.

About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long over-
coat, with collar turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite
side of the street. He went directly to the waiting man.

"Is that you, Bob?" he asked, doubtfully.

"Is that you, Jimmy Wells?" cried the man in the door.

"Bless my heart!" exclaimed the new arrival, grasping both |he other's
hands with his own. "It's Bob, sure as fate. I was certain I'd find you
here if you were still in existence. Well, well, well! — twenty years is a
long time. The old restaurant's gone, Bob; I wish it had lasted, so we
could have had another dinner there. How has the West treated you, old
man?"

"Bully; it has given me everything I asked it for. YouVe changed lots,
Jimmy. I never thought you were so tall by two or three inches."

"Oh, I grew a bit after I was twenty."

"Doing well in New York, Jimmy?"

"Moderately. I have a position, in one of the city departments. Come
on, Bob; we'll go around to a place I know of, and have a good long talk
about old times."

The two men started up the street, arm in arm. The man from the
West, his egotism enlarged by success, was beginning to outline the his-
tory of his career. The other, submerged in his overcoat, listened with
interest.

At the corner stood a drug store, brilliant with electric lights. When
they came into this glare each of them turned simultaneously to gaze
upon the other's face.

The man from the West stopped suddenly and released his arm.

"You're not Jimmy Wells," he snapped. "Twenty years is a long time,

LOST ON DRESS PARADE gi

but not long enough to change a man's nose from a Roman to a pug."
"It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one," said the tall man.
"You've been under arrest for ten minutes, 'Silky' Bob. Chicago thinks
you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants to have a
chat with you. Going quietly, are you ? That's sensible. Now, before we
go to the station here's a note I was asked to hand to you. You may read
it here at the window.- It's from Patrolman Wells."

The man from the West unfolded the little piece of paper handed
him. His hand was steady when he began to read, but it trembled a little
by the time he had finished. The note was rather short.

Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match
to light your cigar I saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago.
Somehow I couldn't do it myself, so I went around and got a plain
clothes man to do the job.

Jimmy

LOST ON DRESS PARADE

Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom.
One iron was heating on a small gas stove; the other was being pushed
vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that would be
seen later on extending in straight lines from Mr. Chandler's patent
leather shoes to the edge of his low-cut vest. So much of the hero's toilet
may be intrusted to our confidence. The remainder may be guessed by
those whom genteel poverty has driven to ignoble expedient. Our next
view of him shall be as he descends the steps of his lodging-house im-
maculately and correctly clothed; calm, assured, handsome—in appear-
ance the typical New York young clubman setting out, slightly bored, to
inaugurate the pleasures of the evening.

Chandler's honorarium was $18 per week. He was employed in the
office of an architect. He was twenty-two years old; he considered archi-
tecture to be truly an art; and he honestly believed— though he would
not have dared to admit it in New York—that the Faltiron Building was
inferior in design to the great cathedral in Milan.

Out of each week's earnings Chandler set aside $i. At the end o£ each
ten weeks with the extra capital thus accumulated, he purchased one
gentleman's evening from the bargain counter of stingy old Father Time.
He arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents; he took
himself to the quarter where life is brightest and showiest, and there
dined with taste and luxury. With ten dollars a man may, for a few hours,
play the wealthy idler to perfection. The sum is ample for a well-con-

92 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

sidered meal, a bottle bearing a respectable label, commensurate tips, a
smoke, cab fare, and the ordinary etceteras.

This one delectable evening culled from each dull seventy was to
Chandler a source of renascent bliss. To the society bud comes but one
debut; it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened;
but to Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as
new, as the first had been. To sit among bon vivants under palms in the
swirl of concealed music, to look upon the habitues of such a paradise
and to be looked upon by them — what is a girl's first dance and short-
sleeved tulle compared with this?

Up Broadway Chandler moved with the vespertine dress parade. For
this evening he was an exhibit as well as a gazer. For the next sixty-nine
evenings he would be dining in cheviot and worsted at dubious table
d'h6tes, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his hall
bedroom. He was willing to do that, for he was a true son of the great
city of razzle-dazzle, and to him one evening in the limelight made up
for many dark ones.

Chandler protracted his walk until the forties began to intersect the
great and glittering primrose way, for the evening was yet young, and
when one is of the beau monde only one day in seventy, one loves to
protract the pleasure. Eyes bright, sinister, curious, admiring, provocative,
alluring were bent upon him, for his garb and air proclaimed him a dev-
otee to the hour of solace and pleasure.

At a certain corner he came to a standstill, proposing to himself the
question of turning back toward the showy and fashionable restaurant in
which he usually dined on the evenings of his especial luxury. Just then
a girl scuddled lightly around the corner, slipped on a patch of icy snow
and fell plump upon the sidewalk.

Chandler assisted her to her feet with instant and solicitous courtesy.
The girl hobbled to the wall of the building, leaned against it, and
thanked him demurely.

"I think my ankle is strained," she said. "It twisted when I fell'*

"Does it pain you much?" inquired Chandler.

"Only when I rest my weight upon it. I think I will be able to walk
in a minute or two."

"If I can be of any further service," suggested the young man, "I will
call a cab, or "

"Thank you," said the girl, softly but heartily. "I am sure you need not
trouble yourself any further. It was so awkward of me. And my shoe
heels are horridly commonsense; I can't blame them at all."

Chandler looked at the girl and found her swiftly drawing his interest.
She was pretty in a refined way; and her eye was both merry and kind.
She was inexpensively clothed in a plain black dress that suggested a
sort of uniform such as shop-girls wear. Her glossy dark-brown hair

LOST ON DRESS PARADE 93

showed its coils beneath a cheap hat of black straw whose only ornament
was a velvet ribbon and bow. She could have posed as a model for the
self-respecting working girl of the best type.

A sudden idea came into the head of the young architect. He would
ask this girl to dine with him. Here was the element that his splendid but
solitary periodic feats had lacked. His brief season of elegant luxury
would be doubly enjoyable if he could add to it a lady's society. This girl
was a lady, he was sure — her manner and speech settled that And in spite
of her extremely plain attire he felt that he would be pleased to sit at
table with her.

These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind, and he decided to ask
her. It was a breach of etiquette, of course, but oftentimes wage-earning
girls waived formalities in matters of this kind. They were generally
shrewd judges of men; and thought better of their own judgment than
they did of useless conventions. His ten dollars, discreetly expended,
would enable the two to dine very well indeed. The dinner would no
doubt be a wonderful experience thrown into the dull routine of the girl's
life; and her lively appreciation of it would add to his own triumph and
pleasure.

"I think," he said to her, with frank gravity, "that your foot^ needs a
longer rest than you suppose. Now, I am, going to suggest a way in which
you can give it that and at the same time do me a favor. I was on my way
to dine all by my lonely self when you came tumbling around the corner.
You come with me and we'll have a cozy dinner and a pleasant talk
together, and by that time your game ankle will carry you home very
nicely, I am sure."

The girl looked quickly up into Chandler's clear, pleasant countenance.
Her eyes twinkled once very brightly, and then she smiled ingenuously.

"But we don't know each other— it wouldn't be right, would it?" she
said, doubtfully.

"There is nothing wrong about it," said the young man, candidly. "I'll
introduce myself—permit me— Mr. Towers Chandler. After our dinner,
which I will try to make as pleasant as possible, I will bid you good-eve-
ning, or attend you safely to your door, whichever you prefer."

"But, dear me!" said the girl, with a glance at Chandler's faultless
attire. "In this old dress and hat!"

"Never mind that," said Chandler, cheerfully. Tm sure you look more
charming in them than any one we shall see in the most elaborate dinner
toilette."

"My ankle does hurt yet," admitted the girl, attempting a limping step.
"I think I will accept your invitation, Mr. Chandler. You may call me—
Miss Marian."

"Come then, Miss Marian," sard the young architect, gaily, but with
perfect courtesy; "you will not have far to walk. There is a very respect-

94 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

able and good restaurant in the next block. You will have to lean^on jtny
arm— so—and walk slowly. It is lonely dining all by one's self. I'm just
a little bit glad that you slipped on the ice."

When the two were established at a well-appointed table, with a prom-
ising waiter hovering in attendance, Chandler began to experience the
real joy that his regular outing always brought to him.

The restaurant was not so showy or pretentious as the one further
down Broadway, which he always preferred, but it was nearly so. The
tables were well filled with prosperous-looking diners, there was a good or-
chestra, playing softly enough to make conversation a possible pleasure,
and the cuisine and service were beyond criticism. His companion, even
in her cheap hat and dress, held herself with an air that added distinction
to the natural beauty of her face and figure. And it is certain that she
looked at Chandler, with his animated but self-possessed manner and his
kindling and frank blue eyes, with something not far from admiration in
her own charming face.

Then it was that the Madness of Manhattan, the Frenzy of Fuss and
Feathers, the Bacillus of Brag, the Provincial Plague of Pose seized upon
Towers Chandler. He was on Broadway, surrounded by pomp and style,
and there were eyes to look at him. On the stage of that comedy he had
assumed to play the one-night part of a butterfly of fashion and an idler
of means and taste. He was dressed for the part, and all his good angels
had not the power to prevent him from acting it.

So he began to prate to Miss Marian of clubs, of teas, of golf and riding
and kennels and cotillions and tours abroad and threw out hints of a yacht
lying at Larchmont. He could see that she was vastly impressed by this
vague talk, so he endorsed his pose by random insinuations concerning
great wealth, and mentioned familiarly a few names that are handled rev-
erently by the proletariat. It was Chandler's short little day, and he was
wringing from it the best that could be had, as he saw it. And yet once or
twice he saw the pure gold of this girl shine through the mist that his
egotism had raised between him and all objects.

"This way of living that you speak of," she said, "sounds so futile and
purposeless. Haven't you any Work to do in the world that might interest
you more?"

"My dear Miss Marian," he exclaimed — "work! Think of dressing
every day for dinner, of making half a dozen calls in an afternoon — with
a policeman at every corner ready to jump into your auto and take you
to the station, if you get up any greater speed than a donkey cart's gait.
We do-nothings are the, hardest workers in the land?'

The dinner was concluded, the waiter generously feed, and the two
walked out to the corner where they had met. Miss Marian walked very
well now; her limp was scarcely noticeable.

LOST ON DRESS PARADE 95

"Thank you for a nice time," she said, frankly. "I must run home now.
I liked the dinner very much, Mr. Chandler."

He shook hands with her, smiling cordially, and said something about a
game of bridge at his club. He watched her for a moment, walking rather
rapidly eastward, and then he found a cab to drive him slowly homeward.

In his chilly bedroom Chandler laid away his evening clothes for a
sixty-nine days' rest. He went about it thoughtfully.

"That was a stunning girl," he said to himself. "She's all right, too,
I'd be sworn, even if she does have to work. Perhaps if I'd told her the
truth instead of all that razzle-dazzle we might— but, confound itl I had
to play up to my clothes."

Thus spoke the brave who was born and reared in the wigwams of the
tribe of the Manhattans.

The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly cross-town until
she arrived at a handsome and sedate mansion two squares to the east,
facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxil-
iary gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a
handsome young lady in an elaborate house dress was looking anxiously
out the window.

"Oh, you madcap!" exclaimed the elder girl, when the other entered.
"When will you quit frightening us this way? It's two hours since you
ran out in that rag of an old dress and Marie's hat, Mamma has been so
alarmed. She sent Louis in the auto to try to find you. You are a bad*
thoughtless Puss."

The elder girl touched a button, and a maid came in a moment.

"Marie, tell mamma that Miss Marian has returned."

"Don't scold, Sister. I only ran down to Mme. Theo's to tell her to use
mauve insertion instead of pink. My costume and Marie's hat were just
what Itifeeded. Every one thought I was a shop-girl, I am sure."

"Dinner is over, dear; you stayed so late."

"I know. I slipped on the sidewalk and turned my ankle. I could not
walk, so I hobbled into a restaurant and sat there until I was- better. That
is why I was so long,"

The two girls sat in the window seat, looking out at the lights and the
stream of hurrying vehicles in the avenue. The younger one cuddled
down with her head in her sister's lap.

"We will have to marry some day," she said, dreamily—'both of us.
We have so much money that we will not be allowed to disappoint the
public. Do you want me to tell you the kind of a man I could love, Sis ?"

"Go on, you scatterbrain," smiled the other.

"I could love a man with dark and kind blue eyes, who is gentle and
respectful to poor girls, who i$ handsome and good and does not try to
flirt. But I could love him only if he had an ambition, an object, some
work to do in the world. I would not care how poor he was if I could

96 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

help him build his way up. But, Sister dear, the kind of man we always
meet— the man who lives an idle life between society and his clubs— I
could not love a man like that, even if his eyes were blue and he were so
kind to poor girls whom he met in the street."

BY COURIER

It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters;
and it is likely that the young lady, who was seated on one of the benches
at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit for a
while and enjoy a foretaste of coming Spring.

She rested there, pensive and still. A certain melancholy that touched
her countenance must have been of recent birth, for it had not yet altered
the fine and youthful contours of her cheek, nor subdued the arch
though resolute curve of her lips.

A tall young man came striding through the park along the path near
which she sat. Behind him tagged a boy carrying a suit-case. At sight of
the young lady, the man's face changed to red and back to pale again. He
watched her countenance as he drew nearer, with hope and anxiety
mingled on his own. He passed within a few yards of her, but he saw no
evidence that she was aware of his presence or existence.

Some fifty yards further on he suddenly stopped and sat on a bench at
one side. The boy dropped the suit-case and stared at him with wonder-
ing, shrewd eyes. The young man took out his handkerchief and wiped
his brow. It was a good handkerchief, a good brow, and the young man
was good to look at. He said to the boy:

"I want you to take a message to that young lady on that bench. Tell
her I am on my way to the station, to leave for San Francisco, where I
shall join that Alaska moose-hunting expedition. Tell her that, since she
has commanded me neither to speak nor to write to her, I take this means
of making one last appeal to her sense of justice, for the sake of what
has been. Tell her that to condemn and discard one who has not deserved
such treatment, without giving him her reasons or a chance to explain
is contrary to her nature as I believe it to be. Tell her that I have thus,
to a certain degree, disobeyed her injunctions, in the hope that she may
yet be inclined to see justice done. Go, and tell her that."

The young man dropped a half-dollar into the? boy's hand. The boy
looked at him for a moment with bright, canny eyes out of a dirty, in-
telligent face and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the
bench a little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of
an old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back of his head. The lady looked
at him coolly, without prejudice or favor.

BY COURIER 97

"Lady," he said, "dat gent on de oder bench sent yer a song and dance
by me. If yer don't know de guy, and he's tryin' to do de Johnny act, say
de^word, and I'll call a cop in t'ree minutes. If yer does know him, and
he's on de square, w'y I'll spiel yer de bunch of hot air he sent yer."

The young lady betrayed a faint interest.

"A song and dance!" she said, in a deliberate, sweet voice that seemed
to clothe her words in a diaphanous garment of impalpable irony. "A
new idea — in the troubadour line, I suppose. I — used to know the gentle-
man who sent you so I think it will hardly be necessary to call the police.
You may execute your song and dance, but do not sing too loudly. It is
a little early yet for open-air vaudeville, and we might attract attention."

"Awe," said the boy, with a shrug down the length of him, "yer know
what I mean, lady. 'Tain't a turn, it's wind. He told me to tell yer he's
got his collars and cuffs in dat grip for a scoot clean out to 'Frisco. Den
he's goin' to shoot snow-birds in de Klondike. He says yer told him not
to send 'round no more pink notes nor come hangin' over de garden gate,
and he takes dis means of puttin' yer wise. He says yer refereed him out
like a has-been, and never give him no chance to kick at de decision. He
says yer swiped him, and never said why."

The slightly awakened interest in the young lady's eyes did not abate.
Perhaps it was caused by either the originality or the audacity of the
snow-bird hunter, in thus circumventing her express commands against
the ordinary modes of communication. She fixed her eye on a statue
standing disconsolate in the dishevelled park, and spoke into the trans-
mitter:

"Tell the gentleman that I need not repeat to him a description of my
ideals. He knows what they have been and what they still are. So far
as they touch on this case, absolute loyalty and truth are the ones para-
mount. Tell him that I have studied my own heart as well as one can,
and I know its weakness as well as I do its needs. That is why I decline
to hear his pleas, whatever they may be. I did not condemn him through
hearsay or doubtful evidence, and that is why I made no charge. But,
since he persists in hearing what he already well knows, you may convey
the matter.

"Tell him that I entered the conservatory that evening from the rear,
to cut a rose for my mother. Tell him I saw him and Miss Ashburton
beneath the pink oleander. The tableau was pretty, but the pose and
juxtaposition were too eloquent and evident to require explanation. I left
the conservatory, and, at the same time, the rose and my ideal. You may
carry that song and dance to your impressario."

"I'm shy on one word, lady. Jux — jux — put me wise on that, will yer?"

"Juxtaposition— or you may call it propinquity — or, if you like, being
rather too near for one maintaining the position of an ideal,"

The gravel spun from beneath the boy's feet. He stood by the other

98 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

bench. The man's eyes interrogated him, hungrily. The boy's were shin-
ing with the impersonal zeal of the translator.

"De lady says dat she's on to de fact dat gals is dead easy when a feller
come spielin' ghost stories and tryin' to make up, and dat's why she won't
listen to no soft-soap. She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a
bunch o' calico in de hot-house. She side-stepped in to pull some posies
and yer was squeezin' der oder gal to beat de band. She says it looked
cute, all right all right, but it made her sick. She says yer better git busy,
and make a sneak for de train."

The young man gave a low whistle and his eyes flashed with a sudden
thought. His hand flew to the inside pocket of his coat, and drew out a
handful of letters. Selecting one, he handed it to the boy, following it
with a silver dollar from his vest-pocket.

"Give that letter to the lady/' he said, "and ask her to read it. Tell her
that it should explain the situation. Tell her that, if she had mingled a
little trust with her conception of the ideal, much heartache might have
been avoided. Tell her that loyalty she prizes so much has never wavered.
Tell her I am waiting for an answer."

The messenger stood before the lady.

"De gent says he's had de ski-bunk put on him widout no cause. He
says he's no bum guy; and, lady, yer read dat letter, and 111 bet yer he's a
white sport, all right."

The young lady unfolded the letter, somewhat doubtfully, and read it,

Dear Dr. Arnold: I want to thank you for your most kind and oppor-
tune aid to my daughter last Friday evening, when, she was overcome
by an attack of her old heart-trouble in the conservatory at Mrs. Wald-
ron's reception. Had you not been near to catch her as she fell and to
render proper attention, we might have lost her. I would be glad if you
would call and undertake the treatment of her case,

Gratefully yours,
Robert Ashburton

The young lady refolded the letter, and handed it to the boy.
"De gent wants an answer," said the messenger. "What's de word?"
The lady's eyes suddenly flashed on him, bright, smiling and wet
"Tell that guy on the other bench/* she said, with a happy, tremulous
laugh, "that his girl wants him."

THE FURNISHED ROOM

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the
population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless

THE FURNISHED ROOM 99

they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished
room, transients forever — transients in abode, transients in heart and
mind. They sing "Home, Sweet Home" in ragtime; they carry their lares
et penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a
rubber plant is their fig tree.

Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers,
should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it
would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake
of all these vagrant guests.

One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling
red mansions, ringing their bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-
baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead.
The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths.

To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came
a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm
that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy
with edible lodgers.

He asked if there was a room to let.

"Come in," said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat;
her throat seemed lined with fur. "I have the third-floor back, vacant
since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?"

The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no par-
ticular source mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly
upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed
to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to
lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the stair-case and
was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs
were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within
them, If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that
statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive
that imps and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down
to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below.

"This is the room," said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. "It's
a nice room. It ain't often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it
last summer — no trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The
water's at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mopney kept it three months.
They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta Sprowls — you may have
heard of her — Oh, that was just the stage names — right there over the
dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here,
and you see there is plepty of closet room. It's a room everybody likes. It
never stays idle long."

"Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?" asked the
young man.

"They comes and goes, A good proportion of my lodgers is connected

100 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people
never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes."

He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he
said, and would take possession at once. He counted out the money.
The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As
the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the ques-
tion that he carried at the end of his tongue.

"A young girl— Miss Vashner— Miss Eloise Vashner— do you remem-
ber such a one among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage,
most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold
hair and dark mole near her left eyebrow."

"No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they
change as often as their rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don't
call that one to mind." t

No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevi-
table negative. So much time spent by day in questioning managers,
agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of theatres
from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what
he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He
was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, water-girt
city held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting
its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day
buried to-morrow in ooze and slime.

The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of
pseudohospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the spe-
cious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams
from the decayed furniture, the ragged brocade upholstery of a couch and
two chairs, a foot-wide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from
one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner.

The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in
speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him
of its divers tenantry.

• A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered, rectangular, tropical
islet lay surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-
papered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from
house to house— The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wed-
ding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe out-
line was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly
askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate
flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne
them to a fresh port— a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medi-
cine bottle, some stray cards out of a deck;

One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph became explicit, the
little signs left by the furnished rooms' procession of guests developed

THE FURNISHED ROOM 101

a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front of the dresser
told that lovely women had marched in the throng. The tiny fingerprints
on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel their way to sun and
air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, wit-
nessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents
against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a diamond
in staggering letters the name "Marie." It seemed that the succession of
dwellers in the furnished room had turned in fury — perhaps tempted
beyond forbearance by its garish coldness — and wreaked upon it their
passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by
bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during
the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some more potent unheaval had
cloven a great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the floor
owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual
agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been
wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home;
and yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the
resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their wrath. A
hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and cherish.

The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft-shod,
through his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished sounds
and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent,
slack laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice,
a lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a banjo tinkled with spirit.
Doors banged somewhere; the elevated trains roared intermittently;
a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed the breath
of the house — a dank savor rather than a smell — a cold, musty effluvium
as from underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of
linoleum and mildewed and rotten woodwork.

Then suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong,
sweet odor of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with
such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living
visitant. And the man cried aloud: "What, dear?" as if he had been called,
and sprang up and faced about. The rich odor clung to him and wrapped
him around. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time
confused and commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an
odor? Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound that
had touched, that had caressed him ?

"She has been in this room," he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a
token, for he knew he would recognize the smallest thing that had be-
longed to her or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of mignon-
ette, the odor that she had loved and made her own — whence came it?

The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the
flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins — those discreet, indis-

102 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

tinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite mood
and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their tri-
umphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came
upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It
was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he hurled it to the floor. In another
drawer he found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a pawnbroker's
card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams^ In
the last was a woman's black satin hair bow, which halted him, poised
between ice and fire. But the black satin hair bow also is femininity's
demure, impersonal common ornament and tells no tales.

And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming
the walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands
and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangings, the
drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that
she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him,
wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even
his grosser ones became cognizant of the call Once again he answered
loudly: "Yes, dear!" and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he
could not yet discern form and color and love and outstretched arms in
the odor of mignonette. Oh, God! whence that odor, and since when
have odors had a voice to call ? Thus he groped.

He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes.
These he passed in passive contempt. But once he found in a fold of the
matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he ground beneath his heel with a
green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He found
dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant; but
of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and whose
spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace.

And then he thought of the housekeeper.

He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed
a crack of light. She came out to his knock. He smothered his excitement
as best he could.

"Will you tell me, madam," he besought her, "who occupied the room
I have before I came ? "

"Yes, sir. I can tell you again. 'Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said.
Miss BVetta Sprowls it was in the theatres, but Missis Mooney she was.
My house is well known for respectability. The marriage certificate
hung, framed, on a nail over "

"What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls— in looks, I mean?"

"Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left
a week ago Tuesday."

"And before they occupied it?"

"Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying busi-
ness. He left owing me a week. Before him was Missis Crowder, and

THE BRIEF DEBUT OF TILDY 103

her two children, that stayed four months; and back of them was old Mr.
Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes
back a year, sir, and further I do not remember."

He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The
essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had
departed. In its place was the old, stale odor of mouldy house furniture,
of atmosphere in storage.

The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow,
singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets
into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every
crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he turned
out the light, turned the ga^ full on again and laid himself gratefully
upon the bed.

It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched
it and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats where
housekeepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom.

"I rented out my third-floor this evening," said Mrs. Purdy, across a
fine circle of foam. "A young man took it. He went up to bed two hours
ago."

"Now, did ye, Mrs, Purdy, ma'am?" said Mrs. McCool, with intense
admiration. "You do be a wonder for rentin' rooms of that kind. And
did ye tell him, then?" she concluded in a husky whisper laden with
mystery.

"Rooms," said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, "are furnished for
to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool."

" Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have
the rale sense for business, ma'am. There be many people will rayjict
the rentin' of a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dyin' in
the bed of it."

"As you say, we has our living to be making," remarked Mrs. Purdy.

"Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay
out the third-floor-back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin'
herself wid the gas — a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am."

"She'd a-been called handsome, as you say," said Mrs. Purdy, as-
senting but critical, "but for that mole she had a-growin' by her left eye-
brow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool."

THE BRIEF D^BUT OF TILDY

If you do not know Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your
loss. For if you -are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively you

104 BOOKI THE FOUR MILLION

should be interested to know how the other half consumes provisions.
And if you belong to the half to whom waiters' checks are things of
moment, you should know Bogle's, for there you get your money's worth
— in quantity, at least.

Bogle's is situated in that highway of bourgeoisie, that boulevard of
Brown-Jones-and-Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of
tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster-stand, con-
taining cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may
shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust.
From the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man should
extract a sanguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet will his prowess
be balked when he comes to wrest salt fipm Bogle's cruets. Also upon
each table stands the counterfeit of that benign sauce made "from the
recipe of a nobleman in India."

At the cashier's desk sits Bogle, cold, sordid, slow, smouldering, and
takes your money. Behind a mountain of toothpicks he makes your
change, files your check, and ejects at you, like a toad, a word about the
weather. Beyond a corroboration of his meteorological statement you
would better not venture. You are not Bogle's friend; you are a fed,
transient customer, and you and he may not meet again until the blowing
of Gabriel's dinner horn. So take your change and go — to the devil if you
like. There you have Bogle's sentiments.

The needs of Bogle's customers were supplied by two waitresses and
a Voice. One of the waitresses was named Aileen. She was tall, beautiful,
lively, gracious and learned in persiflage. Her other name? There was
no more necessity for another name at Bogle's than there was for finger-
bowls.

The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest
Matilda? Please listen this time— Tildy— Tildy. Tildy was dumpy, plain-
faced, and too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last clause to
yourself once or twice, and make the acquaintance of the duplicate in-
finite.

The Voice at Bogle's was invisible. It came from the kitchen, and did
not shine in the way of originality. It was a heathen Voice, and con-
tented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the wait-
resses concerning food.

Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful? Had she
donned a few hundred dollars' worth of clothes and joined the Easter
parade, and had you seen her, you would have hastened to say so
yourself.

The customers at Bogle's were her slaves. Six tables full she could wait
upon at once. They who were in a hurry restrained their impatience for
the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, graceful figure. They
who had finished eating ate more that they might continue in the light

THE BRIEF DEBUT OF TILDY 105

of her smiles. Every man there — and they were mostly men — tried to
make his impression upon her.

Aileen could successfully exchange repartee against a dozen at once.
And every smile that she sent forth lodged, like pellets from a scatter-gun,
in as many hearts. And all this while she would be performing astound-
ing feats with orders of pork and beans, pot roasts, ham-and, sausage-and-
the-wheats, and any quantity of things on the iron and in the pan and
straight up and on the side. With all this feasting and flirting and merry
exchange of wit Bogle's came mighty near being a salon, with Aileen for
its Madame Recamier. ,

If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the regulars
were her adorers. There was much rivalry among many of the steady
customers. Aileen could have had an engagement every evening. At least
twice a week some one took her to a theatre or to a dance. One stout
gentleman whom she and Tildy had privately christened "The Hog"
presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one known as "Freshy,"
who rode on the Traction Company's repair wagon, was going to give
her a poodle as soon as his brother got the hauling contract in the Ninth.
And the man who always ate spareribs and spinach and said he was a
stock broker asked her to go to "Parsifal" with him.

"I don't know where this place is," said Aileen while talking it over
with Tildy, "but the wedding-ring's got to be on before I put a stitch into
a travelling dress— -ain't that right? Well, I guess!"

But, Tildy!

In steaming, chattering, cabbage-scented .Bogle's there was almost a
heart tragedy. Tildy with the blunt nose, the hay-colored hair, the freckled
skin, the bag-o'-meal figure, had never had an admirer. Not a man fol-
lowed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the restaurant save
now and then when they glared with the beast-hunger for food. None
of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges of wit. None of
them loudly "jollied" her of mornings as they did Aileen, .accusing her,
when the eggs were slow in coming, of late hours in the company of
envied swains. No one had ever given her a turquoise, ring or invited
her upon a voyage to mysterious, distant "Parsifal."

Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat
at her tables spoke to her briefly with quotations from the bill of fare;
and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwise-flavored accents,
eloquently addressed to the fair Aileen. They writhed in their chairs to
gaze around and over the impending form of Tildy, that Aileen's pul-
chritude might season and make Ambrosia of their bacon and eggs.

And Tildy was content to be the unwooed drudge if Aileen could re-
ceive the flattery and the homage. The blunt nose was loyal to the short
Grecian. She was Aileen's friend; and slje was glad to see her rule hearts
and wean the attention of men from smoking pot-pie and lemon me-

106 BOOK I THE FOUR MILLION

ringue. But deep below our freckles and hay-colored hair the unhand-
somest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but coming
to us alone.

There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly
bruised eye; and Tildy's solicitude was almost enough to heal any optic.

"Fresh guy," explained Aileen, 'last night as I was going home at
Twenty-third and Sixth. Sashayed up, so he did, and made a break. I
turned him down, cold, and he made a sneak; but followed me down
to Eighteenth, and tried his hot air again. Gee! but I slapped him a good
one, side of the face. Then he give me that eye. Does it look real awful,
Til! I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when he comes in for
his tea and toast at ten."

Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No man
had ever tried to follow her. She was safe abroad at any hour of the
twenty-four. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow one
and black one's eye for love!

Among the customers at Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who
worked in a laundry office. Mr. Seeders was thin and had light hair, and
appeared to have been recently rough-dried and starched. He was too
diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one of Tildy's
tables, where he devoted himself to silence and boiled weakfish,

One day when Mr. Seeders came in to dinner he had been drinking
beer, There were only two or three customers in the restaurant. When
Mr. Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around
Tildy's waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the
street, snapped his fingers in the direction of the laundry, and hied him-
self to play pennies in the slot machines at the Amusement Arcade.

For a few moments Tildy stood petrified. Then she was aware of
Aileen shaking at her an arch forefinger, and saying:

"Why, Til, you naughty "girl! Ain't you getting to be awful, Miss Sly-
boots. First thing I know you'll be stealing some of my fellows. I must
keep an eye on you, my lady,"

Another thing dawned upon Tildy's recovering wits. In a moment she
had advanced from a hopeless, lowly admirer to be an Eve-sister of the
potent Aileen. She herself was now a man-charmer, a mark for Cupid,
a Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet
boards. Man had found her waist achievable and her lips desirable. The
sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miracu-
lous piece of one-day laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her
uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and ironed it, and returned
it to her sheer embroidered lawn—the robe of Venus herself.

^The freckles on Tildy's cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both
Circe and Psyche peeped from her brightened eyes. Not even Aileen
herself had been publicly embraced aad kissed in the restaurant.

THE BRIEF DEBUT OF TILDY IQJ

Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack she
went and stood at Bogle's desk. Her eyes were shining; she tried not to
let her words sound proud and boastful.

"A gentleman insulted me to-day," she said. "He hugged me around
the waist and kissed me."

"That so?" said Bogle, cracking open his business armor. "After this
week you get a dollar a week more."

At the next regular meal when Tildy set food before customers with
whom she had acquaintance she said to each of them modestly, as one
whose merit needed no bolstering:

"A gentleman insulted me to-day in the restaurant. He put his arms
around my waist and kissed me."

The diners accepted the revelation in various ways — some incredu-
lously, some with congratulations: others turned upon her the stream of
badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone. And Tildy 's
heart swelled in her bosom, for she saw at last the towers of Romance
rise above the horizon of the gray plain in which she had for so long
travelled.

For two days Mr. Seeders came not again. During that time Tildy
established herself firmly as a woman to be wooed. She bought ribbons,
and arranged her hair like Aileen's, and tightened her waist two inches.
She had a thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Seeders would rush in
suddenly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have loved her desperately;
and impulsive lovers are always blindly jealous.

Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy rather
hoped that he would not shoot at her, for she was always loyal to Aileen;
and she did not want to over-shadow her friend.

At 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came in.
There were no customers at the tables. At the back end of the restaurant
Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was quartering pies. Mr.
Seeders walked back to where they stood.

Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon
against her heart. A red hair-bow was in her hair; she wore Venus's
Eighth Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver
symbolic heart.

Mr. Seeders was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into
his hip pocket and the other into a fresh pumpkin pie.

"Miss Tildy," said he, "I want to apologize for what I done the other
evenin'. Tell you the truth, I was pretty well tanked up or I wouldn't
of done it. I wouldn't do no lady that a-way when I was sober. So I hope,
Miss Tildy, you'll accept my 'pology, and believe that I wouldn't of done
it if I'd known what I was doin' and hadn't of been drunk."

With this handsome plea Mr. Seeders back away, and departed, feel-
ing that reparation had been made.

I08 BOOKI THEFOURMILLION

But behind the convenient screen Tildy had thrown herself flat upon
a table among the butter chips and the coffee cups, and was sobbing her
heart out — out and back again to the gray plain wherein travel they with
blunt noses and hay-colored hair. From her knot she had torn the red
hair-bow and cast it upon the floor. Seeders she despised utterly; she had
but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince who might
have set the clocks going and the pages to running in fairyland. But the
kiss had been maudlin and unmeant; the court had not stirred at the
false alarm; she must forevermore remain the Sleeping Beauty.

Yet not all was lost. Aileen's arm was around her; and Tildy's red hand
groped among the butter chips till it found the warm clasp of her friend's.

"Don't you fret, Til," said Aileen, who did not understand entirely.
"That turnip-faced little clothespin of a Seeders ain't worth it. He ain't
anything of a gentleman or he wouldn't ever of apologized."

BOOK

HEART OF
THE WEST

HEARTS AND CROSSES

Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for
anything he usually — but this is not Baldy's story. He poured out a third
drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. Baldy was in
consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.

"I'd be king if I was you/' said Baldy, so positively that his holster
creaked and his spurs rattled.

Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further
disorder in his straw-colored hair. The tonsorial recourse being without
avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful Baldy.

"If a man marries a queen, it oughtn't to make him a two-spot," de-
clared Webb, epitomizing his grievances.

"Sure not," said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely solid-

110 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

tous concerning the relative value of the cards. "By rights you're a king.
If I was you, I'd call for a new deal. The cards have been stacked on
you — I'll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager."

"What?" asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.

"You're a prince-consort."

"Go easy," said Webb. "I never black-guarded you none."

"It's a title," explained Baldy, "up among the picture-cards; but it don't
take no tricks. I'll tell you, Webb. It's a brand they've got for certain
animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes mar-
ries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen. Are we
king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we march
between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal Hall
Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and
accept the responsibility for the heir-apparent. That ain't any square deal
Yes, sir, Webb, you're a prince-consort; and if I was you, I'd start a
interregnum or a habeas corpus or somethin'; and I'd be king if I had to
turn from the bottom of the deck."

Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.

"Baldy," said Webb, solemnly, "me and you punched cows in the same
outfit for years. We been runnin' on the same range, and ridin' the same
trails since we was boys. I wouldn't talk about my family affairs to nobody
but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I married Santa
McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I don't amount to
a knot in a stake rope."

"When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas," continued
Baldy with Satanic sweetness, "you was some tallow. You had as much
to say on the ranch as he did."

"I did," admitted Webb, "up to the time he found out I was tryin' to
get my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as
far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they com-
menced to call Santa the 'cattle queen.' I'm boss of the cattle — that's all
She 'tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can't sell
even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa's the 'queen'; and
I'm Mr. Nobody."

Td be a king if I was you," repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. "When
a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her — on the hoof —
dressed — dried — corned — any old way from the chaparral to the packing-
house. Lots of folks thinks it's funny, Webb, that you don't have the
say-so on the Nopalito. I ain't reflectin* none on Miz Yeager — she's the
finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next Christmas — but a man
ought to be boss of his own camp."

The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask o£ wounded
melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and guile-
less blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose leadership

HEARTS AND CROSSES III

had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But his active
and sinewy seventy-two inches and his girded revolvers forbade the com-
parison.

"What was that you called me, Baldy?" he asked, "What kind of a
concert was it?"

"A 'consort,* " corrected Baldy—" 'a prince-consort.' It's a kind of short-
card pseudonym. You come in sort of between Jack-high and a four-card
flush."

Webb Yeager sighed, and gathered the strap of his Winchester scab-
bard from the floor.

"I'm ridin' back to the ranch to-day," he said, half-heartedly. "I've got
to start a bunch of beeves for San Antone in the morning."

"I'm your company as far as Dry Lake," announced Baldy. "I've got a
round-up camp on the San Marcos cuttin' out two-year-olds.'*

The two companeros mounted their ponies and trotted away from the
little railroad settlement, where they had foregathered in the thirsty
morning.

At Dry Lake, where their routes diverged, they reined up for a party
cigarette. For miles they had ridden in silence save for the soft drum of
the ponies' hoofs on the matted mesquite grass, and the rattle of the
chaparral against their wooden stirrups. But in Texas discourse is seldom
continuous. You may fill in a mile, a meal, and a murder between your
paragraphs without detriment to your thesis. So, without apology, Webb
offered an addendum to the conversation that had begun ten miles away.

"You remember, yourself, Baldy, that there was a time when Santa
wasn't quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister
was keepin' us apart, and how she used to send me the sign that she
wanted to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a
colander if I ever come in gun-shot of the ranch. You remember the sign
she used to send, Baldy — the heart with a cross inside of it?"

"Me?" cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness.

"You old sugar-stealing coyote! Don't I remember! Why, you dad-
blamed old long-horned turtle-dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious
about them hieroglyphs. The 'gizzard-and-crossbones' we used to call it.
We used to see 'em on truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was
marked in charcoal on the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the news-
papers. I see one of 'em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old
man McAllister sent oyt frorji the ranch — danged if I didn't."

"Santa's father," exclaimed Webb gently, "got her to promise that she
wouldn't write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign was
her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she managed
to put that mark on somethin' at the ranch that she knew I'd see. And
I never laid eyes on it but when I burnt the wind for the ranch the same
night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the little horse-corral."

112 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"We knowed it," chanted Baldy; "but we never let on. We was all for
you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when
we see that gizzard-and-crossbones figured out on the truck from the
ranch we knowed old Pinto was goin' to eat up miles that night instead
of grass. You remember Scurry — that educated horse-wrangler we had —
the college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever Scurry
saw that come-meet-your-honey brand on anything from the ranch, he'd
wave his hand like that, and say, 'Our friend Lee Andrews will again
swim the Hell's point to-night.' "

"The last time Santa sent me the sign," said Webb, "was once when
she was sick, I noticed it as soon as I hit camp, and I galloped Pinto forty
mile that night. She wasn't at the coma mott. I went to the house; and
old McAllister met me at the door. 'Did you come here to get killed?5
says he; Til disoblige you for once. I just started a Mexican to bring you.
Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her. And then come out here
and see me.'

"Santa was lyin' in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a smile,
and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed — mud and
spurs and chaps and all Tve heard you ridin' across the grass for hours,
Webb,' she says. 1 was sure you'd come. You saw the sign?' she whispers.
The minute I hit camp,' says L * 'Twas marked on the bag of potatoes
and onions.' They're always together,' says she, soft like-— 'always together
in life/ They go well together,' I says, 'in a stew.' CI mean hearts and
crosses,' says Santa. 'Our sign— to love and to suffer— that's what they
mean.'

"And there was old Doc Musgrove amusin* himself with whisky and
a palm-leaf fan. And by and by Santa goes to sleep; and Doc feels her
forehead; and he says to me: 'You're not such a bad febrifuge. But you'd
better slide out now, for the diagnosis don't call for you in regular doses.
The little lady'll be all right when she wakes up.'

"I seen old McAllister outside. 'She's asleep,' says I. 'And now you can
start in with your colander-work. Take your time; for I left my gun on
my saddle-horn.'

"Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: Tumpin' lead into the best ranch-
boss in West Texas don't seem to me good business policy. I don't know
where I could get as good a one. It's the son-in-law idea, Webb, 'that
makes me admire for to use you as a target. You ain't my idea for a
member of the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if youll keep
outside of a radius with the ranch-house in the middle of it. You go up-
stairs and lay down on a cot, and when you get some sleep we'll talk it
over.' "

Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his
saddle-horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to
be off. The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.

HEARTS AND CROSSES 113

"Adios, Baldy," said Webb. (Tm glad I seen you and had this talk."

With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of quail,
the riders sped away toward different points of the compass. A hundred
yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare knoll and emitted
a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth would
have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master of
equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of gravity.

Webb turned in his saddle at the signal.

"If I was you/' came Baldy's strident and perverting tones. "I'd be
king!"

At eight o'clock on the following morning Bud Turner rolled from
his saddle in front of the Nopalito ranch-house, and stumbled with whiz-
zing rowels toward the gallery. Bud was in charge of the bunch of beef-
cattle that was to strike the trail that morning for San Antonio. Mrs.
Yeager was on the gallery watering a cluster of hyacinths growing in a
red earthenware jar,

"King" McAllister had bequeathed to his daughter many of his strong
characteristics — his resolution, his gay courage, his contumacious self-
reliance, his pride as a reigning monarch of hoofs and horns. Allegro and
fortissimo had been McAllister's tempo and tone. In Santa they survived,
transposed to the feminine key. Substantially, she preserved the image of
the mother who had been summoned to wander in other and less finite
green pastures long before the waxing herds of kine had conferred roy-
alty upon the house. She had her mother's slim, strong figure and grave,
soft prettiness that relieved in her the severity of the imperious McAllister
eye and the McAllister air of royal independence.

Webb stood on one end of the gallery giving orders to two or three sub-
bosses of various camps and outfits who had ridden in for instructions,

" 'Morning," said Bud, briefly. "Where do you want them beeves to go
in town — to Barber's, as usual?"

Now, to answer that had been the prerogative of the queen. All the
reins of business — buying, selling, and banking — had been held by her
capable fingers. The handling of the cattle had been entrusted fully to
her husband. In the days of "King" McAllister, Santa had been his secre-
tary and helper; and she had continued her work with wisdom and
profit. But before she could reply, the prince-consort spake up with calm
decision:

"You drive that bunch to Zimmerman and Nesbit's pens. I spoke to
Zimmerman about it some time ago."

Bud turned on his high boot-heels.

"Wait!" called Santa quickly. She looked at her husband with surprise
in her steady gray eyes,

"Why, what do you mean, Webb?" she asked, with a small wrinkle
gathering between her brows. "I never deal with Zimmerman and Nesbit.

114 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Barber has handled every head of stock from this ranch in that market
for five years. I'm not going to take the business out of his hands." She
faced Bud Turner. "Deliver those cattle to Barber," she concluded
positively.

Bud gazed impartially at the water-jar hanging on the gallery, stood
on his other leg, and chewed a mesquite-Jeaf.

"I want this bunch o£ beeves to go to Zimmerman and Nesbit," said
Webb, with a frosty light in his blue eyes.

"Nonsense," said Santa impatiently. "You'd better start on, Bud, so as
to noon at the Little Elm waterhole. Tell Barber we'll have another lot
of culls ready in about a month."

Bud allowed a hesitating eye to steal upward and meet Webb's. Webb
saw apology in his look, and fancied he saw commiseration.

"You deliver them cattle/' he said grimly, "to "

"Barber," finished Santa sharply, "Let that settle it. Is there anything
else you are waiting for, Bud?"

"No, m'm," said Bud. But before going he lingered while a cow's tail
could have switched thrice; for a man is man's ally; and even the Phil-
istines must have blushed when they took Samson in the way they did.

"You hear your boss!" cried Webb, sardonically. He took off his hat,
and bowed until it touched the floor before his wife.

"Webb," said Santa rebukingly, "you're acting mighty foolish to-day."

"Court fool, your Majesty," said Webb, in his slow tones, which had
changed their quality. "What else can you expect? Let me tell you. I was
a man before I married a cattle-queen. What am I now? The laughing-
stock of the camps. I'll be a man again."

Santa looked at him closely.

"Don't be unreasonable, Webb," she said calmly. "You haven't been
slighted in any way. Do I ever interfere in your management of the
cattle? I know the business side of the ranch much better than you do.
I learned it from Dad. Be sensible."

"Kingdoms and queendoms," said Webb, "don't suit me unless I am
in the pictures, too, I punch the cattle and you wear the crown. All right.
I'd rather be High Lord Chancellor of a cow-camp than the eight-spot
in a queen-high flush. It's your ranch; and Barber gets the beeves."

Webb's horse was tied to the rack. He walked into the house and
brought out his roll of blankets that he never took with him except on
long rides, and his "slicker," and his longest stake-rope of plaited raw-
hide. These he began to tie deliberately upon his saddle. Santa, a little
pale, followed him.

Webb swung up into the saddle. His serious, smooth face was without
expression except for a stubborn light that smouldered in his eyes.

"There's a herd of cows and calves," said he, "near the Hondo Water-

HEARTS AND CROSSES 115

hole on the Frio that ought to be moved away from timber. Lobos have
killed three of the calves. I forgot to leave orders. You'd better tell Simms
to attend to it."

Santa laid a hand on the horse's bridle, and looked her husband in
the eye.

"Are you going to leave me, Webb?" she asked quietly.

"I am going to be a man again/' he answered.

"I wish you success in a praiseworthy attempt," she said, with a sudden
coldness. She turned and walked directly into the house.

Webb Yeager rode to the southeast as straight as the topography of
West Texas permitted. And when he reached the horizon he might have
ridden on into blue space as far as knowledge of him on the Nopalito
went. And the days, with Sundays at their head, formed into hebdomadal
squads; and the weeks, captained by the full moon, close ranks into
menstrual companies carrying "Tempus fugit" on their banners; and the
months marched on toward die vast camp-ground of the years; but Webb
Yeager came no more to the dominions of his queen.

One day a being named Bartholomew, a sheep-man— and therefore of
little account— from the lower Rio Grande country, rode in sight ^of
the Nopalito ranch-house, and felt hunger assail him. Ex consuetudine
he was soon seated at the mid-day dining-table of that hospitable king-
dom. Talk like water gushed from him: he might have been smitten with
Aaron's rod— that is your gentle shepherd when an audience is vouch-
safed him whose ears are not overgrown with wool.

"Missis Yeager/' he babbled, "I see a man the other day on the Rancho
Seco down in Hidalgo County by your name— Webb Yeager was his.
He'd just been engaged as manager. He was a tall, light-haired man, not
saying much. Maybe he was some kin of yours, do you think?"

"A husband," said Santa cordially. "The Seco has done well. Mr.
Yeager is one of the best stockmen in the West."

The dropping out of a prince-consort rarely disorganizes a monarchy.
Queen Santa had appointed as mayordomo of the ranch, a trusty subject,
named Ramsay, who had been one of her father's faithful vassals. And
there was scarcely a ripple on the Nopalito ranch save when the gulf-
breeze created undulations in the grass of its wide acres.

For several years the Nopalito had been making experiments with an
English breed of cattle that looked down with aristocratic contempt upon
the Texas long-horns. The experiments were found satisfactory; and a
pasture had been set apart for the blue-bloods. The fame of them had
gone forth into the chaparral and pear as far as men ride in saddles.
Other ranches woke up, rubbed their eyes, and looked with new dis-
satisfaction upon the long-horns.

As a consequence, one day a sunburned, capable, silk-kerchiefed non-

Il6 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

chalant youth, garnished with revolvers, and attended by three Mexican
vaqueros, alighted at the Nopalito ranch and presented the following
business-like epistle to the queen thereof.

Mrs. Yeager — The Nopalito Ranch:

Dear Madam:

I am instructed by the owners of the Rancho Seco to purchase TOO
head of two and three-year-old cows of the Sussex breed owned by
you. If you can fill the order please deliver the cattle to the bearer; and
a check will be forwarded to you at once.

Respectfully,

Webster Yeager,
Manager of the Rancho Seco.

Business is business, even — very scantily did it escape being written
"especially" — in a kingdom.

That night the 100 head of cattle were driven up from the pasture and
penned in a corral near the ranch-house for delivery in the morning.

When night closed down and the house was still, did Santa Yeager
throw herself down, clasping that formal note to her bosom, weeping,
and calling out a name that pride (either in one or the other) had kept
from her lips many a day? Or did she file the letter, in her business way,
retaining her royal balance and strength ?

Wonder, if you will; but royalty is sacred; and there is a veil. But
this much you shall learn.

At midnight Santa slipped softly out of the ranch-house, clothed in
something dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-oak
trees. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale
orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist. But the mock-
bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers scented the
air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped and played in
an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the southeast and
threw kisses thitherward; for there was none to see.

Then she sped silently to the blacksmith-shop, fifty yards away; and
what she did there can only be surmised. But the forge glowed red; and
there was a faint hammering such as Cupid might make when he sharpens
his arrow-points.

Later she came forth with a queer-shaped, handled thing in one hand,
and a portable furnace, such as are seen in branding-camps, in the other.
To the corral where the Sussex cattle were penned she sped with these
things swiftly in the moonlight.

She opened the gate and slipped inside the corral. The Sussex cattle
were mostly a dark red. But among this bunch was one that was milky
white — notable among the others.

HEARTS AND CROSSES IIJ

And now Santa shook from her shoulder something that we had not
seen before— a rope lasso. She freed the loop of it, coiling the length in
her left hand, and plunged into the thick of the cattle.

The white cow was her object. She swung the lasso, which caught one
horn and slipped off. The next throw encircled the forefeet and the animal
fell heavily. Santa made for it like a panther; but it scrambled up and
dashed against her, knocking her over like a blade of grass.

Again she made the cast, while the aroused cattle milled round the four
sides of the corral in a plunging mass. This throw was fair; the white
cow came to earth again; and before it could rise Santa had made the
lasso fast around a post of the corral with a swift and simple knot, and
had leaped upon the cow again with the rawhide hobbles.

In one minute the feet of the animal were tied (no record-breaking
deed) and Santa leaned against the corral for the same space of time,
panting and lax.

And then she ran swiftly to her furnace at the gate and brought the
branding-iron, queerly shaped and white-hot.

The bellow of the outraged white cow, as the iron was applied, should
have stirred the slumbering .auricular nerves and consciences of the near-
by subjects of the Nopalito, but it did not. And it was amid the deepest
nocturnal silence that Santa ran like a lapwing back to the ranch-house
and there fell upon a cot and sobbed — sobbed as though queens had hearts
as simple ranchmen's wives have, and as though she would gladly make
kings of prince-consorts, should they ride back again from over the hills
and far away.

In the morning the capable, revolvered youth and his vaqueros set forth,
driving the bunch of Sussex cattle across the prairies to the Rancho Seco.
Ninety miles it was; a six days' journey, grazing and watering the animals
on the way.

The beasts arrived at Rancho Seco one evening at dusk; and were
received and counted by the foreman of the ranch.

The next morning at eight o'clock a horseman loped out of the brush
to the Nopalito ranch-house. He dismounted stiffly, and strode, with whiz-
zing spurs, to the house. His horse gave a great sigh and swayed foam-
streaked, with down-drooping head and closed eyes.

But waste not your pity upon Belshazzar, the flea-bitten sorrel. Today,
in Nopalito horse-pasture he survives, pampered, beloved, unridden,
cherished record-holder of long-distance rides.

The horseman stumbled into the house. Two arms fell around his neck
and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen alike: "Webb —
oh, Webb!"

"I was a skunk," said Webb Yeager.

"Hush," said Santa, "did you see it?"

"I saw it," said Webb.

Il8 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

What they meant God knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read
the primer of events.

"Be the cattle-queen," said Webb; "and overlook it if you can. I was
a mangy, sheep-stealing coyote."

"Hush!" said Santa again, laying her fingers upon his mouth. "There's
no queen here. Do you know who I am ? I am Santa Yeager, First Lady
of the Bedchamber. Come here."

She dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right. There
stood a cradle with an infant in it — a red, ribald, unintelligible, babbling,
beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an unseemly manner.

"There's no queen on this ranch,'* said Santa again. "Look at the king.
He's got your eyes, Webb. Down on your knees and look at his High-
ness."

But jingling rowels sounded on the gallery, and Bud Turner stumbled
there again with the same query that he had brought, lacking a few days,
a year ago.

" 'Morning. Them beeves is just turned out on the trail. Shall I drive
'em to Barber's, or "

He saw Webb and stopped, open-mouthed.

"Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!" shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air
with his fists.

"You hear your boss, Bud," said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin —
just as he had said a year ago.

And that is all, except that when old man Quinn, owner of the Rancho
Seco, went out to look over the herd of Sussex cattle that he had bought
from the Nopalito ranch, he asked his new manager:

"What's the Nopalito ranch brand, Wilson?"

"X Bar Y," said Wilson.

"I thought so," said Quinn. "But look at that white heifer there; she's
got another brand — a heart with a cross inside of it What brand is that?"

THE RANSOM OF MACK

Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold
mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say "old" Mack; but he wasn't old.
Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old.

"Andy," he says to me, "I'm tired of hustling. You and me have been
working hard together for three years. Say we knock off for a while,
and spend some of this idle money we've coaxed our way."

'The proposition hits me just right," says I. "Let's be nabobs a while
and see how it feels. What'll we do—take in the Niagara Falls, or buck
at faro?"

"For a good many years," says Mack, "I've thought that if I ever had

THE RANSOM OF MACK 119

extravagant money I'd rent a two-room cabin somewhere, hire a China-
man to cook, and sit in my stocking feet and read Buckle's History of
Civilization."

"That sounds self-indulgent and gratifying without vulgar ostentation,"
says I; "and I don't see how money could be better invested. Give me a
cuckoo clock and a Sep Winner's Self-Instructor for the Banjo, and I'll
join you."

A week afterward me and Mack hits this small town of Pina, about
thirty miles out from Denver, and finds an elegant two-room house that
just suits us. We deposited halta-peck of money in the Pijia bank and
shook hands with every one of the 340 citizens in the town. We brought
along the Chinaman and the cuckoo clock and Buckle and the Instructor
with us from Denver; and they made the cabin seem like home at
once.

Never believe it when they tell you riches don't bring happiness. If you
could have seen old Mack sitting in his rocking-chair with his blue-yarn
sock feet up in the window and absorbing in that Buckle stuflE through his
specs you'd have seen a picture of content that would have made Rocke-
feller jealous. And I was learning to pick out "Old Zip Coon" on the
banjo, and the cuckoo was on time with his remarks, and Ah Sing was
messing up the atmosphere with the handsomest smell of ham and eggs
that ever laid the honeysuckle in the shade. When it got too dark to
make out Buckle's nonsense and the notes in the Instructor, me and
Mack would light our pipes and talk about science and pearl diving and
sciatica and Egypt and spelling and fish and trade-winds and leather and
gratitude and eagles, and a lot of subjects that we'd never had time to
explain our sentiments about before.

One evening Mack spoke up and asked me if I was much apprised in
the habits and policies of women folks,

"Why, yes," says I, in a tone of voice; "I know 'em from Alfred to
Omaha. The feminine nature and similitude," says I, "is as plain to my
sight as the Rocky Mountains is to a blue-eyed burro. I'm onto all their
little sidesteps and punctual discrepancies."

"I tell you, Andy," says Mack, with a kind of sigh. "I never had the
least amount of intersection with their predispositions. Maybe I might
have had a proneness in respect to their vicinity, but I never took the time.
I made my own living since I was fourteen; and I never seemed to get
my ratiocinations equipped with the sentiments usually depicted toward
the sect. I sometimes wish I had," says old Mack.

"They're an adverse study," says I, "and adapted to points of view. Al-
though they vary in rationale, I have found 'em quite often obviously
differing from each other in divergences of contrast."

"It seems to me/' goes on Mack, "that a man had better take 'em in and
secure his inspirations of the sect when he's young and so preordained*

I2O BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

I let my chance go by; and I guess I'm too old now to go hopping into
the curriculum."

"Oh, I don't know," I tells him ."Maybe you better credit yourself with
a barrel of money and a lot of emancipation from a quantity of uncon-
tent. Still, I don't regret my knowledge of 'em," I says. "It takes a man
who understands the symptoms and by-plays of women-folks to take care
of himself in this world."

We stayed on in Pifia because we liked the place. Some folks might
enjoy their money with noise and rapture and locomotion; but me and
Mack we had had plenty of turmoils and hotel towels. The people were
friendly; Ah Sing got the swing of the grub we liked ; Mack and Buckle
were as thick as two body-snatchers, and I was hitting out a cordial re-
semblance to "Buffalo Gals, Can't You Come Out To-night/' on the
banjo,

One day I got a telegram from Speight, the man that was working a
mine I had an interest in out in New Mexico. I had to go out there; and I
was gone two months. I was anxious to get back to Pina and enjoy life
once more.

When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the
door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be smiling
then.

That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass^ he
was the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and
shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as big
as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was smirking
and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid with colic.

"Hello, Andy," says Mack, out of his face. "Glad to see you back.
Things have happened since you went away."

"I know it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made you
that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this pre-
sumptious kind of ribaldry?"

"Why, Andy," said he, "they've elected me justice of the peace since
you left."

I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the
peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged.

Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack
kind of half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled
and bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by.

"No hope for you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at
your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather
shoes! All this in two little short months!"

"I'm going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night," says
Mack, in a kind of a flutter.

"I forgot something at the post-office," says I, and walked away quick.

THERANSOMOFMACK 121

I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat
and told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age.
She blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from
the "Two Orphans."

"I understand you are to be married to-night," I said.

"Correct," says she. "You got any objections?"

"Listen, sissy," I begins.

"My name is Miss Rebosa Reed," says she in a pained way.

"I know it," says I. "Now, Rebosa, I'm old enough to have owed
money to your father. And that old, specious, dressed-up, garbled, sea-
sick ptomaine prancing around avidiously like an irremediable turkey
gobbler with patent leather shoes on is my best friend. Why did you go
and get him invested in this marriage business?"

"Why, he was the only chance there was," answered Miss Rebosa.

"Nay," says I, giving a sickening look of admiration at her complexion
and style of features; "with your beauty you might pick any kind of a
man. Listen, Rebosa. Old Mack ain't the man you want. He was twenty-
two when you was nee Reed, as the papers say. This bursting into bloom
won't last with him. He's all ventilated with oldness and rectitude and
decay. Old Mack's down with a case of Indian summer. He overlooked
his bet when he was young; and now he's suing Nature for the interest
on the promissory note he took from Cupid instead of the cash. Rebosa,
are you bent on having this marriage occur?"

"Why, sure I am," says she, oscillating the pansies on her hat, "and so
is somebody else, I reckon."

"What time is it to take place?" I asks.

"At six o'clock," says she.

I made up my mind right away what to do. I'd save old Mack if I could.
To have a good, seasoned, ineligible man like that turn chicken for a girl
that hadn't quit eating slate pencils and buttoning in the back was more
than I could look on with easiness.

"Rebosa," says I, earnest, drawing upon my display of knowledge con-
cerning the feminine intuitions of reason — "ain't there a young man in
Pina — a nice young man that you think a heap of?"

"Yep," says Rebosa, nodding her pansies — "Sure there is! What do you
think I Gracious!"

"Does he like you?" I asks. "How does he stand in the matter?"

"Crazy," says Rebosa. "Ma has to wet down the front steps to keep him
from sitting there all the time. But I guess that'll be all over after to-
night," she winds up with a sigh.

"Rebosa," says I, "you don't really experience any of this adoration
called love for old Mack, do you?"

"Lord! no," says the girl, shaking her head. "I think he's as dry as a
lava bed. The idea!"

122 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"Who is this young man that you like, Rebosa?" I inquires.

"It's Eddie Bayles," says she. "He clerks in Crosby's grocery. But he
don't make but thirty-five a month. Ella Noakes was wild about him
once."

"Old Mack tells me," I says, "that he's going to marry you at six o'clock
this evening."

"That's the time," says she. "It's to be at our house."

"Rebosa," says I, "listen to me. If Eddie Bayles had a thousand dollars
cash — a thousand dollars, mind you, would buy him a store of his own —
if you and Eddie had that much to excuse matrimony on, would you con-
sent to marry him this evening at five o'clock?"

The girl looks at me a minute; and I can see these inaudible cogitations
going on inside of her, as women will.

"A thousand dollars?" says she. "Of course I would."

"Come on," says I. "We'll go and see Eddie."

We went up to Crosby's store and called Eddie outside. He looked to
be estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my
proposition.

"At five o'clock?" says he, "for a thousand dollars? Please don't wake
me up! Well, you are the rich uncle retired from the spice business in
India. I'll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself,"

We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote
my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and
Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to therti.

And then I gave Jem my blessing, and went to wander in the wild-wood
for a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age and
the zodiac and the ways of women and all the disorder that goes with a
lifetime. I passed myself congratulations that I had probably saved my old
friend Mack from his attack of Indian summer. I knew when he got well
of it and shed his infatuation and his patent leather shoes, he would feel
grateful. "To keep old Mack disinvolved," thinks I, "from relapses like
this, is worth more than a thousand dollars." And most of all I was glad
that I'd made a study of women, and wasn't to be deceived any by their
means of conceit and evolution.

It must have been half-past five when I got back home. I stepped in;
and there sat old Mack on the back of his neck in his old clothes with his
blue socks on the window and the History of Civilization propped up on
his knees.

"This don't look like getting ready for a wedding at six," I says, to seem
innocent.

"Oh," says Mack, reaching for his tobacco, "that was postponed back
to five o'clock. They sent me a note saying the hour had been changed* It's
all over now. What made you stay away so long, Andy?"

"You heard about the wedding?" I asks.

TELEMACHUS, FRIEND 123

"I operated it," says he. "I told you I was justice of the peace. The
preacher is off East to visit his folks, and I'm the only one in town that
can perform the dispensations of marriage. I promised Eddie and Rebosa
a month ago I'm marry 'em. He's a busy lad; and he'll have a grocery of
his own some day."

"He will," says I.

"There was lots of women at the wedding," says Mack, smoking up.
"But I didn't seem to get any ideas from 'em. I wish I was informed in
the structure of their attainments like you said you was."

"That was two months ago," says I, reaching up for the banjo.

TELEMACHUS, FRIEND

Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of Los Pinos, in
New Mexico, for the south-bound train, which was one hour late. I sat on
the porch of the Summit House and discussed the functions of life with
Telemachus Hicks, the hotel proprietor.

Perceiving that personalities were not out of order, I asked him what
species of beast had long ago twisted and mutilated his left ear. Being a
hunter, I was concerned in the evils that may befall one in the pursuit of
game,

"That ear," says Hicks, "is the relic of true friendship."

"An accident?" I persisted.

"No friendship is an accident," said Telemachus; and I was silent,

"The only perfect case of true friendship I ever knew/' went on my
host, "was a cordial intent between a Connecticut man and a monkey.
The monkey climbed palms in Barranquilla and threw down cocoanuts
to the man. The man sawed them in two and made dippers, which he
sold for two reales each and bought rum. The monkey drank the milk
of the nuts. Through each being satisfied with his own share of the graft,
they lived like brothers,

"But in the case of human beings, friendship is a transitory act, subject
to discontinuance without further notice.

"I had a friend once, of the entitlement of Paisley Fish, that I imagined
was sealed to me for an endless space of time. Side by side for seven
years we had mined, ranched, sold patent churns, herded sheep, took
photographs and other things, built wire fences, and picked prunes.
Thinks I, neither homicide nor flattery nor riches nor sophistry nor drink
can make trouble between me and Paisley Fish. We was friends an
amount you could hardly guess at, We was friends in business, and we
let our amicable qualities lap over and season our hours of recreation and
folly. We certainly had days of Damon and nights of Pythias.

124 BOOK. II HEART OF THE WEST

"One summer me and Paisley gallops down into these San Andres
mountains for the purpose of a month's surcease and levity, dressed in the
natural store habiliments of man. We hit this town of Los Pifios, which
certainly was a roof-garden spot of the world, and flowing with condensed
milk and honey. It had a street or two, and air, and hens, and a eating-
house; and that was enough for us.

"We strikes the town after supper-time, and we concludes to sample
whatever efficacy there is in this eating-house down by the railroad
tracks. By the time we had set down and pried up our plates with a knife
from the red oil-cloth, along intrudes Widow Jessup with the hot biscuit
and fried liver.

"Now, there was a woman that would have tempted an anchovy to
forget his vows. She was not so small as she was large; and a kind of
welcome air seemed to mitigate her vicinity. The pink of her face was
the in hoc signo of a culinary temper and a warm disposition, and her
smile would have brought out the dogwood blossoms in December.

"Widow Jessup talks to us a lot of garrulousness about the climate and
history and Tennyson and prunes and the scarcity of mutton, and finally
wants to know where we came from,

"'Spring Valley/ says I.

"'Big Spring Valley/ chips in Paisley, out of a lot of potatoes and
knuckle-bone of ham in his mouth.

"That was the first sign I noticed that the old fidus Diogenes business
between me and Paisley Fish was ended forever. He knew how I hated a
talkative person, and yet he stampedes into the conversation with his
amendments and addendums of syntax. On the map it was Big Spring
Valley; but I had heard Paisley himself call it Spring Valley a thousand
times.

"Without saying any more, we went out after supper and set on the
railroad track. We had been pardners too long not to know what was
going on in each other's mind.

" 1 reckon you understand,' says Paisley, 'that I've made up my mind
to accrue that widow woman as part and parcel in and to my heredita-
ments forever, both domestic, sociable, legal, and otherwise, until death
us do part.'

" 'Why, yes,' says I, 'I read it between the lines, though you only spoke
one. And I suppose you are aware,' says I, 'that I have a movement on
foot that leads up to the widow's changing her name to Hicks, and leaves
you writing to the society column to inquire whether the best man wears
a japonica or seamless socks at the wedding!'

" There'll be some hiatuses in your program,' says Paisley, chewing up
a piece of a railroad tie. I'd give in to you,1 says he, 'in 'most any respect
if it was secular affairs, but this is not so. The smiles of woman,' goes on
Paisley, 'is the whirlpool of Squills and Chalybeates, into which vortex

TELEMACHUS, FRIEND 125

the good ship Friendship is often drawn and dismembered. I'd assault
a bear that was annoying you,' says Paisley, 'or I'd indorse your note, or
rub the place between your shoulder-blades with opodeldoc the same as
ever; but there my sense of etiquette ceases. In this fracas with Mrs. Jes-
sup we play it alone. I've notified you fair.'

"And then I collaborates with myself, and offers the following resolu-
tions and by-laws :

" 'Friendship between man and man/ says I, 'is an ancient historical
virtue enacted in the days when men had to protect each other against
lizards with eighty-foot tails and flying turtles. And they've kept up the
habit to this day, and stand by each other till the bellboy comes up and
tells them the animals are not really there. I've often heard/ I says, 'about
ladies stepping in and breaking up a friendship between men. Why
should that be? I'll tell you, Paisley, the first sight and hot biscuit of Mrs.
Jessup appears to have inserted a oscillation into each of our bosoms. Let
the best man of us have her. I'll play you a square game, and won't do
any underhanded work. I'll do all of my courting of her in your pres-
ence, so you will have an equal opportunity. With that arrangement I
don't see why our steamboat of friendship should fall overboard in the
medicinal whirlpools you speak of, whichever of us wins out.'

'"Good old hoss!' says Paisley, shaking my hand. 'And I'll do the
same,' says he. 'We'll court the lady synonymously, and without any of
the prudery and bloodshed usual to such occasions. And we'll be friends
still, win or lose.'

"At one side of Mrs. Jessup's eating-house was a bench under some
trees where she used to sit in the breeze after the south-bound had been
fed and gone. And there me and Paisley used to congregate after supper
and make partial payments on our respects to the lady of our choice. And
we was so honorable and circuitous in our calls that if one of us got there
first we waited for the other before beginning any gallivantery. ,

"The first evening that Mrs. Jessup knew about our arrangement I got
to the bench before Paisley did. Supper was just over, and Mrs. Jessup
was out there with a fresh pink dress on, and almost cool enough to
handle.

"I sat down by her and made a few specifications about the moral sur-
face of nature as set forth by the landscape and the contiguous perspec-
tive. That evening was surely a case in point. The moon was attending to
business in the section of sky where it belonged, and the trees was making
shadows on the ground according to science and nature, and there was a
kind of conspicuous hullabaloo going on in the bushes between the bull-
bats and the orioles and the jack-rabbits and other feathered insects of
the forest. And the wind out of the mountains was singing like a jew's-
harp in the pile of old tomato-cans by the railroad track.

126 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"I felt a kind of sensation in my left side— something like dough rising
in a crock by the fire. Mrs. Jessup had moved up closer.

" 'Oh, Mr. Hicks/ says she, 'when one is alone in the world, don't they
feel it more aggravated on a beautiful night like this?'

"I rose up ofl the bench at once.

"'Excuse me, ma'am,' says I, 'but Til have to wait till Paisley comes
before I can give a audible hearing to leading questions like that,'

"And then I explained to her how we was friends cinctured by years
of embarrassment and travel and complicity, and how we had agreed to
take no advantage of each other in any of the more mushy walks of life,
such as might be fomented by sentiment and proximity. Mrs. Jessup ap-
pears to think serious about the matter for a minute, and then she breaks
into a species of laughter that makes the wildwood resound.

"In a few minutes Paisley drops around, with oil of bergamot on his
hair, and sits on the other side of Mrs. Jessup, and inaugurates a sad tale
of adventure in which him and Pieface Lumley has a skinning-match of
dead cows in '95 for a silver-mounted saddle in the Santa Rita valley dur-
ing the nine months' drought.

"Now, from the start of that courtship I had Paisley Fish hobbled and
tied to a post. Each one of us had a different system of reaching out for
the easy places in the female heart. Paisley's scheme was to petrify 'em
with wonderful relations of events that he had either come across per-
sonally or in large print. I think he must have got his idea of subjugation
from one of Shakespeare's shows I see once called 'Othello.' There is a
colored man in it who acquires a duke's daughter by disbursing to her a
mixture of the talk turned out by Rider Haggard, Lew Dockstader, and
Dr. Parkhurst. But that style of courting don't work well of? the stage.

"Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that state
of affairs when she can be referred to as 'nee Jones.' Learn how to pick
up her hand and hold it, and she's yours. It ain't so easy. Some men grab
at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of the shoulder that
you can smell the arnica and hear 'em tearing off bandages. Some take it
up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off at arm's length like a druggist
pouring tincture of asafcetida in a bottle. And most of *em catch hold of
it and drag it right out before the lady's eyes like a boy finding a baseball
in the grass, without giving her a chance to forget that the hand is grow-
ing on the end of her arm. Them ways are all wrong.

"I'll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the
backyard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on a
fence looking at him ? He pretends he hasn't got a thing in his hand, and
that the cat don't see him, and that he don't see the cat. That's the idea.
Never drag her hand out where she'll have to take notice of it. Don't let
her know that you think she knows you have the least idea she is aware
you are holding her hand. That was my rule of tactics; and as far as

TELEMACHUS, FRIEND 127

Paisley's serenade about hostilities and misadventure went, he might as
well have been reading to her a time-table of the Sunday trains that stop
at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.

"One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, my friend-
ship gets subsidized for a minute, and I asks Mrs. Jessup if she didn't
think a "HP was easier to write than a ']•' In a second her head was mash-
ing the oleander flower in my button-hole, and I leaned over and — but I
didn't.

" 'If you don't mind/ says I, standing up, 'we'll wait for Paisley to come
before finishing this. I've never done anything dishonorable yet to our
friendship, and this won't be quite fair.'

" 'Mr. Hicks,' says Mrs. Jessup, looking at me peculiar in the dark, 'if
it wasn't for but one thing, I'd ask you to hike yourself down the gulch
and never disresume your visits to my house/
" 'And what is that, ma'am?' I asks,

" 'You are too good a friend not to make a good husband,* says she.
"In five minutes Paisley was on his side of Mrs. Jessup.
" 'In Silver City, in the summer of '98,' he begins, 'I see Jim Barthol-
omew chew off a Chinaman's ear in the Blue Light Saloon on account of
a crossbarred muslin shirt that — what was that noise?'

"I had resumed matters again with Mrs. Jessup right where we had
left off.

" 'Mrs. Jessup,' says I, 'has promised to make it Hicks. And this is an-
other of the same sort.'

"Paisley winds his feet around a leg of the bench and kind of groans.
" *Lem/ says he, cwe been friends for seven years. Would you mind not
kissing Mrs. Jessup quite so loud ? I'd do the same for you.'
" 'All right/ says I. 'The other kind will do as well.'
'"This Chinaman/ goes on Paisley, 'was the one that shot a man

named Mullins in the spring of '97, and that was '

"Paisley interrupted himself again.

" 'Lem/ says he, *if you was a true friend you wouldn't hug Mrs. Jes-
sup quite so hard. I felt the bench shake all over just then. You know you
told me you would give me an even chance as long as there was any.5

" 'Mr. Man/ says Mrs, Jessup, turning around to Paisley, 'if you was to
drop in to the celebration of mine and Mr. Hicks's silver wedding,
twenty-five years from now, do you think you could get it into that Hub-
bard squash you call your head that you are nix cum rous in this business ?
I've put up with you a long time because you was Mr. Hicks's friend; but
it seems to me it's time for you to wear the willow and trot off down the
hill.'

" 'Mrs. Jessup/ says I, without losing my grasp on the situation as
fiance, 'Mr. Paisley is my friend, and I offered him a square deal and a
equal opportunity as long as there was a chance.'

" 'A chance!' says she. 'Well, he may think he has a chance; but I hope

128 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

he won't think he's got a cinch, after what he's been next to all the
evening/

"Well, a month afterwards me and Mrs. Jessup was married in the Los
Pinos Methodist Church; and the whole town closed up to see the per-
formance.

"When we lined up in front and the preacher was beginning to sing
out his rituals and observances, I looks around and misses Paisley. I calls
time on the preacher, 'Paisley ain't here,' says I. We've got to wait for
Paisley. A friend once, a friend always— that's Telemachus Hicks,' says I.
Mrs. Jessup's eyes snapped some; but the preacher holds up the incanta-
tions according to instructions.

"In a few minutes Paisley gallops up the aisle, putting on a cuff as he
comes. He explains that the only dry-goods store in town was closed for
the wedding, and he couldn't get the kind of a boiled shirt that his taste
called for until he had broke open the back window of the store and
helped himself. Then he ranges up on the other side of the bride, and
the wedding goes on. I always imagined that Paisley calculated as a last
chance that the preacher might marry him to the widow by mistake.

"After the proceedings was over we had tea and jerked antelope and
canned apricots, and then the populace hiked itself away. Last of all
Paisley shook me by the hand and told me I'd acted square and on the
level with him and he was proud to call me a friend.

"The preacher had a small house on the side of the street tfiat he'd
fixed up to rent; and he allowed me and Mrs. Hicks to occupy it till the
ten-forty train the next morning, when we was going on a bridal tour to
El Paso. His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks and poison ivy,
and it looked real festal and bowery.

"About ten o'clock that night I sets down in the front door and pulls off
my boots a while in the cool breeze, while Mrs. Hicks was fixing around
in the room. Right soon the light went out inside; and I sat there a
while, reverberating over old times and scenes. And then I heard Mrs.
Hicks call out, 'Ain't you coming in soon, Lem?'

"Well, well!' says I, kind of rousing up. 'Durn me if I wasn't waiting
for old Paisley to '

"But when I got that far," concluded Telemachus Hicks, "I thought
somebody had shot this left ear of mine off with a forty-five. But it turned
out to be only a lick from a broomhandle in the hands of Mrs. Hicks."

THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN

'Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the
educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the

THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN I2g

weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can't tell me
why our college professors shouldn't be transferred to the meteorological
department. They have been learned to read; and they could very easily

fiance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what
ind of weather to expect. But there's the other side of the proposition.
I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green
with an elegant education.

We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line pros-
pecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla- Walla, carrying a line
of hope as excess baggage, and grubstaked us; and there we was in the
foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army
through a peace conference.

Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and
stops to eat three cans of green-gages, and leave us a newspaper of modern
date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather, and the
card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck was
"warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes."

That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me
and Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain,
thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot on a
level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in. We got
in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub enough for two
months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought proper.

If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up
in a eighteen-by-twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won't
stand it.

When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each
other's jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and called
bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a edict to me.
Says he:

"I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the bot-
tom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears com-
pared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates out
of your organs of conversation. The kind of half-masticated noises that
you emit every clay puts me in mind of a cow's cud, only she's lady
enough to keep hers to herself, and you ain't."

"Mr. Green," says I, "you having been friend of mine once, I have
some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for society
between you and a, common yellow three-legged cur pup, one of the in-
mates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just at present."

This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speak-
ing to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho
cooks his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The
snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day.

130 BOOKII HEART OF THE WEST

You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and
doing "if John had three apples and James five" on a slate. We never felt
any special need for a university degree, though we had acquired a species
of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around the world that we could use
in emergencies. But snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter Roots, we felt
for the first time that if we had studied Homer or Greek and fractions
and the higher branches of information, we"d have had some resources
in the line of meditation and private thought. I've seen them Eastern col-
lege fellows working in camps all through the West, and I never noticed
but what education was less of a drawback to ?em than you would think.
Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew McWilliams' saddle horse
got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles for one of these strangers that
claimed to be a botanist. But that horse died.

One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little
shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I
started toward 'em but caught Idaho's eye. He speaks for the first time
in a week.

"Don't burn your fingers," says he. "In spite of the fact that you're
only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I'll give you a
square deal. And that's more than your parents did when they turned
you loose in the world with the sociability of a rattlesnake and the bed-
side manner of a frozen turnip. I'll play you a game of seven-up, the
winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the other."

We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine.
Then each of us got on his side of the house and went to reading.

I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And
Idaho looked at his like a kid looks at a stick of candy.

Mine was a little book about five by six inches called "Herklmer's
Handbook of Indispensable Information." I may be wrong, but I think
that was the greatest book that ever was written. I've got it to-day; and
I can stump you or any man fifty times in five minutes with the informa-
tion in it. Talk about Solomon or the New York Tribune! Herkimer had
cases on both of 'em. That man must have put in fifty years and travelled
a million miles to find out all that stuff. There was the population of all
cities in it, and the way to tell a girl's age, and the number of teeth a
camel has. It told you the longest tunnel in the world, the number of the
stars, how long it takes for chicken pox to break out, what a lady's neck
ought to measure, the veto powers of Governors, the dates of the Roman
aqueducts, how many pounds of rice going without three beers a day
would buy, the average annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quan-
tity of seed required to plant an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poi-
sons, the number of hairs on a blond lady's head, how to preserve eggs,
the height of all the mountains in the world, and the dates of all wars and
battles, and how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the

THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 13!

number of tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and
beds, and what to do before the doctor comes — and a hundred times as
many things besides. If there was anything Herkimer didn't know I
didn't miss it out of the book.

I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education
was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old
Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away with a
kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through his tan-
bark whiskers.

"Idaho," says I, "what kind of a book is yours?"

Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any
slander or malignity.

"Why," says he, "this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M."

"Homer K. M. what?" I asked.

"Why, just Homer K. M.," says he.

"You're a liar," says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up
a tree. "No man is going 'round signing books with his initials. If it's
Homer K, M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, or Homer
K. M. Jones, why don't you say so like a man instead of biting off the
end of it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothesline?"

"I put it to you straight, Sandy," says Idaho, quiet. "It's a poem book,"
says he, "by Homer K. M. I couldn't get color out of it at first) but there's
a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn't have missed this book for a pair of
red blankets."

"You're welcome to it," says I. "What I want is a disinterested state-
ment of facts for the mind to work on, and that's what I seem to find in
the book I've drawn."

"What you've got," says Idaho, "is statistics, the lowest grade of infor-
mation that exists. They'll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.'s system
of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular toast is
'nothing doing,' and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps it so well
lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an invitation to. split
a quart. But it's poetry," says Idaho, "and I have sensations of scorn for
that truck of yours that tries to convey sense in feet and inches. When it
comes to explaining the instinct of philosophy through the art of nature,
old K. M. has got your man beat by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest meas-
urement, and average annual rainfall."

So that's the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the excite-
ment we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with
a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if you had
stepped up to me Suddenly and said: "Sanderson Pratt, what would it
cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-eight tin at nine
dollars and fifty cents per box?" I'd have told you as quick as light could
travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one hundred and ninety-

132 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

two thousand miles per second. How many can do it? You wake up 'most
any man you know in the middle of the night, and ask him quick to tell
you the number of bones in the human skeleton exclusive of the teeth,
or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska Legislature overrules a
veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see.

About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn't exactly
know. Idaho boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth;
but I wasn't so sure.

This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his libretto through Idaho,
seemed to me to be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a tin
can tied to his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits down,
hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and says :

"Oh, well, since we can't shake the growler, let's get filled at the
corner, and all have a drind on me."

Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia
producing anything worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and
Maltese cats.

That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to sell
out quick and keep moving. We unloaded on our grubstaker for eight
thousand dollars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little town of
Rosa, on the Salmon River, to rest up, and get some human grub, and
have our whiskers harvested.

Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, and was as free of
uproar and pestilence as one of them rural towns in the country. There
was a three-mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and me and
Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, dropping off of nights at
the Sunset View Hotel Being now well read as well as travelled, we was
soon pro re nata with the best society in Rosa, and was invited out to the
most dressed-up and high-toned entertainments. It was at a piano recital
and quail-eating contest in the city hall, for the benefit of the fire com-
pany, that me and Idaho first met Mrs. D. Ormond Sampson, the queen
of Rosa society.

Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in
town. It was painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you
could see it as plain as egg on the chin of an O'Grady on a Friday.
Twenty-two men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was trying to stake a
claim on that yellow house.

There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been
raked out of the Hall Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs.
Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and asked
permission to escort her home. That's where I made a hit.

On the way home says she:

"Ain't the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?"
"For the chance they've got," says I, "they're humping

themselves in a

THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 133

mighty creditable way. That big one you see is sixty-six billions of miles
distant. It took thirty-six years for light to reach us. With an eighteen-foot
telescope you can see forty-three millions of 'em, including them of the
thirteenth magnitude, which, if one was to go out now, you would keep
on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years."

"My!" says Mrs. Sampson, "I never knew that before. How warm it is!
I'm as damp as I can be from dancing so much."

"That's easy to account for," says I, " when you happen to know that
you've got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one of
your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was placed
end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles."

"Lawsy!" says Mrs, Sampson. "It sounds like an irrigation ditch you
was describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of infor-
mation?"

"From observation, Mrs. Sampson," I tells her. "I keep my eyes open
when I go about the world."

"Mr. Pratt," says she, "I always did admire a man of education. There
are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that
it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I'd be grati-
fied to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined."

And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow house.
Every Tuesday and Friday evenings I used to go there and tell her about
the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and compiled from
nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of the town got
every minute of the rest of the week that they could.

I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with
old K. M.'s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way
over to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming down
the lane that led to her house. Her eyes were snapping, and her hat made
a dangerous dip over one eye.

"Mr. Pratt," she opens up, "this Mr, Green is a friend of yours, I be-
lieve."

"For nine years," says I.

"Cut him out," says she* "He's no gentleman!"

"Why, ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountain, with
asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never
on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a
gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance
and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him
impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of
Idaho's society, Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to impute him,
and I should hate to see him imputed."

"It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take up
the curmudgeons in your friend's behalf; but it don't alter the fact that he

134 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy
of any lady."

"Why, now, now, now!" says I, "Old Idaho do that! I could believe it
of myself sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a
blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snowbound in the
mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry,
which may have corrupted his demeanor."

"It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been
reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls
Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her
poetry."

"Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for one he had was by a
man who writes under the nom de plume of K. M."

"He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was.
And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and
on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see
her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a
moment that I'd skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of
wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down
under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but I'm
not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain in
any such style as that. And of course he'd bring his book of verses along,
too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him
take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn't kick unless it was on
account of there being too much bread along. And what do you think of
your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?"

"Well, }m," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kind of
poetry, and meant no harm. Maybe it belonged to the class of rhymes
they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent through
the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they don't say.
I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says I, "and let us
extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes
of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, Mrs. Sampson/' I
goes on, "we should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though it is
warm here, we should remember that at the equator the line of perpetual
frost is at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of
forty degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thousand to nine thou-
sand feet."

"Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "It's such a comfort to hear you
say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a
Ruby's poetry!"

"Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the inhuman-
ity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of ascertained
facts and legalized measures that beauty is to be found. In this very log

THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN 135

we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics more wonderful than any
poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the depth of two thou-
sand feet it would become coal in three thousand years. The deepest coal
mine in the world is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet
long, three feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep will hold one ton
of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it above the wound. A man's leg
contains thirty bones. The Tower of London was burned in 1841."

"Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original
and soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be."

But it wasn't till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me
out of Herkimer.

One night I was waked up by folks hollering "Fire!" all around. I
jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene.
When I seen it was Mrs. Sampson's house, I gave forth a kind of yell,
and I was there in two minutes.

The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every
masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and bark-
ing and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to get away
from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him the whole
place was on fire downstairs, and no man could go in it and come out
alive.

"Where's Mrs. Sampson?" I asks.

"She hasn't been seen," says one of the firemen. "She sleeps upstairs.
We've tried to get in, but we can't, and our company hasn't got any
ladders yet."

I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook
out of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands —
I reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement.

"Herky, old boy," I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, "you ain't
ever lied to me yet, and you ain't ever throwed me down at a scratch yet.
Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!" says I.

I turned to "What to do in Case of Accidents," on page 117. 1 run my
finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never over-
looked anything! It said:

SUFFOCATION FROM INHALING SMOKE OR GAS. — There is nothing
better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the corner of the eye.

I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was
running by.

"Here," says I, giving him some money, "run to the drug store and
bring a dollar's worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you'll get another one for
yourself. Now," I sings out to the crowd, "we'll have Mrs. Sampson!"
An4 I throws away my coat and hat,.

136 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It's sure death, they
say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall through.

"How in blazes," I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling like
it, "do you expect me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?"

I jabbed each elbow in a fireman's face, kicked the bark off of one
citizen's shin, and tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I
busted into the house. If I die first I'll write you a letter and tell you if
it's any worse down there than the inside of that yellow house was; but
don't believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders
of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The fire and smoke had
me down on the floor twice, and was about to shame Herkimer, but the
firemen helped me with their little stream of water, and I got to Mrs.
Sampson's room. She'd lost conscientiousness from the smoke, so I
wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my shoulder. Well, the
floors wasn't as bad as they said, or I never could have done it — not by no
means.

I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass.
Then, of course, every one of them other twenty-two plantiffs to the
lady's hand crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to save her.
And up runs the boy with the flaxseed.

I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson's head. She opened her
eyes and says:

"Is that you, Mr. Pratt?"

"S-s-sh," says I. "Don't talk till you've had the remedy."

I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks
the bag of flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I bends
over and slips three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of her eye.

Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs
at Mrs. Sampson's pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such
sandblasted nonsense.

"Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oak seed," says I, "I'm no regular prac-
titioner, but I'll show you my authority, anyway."

They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook.

"Look on page 117," says I, "at the remedy for suffocation by smoke or
gas. Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don't know whether
it works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the compound gastro-
hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer says it, and he was called
to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation, there's no ob-
jection."

Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a
fireman's lantern.

"Well, Mr. Pratt," says he, "you evidently got on the wrong line in
reading your diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: 'Get the patient
into fresh air as quickly as possible, and place in a reclining position.'

THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES 137

The flaxseed remedy is for 'Dust and Cinders in the Eye/ on the line
above. But, after all "

"See here/' interrupts Mrs. Sampson, "I reckon I've got something to
say in this consultation. That flaxseed done me more good than anything
I ever tried." And then she raises up her head and lays it back on my arm
again, and says: "Put some in the other eye, Sandy dear."

And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day, you'd
see a fine new yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs. Sampson, em-
bellishing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside you'd see on the
marble-top centre table in the parlor, "Herkimer's Handbook of Indis-
pensable Information," all rebound in red morocco, and ready to be con-
sulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness and wisdom.

THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES

While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio
bottoms a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden stirrup
and gave my ankle a wrench that laid me up in camp for a week.

On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the
grub wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson
Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny,
with customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was be-
reaved, for the greater portion of his time, of an audience.

Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud's obmutescence.

Betimes I was stirred by invalid longings for something to eat that did
not come under the caption of "grub." I had visions of the maternal
pantry "deep as first love, and wild with all regret/' and then I asked:

"Jud, can you make pancakes?"

Jud laid down his sixshooter, with which he was preparing to pound
an antelope steak, and stood over me in what I felt to be a menacing atti-
tude. He further indorsed my impression that his pose was resentful by
fixing upon me with his light blue eyes a look of cold suspicion.

"Say, you/' he said, with candid, though not excessive, choler, "did you
mean that straight, or was you trying to throw the gaff into me? Some
of the boys been telling you about me and that pancake racket?"

"No, Jud/' I said, sincerely, "I meant it. It seems to me I'd swap my
pony and saddle for a stack of buttered brown pancakes with some first
crop, open kettle, New Orleans sweetening. Was there a story about
pancakes?"

Jud was mollified at once when he saw that I had not been dealing in
allusions. He brought some mysterious bags and tin boxes from the grub
wagon and set them in the shade of the hackberry where I lay reclined.

138 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

I watched him as he began to arrange them leisurely and untie their many
strings.

"No, not a story," said Jud, as he worked, "but just the logical disclo-
sures in the case of me and that pink-eyed snoozer from Mired Mule
Canada and Miss Willella Learight. I don't mind telling you.

"I was punching then for old Bill Toomey, on the San Miguel. One
day I gets all ensnared up in aspirations for to eat some canned grub that
hasn't ever mooed or baaed or grunted or been in peck measures. So, I
gets on my bronc and pushed the wind for Uncle Emsley Telfair's store
at the Pimienta Crossing on the Neuces.

"About three in the afternoon I throwed my bridle over a mesquite
limb and walked the last twenty yards into Uncle Emsley's store. I got
up on the counter and told Uncle Emsley that the signs pointed to the
devastation of the fruit crop of the world. In a minute I had a bag of
crackers and a long-handled spoon, with an open can each of apricots and
pineapples and cherries and green-gages beside of me with Uncle Emsley
busy chopping away with the hatchet at the yellow clings. I was feeling
like Adam before the apple stampede, and was digging my spurs into
the side of the counter and working with my twenty-four-inch spoon
when I happened to look out of the window into the yard of Uncle Ems-
ley's house, which was next to the store.

"There was a girl standing there — an imported girl with fixings on —
philandering with a croquet maul and amusing herself by watching my
style of encouraging the fruit canning industry.

"I slid off the counter and delivered up my shovel to Uncle Emsley.

"'That's my niece,' says he; 'Miss Willella Learight, down from Pal-
estine on a visit. Do you want that I should make you acquainted?'

"'The Holy Land,' I says to myself, my thought milling some as I
tried to run 'em into the corral. Why not? There was sure angels in

Pales Why yes, Uncle Emsley/ I says out loud, I'd be awful edified to

meet Miss Learight.'

"So Uncle Emsley took me out in the yard and gave us each other's
entitlements.

"I never was shy about women. I never could understand why some
men who can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark,
get all left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see
a bolt of calico draped around what belongs in it. Inside of eight minutes
me and Miss Willella was aggravating the croquet balls around as amia-
ble as second cousins. She gave me a dig about the quantity of canned
fruit I had eaten, and I got back at her, flat-footed, about how a certain
lady named Eve started the fruit trouble in the first free-grass pasture—
'Over in Palestine, wasn't it?' says I, as easy and pat as roping a one-year-
old.

"That was how I acquired cordiality for the proximities of Miss Willella

THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES 139

Learight; and the disposition grew larger as time passed. She was stop-
ping at Pimienta Crossing for her health, which was very good, and for
the climate, which was forty per cent, hotter than Palestine. I rode over
to see her once every week for a while; and then I figured it out that if
I doubled the number of trips I would see her twice as often.

"One week I slipped in a third trip; and that's where the pancakes and
the pink-eyed snoozer busted into the game.

"That evening, while I set on the counter with a peach and two dam-
sons in my mouth, I asked Uncle Emsley how Miss Willella was.

" 'Why/ says Uncle Emsley, 'she's gone riding with Jackson Bird, the
sheep man from over at Mired Mule Canada.'

"I swallowed the peach seed and the two damsons seeds. I guess some-
body held the counter by the bridle while I got off; and then I walked out
straight ahead till I butted against the mesquite where my roan was tied*

"'She's gone riding,' I whispered in my bronc's ear, 'with Birdstone
Jack, the hired mule from Sheep Man's Canada, Did you get that, old
Leather-and-Gallops ?'

"That bronc of mine wept, in his way. He'd been raised a cow pony
and he didn't care for snoozers.

"I went back and said to Uncle Emsley: 'Did you say a sheep man?'

" 'I said a sheep man,' says Uncle again. 'You must have heard tell of
Jackson Bird. He's got eight sections of grazing and four thousand head
of the finest Merinos south of the Arctic Circle.'

"I went out and sat on the ground in the shade of the store and leaned
against a prickly pear. I sifted sand into my boots with unthinking hands
while I soliloquized a quantity about this bird with the Jackson plumage
to his name.

"I never had believed in harming sheep men. I see one, one day, read-
ing a Latin grammar on hossback, and I never touched him! They never
irritated me like they do most cowmen. You wouldn't go to work now,
and impair and disfigure snoozers, would you, that eat on tables and
wear little shoes and speak to you on subjects? I had always let 'em pass,
just as you would a jack-rabbit; with a polite word and a guess about the
weather, but no stopping to swap canteens. I never thought it was worth
while to be hostile with a snoozer. And because I'd been lenient, and let
'em live, here was one going around riding with Miss Willella Learight!

"An hour by sun they come loping back, and stopped at Uncle Emsley's
gate. The sheep person helped her off; and they stood throwing each
other sentences all sprightful and sagacious for a while. And then this
feathered Jackson flies up in his saddle and raises his little stewpot of a
hat, and trots off in the direction of his mutton ranch. By this time I had
turned the sand out of my boots and unpinned myself from the prickly
pear; and by the time he gets half a mile out of Pimienta, I singlefoots
up beside him on my bronc.

140 BOOKII HEART OF THE WEST

"I said that snoozer was pink-eyed, but he wasn't. His seeing arrange-
ment was gray enough, but his eye-lashes was pink and his hair was
sandy, and that gave you the idea. Sheep man — he wasn't more than a
lamb man, anyhow— a little thing with his neck involved in a yellow silk
handkerchief, and shoes tied up in bowknots.

"'Afternoon!' says I to him. 'You now ride with a equestrian who is
commonly called Dead-Moral-Certainty Judson, on account of the way
I shoot. When I want a stranger to know me I always introduce myself
before the draw, for I never did like to shake hands with ghosts.5

"'Ah,' says he, just like that— 'Ah, I'm glad to know you, Mr. Judson.
I'm Jackson Bird, from over at Mired Mule Ranch.'

"Just then one of my eyes saw a roadrunner skipping down the hill
with a young tarantula in his bill, and the other eye noticed a rabbit-hawk
sitting on a dead limb in a water-elm. I popped over one after the other
with my forty-five just to show him. 'Two out of three,' says I. 'Birds
just naturally seem to draw my fire wherever I go,'

" 'Nice shooting,' says the sheep man, without a flutter. 'But don't you
sometimes ever miss the third shot? Elegant fine rain that was last week
for the young grass, Mr. Judson,' says he.

" 'Willie,' says I, riding over close to his palfrey, 'your infatuated par-
ents may have denounced you by the name of Jackson, but you sure
moulted into a twittering Willie — let us slough off this here analysis of
rain and the elements, and get down to talk that is outside the vocabulary
of parrots. That is a bad habit you have got of riding with young ladies
over at Pimienta. I've known birds,' says I, 'to be served on toast for less
than that. Miss Willella,' says I, 'don't ever want any nest made out of
sheep's wool by a tomtit of the Jacksonian branch of ornithology. Now,
are you going to quit, or do you wish for to gallop up against this Dead-
Moral-Certainty attachment to my name, which is good for two hyphens
and at least one set of funeral obsequies?'

"Jackson Bird flushed up some, and then he laughed.

" 'Why, Mr. Judson,' says he, 'you've got the wrong idea. I've called on
Miss Learight a few times; but not for the purpose you imagine. My
object is purely a gastronomical one.'

"I reached for my gun.

" 'Any coyote,' says I, 'that would boast of dishonorable '

" 'Wait a minute,' says this Bird, 'till I explain. What would I do with
a wife? If you ever saw that ranch of mine! I do my own cooking and
mending. Eating— that's all the pleasure I get out of sheep raising. Mr.
Judson, did you ever taste the pancakes that Miss Learight makes?'

'"Me? No,' I told him. 1 never was advised that she was up to any
culinary maneuvers.'

" 'They're golden sunshine,' says he, 'honey-browned by the ambrosial
fires of Epicurus. I'd give two years of my life to get the recipe for making

THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES 14!

them pancakes. That's what I went to see Miss Learight for,' says Jackson
Bird, 'but I haven't been able to get it from her. It's an old recipe that's
been in the family for seventy-five years. They hand it down from one
generation to another, but they don't give it away to outsiders. If I could
get that recipe, so I could make them pancakes for myself on my ranch,
I'd be a happy man/ says Bird.

" 'Are you sure,' I says to him, 'that it ain't the hand that mixes the
pancakes that you're after?'

" 'Sure,' says Jackson. 'Miss Learight is a mighty nice girl, but I can
assure you my intentions go no further than the gastro— 5 but he seen
my hand going down to my holster and he changed his similitude— 'than
the desire to procure a copy of the pancake recipe,' he finishes.

" 'You ain't such a bad little man,' says I, trying to be fair. 1 was think-
ing some of making orphans of your sheep, but I'll let you fly away this
time. But you stick to pancakes,' says I, 'as close as the middle one of a
stack; and don't go and mistake sentiments for syrup, or there'll be sing-
ing at your ranch, and you won't hear it.'

" 'To convince you that I am sincere,' says the sheep man, Til ask you
to help me. Miss Learight and you being closer friends, maybe she would
do for you what she wouldn't for me. If you will get me a copy of that
pancake recipe, I give you my word that I'll never call upon her again.'

" 'That's fair,' I says, and I shook hands with Jackson Bird, Til get it
for you if I can, and glad to oblige.' And he turned off down the big pear
flat on the Piedra, in the direction of Mired Mule; and I steered north-
west for old Bill Toomey's ranch.

"It was five days afterward when I got another chance to ride over to
Pimienta. Miss Willella and me passed a gratifying evening at Uncle
Emsley's. She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with
quotations from the operas. I gave imitations of a rattlesnake, and told
her about Snaky McFee's new way of skinning cows, and described the
trip I made to Saint Louis once. We was getting along in one another's
estimations fine. Thinks I, if Jackson can now be persuaded to migrate,
I win. I recollect his promise about the pancake receipt, and I thinks I
will persuade it from Miss Willella and give it to him; and then if I
catches Birdie off of Mired Mule again, I'll make him hop the twig.

"So, along about ten o'clock, I put on a wheedling smile and says to
Miss Willella: 'Now, if there's anything I do like better than the sight
of a red steer on green grass it's the taste of a nice hot pancake smothered
in sugarhouse molasses.'

"Miss Willella gives a little jump on the piano stool, and looked at me
curious.

" 'Yes,' says she, 'they're real nice. What did you say was the name of
that street in Saint Louis, Mr, Odom, where you lost your hat?'

" 'Pancake Avenue/ says I, with a wink, to show her that I was on

142 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

about the family receipt, and couldn't be side-corralled off of the subject.
'Come now, Miss Willella/ I says; let's hear how you make 'em. Pan-
cakes is just whirling in my head like wagon wheels. Start her off, now—-
pound of flour, eight dozen eggs, and so on. How does the catalogue of
constituents run?'

" 'Excuse me for a moment, please/ says Miss Willella, and she gives
me a quick kind of sideways look, and slides off the stool. She ambled
out into the other room and directly Uncle Emsley comes in in his shirt
sleeves, with a pitcher of water. He turns around to get a glass on the
table, and I see a forty-five in his hip pocket. 'Great post-holes!' thinks I,
'but here's a family thinks a heap of cooking receipts, protecting it with
firearms, I've known outfits that wouldn't do that much by a family feud.'

" 'Drink this here down,' says Uncle Emsley, handing me the glass of
water. 'You've rid too far to-day, Jud, and got yourself over-excited. Try
to think about something else now.'

" 'Do you know how to make them pancakes, Uncle Ernsley ?' I asked.

'"Well, I'm not as apprised in the anatomy of them as some/ says
Uncle Emsley, 'but I reckon you take a sifter of plaster of paris and a
little dough and saleratus and corn meal, and mix *em with eggs and but-
termilk as usual. Is old Bill going to ship beeves to Kansas City again this
spring, Jud?*

"That was all the pancake specifications I could get that night. I didn't
wonder that Jackson Bird found it uphill work. So I dropped the subject
and talked with Uncle Emsley a while about hollow-horn and cyclont\s.
And then Miss Willella came and said 'Good-night/ and I hit the breeze
for the ranch.

"About a week afterward I met Jackson Bird riding out of Pimienta as
I rode in, and we stopped in the road for a few frivolous remarks.

" 'Got the bill of particulars for them flap-jacks yet?' I asked him,

" 'Well, no,1 says Jackson. 1 don't seem to have any success in getting
hold of it. Did you try?'

" 1 did,' says I, 'and 'twas like trying to dig a prairie dog out of his hole
with a peanut hull. That pancake receipt must be a jooka-lorum, the way
they hold on to it.'

"Tm 'most ready to give it up/ says Jackson, so discouraged in his
pronunciations that I felt sorry for him; 'but I did want to know how to
make them pancakes to eat on my lonely ranch/ says he. 'I lie awake at
nights thinking how good they are.'

" 'You keep on trying for it/ I tells him, 'and I'll do the same. One of
us is bound to get a rope over its horns before long. Well, so-long, Jacksy.'

"You see, by this time we was on the peacefulest of terms. When I
saw that he wasn't after Miss Willella I had more endurable contempla-
tions of that sandy-haired snoozer. In order to help out the ambitions of
his appetite I kept on trying to get that receipt -from Miss Willella. But

THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES 143

every time I would say 'pancakes' she would get sort of remote and fidg-
ety about the eye, and try to change the subject. If I held her to it she
would slide out and round up Uncle Emsley with his pitcher of water
and hip-pocket howitzer.

"One day I galloped over to the store with a fine bunch of blue ver-
benas that I cut out of a herd of wild flowers over on Poisoned Dog
Prairie. Uncle Emsley looked at 'em with one eye shut and says :

" 'Haven't ye heard the news?'

"'Cattle up?' I asks.

" 'Willella and Jackson Bird was married in Palestine yesterday/ says
he. 'Just got a letter this morning.'

"I dropped them flowers in a cracker-barrel, and let the news trickle
in my ears and down toward my upper left-hand shirt pocket until it got
to my feet.

" 'Would you mind saying that over again once more. Uncle Emsley?'
says I. 'Maybe my hearing has got wrong, and you only said that prime
heifers was 4.80 on the hoof, or something like that.'

" 'Married yesterday,' says Uncle Emsley, 'and gone to Waco and Niag-
ara Falls on a wedding tour. Why, didn't you see none of the signs all
along? Jackson Bird has been courting Willella ever since that day he
took her out riding.'

" 'Then,' says I, in a kind of a yell, 'what was all this zizzaparoola he
gives me about pancakes ? Tell me that!

"When I said 'pancakes' Uncle Emsley sort of dodged and stepped
back.

" 'Somebody's been dealing me pancakes from the bottom of the deck,'
I says, 'and 111 find out. I believe you know. Talk up,' says I, 'or we'll
mix a panful of batter right here.'

"I slid over the counter after Uncle Emsley. He grabbed at his gun,
but it was in a drawer, and he missed it two inches. I got him by the
front of his shirt and shoved him in a corner.

'"Talk pancakes,' says I, 'or be made into one. Does Miss Willella
make 'em?'

" 'She never made one in her life and I never saw one,' says Uncle
Emsley, soothing. 'Calm down now, Jud — calm down. You've got excited,
and that wound in your head is contaminating your sense of intelligence.
Try not to think about pancakes,'

'* 'Uncle Emsley,' says I, Tm not wounded in the head except so far
as my natural cogitative instincts run to runts. Jackson Bird told me he
was calling on Miss Willella for the purpose of finding out her system
of producing pancakes, and he asked me to help him get the bill of lading
of the ingredients. I done so, with the results as you see. Have I been
sodded down with Johnson grass by a pink-eyed snoozer, or what?'

" 'Slack up your grip on my dress shirt,' says Uncle Emsley, 'and I'll

144 BOOK II HEARTOFTHEWEST

tell you. Yes, it looks like Jackson Bird has gone and humbugged you
some. The day after he went riding with Willella he came back and
told me and her to watch out for you whenever you go to talking about
pancakes. He said you was in camp once where they was cooking flap-
jacks, and one of the fellows cut you over the head with a frying pan.
Jackson said that whenever you got over-hot or excited that wound hurt
you and made you kind of crazy, and you went raving about pancakes.
He told us to just get you worked off of the subject and soothed down,
and you wouldn't be dangerous. So, me and Willella done the best by you
we knew how. Well, well,' says Uncle Emsley, 'that Jackson Bird is sure
a seldom kind of a snoozer.' "

During the progress of Jud's story he had been slowly but deftly com-
bining certain portions of the contents of his sacks and cans. Toward the
close of it he set before me the finished product-— a pair of red-hot, rich-
hued pancakes on a tin plate. From some secret hoarding place he also
brought a lump of excellent butter and a bottle of golden syrup.

"How long ago did these things happen?" I asked him.

"Three years," said Jud. "They're living on the Mired Mule Ranch
now. But I haven't seen either of 'em since. They say Jackson Bird was
fixing his ranch up fine with rocking chairs and window curtains all the
time he was putting me up the pancake tree. Oh, I got over it after a
while. But the boys kept the racket up."

"Did you make these cakes by the famous recipe?" I asked.

"Didn't I tell you there wasn't no receipt?" said Jud, "The boys hol-
lered pancakes till they got pancake hungry, and I cut this receipt out
of a newspaper. How does the truck taste?"

"They're delicious," I answered. "Why don't you have some, too, Jud?"

I was sure I heard a sigh.

"Me?" said Jud. "I don't never eat 'em."

SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY

Golden by day and silver by night, a new trail now leads to us across the
Indian Ocean. Dusky kings and princes have found out our Bombay of
the West; and few be their trails that do not lead down Broadway on
their journey for to admire and for to see.

If chance should ever lead you near a hotel that transiently shelters
some one of these splendid touring grandees, I counsel you to seek Lucul-
lus Polk among the republican tuft-hunters that besiege its entrances. He
will be there. You will know him by his red, alert, Wellington-nosed
face, by his manner of nervous caution mingled with determination, by
his assumed promoter's or broker's air of busy impatience, and by his

SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY 145

bright-red necktie, gallantly redressing the wrongs of his maltreated blue
serge suit, like a battle standard, still waving above a lost cause. I found
him profitable; and so may you. When you do look for him, look among
the light-horse troop of Bedouins that besiege the picket-line of the travel-
ling potentate's guards and secretaries — among the wild-eyed genii of
Arabian Afternoons that gather to make astounding and egregious de-
mands upon the prince's coffers.

I first saw Mr. Polk coming down the steps of the hotel at which so-
journed His Highness the Gaekwar of Baroda, most enlightened of the
Mahratta princes, who, of late, ate bread and salt in our Metropolis of the
Occident.

Lucullus moved rapidly, as though propelled by some potent moral
force that imminently threatened to become physical. Behind him closely
followed the impetus— a hotel detective, if ever white Alpine hat, hawk's
nose, implacable watch chain, and loud refinement of manner spoke the
truth. A brace of uniformed porters at his heels preserved the smooth
decorum of the hotel, repudiating by their air of disengagement any
suspicion that they formed a reserve squad of ejectment.

Safe on the sidewalk, Lucullus Polk turned and shook a freckled fist
at the caravansary. And, to my joy, he began to breathe deep invective
in strange words.

"Rides in howdahs, does he?" he cried loudly and sneeringly. "Rides
on elephants in howdahs and calls himself a prince! Kings — yah! Comes
over here and talks horse till you would think he was a president; and
then goes home and rides in a private dining-room strapped onto an
elephant. Well, well, well!"

The ejecting committee quietly retired. The scorner of princes turned
to me and snapped his fingers.

"What do you think of that?" he shouted derisively. "The Gaekwar of
Baroda rides on an elephant in a howdah! And there's old Bikram Sham-
sher Jang scorching up and down the pig-paths of Khatmandu on a
motor-cycle. Wouldn't that maharajah you? And the Shah of Persia, that
ought to have been Muley-on-the-spot for at least three, he's got the
palanquin habit. And that funny-hat prince from Korea— wouldn't you
think he could afford to, amble around on a milk-white palfrey once in
a dynasty or two? Nothing doing! His idea of a Balaklava charge is to
tuck his skirts under him and do his mile in six days over the hog-wallows
of Seoul on a bulkcart That's the kind of visiting potentates that come
to this country now. It's a hard deal, friend."

I murmured: a few words of sympathy. But it was uncomprehending,
for I did not know his grievance against the rulers who flash, meteor-like,
now and then upon our shores.

"The last one I sold," continued the displeased one, "was to that three-
horse-tailed Turkish pasha that came aver a year ago. Five hundred

146 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

dollars he paid for it, easy. I says to his executioner or secretary— he was
a kind of a Jew or a Chinaman— Tis Turkey Giblets is fond of horses,
then?'

"'Him?' says the secretary. 'Well, no. He's got a big, fat wife in the
harem named Bad Dora that he don't like. I believe he intends to saddle
her up and ride her up and down the board-walk in the Bulbul Gardens
a few times every day. You haven't got a pair of extra long spurs you
could throw in on the deal, have you?' Yes, sir, there's mighty few real
rough-riders among the royal sports these days/1

As soon as Lucullus Polk got cool enough I picked him up, and with
no greater effort than you would employ in persuading a drowning man
to clutch a straw, I inveigled him into accompanying me to a cool corner
in a dim cafe.

And it came to pass that men-servants set before us brewage; and
Lucullus Polk spake unto me, relating the wherefores of his beleaguering
the antechambers of the princes of the earth.

"Did you ever hear of the S. A. & A. P. Railroad in Texas? Well, that
don't stand for Samaritan Actor's Aid Philanthropy. I was down that way
managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that play
the Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went to pieces
when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of Beeville. I don't
know what became of the rest of the company. I believe there were some
salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe was when I told them that
forty-three cents was all the treasury contained. I say I never saw any
of them after that; but I heard them for about twenty minutes. I didn't
have time to look back. But after dark I came out of the woods and struck
the S. A. & A. P. agent for means of transportation. He at once extended
to me the courtesies of the entire railroad, kindly warning me, however,
not to get aboard any of the rolling stock.

"About ten the next morning I steps off the ties into a village that calls
itself Atascosa City. I bought a thirty-cent breakfast and a ten-cent cigar,
and stood on Main Street jingling the three pennies in my pocket — dead
broke. A man in Texas with only three cents in his pocket is no better
off than a man that has no money and owes two cents.

"One of luck's favorite tricks is to soak a man for his last dollar so
quick that he don't have time to look it. There I was in a swell St. Louis
tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an eighteen-carat sulphate-
of-copper scarf pin, with no hope in sight except the two great Texas
industries, the cotton fields, and grading new railroads. I never picked
cotton, and I never cottoned to a pick, so the outlook had ultramarine
edges.

"All of a sudden, while I was standing on the edge of the wooden
sidewalk, down out of the sky. falls two fine gold watches into the middle
of the street. One hits a chunk of mud and sticks. The other falls hard

SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY 147

and flies open, making a fine drizzle of little springs and screws and
wheels. I looks up for a balloon or an airship1; but not seeing any, I steps
off the sidewalk to investigate.

"But I hear a couple of yells and see two men running up the street
in leather overalls and high-heeled boots and carwheel hats. One man is
six or eight feet high, with open-plumbed joints and a heartbroken cast
of countenance. He picks up the watch that has stuck in the mud. The
other man, who is little, with pink hair and white eyes, goes for the
empty case, and says, 'I win.' Then the elevated pessimist goes down
under his leather leg-holsters and hands a handful of twenty-dollar gold
pieces to his albino friend, I don't know how much money it was; it
looked as big as an earthquake-relief fund to me.

"Til have this here case filled up with the works,' says Shorty, 'and
throw you again for five hundred.'

" Tm your company,' says the high man. Til meet you at the Smoked
Dog Saloon an hour from now.'

"The little man hustles away with a kind of Swiss movement toward
a jewelry store. The heartbroken person stoops over and takes a telescopic
view of my haberdashery.

" Them's a mighty slick outfit of habiliments you have got on, Mr.
Man/ says he. Til bet a hoss you never acquired the right, title, and inter-
est in and to them clothes in Atascosa City.'

" 'Why no,' says I, being ready enough to exchange personalities with
this moneyed monument of melancholy. 'I had this suit tailored from a
special line of coatericks, vestures, and paintings in St. Louis. Would you
mind putting me sane/ says I, 'on this watch-throwing contest? I've been
used to seeing timepieces treated with more politeness and esteem — ex-
cept women's watches, of course, which by nature they abuse by cracking
walnuts with 'em and having 'em taken showing in tintype pictures.'

" 'Me and George,' he explains, 'are up from the ranch, having a spell
of fun. Up to last month we owned four sections of watered grazing
down on the San Miguel. But along comes one of these oil prospectors
and begins to bore. He strikes a gusher that flows out twenty thousand —
or maybe it was twenty million — barrels of oil a day. And me and George
gets one hundred and fifty thousand dollars — seventy-five thousand dol-
lars apiece — for the land. So now and then we saddles up and hits the
breeze for Atascosa City for a few days of excitement and damage. Here's
a little bunch of the dinero that I drawed out of the bank this morning/
says he, and shows a roll of twenties and fifties as big around as a sleep-
ing-car pillow. The yellowbacks glowed like a sun set on the gable end
of Joh D's barn. My knees got weak, and I sat down on the edge of
the board sidewalk.

" Tou must have knocked around a right smart/ goes on this oil Grease-
us. 'I shouldn't be surprised if you have saw towns more livelier than

148 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

what Atascosa City is. Sometimes it seems to me that there ought to be
some more ways of having a good time than there is here, 'specially when
youVe got plenty o£ money and don't mind spending it.'

"Then this Mother Gary's chick of the desert sits down by me and we
hold a conversationfest. It seems that he was money-poor. He'd lived in
ranch camps all his life; and he confessed to me that his supreme idea
of luxury was to ride into camp, tired out from a roundup, eat a peck of
Mexican beans, hobble his brains with a pint of raw whisky, and go to
sleep with his boots for a pillow. When this bargeload of unexpected
money came to him and his pink but perky partner, George, and they
hied themselves to this clump of outhouses called Atascosa City, you know
what happened to them. They had money to buy anything they wanted;
but they didn't know what to want. Their ideas of spendthriftiness were
limited to three — whisky, saddles, and gold watches. If there was anything
else in the world to throw away fortunes on, they had never heard about
it. So, when they wanted to have a hot time, they'd ride into town and
get a city directory and stand in front of the principal saloon and call up
the population alphabetically for free drinks. Then they would order
three or four new California saddles from the storekeeper, and play crack-
loo on the sidwalk with twenty-dollar gold pieces. Betting who could
throw his gold watch the farthest was an inspiration of George's; but
even that was getting to be monotonous.

"Was I on to the opportunity? Listen.

"In thirty minutes I had dashed off a word picture of metropolitan
joys that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney Island
with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an agree-
ment that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in and to the
aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was his name,
was to pay all expenses for a month* At the end of that time, if I had
made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was to pay me one
thousand dollars. And then, to clinch the bargain, we called the roll of
Atascosa City and put all of its citizens except the ladies and minors
under the table, except one man named Horace Westervelt St. Claire.
Just for that we bought a couple hatf uls of cheap silver watches and egged
him out of town with 'em. We wound up by dragging the harness-maker
out of bed and setting him to work on three new saddles; and then we
went to sleep across the railroad track at the depot, just to annoy the
S. A. & A. P. Think of having seventy-five thousand dollars and trying
to avoid the disgrace of dying rich in a town like that!

"The next day George, who was married or something, started back
to the ranch. Me and Solly, as I now called him, prepared to shake oflf
our rnoth balls and wing our way against the arc-lights of the joyous and
tuneful East.

"'No way-stops/ says I to Solly, 'except long enough to get you bar-1

SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY 149

bered and haberdashed. This is no Texas feet shampetter,' says I, 'where
you eat chili-con-carne-con-huevos and then holler "Whoopee!" across the
plaza. We're now going against the real high life. We're going to mingle
with the set that carries a Spitz, wears spats, and hits the ground in high
spots.'

"Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his
brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern
banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the S. A. &
A, P., and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route
to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.

"We stopped in San Antonio long enough for Solly to buy some clothes,
and eight rounds of drinks for the guests and employees of the Menger
Hotel, and order four Mexican saddles with silver trimmings and white
Angora suaderos to be shipped down to the ranch. From there we made
a big jump to St. Louis. We got there in time for dinner; and I put our
thumb-prints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the city.

" 'Now,5 says I to Solly, with a wink at myself, 'here's the first dinner-
station we've struck where we can get a real good plate of beans.' And
while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of the gas-pipe, I
got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter's Tuxedo, drew him
apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed him up again.

" Trankoyse," says I, 'I have a pal here for dinner that's been subsisting
for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef and order a dinner
for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the general passenger agent
of the Iron Mountain when they eat here. We've got more than Bern-
hardt's tent full of money; and we want the nosebags crammed with all
the Chief Deveries de cuisine. Object is no expense. Now, show us.'

"At six o'clock me and Solly sat down to dinner. Spread! There's noth-
ing been seen like it since the Cambon snack. It was all served at once.
The chef called it dinnay & la pofar. It's a famous thing among the
gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind. There was
guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness 's stout; roast veal, mock turtle
soup, and chicken p&te; shad-roe, caviar, and tapioca; canvas-back duck,
canvas-back ham, and cottontail rabbit; Philadelphia capon, fried snails,
and sloe-gin — and so on, in threes. The idea was that you eat nearly all
you can of them, and then the waiter takes away the discard and gives
you pears to fill on.

"I was sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after the
bob-tail flushes he'd been eating on the ranch; and I was a little anxious
that he should, for I didn't remember his having honored my efforts with
a smile since we left Atascosa City.

"We were in the main dining room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd
there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics, the
water supply and the color line. They mix the two subjects so fast that

150 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

strangers often think they are discussing water-colors; and that has given
the old town something of a rep as an art centre. And over in the corner
was a fine brass band playing; and now, thinks I, Solly will become con-
scious of the spiritual oats of life nourishing and exhilarating his system.
But nong, mong frang.

"He gazed across the table at me. There was four square yards of it,
looking like the path of a cyclone that has wandered through a stock-yard,
a poultry-farm, a vetable-garden, and an Irish linen mill. Solly gets up
and comes around to me.

" 'Luke,' says he, Tm pretty hungry after our ride. I thought you said
they had some beans here. I'm going out and get something I can eat.
You can stay and monkey with this artificial layout of grub if you
want to.'

" 'Wait a minute,' says I.

"I called the waiter, and slapped 'S. Mills5 on the back of the check for
thirteen dollars and fifty cents,

" 'What do you mean/ says I, 'by serving gentlemen with a lot of truck
only suitable for deck hands on a Mississippi steamboat? We're going
out to get something decent to eat.'

"I walked up the street with the unhappy plainsman, He saw a saddle-
shop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes. We went in, and
he ordered and paid for two more saddles — one with a solid silver horn
and nails and ornaments and a six-inch border of rhinestones and imita-
tion rubies around the flaps. The other one had to have a gold-mounted
horn, quadruple-plated stirrups, and the leather inlaid with silver bead-
work wherever it would stand it. Eleven hundred dollars the two cost
him.

"Then he goes out and heads toward the river, following his nose. In a
little side street, where there was no street and no sidewalks and no
houses, he finds what he is looking for. We go into a shanty and sit on
high stools among stevedores and boatmen, and eat beans with tin spoons.
Yes, sir, beans— beans boiled with salt pork.

" 'I kind of thought we'd strike some over this way,' says Solly.

"'Delightful,' says I. That stylish hotel grub may appeal to some: but
for me, give me the husky table d'goat!

"When we had succumbed to the beans I leads him out of the tarpaulin-
steam under a lamp post and pulls out a daily paper with the amusement
column folded out.

" 'But now, what ho for a merry round of pleasure,' says I. 'Here's one
of Hall Caine's shows, and a stock-yard company in "Hamlet," and
skating at the Hollowhorn Rink, and Sara Bernhardt, and the Shapely
Syrens Burlesque Company. I should think, now, that the Shapely '

"But what does this healthy, wealthy, and wise man do but reach his
arms up to the second-story windows and gape noisily.

SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY 151

" 'Reckon 1*11 be going to bed/ says he, 'it's about my time. St. Louis is
a kind of quiet place, ain't it?'

"'Oh, yes/ says I; 'ever since the railroads ran in here the town's been
practically ruined. And the building-and-loan associations and the fair have
about killed it. Guess we might as well go to bed. Wait till you see Chi-
cago though. Shall we get tickets for the Big Breeze to-morrow?5

" 'Mought as well,' says Solly. 'I reckon all these towns are about alike.'

"Well, maybe the wise cicerone and personal conductor didn't fall hard
in Chicago; Loolooville-on-the-Lake is supposed to have one or two things
in it calculated to keep the rural visitor awake after the curfew rings.
But not for the grass-fed man of the pampas! I tried him with theatres,
rides in automobiles, sails on the lake, champagne suppers, and all those
little inventions that hold the simple life in check; but in vain. Solly grew
sadder day by day. And I got fearful about my salary, and knew I must
play my trump card. So I mentioned New York to him, and informed
him that these Western towns were no more than gateways to the great
walled city of the whirling dervishes.

"After I bought the tickets I missed Solly. I knew his habits by then;
so in a couple of hours I found him in a saddle-shop. They had some new
ideas there in the way of trees and girths that had strayed down from the
Canadian mounted police; and Solly was so interested that he almost
looked reconciled to live. He invested about nine hundred dollars in
there.

"At the depot I telegraphed a cigar-store man I knew in New York
to meet me at the Twenty-third Street ferry with a list of all the saddle-
stores in the city. I wanted to know where to look for Solly when he got
lost.

"Now I'll tell you what happened in New York. I says to myself:
'Friend Heherezade, you want to get busy and make Bagdad look pretty
to the sad sultan of the sour countenance, or it'll be the bow string for
yours.' But I never had any doubt I could do it.

"I began with him like you'd feed a starving man. I showed him the
horse-cars on Broadway and the Staten Island ferry-boats. And then I
piled up the sensations on him, but always keeping a lot of warmer ones
up my sleeve.

"At the end of the third day he looked like a composite picture of five
thousand orphans too late to catch a picnic steamboat, and I was wilting
down a collar every two hours wondering how I could please him and
whether I was going to get my thou. He went to sleep looking at
the Brooklyn Bridge; he disregarded the sky-scrapers above the third
story; it took three ushers to wake him up at the liveliest vaudeville in
town.

"Once I thought I had him. I nailed a pair of cuffs on him one morning
before he was awake; and I dragged him that evening to the palm-cage

152 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

of one of the biggest hotels in the city— to see the Johnnies and the Alice-
sit-by-the-hours. They were out in numerous quantities, with the fat of
the land showing in their clothes. While we were looking them over,
Solly divested himself of a fearful, rusty kind of laugh— like moving a
folding bed with one roller broken. It was his first in two weeks, and it
gave me hope.

" 'Right you are,' says I. 'They're a funny lot of post-cards, aren't they?'

" 'Oh, I wasn't thinking of them dudes and culls on the hoof,' says he.
'I was thinking of the time me and George put sheep-dip in Horsehead
Johnson's whisky. I wish I was back in Atascosa City,' says he.

"I felt a cold chill run down my back. 'Me to play and mate in one
move,' says I to myself.

"I made Solly promise to stay in the cafe for half an hour and I hiked
out in a cab to Lolabelle Delatour's flat on Forty-third Street. I knew
her well. She was a chorus-girl in a Broadway musical comedy.

" 'Jane,7 says I when I found her, Tve got a friend from Texas here.
He's all right, but— well, he carries weight. I'd like to give him a little
whirl after the show this evening—- bubbles, you know, and a buzz out to
a casino for the whitebait and pickled walnuts. Is it a go?'

" 'Can he sing?' asks Lolabelle.

" 'You know,' says I, 'that I wouldn't take him away from home un-
less his notes were good. He's got pots of money — bean-pots full of it.'

" 'Bring him around after the second act,' says Lolabelle, 'and I'll ex-
amine his credentials and securities.'

"So about ten o'clock that evening I led Solly to Miss Delatour's
dressing-room, and her maid let us in. In ten minutes in comes Lolabelle,
fresh from the stage, looking stunning in the costume she wears when she
steps from the ranks of the lady grenadiers and says to the king, 'Wel-
come to our May-day revels.' And you can bet it wasn't the way she spoke
the lines that got her the part.

"As soon as Solly saw her he got up and walked straight out through
the stage entrance into the street. I followed him. Lolabelle wasn't paying
my salary. I wondered whether anybody was.

" 'Luke,' says Solly, outside, 'that was an awful mistake. We must have
got into the lady's private room. I hope I'm gentleman enough to do
anything possible in the way of apologies. Do you reckon she'd ever for-
give us?'

" 'She may forget it,? says I. 'Of course it was a mistake. Let's go find
some beans.'

"That's the way it went. But pretty soon afterward Solly failed to show
up at dinner time for several days. I cornered him. He confessed that
he had found a restaurant on Third Avenue where they cooked beans in
Texas style. I made him take me there. The minute I set foot inside the
door I threw up my hands.

SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY 153

"There was a young woman at the desk, and Solly introduced me to
her. And then we sat down and had beans,

"Yes, sir, sitting at the desk was the kind of a young woman that can
catch any man in the world as easy as lifting a finger. There's a way of
doing it. She knew. I saw her working it. She was healthy-looking and
plain dressed. She had her hair drawn back from her forehead and face —
no curls or frizzes; that's the way she looked. Now I'll tell you the way
they work the games; it's simple. When she wants a man, she manages it
so that every time he looks at her he finds her looking at him. That's all.

"The next evening Solly was to go to Coney Island with me at seven.
At eight o'clock he hadn't showed up. I went out and found a cab. I felt
sure there was something wrong.

" 'Drive to the Back Home Restaurant on Third Avenue/ says I. 'And
if I don't find what I want there, take in these saddle-shops.' I handed
him the list

" 'Boss,' says the cabby, 1 et a steak in that restaurant once. If you're
real hungry, I advise you to try the saddle-shops first.'

" Tm a detective,' says I, 'and I don't eat. Hurry up!'

"As soon as I got to the restaurant I felt in the lines of my palms
that I should beware of a tall, red, damfool man, and I was going to lose
a sum of money.

"Solly wasn't there. Neither was the smooth-haired lady.

"I waited; and in an hour they came in a cab and got out, hand in
hand. I asked Solly to step around the corner for a few words. He was
grinning clear across his face; but I had not administered the grin.

" 'She's the greatest that ever sniffed the breeze,' says he.

" 'Congrats/ says I. 'I'd like to have my thousand now if you please.'

" 'Well, Luke/ says he, 'I don't know that I've had such a skyhoodlin'
fine time under your tutelage and dispensation. But I'll do the best I can
for you — I'll do the best I can," he repeats. "Me and Miss Skinner was
married an hour ago. We're leaving for Texas in the morning.'

"'Great!' says I. 'Consider yourself covered with rice and Congress
gaiters. But don't let's tie so many satin bows on our business relations
that we lose sight of 'em. How about my honorarium?'

" 'Missis Mills/ says he, 'has taken possession of my money and papers
except six bits. I told her what I'd agreed to give you; but she says it's an
irreligious and illegal contract, and she won't pay a cent of it. But I ain't
going to see you treated unfair/ says he. 'I've got eighty-seven saddles on
the ranch what I've bought on this trip; and when I get back I'm going
to pick out the best six in the lost and send 'em to you.' "

"And did he?" I asked, when Lucullus ceased talking.

"He did. And they are fit for kings to ride on. The six he sent me must
have cost him three thousand dollars. But where is the market for 'em?
Who would buy one except one of these rajahs and princes of Asia and

154 BOOKII HEARTOFTHE WEST

Africa? I've got 'em all on the list. I know ever tan royal dub and
princerino from Mindanao to the Caspian Sea."

"It's a long time between customers," I ventured.

"They're coming faster," said Polk. "Nowadays, when one of the mur-
dering mutts gets civilized enough to abolish suttee and quite using his
whiskers for a napkin, he calls himself the Roosevelt of the East, and
comes over to investigate our Chautauquas and cocktails. I'll place 'em
all yet. Now look here."

From an inside pocket he drew a tightly folded newspaper with much-
worn edges, and indicated a paragraph.

"Read that," said the saddler to royalty. The paragraph ran thus:

His Highness Seyyid Feysal bin Turkee, Imam of Muskat, is one of the
most progressive and enlightened rulers of the Old World. His stables
contain more than a thousand horses of the purest Persian breeds. It is
said that this powerful prince contemplates a visit to the United States
at an early date.

"There!" said Mr. Polk triumphantly. "My best saddle is as good as
sold— the one with turquoises set in the rim of the cantle. Have you three
dollars that you could loan me for a short time?"

It happened that I had; and I did.

If this should meet the eye of the Imam of Muskat, may it quicken
his whim to visit the land of the free! Otherwise I fear that I shall be
longer than a short time separated from my dollars three.

HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO

If you are knowing in the chronicles of the, ring you will recall to mind an
event in the early 'nineties when, for a minute and sundry odd seconds,
a champion and a "would-be" faced each other on the alien side of an
international river. So brief a conflict had rarely imposed upon the fair
promise of true sport. The reporters made what they could of it, but,
divested of padding, the action was sadly fugacious. The champion merely
smote his victim, turned his back upon him, remarking, "I know what
I done to dat stiff/* and extended an arm like a ship's mast for his glove
to be removed.

Which accounts for a trainload of extremely disgusted gentlemen in
uproar of fancy vests and. neckwear being spilled from their Pullman in
San Antonio in the early morning following the fight. Which also partly
accounts for the unhappy predicament in which "Cricket" McGuire found
himself as he tumbled from his car and sat upon the depot platform,

HYGEIAATTHESOLITO 155

torn by a spasm of that hollow, racking cough so familiar to San Antonian
ears. At that time, in the uncertain light of dawn, that way passed Curtis
Raidler, the Nueces County cattleman — may his shadow never measure
under six feet two.

The cattleman, out this early to catch the south-bound for his ranch
station, stopped at the side of the distressed patron of sport and spoke
in the kindly drawl of his ilk and region, "Got it pretty bad, bud?"

"Cricket" McGuire, exfeather-weight prize-fighter, tout, jockey, fol-
lower of the "ponies," all-around sport, and manipulator of the gum balls
and walnut shells, looked up pugnaciously at the imputation cast by
"bud."

"G'wan," he rasped, "telegraph pole. I didn't ring for yer."

Another paroxysm wrung him, and he leaned limply against a con-
venient baggage truck. Raidler waited patiently, glancing around at the
white hats, short overcoats, and big cigars thronging the platform. "You're
from the No'th ain't you, bud?" he asked when the other was partially
recovered. "Come down to see the fight?"

"Fight!" snapped McGuire. "Puss-in-the-corner. 'Twas a hypodermic
injection. Handed him just one like a squirt of dope, and he's asleep, and
no tanbark needed in front of his residence. Fight!" He rattled a bit,
coughed, and went on, hardly addressing the cattleman, but rather for
the relief of voicing his troubles. "No more dead sure t'ings for me. But
Rus Sage himself would have snatched at it. Five to one dat de boy from
Cork wouldn't stay t'ree rounds is what I invested in. Put my last cent
on, and could already smell the sawdust in dat all-night joint of Jimmy
Delaney's on T'irty-seventh Street I was goin' to buy. And den — say, tele-
graph pole, what a gazaboo a guy is to put his whole roll on one turn of
thegaboozlum!"

"You're plenty right," said the big cattleman; "more 'specially when
you lose. Son, you get up and light out for a hotel. You got a mighty bad
cough. Had it long?"

"Lungs," said McGuire comprehensively. "I got it. The croaker says
I'll come to time for six months longer — maybe a year if I hold my gait.
I wanted to settle down and take care of myself. Dat's why I speculated
on dat five to one perhaps. I had a t'ousand iron dollars saved up. If I
winned I was goin* to buy Delaney's cafe. Who'd a t'ought dat stiff would
take a nap in de foist round — say?"

"It's a hard deal," commented Raidler, looking down at the diminutive
form of McGuire crumpled against the truck. "But you go to a hotel and
rest. There's the Menger and the Maverick, and "

"And the Fi'th Av'noo, and the Waldorf-Astoria," mimicked McGuire.
"Told you I went broke. I'm on de bum proper. I've got one dime left.
Maybe a trip to Europe or a sail in me private yacht would fix me up—
pa'per!"

156 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

He flung his dime at a newsboy, got his Express, propped his back
against the truck, and was at once rapt in the account of his Waterloo, as
expanded by the ingenious press.

Custis Raidler interrogated an enormous gold watch, and laid his hand
on McGuire's shoulder,

"Come on, bud," he said. "We got three minutes to catch the train."

Sarcasm seemed to be McGuire's vein,

"You ain't seen me cash in any chips or call a turn since I told you I
was broke, a minute ago, have you? Friend, chase yourself away."

"You're going down to my ranch," said the cattleman, "and stay till you
get well Six months'll fix you good as new," He lifted McGuire with
one hand, and half-dragged him in the direction of the train.

"What about the money?" said McGuire, struggling weakly to escape.

"Money for what?" asked Raidler, puzzled. They eyed each other, not
understanding, for they touched only as at the gear of bevelled cog-wheels
— at right angles, and moving upon different axes.

Passengers on the south-bound saw them seated together, and won-
dered at the conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one,
with a countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-
beady of eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and
reknit, indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type neither
new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different soil. Six feet
two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a crystal brook, he^ repr^-
sented the union of the West and South. Few accurate pictures of his kind
have been made, for art galleries are so small and the mutoscope is as yet;
unknown in Texas. After all, the only possible medium of portrayal of
Raidler's kind would be the fresco— something high and simple and cool
and unframed.

They were rolling southward on the International, The timber was
huddling into little, dense green motts at rare distances before the inunda-
tion of the downright, vert prairies. This was the land of the ranches;
the domain of the kings of the kine.

McGuire sat, collapsed into his corner of the seat, receiving with acid
suspicion the conversation of the cattleman. What was the "game" of this
big "geezer" who was carrying him off? Altruism would have been Mc-
Guire's last guess. "He ain't no farmer," thought the captive, "and he
ain't no con man, for sure, Wat's his lay? You trail in, Cricket, and see
how many cards he draws. You're up against it, anyhow. You get a nickel
and gallopin' consumption, and you better lay low. Lay low and see w'at's
his game."

At Rincon, a hundred miles from San Antonio, they left the train for a
buckboard which was waiting there for Raidler. In this they travelled the
thirty miles between the station and their destination. If anything could,
this drive should have stirred the acrimonious McGuire to a sense of his

HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO 157

ransom. They sped upon velvet wheels across an exhilarant savanna. The
pair o£ Spanish ponies struck a nimble, tireless trot, which gait they occa-
sionally relieved by a wild, untrammelled gallop. The air was wine and
seltzer, perfumed, as they absorbed it, with the delicate redolence of
prairie flowers. The road perished, and the buckboard swam the un-
charted billows of the grass itself, steered by the practised hand of Raidler,
to whom each tiny distant mott of trees was a signboard, each convolution
of the low hills a voucher of course and distance. But McGuire reclined
upon his spine, seeing nothing but a desert, and receiving the cattleman's
advances with sullen distrust "Wat's he up to?" was the burden of his
thoughts; "w'at kind of a gold brick has the big guy got to sell?" Mc-
Guire was only applying the measure of the streets he had walked to a
range bounded by die horizon and the fourth dimension.

A week before, while riding the prairies, Raidler had come upon a sick
and weakling calf deserted and bawling. Without dismounting he had
reached and slung the distressed bossy across his saddle, and dropped it
at the ranch for the boys to attend to. It was impossible for McGuire to
know or comprehend that, in the eyes of the cattleman, his case and that
of the calf were identical in interest and demand upon his assistance. A
creature was ill and helpless; he had the power to render aid — these were
the only postulates required for the cattleman to act. They formed his
system of logic and the most of his creed. McGuire was the seventh in-
valid whom Raidler had picked up thus casually in San Antonio, where
so many thousand go for the ozone that is said to linger about its con-
tracted streets. Five of them had been guests of Solito Ranch until they
had been able to leave, cured or better, and exhausting the vocabulary of
tearful gratitude. One came too late, but rested very comfortably, at last,
under a ratama tree in the garden.

So, then, it was no surprise to the ranchhold when the buckboard spun
to the door, and Raidler took up his debile prot£g£ like a handful of rags
and set him down upon the gallery.

McGuire looked upon things strange to him. The ranch-house was the
best in the country. It was built of brick hauled one hundred miles by
wagon, but it was of but one story, and its four rooms were completely
encircled by a mud floor "gallery." The miscellaneous setting of horses,
dogs, saddles, wagons, guns, and cow-punchers' paraphernalia oppressed
the metropolitan eye of the wrecked sportsman.

"Well, here we are at home," said Raidler, cheeringly.

"It's a h— 1 of a looking place," said McGuire promptly, as he rolled
upon the gallery floor, in a fit of coughing.

"We'll try to make it comfortable for you, buddy," said the cattleman,
gently. "It ain't fine inside; but it's the outdoors, anyway, that'll do you
the most good. This'll be your room, in here. Anything we got, you ask
for it;."

158 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

He led McGuire into the east room. The floor was bare and clean.
White curtains waved in the gulf breeze through the open windows. A
big willow rocker, two straight chairs, a long table covered with news-
papers, pipes, tobacco, spurs, and cartridges stood in the centre. Some well-
mounted heads of deer and one of an enormous black javeli projected
from the walls. A wide, cool cot-bed stood in a corner. Nueces County
people regarded this guest chamber as fit for a prince. McGuire showed
his eye teeth at it. He took out his nickel and spun it up to the ceiling.

"T'ought I was lyin' about the money, did ye? Well, you can frisk
me if you wanter. Dat's the last simoleon in the treasury. Who's goin' to
pay?"

The cattleman's clear gray eyes looked steadily from under his grizzly
brows into the huckleberry optics of his guest. After a little he said simply,
and not ungraciously, "I'll be much obliged to you, son, if you won't
mention money any more. Once was quite a plenty. Folks I ask to my
ranch don't have to pay anything, and they very scarcely ever offers it.
Supper'll be ready in half an hour. There's water in the pitcher, and some,
cooler, to drink in that red jar hanging on the gallery."

"Where's the bell?" asked McGuire, looking about.

"Bell for what?"

"Bell to ring for things. I can't — see here," he exploded in a sudden
weak fury, "I never asked you to bring me here. I never held you up for a
cent. I never gave you a hard-luck story till you asked me. Here I am
fifty mile from a bellboy or a cocktail. I'm sick. I can't hustle. Gee! but
I'm up against it!" McGuire fell upon the cot and sobbed shiveringly

Raidler went to the door and called. A slender, bright-complexioned
Mexican youth about twenty came quickly. Raidler spoke to him in
Spanish.

"Ylario, it is in my mind that I promised you the position of vaquero on
the San Carlos range at the fall rodeo!'

"Si senor, such was your goodness."

"Listen. This senorito is my friend. He is very sick. Place yourself at
his side. Attend to his wants at all times. Have much patience and care
with him. And when he is well, or — and when he is well, instead of
vaquero I will make you mayordomo of the Rancho de las Piedras Estd
bueno?"

"Si, si — mil gracias, senor." Ylario tried to kneel upon the floor in his
gratitude, but the cattleman kicked at him benevolently, growling, "None
of your opery-house antics, now."

Ten minutes later Ylario came from McGuire's room and stood before
Raidler.

"The little senor" he announced, "presents his compliments" (Raidler
credited Ylario with the preliminary) "and desires some pounded ice,
one hot bath, one gin feez-z, that the windows be all closed, toast, one
shave, one Newyorkheral', cigarettes, and to send one telegram."

HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO 159

Raidler took a quart bottle of whisky from his medicine cabinet, "Here,
take him this/5 he said.

Thus was instituted the reign of terror at the Solito Ranch. For a few
weeks McGuire blustered and boasted and swaggered before the cow-
punchers who rode in for miles around to see this latest importation of
Raidler's. He was an absolutely new experience to them. He explained to
them all the intricate points of sparring and the tricks of training and
defence. He opened to their minds' view all the indecorous life of a tagger
after professional sports. His jargon of slang was a continuous joy and
surprise to them. His gestures, his strange poses, his frank ribaldry of
tongue and principle fascinated them. He was like a being from a new
world.

Strange to say, this new world he had entered did not exist to him. He
was an utter egoist of bricks and mortar. He had dropped out, he felt, in
open space for a time, and all it contained was an audience for his
reminiscences. Neither the limitless freedom of the prairie days nor the
grand hush of the close-drawn, spangled nights touched him. All the
hues of Aurora could not win him from the pink pages of a sporting
journal. "Get something for nothing," was his mission in life; "T'irty-
seventh" Street was his goal

Nearly two months after his arrival he began to complain that he felt
worse. It was then that he became the ranch's incubus, its harpy, its Old
Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous kobold
or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing. The keynote
of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a gehenna against his
will; that he was dying of neglect and lack of comforts. With all his dire
protestations of increasing illness, to the eye of others he remained un-
changed. His currant-like eyes were as bright and diabolic as ever; his
voice was as rasping; his callous face, with the skin drawn tense as a
drum-head, had no flesh to lose. A flush on his prominent cheek bones
each afternoon hinted that a clinical thermometer might have revealed a
symptom, and percussion might have established the fact that McGuire
was breathing with only one lung, but his appearance remained the same.

In constant attendance upon him was Ylario, whom the coming reward
of the mayordomoship must have greatly stimulated, for McGuire chained
him to a bitter existence. The air — the man's only chance for life — he
commanded to be kept out by closed windows and drawn curtains. The
room was always blue and foul with cigarette smoke; whosoever entered
it must sit, suffocating, and listen to the imp's interminable gasconade
concerning his scandalous career.

The oddest thing of all was the relation existing between McGuire
and his benefactor. The attitude of the invalid toward the cattleman was
something like that of a peevish, pervejrse child toward an indulgent par-
ent. When Raidler would leave the ranch McGuire would fall into a fit

l6o BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

of malevolent, silent sullenness. When he returned, he would be met by
a string of violent and stinging reproaches. Raidler's attitude toward his
charge was quite inexplicable in its way. The cattleman seemed actually
to assume and feel the character assigned him by McGuire's intemperate
accusations — the character of tyrant and guilty oppressor. He seemed to
have adopted the responsibility of the fellow's condition, and he always
met his tirades with a pacific, patient, and even remorseful kindness that
never altered.

One day Raidler said to him, "Try more air, son. You can have the
buckboard and a driver every day if you'll go. Try a week or two in one of
the cow camps. I'll fix you up plum comfortable. The ground, and the
air next to it—them's the things to cure you. I knowed a man from
Philadelphy, sicker than you are, got lost on the Guadalupe, and slept on
the bare grass in sheep camps for two weeks. Well, sir, it started him
getting well, which he done. Close to the ground — that's where the medi-
cine in the air stays. Try a little hossback riding now. There's a gentle
pony "

"What've I done to yer?" screamed McGuire. "Did I ever double-cross
yer? Did I ask you to bring me here? Drive me out to your camps if you
wanter; or stick a knife in me and save trouble. Ride! I can't lift my feet.
I couldn't sidestep a jar from a five-year-old kid. That's what your d — d
ranch has done for me. There's nothing to eat, nothing to see, and no-
body to talk to but a lot of Reubens who don't know a punching bag from
lobster salad."

"It's a lonesome place, for certain," apologized Raidler abashedly. "We
got plenty, but it's rough enough. Anything you think of you want, the
boys 11 ride up and fetch it down for you."

It was Chad Murchison, a cow-puncher from the Circle Bar outfit, who
first suggested that McGuire's illness was fraudulent. Chad had brought
a basket of grapes for him thirty miles, and four out of his way, tied to
his saddle-horn. After remaining in the smoke-tainted room for a while,
he emerged and bluntly confided his suspicions to Raidler.

"His arm," said Chad, "is harder 'n a diamond. He interduced me to
what he called a shore-perplexus punch, and 'twas like being kicked twice
by a mustang. He's playin' it low down on you, Curt. He ain't no sicker'n
I am, I hate to say it, but the runt's workin' you for range and shelter."

The cattleman's ingenuous mind refused to entertain Chad's view of
the case, and when, later, he came to apply the test, doubt entered not into
his motives.

One day, about noon, two men drove up to the ranch, alighted, hitched,
and came in to dinner; standing and general invitations being the custom
of the country. One of them was a great San Antonio doctor, whose
costly services had been engaged by a wealthy cowman who had been laid
tow by an accidental bullet. He was now being driven to the station to

HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO l6l

take the train back to town. After dinner Raidler took him aside, pushed a
twenty-dollar bill against his hand, and said :

"Doc, there's a young chap in that room I guess has got a bad case of
consumption. I'd like for you to look him over and see just how bad he is,
and if we can do anything for him."

"How much was that dinner I just ate, Mr. Raidler?" said the doctor
bluffly, looking over his spectacles. Raidler returned the money to his
pocket. The doctor immediately entered McGuire's room, and the cattle-
man seated himself upon a heap of saddles on the gallery, ready to
reproach himself in the event the verdict should be unfavorable.

In ten minutes the doctor came briskly out. "Your man," he said
promptly, "is as sound as a new dollar. His lungs are better than mine.
Respiration, temperature, and pulse normal. Chest expansion four inches.
Not a sign of weakness anywhere, pf course I didn't examine for the
bacillus, but it isn't there. You can put my name to the diagnosis. Even
cigarettes and a vilely close room haven't hurt him. Coughs, does he?
Well, you tell him it isn't necessary. You asked if there is anything we
could do for him. Well, I advise you to set him digging post-holes or
breaking mustangs. There's our team ready. Good-day, sir." And like
a pufl of wholesome, blustery wind the doctor was off.

Raidler reached out and plucked a leaf from a mesquite bush by the
railing, and began chewing it thoughtfully.

The branding season was at hand, and the next morning Ross Hargis,
foreman of the outfit, was mustering his force of some twenty-five men
at the ranch, ready to start for the San Carlos range, where the work
was to begin. By six o'clock the horses were all saddled, the grub wagon
ready, and the cow-punchers were swinging themselves upon their mounts,
when Raidler bade them wait. A boy was bringing up an extra pony,
bridled and saddled, to the gate. Raidler walked to McGuire's room and
threw open the door. McGuire was lying on his cot, not yet dressed,
smoking.

"Get up," said the cattleman, and his voice was clear and brassy, like
a bugle.

"How's that?" asked McGuire, a little startled.

"Get up and dress. I can stand a rattlesnake, but I hate a liar. Do I have
to tell you again?" He caught McGuire by the neck and stood him on
the floor.

"Say, friend," cried McGuire wildly, "are you bug-house? I'm sick-
see? I'll croak if I got to hustle. What've I done to yer?" he began his
chronic whine — "I never asked yer to "

"Put on your clothes," called Raidler, in a rising tone.

Swearing, stumbling, shivering, keeping his amazed-, shiny eyes upon
the now menacing form of the aroused cattleman, McGuire managed to
tumble into his clothes. Then Raidler took him by the collar and shoved

l62 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

him out and across the yard to the extra pony hitched at the gate. The
cow-punchers lolled in their saddles, open-mouthed.

"Take this man," said Raidler to Ross Hargis, "and put him to work.
Make him work hard, sleep hard, and eat hard. You boys know I done
what I could for him, and he was welcome. Yesterday the best doctor in
San Antone examined him, and says he's got the lungs of a burro and the
constitution of a steer. You know what to do with him, Ross."

Ross Hargis only smiled grimly.

"Aw," said McGuire, looking intently at Raidler, with a peculiar ex-
pression upon his face, "the croaker said I was all right, did he? Said I
was fakin', did he? You put him onto me. You t'ought I wasn't sick. You
said I was a liar. Say, friend, I talked rough, I know, but I didn't mean

most of it. If you felt like I did aw! I forgot 1 ain't sick, the croaker

says. Well, friend, now I'll go work for yer. Here's where you play even,"

He sprang into the saddle easily as a bird, got the quirt from the horn,
and gave his pony a slash with it. "Cricket," who once brought in Good
Boy by a neck at Hawthorne— and a 10 to i shot— had his foot in the
stirrups again.

McGuire led the cavalcade as they dashed away from San Carlos, and
the cow-punchers gave a yell of applause as they closed in behind his dust.

But in less than a mile he had lagged to the rear, and was last man
when they struck the patch of high chaparral below the horse pens. Be-
hind a clump of this he drew rein, and held a handkerchief to his mouth.
He took it away drenched with bright, arterial blood, and threw it care-
fully into a clump of prickly pear. Then he slashed with his quirt again,
gasped "G'wan" to his astonished pony, and galloped after the gang.

That night Raidler received a message from his old home in Alabama.
There had been a death in the family; an estate was to divide, and they
called for him to come. Daylight found him in the buckboard, skimming
the prairies for the station. It was two months before he returned. When
he arrived at the ranch-house he found it well-nigh deserted save for
Ylario, who acted as a kind of steward during his absence. Little by little
the youth made him acquainted with the work done while he was away.
The branding camp, he was informed, was still doing business. On ac-
count of many severe storms the cattle had been badly scattered, and the
branding had been accomplished but slowly. The camp was now in the
valley of the Guadalupe, twenty miles away.

"By the way/' said Raidler, suddenly remembering, "that fellow I sent
along with them— McGuire — is he working yet?"

"I do not know," said Ylario. "Man's from the camp come verree few
times to the ranch. So plentee work with the leetle calves. They no say.
Dh, I think that fellow McGuire he dead much time ago."

"Dead!" said Raidler. "What you talking about?"

HYGEIA ATTHESOLITO 163

"Verree sick fellow, McGuire," replied Ylario, with a shrug of his
shoulder. "I theenk he no live one, two month when he go away."

"Shucks!" said Raidler. "He humbugged you, too, did he? The doctor
examined him and said he was sound as a mesquite knot."

"That doctor," said Ylario, smiling, "he tell you so? That doctor no
see McGuire."

"Talk up," ordered Raidler. "What the devil do you mean?"

"McGuire," continued the boy tranquilly, "he getting drink water out-
side when that doctor come in room. That doctor take me and pound me
all over here with his fingers"— putting his hand to his chest— "I not know
for what. He put his ear here and here and here, and listen— I not know
for what. He put his little glass stick in my mouth. He feel my arm here.
He make me count like whisper — so — twenty, treinta, cuarenta. Who
knows," concluded Ylario, with a deprecating spread of his hands, "for
what that doctor do those verree droll and such-like things?"

"What horses are up?" asked Raidler, shortly.

"Paisano is grazing out behind the little corral, senor"

"Saddle him for me at once."

Within a very few minutes the cattleman was mounted and away.
Paisano, well named after that ungainly but swift-running bird, struck
into his long lope that ate up the road like a strip of macaroni. In two
hours and a quarter Raidler, from a gentle swell, saw the branding camp
by a water hole in the Guadalupe. Sick with expectancy of the news he
feared, he rode up, dismounted, and dropped Paisano's reins. So gentle
was his heart that at that moment he would have pleaded guilty to the
murder of McGuire.

The only being in the camp was the cook, who was just arranging the
hunks of barbecued beef, and distributing the tin coffee cups for supper.
Raidler evaded a direct question concerning the one subject in his mind.

"Everything all right in camp, Pete?" he managed to inquire.

"So, so," said Pete, conservatively. "Grub give out twice. Wind scattered
the cattle, and we've had to rake the brush for forty mile. I need a new
coffee-pot. And the mosquitoes is some more hellish than common."

"The boys— all well?"

Pete was no optimist. Besides, inquiries concerning the health of cow-
punchers were not only superfluous, but bordered on flaccidity. It was not
like the boss to make them.

"What's left of 'em don't miss no calls to grub," the cook conceded.

"What's left of 'em?J repeated Raidler in a husky voice. Mechanically
he began to look around for McGuire's grave. He had in his mind a white
slab such as he had seen in the Alabama church-yard. But immediately
he knew that was foolish.

"Sure," said Pete; "what's left. Cow camps change in two ^months.
Some's gone."

164 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Raidler nerved himself.

"That — chap — I sent along — McGuire — did — he "

"Say," interrupted Pete, rising with a chunk of corn bread in each hand,
that was a dirty shame, sending that poor, sick kid to a cow camp. A
doctor that couldn't tell he was graveyard meat ought to be skinned with
a cinch buckle. Game as he was, too — it's a scandal among snakes —
lemme tell you what he done. First night in camp the boys started to in-
itiate him in the leather breeches degree. Ross Hargis busted him one
swipe with his chaparreras, and what do you reckon the poor child did?
Got up, the little skeeter, and licked Ross. Licked Ross Hargis. Licked
him good. Hit him plenty and everywhere and hard, Ross'd just get up
and pick out a fresh place to lay down on agin.

"Then that McGuire goes off there and lays down with his head in
the grass and bleeds. A hem'ridge they calls it. He lays there eighteen
hours by the watch, and they can't budge him. Then Ross Hargis, who
loves any man who can lick him, goes to work and damns the doctors
from Greenland to Poland Chiny; and him and Green Branch Johnson
they gets McGuire in a tent, and spells each other feedin' him chopped
raw meat and whisky.

"But it looks like the kid ain't got no appetite to git well, for they
misses him from the tent in the night and finds him rootin' in the grass,
and likewise a drizzle fallin'. 'Gwan,' he says, 'lemme go and die like I
wanter. He said I was a liar and a fake and I was playin' sick. Lcmme
alone.'

"Two weeks," went on the cook, "he laid around, not noticin' no-
body, and then "

A sudden thunder filled the air, and a score of galloping centaurs
crashed through the brush into camp.

"Illustrious rattlesnakes!" exclaimed Pete, springing all ways at
once: "here's the boys come, and I'm an assassinated man if supper ain't
ready in three minutes."

But Raidler saw only one thing. A little brown-faced, grinning chap,
springing from his saddle in the full light of the fire, McGuire was not
like that, and yet

In another instant the cattleman was holding him by the hand and
shoulder.

"Son, son, how goes it?" was all he found to say.

"Close to the ground, says you," shouted McGuire, crunching Raidler's
fingers in a grip of steel; "and dat's where I found it — healt' and strengt',
and tumbled to what a cheap skate I been actin'. T'anks fer kickin' me
out, old man. And — say! de joke's on dat croaker, ain't it? I looked t'rough
the window and see him playin' tag on dat Dago kid's solar plexus."

"You son of a tinker," growled the cattleman, "whyn't you talk up and
say the doctor never examined you?"

"Aw— g' wan!" said McGuire, with a flash of his old asperity, "no-

AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE 165

body can't bluff me. You never ast me. You made your spiel, and you
t'rowed me out, and I let it go at dat. And, say, friend, dis chasin' cows is
outer sight. Dis is de whitest bunch of sports I ever travelled with. You'll
let me stay, won't yer, old man?"

Raidler looked wonderingly toward Ross Hargis.

"That cussed little runt," remarked Ross tenderly, "is the Jo-dartin'est
hustler — and the hardest hitter in anybody's cow camp."

AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE

At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed
rangers sweltered in a little 'dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful espionage
upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side.

Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening
previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, for
alleged violation of the Top Notch code of behavior. Garcia had men-
tioned twenty-four hours as a limit, by which time he would call and col-
lect plentiful indemnity for personal satisfaction.

This Mexican, although a tremendous braggart, was thoroughly cou-
rageous, and each side of the river respected him for one of these attributes.
He and a following of similar bravos were addicted to the pastime of
retrieving towns from stagnation.

The day designated by Garcia for retribution was to be further sig-
nalized on the American side by a cattlemen's convention, a bull fight,
and an old settlers' barbecue and picnic. Knowing the avenger to be a man
of his word, and believing it prudent to court peace while three such
gently social relaxations were in progress, Captain McNulty, of the
ranger company stationed there, detailed his lieutenant and three men for
duty at the end of the bridge. Their instructions were to prevent the in-
vasion of Garcia, either alone or attended by his gang.

Travel was slight that sultry afternoon, and rangers swore gently, and
mopped their brows in their convenient but close quarters. For an hour no
one had crossed save an old woman enveloped in a brown wrapper and a
black mantilla, driving before her a burro loaded with kindling wood
tied in small bundles for peddling. Then three shots were fired down the
street, the sound coming clear and snappy through the still air.

The four rangers quickened from sprawling, symbolic figures of in-
dolence to alert life, but only one rose to his feet. Three turned their eyes
beseechingly but hopelessly upon the fourth, who had gotten nimbly up
and was buckling his cartridge-belt around him. The three knew that
Lieutenant Bob Buckley, in command, would allow no man of them the
privilege of investigating a row when he himself might go.

l66 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

The agile, broad-chested lieutenant, without a change of expression in
his smooth, yellow-brown, melancholy face, shot the belt strap through
the guard of the buckle, hefted his sixes in their holsters as a belle gives
the finishing touches to her toilette, caught up his Winchester, and dived
for the door. There he paused long enough to caution his comrades to
maintain their watch upon the bridge, and then plunged into the broiling
highway.

The three relapsed into resigned inertia and plaintive comment.

"I've heard of fellows," grumbled Broncho Leathers, "what was wedded
to danger, but if Bob Buckley ain't committed bigamy with trouble, I'm
a son of a gun,"

"Peculiarness of Bob is," inserted the Nueces Kid, "he ain't had proper
trainin'. He never learned how to git skeered. Now, a man ought to be
skeered enough when he tackles a fuss to hanker after readin1 his name
on the list of survivors, anyway."

"Buckley," commented Ranger No. 3, who was a misguided Eastern
man, burdened with an education, "scraps in such a solemn manner that
I have been led to doubt its spontaneity. Fm not quite onto his system,
but he fights, like Tybalt, by the book of arithmetic."

"I never heard," mentioned Broncho, "about any of Dibble's ways of
mixin' scrappin' and cipherinV7

"Triggernometry ?" suggested the Nueces infant.

"That's rather better than I hoped from you," nodded the Easterner,
approvingly. "The other meaning is that Buckley never goes into a fight
without giving away weight. He seems to dread taking the slightest ad-
vantage. That's quite close to foolhardiness when you are dealing with
horse-thieves and fence-cutters who would ambush you any night, and
shoot you in the back if they could. Buckley's too full of sand. He'll play
Horatius, and hold the bridge once too often some day."

"I'm on there," drawled the Kid; "I mind that bridge gang in the
reader. Me, I go instructed for the other chap— Spurious Somebody— the
one that fought and pulled his freight, to fight 'em on some other date."

"Anyway," summed up Broncho, "Bob's about the gamest man I ever
see along the Rio Bravo. Great Sam Houston! If she gets any hotter she'll
sizzle!" Broncho whacked at a scorpion with his four-pound Stetson felt,
and the three watchers relapsed into comfortless silence.

How well Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two
years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus spake
of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward in all
that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had suspected
him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a physical
cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had he forced his
craven body to do the bravest deeds. Scourging himself always, as a
monk whips his besetting sin, Buckley threw himself with apparent reck-

AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE iff/

lessness into every danger, with the hope of some day ridding himself of
the despised affliction. But each successive test brought no relief, and the
ranger's face by nature adapted to cheerfulness and good humor, became
set to the guise of gloomy melancholy. Thus, while the frontier admired
his deeds, and his prowess was celebrated in print and by word of mouth
in many campfires in the valley of the Bravo, his heart was sick within
him. Only himself knew of the horrible tightening of the chest, tie dry
mouth, the weakening of the spine, the agony of the strung nerves— the
never-failing symptoms of his shameful malady.

One mere boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg
perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging from
his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever invention.
Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that devil-may-care
method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck, you go into a scrap
like it was a funeral. Not," he added, with a complimentary wave of his
tin cup, "but what it generally is."

Buckley's conscience was of the New England order with Western
adjustments, arid he continued to get his rebellious body into as many
difficulties as possible; wherefore, on that sultry afternoon he chose to
drive his own protesting limbs to investigation of that sudden alarm
that had startled the peace and dignity of the State.

Two squares down the street stood the Top Notch Saloon. Here
Buckley came upon signs of recent upheaval. A few curious spectators
pressed about its front entrance, grinding beneath their heels the frag-
ments of a plate-glass window. Inside, Buckley found Bud Dawson utterly
ignoring a bullet wound in his shoulder, while he feelingly wept at having
to explain why he failed to drop the "blamed masquerooter," who shot
him. At the entrance of the ranger Bud turned appealingly to him for
confirmation of the devastation he might have dealt.

"You know, Buck, I'd 'a* plum got him, first rattle, if I'd thought a
minute. Come in amasquerootin', playin* female till he got the drop, and
turned loose. I never reached for a gun, thinkin' it was sure Chihuahua
Betty, or Mrs. Atwater, or anyhow one of the Mayfield girls comin'
a-gunninj, which they might, liable as not. I never thought of that blamed
Garcia until "

"Garcia!" snapped Buckley, "How did he get over here?"

Bud's bartender took the ranger by the arm and led him to the side
door. There stood a patient gray burro cropping the grass along the gutter,
with a load of kindling wood tied across its back. On the ground lay a
black shawl and a voluminous brown dress.

"Masquerootin* in them things," called Bud, still resisting attempted
ministrations to his wounds. "Thought he was a lady till he give a yell
arid winged me."

"He went down this side street," said the bartender. "He was alone,

l68 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

and hell hide out till night when his gang comes over. You ought to find
him in that Mexican lay-out below the depot. He's got a girl down there —
Pancha Sales."

"How was he armed?" asked Buckley.

"Two pearl-handled sixes, and a knife."

"Keep this for me, Billy," said the ranger, handing over his Winchester.
Quixotic, perhaps, but it was Bob Buckley's way. Another man — and
a braver one — might have raised a posse to accompany him. It was
Buckley's rule to discard all preliminary advantage.

The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty
street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of
refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened.
Many citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the
course of Garcia's retreat.

As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the
suiJocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the brim
of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it went down,
down, down in his bosom.

The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three
hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G. N. on the other side of
the river. Passengers for Los Estados Unidos grumblingly sought enter-
tainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for uatil
the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, be-
cause two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone.
Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of
Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running
Horses, and Ozone, In those times cattlemen played at crack4oo on the
side-walks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of
the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference
of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers —
they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Espe-
cially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone.
Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest
ones were on the way.

On a side track near the mean little *dobe depot stood a private car, left
there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an ineffectual
schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings, connection with
the next day's regular.

The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in
it and cringed to the conductor's hatbands slips would never have recog-
nized it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain domestic
touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public servitude. The
whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its windows. From its fore

AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE 169

end dropped in the torrid air the flag of Mexico. From its rear projected
the Stars and Stripes and a busy stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its
suggestion of culinary comforts the general suggestion of privacy and
ease. The beholder's eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to
culminate in a single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its
entire length — a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and gen-
ius. Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the
name was that of "Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe." This, her car,
was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities, and now
headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory advertisement,
she would exhibit her "Marvellous Dominion and Fearless Control over
Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as they Coil
and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied Tremblers!"

One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This
quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth of
five nations; its architecture tent, jacal, and 'dobe; its distractions the
hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the sudden stranger's store
of experience. Beyond this dishonorable fringe upon the old town's jowl
rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and' filling a little hollow.
Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and
disconcerting side of the great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte.

In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours the
impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe.

The front door of the car was open. Its forward end was curtained off
into a small reception room. Here the admiring and propitiatory reporters
were wont to sit and transpose the music of Senorita Alvarita's talk into
the more florid key of the press. A picture of Abraham Lincoln hung
against a wall; one of a cluster of school-girls grouped upon stone steps
was in another place; a third was Easter lilies in a blood-red frame. A
neat carpet was under foot. A pitcher, sweating cold drops, and a glass
stood upon a fragile stand, In a willow rocker, reading a newspaper, sat
Alvarita.

Spanish, you would say, Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that com-
pound, like a diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of purple
grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting with their
untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold, touched with a
pretty insolence that gave it life. To hasten conviction of her charm, but
glance at the stacks of handbills in the corner, green, and yellow, and
white. Upon them you see an incompetent presentment of the senorita in
her professional garb and pose. Irresistible, in black lace and yellow rib-
bons, she faces you; a blue racer is spiralled upon each bare arm; coiled
twice about her waist and once about her neck, his horrid head close to
hers; you perceive Kuku, the great eleven-foot Asian python.

A hand drew aside the curtain that partitioned the car, and a middle-

170 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

aged faded woman holding a knife and a half -peeled potato looked in and
said:

"Alviry, are you right busy?"

"I'm reading the home paper, ma. What do you think! that pale, tow-
headed Matilda Price got that most votes in the News for the prettiest girl
in Gallipo — lees"

"Shuh! She wouldn't of done it if you'd been home, Alviry. Lord
knows, I hope we'll be there before fall's over, I'm tired gallopin* round
the world playin' we are dagoes, and givin' snake shows. But that ain't
what I wanted to say. That there biggest snake's gone again. I've looked
all over the car and can't find him. He must have been gone an hour.
I remember hearin' somethin' rustlin' along the floor, but I thought it was
you."

"Oh, blame that old rascal!" exclaimed the Queen; throwing down
her paper. "This is the third time he's got away. George nevef mil fasten
down the lid to his box properly. I do believe he's afraid of Kuku. Now
I've got to go hunt him."

"Better hurry; somebody might hurt him.n

The Queen's teeth showed in a gleaming, contemptuous smile. "No
danger. When they see Kuku outside they simply scoot away and buy
bromides. There's a crick over between here and the river. That old
scamp'd swap his skin any time for a drink of running water. I guess I'll
find him there, all right."

A few minutes later Alvarita stepped upon the forward platform,
ready for her quest. Her handsome black skirt was shaped to the most
recent proclamation of fashion. Her spotless shirt-waist gladdened the
eye in that desert of sunshine, a swelling oasis, cool and fresh. A man's
split-straw hat sat firmly upon her coiled abundant hair. Beneath her
serene, round, impudent chin a man's four-in-hand tie was jauntily
knotted about a man's high, stiff collar. A parasol she carried, of white
silk, and its fringe was lace, yellowly genuine.

I will grant Gallipolis as to her costume, but firmly to Seville or
Valladolid I am held by her eyes; castanets, balconies, mantillas, sere-
nades, ambuscades, escapades— all these their dark depths guaranteed.

"Ain't you afraid to go out alone, Alviry?" queried the Queen-mother
anxiously. "There's so many rough people about. Mebbe you'd better "

"I never saw anything I was afraid of yet, ma. 'Specially people. And
men in particular. Don't you fret. I'll trot along back as soon as I find
that runaway scamp."

The dust lay thick upon the bare ground near the tracks. Alvarita's eye
soon discovered the serrated trail of the escaped python. It led across the
depot grounds and away down a smaller street in the direction of the
little canon, as predicted by her. A stillness and lack of excitement in the
neighborhood encouraged the hope that, as yet, the inhabitants were un-

AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE IJl

aware that so formidable a guest traversed their highways. The heat had
driven them indoors, whence outdrifted occasional shrill laughs, or the
depressing whine of a maltreated concertina. In the shade a few Mexican
children, like vivified stolid idols in clay, stared from their play, vision-
struck and silent, as Alvarita came and went. Here and there a woman
peeped from a door and stood dumb, reduced to silence by the aspect
of the white silk parasol.

A hundred yards and the limits of the town were passed, scattered
chaparral succeeding, and then a noble grove, overflowing the bijou canon.
Through this a small bright stream meandered. Park-like it was, with a
kind of cockney ruralness further indorsed by the waste papers and rifled
tins of picnickers. Up this stream, and down it, among its pseudo-sylvan
glades and depressions, wandered the bright and unruffled Alvarita. Once
she saw evidence of the recreant reptile's progress in his distinctive trail
across a spread of fine sand in the arroyo. The living water was bound
to lure him; he could not be far away.

So sure was she of his immediate proximity that she perched herself to
idle for a time in the curve of a great creeper that looped down from a
giant water-elm. To reach this she climbed from the pathway a little dis-
tance up the side of a steep and rugged incline. Around her chaparral
grew thick and high. A late-blooming ratama tree dispensed from its
yellow petals a sweet and persistent odor. Adown the ravine rustled a
sedative wind, melancholy with the taste of sodden, fallen leaves.

Alvarita removed her hat, and undoing the oppressive convolutions of
her hair, began to slowly arrange it in two long, dusky plaits.

From the obscure depths of a thick clump of evergreen shrubs five feet
away, two small jewel-bright eyes were steadfastly regarding her. Coiled
there lay Kuku, the great python; Kuku, the magnificent, he of the
plated muzzle, the grooved lips, the eleven-foot stretch of elegantly and
brilliantly mottled skin. The great python was viewing his mistress with-
out a sound or motion to disclose his presence. Perhaps the splendid truant
forfeit his capture, but, screened by the foliage, thought to prolong the
delight of his escapade. What pleasure it was, after the hot and dusty
car, to lie thus, smelling the running water, and feeling the agreeable
roughness of the earth and stones against his body! Soon, very soon the
Queen would find him, and he, powerless as a worm in her audacious
hands, would be returned to the dark chest in the narrow house that ran
on wheels.

Alvarita heard a sudden crunching of the gravel below her. Turning
her head she saw a big, swarthy Mexican, with a daring and evil expres-
sion, contemplating her with an ominous, dull eye.

"What do you want?" she asked as sharply as five hairpins between her
lips would permit, continuing to plait her hair, and looking him over with

172 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

placid contempt. The Mexican continued to gaze at her, and showed his
teeth in a. white, jagged smile.

"I no hurt-y you, Senorita," he said.

"You bet you won't," answered the Queen, shaking back one finished,
massive plait. "But don't you think you'd better move on?"^

"Not hurt-y you— no. But maybeso take one £«o— one li'l kees, you call
him."

The man smiled again, and set his foot to ascend the slope. Alvarita
leaned swiftly and picked up a stone the size of a cocoanut.

"Vamoose, quick," she ordered peremptorily, "you coon!"

The red of insult burned through the Mexican's dark skin.

"Hidalgo, Yo!" he shot between his fangs. "I am not neg-r-ro! Diabla
bonita, for that you shall pay me."

He made two quick upward steps this time, but the stone, hurled by
no weak arm, struck him square in the chest. He staggered back to the
footway, swerved half around, and met another sight that drove all
thoughts of the girl from his head. She turned her eyes to see what had
diverted his interest. A man with red-brown, curling hair and a melan-
choly, sunburned, smooth-shaven face was coming up the path, twenty
yards away. Around the Mexican's waist was buckled a pistol belt with
two empty holsters. He had laid aside his sixes— possibly in the jacal of
the fair Pancha— and had forgotten them when the passing of the fairer
Alvarita had enticed him to her trail. His hands now flew instinctively to
the holsters, but finding the weapons gone, he spread his fingers outward
with the eloquent, abjuring, deprecating Latin gesture, and stood like a
rock. Seeing his plight, the newcomer unbuckled his own belt containing
two revolvers, threw it upon the ground, and continued to advance.

"Splendid!" murmured Alvarita, with flashing eyes.

As Bob Buckley, according to the mad code of bravery that his sensitive
conscience imposed upon his cowardly nerves, abandoned his guns and
closed in upon his enemy, the old, inevitable nausea of abject fear wrung
him. His breath whistled through his constricted air passages. His feet
seemed like lumps of lead. His mouth was dry as dust. His heart, con-
gested with blood, hurt his ribs as it thumped against them. The hot June
day turned to moist November. And still he advanced, spurred by a
mandatory pride that strained its uttermost against his weakling flesh.

The distance between the two men slowly lessened. The Mexican
stood, immovable, waiting. When scarce five yards separated them a little
shower of loosened gravel rattled down from above to the ranger's feet.
He glanced upward with instinctive caution. A pair of dark eyes, bril-
liantly soft, and fierily tender, encountered and held his own. The most
fearful heart and the boldest one in all the Rio Bravo country exchanged
a silent and inscrutable communication. Alvarita, still seated within her

AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE 173

vine, leaned forward above the breast-high chaparral. One hand was laid
across her bosom. One great dark braid curved forward over her shoulder.
Her lips were parted; her face was lit with what seemed but wonder —
great and absolute wonder. Her eyes lingered upon Buckley's. Let no one
ask or presume to tell through what subtle medium the miracle was per-
formed. As by a lightning flash two clouds will accomplish counterpoise
and compensation of electric surcharge, so on that eye glance the man
received his complement of manhood, and the maid concealed what en-
riched her womanly grace by its loss.

The Mexican, suddenly stirring, ventilated his attitude of apathetic
waiting by conjuring swiftly from his bootleg a long knife. Buckley cast
aside his hat, and laughed once aloud, like a happy school-boy at a frolic.
Then, empty-handed, he sprang nimbly, and Garcia met him without
default.

So soon was the engagement ended that disappointment imposed upon
the ranger's war-like ecstasy. Instead of dealing the traditional downward
stroke, the Mexican lunged straight with his knife. Buckley took the
precarious chance, and caught his wrist, fair and firm. Then he delivered
the good Saxon knock-out blow — always so pathetically disastrous to the
listless Latin races — and Garcia was down and out, with his head under
a clump of prickly pears. The ranger looked up again to the Queen of the
Serpents.

Alvarita scrambled down to the path.

"I'm mighty glad I happened along when I did," said the ranger.

"He— he frightened me so," cooed Alvarita.

They did not hear the long, low hiss of the python under the shrubs.
Wiliest of the beasts, no doubt he was expressing the humiliation he
felt at having so long dwelt in subjection to this trembling and coloring
mistress of his whom he had deemed so strong and potent and fearsome.

Then came galloping to the spot the civic authorities; and to them the
ranger awarded the prostrate disturber of the peace, whom they bore
away limply across the saddle of one of their mounts. But Buckley and
Alvarita lingered.

Slowly, slowly they walked. The ranger regained his belt of weapons.
With a fine timidity she begged the indulgence of fingering the great
.45'$ with little "Ohs" and "Ahs" of new-born delicious shyness.

The canoncito was growing dusky. Beyond its terminus in the river
bluff they could see the outer world yet suffused with the waning glory of
sunset.

A scream — a piercing scream of fright from Alvarita, Back she cow-
ered, and the ready, protecting arm of Buckley formed her refuge. What
terror so dire as to thus beset the close of the reign of the never-before-
daunted Queen ?

Across the path there crawled a caterpillar—^ horrid, fuzzy, two-inch

174 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou wert avenged. Thus abdicated the Queen
of the Serpent Tribe — viva la reina!

THE HIGHER ABDICATION

Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a fleet-
ing glance from the bartender's eye, and stood still, trying to look like a
business man who had just dined at the Menger and was waiting for a
friend who had promised to pick him up in his motor car. Curly's his-
trionic powers were equal to the impersonation; but his make-up was
wanting.

The bartender rounded the bar in a casual way, looking up at the ceil-
ing as though he was pondering some intricate problem of kalsomining,
and then fell upon Curly so suddenly that the roadster had no excuses
ready. Irresistibly, but so composedly that it seemed almost absentmind-
edness on his part, the dispenser of drinks pushed Curly to the swinging
doors and kicked him out, with a nonchalance that almost amounted to
sadness. That was the way of the Southwest.

Curly arose from the gutter leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment
toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the twenty-two
years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit. The slings and ar-
rows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the buckler of his armored
pride. With especial resignation did he suffer contumely and injury at the
hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were his enemies; and unnaturally,
they were often his friends. He had to take his chances with them. But he
had not yet learned to estimate these cool, languid, Southwestern knights
of the bung-starter, who had the manners of an Earl of Pawtucket, and
who, when they disapproved of your presence, moved you with the
silence and despatch of a chess automaton advancing a pawn.

Curly stood a few moments in the narrow, mesquite-paved street, San
Antonio puzzled and disturbed him. Three days he had been a non-paying
guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of an I. & G. N.
freight, because Greaser Johnny had told him in De$ Moines that the
Alamo City was manna fallen, gathered, cooked, and served free with
cream and sugar. Curly had found the tip pardy a good one. There was
hospitality in plenty of a careless, liberal, irregular sort. But the town itself
was a weight upon his spirits after his experience with the rushing, busi-
ness-like, systematized cities of the North and East. Here he was often
flung a dollar, but too frequently a good-natured kick would follow it.
Once a band of hilarious cowboys had roped him on Military Plaza and
dragged him across the black soil until no respectable rag-bag would
have stood sponsor for his clothes. The winding, doubling streets, leading

THE HIGHER ABDICATION 175

nowhere, bewildered him. And then there was a little river, crooked as
a pot-hook, that crawled through the middle of the town, crossed by a
hundred little bridges so nearly alike that they got on Curly's nerves. And
the last bartender wore a number nine shoe.

The saloon stood on a corner. The hour was eight o'clock. Homefarers
and outgoers jostled Curly on the narrow stone sidewalk. Between the
buildings to his left he looked down a cleft that proclaimed itself another
thoroughfare. The alley was dark except for one patch of light. Where
there was a light there were sure to be human beings. Where there were
human beings after nightfall in San Antonio there might be food, and
there was sure to be drink. So Curly headed for the light.

The illumination came from Schwegel's Cafe. On the sidewalk in front
of it Curly picked up an old envelope. It might have contained a check
for a million. It was empty; but the wanderer read the address, "Mr. Otto
Schwegel;' and the name of the town and State. The postmark was
Detroit.

Curly entered the saloon. And now in the light it could be perceived
that he bore the stamp of many years of vagabondage. He had none of
the tidiness of the calculating and shrewd professional tramp. His ward-
robe represented the cast-off specimens of half a dozen fashions and eras.
Two factories had combined their efforts in providing shoes for his feet.
As you gazed at him there passed through your mind vague impressions
of mummies, wax figures, Russian exiles, and men lost on desert islands.
His face was covered almost to his eyes with a curly brown beard that he
kept trimmed short with a pocket-knife, and that had furnished him with
his nom de route. Light-blue eyes, full of sullenness, fear, cunning, im-
pudence, and fawning, witnessed the stress that had been laid upon his
soul.

The saloon was small, and in its atmosphere the odors of meat and
drink struggled for the ascendency. The pig and the cabbage wrestled
with hydrogen and oxygen. Behind the bar Schwegel labored with an
assistant whose epidermal pores showed no signs of being obstructed. Hot
wiernerwurst and sauerkraut were being served to purchasers of beer.
Curly shuffled to the end of the bar, coughed hollowly, and told Schwegel
that he was a Detroit cabinet-maker out of a job.

It followed as the night the day that he got his schooner and lunch.

"Was you acquainted maybe mit Heinrich Strauss in Detroit?" asked
Schwegel.

"Did I know Heinrich Strauss?" repeated Curly, affectionately. "Why,
say, 'Bo, I wish I had a dollar for every game of pinochle me and Heine
has played on Sunday afternoons."

More beer and a second plate of steaming food was set before the
diplomat. And then Curly, knowing to a fluid-drachm how far a "con"
game would go, shuffled out into the unpromising street.

176 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

And now he began to perceive the inconveniences of this stony South-
ern town. There was none of the outdoor gaiety and brilliancy and music
that provided distraction even to the poorest in the cities of the North.
Here, even so early, the gloomy, rock-walled houses were closed and
barred against the murky dampness of the night. The streets were mere
fissures through which flowed gray wreaths of river mist. As he walked
he heard laughter and the chink of coin and chips behind darkened
windows, and music coming from every chink of wood and stone. But the
diversions were selfish; the day of popular pastimes had not yet come to
San Antonio.

But at length Curly, as he strayed, turned the sharp angle of another
lost street and came upon a rollicking band of stockmen from the outlying
ranches celebrating in the open in front of an ancient wooden hotel. One
great roisterer from the sheep country who had just instigated a move-
ment toward the bar, swept Curly in like a stray goat with the rest of his
flock. The princes of kine and wool hailed him as a new zoological dis-
covery, and uproariously strove to preserve him in the diluted alcohol of
their compliments and regards.

An hour afterward Curly staggered from the hotel barroom, dismissed
by his fickle friends, whose interest in him and subsided as quickly as it
had risen. Full— stoked with alcoholic fuel and cargoed with food, the
only question remaining to disturb him was that of shelter and bed.

A drizzling, cold Texas rain had begun to fall— an endless, lazy, un-
intermittent downfall that lowered the spirits of men and raised s^rdiuc-
tant steam from the warm stones of the streets and houses. Thus comes the
"norther" dousing gentle spring and amiable autumn with the chilling
salutes and adieux of coming and departing winter.

Curly followed his nose down the first tortuous street into which his
irresponsible feet conducted him. At the lower end of it, on the bank of
the serpentine stream, he perceived an open gate in a cemented rock wall.
Inside he saw camp fires and a row of low wooden sheds built against
three sides of the enclosing wall. He entered the enclosure. Under the
sheds many horses were champing at their oats and corn. Many wagons
and buckboards stood about with their teams' harness thrown carelessly
upon the shafts and doubletrees. Curly recognized the place as a wagon
yard, such as is provided by merchants for their out-of-town friends and
customers. No one was in sight. No doubt the drivers of those wagons
were scattered about the town "seeing the elephant and hearing the owl."
In their haste to become patrons of the town's dispensaries of mirth and
good cheer the last ones to depart must have left the great wooden gate
swinging open.

Curly had satisfied the hunger of an anaconda and the thirst of a
camel, so he was neither in the mood nor the condition of an explorer. He
zigzagged his way to the first wagon that his eyesight distinguished in the

THE HIGHER ABDICATION 177

semi-darkness under the shed. It was a two-horse wagon with a top of
white canvas. The wagon was half filled with loose piles of wool sacks,
two or three great bundles of gray blankets, and a number of bales, bun-
dles, and boxes. A reasoning eye would have estimated the load at once
as ranch supplies, bound on the morrow for some outlying hacienda. But
to the drowsy intelligence of Curly they represented only warmth and
softness and protection against the cold humidity of the night. After sev-
eral unlucky efforts, at last he conquered gravity so far as to climb over
a wheel and pitch forward upon the best and warmest bed he had fallen
upon in many a day. Then he became instinctively a burrowing animal,
and dug his way like a prairie-dog down among the sacks and blankets,
hiding himself from the cold air as snug and safe as a bear in his den. For
three nights sleep had visited Curly only in broken and shivering doses.
So now, when Morpheus condescended to pay him a call, Curly got such
a strangle hold on the mythological old gentleman that it was a wonder
that any one else in the whole world got a wink of sleep that night.

Six cow-punchers of the Cibolo Ranch were waiting around the door
of the ranch store. Their ponies cropped grass near by, tied in the Texas
fashion — which is not tied at all. Their bridle reins had been dropped to
the earth, which is a more effectual way of securing them (such is the
power of habit and imagination) than you could devise, out of a half-inch
rope and a live-oak tree.

These guardians of the cow lounged about, each with a brown cigarette
paper in his hand, and gently but unceasingly cursed Sam Revell, the
storekeeper. Sam stood in the door, snapping the red elastic bands on his
pink madras shirtsleeves and looking down affectionately at the only pair
of tan shoes within a forty-mile radius. His offence had been serious, and
he was divided between humble apology and admiration for the beauty of
his raiment. He had allowed the ranch stock of "smoking" to become
exhausted.

"I thought sure there was another case of it under the counter, boys,"
he explained. "But it happened to be catterdges,"

"You've sure got a case of happendicitis," said Poky Rodgers, fence
rider of the Largo Verde potrero. "Somebody ought to happen to give you
a knock on the head with the butt end of a quirt. I've rode in nine miles
for some tobacco; and it don't appear natural and seemly that you ought
to be allowed to live."

"The boys was smokin' cut plug and dried mesquite leaves mixed when
I left," sighed Mustang Taylor, horse wrangler of the Three Eljn camp.
"They'll be lookin' for me back by nine. They'll be settin' up, with their
papers ready to roll a whiff of the real thing before bedtime. And I've got
to tell 'em that this pink-eyed, sheep-headed, sulphur-footed, shirt-waisted
son of a calico broncho, Sam Revell, hasn't got no tobacco on hand."

178 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Gregorio Falcon, Mexican vaquero and best thrower o£ the rope on the
Cibolo, pushed his heavy, silver-embroidered straw sombrero back upon
his thicket of jet-black curls and scraped the bottoms of his pockets for a
few crumbs of the precious weed.

"Ah, Don Samuel/' he said, reproachfully, but with his touch of Cas-
tilian manners, "escuse me. Dthey say dthe jackrabbeet and dthe sheep
have the most leetle sesos — how you call dthem — brain-es ? Ah, don't be-
lieve dthat, Don Samuel— escuse me. Ah dthink people w'at don't keep
esmokin' tobacco, dthey — hot you weel escuse me, Don Samuel."

"Now, what's the use of chewin' the rag, boys," said the untroubled
Sam, stooping over to rub the toes of his shoes with a red-and-yellow
handkerchief. "Ranse took the order for some more smokin' to San An-
tone with him Tuesday. Pancho rode Ranse's hoss back yesterday; and
Ranse is goin' to drive the wagon back himself. There wa'n't much of a
load— just some woolsacks and blankets and nails and canned peaches an
a few things we was out of. I look for Ranse to roll in to-day sure. He's a
early starter and a hell-to-split driver, and he ought to be here not far from
sundown."

"What plugs is he drivin'?" asked Mustang Taylor, with a smack of
hope in his tones.

"The buckboard grays," said Sam.

"I'll wait a spell, then," said the wrangler. "Them plugs eat up a trail
like a road-runner swallowin' a whip snake. And you may bust me open
a can of green-gage plums, Sam, while I'm waitin' for somethin' better."

"Open me some yellow clings," ordered Poky Rodgers. "Ill wait, too."

The tobaccoless punchers arranged themselves comfortably on the steps
of the store. Inside Sam chopped open with a hatchet the tops of the cans
of fruit.

The store, a big, white wooden building like a barn, stood fifty yards
from the ranch-house. Beyond it were the horse corrals; and still farther
the wool sheds and the brush-topped shearing pens — for the Rancho Ci-
bolo raised both cattle and sheep. Behind the store, at a little distance,
were the grass-thatched jaccds of the Mexicans who bestowed their alle-
giance upon the Cibolo.

The ranch-house was composed of four large rooms, with plastered
adobe walls, and a two-room wooden ell. A twenty-feet-wide "gallery"
circumvented the structure. It was set in a grove of immense live-oaks and
water-elms near a lake — a long, not very wide, and tremendously deep
lake in which, at nightfall, great gars leaped to the surface and plunged
with the noise of hippopotamuses frolicking at their bath. From the trees
hung garlands and massive pendants of the melancholy gray moss of the
South. Indeed, the Cibolo ranch-house seemed more of the South than of
the West. It looked as if old "Kiowa" Truesdell might have brought it

THE HIGHER ABDICATION 179

with him from the lowlands of Mississippi when he came to Texas with
his rifle in the hollow of his arm in '55.

But, though he did not bring the family mansion, Truesdell did bring
something in the way of a family inheritance that was more lasting than
brick or stone. He brought one end of the Truesdell-Curtis family feud.
And when a Curtis bought the Rancho de los Olmos, sixteen miles from
the Cibolo, there were lively times on the pear flats and in the chaparral
thickets of the Southwest. In those days Truesdell cleaned the brush of
many a wolf and tiger cat and Mexican lion; and one or two Curtises fell
heirs to notches on his rifle stock. Also he buried a brother with a Curtis
bullet in him on the bank of the lake at Cibolo. And then the Kiowa In-
dians made their last raid upon the ranches between the Frio and the Rio
Grande, and Truesdell at the head of his rangers rid the earth of them
to the last brave, earning his sobriquet. Then came prosperity in the form
of waxing herds and broadening lands. And then old age and bitterness,
when he sat, with his great mane of hair as white as the Spanish-dagger
blossoms and his fierce, pale-blue eyes, on the shaded gallery at Cibolo,
growling like the pumas that he had slain. He snapped his fingers at old
age; the bitter taste of life did not come from that. The cup that stuck at
his lips was that his only son Ransom wanted to marry a Curtis, the last
youthful survivor of the other end of the feud.

For a while the only sounds to be heard at the store were the rattling
of the tin spoons and the gurgling intake of the juicy fruits by the cow-
punchers, the stamping of the grazing ponies, and the singing of a doleful
song by Sam as he contentedly brushed his stiff auburn hair for the twen-
tieth time that day before a crinkly mirror.

From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping stretch
of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green, billowing mesquite
flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned with nearly black masses of
short chaparral. Through the mesquite flat wound the ranch road that,
five miles away, flowed into the old government trail to San Antonio. The
sun was so low that the gentlest elevation cast its gray shadow miles into
the green-gold of sunshine.

That evening ears were quicker than eyes.

The Mexican held up a tawny finger to still the scraping of tin against
tin.

"One waggeen," said he, "cross dthe Arroyo Hodo, Ah hear dthe
wheel. Verree rockee place, dthe Hondo."

"You've got good ears, Gregorio," said Mustang Taylor. "I never heard
nothin' but the song-bird in the bush and the zephyr skally-hootin' across
the peaceful dell"

In ten minutes Taylor remarked: "I see the dust of a wagon risin'
right above the fur end of the flat."

l8o BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"You have verree good eyes, senor," said Gregorio smiling.

Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of
the mesquites. In twenty minutes they heard the clatter of horses' hoofs:
in five minutes more the gray plugs dashed out of the thicket, whickering
for oats and drawing the light wagon behind them like a toy.

From the jacals came a cry of: "El Amo! El Amol" Four Mexican
youths raced to unharness the grays. The cow-punchers gave a yell of
greeting and delight.

Ranse Truesdell, driving, threw the reins to the ground and laughed.

"It's under the wagon sheet, boys," he said. "I know what you're wait-
ing for. If Sam lets it run out again we'll use them yellow shoes of his for
a target. There's two cases. Pull 'em out and light up. I know you'll want
a smoke."

After striking dry country Ranse had removed the wagon sheet from
the bows and thrown it over the goods in the wagon. Six pairs of hasty
hands dragged it off and grabbled beneath the sacks and blankets for the
cases of tobacco.

Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode
with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm like
the tongue of a wagon. He caught something harder than a blanket and
pulled out a fearful thing— a shapeless, muddy bunch of leather tied to-
gether with wire and twine. From its ragged end, like the head and claws
of a disturbed turtle, protruded human toes.

"Who-ee!" yelled Long Collins. "Ranse, are you a-packin' around of
corpuses? Here's a— howlin' grasshoppers!"

, Up from his long slumber popped Curly, like some vile worm from its
burrow. He clawed his way out and sat blinking like a disreputable,
drunken owl. His face was as bluish red and puffed and seamed and cross-
lined as the cheapest round steak of the butcher. His eyes were swollen
slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the wildest
thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cleo de M£rode.
The rest of him was scarecrow done to the life.

Ranse jumped down from his seat and looked at his strange cargo with
wide-open eyes.

"Here, you maverick, what are you doing in my wagon? How did you
get in there?"

The punchers gathered around in delight. For the time they had for-
gotten tobacco.

Curly looked around him slowly in every direction. He snarled like
a Scotch terrier through his ragged beard.

"Where is this," he rasped through his parched throat. "It's a damn
farm in an old field. What'd you bring me here for-— say? Did I say I
wanted to come here? What are you Reubs rubberin' at— hey? G'wan or
I'll punch some of your faces."

THE HIGHER ABDICATION l8l

"Drag him out, Collins," said Ranse.

Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his
shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering
from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out a
case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to glow,
bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam.

"How'd you come in my wagon?" repeated Ranse, this time in a voice
that drew a reply.

Curly recognized the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen
and large persons in blue carrying clubs.

"Me?" he growled. "Oh, was you talkin' to me? Why, I was on my
way to the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pajamas. So I
crawled into that wagon in the wagon-yard — see? I never told you to
bring me out to this bloomin' farm — see?"

"What is it, Mustang?" asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to
smoke in his ecstasy. "What do it live on?"

"It's a galliwampus, Poky," said Mustang. "It's the thing that hollers
'williwallo' up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don't know
if it bites."

"No, it ain't, Mustang," volunteered Long Collins. "Them galliwam-
puses has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a hicklesnif-
ter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don't stand so close to it.
It wipes out villages with one stroke of its prehensile tail."

Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their
first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist.

"Well, ain't that a Willie for your whiskers?" he commented. "Where'd
you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin' to make an auditorium for inbreviates
out of the ranch?"

"Say," said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell
blunted. "Any of you kiddin' guys got a drink on you? Have your fun.
Say, I've been hittin' the stuff till I don't know straight up."

He turned to Ranse. "Say, you shanghaied me on your d — d old prairie
schooner — did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I'm goin*
all to little pieces. What's doin'?"

Ranse saw that the tramp's nerves were racking him. He despatched
one of the Mexican boys to the ranch-house for a glass of whisky. Curly
gulped it down; and into his eyes came a brief, grateful glow — as human
as the expression in the eye of a faithful setter dog.

"Thanky, boss," he said, quietly.

"You're thirty miles from a railroad, and forty miles from a saloon,"
said Ranse.

Curly fell back weakly against the steps.

"Since you are here," continued the ranchman, "come along with me.
We can't turn you out on the prairie. A rabbit might tear you to pieces."

182 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

He conducted Curly to a large shed where the ranch vehicles were
kept. There he spread out a canvas cot and brought blankets.

"I don't suppose you can sleep," said Ranse, "since you've been pound-
ing your ear for twenty-four hours. But you can camp here till morning,
ril have Pedro fetch you up some grub."

"Sleep!" said Curly. "I can sleep a week. Say, sport, have you got a cof-
fin nail on you?"

Fifty miles had Ransom Truesdell driven that day. And yet this is what
he did.

Old "Kiowa" Truesdell sat in his great wicker chair reading by the
light of an immense oil lamp. Ranse laid a bundle of newspapers fresh
from town at his elbow.

"Back, Ranse?" said the old man, looking up.

"Son," old "Kiowa" continued, "I've been thinking all day about a cer-
tain matter that we have talked about. I want you to tell me again. I've
lived for you. I've fought wolves and Indians and worse white men to
protect you. You never had any mother that you can remember. I've
taught you to shoot straight, ride hard, and live clean. Later on I've
worked to pile up dollars that'll be yours. You'll be a rich man, Ranse,
when my chunk goes out. I've made you. I've licked you into shape like
a leopard cat licks its cubs. You don't belong to yourself — you've got to
be a Truesdell first. Now, is there to be any more nonsense about this Cur-
tis girl?"

"I'll tell you once more," said Ranse, slowly. "As I am a Truesdell and
as you are my father, I'll never marry a Curtis."

"Good boy," said old "Kiowa." "You'd better go get some supper."

Ranse went to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Pedro, the Mexican
cook, sprang up to bring the food he was keeping warm in the stove.

"Just a cup of coffee, Pedro," he said, and drank it standing. And then:

"There's a tramp on a cot in the wagon-shed. Take him something to
eat. Better make it enough for two."

Ranse walked out toward the jacals. A boy came running.

"Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?"

"Why not, senor? I saw him near the puerta but two hours past. He
bears a drag-rope."

"Get him and saddle him as quick as you can."

"Prontito, senor"

Soon mounted, on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with
his knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his
guitar in the moonlight.

Vaminos shall have a word — Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexi-
:ans, who have a hundred names for the colors of a horse, called him
yruyo. He was a mouse-colored, slate-colored, flea-bitten roan-dun, if you

THE HIGHER ABDICATION 183

can conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail went a line of
black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not laid off as many
miles in the world as he could travel in a day.

Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure
of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow
ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses
of France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal
sky for a lid. In a glade five jack-rabbits leaped and played together like
kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that appeared to have
dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often steered their course
by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de los Olmos.

In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony
Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily.

"I ought to have ridden nearer your home," said Ranse. "But you never
will let me."

Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white
teeth and fearless eyes. No sentimentality there, in spite of the moonlight,
the odor of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse Truesdell, the
lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to meet him.

"How often have I told you, Ranse," she said, "that I am your half-way
girl? Always half-way."

"Well?" said Ranse, with a question in his tones.

"I did," said Yenna, with almost a sigh. "I told him after dinner when
I thought he would be in a good humor. Did you ever wake up a lion,
Ranse, with the mistaken idea that he would be a kitten? He almost tore
the ranch to pieces. It's all up. I love my daddy, Ranse, and I'm afraid—
I'm afraid of him, too. He ordered me to promise that I'd never marry a
Truesdell. I promised. That's all. What luck did you have ?"

"The same," said Ranse, slowly. "I promised him that his son would
never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty
old. I'm sorry, Yenna."

The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the
horn of his saddle.

"I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said ar-
dently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the house
and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbor."

"Good-night," said Ranse. "Ride carefully over them badger holes."

They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in
her saddle and called clearly:

"Don't forget I'm your half-way girl, Ranse."

"Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse vindic-
tively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.

Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own
room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the packet

184 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had gone to
Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it savagely—
as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his shins— as a
drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an envelope fell from
somewhere— probably from where it had lodged in one of the upper
drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.

Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican jacds.

"Tia Juana," he said, "I would like to talk with you awhile."

An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled,
rose from a stool.

"Sit down/' said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in
the jacal. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" he asked, speaking Spanish.

"Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?" an-
swered the old woman wonderingly.

"Tia Juana, who am I?" he repeated, with his stern eyes looking into
hers.

A frightened look came in the old woman's face. She fumbled with her

black shawl.

"Who am I, Tia Juana ? " said Ranse once more.

"Thirty-two years I have lived on the Rancho Cibolo," said Tia Juana.
"I thought to be buried under the coma mott beyond the garden before
these things should be known. Close the door, Don Ransom, and I will
speak. I see in your face that you know."

An hour Ranse spent behind Tia Juana's closed door. As he was on his
way back to the house Curly called to him from the wagon-shed.

The tramp sat on his cot, swinging his feet and smoking.

"Say, sport," he grumbled. "This is no way to treat a man after kid-
nappin' him. I went up to the store and borrowed a razor from that fresh
guy and had a shave. But that ain't all a man needs. Say— can't you loosen
up for about three fingers more of that booze? I never asked you to bring
me to your d — d farm."

"Stand up out here in the light," said Ranse, looking at him closely.

Curly got up sullenly and took a step or two.

His face, now shaven smooth, seemed transformed. His hair had been
combed, and it fell back from the right side of his forehead with a pe-
culiar wave. The moonlight charitably softened the ravages of drink; and
his aquiline, well-shaped nose and small, square-cleft chin almost gave
distinction to his looks.

Ranse sat on the foot of the cot and looked at him curiously.

"Where did you come from — have you got any home or folks any-
where?"

"Me? Why, I'm a dook," said Curly. "I'm Sir Reginald—oh, cheese it.
No; I don't know anything about my ancestors. I've been a tramp ever

THE HIGHER ABDICATION 185

since I can remember. Say, old pal, are you going to set 'em up again to-
night or not?"

"You answer my questions and maybe I will. How did you come to be
a tramp?"

"Me," answered Curly. "Why, I adopted that profession when I was
an infant. Case of had to. First thing I can remember, I belonged to a big,
lazy hobo called Beefsteak Charley. He sent me around to houses to beg.
I wasn't hardly big enough to reach the latch of a gate."

"Did he ever tell you how he got you?" asked Ranse.

"Once when he was sober he said he bought me for an old six-shooter
and six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what's
the diflf? That's all I know."

"All right," said Ranse. "I reckon you're a maverick for certain. I'm
going to put the Rancho Cibolo brand on you. I'll start you to work in one
of the camps to-morrow."

"Work!" sniffed Curly, disdainfully. "What do you take me for? Do
you think I'd chase cows, and hop-skip-and-jump around after crazy sheep
like that pink-and-yellow guy at the store says these Reubs do ? Forget it."

"Oh, you'll like it when you get used to it," said Ranse. "Yes. I'll send
you up one more drink by Pedro. I think you'll make a first-class cow-
puncher before I get through with you."

"Me?" said Curly. "I pity the cows you set me to chaperon. They can
go chase themselves. Don't forget my nightcap, please, boss."

Ranse paid a visit to the store before going to the house. Sam Revell
was taking off his tan shoes regretfully and preparing for bed.

"Any of the boys from the San Gabriel camp riding in early in the
morning ? " asked Ranse.

"Long Collins," said Sam, briefly. "For the mail."

"Tell him," said Ranse, "to take that tramp out to camp with him and
keep him till I get there."

Curly was sitting on his blankets in the San Gabriel camp cursing tal-
entedly when Ranse Truesdell rode up and dismounted on the next after-
noon. The cow-punchers were ignoring the stray. He was grimy with
dust and black dirt. His clothes were making their last stand in favor of
the conventions.

Ranse went up to Buck Rabb, the camp boss, and spoke briefly.

"He's a plum buzzard," said Buck. "He won't work, and he's the low-
downest passel of inhumanity I ever see. I didn't know what you wanted
done with him, Ranse, so I just let him set. That seems to suit him. He's
been condemned to death by the boys a dozen times, but I told 'em maybe
you was savin' him for torture."

Ranse took off his coat.

"I've got a hard job before me, Buck, I reckon, but it has to be done.

l86 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

I've got to make a man out of that thing. That's what I've come to camp
for."

He went up to Curly.

"Brother," he said, "don't you think if you had a bath it would allow
you to take a seat in the company of your fellow-man with less injustice to
the atmosphere?"

"Run away, farmer," said Curly, sardonically. "Willie will send for
nursey when he feels like having his tub."

The charco, or water hole, was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of
Curly 's ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink. Then
with the strength and sleight of a hammer-thrower he hurled the offend-
ing member of society far into the lake.

Curly crawled out and up the bank spluttering like a porpoise.

Ranse met him with a piece of soap and a coarse towel in his hands.
"Go to the other end of the lake and use this," he said. "Buck will give
you some dry clothes at the wagon."

The tramp obeyed without protest. By the time supper was ready he
had returned to camp. He was hardly to be recognized in his new blue
shirt and brown duck clothes. Ranse observed him out of the corner of
his eye.

"Lordy, I hope he ain't a coward," he was saying to himself. "I hope he
won't turn out to be a coward."

His doubts were soon allayed. Curly walked straight to where he stood.
His light-blue eyes were blazing.

"Now I'm clean," he said, meaningly, "maybe you'll talk to me. Think
you've got a picnic here, do you? You clodhoppers think you can run
over a man because you know he can't get away. All right. Now, what do
you think of that?"

Curly planted a stinging slap against Ranse's left cheek. The print of
his hand stood out a dull red against the tan.

Ranse smiled happily.

The cow-punchers talk to this day of the battle that followed.

Somewhere in his restless tour of the cities Curly had acquired the art
of self-defence. The ranchman was equipped only with the splendid
strength and equilibrium of perfect health and the endurance conferred
by decent living. The two attributes nearly matched. There were no
formal rounds. At last the fibre of the clean liver prevailed. The last time
Curly went down from one of the ranchman's awkward but powerful
blows he remained on the grass, but looking up with an unquenched eye.

Ranse went to the water barrel and washed the red from a cut on his
chin in the stream from the faucet.

On his face was a grin of satisfaction.

Much benefit might accrue to educators and moralists if they could
know the details of the curriculum of reclamation through which Ranse

THE HIGHER ABDICATION 187

put his waif during the month that he spent in the San Gabriel camp.
The ranchman had no fine theories to work out — perhaps his whole
stock of pedagogy embraced only a knowledge of horse-breaking and a
belief in heredity.

The cow-punchers saw that their boss was trying to make a man out of
the strange animal that he had sent among them; and they tacitly organ-
ized themselves into a faculty of assistants. But their system was their own.

Curly's first lesson stuck. He became on friendly and then on intimate
terms with soap and water. And the thing that pleased Ranse most was
that his "subject" held his ground at each successive higher step. But the
steps were sometimes far apart.

Once he got at the quart bottle of whisky kept sacredly in the grub
tent for rattlesnake bites, and spent sixteen hours on the grass, magnifi-
cently drunk. But when he staggered to his feet his first move was to find
his soap and towel and start for the charco. And once, when a treat came
from the ranch in the form of a basket of fresh tomatoes and young on-
ions, Curly devoured the entire consignment before the punchers reached
the camp at supper time.

And then the punchers punished him in their own way. For three days
they did not speak to him, except to reply to his own questions or remarks.
And they spoke with absolute and unfailing politeness. They played tricks
on one another; they pounded one another hurtfully and affectionately;
they heaped upon one another's heads friendly curses and obloquy; but
they were polite to Curly. He saw it, and it stung him as much as Ranse
hoped it would.

Then came a night that brought a cold, wet norther. Wilson, the
youngest of the outfit, had lain in camp two days, ill with a fever. When
Joe got up at daylight to begin breakfast he found Curly sitting asleep
against a wheel of the grub wagon with only a saddle blanket around
him, while Curly's blankets were stretched over Wilson to protect him
from the rain and wind.

Three nights after that Curly rolled himself in his blanket and went
to sleep. Then the other punchers rose up softly and began to make prep-
arations. Ranse saw Long Collins tie a rope to the horn of a saddle.
Others were getting out their six-shooters.

"Boys," said Ranse, "I'm much obliged. I was hoping you would. But
I didn't like to ask."

Half a dozen six-shooters began to pop — awful yells rent the air— Long
Collins galloped wildly across Curley's bed, dragging the saddle after him.
That was merely their 'way of gently awaking their victim. Then they
hazed him for an hour, carefully and ridiculously, after the code of cow
camps. Whenever he uttered protest they held him stretched over a roll
of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather leggins.

And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was re-

l88 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

ceiving the punchers' accolade. Nevermore would they be polite to him.
But he would be their "pardner" and stirrup-brother, foot to foot.

When the fooling was ended all hands made a raid on Joe's big coffee-
pot by the fire for a Java nightcap. Ranse watched the new knight care-
fully to see if he understood and was worthy. Curly limped with his cup
of coffee to a log and sat upon it. Long Collins followed and sat by his
side. Buck Rabb went and sat at the other. Curly — grinned.

And then Ranse furnished Curly with mounts and saddle and equip-
ment, and turned him over to Buck Rabb, instructing him to finish the
job.

Three weeks later Ranse rode from the ranch into Rabb's camp, which
was then in Snake Valley. The boys were saddling for the day's ride. He
sought out Long Collins among them.

"How about that bronco?" he asked.

Long Collins grinned.

"Reach out your hand, Ranse Truesdell," he said, "and you'll touch
him. And you can shake his'n, too, if you like, for he's plumb white and
there's none better in no camp."

Ranse looked again at the clear-faced, bronzed, smiling cow-puncher
who stood at Collins 's side. Could that be Curly? He held out his hand,
and Curly grasped it with the muscles of a bronco-buster.

"I want you at the ranch," said Ranse.

"All right, sport," said Curly, heartily. "But I want to come back again.
Say, pal, this is a dandy farm. And I don't want any better fun than
hustlin' cows with this bunch of guys. They're all to the merry merry."

At the Cibolo ranch-house they dismounted. Ranse bade Curly wait at
the door of the living room. He walked inside. Old "Kiowa" Truesdell
was reading at a table.

"Good-morning, Mr. Truesdell," said Ranse

The old man turned his white head quickly.

"How is this?" he began. "Why do you call me 'Mr, '?"

When he looked at Ranse's face he stopped, and the hand that held
his newspaper shook slightly.

"Boy," he said slowly, "how did you find it out?"

"It's all right," said Ranse, with a smile. "I made Tia Juana tell me. It
was kind of by accident, but it's all right."

"You've been like a son to me," said old "Kiowa," trembling.

"Tia Juana told me all about it," said Ranse. "She told me how you
adopted me when I was knee-high to a puddle duck out of a wagon train
of prospectors that was bound West. And she told me how the kid— your
own kid, you know — got lost or was run away with. And she said it was
the same day that the sheep-shearers got on a bender and left the ranch."

"Our boy strayed from the house when he was two years old," said
the old man. "And then along came these emigrant wagons with a young-

CUPID A. LA CAUTE 189

ster they didn't want; and we took you. I never intended you to know,
Ranse. We never heard of our boy again."

"He's right outside, unless I'm mighty mistaken," said Ranse, opening
the door and beckoning.

Curly walked in.

No one could have doubted. The old man and the young had the same
sweep o£ hair, the same nose, chin, line of face, and prominent light-blue
eyes.

Old "Kiowa" rose eagerly.

Curly looked about the room curiously. A puzzled expression came
over his face. He pointed to the wall opposite.

"Where's the tick-tock?" he asked, absentrnindedly.

"The clock," cried old "Kiowa" loudly. "The eight-day clock used to
stand there. Why "

He turned to Ranse, but Ranse was not there.

Already a hundred yards away, Vaminos, the good flea-bitten dun, was
bearing him eastward like a racer through dust and chaparral towards the
Rancho de los Olmos.

CUPID A LA CARTE

"The dispositions of woman," said Jeff Peters, after various opinions on
the subject had been advanced, "run, regular, to diversions. What a
woman wants is what you're out of. She wants more of a thing when it's
scarce. She likes to have souvenirs of things she never heard of. A one-
sided view of objects is disjointing to the female composition.

" Tis a misfortune of mine, begotten by nature and travel," continued
Jeff, looking thoughtfully between his elevated feet at the grocery stove,
"to look deeper into some subjects than most people do. I've breathed
gasoline smoke. talking to street crowds in nearly every town in the United
States. I've held 'em spellbound with music, oratory, sleight of hand, and
prevarications, while I've sold 'em jewelry, medicine, soap, hair tonic, and
junk of other nominations. And during my travels, as a matter of recrea-
tion and expiation, I've taken cognizance some of women. It takes a man
a lifetime to find out about one particular woman; but if he puts in, say,
ten years, industrious and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments
of the sex. One lesson I picked up was when I was working the West with
a line of Brazilian diamonds and a patent fire kindler just after my trip
from Savannah down through the cotton belt with Dalby's Anti-explosive
Lamp Oil Powder. 'Twas when the Oklahoma country was in first bloom.
Guthrie was rising in the middle of it like a lump o£ self-raising dough.
It was a boom town of the regular kind — you stood in line to get a chance

190 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

to wash your face; if you ate over ten minutes you had a lodging hill
added on; if you slept on a plank at night they charged it to you as board
the next morning.

"By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering
choice places wherein to feed. So I looked around and found a proposition
that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent just opened up by
an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the boom. They had knocked
together a box house, where they lived and did the cooking, and served the
meals in a tent pitched against the side. That tent was joyful with placards
on it calculated to redeem the world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of
boarding houses and pick-me-up hotels. 'Try Mother's Home-Made Bis-
cuits/ 'What's the Matter with Our Apple Dumplings and Hard Sauce?'
'Hot Cakes and Maple Syrup Like You Ate When a Boy/ 'Our Fried
Chicken Never Was Heard to Crow' — there was literature doomed to
please the digestions of man! I said to myself that mother's wandering
boy should munch there that night. And so it came to pass. And there is
where I contracted my case of Mame Dugan.

"Old Man Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent
his time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty
memorializing the great corn-crop failure of '86. Ma Dugan did the cook-
ing, and Mame waited on table.

"As soon as I saw Mame I knew there was a mistake in the census
reports. There wasn't but one girl in the United States. When you come
to specifications it isn't easy. She was about the size of an angel, and she
had eyes, and ways about her. When you come to the kind of a girl she
was, you'll find a belt of 'em reaching from the Brooklyn Bridge west as
far as the courthouse in Council Bluffs, la. They earn their own living in
stores, restaurants, factories, and offices. They're descended straight from
Eve, and they're the crowd that's got woman's rights, and if a man wants
to dispute it he's in line to get one of them against his jaw. They're
chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look life
straight in the eye. They've met man face to face, and discovered that he's
a poor creature. They've dropped to it that the reports in the Seaside
Library about his being a fairy prince lack confirmation.

"Mame was that sort. She was full of life and fun, and breezy; she
passed the repartee with the boarders quick as a wink; you'd have smoth-
ered laughing. I am disinclined to make excavations into the insides of a
personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the diversions and dis-
crepancies of the indisposition known as love should be as private a
sentiment as a toothbrush* 'Tis my opinion that the biographies of the
heart should be confined with the historical romances of the liver to the ,
advertising pages of the magazines. So, you'll excuse the lack of an item-
ized bill of my feelings toward Mame.

"Pretty soon I got a regular habit of dropping into the tent to eat at

CUPID A LA CARTE K)I

irregular times when there wasn't so many around. Mame would sail in
with a smile, in a black dress and white apron, and say: 'Hello, Jeff — why
don't you come at mealtime. Want to see how much trouble you can be,
of course. Friedchickenbeefsteakporkchopshamandeggspotpie'-— and so
on. She called me Jeff, but there was no significations attached. Designa-
tions was all she meant. The front names of any of us she used as they
came to hand. I'd eat about two meals before I left, and string 'em out like
a society spread where they changed plates and wives, and josh one an-
other festively between bites. Mame stood for it, pleasant, for it wasn't up
to her to take any canvas off the tent by declining dollars just because
they were chipped in after meal times.

"It wasn't long until there was another fellow named Ed Collier got
the between-meals affliction, and him and me put in bridges between
breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper, that made a three-ringed
circus of that tent, and Mame's turn as waiter a continuous performance.
That Collier man was saturated with designs and contrivings. He was in
well-boring or insurance or claim-jumping or something — I've forgotten
which. He was a man well lubricated with gentility and his words were
such as recommended you to his point of view. So Collier and me infested
the grub tent with care and activity. Mame was level full of impartiality.
'Twas like a casino hand the way she dealt out her favors — one to Collier
and one to me and one to the board and not a card up her sleeve.

"Me and Collier naturally got acquainted, and gravitated together some
on the outside. Divested of his stratagems, he seemed to be a pleasant
chap, full of an amiable sort of hostility.

" 'I notice you have an affinity for grubbing in the banquet hall after
the guests have fled,' says I to him one day, to draw his conclusions.

"Well, yes,' says Collier, reflecting; 'the tumult of a crowded board
seems to harass my sensitive nerves.'

"'It exasperates mine some, too,' says I, 'Nice little girl, don't you
think?'

" 'I see,' says Collier, laughing. 'Well, now that you mention it, I have
noticed that she doesri't seem to displease the optic nerve.*

" 'She's a joy to mine,' says I, 'and I'm going after her. Notice is hereby
served,'

" Til be as candid as you,' admits Collier, 'and if the drug stbres don't
run out of pepsin I'll give you a run for your money that'll leave you a
dyspeptic at the wind-up.'

"So Collier and me begins the race; the grub department lays in new
supplies; Mame waits on us, jolly and kind and agreeable and it looks
like an even break, with Cupid and the cook working overtime in Dugan's
restaurant.

" Twas one night in September when I got Mame to take a walk after
supper when the things "were all cleared away. We strolled out a distance

192 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

and sat on a pile of lumber at the edge of town. Such opportunities was
seldom, so I spoke my piece, explaining how the Brazilian diamonds and
the fire kindler were laying up sufficient treasure to guarantee the happi-
ness of two, and that both of 'm together couldn't equal the light from
somebody's eyes, and that the name of Dugan should be changed to
Peters, or reasons why not would be in order.

"Mame didn't say anything right away. Directly she gave a kind of
shudder, and I began to learn something.

" 'Jeff,' she says. Tm sorry you spoke. I like you as well as any of them,
but there isn't the man in the world I'd ever marry, and there never will
be. Do you know what a man is in my eye? He's a tomb. He's a sarcopha-
gus for the interment of Beefsteakporkchopsliver'nbaconhamandeggs.
He's that and nothing more. For two years I've watched men eat, eat, eat,
until they represent nothing on earth to me but ruminant bipeds. They're
absolutely nothing but something that goes in front of a knife and fork
and plate at the table. They're fixed that way in my mind and memory.
I've tried to overcome it, but I can't. I've heard girls rave about their
sweethearts, but I never could understand it. A man and a sausage
grinder and a pantry awake in me exactly the same sentiments. I went
to a matinee once to see an actor the girls were crazy about. I got inter-
ested enough to wonder whether he liked his steak rare, medium, or well
done, and his eggs over or straight up. That was all. No, Jeff; I'll marry
no man and see him sit at the breakfast table and eat and come back to
dinner and eat, and happen in again at supper to eat, eat, eat.'

" 'But, Mame,' says I, 'it'll wear off. You've had too much of it. You'll
marry some time, of course. Men don't eat always.'

" 'As far as my observation goes, they do. No, I'll tell you what I'm go-
ing to do.' Mame turns, suddenly to animation and bright eyes. There's a
girl named Susie Foster in Terre Haute, a chum of mine. She waits in
the railroad eating house there. I worked two years in a restaurant in that
town. Susie has it worse than I do, because the men who eat at railroad
stations gobble. They try to flirt and gobble at the same time. Whew!
Susie and I have it all planned out. We're saving our money, and when
we get enough we're going to buy a little cottage and five acres we know
of, and live together, and grow violets for the Eastern market. A man
better not bring his appetite within a mile of that ranch.'

" 'Don't girls ever ' I commenced, but Mame heads me off sharp.

" 'No, they don't; They nibble a little bit sometimes; that's all.'

" 'I thought the confect '

" Tor goodness' sake, change the subject,' says Mame.

"As I said before, that experience put me wise that the feminine ar-
rangement ever struggles after deceptions and illusions. Take England —
beef made her; wieners elevated Germany; Uncle Sam owes his greatness
to fried chicken and pie, but the young ladies of the Shetalkyou schools,

CUPIDALACARTE 193

they'll never believe it. Shakespeare, they allow, and Rubinstein, and the
Rough Riders is what did the trick.

" 'Twas a situation calculated to disturb. I couldn't bear to give up
Mame; and yet it pained me to think of abandoning the practice of eating.
I had acquired the habit too early. For twenty-seven years I had been
blindly rushing upon my fate, yielding to the insidious lures of that deadly
monster, food. It was too late. I was a ruminant biped for keeps. It was
lobster salad to a doughnut that my life was going to be blighted by it.

"I continued to board at the Dugan tent, hoping that Mame would re-
lent. I had sufficient faith in true love to believe that since it has often
outlived the absence of a square meal it might, in time, overcome the
presence of one. I went on ministering to my fatal vice, although I felt
that each time I shoved a potato into my mouth in Mame's presence I
might be burying my fondest hopes.

"I think Collier must have spoken to Mame and got the same answer,
for one day he orders a cup of coffee and a cracker, and sits nibbling the
corner of it like a girl in the parlor, that's filled up in the kitchen, previ-
ous, on cold roast and fried cabbage. I caught on and did the same, and
maybe we thought we'd made a hit! The next day we tried it again, and
out comes Old Man Dugan fetching in his hands the fairy viands.

" 'Kinder off yer feed, ain't ye, gents ? ' he asks, fatherly and sorne sar-
donic. 'Thought I'd spell Mame a bit, seein' the work was light, and my
rheumatiz can stand the strain.'

"So back me and Collier had to drop to the heavy grub again. I noticed
about that time that I was seized by a most uncommon and devastating
appetite. I ate until Mame must have hated to see me darken the door.
Afterward I found out that I had been made the victim of the first dark
and irreligious trick played on me by Ed Collier. Him and me had been
taking drinks together uptown regular trying to drown our thirst for food.
That man had bribed about ten bartenders to always put a big slug of
Appletree's Anaconda Appetite Bitters in every one of my drinks. But
the last trick he played me was hardest to forget.

"One day Collier failed to show up at the tent. A man told me he left
town that morning. My only rival now was the bill of fare. A few days
before he left Collier had presented me with a two-gallon jug of fine
whisky which he said a cousin had sent him from Kentucky. I now have
reason to believe that it contained Appletree's Anaconda Appetite Bitters
almost exclusively. I continued to devour tons of provisions. In Mame's
eyes I remained a mere biped, more ruminant than ever.

"About a week after Collier pulled his freight there came a kind of
side-show to town, and hoisted a tent near the railroad. I judged it was a
sort of fake museum and curiosity business. I called to see Mame one
night, and Ma Dugan said she and Thomas, her younger brother, had
gone to the show. That same thing happened for three nights that week.

194 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Saturday night I caught her on the way coming back, and got to sit on
the steps a while and talk to her. I noticed she looked different. Her eyes
were softer, and shiny like. Instead of a Mame Dugan to fly from the
voracity of man and raise violets, she seemed to be a Mame more in line
as God intended her, approachable, and suited to bask in the light of the
Brazilians and the Kindler.

" Tou seem to be right smart inveigled,' says I, 'with the Unparalleled
Exhibition of the World's Living Curiosities and Wonders.'

" It's a change/ says Mame.

" 'You'll need another/ says I, 'if you keep on going every night/

" 'Don't be cross Jeff/ says she; 'it takes my mind off business.'

" 'Don't the curiosities eat?' I ask.

" 'Not all of them. Some of them are wax.'

" 'Look out, then, that you don't get stuck/ says I, kind of flip and
foolish.

"Mame blushed. I didn't know what to think about her. My hopes
raised some that perhaps my attentions had palliated man's awful crime
of visibly introducing nourishment into his system. She talked some
about the stars, referring to them with respect and politeness, and I
drivelled a quantity about united hearts, homes made bright by true affec-
tion, and the Kindler. Mame listened without scorn and I says to myself,
'Jeff, old man, you're removing the hoodoo that has clung to the con-
sumer of victuals; you're setting your heel upon the serpent that lurks in
the gravy bowl.'

"Monday night I drop around. Mame is at the Unparalleled Exhibition
with Thomas.

" 'Now, may the curse of the forty-one seven-sided sea cooks/ says I,
'and the bad luck of the nine impenitent grasshoppers rest upon this self-
same sideshow at once and forever. Amen. I'll go to see it myself to-
morrow night and investigate its baleful charm. Shall man that was
made to inherit the earth be bereft of his sweetheart first by a knife and
fork and then by a ten-cent circus?'

'The next night before starting out for the exhibition tent I inquire
and find out that Mame is not at home. She is not at the circus with
Thomas this time, for Thomas waylays me in the grass outside of the
grub tent with a scheme of his own before I had time to eat supper.

"What'll you give me, Jeff/ says he, 'if I tell you something?'

" 'The value of it, son/ I says.

" 'Sis is stuck on a freak/ says Thomas, 'one of the side-show freaks. I
don't like him. She does. I overheard 'em talking. Thought maybe you'd
like to know. Say, Jeff, does it put you wise two dollars' worth? There's
a target rifle up town that '

'I frisked my pockets and commenced to dribble "a stream of halves
and quarters into Thomas's hat. The information was of the pile-driver

CUPID A LA CARTE 195

system of news, and it telescoped my intellects for a while. While I was
leaking small change and smiling foolish on the outside, and suffering
disturbances internally, I was saying, idiotically and pleasantly:

"Thank you, Thomas— thank you— er— a freak, you said, Thomas.
Now, could you make out the monstrosity's entitlements a little clearer if
you please, Thomas?'

" This is the fellow,' says Thomas, pulling out a yellow handbill from
his pocket and shoving it under my nose. 'He's the Champion Faster of
the Universe. I guess that's why Sis got soft on him. He don't eat nothing.
He's going to fast forty-nine days. This is the sixth. That's him.'

"I looked at the name Thomas pointed out — Trofessor Eduardo Col-
lieri' *Ah!' says I, in admiration, 'that's not so bad, Ed Collier. I give you
credit for the trick. But I don't give you the girl until she's Mrs. Freak.'

"I hit the sod in the direction of the show, I came up to the rear of the
tent, and, as I did so, a man wiggled out like a snake from under the
bottom of the canvas, scrambled to his feet, and ran into me like a locoed
bronco. I gathered him by the neck and investigated him by the light of
the stars. It is Professor Eduardo Collieri, in human habiliments, with a
desperate look in one eye and impatience in the other.

" 'Hello, Curiosity,' says I. 'Get still a minute and let's have a look at
your freakship. How do you like being the willopus-wallopus or the bim-
bam from Borneo, or whatever name you are denounced by in the side-
show business?'

" 'Jeff Peters,' says Collier, in a weak voice. Turn me loose, or I'll slug
you one. I'm in the extremest kind of a large hurry. Hands off!'

" Tut, tut, Eddie,' I answers, holding him hard; 'let an old friend gaze
on the exhibition of your curiousness. It's an eminent graft you fell onto,
my son. But don't speak of assaults and battery, because you're not fit.
The best you've got is a lot of nerve and a mighty empty stomach.' And so
it was. The man was as weak as a vegetarian cat.

" Td argue this case with you, Jeff,' says he, regretful in his style, *for
an unlimited number of rounds if I had half an hour to train in and a
slab of beefsteak two feet square to train with. Curse the man, I say, that
invented the art of going foodless. May his soul in eternity be chained up
within two feet of a bottomless pit of red-hot hash. I'm abandoning the
conflict, Jeff; I'm deserting to the enemy. You'll find Miss Dugan inside
contemplating the only living mummy and the informed hog. She's a
fine girl, Jeff. I'd have beat you out if I could have kept up the grubless
habit a little while longer, You'll have to admit that the fasting dodge was
aces-up for a while. I figured it out that way. But, say, Jeff, it's said that
love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement
lacks verification. It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it. I love
that Mame Dugan. I've gone six days without food in order to coincide
with her sentiments. Only one bite did I have. That was when I knocked

196 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

the tattooed man down with a war club and got a sandwich he was gob-
bling. The manager fined me all my salary; but salary wasn't what I was
after. 'Twas that girl. I'd give my life for her, but I'd endanger my im-
mortal soul for a beef stew. Hunger is a horrible thing, Jeff. Love and
business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but
shadows of words when a man's starving!'

"In such language Ed Collier discoursed to me, pathetic. I gathered the
diagnosis that his affections and his digestions had been implicated ^in a
scramble and the commissary had won out. I never disliked Ed Collier. I
searched my internal admonitions of suitable etiquette to see if I could
find a remark of a consoling nature, but there was none convenient.

" Td be glad, now,' says Ed, 'if you'll let me go. I've been hard hit, but
I'll hit the ration supply harder. I'm going to clean out every restaurant
in town. I'm going to wade waist deep in sirloins and swim in ham and
eggs. It's an awful thing, Jeff Peters, for a man to come to this pass— to
give up his girl for something to eat— it's worse than that man Esau, that
swapped his copyright for a partridge— but then, hunger's a fierce thing.
You'll excuse me, now, Jeff, for I smell a pervasion of ham frying in the
distance, and my legs are crying out to stampede in that direction.5

" 'A hearty meal to you, Ed Collier,' I says to him, 'and no hard feelings.
For myself, I am projected to be an unseldom eater, and I have condo-
lence for your predicaments.'

"There was a sudden big whiff of frying ham smell on the breeze; and
the Champion Faster gives a snort and gallops off in the dark toward
fodder.

"I wish some of the cultured outfit that are always advertising the
extenuating circumstances of love and romance had been there to see.
There was Ed Collier, a fine man full of contrivances and flirtations,
abandoning the girl of his heart and ripping out into the contiguous terri-
tory in the pursuit of sordid grub. 'Twas a rebuke to the poets and a slap
at the best-paying element of fiction. An empty stomach is a sure antidote
to an overfull heart.

"I was naturally anxious to know how far Mame was infatuated with
Collier and his stratagems. I went inside the Unparalleled Exhibition, and
there she was. She looked surprised to see me, but unguilty.

" 'It's an elegant evening outside,' says I. 'The coolness is quite nice and
gratifying, and the stars are lined out, first class, up where they belong.
Wouldn't you shake these by-products of the animal kingdom long
enough to take a walk with a common human who never was on a pro-
gramme in his life?'

"Mame gave a sort of sly glance around, and I knew what that meant.

" 'Oh/ says I, (I hate to tell you; but the curiosity that lives on wind has
flew the coop. He just crawled out under the tent. By this time he has
amalgamated himself with half the delicatessen truck in town/

CUPID A LA CARTE 197

" 'You mean Ed Collier?' says Mame.

"'I do,' I answers; 'and a pity it is that he has gone back to crime again.
I met him outside the tent, and he exposed his intentions of devastating
the food crop of the world. 'Tis enormously said when one's ideal descends
from his pedestal to make a seventeen-year locust of himself.'

"Mame looked me straight in the eye until she had corkscrewed my
reflections.

" 'Jdff/ says she, 'it isn't quite like you to talk that way. I don't care to
hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but they don't
look ridiculous to the girl he does 'em for. That was the man in a hun-
dred. He stopped eating just to please me. I'd be hardhearted and ungrate-
ful if I didn't feel kindly toward him. Could you do what he did?'

"'I know,' says I, seeing the point. Tm condemned. I can't help it. The
brand of the consumer is upon my brow, Mrs. Eve settled that business for
me when she made the dicker with the snake. I fell from the fire into
the frying-pan. I guess I'm the Champion Feaster of the Universe.' I
spoke humble, and Mame mollified herself a little.

" 'Ed Collier and I are good friends,' she said, 'the same as me and you.
I gave him the same answer I did you — no marrying for me. I liked to be
with Ed and talk to him. There was something mighty pleasant to me in
the thought that here was a man who never used a knife and fork, and
all for my sake/

" 'Wasn't you in love with him?' I asks, all injudicious. 'Wasn't there a
deal on for you to become Mrs. Curiosity?'

"All of us do it sometimes. All of us get jostled out of the line of
profitable talk now and then. Mame put on that little lemon glace smile
that runs between ice and sugar, and says, much too pleasant: 'You're
short on credentials for asking that question, Mr. Peters. Suppose you do
a forty-nine day fast, just to give you ground to stand on, and then maybe
I'll answer it.'

"So, even after Collier was kidnapped out of the way by the revolt o£
his appetite, my own prospects with Mame didn't seem to be improved.
And then business played out in Guthrie.

"I had stayed too long there. The Brazilians I had sold commenced to
show signs of wear, and the Kindler refused to light up right frequent
on wet mornings. There is always a time, in my business, when the star
of success says, 'Move on to the next town.' I was traveling by wagon at
that time so as not to miss any of the small towns; so I hitched up a few
days later and went down to tell Mame good-bye. I wasn't abandoning
the game; I intended running over to Oklahoma City and work it for a
week or two. Then I was coming back to institute fresh proceedings
against Mame.

"What do I find at the Dugan's but Mame all conspicuous in a blue
traveling dress, with her little trunk at the door. It seems that sister Lottie

ig BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Bell, who is a typewriter in Terre Haute, is going to be married next
Thursday, and Mame is off for a week's visit to be an accomplice at the
ceremony. Mame is waiting for a freight wagon that is going to take her
to Oklahoma, but I condemns the freight wagon with promptness and
scorn, and offers, to deliver the goods myself. Ma Dugan sees no reason
why not, as Mr. Freighter wants pay for the job; so, thirty minutes later
Mame and I pull out in my light spring wagon with white canvas cover,
and head due south.

"That morning was of a praiseworthy sort. The breeze was lively, and
$melled excellent of flowers and grass, and the little cottontail rabbits
entertained themselves with skylarking across the road. My two Ken-
tucky bays went for the horizon until it come sailing in so fast you wanted
to dodge it like a clothesline. Mame was full of talk and rattled on like a
kid about her old home and her school pranks and the things she liked
and the hateful ways of those Johnson girls just across the street, 'way up
in Indiana. Not a word was said about Ed Collier or victuals or such
solemn subjects. About noon Mame looks and finds that the lunch she
had put up in a basket had been left behind. I could have managed quite
a collation, but Mame didn't seem to be grieving over nothing to eat, so I
made no lamentations. It was a sore subject with me, and I ruled proven-
der in all its branches out of my conversation.

"I am minded to touch light on explanations how I came to lose the
way. The road was dim and well grown with grass; and there wa& Marne
by my side confiscating my intellects and attention. The excuses are good
or they are not, as they may appear to you. But I lost it, and at dusk that
afternoon, when we should have been in Oklahoma City, we were see-
sawing along the edge of nowhere in some undiscovered river bottom,
and the rain was falling in large, wet bunches. Down there in the swamps
we saw a little log house on a small knoll of high ground. The bottom
grass and the chaparral and the lonesome timber crowded all around it,
It seemed to be a melancholy little house, and you felt sorry for it 'Twas
that house for the night, the way I reasoned it. I explained to Mame, and
she leaves it to me to decide. She doesn't become galvanic and prosecuting,
as most women would, but she says it's all right; she knows I didn't mean
to do it.

"We found the house was deserted. It had two empty rooms. There was
a little shed in the yard where beasts had once been kept. In a loft of it
was a lot of old hay. I put my horses ia there and gave them some of it,
for which they looked at me sorrowful, expecting apologies. The rest of
the hay I carried into the house by armfuls, with a view to accommoda-
tions. I also brought in the patent Kindler and the Brazilians, neither of
which are guaranteed against the action of water.

"Mame and I sat on the wagon seats on the floor, and I lit a lot of the
Kindler on the hearth, for the night was chilly. If I was any judge, that

CUPIDALACARTE 199

girl enjoyed it. It was a change for her. It gave her a different point of
view. She laughed and talked, and the Kindler made a dim light com-
pared to her eyes. I had a pocketful of cigars, and as far as I was con-
cerned there had never been any fall of man. We were at the same old
stand in the Garden of Eden. Out there somewhere in the rain and the
dark was the river of Zion, and the angel with the flaming sword had
not yet put up the keep-off-the-grass sign. I opened up a gross or two of
the Brazilians and made Mame put them on— rings, brooches, necklaces,
eardrops, bracelets, girdles, and lockets. She flashed and sparkled like a
million-dollar princess until she had pink spots in her cheeks and almost
cried for a looking-glass.

"When it got late I made a fine bunk on the floor for Mame with the
hay and my lap robes and blankets out of the wagon and persuaded her
to lie down. I sat in the other room burning tobacco and listening to the
pouring rain and meditating on the many vicissitudes that come to a man
during the seventy years or so immediately preceding his funeral.

"I must have dozed a little before morning, for my eyes were shut, and
when I opened them it was daylight, and there stood Mame with her hair
all done up neat and correct, and her eyes bright with admiration of ex-
istence.

" 'Gee whiz, Jeff!' she exclaims, 'but I'm hungry. I could eat a '

"I looked up and caught her eye. Her smile went back in and she gave
me a cold look of suspicion. Then I laughed, and laid down on the floor
to laugh easier. It seemed funny to me. By nature and geniality I am a
hearty laugher, and I went the limit. When I came to, Mame was sitting
with her back to me, all contaminated with dignity.

" 'Don't be angry, Mame,' I says, 'for I couldn't help it. It's the funny
way youVe done up your hair. If you could only see it!'

" 'You needn't tell stories, sir/ said Mame, cool and advised. 'My hair
is all right. I know what you were laughing about. Why, Jeff, look out-
side,' she winds up, peeping through a chink between the logs. I opened
the little wooden window and looked out. The entire river bottom was
flooded, and the knob of land on which the house stood was an island in
the middle of a rushing stream of yellow water a hundred yards wide.
And it was still raining hard. All we could do was to stay there till the
dove brought in the olive branch.

"I am bound to admit that conversations and amusements languished
during the day. I was aware that Mame was getting a too prolonged
onesided view of things again, but I had no way to change it. Personally,
I was wrapped up in the desire to eat. I had hallucinations of hash and
visions of ham, and I kept saying to myself all the time, 'What'll you have
to eat Jeff? — what'll you order, now, old man, when the waiter comes?'
I picks out to myself all sorts of favorites from the bill of fare, and imag-
ines them coming. I guess it's that way with all very hungry men. They

200 BOOKII HEART OF THE WEST

can't get their cogitations trained on anything but something to eat. It
shows that the little table with the broken-legged caster and the imitation
Worcester sauce and the napkin covering up the coffee stains is the para-
mount issue, after all, instead of the question of immortality or peace be-
tween nations.

"I sat there, musing along, arguing with myself quite heated as to how
I'd have my steak— with mushrooms or h la Creole. Mame was on the
other seat, pensive, her head leaning on her hand. 'Let the potatoes come
home-fried/ I states in my mind, 'and brown the hash in the pan, with
nine poached eggs on the side.' I felt, careful, in my own pockets to see if
I could find a peanut or a grain or two of popcorn.

"Night came on again with the river still rising and the rain still falling.
I looked at Mame and I noticed that desperate look on her face that a girl
always wear when she passes an ice-cream lair. I knew that poor girl
was hungry— maybe for the first time in her life. There was that anxious
look in her eye that a woman has only when she has missed a meal or
feels her skirt unfastened in the back.

"It was about eleven o'clock or so on the second night when we sat,
gloomy, in our ship-wrecked cabin. I kept jerking my mind away from
the subject of food, but it kept flopping back again before I could fasten
it. I thought of everything good to eat I had ever heard of. I went away
back to my kidhood and remembered the hot biscuit sopped in sorghum
and bacon gravy with partiality and respect. Then I trailed along up the
years, pausing at green apples and salt, flapjacks and maple, lye hominy,
fried chicken Old Virginia style, corn on the cob, spareribs and sweet
potato pie, and wound up with Georgia Brunswick stew, which is the top
notch of good things to eat, because it comprises 'em all.

"They say a drowning man sees a panorama of his whole life pass be-
fore him. Well, when a man's starving he sees the ghost of every meal he
ever ate set out before him, and he invents new dishes that would make
the fortune of a chef. If somebody would collect the last words of men
who starved to death they'd have to sift 'em mighty fine to discover the
sentiment, but they'd compile into a cook book that would sell into the
millions.

"I guess I must have had my conscience pretty well inflicted with culi-
nary mediations, for, without intending to do so, I says, out loud, to the
imaginary waiter, 'Cut it thick and have it rare, with the French fried,
and six, soft-scrambled, on toast.'

"Mame turned her head quick as a wink. Her eyes were sparkling and
she smiled sudden,

"'Medium for me,' she rattles on, 'with the Juliennes, and three,
straight up. Draw one, and brown the wheats, double order to come. Oh,
Jeff, wouldn't it be glorious! And then I'd like to have a half fry, and a
little chicken curried with rice, and a cup custard with ice cream, and '

CUPIDALACARTE 201

"'Go easy/ I interrupts; * where 's the chicken liver pie, and the kidney
saute on toast, and the roast lamb, and '

" 'Oh,' cuts in Mame, all excited, 'with mint sauce, and the turkey salad,
and stuffed olives, and raspberry tarts, and '

" 'Keep it going,' says I. 'Hurry up with the fried squash, and the hot
corn pone with sweet milk, and don't forget the apple dumpling with hard
sauce, and the cross-barred dewberry pie '

"Yes, for ten minutes we kept up that kind of restaurant repartee. We
ranges up and down and backward and forward over the main trunk
lines and the branches of the victual subject, and Mame leads the game,
for she is apprised in the ramifications of grub, and the dishes she nomi-
nates aggravates my yearnings. It seems that there is set up a feeling that
Mame will line up friendly again with food. It seems that she looks upon
the obnoxious science of eating with less contempt than before.

"The next morning we find that the flood has Subsided. I geared up
the bays, and spashed out through the mud, some precarious, until
we found the road again. We were only a few miles wrong, and in two
hours we were in Oklahoma City. The first thing we saw was a big res-
taurant sign, and we piled into there in a hurry. Here I finds myself sit-
ting with Mame at table, with knives and forks and plates between us,
and she not scornful, but smiling with starvation and sweetness.

" 'Twas a new restaurant and well stocked. I designated a list of quota-
tions from the bill of fare that made the waiter look out toward the
wagon to see how many more might be coming.

"There we were, and there was the order being served. 'Twas a ban-
quet for a dozen, but we felt like a dozen. I looked across the table at
Mame and smiled, for I had recollections. Mame was looking at the table
like a boy looks at his first stem-winder. Then she looked at me, straight in
the face, and two big tears came in her eyes. The waiter was gone after
more grub.

"'Jeff,' she says, soft like, 'I've been a foolish girl. I've looked at things
from the wrong side. I never felt this way before. Men get hungry every
day like this, don't they? They're big and strong,, and they do the hard
work of the world, and they don't eat just to spite silly waiter girls in res-
taurants, do they, Jeff? You said once— that is, you asked me— you wanted
me to— well? Jeff, if you still care— I'd be glad and willing to have you
always sitting across the table from me. Now give me something to eat,
quick, please.'

"So, as I've said, a woman needs to change her point of view now and
then. They get tired of the same old sights—the same old dinner table,
washtub, and sewing machine. Give 'em a touch of the various— a little
travel and a little rest, a little tomfoolery along with the tragedies of keep-
ing house, a little petting after the blowing-up, a little upsetting and

202 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

jostling around — and everybody in the game will have chips added to their
stack by the play."

THE CABALLERO S WAY

The Cisco Kid had killed six men in more or less fair scrimmages, had
murdered twice as many (mostly Mexicans), and had winged a larger
number whom he modestly forebore to count. Therefore a woman loved
him.

The Kid was twenty-five, looked twenty; and a careful insurance com-
pany would have estimated the probable time of his demise at, say,
twenty-six. His habitat was anywhere between the Frio and the Rio
Grande. He killed for the love of it— because he was quick-tempered— to
avoid arrest — for his own amusement — any reason that came to his mind
would suffice. He had escaped capture because he could shoot five-sixths
of a second sooner than any sheriff or ranger in the service, and because
he rode a speckled roan horse that knew every cowpath in the mesquite
and pear thickets from San Antonio to Matamoras.

Tonia Perez, the girl who loved the Cisco Kid, was half Carmen, half
Madonna, and the rest — oh, yes, a woman who is half Carmen and half
Madonna can always be something more— the rest, let us say, was hum-
ming-bird. She lived in a grass-roofed jacal near a little Mexican settle-
ment at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio. With her lived a father or
grandfather, a lineal Aztec, somewhat less than a thousand years old, who
herded a hundred goats and lived in a continuous drunken dream from
drinking mescal. Back of the jacal a tremendous forest of bristling pear,
twenty feet high at its worst, crowded almost to its door. It was along the
bewildering maze of this spinous thicket that the speckled roan would
bring the Kid to see his girl. And once, clinging like a lizard to the ridge-
pole, high up under the peaked grass roof, he had heard Tonia, with her
Madonna face and Carmen beauty and humming-bird soul, parley with
the sheriff's posse, denying knowledge of her man in her soft melange of
• Spanish and English.

One day the adjutant-general of the State, who is, ex officio, commander
of the ranger forces, wrote some sarcastic lines to Captain Duval of Com-
pany X, stationed at Laredo, relative to the serene and undisturbed ex-
istence led by murderers and desperadoes in the said captain's territory.

The captain turned the color of brick dust under his tan, and forwarded
the letter, after adding a few comments, per ranger Private Bill Adamson,
to ranger Lieutenant Sandridge, camped at a water hole on the Nueces
with a squad of five men in preservation of law and order.

Lieutenant Sandridge turned a beautiful couleur de rose through his

THE CABALLERO's WAY 203

ordinary strawberry complexion, tucked the letter in his hip pocket, and
chewed off the end of his gamboge moustache.

The next morning he saddled his horse and rode alone to the Mexican
settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, twenty miles away.

Six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet as a deacon, dangerous as a
machine gun, Sandridge moved among the ]acales, patiently seeking news
of the Cisco Kid.

Far more than the law, the Mexicans dreaded the cold and certain
vengeance of the lone rider that the ranger sought. It had been one of
the Kid's pastimes to shoot Mexicans "to see them kick": if he demanded
from them moribund Terpsichorean feats, simply that he might be enter-
tained, what terrible and extreme penalties would be certain to follow
should they anger him! One and all they lounged with upturned palms
and shrugging shoulders, filling the air with "quien sabes" and denials of
the Kid's acquaintance.

But there was a man named Fink who kept a store at the Crossing — a
man of many nationalities, tongues, interests, and ways of thinking.

"No use to ask them Mexicans," he said to Sandridge. "They're afraid
to tell. This hombre they call the Kid — Goodall is his name, ain't it? —
he's been in my store once or twice. I have an idea you might run across
him at — but I guess I don't keer to say, myself. I'm two seconds later in
pulling a gun than I used to be and the difference is worth thinking
about. But this Kid's got a half-Mexican girl at the Crossing that he comes
to see. She lives in that jacal a hundred yards down the arroyo at the edge
of the pear. Maybe she — no, I don't suppose she would, but that jacal
would be a good place to watch, any way ."

Sandridge rode down to the jacal of Perez. The sun was low, and the
broad shade of the great pear thicket already covered the grass-thatched
hut. The goats were enclosed for the night in a brush corral near by. A
few kids walked the top of it, nibbling the chaparral leaves. The old
Mexican lay upon a blanket on the grass, already in a stupor from his
mescal, and dreaming, perhaps, of the nights when he and Pizarro
touched glasses to their New World fortunes — so old his wrinkled face
seemed to proclaim him to be. And in the door of the jacal stood Tonia.
And Lieutenant Sandridge sat in his saddle staring at her like a gannet
agape at a sailorman.

The Cisco Kid was a vain person, as all eminent and successful assassins
are, and his bosom would have been ruffled had he known that at a simple
exchange of glances two persons, in whose minds he had been looming
large, suddenly abandoned (at least for the time) all thought of him.

Never before had Tonia seen such a man as this. He seemed to be made
of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather. He seemed to illu-
minate the shadow of the pear when he smiled, as though the sun were
rising again. The men she had known had been small and dark. Even the

204 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Kid, in spite of his achievements, was a stripling no larger than herself,
with black straight hair and a cold marble face that chilled the noonday.

As for Tonia, though she sends description to the poorhouse, let her
make a millionaire of your fancy. Her blue-black hair, smoothly divided
in the middle and bound close to her head, and her large eyes full of the
Latin melancholy, gave her the Madonna touch. Her motions and air
spoke of the concealed fire and the desire to charm that she inherited
from the gitanas of the Basque province. As for the humming-bird part of
her, that dwelt in her heart; you could not perceive it unless her bright
red skirt and dark blue blouse gave you a symbolic hint of the vagarious
bird.

The newly lighted sun-god asked for a drink of water. Tonia brought
it from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter. Sandridge considered
it necessary to dismount so as to lessen the trouble of her ministrations.

I play no spy; nor do I assume to master the thoughts of any human
heart; but I assert, by the chronicler's right, that before a quarter of an
hour had sped, Sandridge was teaching her how to plait a six-strand raw-
hide stake-rope, and Tonia had explained to him that were it not for her
little English book that the peripatetic padre had given her and the little
crippled chivo, that she fed from a bottle, she would be very, very lonely
indeed.

Which leads to a suspicion that the Kid's fences needed repairing, and
that the adjutant-general's sarcasm had fallen upon unproductive spiL

In his camp by the water hole Lieutenant Sandridge announ<^d and
reiterated his intention of either causing the Cisco Kid to nibble the black
loam of the Frio country prairies or of hailing him before a judge and
jury. That sounded business-like. Twice a week he rode over to the Lone
Wolf Crossing of the Frio, and directed Tonia's slim, slightly lemon-
tinted fingers among the intricacies of the slowly growing lariat. A six-
strand plait is hard to learn and easy to teach.

The ranger knew that he might find the Kid there at any visit. He
kept his armament ready, and had a frequent eye for the pear thicket at
the rear of the jacal. Thus he might bring down the kite and the hum-
ming-bird with one stone.

While the sunny-haired ornithologist was pursuing his studies the
Cisco Kid was also attending to his professional duties. He moodily shot
up a saloon in a small cow village on Quintana Creek, killed the town
marshal (plugging him neatly in the centre of his tin badge), and then
rode away, morose and unsatisfied. No true artist is uplifted by shooting
an aged man carrying an old-style .38 bulldog.

On his way the Kid suddenly experienced the yearning that all men
feel when wrong-doing loses its keen edge of delight. He yearned for
the woman he loved to reassure him that she was his in spite of it. He
wanted her to call his bloodthirstiness bravery and his cruelty devotion.

THE CABALLERO'S WAY 205

He wanted Tonia to bring him water from the red jug under the brush
shelter, and tell him how the chivo was thriving on the bottle.

The Kid turned the speckled roan's head up the ten-mile pear flat that
stretches along the Arroyo Hondo until it ends at the Lone Wolf Crossing
of the Frio. The roam whickered; for he had a sense of locality and di-
rection equal to that of a belt-line street-car horse; and he knew he would
soon be nibbling the rich mesquite grass at the end of a forty-foot stake
rope while Ulysses rested his head in Circe's straw-roofed hut.

More weird and lonesome than the journey of an Amazonian explorer
is the ride of one through a Texas pear flat. With dismal monotony and
startling variety the uncanny and multiform shapes of the cacti lift their
twisted trunks and fat, bristly hands to encumber the way. The demon
plant, appearing to live without soil or rain, seems to taunt the parched
traveler with its lush gray greenness. It warps itself a thousand times
about what look to be open and inviting paths, only to lure the rider into
blind and impassable spine-defended "bottoms of the bag," leaving him to
retreat if he can, with the points of the compass whirling in his head.

To be lost in the pear is to die almost the death of the thief on the cross,
pierced by nails and with grotseque shapes of all the fiends hovering about

But it was not so with the Kid and his mount. Winding, twisting,
circling, tracing the most fantastic and bewildering trail ever picked out,
the good roan lessened the distance to the Lone Wolf Crossing with every
coil and turn that he made.

While they fared the Kid sang. He knew but one tune and he sang it,
as he knew but one code and lived it, and but one girl and loved her. He
was a single-minded man of conventional ideas. He had a voice like a
coyote with bronchitis, but whenever he chose to sing his song he sang it.
It was a conventional song of the camps and trail, running at its beginning
as near as may be to these words:

Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl
Or I'll tell you what I'll do

and so on. The roan was inured to it, and did not mind.

But even the poorest singer will, after a certain time, gain his own
consent to refrain from contributing to the world's noises. So the Kid, by
the time he was within a mile or two of Tonia's jacal, had reluctantly
allowed his spng to die away — not because his vocal performance had be-
come less charming to his own ears, but because his laryngeal muscles
were aweary.

As though he were in a circus ring the speckled roan wheeled and
danced through the labyrinth of pear until at length his rider knew by
certain landmarks that the Lone Wolf Crossing was close at hand. Then,
where the pear was thinner, he caught sight of the grass roof of the jacal
and the hackberry tree on the edge of the arroyo. A few yards farther

206 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

the Kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the prickly openings.
Then he dismounted, dropped the roan's reins, and proceeded on foot,
stooping and silent, like an Indian. The roan, knowing his part, stood still,
making no sound.

The Kid crept noiselessly to the very edge of the pear thicket and rec-
onnoitered between the leaves of a clump of cactus.

Ten yards from his hiding-place, in the shade of the jacal, sat his Tonia
calmly plaiting a raw-hide lariat. So far she might surely escape con-
demnation; women have been known, from time to time, to engage in
more mischievous occupations. But if all must be told, there is to be
added that her head reposed against the broad and comfortable chest of
a tall red-and-yellow man, and that his arm was about her, guiding her
nimble small fingers that required so many lessons at the intricate six-
strand plait.

Sandridge glanced quickly at the dark mass of pear when he heard
a slight squeaking sound that was not altogether unfamiliar. A gun-
scabbard will make that sound when one grasps the handle of a six-shooter
suddenly. But the sound was not repeated; and Tonia's fingers needed
close attention.

And then, in the shadow of death, they began to talk of their love; and
in the still July afternoon every word they uttered reached the ears of
the Kid.

"Remember, then," said Tonia, "you must not come again until I send
for you. Soon he will be here. A vaquero at the tienda said to-day he saw
him on the Guadalupe three days ago. When he is that near he always
comes. If he comes and finds you here he will kill you. So, for my sake,
you must come no more until I send you the word."

"All right," said the ranger. "And then what?"

"And then," said the girl, "you must bring your men here and kill him.
If not, he will kill you."

"He ain't a man to surrender, that's sure," said Sandridge. "It's kill or
be killed for the officer that goes up against Mr. Cisco Kid."

"He must die," said the girl. "Otherwise there will not be any peace
in the world for thee and me. He has killed many. Let him so die. Bring
your men, and give him no chance to escape."

"You used to think right much of him," said Sandridge.

Tonia dropped the lariat, twisted herself around, and curved a lemon-
tinted arm over the ranger's shoulder.

"But then," she murmured in liquid Spanish, "I had not beheld thee,
thou great, red mountain of a man! And thou art kind and good, as well
as strong. Could one choose him, knowing thee? Let him die; for then I
will not be filled with fear by day and night lest he hurt thee or me."

"How can I know when he comes?" asked Sandridge.

"When he comes," said Tonia, "he remains two days, sometimes three.

THE CABALLERO'S WAY 207

Gregorio, the small son of Old Luisa., the lavandera, has a swift pony. I will
write a letter to thee and send it by him, saying how it will be best to
come upon him. By Gregorio will the letter come. And bring many men
with thee, and have, much care, oh, dear red one, for the rattlesnake is
not quicker to strike than is 'El Chivatoj as they call him, to send a ball
from his pistola"

"The Kid's handy with his gun, sure enough," admitted Sandridge,
"but when I come for him I shall come alone. I'll get him by myself or
not at all. The Cap wrote one or two things to me that make me want to
do the trick without any help. You let me know when Mr. Kid arrives,
and I'll do the rest."

"I will send you the message by the boy Gregorio," said the girl. "I
knew you were braver than that small slayer of men who never smiles.
How could I ever have thought I cared for him?"

It was time for the ranger to ride back to his camp on the water hole.
Before he mounted his horse he raised the slight form of Tonia with one
arm high from the earth for a parting salute. The drowsy stillness of the
torpid summer air still lay thick upon the dreaming afternoon. The smoke
from the fire in the jacal, where the frijoles blubbered in the iron pot, rose
straight as a plumb-line above the clay-daubed chimney. No sound or
movement disturbed the serenity of the dense pear thicket ten yards away.

When the form of Sandridge had disappeared, loping his big dun down
the steep banks of the Frio crossing, the Kid crept back to his own horse,
mounted him, and rode back along the tortuous trail he had come.

But not far. He stopped and waited in the silent depths of the pear
until half an hour had passed. And then Tonia heard the high, untrue
notes of his unmusical singing coming nearer and nearer; and she ran
to the edge of the pear to meet him.

The Kid seldom smiled; but he smiled and waved his hat when he
saw her. He dismounted, and his girl sprang into his arms. The Kid
looked at her fondly. His thick black hair clung to his head like a wrin-
kled mat. The meeting brought a slight ripple of some undercurrent of
feeling to his smooth, dark face that was usually as motionless as a clay
mask.

"How's my girl?" he asked, holding her close.

"Sick of waiting so long for you, dear one," she answered. "My eyes
are dim with always gazing into that devil's pincushion, through which
you come. And I can see into it such a little way, too. But you are here,
beloved one, and I will not scold. Que mal muchacho! not to come to see
your alma more often. Go in and rest, and let me water your horse and
stake him with the long rope. There is cool water in the jar for you."

The Kid kissed her affectionately.

"Not if the court knows itself do I let a lady stake my horse for me,"

208 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

said he. "But i£ you'll run in, chica, and throw a pot of coffee together
while I attend to the caballo, I'll be a good deal obliged."

Besides his marksmanship the Kid had another attribute for which
he admired himself greatly. He was muy caballero, as the Mexicans ex-
press it, where the ladies were concerned. For them he had always gentle
words and consideration, He could not have spoken a harsh word to a
woman. He might ruthlessly slay their husbands and brothers, but he
could not have laid the weight of a finger in anger upon a woman.
Wherefore many of that interesting division of humanity who had come
under the spell of his politeness declared their disbelief in the stories
circulated about Mr. Kid. One shouldn't believe everything one heard,
they said. When confronted by their indignant men folk with proof of
the caballero' $ deeds of infamy, they said maybe he had been driven to it,
and that he knew how to treat a lady, anyhow.

Considering this extremely courteous idiosyncrasy of the Kid and the
pride that he took in it, one can perceive that the solution of the problem
that was presented to him by what he saw and heard from his hiding-
place in the pear that afternoon (at least as to one of the actors) must
have been obscured by difficulties. And yet one could not think of the Kid
overlooking little matters of that kind.

At the end of the short twilight they gathered around a supper of
frijoles, goat steaks, canned peaches, and coffee, by the light of a lantern
in the jacal. Afterward, the ancestor, his flock corralled, smoked a cigarette
and became a mummy in a gray blanket. Tonia washed the few dishes
while the Kid dried them with the flour-sacking towel. Her eyes shone*
she chatted volubly of the inconsequent happenings of her small world
since the Kid's last visit; it was as all his other home-comings had been.

Then outside Tonia swung in a grass hammock with her guitar and
sang sad cancioncs de amor.

"Do you love me just the same, old girl?" asked the Kid, hunting for
his cigarette papers.

"Always the same, little one/' said Tonia, her dark eyes lingering upon
him.

"I must go over to Fink's," said the Kid, rising, "for some tobacco. I
thought I had another sack in my coat. I'll be back in a quarter of an
hour."

"Hasten," said Tonia, "and tell me — how long shall I call you my own
this time? Will you be gone again to-morrow, leaving me to grieve, or
will you be longer with your Tonia?"

"Oh, I might stay two or three days this trip," said the Kid, yawning.
Tve been on the dodge for a month, and I'd like to rest up."

He was gone half an hour for his tobacco. When he returned Tonia
was still lying in the hammock.

"It's funny," said the Kid, "how I feel. I feel like there was somebody

THE CABALLERO'S WAY 209

lying behind every bush and tree waiting to shoot me. I never had mully-
grubs like them before. Maybe it's one of them presumptions. I've got half
a notion to light out in the morning before day. The Guadalupe country
is burning up about that old Dutchman I plugged down there."

"You are not afraid — no one could make my brave little one fear."
"Well, I haven't been usually regarded as a jack-rabbit when it comes
to scrapping; but I don't want a posse smoking me out when I'm in your
jacaL Somebody might get hurt that oughtn't to."

"Remain with your Tonia; no one will find you here."

The Kid looked keenly into the shadows up and down the arroyo and
toward the dim lights of the Mexican village.

"I'll see how it looks later on/' was his decision.

At midnight a horseman rode into the ranger's camp, blazing his way
by noisy "halloes" to indicate a pacific mission. Sandridge and one or
two others turned out to investigate the row. The rider announced him-
self to be Domingo Sales, from the Lone Wolf Crossing. He bore a letter
for Senor Sandridge. Old Luisa, the lavandera, had persuaded him to
bring it, he said, her son Gregorio being too ill of a fever to ride.

Sandridge lighted the camp lantern and read the letter. These were its
words :

Dear One: He has come. Hardly had you ridden away when he came
out of the pear. When he first talked he said he would stay three days
or more. Then as it grew later he was like a wolf or a fox, and walked
about without rest, looking and listening. Soon he said he must leave
before daylight when it is dark and stillest. And then he seemed to sus-
pect that I be not true to him. He looked at me so strange that I am
frightened. I swear to him that I love him, his own Tonia. Last of all he
said I must prove to him I am true. He thinks that even now men are
waiting to kill him as he rides from my house. To escape he says he
will dress in my clothes, my red skirt and the blue waist I wear and the
brown mantilla over the head, and thus ride away. But before that he
says that I must put on his clothes, his pantalones and camisa and hat,
and ride away on his horse from the jacal as far as the big road beyond
the crossing and back again. This before he goes, so he can tell if I am
true and if men are hidden to shoot him. It is a terrible thing. An hour
before daybreak this is to be. Come, my dear one, and kill this man and
take me for your Tonia. Do not try to take hold of him alive, but kill
him quickly. Knowing all, you should do that. You must come long be-
fore the time and hide yourself in the little shed near the jacal where the
wagon and saddles are kept. It is dark in there. He will wear my red
skirt and blue waist and brown mantilla. I send you a hundred kisses.
Come surely and shoot quickly and straight.

Thine Own Tonia

210 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

Sandridge quickly explained to his men the official part of the missive.
The rangers protested against his going alone.

"I'll get him easy enough," said the lieutenant. "The girl's got him
trapped. And don't even think he'll get the drop on me."

Sandridge saddled his horse and rode to the Lone Wolf Crossing. He
tied his big dun in a clump of brush on the arroyo, took his Winchester
from his scabbard, and carefully approached the Perez jacal. There was
only the half of a high moon drifted over by ragged, milk-white gulf
clouds.

The wagon-shed was an excellent place for ambush; and the ranger
got inside it safely. In the black shadow of the brush shelter in front of
the jacal he could see a horse tied and hear him impatiently pawing the
hard-trodden earth.

He waited almost an hour before two figures came out of the jacal. One,
in man's clothes, quickly mounted the horse and galloped past the
wagon-shed toward the crossing and village. And then the other figure, in
skirt, waist, and mantilla over its head, stepped out into the faint moon-
light, gazing after the rider. Sandridge thought he would take his chance
then before Tonia rode back. He fancied she might not care to see it.

"Throw up your hands," he ordered, loudly, stepping out of the
wagon-shed with his Winchester at his shoulder.

There was a quick turn of the figure, but no movement to obey, so the
ranger pumped in the bullets — one — two — three — and then twice more;
for you never could be too sure of bringing down the Cisco Kid. There
was no danger of missing at ten paces, even in that half moonlight.

The old ancestor, asleep on his blanket, was awakened by the shots.
Listening further, he heard a great cry from some man in mortal distress
or anguish, and rose up grumbling at the disturbing ways of moderns.

The tall, red ghost of a man burst into the jacal, reaching one hand,
shaking like a tule reed, for the lantern hanging on its nail. The other
spread a letter on the table.

"Look at this letter, Perez," cried the man. "Who wrote it?"

"Ah, Dios! it is Senor Sandridge," mumbled the old man, approach-
ing. "Pues, senor, that letter was written by 'El Chivata' as he is called —
by the man of Tonia. They say he is a bad man; I do not know. While
Tonia slept he wrote the letter and sent it by this old hand of mine to
Domingo Sales to be brought to you. Is there anything wrong in the
letter? I am very old; and I did not know. Valgame Dios! it is a very
foolish world; and there is nothing in the house to drink — nothing to
drink."

Just then all that Sandridge could think of to do was to go outside and
throw himself face downward in the dust by the side of his humming-
bird, of whom not a feather fluttered. He was not a caballero by instinct,
and he could not understand the niceties of revenge.

THE SPHINX APPLE 211

A mile away the rider who had ridden past the wagon-shed struck up
a harsh, untuneful song, the words of which began:

Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl
Or I'll tell you what I'll do

THE SPHINX APPLE,

Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise City,
Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow had
been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level. The re-
mainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping along
the ribs of a bijou range of ragged mountains. Now, when both snow
and night masked its dangers, further travel was not to be thought of,
said Bildad Rose. So he pulled up his four stout horses, and delivered to
his five passengers oral deductions of his wisdom.

Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as
upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his fellow-
passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore, to objur-
gate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their prime factor might
be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a young woman, remained
in the coach.

Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two
rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the upper
fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small house. Upon
this house descended — or rather ascended — Judge Menefee and his co-
horts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They called; they
pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence they waxed
restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers, and invaded the
premises.

The watchers from the coach heard stumblings and shoutings from the
interior of the ravaged house. Before long a light within flickered,
glowed, flamed high and bright and cheerful. Then came running back
through the driving flakes the exuberant explorers. More deeply pitched
than the clarion— even orchestral in volume— the voice of Judge Menefee
proclaimed the succor that lay in apposition with their state of travail The
one room of the house was uninhabited, he said, and bare of furniture;
but it contained a great fireplace; and they had discovered an ample
store of chopped wood in a lean-to at the rear. Housing and warmth
against the shivering night were thus assured. For the placation of Bildad
Rose there was news of a stable, not ruined beyond service, with hay in
a loft, near the house.

212 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"Gentlemen," cried Bildad Rose from his seat, swathed in coats and
robes, "tear me down two panels of that fence, so I can drive in. That
is old man Redruth's shanty. I thought we must be nigh it. They took
him to the foolish house in August."

Cheerfully the four passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The
exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice
from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The
driver and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee opened
the door of the coach, and removed his hat.

"I have to announce, Miss Garland," said he, "the enforced suspension
of our journey. The driver asserts that the risk in traveling the mountain
road by night is too great even to consider. It will be necessary to remain
in the shelter of this house until morning. I beg that you will feel that
there is nothing to fear beyond a temporary inconvenience. I have per-
sonally inspected the house, and find that there are means to provide
against the rigor of the weather, at least. You shall be made as comfort-
able as possible. Permit me to assist you to alight."

To the Judge's side came the passenger whose pursuit in life was the
placing of the Little Goliath windmill. His name was Dun woody; but
that matters not much. In traveling merely from Paradise to Sunrise City
one needs little or no name. Still, one who would seek to divide honors
with Judge Madison L. Menefee deserves a cognominal peg upon which
Fame may hang a wreath. Thus spake, loudly and buoyantly, the aerial
miller:

"Guess you'll have to climb out of the ark, Mrs. McFarland. This
wigwam ain't exactly the Palmer House, but it turns snow, and they
won't search your grip for souvenir spoons when you leave. We've got a
fire going, and we'll fix you up with dry Trilbys and keep the mice away,
anyhow, all right, all right."

One of the two passengers who were struggling in a m£Ue of horses,
harness, snow, and the sarcastic injunctions of Bildad Rose, called loudly
from the whirl of his volunteer duties: "Say, some of you fellows get
Miss Solomon into the house, will you? Whoa, there! you confounded
brute!"

Again must it be gently urged that in traveling from Paradise to Sun-
rise City an accurate name is prodigality. When Judge Menefee — sanc-
tioned to the act by his grey hair and widespread repute — had introduced
himself to the lady passenger, she had, herself, sweetly breathed a name,
in response, that the hearing of the male passengers had variously in-
terpreted. In the not unjealous spirit of rivalry that eventuated, each
clung stubbornly to his own theory. For the lady passenger to have reas-
severated or corrected would have seemed didactic if not unduly solic-
itous of a specific acquaintance. Therefore the lady passenger permitted
herself to be Garlanded and McFarlanded and Solomoned with equal and

THE SPHINX APPLE 213

discreet complacency. It is thirty-five miles from Paradise to Sunrise City.
Compagnon de voyage is name enough, by the gripsack of the Wander-
ing Jew! for so brief a journey.

Soon the little party of wayfarers were happily seated in a cheerful arc
before the roaring fire. The robes, cushions, and removable portions of
the coach had been brought in and put to service. The lady passenger
chose a place near the hearth at one end of the arc. There she graced al-
most a throne that her subjects had prepared. She sat upon cushions and
leaned against an empty box and barrel, robe bespread, which formed a
defence from the invading draughts. She extended her feet, delectably
shod, to the cordial heat. She ungloved her hands, but retained about her
neck her long fur boa. The unstable flames half revealed, while the ward-
ing boa half submerged, her face— a youthful face, altogether feminine,
clearly moulded and calm with beauty's unchallenged confidence. Chiv-
alry and manhood were here vying to please and comfort her. She seemed
to accept their devoirs — not piquantly, as one courted and attended; not
preeningly, as many of her sex unworthily reap their honors; nor yet
stolidly, as the ox receives his hay; but concordantly with nature's own
plan— as the lily ingests the drop of dew foreordained to its refreshment.

Outside the wind roared mightily, the fine snow whizzed through the
cracks, the cold besieged the backs of the immolated six; but the elements
did not lack a champion that night. Judge Menefee was attorney for the
storm. The weather was his client, and he strove by special pleading to
convince his companions in that frigid jury-box that they sojourned in a
bower of roses, beset only by benignant zephyrs. He drew upon a fund of
gaiety, wit, and anecdote, sophistical, but crowned with success. His cheer-
fulness communicated itself irresistibly. Each one hastened to contribute
his quota toward the general optimism. Even the lady passenger was
moved to expression.

"I think it is quite charming," she said, in her slow, crystal tones.

At intervals some one of the passengers would rise and humorously
explore the room. There was little evidence to be collected of its habita-
tion by old man Redruth.

Bildad Rose was called upon vivaciously for the ex-hermit's history.
Now, since the stage-driver's horses were fairly comfortable and his
passengers appeared to be so, peace and comity returned to him.

"The old didapper," began Bildad, somewhat irreverently, "infested
this here house about twenty year. He never allowed nobody to come
nigh him. He'd duck his head inside and slam the door whenever a team
drove along. There was spinning-wheels up in his loft, all right. He used
to buy his groceries and tobacco at Sam Tilly's store, on the Little Muddy.
Last August he went up there dressed in a red bedquilt, and told Sam
he was King Solomon, and that the Queen of Sheba was coming to visit
him. He fetched along all the money he had— a little bag full of silver—

214 BOOKII HEART OF THE WEST

and dropped it in Sam's well. 'She won't come,' says old man Redruth to
Sam, 'if she knows I've got any money.'

"As soon as folks heard he had that sort of a theory about women and
money they know he was crazy; so they sent down and packed him to
the foolish asylum."

"Was there a romance in his life that drove him to a solitary existence?"
asked one of the passengers, a young man who had an Agency.

"No," said Bildad, "not that I ever heard spoke of. Just ordinary trouble.
They say he had had unfortunateness in the way of love derangements
with a young lady when he was young; before he contracted red bedquilts
and had his financial conclusions disqualified. I never heard of no ro-
mance."

"Ah!" exclaimed Judge Menefee, impressively; "a case of unrequited
affection, no doubt."

"No, sir," returned Bildad, "not at all She never married him. Mar-
maduke Muligan, down at Paradise, seen a man once that come from old
Redruth 's town. He said Redruth was a fine young man, but when you
kicked him on the pocket all you could hear jingle was a cuff-fastener
and a bunch of keys. He was engaged to this young lady — Miss Alice —
something was her name; I've forgot. This man said she was the jpnd
of a girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare. Well,
there come to the town a young chap all affluent and easy, and fixed up
with buggies and mining stock and leisure time. Although she was a
staked claim, Miss Alice and the new entry seemed to strike a mutual
kind of a clip. They had calls and coincidences of going to the post office
and such things as sometimes make a girl send back the engagement ring
and other presents — 'a rift within the loot,' the poetry man calls it.

"One day folks seen Redruth and Miss Alice standing talking at the
gate. Then he lifts his hat and walks away, and that was the last anybody
in that town seen of him, as far as this man knew."

"What about the young lady?" asked the young man who had an
Agency.

"Never heard," answered Bildad. "Right there is where my lode of
information turns to an old spavined crowbait, and folds its wings, for
I've pumped it dry."

"A very sad " began Judge Menefee, but his remark was curtailed

by a higher authority.

"What a charming story!" said the lady passenger, in flute-like tones.

A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of the
fire.

The men were seated upon the floor, having slightly mitigated its
inhospitable surface with wraps and stray pieces of boards. The man
who was placing Little Goliath windmills arose and walked about to ease
his cramped muscles.

THE SPHINX APPLE 215

Suddenly a triumphant shout came from him. He hurried back from
a dusky corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was
an apple — a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In a
paper bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could have
been no relic of the love-wrecked Redruth, for its glorious soundness
repudiated the theory that it had laid on that musty shelf since August.
No doubt some recent bivouackers, lunching in the deserted house, had
left it there.

Dunwoody — again his exploits demand for him the honors of nomen-
clature—flaunted his apple in the faces of his f ellow-marooners. "See what
I found, Mrs. McFarland!" he cried, vaingloriously. He held the apple
high up in the light of the fire, where it glowed a still richer red. The
lady passenger smiled calmly — always calmly.

"What a charming apple!" she murmured, clearly.

For a brief space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated.
Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished
man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover
the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a function,
a setting for some impromptu fanciful discourse or piece of comedy — and
have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady passenger was
regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an admiring
smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the windmill man
swelled and gyrated like a sample of his own goods, puffed up with the
wind that ever blows from the chorus land toward the domain of the star.

While the transported Dunwoody, with his Aladdin's apple, was re-
ceiving the fickle attentions of all, the resourceful jurist formed a plan
to recover his own laurels.

With his courtliest smile upon his heavy but classic features, Judge
Menefee advanced, and took the apple, as if to examine it, from the hand
of Dunwoody. In his hand it became Exhibit A.

"A fine apple," he said, approvingly. "Really, my dear Mr. Dunwindy,
you have eclipsed all of us as a forager. But I have an idea. This apple
shall become an emblem, a token, a symbol, a prize bestowed by the mind
and heart of beauty upon the most deserving."

The audience, except one, applauded. "Good on the stump, ain't he?"
commented the passenger who was nobody in particular to the young
man who had an Agency.

The unresponsive one was the windmill man. He saw himself re-
duced to the ranks. Never would the thought have occurred to him to
declare his apple an emblem. He had intended after it. had been divided
and eaten, to create diversion by sticking the seeds against his forehead
and naming them for young ladies of his acquaintance. One he was going
to name Mrs. McFarland. The seed that fell off first would be— but 'twas
too late now.

2l6 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"The apple/' continued Judge Menefee, charging his jury, "in modern
days occupies, though undeservedly, a lowly place in our esteem. Indeed,
it is so constantly associated with the culinary and the commercial that it
is hardly to be classed among the polite fruits. But in ancient times this
was not so. Biblical, historical, and mythological lore abounds with evi-
dences that the apple was the aristocrat of fruits. We still say 'the apple of
the eye* when we wish to describe something superlatively precious. We
find in Proverbs the comparison to 'apples of silver.' No other product of
tree or vine has been so utilized in figurative speech. Who has not heard of
and longed for the 'apples of the Hesperides'? I need not call your atten-
tion to the most tremendous and significant instance of the apple's an-
cient prestige when its consumption by our first parents occasioned the
fall of man from his state of goodness and perfection."

"Apples like them," said the windmill man, lingering with the ob-
jective article, "are worth $3.50 a barrel in the Chicago market."

"Now, what I have to propose," said Judge Menefee, conceding an
indulgent smile to his interrupter, "is this : We must remain here, perforce,
until morning. We have wood in plenty to keep us warm. Our next need
is to entertain ourselves as best we can, in order that the time shall not
pass too slowly. I propose that we place this apple in the hands of Miss
Garland. It is no longer a fruit, but, as I said, a prize, in award, represent-
ing a great human idea. Miss Garland, herself, shall cease to be an in-
dividual— but only temporarily, I am happy to add" — (a low bow, full
of the old-time grace). "She shall represent her sex; she shall be the
embodiment, the epitome of womankind — the heart and brain, I may say,
of God's masterpiece of creation. In this guise she shall judge and decide
the question which follows:

"But a few minutes ago our friend, Mr. Rose, favored us with an
entertaining but fragmentary sketch of the romance in the life of the
former possessor of this habitation. The few facts that we have learned
seem to me to open up a fascinating field for conjecture, for the study of
human hearts, for the exercise of the imagination — in short, for story-
telling. Let us make use of the opportunity. Let each one of us relate his
own version of the story of Redruth, the hermit, and his lady-love, be-
ginning where Mr: Rose's narrative ends — at the parting of the lovers
at the gate. This much should be assumed and conceded — that the young
lady was not necessarily to blame for Redruth's becoming a crazed and
world-hating hermit. When we have done, Miss Garland shall render the
JUDGMENT OF WOMAN. As the Spirit of her Sex she shall decide which
version of the story best and most truly depicts human and love interest,
and most faithfully estimates the character and acts of Redruth's betrothed
according to the feminine view. The apple shall be bestowed upon him
who is awarded the decision. If you are all agreed, we shall be pleased
to hear the first story from Mr. Dinwiddie."

THE SPHINX APPLE 217

The last sentence captured the windmill man. He was not one to linger
in the dumps.

"That's a first-rate scheme, Judge/' he said, heartily. "Be a regular
short-story vaudeville, won't it? I used to be correspondent for a paper
in Springfield, and when there wasn't any news I faked it. Guess I can
do my turn all right."

"I think the idea is charming," said the lady passenger, brightly. "It
will be almost like a game."

Judge Menefee stepped forward and placed the apple in her hand
impressively.

"In olden days," he said, profoundly, "Paris awarded the golden apple
to the most beautiful"

"I was at the Exposition," remarked the windmill man, now cheerful
again, "but I never heard of it. And I was on the Midway, too, all the
time I wasn't at the machinery exhibit."

"But now," continued the Judge, "the fruit shall translate to us the
mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss Garland.
Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize as you may
deem it just."

The lady passenger smiled sweetly. The apple lay in her lap beneath
her robes and wraps. She reclined against her protecting bulwark, brightly
and cosily at ease. But for the voices and the wind one might have listened
hopefully to hear her purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon the fire. Judge
Menefee nodded suavely. "Will you oblige us with the initial story?" he
asked.

The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his head
on account of the draughts.

"Well," he began, without any embarrassment, "this is about the way
I size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by
this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of his
girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is still square.
Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and gold bonds when
he's got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around to see her. Well, maybe
he's hot, and talks like the proprietor, and forgets that an engagement
ain't always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I guess that makes Alice warm under
the lace yoke. Well, she answers back sharp. Well, he "

"Say!" interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, "if you
could put up a windmill on every one of them Veils' you're using,
you'd be able to retire from business, wouldn't you?"

The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.

"Oh, I ain't no Guy de Mopassong" he said, cheerfully. "I'm giving it
to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this: 'Mr. Gold
Bonds is only a friend,' says she; 'but he takes me riding and buys me
theatre tickets, and that's what you never do. Ain't I to never have any

2l8 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

pleasure in life while I can?' 'Pass this chatfield-chatfield thing along,' says
Redruth;— 'hand out the mitt to the Willie with creases in it or you don't
put your slippers under my wardrobe.5

"Now that kind of train orders don't go with a girl that's got any spirit.
I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only wanted, as
girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and caramels before she
settled down to patch George's other pair, and be a good wife. But he is
glued to the high horse, and won't come down. Well, she hands him back
the ring, proper enough; and George goes away and hits the booze. Yep.
That's what done it. I bet that girl fired the cornucopia with the fancy vest
two days after her steady left. George boards a freight and checks his bag
of crackers for parts unknown. He sticks to Old Booze for a number of
years; and then the aniline and aquafortis gets the decision. 4Me for the
hermit's hut,' says George, 'and the long whiskers, and the buried can
of money that isn't there,'

"But that Alice, in my mind, was on the level. She never married, but
took up typewriting as soon as the wrinkles began to show, and kept a cat
that came when you said 'weeny — weeny — weeny!' I got too much faith
in good women to believe they throw down the fellow they're stuck on
every time for the dough." The windmill man ceased.

"I think," said the lady passenger, slightly moving upon her lowly
throne, "that that is a char "

"Oh, Miss Garland!" interposed Judge Menefee, with uplifted hand,
"I beg of you, no comments! It would not be fair to the other contestants.
Mr.— er— will you take the next turn?" The Judge addressed the young
man who had the Agency.

"My version of the romance," began the young man, diffidently clasp-
ing his hands, "would be this: They did not quarrel when they parted.
Mr. Redruth bade her good-bye and went out into the world to seek his
fortune. He knew his love would remain true to him. He scorned the
thought that his rival could make an impression upon a heart so fond
and faithful. I would say that Mr. Redruth went out to the Rocky
Mountains in Wyoming to seek for gold. One day a crew of pirates landed
and captured him while at work,, and "

"Hey! what's that?" sharply called the passenger who was nobody in
particular — "a crew or pirates landed in the Rocky Mountains! Will you
tell us how they sailed "

"Landed from a train," said the narrator, quietly and not without some
readiness. "They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they
took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a beauti-
ful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to Alice. After
another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with the diamonds

THE SPHINX APPLE 2IQ

"What diamonds?" asked the unimportant passenger, almost with
acerbity.

"The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple," said
the other, somewhat obscurely. "When he reached home, Alice's mother
led him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. 'Her heart was
broken when you left/ said her mother. 'And what of my rival — of Chester
Mclntosh?' asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice's grave. 'When
he found out/ she answered, 'that her heart was yours, he pined away
day by day until, at length, he started a furniture store in Grand Rapids.
We heard lately that he was bitten to death by an infuriated moose near
South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to forget scenes of civiliza-
tion.' With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the face of mankind and became
a hermit, as we have seen.

"My story," concluded the young man with an Agency, "may lack the
literary quality; but what I want it to show is that the young lady re-
mained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true affec-
tion. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think otherwise."

The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where reclined
the lady passenger.

Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story
in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver's essay was brief.

"I'm not one of them lobo wolves," he said, "who are always blaming
on women the calamities of life. My testimony in regards to the fiction
story you ask for, Judge, will be about as follows: What ailed Redruth was
pure laziness. If he had up and slugged this Percival De Lacey that tried
to give him the outside of the road, and had kept Alice in the grape-vine
swing with the blind-bridle on, all would have been well. The woman
you want is sure worth taking pains for.

"'Send for me if you want me again/ says Redruth, and hoists his
Stetson, and walks off. He'd have called it pride, but the nixycomlogical
name for it is laziness. No woman don't like to run after a man. 'Let him
come back, hisself/ says the girl; and I'll be bound she tells the boy with
the pay ore to trot; and then spends her time watching out the window
for the man with the empty pocket-book and the tickly moustache.

"I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a
note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don't. 'This game
won't work/ says Redruth; 'then so won't I/ And he goes in the hermit
business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was what done
the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with long whisk-
ers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of Marlborough
and this Standard Oil snooper. Have they got 'em?

"Now, this Alice didn't never marry, I'll bet a hoss. If Redruth had
married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns
up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a lock

220 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort of articles
is as good as a husband to some women. I'd say she played out a lone
hand. I don't blame no woman for old man Redruth's abandonment of
barber shops and clean shirts."

Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular.
Nameless to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.

But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds to
the Judges call

A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms
wrapping about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth, oakum-
colored hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr's, with upturned, tobacco-
stained corners. An eye like a fish's; a red necktie with a horseshoe pin.
He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed itself into words.

"Everybody wrong so far. What! a romance without any orange
blossoms! Ho, ho! My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the
certified checks in his trouserings.

"Take Jem as they parted at the gate? All right. Tou never loved me/
says Redruth, wildly, 'or you wouldn't speak to a man who can buy you
the ice cream.' 'I hate him,' says she. 1 loathe his side-bar buggy; I Despise
the elegant cream bonbons he sends me in gilt boxes covered with real
lace; I feel that I could stab him to the heart when he presents me with a
solid medallion locket with turquoises and pearls running in a vine
around the border. Away with them! 'Tis only you I love.' 'Back to the
cosy corner!5 says Redruth. Was I bound and lettered in East Aurora?
Get platonic, if you please, No jack-pots for mine. Go and hate your
friend some more. For me the Nickerson girl on Avenue B, and gum,
and a trolley ride.5

"Around that night comes John W. Croesus. What! tears?' says he,
arranging his pearl pin. 'You have driven my lover away/ says little Alice
sobbing: 'I hate the sight of you.* 'Marry me, then,' says John W., lighting
a Henry Clay. What!' she cries, indignantly, 'marry you! Never,' she
says, 'until this blows over, and I can do some shopping, and you see about
the license. There's a telephone next door if you want to call up the county
clerk.'"

The narrator paused to give vent to his cynical chuckle.

"Did they marry?" he continued. "Did the duck swallow the June-bug?
And then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There's where you are
all wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a hermit?
One says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say women did it.
How old is the old man now?" asked the speaker, turning to Bildad
Rose.

"I should say about sixty-five."

"All right. He conducted his hefmit shop here for twenty years. Say
he was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate. That leaves

THE SPHINX APPLE 221

twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked. Where did he
spend that ten and two fives ? I'll give you my idea. Up for bigamy. Say
there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at Skillet
Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets his cases
mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they are through
with him, and says: 'Any line for me except the crinoline. The hermit
trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to 'em for work.
The jolly hermit's life for me. No more long hairs in the comb or dill
pickles lying around in the cigar tray.' You tell me they pinched old
Redruth for the noodle villa just because he said he was King Solomon?
Figs! He was Solomon. That's all of mine. I guess it don't call for any
apples. Enclosed find stamps. It don't sound much like a prize winner."

Respecting the stricture laid by Judge Menefee against comments upon
the stories, all were silent when the passenger who was nobody in
particular had concluded. And then the ingenious originator of the contest
cleared his throat to begin the ultimate entry for the prize. Though
seated with small comfort upon the floor, you might search in vain for any
abatement of dignity in Judge Menefee. The now diminishing firelight
played softly upon his face, as clearly chiselled as a Roman emperor's on
some old coin, and upon the thick waves of his honorable gray hair.

"A woman's heart!" he began, in even but thrilling tones— "who can
hope to fathom it? The ways and desires of men are various. I think that
the hearts of all women beat with the same rhythm, and to the same old
tune of love. Love, to a woman, means sacrifice. If she be worthy of the
name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine devotion.

"Gentlemen of the — er — I should say, my friends, the case of Redruth
versus love and affection has been called. Yet, who is on trial ? Not Red-
ruth, for he has been punished. Not those immortal passions that clothe
our lives with the joy of the angels. Then who? Each man of us here to-
night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness inhabits his
bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of its fairest
flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically insignificant, but
worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon of approval from so
worthy a representative of feminine judgment and taste.

"In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to
whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice against
the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or love of luxury
of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have not found woman
to be so unspiritual or venal. We must seek elsewhere, among man's
baser nature and lower motives for the cause.

"There was, in all probability, a lovers' quarrel as they stood at the
gate on that memorable day. Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth
vanished from his native haunts. But had he just cause to do so? There is
no evidence for or against. But there is something higher than evidence:

222 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

there is the grand, eternal belief in woman's goodness, in her steadfastness
against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face of proffered riches.

"I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about the
world. I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete despair
when he realizes that he has lost the most precious gift life had to offer
him. Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the subsequent
derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.

"But what do I see on the other hand? A lonely woman fading away
as the years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a form
and listening for a step that will come no more. She is old now. Her hair
is white and smoothly banded. Each day she sits at the door and gazes
longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting there at the gate,
just as he left her— his forever, but not here below. Yes; my belief in
woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted forever on earth, but wait-
ing! She in anticipation of a meeting in Elysium; he in the Slough of
Despond."

"I thought he was in the bughouse/' said the passenger who was no-
body in particular.

Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently. The men sat, drooping, in
grotesque attitudes. The wind had abated its violence; coming now in
fiful, virulent puffs. The fire had burned to a mass of red coals which
shed but a dim light within the room. The lady passenger in her cosy
nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a mass of
coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small space of snowy forehead .above
her clinging boa.

Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet.

"And now, Miss Garland," he announced, "we have concluded. It is
for you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument — especially,
I may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood — approaches
nearest to your own conception."

No answer came from the lady passenger. Judge Menefee bent over
solicitously. The passenger who was nobody in particular laughed low
and harshly. The lady was sleeping sweetly. The Judge essayed to take
her hand to awaken her. In doing so he touched a small, cold> round,
irregular something in her lap.

"She has eaten the apple," announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones,
as he held up the core for them to see.

THE MISSING CHORD

I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy
Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time

THE MISSING CHORD 223

when I called "Hallo!" at his hitching-rack; but from that moment until
my departure on the next morning we were> according to the Texas code,
undeniable friends.

After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-
room house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista
grass. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the hard-packed
loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the structure and smoked
El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably concerning the affairs of
the rest of the world.

As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging harm of that
prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who will
undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring. Atx in-
ventory must suffice.

The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient
prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear, lay
around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed as
dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The miraculous
air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues of wild
flowerets, gave tang and savor to the breath. In the sky was a great,
round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark
lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. In
the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a groundless panic would
send a squad of them huddling together with a drumming rush. For other
sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped beyond the ^hearing-pen, and
whippoorwills twittered in the long grass. But even these dissonances
hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds* notes that fell from a
dozen neighboring shrubs and trees. It would not have been preposterous
for one to tiptoe and essay to touch the stars, they hung so bright and
imminent.

Mr. Kinney's wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the
house. She remained to busy herself with the domestic round of duties in
which I had observed that she seemed to take a buoyant and contented
pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other, as Kinney
and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and brilliant music.
If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing, the construer of that
rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the secrets of the keyboard. A
piano, and one so well played, seemed to me to be an unusual thing to
find in that small and unpromising ranchhouse. I must have looked my
surprise at Rush Kinney, for he laughed in his soft Southern way, and
nodded at me through the moonlit ha^e of our cigarettes.

"You don't often hear as agreeable a noise as that on a sheep-ranch,"
he remarked; "but I never see any reason for not playing up to the arts
and graces just because we happen to live out in the brush. It's a lone-

224 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

some life for a woman; and if a little music can make it any better, why
not have it? That's the way I look at it."

"A wise and generous theory," I assented. "And Mrs. Kinney plays
well. I am not learned in the science of music, but I should call her an
uncommonly good performer. She has technic and more than ordinary
power."

The moon was very bright, you will understand, and I saw upon
Kinney's face a sort of amused and pregnant expression, as though there
were things behind it that might be expounded.

"You came up the trail from the Double-Elm Fork," he said, promis-
ingly. "As you crossed it you must have seen an old deserted jacal to your
left under a coma mott."

"I did," said I. "There was a drove of invalis rooting around it. I could
see by the broken corrals that no one lived there."

"That's where this music proposition started," said Kinney. "I don't
mind telling you about it while we smoke. That's where old Cal Adams
lived. He had about eight hundred graded merinos and a daughter that
was solid silk and as handsome as a new stake-rope on a thirty-dollar
pony. And I don't mind telling you that I was guilty in the second degree
of hanging around old Cal's ranch all the time I could spare away from,
lambing and shearing. Miss Manila was her name; and I had figured it •
out by the rule of two that she was destined to become the chatelaine and
lady superior of Rancho Lomito, belonging to R. Kinney, Esq., where you
are now a welcome and honored guest.

"I will say that old Cal wasn't distinguished as a sheepman. He was
a little, old stoop-shouldered hombre about as big as a gun scabbard, with
scraggy white whiskers, and condemned to the continuous use of language.
Old Cal was so obscure in his chosen profession that he wasn't even hated
by the cowmen. And when a sheepman don't get eminent enough to
acquire .the hostility of the cattlemen, he is mighty apt to die unwept
and considerably unsung.

"But that Marilla girl was a benefit to the eye. And she was the most
elegant kind of a housekeeper. I was the nearest neighbor, and I used
to ride over to the Double-Elm anywhere from nine to sixteen times a
week with fresh butter or a quarter of venison or a sample of new sheep-
dip just as a frivolous excuse to see Marilla. Marilla and me got to be
extensively inveigled with each other, and I was pretty sure I was going
to get my rope around her neck and lead her over to the Lomito. Only she
was so everlastingly permeated with filial sentiments toward old Cal
that I never could get her to talk about serious matters.

"You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and
had less sense than old Cal. He was advised about all the branches of
information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments of
doctrines and enlightenment. You couldn't advance him any ideas on any

THE MISSING CHORD 225

of the parts of speech or lines of thought. You would have thought he was
a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and natural history
and the origin of derivations. Any subject you brought up old Cal could
give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek root up to the time
it was sacked and on the market.

"One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm with
a lady's magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific paper for old
Cal.

"While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out run Marilla, 'tickled to
death' with some news that couldn't wait.

"'Oh, Rush/ she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification, 'what
do you think! Dad's going to buy me a piano. Ain't it grand? I never
dreamed I'd ever have one.'

"'It's sure joyful,' says I. 'I always admired the agreeable uproar of a
piano. It'll be lots of company for you. That's mighty good of Uncle Cal
to do that.'

"Tm all undecided,' says Marilla, 'between a piano and a organ. A
parlor organ is nice.'

" 'Either of 'em,' says I, 'is first-class for mitigating the lack of noise
around a sheep-ranch. For my part,' I says, 'I shouldn't like anything
better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few waltzes and
jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the piano-stool and round-
ing up the notes.'

"'Oh, hush about that,' says Marilla, 'and go on in the house. Dad
hasn't rode out to-day. He's not feeling well.'

"Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot. He had a pretty bad cold and
cough. I stayed to supper.

" 'Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,' says I to him.

" 'Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,' says he. 'She's been hanker-
ing for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with something
in that line right away. The sheep sheared six pounds all around this fall;
and I'm going to get Marilla an instrument if it takes the price of the
whole clip to do it.'

" 'Star wayno' says I. 'The little girl deserves it.'

" Tm going to San Antone on the last load of wool/ says Uncle Cal,
'and select an instrument for her myself.'

" 'Wouldn't it be better,' I suggest, 'to take Marilla along and let her
pick out one that she likes?'

"I might have known that would set Uncle Cal goiiig. Of course, a man
like him, that knew everything about everything, would look at that as a
reflection on his attainments.

" 'No, sir, it wouldn't/ says he, pulling at his white whiskers. 'There
ain't a better judge of musical instruments in the whole world than what
I am. I had an uncle/ says he, 'that was a partner in a piano-factory, and

226 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

I've seen thousands of 'em put together. I know all about musical instru-
ments from a pipe-organ to a corn-stalk fiddle. There ain't a man lives,
sir, that can tell me any news about any instrument that has to be pounded,
blowed, scraped, grinded, picked, or wound with a key.5

" 'You get me what you like, dad,' says Marilla, who couldn't keep her
feet on the floor from joy. 'Of course you know what to select. I'd just as
lief it was a piano or a organ or what,'

" 1 see in St. Louis once what they call a orchestrion,' says Uncle Cal,
'that I judged was about the finest thing in the way of music ever in-
vented. But there ain't room in this house for one. Anyway, I imagine
they'd cost a thousand dollars. I reckon something in the piano line would
suit Marilla the best. She took lessons in that respect for two years over at
Birdstail. I wouldn't trust the buying of an instrument to anybody else
but myself. I reckon if I hadn't took up sheep-raising I'd have been one
of the finest composers or piano-and-organ manufacturers in the world.'

"That was Uncle Cal's style. But I never lost any patience with him, on
account of his thinking so much of Marilla. And she thought just as much
of him. He sent her to the academy over at Birdstail for two years when
it took nearly every pound of wool to pay the expenses.

"Along about Tuesday Uncle Cal put out for San Antone on the last
wagon-load of wopl. Manila's Uncle Ben, who lived in Birdstail, come
over and stayed at the ranch while Uncle Cal was gone.

"It was ninety miles to San Antone, and forty to the nearest railroad-
station, so Uncle Cal was gone about four days. I was over at the Doujble-
Elm when he came rolling back one evening about sundown. And up
there in the wagon, sure enough, was a piano or a organ — we couldn't tell
which — all wrapped up in wool-sacks, with a wagon-sheet tied over it in
case of rain. And out skips Marilla, hollering, 'Oh, oh!' with her eyes shin-
ing and her hair a-flying. 'Dad — dad,' she sings out, chave you brought it
—have you brought it?' — and it right there before her eyes, as women
will do.

" Tinest piano in San Antone,' says Uncle Cal, waving his hand, proud.
'Genuine rosewood, and the finest, loudest tone you ever listened to. I
heard the storekeeper play it, and I took it on the spot and paid cash
down.'

"Me and Ben and Uncle Cal and a Mexican lifted it out of the wagon
and carried it in the house and set it in a corner. It was one of them up-
right instruments, and not very heavy or very big.

"And then all of a sudden Uncle Cal flops over and says he's mighty
sick. He's got a high fever, and he complains of his lungs. He gets into
bed, while me and Ben goes out to unhitch and put the horses in the pas-
ture, and Marilla flies around to get Uncle Cal something hot to drink.
But first she puts both arms on that piano and hugs it with a soft kind of
a smile, like you see kids doing with their Christmas toys.

THE MISSING CHORD 227

"When I came in from the pasture, Marilla was in the room where the
piano was. I could see by the strings and wool-sacks on the floor that she
had had it unwrapped. But now she was tying the wagon-sheet over it
again, and there was a kind of solemn, whitish look on her face.

"'Ain't wrapping up the music again, are you, Marilla?' I asks. 'What's
the matter with just a couple of tunes for to see how she goes under the
saddle?'

" 'Not to-night, Rush,' says she. 'I don't want to play any to-night. Dad's
too sick. Just think, Rush, he paid three hundred dollars for it — nearly a
third of what the wool-clip brought!'

" 'Well, it ain't anyways in the neighborhood of a third of what you are
worth,' I told her. 'And I don't think Uncle Cal is too sick to hear a little
agitation of the piano-keys just to christen the machine.'

"'Not to-night, Rush,' says Marilla, in a way that she had when she
wanted to settle things.

"But it seems that Uncle Cal was plenty sick, after all. He got so bad
that Ben saddled up and rode over to Birdstail for Doc Simpson. I stayed
around to see if I'd be needed for anything.

"When Uncle Gal's pain let up on him a little he called Marilla and
says to her: 'Did you look at your instrument, honey? And do you like it?'

"'It's lovely, dad,' says she, leaning down by his pillow; 'I never saw
one so pretty. How dear and good it was of you to buy it for me!'

" 'I haven't heard you play on it any yet,' says Uncle Cal; 'and I've been
listening. My side don't hurt quite so bad now — won't you play a piece,
Marilla?'

"But no; she puts Uncle Cal off and soothes him down like you've seen
women do with a kid. It seems she's made up her mind not to touch that
piano at present.

"When Doc Simpson comes over he tells us that Uncle Cal has pneu-
monia the worst kind; and as the old man was past sixty and nearly on the
lift anyhow, the odds was against his walking on grass any more.

"On the fourth day of his sickness he calls for Marilla again and wants
to talk piano. Doc Simpson was there, and so was Ben and Mrs. Ben, try-
ing to do all they could.

" 'I'd have made a wonderful success in anything connected with mu-
sic,' says Uncle Cal. 'I got the finest instrument for the money in San An-
tone. Ain't that piano all right in every respect, Marilla?*

'"It's just perfect, dad,' says she. 'It's got the finest tone I ever heard.
But don't you think you could sleep a little now, dad?'

" 'No, I don't,' says Uncle Cal. 'I want to hear that piano. I don't believe
you've even tried it yet. I went all the way to San Antone and picked it
out for you myself. It took a third of the fall clip to buy it; but I don't mind
that if it makes my good girl happier. Won't you play a little bit for dad,
Marilla?'

228 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"Doc Simpson beckoned Marilla to one side and recommended her to
do what Uncle Cal wanted, so it would get him quieted. And her Uncle
Ben and his wife asked her, too.

"'Why not hit out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?' I asks Ma-
rilla. 'Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a good deal
to hear you touch up the piano he's bought for you. Don't you think you
might?'

"But Marilla stands there with big tears rolling down from her eyes
and says nothing. And then she runs over and slips her arm under Uncle
Cal's neck and hugs him tight.

" 'Why, last night, dad/ we heard her say, 'I played ever so much. Hon-
est— I have been playing it. And it's such a splendid instrument, you don't
know how I love it. Last night I played "Bonnie Dundee" and the "Anvil
Polka" and the "Blue Danube" — and lots of pieces. You must surely have
heard me playing a little, didn't you, dad? I didn't like to play loud when
you was so sick.'

" 'Well, well,' says Uncle Cal, 'maybe I did. Maybe I did and forgot about
it. My head is a little cranky at times. I heard the man in the store play
it fine. I'm mighty glad you like it, Marilla. Yes, I believe I could go to
sleep a while if you'll stay right beside me till I do.5

"There was where Marilla had me guessing. Much as she thought of
that old man, she wouldn't strike a note on that piano that he'd bought
her. I couldn't imagine why she told him she'd been playing it, for the
wagon-sheet hadn't even been off of it since she put it back on the same
day it come. I knew she could play a little anyhow, for I'd once heard her
snatch some pretty fair dance-music out of an old piano at the Charco
Largo Ranch.

"Well, in about a week the pneumonia got the best of Uncle Cal. They
had the funeral over at Birdstail, and all of us went over. I brought Marilla
back home in my buckboard. Her Uncle Ben and his wife were going to
stay there a few days with her.

"That night Marilla takes me in the room where the piano was, while
the others were out on the gallery.

" 'Come here, Rush,' says she; 'I want you to see this now,*

"She unties the rope, and drags off the wagon-sheet.

"If you ever rode a saddle without a horse, or fired off a gun that wasn't
loaded, or took a drink out of an empty bottle, why, then you might have
been able to scare an opera or two out of the instrument Uncle Cal had
bought.

"Instead of a piano, it was one of them machines they've invented to
play the piano with. By itself it was about as musical as the holes of a flute
without the flute.

"And that was the piano that Uncle Cal had selected; and standing by
it was the good, fine, all-wool girl that never let him know it.

A CALL LOAN

"And what you heard playing a while ago," concluded Mr. Kinney,
"was that same deputy-piano machine; only just at present it's shoved up
against a six-hundred-dollar piano that I bought for Manila as soon as we
was married."

A CALL LOAN

In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees
of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and bone.
They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so inclined.
The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed to him
that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought a
watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt his ribs,
and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin suaderos, and
ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky— what else was there for him
to spend money for?

Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth
were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In the
breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may slumber
through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does it become
extinct.

So, out of the chaparral came Long Bill Longley from the Bar Circle
Branch on the Frio— a wife-driven man— to taste the urban joys of
success. Something like half a million dollars he had, with an income
steaily increasing.

Long Bill was a graduate of the camp and trail. Luck and thrift, a cool
head, and a telescopic eye for mavericks had raised him from cowboy to
be a cowman. Then came the boom in cattle, and Fortune, stepping gin-
gerly among the cactus thorns, came and emptied her cornucopia at the
doorstep of th£ ranch.

In the little frontier city of Chaparosa, Longley built a costly residence.
Here he became a captive, bound to the chariot of social existence. He
was doomed to become a leading citizen. He struggled for a time like a
mustang in his first corral, and then he hung up his quirt and spurs. Time
hung heavily on his hands. He organized the First National Bank of
Chaparosa, and was elected its president.

One day a dyspeptic man, wearing double-magnifying glasses, inserted
an official-looking card between the bars of the cashier's window of the
First National Bank. Five minutes later the bank force was dancing at the
beck and call of a national bank examiner.

This examiner, Mr. J, Edgar Todd, proved to be a thorough one.

230 BOOK II HEARTOFTHEWEST

At the end of it all the examiner put on his hat, and called the presi-
dent, Mr. William R. Longley, into the private office.

"Well, how do you find things?" asked Longley, in his slow, deep
tones. "Any brands in the round-up you didn't like the looks of?"

"The bank checks up all right, Mr. Longley," said Todd; "and I find
your loans in very good shape — with one exception. You are carrying one
very bad bit of paper — one that is so bad that I have been thinking that
you surely do not realize the serious position it places you in. I refer to a
call loan of $10,000 made to Thomas Merwin. Not only is the amount in
excess of the maximum sum the bank can loan any individual legally, but
it is absolutely without endorsement or security. Thus you have doubly
violated the national banking laws, and have laid yourself open to crim-
inal prosecution by the Government. A report of the matter to the Comp-
troller of the Currency — which I am bound to make — would, I am sure,
result in the matter being turned over to the Department of Justice for
action. You see what a serious thing it is."

Bill Longley was leaning his lengthy, slowly moving frame back in his
swivel chair. His hands were clasped behind his head, and he turned a lit-
tle to look the examiner in the face. The examiner was surprised to see
a smile creep about the rugged mouth of the banker, and a kindly twinkle
in his light-blue eyes. If he saw the seriousness of the affair, it did not
show in his countenance.

"Of course, you don't know Tom Merwin," said Longley, almost gen-
ially. "Yes, I know about that loan. It hasn't any security except Tom
Merwin's word. Somehow, I've always found that when a man's word is
good, it's the best security there is. Oh, yes, I know the Government doesn't
think so. I guess I'll see Tom about that note."

Mr. Todd's dyspepsia seemed to grow suddenly worse. He looked at the
chaparral banker through his double-magnifying glasses in amazement.

"You see," said Longley, easily explaining the thing away, "Tom heard
of 2,000 head of two-year-olds down near Rocky Ford on the Rio Grande
that could be had for $8 a head. I reckon 'twas one of old Laendro
Garcia's outfits that he had smuggled over, and he wanted to make a
quick turn on 'em. Those cattle are worth $15 on the hoof in Kansas City.
Tom knew it and I knew it. He had $6,000, and I let him have the $10,000
to make the deal with. His brother Ed took 'em on to market three weeks
ago. He ought to be back 'most any day now with the money. When he
comes Tom '11 pay that note."

The bank examiner was shocked. It was, perhaps, his duty to step out
to the telegraph office and wire the situation to the Comptroller. But he
did not. He talked pointedly and effectively to Longley for three min-
utes. He succeeded in making the banker understand that he stood upon
the^ border of a catastrophe. And then he offered a tiny logphole of escape.

"I am going to Hilldale's to-night," he told Longley, "to examine a

ACALLLOAN 23!

bank there. I will pass through Chaparosa on my way back. At twelve to-
morrow I shall call at this bank. If this loan has been cleared out of the
way by that time it will not be mentioned in my report. If not — I will have
to do my duty."

With that the examiner bowed and departed.

The President of the First National lounged in his chair half an hour
longer, and then he lit a mild cigar, and went over to Tom Merwin's
house. Merwin, a ranchman in brown duck, with a contemplative eye,
sat with his feet upon a table, plaiting a rawhide quirt.

"Tom," said Longley, leaning against the table, "y°u heard anything
from Ed yet?"

"Not yet," said Merwin, continuing his plaiting. "I guess Ed'll be along
back now in a few days."

"There was a bank examiner," said Longley, "nosing around our place
to-day, and he bucked a sight about that note of yours. You know I know
it's all right, but the thing is against the banking laws. I was pretty sure
you'd have paid it off before the bank was examined again, but the son-
of-a-gun slipped in on us, Tom. Now, I'm short of cash myself just now,
or I'd let you have the money to take it up with. I've got till twelve o'clock
to-morrow, and then I've got to show the cash in place of that note or "

"Or what, Bill?" asked Merwin, as Longley hesitated.

"Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam's feet."

"Ill try to raise the money for you on time," said Merwin, interested
in his plaiting.

"All right, Tom," concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door;
"I knew you would if you could."

Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in
town, a private one, run by Cooper & Craig.

"Cooper," he said, to the partner by that name, "I've got to have $10,-
ooo to-day or to-morrow. I've got a house and lot here that's worth about
f 6,000 and that's all the actual collateral. But I've got a cattle deal on that's
sure to bring me in more than that much profit within a few days."

Cooper began to cough.

"Now, for God's sake don't say no," said Merwin. "I owe that much
money on a call loan. It's been called, and the man that called it is a man
I've laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps for
ten years. He can call anything IVe got. He can call the blood out of my

veins and it'll come. He's got to have the money. He's in a devil of a

Well, he needs the money, and I've got to get it for him. You know my
word's good, Cooper."

"No doubt of it," assented Cooper, urbanely, "but I've a partner, you
know. I'm not free in making loans. And even if you had the best secu-
rity in your hands, Merwin, we couldn't accommodate you in less than a
week. We're just making a shipment of $15,000 to Myer Brothers in Rock-

232 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

dell, to buy cotton with. It goes down on the narrow gauge to-night. That
leaves our cash quite short at present. Sorry we can't arrange it for you."

Merwin went back to his little bar office and plaited at his quirt again.
About four o'clock in the afternoon he went to the First National and
leaned over the railing of Longley's desk.

"I'll try to get that money for you to-night — I mean to-morrow. Bill."

"All right, Tom," said Longley, quietly.

At nine o'clock that night Tom Merwin stepped cautiously out of the
small frame house in which he lived. It was near the edge of the little
town, and few citizens were in the neighborhood at that hour. Merwin
wore two six-shooters in a belt and a slouch hat. He moved swiftly down
a lonely street, and then followed the sandy road that ran parallel to the
narrow-gauge track until he reached the water-tank, two miles below the
town. There Tom Merwin stopped, tied a black silk handkerchief about
the lower part of his face, and pulled his hat down low.

In ten minutes the night train for Rockdell pulled up at the tank, hav-
ing come from Chaparosa.

With a gun in each hand Merwin raised himself from behind a clump
of chaparral and started for the engine. But before he had taken three
steps, two long, strong arms clasped him from behind, and he was lifted
from his feet and thrown, face downward, upon the grass. There was a
heavy knee pressing against his back, and an iron hand grasping each of
his wrists. He was held thus, like a child, until the engine had taken wa-
ter, and until the train had moved, with accelerating speed, out of sight.
Then he was released, and rose to his feet to face Bill Longley.

"The case never needed to be fixed up this way, Tom," said Longley.
"I saw Cooper this evening, and he told me what you and him talked
about. Then I went down to your house to-night and saw you come out
with your guns on, and I followed you. Let's go back, Tom."

They walked away together, side by side,

"Twas the only chance I saw," said Merwin, presently. "You called
your loan, and I tried to answer you. Now, what'll you do, Bill, if they
sock it to you?"

"What would you have done if they'd socked it to you ? " was the an-
swer Longley made.

"I never thought I'd lay in a bush to stick up a train," remarked Mer-
win; "but a call loan's different. A call's a call with me. We've got twelve
hours yet, Bill, before this spy jumps onto you. We've got to raise them
spondulicks somehow. Maybe we can— Great Sam Houston! do you hear
that?"

Merwin broke into a run, and Longley kept with him, hearing only a
rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the lugubrious
air of "The Cowboy's Lament."

"It's the only tune he knows," shouted Merwin, as he ran. "I'll bet *

THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA 233

They were at the door of Merwin's house. He kicked it open and fell
over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned, firm-
jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a brown ciga-
rette.

"What's the word, Ed?" gasped Merwin.

"So, so," drawled that capable youngster. "Just got in on the 9:30.
Sold the bunch for fifteen, straight. Now, buddy, you want to quit kickin'
a valise around that's got $29,000 in greenbacks in its in'ards."

THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA

There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible
old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a tremen-
dous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their holes un-
der the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they called the man
"Whispering Ben." When he came to own 50,000 acres of land and more
cattle than he could count, they called him O'Donnell "the Cattle King,"

The queen had been a Mexican girl from Laredo. She made a good,
mild, Coloradoclaro wife, and even succeeded in teaching Ben to modify
his voice sufficiently while in the house to keep the dishes from being
broken. When Ben got to be king she would sit on the gallery of Espinosa
Ranch and weave rush mats. When wealth became so irresistible and op-
pressive that upholstered chairs and a centre table were brought down
from San Antone in the wagons, she bowed her smooth, dark head, and
shared the fate of the Danae.

To avoid U$e-maje$t£ you have been presented first to the king and
queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called "The Chron-
icle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and Lion that Bungled his Job."

Josefa O'Donnell was the surviving daughter, the princess. From' her
mother she inherited warmth of nature and a dusky, semi-tropic beauty.
From Ben O'Donnell the royal she acquired a store in intrepidity, com-
mon sense, and the faculty of ruling. The combination was worth going
miles to see. Josefa while riding her pony at a gallop could put five out
of six bullets through a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. She
could play for hours with a white kitten she owned, dressing it in all man-
ner of absurd clothes. Scorning a pencil, she could tell you out of her
head what 1545 two-year-olds would bring on the hoof, at $8.50 per head.
Roughly speaking, tie Espinosa Ranch is forty miles long and thirty
broad — but mostly leased land. Josefa, on her pony, had prospected over
every mile of it. Every cow-puncher on the range knew her by sight and
was a loyal vassal. Ripley Givens, foreman of one of the Espinosa outfits,
saw her one day, and made up his mind to form a royal matrimonial al-

234 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

liance. Presumptuous? No. In those days in the Nueces country a man
was a man, And, after all, the title of cattle king does not presuppose
blood royal. Often it only signifies that its owner wears the crown in token
of his magnificent qualities in the art of cattle stealing.

One day Ripley Givens rode over to the Double Elm Ranch to inquire
about a bunch of strayed yearlings. He was late in setting out on his re-
turn trip, and it was sundown when he struck the White Horse Crossing
of the Nueces. From there to his own camp it was sixteen miles. To the
Espinosa ranch-house it was twelve. Givens was tired. He decided to pass
the night at the Crossing.

There was a fine water hole in the river-bed. The banks were thickly
covered with great trees, undergrown with brush. Back from the water
hole fifty yards was a stretch of curly mesquite grass — supper for his horse
and bed for himself. Givens staked his horse, and spread out his saddle
blankets to dry. He sat down with his back against a tree and rolled a
cigarette. From somewhere in the dense timber along the river came a
sudden, rageful, shivering wail. The pony danced at the end of his rope
and blew a whistling snort of comprehending fear, Givens puffed at his
cigarette, but he reached leisurely for his pistol-belt, which lay on the
grass, and twirled the cylinder of his weapon tentatively. A great gar
plunged with a loud splash into the water hole. A little brown rabbit
skipped around a bunch of catclaw and sat twitching his whiskers and
looking humorously at Givens. The pony went on eating grass.

It is well to be reasonably watchful when a Mexican lion sings soprano
along the arroyos at sundown. The burden of his song may be that young
calves and fat lambs are scarce, and that he has a carnivorous desire for
your acquaintance.

In the grass lay an empty fruit can, cast there by some former so-
journer. Givens caught sight of it with a grunt of satisfaction. In his coat
pocket tied behind his saddle was a handful or two of ground coffee.
Black coffee and cigarettes! What ranchero could desire more?

In two mintues he had a little fire going clearly. He started, with his
can, for the water hole. When within fifteen yards of its edge he saw,
between the bushes, a side-saddled pony with down-dropped reins crop-
ping grass a little distance to his left. Just rising from her hands and knees
on the brink of the water hole was Josefa O'Donnell. She had been drink-
ing water, and she brushed the sand from the palms of her hands. Ten
yards away, to her right, half concealed by a clump of sacuista, Givens
saw the crouching form of the Mexican lion. His amber eyelids glared
hungrily; six feet from them was the tip of the tail stretched straight,
like a pointer's. His hind-quarters rocked with the motion of the cat tribe
preliminary to leaping.

Givens did what he could. His six-shooter was thirty-five yards away

THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA 235

lying on the grass. He gave a loud yell, and dashed between the lion and
the princess.

The "rucus," as Givens called it afterward, was brief and somewhat
confused. When he arrived on the line o£ attack he saw a dim streak in
the air, and heard a couple of faint cracks. Then a hundred pounds of
Mexican lion plumped down upon his head and flattened him, with a
heavy jar, to the ground. He remembered calling out: "Let up, now— no
fair gouging!" and then he crawled from under the lion like a worm, with
his mouth full of grass and dirt, and a big lump on the back of his head
where it had struck the root of a water-elm. The lion lay motionless. Giv-
ens, feeling aggrieved, and suspicious of fouls, shook his fist at the lion,

and shouted: "111 rastle you again for twenty " and then he got back

to himself.

Josefa was standing in her tracks, quietly reloading her silver-mounted
.38. It had not been a difficult shot. The lion's head made an easier mark
than a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. There was a provok-
ing, teasing, maddening smile upon her mouth and in her dark eyes. The
would-be-rescuing knight felt the fire of his fiasco burn down to his soul.
Here had been his chance, the chance that he had dreamed of; and
Momus, and not Cupid, had presided over it. The satyrs in the wood
were, no doubt, holding their sides in hilarious, silent laughter. There
had been something like vaudeville — say Signor Givens and his funny
knockabout act with the stuffed lion.

"Is that you, Mr. Givens?" said Josefa, in her deliberate, saccharine
contralto. "You nearly spoiled my shot when you yelled. Did you hurt
your head when you fell?"

"Oh, no," said Givens, quietly; "that didn't hurt." He stooped igno-
miniously and dragged his best Stetson hat from under the beast. It was
crushed and wrinkled to a fine comedy effect. Then he knelt down and
softly stroked the fierce, open-jawed head of the dead lion.

"Poor old Bill!" he exclaimed, mournfully.

"What's that?" asked Josefa, sharply.

"Of course you didn't know, Miss Josefa," said Givens, with an air of
one allowing magnanimity to triumph over grief. "Nobody can blame
you. I tried to save him, but I couldn't let you know in time."

"Save who?"

"Why, Bill. I've been looking for him all day. You see, he's been our
camp pet for two years. Poor old fellow, he wouldn't have hurt a cotton-
tail rabbit. It'll break the boys all up when they hear about it. But you
couldn't tell of course, that Bill was just trying to play with you."

Josefa's black eyes burned steadily upon him. Ripley Givens met the
test successfully. He stood rumpling the yellow-brown curls on his head
pensively. In his eyes was regret, not unmingled with a gentle reproach.

236 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

His smooth features were set to a pattern of indisputable sorrow. Josefa
wavered.

"What was your pet doing here?'* she asked, making a last stand,
"There's no camp near the White Horse Crossing."

"The old rascal ran away from camp yesterday," answered Givens,
readily. "It's a wonder the coyotes didn't scare him to death. You see,
Jim Webster, our horse wrangler, brought a little terrier pup into camp
last week. The pup made life miserable for Bill — he used to chase him
around and chew his hind legs for hours at a time. Every night when
bedtime came Bill would sneak under one of the boys' blankets and sleep
to keep the pup from finding him. I reckon he must have been worried
pretty desperate or he wouldn't have run away. He was always afraid to
get out of sight of camp."

Josefa looked at the body of the fierce animal Givens gently patted one
of the formidable paws that could have killed a yearling calf with one
blow. Slowly a red flush widened upon the dark olive face of the girl. Was
it the signal of shame of the true sportsman who has brought down ig-
noble quarry? Her eyes grew softer, and the lowered lids drove away all
their bright mockery.

"I'm very sorry," she said, humbly; "but he looked so big, and jumped
so high that "

"Poor old Bill was hungry," interrupted Givens, in quick defence of the
deceased. "We always made him jump for his supper in camp. He would
lie down and roll over for a piece of meat. When he saw you he thought
he was going to get something to eat from you."

Suddenly Josefa's eyes opened wide.

"I might have shot you!" she exclaimed. "You ran right in between.
You risked your life to save your pet! That was fine, Mr. Givens. I like a
man who is kind to animals,"

Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now. After all, there was
a hero rising out of the ruins of the anti-climax. The look on Givens 's face
would have secured him a high position in the S. P. C. A,

"I always loved 'em," said he; "horses, dogs, Mexican lions, cows,
alligators "

"I hate alligators," instantly demurred Josefa; "crawly, muddy things!"

"Did I say alligators?" said Givens. "I meant antelopes, of course."

Josefa's conscience drove her to make further amends. She held out her
hand penitently. There was a bright, unshed drop in each of her eyes.

"Please forgive me, Mr. Givens, won't you? I'm only a girl, you know,
and I was frightened at first. I'm very, very sorry I shot Bill. You don't
know how ashamed I feel. I wouldn't have done it for anything."

Givens took the proffered hand. He held it for a time while he allowed
the generosity of his nature to overcome his grief at the loss of Bill. At
last it was clear that he had forgiven her.

THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA 237

"Please don't speak of it any more. Miss Josefa. 'Twas enough to
frighten any young lady the way Bill looked. Ill explain it all right to the
boys."

"Are you really sure you don't hate me?" Josefa came closer to him im-
pulsively. Her eyes were sweet — oh, sweet and pleading with gracious
penitence. "I would hate any one who would kill my kitten. And how
daring and kind of you to risk being shot when you tried to save him!
How very few men would have done that!" Victory wrested from defeat!
Vaudeville turned into drama! Bravo, Ripley Givens!

It was now twilight. Of course Miss Josefa could not be allowed to ride
on to the ranch-house alone. Givens resaddled his pony in spite of that
animal's reproachful glances, and rode with her. Side by side they gal-
loped across the smooth grass, the princess and the man who was kind to
animals. The prairie odors of fruitful earth and delicate bloom were thick
and sweet around them. Coyotes yelping over there on the hill! No fear.
And yet

Josefa rode closer. A little hand seemed to grope. Givens found it with
his own. The ponies kept an even gait. The hands lingered together, and
the owner of one explained.

"I never was frightened before, but just think! How terrible it would be
to meet a really wild lion! Poor Bill! I'm so glad you came with me!"

O'Donnell was sitting on the ranch gallery.

"Hello, Rip!" he shouted— "that you?"

"He rode in with me," said Josefa. "I lost my way and was late."

"Much obliged," called the cattle king. "Stop over, Rip, and ride to
camp in the morning."

But Givens would not. He would push on to camp. There was a bunch
of steers to start off on the trail at daybreak. He said good-night, and trot-
ted away.

An hour later, when ,the lights were out, Josefa, in her night-robe, came
to her door and called to the king in his own room across the brick-paved
hallway :

"Say, Pop, you know that old Mexican lion they call the 'Gotch-eared
Devil' — the one that killed Gonzales, Mr. Martin's sheep herder, and
about fifty calves on the Salada range? Well, I settled his hash this after-
noon over at the White Horse Crossing. Put two balls in his head with
my .38 while he was on the jump. I knew him by the slice gone from his
left ear that old Gonzales cut off with his machete. You couldn't have
made a better shot yourself, Daddy."

"Bully for you!" thundered Whispering Ben from the darkness of the
royal chamber.

238 BOOKII HEART OF THE WEST

THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON

Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle before
using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated a small
sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots of his hair.
Besides sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and tincture of nux vomica
and bay rum. Dry Valley found the recipe in a Sunday newspaper. You
must next be told why a strong man came to fall a victim to a Beauty
Hint.

Dry Valley had been a sheepman. His real name was Hector, but he
had been rechristened after his range to distinguish him from "Elm
Creek" Johnson, who ran sheep further down the Frio.

Many years of living face to face with sheep on their own terms
wearied Dry Valley Johnson. So, he sold his ranch for eighteen thousand
dollars and moved to Santa Rosa to live a life of gentlemanly ease. Being a
silent and melancholy person of thirty-five — or perhaps thirty-eight — he
soon became that cursed and earthcumbering thing — an elderlyish bach-
elor with a hobby. Some one gave him his first strawberry to eat, and he
was done for.

Dry Valley bought a four-room cottage in the village, and a library on
strawberry culture. Behind the cottage was a garden of which he made a
strawberry patch. In his old gray woolen shirt, his brown duck trousers
and high-heeled boots he sprawled all day on a canvas cot under a live-
oak tree at his back door studying the history of the seductive scarlet
berry.

The school teacher, Miss De Witt, spoke of him as "a fine, presentable
man, for all his middle age." But the focus of Dry Valley's eyes embraced
no women. They were merely beings who flew skirts as a signal for him
to lift awkwardly his heavy, round-crowned, broad-brimmed felt Stetson
whenever he met them, and then hurry past to get back to his beloved
berries.

And all this recitative by the chorus is only to bring us to the point
where you may be told why Dry Valley shook up the insoluble sulphur
in the bottle. So long-drawn and inconsequential a thing is history — the
anamorphous shadow of a milestone reaching down the road between us
and the setting sun.

When his strawberries were beginning to ripen Dry Valley bought the
heaviest buggy whip in the Santa Rosa store. He sat for many hours un-
der the live-oak tree plaiting and weaving in an extension to its lash.
When it was done he could snip a leaf from a bush twenty feet away with
the cracker. For the bright, predatory eyes of Santa Rosa youth were

THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON 239

watching the ripening berries, and Dry Valley was arming himself
against their expected raids. No greater care had he taken of his tender
lambs during his ranching days than he did of his cherished fruit, ward-
ing it from the hungry wolves that whistled and howled and shot their
marbles and peered through the fence that surrounded his property.

In the house next to Dry Valley's lived a widow with a pack of children
that gave the husbandman frequent anxious misgivings. In the woman
there was a strain of the Spanish. She had wedded one of the name of
O'Brien. Dry Valley was a connoisseur in cross strains; and he foresaw
trouble in the offspring of this union.

Between the two homesteads ran a crazy picket fence overgrown with
morning glory and wild gourd vines. Often he could see little heads with
mops of black hair and flashing dark eyes dodging in and out between the
pickets, keeping tabs on the reddening berries.

Late one afternoon Dry Valley went to the post office. When he came
back, like Mother Hubbard he found the deuce to pay. The descendants
of Iberian bandits and Hibernian cattle raiders had swooped down upon
his strawberry patch. To the outraged vision of Dry Valley there seemed
to be a sheep corral full of them; perhaps they numbered five or six. Be-
tween the rows of green plants they were stooped, hopping about like
toads, gobbling silently and voraciously his finest fruit.

Dry Valley slipped into the house, got his whip, and charged the ma-
rauders. The lash curled about the legs of the nearest— a greedy ten-year-
old — before they knew they were discovered. His screech gave warning;
and the flock scampered for the fence like a drove of javelis flushed in the
chaparral Dry Valley's whip drew a toll of two more elfin shrieks before
they dived through the vine-clad fence and disappeared.

Dry Valley, less fleet, followed them nearly to the pickets. Checking
his useless pursuit, he rounded a bush, dropped his whip and stood,
voiceless, motionless, the capacity of his powers consumed by the act of
breathing and preserving the perpendicular.

Behind the bush stood Panchita O'Brien, scorning to fly. She was nine-
teen, the oldest of the raiders. Her night-black hair was gathered back in
a wild mass and tied with a scarlet ribbon. She stood, with reluctant feet,
yet nearer the brook than to the river; for childhood had environed and
detained her.

She looked at Dry Valley Johnson for a moment with magnificent in-
solence, and before his eyes slowly crunched a luscious berry between
her white teeth. Then she turned and walked slowly to the fence with a
swaying, conscious motion, such as a duchess might make use of in lead-
ing a promenade. There she turned again and grilled Dry Valley John-
son once more in the dark flame of her audacious eyes, laughed a trifle
school-girlishly, and twisted herself with pantherish quickness between
the pickets to the O'Brien side of the wild gourd vine.

240 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

Dry Valley picked up his whip and went into the house. He stumbled
as he went up the two wooden steps. The old Mexican woman who
cooked his meals and swept his house called him to supper as he went
through the rooms. Dry Valley went on, stumbled down the front steps,
out the gate and down the road into a mesquite thicket at the edge of
town. He sat down in the grass and laboriously plucked the spines from a
prickly pear, one by one. This was his attitude of thought, acquired in
the days when his problems were only those of wind and wool and water.

A thing had happened to the man— a thing that, if you are eligible, you
must pray may pass you by. He had become enveloped in the Indian
Summer of the Soul.

Dry Valley had had no youth. Even his childhood had been one of dig-
nity and seriousness. At six he 'had viewed the frivolous gambols of the
lambs on his father's ranch with disapproval His life as 2. young
man had been wasted. The divine fires and impulses, the glorious exal-
tations and despairs, the glow and enchantment of youth had passed
above his head. Never a thrill of Romeo had he known; he was but^a
melancholy Jaques of the forest with a rudder philosophy lacking the bit-
ter-sweet flavor of experience that tempered the veteran years of the
rugged ranger of Arden. And now in his sere and yellow leaf one scornful
look from the eyes of Panchita O'Brien had flooded the autumnal land-
scape with a tardy and delusive summer heat.

But a sheepman is a hardy animal. Dry Valley Johnson had weathered
too many northers to turn his back on a late summer, spiritual or real.
Old ? He would show them.

By the next mail went an order to San Antonio for an outfit of the lat-
est clothes, colors and styles and prices no object. The next day went the
recipe for the hair restorer clipped from a newspaper; for Dry Valley's
sunburned auburn hair was beginning to turn silvery above his ears.

Dry Valley kept indoors closely for a week except for frequent sallies
after youthful strawberry snatchers. Then, a few days later, he suddenly
emerged brilliantly radiant in the hectic glow of his belated midsummer
madness.

A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost as far as his
wrists and ankles. His shirt was ox-blood; his collar winged and tall; his
necktie a floating oriflamme; his shoes a venomous bright tan, pointed
and shaped on penitential lasts. A little flat straw hat with a striped band
desecrated his weather-beatea head. Lemon-colored kid gloves protected
his tough hands from the benignant May sunshine. This sad and optic-
smiting creature teetered out of its den, smiling foolishly and smoothing
its gloves for men and angels to see. To such a pass had Dry Valley John-
son been brought by Cupid, who always shoots game that is out of season
with an arrow from the quiver of Momus. Reconstructing mythology, he

THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON 24!

had risen, a prismatic macaw, from the ashes of the gray-brown phoenix
that had folded its tired wings to roost under the tree of Santa Rosa.

Dry Valley paused in the street to allow Santa Rosans within sight of
him to be stunned; and then deliberately and slowly, as his shoes re-
quired, entered Mrs. O'Brien's gate.

Not until the eleven months' drought did Santa Rosa cease talking
about Dry Valley Johnson's courtship of Panchita O'Brien. It was an un-
classifiable procedure; something like a combination of cake-walking,
deaf-and-dumb oratory, postage stamp flirtation, and parlor charades. It
lasted two weeks and then came to a sudden end.

Of course Mrs. O'Brien favored the match as soon as Dry Valley's in-
tentions were disclosed. Being the mother of a woman child, and there-
fore a charter member of the Ancient Order of the Rat-trap, she joyfully
decked out Panchita for the sacrifice. The girl was temporarily dazzled by
having her dresses lengthened and her hair piled up on her head, and
came near forgetting that she was only a slice of cheese. It was nice, too,
to have as good a match as Mr. Johnson paying you attentions and to see
the other girls fluttering the curtains at their windows to see you go by
with him.

Dry Valley bought a buggy with yellow wheels *and a fine trotter in
San Antonio. Every day he drove out with Panchita. He was never seen
to speak to her when they were walking or driving. The consciousness of
his clothes kept his mind busy; the knowledge that he could say nothing
of interest kept him dumb; the feeling that Panchita was there kept him
happy.

He took her to parties and dances, and to church. He tried— oh, no man
ever tried so hard, to be young as Dry Valley did. He could not dance;
but he invented a smile which he wore on these joyous occasions, a smile
that, in him, was as great a concession to mirth and gaiety as turning
hand-springs would be in another. He began to seek the company of the
young men in the town — even of the boys. They accepted him as a de-
cided damper, for his attempts at sportiveness were so forced that they
might as well have essayed their games in a cathedral. Neither he nor any
other could estimate what progress he had made with Panchita.

The end came suddenly in one day, as often disappears the false after-
glow before a November sky and wind.

Dry Valley was to call for the girl one afternoon at six for a walk. An
afternoon walk in Santa Rosa was a feature of social life that called for
the pink of one's wardrobe. So Dry Valley began gorgeously to array
himself; and so early that he finished early, and went over to the O'Brien
cottage. As he neared the porch on the crooked walk from the gate he
heard sounds of revelry within. He stopped and looked through the
honeysuckle vines in the open door.

Panchita was amusing her younger brothers and sisters. She wore a

242 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

man's clothes— no doubt those of the late Mr. O'Brien. On her head was
the smallest brother's straw hat decorated with an ink-striped paper
band. On her hands were flapping yellow cloth gloves, roughly cut out and
sewn for the masquerade. The same material covered her shoes, giving
them the semblance of tan leather. High collar and flowing necktie were
not omitted.

Panchita was an actress. Dry Valley saw his affectedly youthful gait,
his limp where the right shoe hurt him, his forced smile, his awkward
simulation of a gallant air, all reproduced with startling fidelity. For the
first time a mirror had been held up to him. The corroboration of one of
the youngsters calling, "Mamma, come and see Pancha do like Mr. John-
son," was not needed.

As softly as the caricatured tans would permit, Dry Valley tiptoed back
to the gate and home again.

Twenty minutes after the time appointed for the walk Panchita
tripped demurely out her gate in a thin, trim white lawn and sailor hat.
She strolled up the sidewalk and slowed her steps at Dry Valley's gate,
her manner expressing wonder at his unusual delinquency.

Then out of his door and down the walk strode — not the polychromatic
victim of a lost summer time, but the sheepman, rehabilitated. He wore
his old gray woolen shirt, open at the throat, his brown duck trousers
stuffed into his run-over boots, and his white felt sombrero on the back
of his head. Twenty years or fifty he might look; Dry Valley cared not
His light blue eyes met Panchita's dark ones with a cold flash in them.
He came as far as the gate. He pointed with his long arm to her house.

"Go home," said Dry Valley. "Go home to your mother. I wonder
lightnin' don't strike a fool like me. Go home and play in the sand. What
business have you got cavortin5 around with grown men ? I reckon I was
locoed to be makin' a he poll-parrot out of myself for a kid like you. Go
home and don't let me see you no more. Why I done it, will somebody
tell me? Go home, and let me try and forget it."

Panchita obeyed and walked slowly toward her home, saying nothing.
For some distance she kept her head turned and her large eyes fixed in-
trepidly upon Dry Valley's. At her gate she stood for a moment looking
back at him, then ran suddenly and swiftly into the house.

Old Antonia was building a fire in the kitchen stove. Dry Valley
stopped at the door and laughed harshly.

"I'm a pretty looking old rhinoceros to be gettin' stuck on a kid ain't I,
Tonia?"saidhe.

"Not verree good thing," agreed Antonia, sagely, "for too much old man
to likee muchacha"

"You bet it ain't," said Dry Valley, grimly. "It's dum foolishness; and,
besides, it hurts."

He brought at one armful the regalia of his aberration— the blue tennis

CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION 243

suit, shoes, hat, gloves, and all, and threw them in a pile at Antonia's feet.

"Give them to your old man," said he, "to hunt antelope in."

Just as the first star presided palely over the twilight Dry Valley got
his biggest strawberry book and sat on the back steps to catch the last of
the reading light. He thought he saw the figure of someone in his straw-
berry patch. He laid aside the book, got his whip, and hurried forth to see.

It was Panchita. She had slipped through the picket fence and was
halfway across the patch. She stopped when she saw him and looked at
him without wavering.

A sudden rage — a humiliating flush of unreasoning wrath — came over
Dry Valley. For this child he had made himself a motley to the view.
He had tried to bribe Time to turn backward for himself; he had— been
made a fool of. -At last he had seen his folly. There was a gulf between
him and youth over which he could not build a bridge even with yellow
gloves to protect his hands. And the sight of his torment coming to pester
him with her elfin pranks — coming to plunder his strawberry vines like a
mischievous school-boy — roused all his anger.

"I told you to keep away from here/' said Dry Valley. "Go back to your
home."

Panchita moved slowly toward him.

Dry Valley cracked his whip.

"Go back home," said Dry Valley, savagely, "and play theatricals some
more. You'd make a fine man. You've made a fine one of me."

She came a step nearer, silent, and with that strange, defiant, steady
shine in her eye that had always puzzled him. Now it stirred his wrath.

His whiplash whistled through the air. He saw a red streak suddenly
come out through her white dress above her knee where it had struck.

Without flinching and with the same unchanging dark glow in her
eyes, Panchita came steadily toward him through the strawberry vines.
Dry Valley's trembling hand released his whip handle. When within a
yard of him Panchita stretched out her arms.

"God kid!" stammered Dry Valley, "do you mean ?"

But the seasons are versatile; and it may have been Springtime after all,
instead of Indian Summer, that struck Dry Valley Johnson.

CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION

Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a
new mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cher-
okee was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz and
pine burrs Cherokee turned up with his pick a nugget weighing thirty
ounces. He staked his claim and then, being a man of breadth and hospi-

244 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

tality, sent out invitations to his friends in three states to drop in and
share his luck.

Not one of the invited guests sent regrets. They rolled in from the Gila
country, from Salt River, from the Pecos, from Albuquerque and Phoenix
and Santa Fe, and from the camps intervening.

When a thousand citizens had arrived and taken up claims they named
the town Yellowhammer, appointed a vigilance committee,, and presented
Cherokee with a watch-chain made of nuggets.

Three hours after the presentation ceremonies Cherokee's claim played
out. He had located a pocket instead of a vein. He abandoned it and
staked others one by one. Luck had kissed her hand to him. Never
afterward did he turn up enough dust in Yellowhammer to pay his bar
bill. But his thousand invited guests were mostly prospering, and Chero-
kee smiled and congratulated them.

Yellowhammer was made up of men who took off their hats to a smil-
ing loser; so they invited Cherokee to say what he wanted.

"Me?" said Cherokee, "oh, grubstakes will be about the thing. I reckon
I'll prospect along up in the Mariposas. If I strike it up there I will
most certainly let you all know about the facts. I never was any hand to
hold out cards on my friends/'

In May Cherokee packed his burro and turned its thoughtful, mouse-
colored forehead to the north. Many citizens escorted him to the undefined
limits of Yellowhammer and bestowed upon him shouts of commenda-
tion and farewells. Five pocket flasks without an air bubble between con-
tents and cork were forced upon him; and he was bidden to consider
Yellowhammer in perpetual commission for his bed, bacon and eggs,
and hot water for shaving in the event that luck did not see fit to warm
her hands by his campfire in the Mariposas.

The name of the father of Yellowhammer was given him by the gold
hunters in accordance with their popular system of nomenclature. It was
not necessary for a citizen to exhibit his baptismal certificate in order
to acquire a cognomen. A man's name was his personal property. For
convenience in calling him up to the bar and in designating him among
other blue-shirted bipeds, a temporary appellation, title or epithet was
conferred upon him by the public. Personal peculiarities formed the
source of the majority of such informal baptisms. Many were easily
dubbed geographically from the regions from which they confessed to
have hailed. Some announced themselves to be "Thompsons," and
"Adamses," and the like, with a brazenness and loudness that cast a cloud
upon their titles. A few vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered their
proper and indisputable names. This was held to be unduly arrogant,
and did not win popularity. One man who said he was Chesterton L. C.
Belmont, and proved it by letters, was given till sundown to leave the
town. Such names as "Shorty," "Bow-legs," "Texas," "Lazy Bill," "Thirsty

CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION 245

Rogers," "Limping Riley," "The Judge," and "California Ed" were in
favor. Cherokee derived his title from the fact that he claimed to have
lived for a time with that tribe in the Indian Nation.

On the twentieth day of December Baldy, the mail rider, brought
Yellowhammer a piece of news.

"What do I see in Albuquerque," said Baldy, to the patrons of the, bar,
"but Cherokee all embellished and festooned up like the Czar of Turkey,
and lavishin' money in bulk. Him and me seen the elephant and the owl,
and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and Cherokee he
audits all the bills, C. O. D. His pockets looked like a pool table's after a
fifteen-ball run."

"Cherokee must have struck pay ore," remarked California Ed. "Well,
he's white. I'm much obliged to him for his success."

"Seems like Cherokee would ramble down to Yellowhammer and see
his friends," said another, slightly aggrieved. "But that's the way. Pros-
perity is the finest cure there is for lost forgetfulness."

"You wait," said Baldy; "I'm comin' to that. Cherokee strikes a three-
foot vein up in the Mariposas that assays a trip to Europe to the ton, and
he closes it out to a syndicate outfit for a hundred thousand hasty dollars
in cash. Then he buys himself a baby sealskin overcoat and a red sleigh,
and what do you think he takes it in his head to do next?"

"Chuck-a-luck," said Texas, whose ideas of recreation were the game-
ster's.

"Come and Kiss Me, Ma Honey," sang Shorty, who carried tintypes in
his pocket and wore a red necktie while working on his claim.

"Bought a saloon?" suggested Thirsty Rogers.

"Cherokee took me to a room," continued Baldy, "and showed me. He's
got that room full of drums and dolls and skates and bags of candy and
jumping-jacks and toy lambs and whistles and such infantile truck. And
what do you think he's goin' to do with them inefficacious knick-knacks ?
Don't surmise none — Cherokee told me. He's goin' to load 'em up in his
red sleigh and — wait a minute, don't order no drinks yet — he's goin' to
drive down here to Yellowhammer and give the kids — the kids of this
here town — the biggest Christmas tree and the biggest cryin' doll and
Little Giant Boys' Tool Chest blowout that was ever seen west of Cape
Hatteras."

Two minutes of absolute silence ticked away in the wake of Baldy's
words. It was broken by the House, who, happily conceiving the moment
to be ripe for extending hospitality, sent a dozen whisky glasses spinning
down the bar, with the slower traveling bottle bringing up the rear.

"Didn't you tell him?" asked the miner called Trinidad.

"Well, no," answered Baldy, pensively; "I never exactly seen my way to.

"You see, Cherokee had this Christmas mess already bought and paid
for; and he was all flattered up with self-esteem over his idea; and we had

246 BOOK II HEARTOFTHEWEST

in a way flew the flume with that fizzy wine I speak of; so I never let on."

"I cannot refrain from a certain amount of surprise/' said the Judge,
as he hung his ivory-handled cane on the bar, "that our friend Cherokee
should possess such an erroneous conception of — ah — his, as it were, own
town."

"Oh, it ain't the eighth wonder of the terrestrial world/' said Baldy.
"Cherokee's been gone from Yellowhammer over seven months. Lots of
things could happen in that time. How's he to know that there ain't a
single kid in this town, and so far as emigration is concerned, none ex-
pected?"

"Come to think of it," remarked California Ed, "it's funny some ain't
drifted in. Town ain't settled enough yet for to bring in the rubber-ring
brigade, I reckon."

"To top off this Christmas-tree splurge of Cherokee's," went on Baldy,
"he's goin* to give an imitation of Santa Glaus. He's got a white wig and
whiskers that disfigure him up exactly like the pictures of this William
Cullen Longfellow in the books, and a red suit of fur-trimmed outside
underwear, and eight-ounces gloves, and a stand-up, lay-down croshayed
red cap. Ain't it a shame that a outfit like that can't get a chance to con-
nect with a Annie and Willie's prayer layout?"

"When does Cherokee allow to come over with his truck?" inquired
Trinidad.

"Mornin' before Christmas," said Baldy. "And he wants you folks to
have a room fixed up and a tree hauled and ready. And such ladies to
assist as can stop breathin' long enough to let it be a surprise for the kids."

The unblessed condition of Yellowhammer had been truly described.
The voice of childhood had never gladdened its flimsy structures; the
patter of restless little feet had never consecrated the one rugged highway
between the two rows of tents and rough buildings. Later they would
come. But now Yellowhammer was but a mountain camp, and nowhere
in it were the roguish, expectant eyes, opening wide at dawn of the en-
chanting day; the eager, small hands to reach for Santa's bewildering
hoard; the elated, childish voicings of the season's joy, such as the coming
good things of the warmhearted Cherokee deserved.

Of women there were five in Yellowhammer. The assayer's wife, the
proprietress of the Lucky Strike Hotel, and a laundress whose washtub
panned out an ounce of dust a day. These were the permanent feminines;
the remaining two were the Spangler Sisters, Misses Fanchon and Erma,
of the Transcontinental Comedy Company, then playing in the repertoire
at the (improvised) Empire Theatre. But of children there were none.
Sometimes Miss Fanchon enacted with spirit and address the part of
robustious childhood; but between her delineation and the visions of
adolescence that the fancy offered as eligible recipients of Cherokee's holi-
day stores there seemed to be fixed a gulf.

CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION 247

Christmas would come on Thursday. On Tuesday morning Trinidad,
instead of going to work, sought the Judge at the Lucky Strike Hotel.

"It'll be a disgrace to Yellowhammer," said Trinidad, "if it throws
Cherokee down on his Christmas-tree blowout. You might say that that
man made this town. For one, I'm goin' to see what can be done to give
Santa Claus a square deal."

"My cooperation," said the Judge, "would be gladly forthcoming. I am
indebted to Cherokee for past favors. But, I do not see—I have hereto-
fore regarded the absence of children rather as a luxury — but in this in-
stance— still, I do not see "

"Look at me," said Trinidad, "and you'll see old Ways and Means with
the fur on. I'm goin' to hitch up a team and rustle a load of kids for Cher-
okee's Santa Claus act, if I have to rob an orphan asylum."

"Eureka!" cried the Judge, enthusiastically.

"No, you didn't," said Trinidad, decidedly. "I found it myself. I learned
about that Latin word at school."

"I will accompany you," declared the Judge, waving his cane. "Perhaps
such eloquence and gift of language as I may possess will be of benefit in
persuading our young friends to lend themselves to our project."

Within an hour Yellowhammer was acquainted with the scheme of
Trinidad and the Judge, and approved it. Citizens who knew of families
with offspring within a forty-mile radius of Yellowhammer came forward
and contributed their information. Trinidad made careful notes of all such
and then hastened to secure a vehicle and team.

The first stop scheduled was at a double loghouse fifteen miles out
from Yellowhammer. A man opened the door at Trinidad's hail, and then
came down 'and leaned upon the rickety gate. The doorway was filled with
a close mass of youngsters, some ragged, all full of curiosity and health.

"It's this way," explained Trinidad. "We're from Yellowhammer, and
we come kidnappin' in a gentle kind of a way. One of our leading citizens
is stung with the Santa Claus affliction, and he's due in town to-morrow
with half the folderols that's painted red and made in Germany. The
youngest kid we got in Yellowhammer packs a forty-five and a safety
razor. Consequently we're mighty shy on anybody to say 'Oh' and 'Ah'
when we light the candles on the Christmas tree. Now, partner, if you'll
loan us a few kids we guarantee to return 'em safe and sound on Christ-
mas Day. And they'll come back loaded down with a good time and Swiss
Family Robinsons and cornucopias and red drums and similar testimo-
nials. What do you say?"

"In other words," said the Judge, "we have discovered for the first time
in our embryonic but progressive little city the inconveniences of the ab-
sence of adolescence. The season of the year having approximately arrived
during which it is a custom to bestow frivolous but often appreciated gifts
upon the young and tender "

248 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

"I understand," said the parent, packing his pipe with a forefinger.
"I guess I needn't detain you gentlemen. Me and the old woman have
got seven kids, so to speak; and, runnin' my mind over the bunch, I don't
appear to hit upon none that we could spare for you to take over to your
doin's. The old woman has got some popcorn candy and ragdolls hid in
the clothes chest, and we allow to give Christmas a little whirl of our own
in a insignificant sort of style. No, I couldn't, with any degree of avidity,
seem to fall in with the idea of lettin' none of 'em go. Thank you kindly,
gentlemen."

Down the slope they drove and up another foothill to the ranchhouse
of Wiley Wilson. Trinidad recited his appeal and the Judge boomed out
his ponderous antiphony. Mrs. Wiley gathered her two rosy-cheeked
youngsters close to her skirts and did not smile until she had seen Wiley
laugh and shake his head. Again a refusal.

Trinidad and the Judge vainly exhausted more than half their list before
twilight set in among the hills. They spent the night at a stage road hos-
telry, and set out again early the next morning. The wagon had not ac-
quired a single passenger.

"It's creepin' upon my faculties," remarked Trinidad, "that borrowin'
kids at Christmas is somethin' like tryin' to steal butter from a man that's
got hot pancakes a-comin'."

"It is undoubtedly an indisputable fact," said the Judge, "that the— ah
— family ties seem to be more coherent and assertive at that period of the
year."

On the day before Christmas they drove thirty miles, making four fruit-
less halts and appeals. Everywhere they found "kids'* at a premium.

The sun was low when the wife of a section boss on a lonely railroad
huddled her unavailable progeny behind her and said:

"There's a woman that's just took charge of the railroad eatin' house
down at Granite Junction. I hear she's got a little boy. Maybe she might
let him go."

Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o'clock in the
afternoon. The train had just departed with its load of fed and appeased
passengers.

On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy
of ten smoking a cigarette. The dining-room had been left in chaos by
the peripatetic appetites. A youngish woman reclined, exhausted, in a
chair. Her face wore sharp lines of worry. She had once possessed a cer-
tain style of beauty that would never wholly leave her and would never
wholly return. Trinidad set forth his mission.

"I'd count it a mercy if you'd take Bobby for a while," she said, wearily.
"I'm on the go from morning till night, and I don't have time to 'tend
to him. He's learning bad habits from the men. It'll be the only chance
he'll have to get any Christmas."

CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION 249

The men went outside and conferred with Bobby. Trinidad pictured
the glories of the Christmas tree and presents in lively colors.

"And, moreover, my young friend," added the Judge, "Santa Glaus
himself will personally distribute the offerings that will typify the gifrs
conveyed by the shepherds of Bethlehem to "

"Aw, come off," said the boy, squinting his small eyes. "I ain't no kid.
There ain't any Santa Glaus. It's your folks that buys toys and sneaks 'em
in when you're asleep. And they make marks in the soot in the chimney
with the tongs to look like Santa's sleigh tracks."

"That might be so," argued Trinidad, "but Christmas trees ain't no
fairy tale. This one's goin' to look like the ten-cent store in Albuquerque,
all strung up in a redwood. There's tops and drums and Noah's arks
and "

"Oh, rats!" said Bobby, wearily. "I cut them out long ago. I'd like to have
a rifle — not a target one — a real one, to shoot wildcats with; but I guess
you won't have any of them on your old tree."

"Well, I can't say for sure," said Trinidad, diplomatically; "it might be.
You go along with us and see."

The hope thus held out, though faint, won the boy's hesitating consent
to go. With this solitary beneficiary for Cherokee's holiday bounty, the
canvassers spun along the homeward road.

In Yellowhammer the empty storeroom had been transformed into
what might have passed as the bower of an Arizona fairy. The ladies
had done their work well. A tall Christmas tree, covered to the topmost
branch with candle, spangles, and toys sufficient for more than a score of
children, stood in the centre of the floor. Near sunset anxious eyes had
begun to scan the street for the returning team of the child-providers. At
noon that day Cherokee had dashed into town with his new sleigh piled
high with bundles and boxes and bales of all sizes and shapes. So intent
was he upon the arrangements for his Altruistic plans that the dearth of
childhood did not receive his notice. No one gave away the humiliating
state of Yellowhammer, for the efforts of Trinidad and the Judge were
expected to supply the deficiency.

When the sun went down Cherokee, with many winks and arch grins
on his seasoned face, went into retirement with the bundle containing the
Santa Glaus raiment and a package containing special and undisclosed
gifts.

"When the kids are rounded up," he instructed the volunteer arrange-
ment committee, "light up the candles on the tree and set 'em to playin'
'Pussy Wants a Corner5 and 'King William.' When they get good and at
it, why— old Santa'll slide in the door. I reckon there'll be plenty of gifts
to go 'round."

The ladies were flitting about the tree, giving it final touches that were
never final. The Spangler Sisters were there in costume as Lady Violet

250 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

de Vere and Marie, the maid, in their new drama, "The Miner's Bride."
The theatre did not open until nine, and they were welcome assistants of
the Christmas-tree committee. Every minute heads would pop out the
door to look and listen for the approach of Trinidad's team. And now
this became an anxious function, for night had fallen and it would soon
be necessary to light the candles on the tree, and Cherokee was apt to
make an irruption at any time in his Kriss Kringle garb.

At length the wagon of the child "rustlers" rattled down the street to
the door. The ladies, with little screams of excitement, flew to the lighting
of the candles. The men of Yellowhammer passed in and out restlessly
or stood about the room in embarrassed groups.

Trinidad and the Judge, bearing the marks of protracted travel, entered,
conducting between them a single impish boy, who stared with sullen,
pessimistic eyes at the gaudy tree.

"Where are the other children?" asked the assayer's wife, the acknowl-
edged leader of all social functions.

"Ma'am," said Trinidad with a sigh, "prospectin' for kids at Christmas
time is like huntin* in limestone for silver. This parental business is one
that I haven't no chance to comprehend. It seems that fathers and mothers
are willin' for their offsprings to be drownded, stole, fed on poison oak,
and et by catamounts 364 days in the year; but on Christmas Day they
insists on enjoyin' the exclusive mortification of their company. This here
young biped, ma'am, is all that washes out of our two days' manoeuvres."

"Oh, the sweet little boy!" cooed Miss Erma, trailing her De Vere robes
to centre of stage.

"Aw, shut up," said Bobby, with a scowl. "Who's a kid? You ain't, you
bet."

"Fresh brat!" breathed Miss Erma, beneath her enamelled smile.

"We done the best we could," said Trinidad. "It's tough on Cherokee,
but it can't be helped."

Then the door opened and Cherokee entered in the conventional dress
o£ Saint Nick. A white rippling beard and flowing hair covered his face
almost to his dark and shining eyes. Over his shoulder he carried a pack.

No one stirred as he came in. Even the Spangler Sisters ceased their
coquettish poses and stared curiously at the tall figure. Bobby stood with
his hands in his pockets gazing gloomily at the effeminate and childish
tree. Cherokee put down his pack and looked wonderingly about the
room. Perhaps he fancied that a bevy of eager children were being herded
somewhere, to be loosed upon his entrance. He went up to Bobby and
extended his red-mittened hand.

"Merry Christmas, little boy," said Cherokee. "Anything on the tree
you want they'll get it down for you. Won't you shake hands with Santa
Glaus?"

"There ain't any Santa Glaus," whined the boy. "You've got old false

CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION 251

billy goat's whiskers on your face. I ain't no kid. What do Iwant with
dolls and tin horses? The driver said you'd have a rifle, and you haven't.
I want to go home."

Trinidad stepped into the breach. He shook Cherokee's hand in warm
greeting.

"I'm sorry, Cherokee," he explained. "There never was a kid in Yellow-
hammer. We tried to rustle a bunch of 'em for your swaree, but this
sardine was all we could catch. He's a atheist, and he don't believe in
Santa Claus. It's a shame for you to be out all this truck. But me and the
Judge was sure we could round up a wagonful of candidates for your
gimcracks."

"That's all right," said Cherokee, gravely. "The expense don't amount
to nothin' worth mentionin'. We can dump the stuff down a shaft or
throw it away. I don't know what I was thinkin' about; but it never
occurred to my cogitations that there wasn't any kids in Yellowhammer."

Meanwhile the company had relaxed into a hollow but praiseworthy
imitation of a pleasure gathering.

Bobby had retreated to a distant chair, and was coldly regarding the
scene with ennui plastered thick upon him. Cherokee, lingering with his
original idea, went over and sat beside him.

"Where do you live, little boy?" he asked, respectfully.

"Granite Junction," said Bobby without emphasis.

The room was warm. Cherokee took off his cap, and then removed his
beard and wig.

"Say!" exclaimed Bobby, with a show of interest, "I know your mug,
all right."

"Did you ever see me before?" asked Cherokee.

"I don't know; but I've seen your picture lots of times."

"Where?"

The boy hesitated. "On the bureau at home," he answered.

"Let's have your name, if you please, buddy."

"Robert Lumsden. The picture belongs to my mother. She puts it under
her pillow of nights. And once I saw her kiss it. I wouldn't. But women
are that way."

Cherokee rose and beckoned to Trinidad.

"Keep this boy by you till I come back," he said. "I'm going to shed
these Christmas duds, and hitch up my sleigh. Fm goin' to take this kid
home."

"Well, infidel," said Trinidad, taking Cherokee's vacant chair, "and so
you are too superannuated and effete to yearn for such mockeries as
candy and toys? it seems."

"I don't like you," said Bobby, with acrimony. "You said there would
be a rifle. A fellow can't even smoke. J wish I was at home."

Cherokee drove his sleigh to the door, and they lifted Bobby in beside

252 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

him. The team of fine horses sprang away prancingly over the hard snow.
Cherokee had on his $500 overcoat of baby sealskin. The laprobe that he
drew about them was as warm as velvet.

Bobby slipped a cigarette from his pocket and was trying to snap a
match.

"Throw that cigarette away/5 said Cherokee, in a quiet but new voice.

Bobby hesitated, and then dropped the cylinder overboard.

"Throw the box, too," commanded the new voice.

More reluctantly the boy obeyed.

"Say," said Bobby, presently, "I like you. I don't know why. Nobody
never made me do anything I didn't want to do before."

"Tell me, kid," said Cherokee, not using his new voice, "are you sure
your mother kissed that picture that looks like me?"

"Dead sure. I seen her do it."

"Didn't you remark somethin' a while ago about wanting a rifle?"

"You bet I did. Will you get me one?"

"To-morrow — silver-mounted."

Cherokee took out his watch,

"Half-past nine. We'll hit the Junction plumb on time with Christmas
Day, Are you cold? Sit closer, son."

A CHAPARRAL PRINCE

Nine o'clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena
climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen's Hotel.
Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman,
scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups, making
the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and water in that
turbulent and depressing hostelry.

The din of the day's quarrying was over — the blasting and drilling, the
creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing and
shifting of the flat-cars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in
the hotel office three or four of the laborers were growling and swearing
over a belated game of checkers. Heavy odors of stewed meat, hot grease,
and cheap coflfee hung like a depressing fog about the house.

Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair.
She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished. Her back and limbs were
sore and aching. But the ache in her heart made the biggest trouble. The
last straw had been added to the burden upon her small shoulders. They
had taken away Grimm. Always at nighty however tired she might be,
she had turned to Grimm for comfort and hope. Each time had Grimm
whispered to her that the prince or the fairy would come tod deliver her

A CHAPARRAL PRINCE 253

out of the wicked enchantment. Every night she had taken fresh courage
and strength from Grimm.

To whatever tale she read she found an analogy in her own condition.
The woodcutter's lost child, the unhappy goose girl, the persecuted step-
daughter, the little maiden imprisoned in the witch's hut— all these were
but transparent disguises for Lena,, the overworked kitchenmaid in the
Quarrymen's Hotel And always when the extremity was direst came the
good fairy or the gallant prince to the rescue.

So, here in the ogre's castle, enslaved by a wicked spell, Lena had
leaned upon Grimm and waited, longing for the powers of goodness to
prevail. But on the day before Mrs. Maloney had found the book in her
room and had carried it away, declaring sharply that it would not do for
servants to read at night; they lost sleep and did not work briskly the next
day. Can one only eleven years old, living away from one's mamma, and
never having any time to play, live entirely deprived of Grimm? Just try
it once and you will see what a difficult thing it is.

Lena's home was in Texas, away up among the little mountains on the
Pedernales River3 in a little town called Fredericksburg. They are all
German people who live in Fredericksburg. Of evenings they sit at little
tables along the sidewalk and drink beer and play pinochle and scat. They
are very thrifty people.

Thriftiest among them was Peter Hildesmuller, Lena's father. And
that is why Lena was sent to work in the hotel at the quarries, thirty miles
away. She earned three dollars every week there, and Peter added her
wages to his well-guarded store. Peter had an ambition to become as rich
as his neighbor, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum pipe three
feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for dinner every day
in the week. And now Lena was quite old enough to work and assist in
the accumulation of riches. But conjecture, if you can, what it means to be
sentenced at eleven years of age from a home in the pleasant little Rhine
village to hard labor in the ogre's castle, where you must fly to serve the
ogres, while they devour cattle and sheep, growling fiercely as they stamp
white limestone dust from their great shoes for you to sweep and scour
with your weak, aching fingers. And then — to have Grimm taken away
from you!

Lena raised the lid of an old empty case that had once contained canned
corn and got out a sheet of paper and a piece of pencil. She was going to
write a letter to her mamma. Tommy Ryan was going to post it for her
at Ballinger's. Tommy was seventeen, worked in the quarries, went home
to Ballinger's every night, and was now waiting in the shadows under
Lena's window for her to throw the letter out to him. That was the only
way she could send a letter to Fredericksburg. Mrs. Maloney did not like
for her to write letters.

The stump of caadle was burning low, so Lena hastily bit the wood

254 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

from around the lead of her pencil and began. This is the letter she
wrote:

Dearest Mamma: — I want so much to see you. And Gretel and Glaus
and Heinrich and little Adolf. I am so tired. I want to see you. To-day
I was slapped by Mrs. Maloney and had no supper. I could not bring
in enough wood, for my hand hurt. She took my book yesterday. I
mean "Grimms's Fairy Tales," which Uncle Leo gave me. It did not
hurt any one for me to read the book. I try to work as well as I can, but
there is so much to do. I read only a little bit every night. Dear mamma,
I shall tell you what I am going to do. Unless you send for me to-
morrow to bring me home I shall go to a deep place I know in the river
and drown. It is wicked to drown, I suppose, but I wanted to see you,
and there is no one else. I am very tired, and Tommy is waiting for
the letter. You will excuse me, mamma, if I do it.

Your respectful and loving daughter,

Lena

Tommy was still waiting faithfully when the letter was concluded,
and when Lena dropped it out she saw him pick it up and start up the
steep hillside. Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled
herself upon the mattress on the floor.

At 10:30 o'clock old man Ballinger came out of house in his stocking
feet and leaned over the gate, smoking his pipe. He looked down the big
road, white in the moonshine, and rubbed one ankle with the toe of his
other foot. It was time for the Fredericksburg mail to come pattering up
the road.

Old man Ballinger had waited only a few minutes when he heard
the lively hoofbeats of Fritz's team of little black mules, and very soon
afterward his covered spring wagon stood in front of the gate. Fritz's big
spectacles flashed in the moonlight and his tremendous voice shouted a
greeting to the postmaster of Ballinger's. The mail-carrier jumped out
and took the bridles from the mules, for he always fed them oats at
Ballinger's.

While the mules were eating from their feed bags old man Ballinger
brought out the mail sack and threw it into the wagon.

Fritz Bergmann was a man of three sentiments — or to be more accurate
—four, the pair of mules deserving to be reckoned individually. Those
mules were the chief interest and joy of his existence. Next came the
Emperor of Germany and Lena Hildesmuller.

"Tell me," said Fritz, when he was ready to start, "contains the sacks
a letter to Frau Hildesmuller from the little Lena at the quarries? One
came in the last mail to say that she is a little sick, already. Her mamma
is very anxious to hear again."

"Yes/' said old man Ballinger^ "thar's a letter for Mrs. Helterskelter,

A CHAPARRAL PRINCE 255

or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he come. Her little
gal workin' over thar, you say?"

"In the hotel," shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; "eleven years
old and not bigger as a frankfurter. The close-fist of a Peter Hildesmuller!
—some day shall I with a big club pound that man's dummkopf— all in
and out the town. Perhaps in this letter Lena will say that she is yet feel-
ing better. So, her mamma will be glad. Auf wtedersehen, Herr Ballinger
— your feets will take cold out in the night air."

"So long, Fritzy," said old man Ballinger. "You got a nice cool night
for your drive."

Up the road went the little black mules at their steady trot, while Fritz
thundered at the#i occasional words of endearment and cheer.

These fancies occupied the mind of the mailcarrier until he reached
the big post-oak forest, eight miles from Ballinger's. Here his rumina-
tions were scattered by the sudden flash and report of pistols and a whoop-
ing as, if from ,a whole tribe of Indians. A band of galloping centaurs
closed in around the mail wagon. One of them leaned over the front wheel,
covered the driver with his revolver, and ordered him to stop. Others
caught at the bridles of Bonder and Blitzen.

"DonnerwetterP5 shouted Fritz, with all his tremendous voice — "wass
ist? Release your hands from dose mules. Ve vas der United States mail!"

"Hurry up, Dutch!" drawled a melancholy voice. "Don't you know
when you're in a stick-up ? Reverse your mules and climb out of the cart."

It is due to the breadth of Hondo Bill's demerit and the largeness of
his achievements to state that the holding up of the Fredericksburg mail
was not perpetrated by way of an exploit. As the lion while in the pursuit
of prey commensurate to his prowess might set a frivolous foot upon a
casual rabbit in his path, , so Hondo Bill and his gang had swooped
sportively upon the pacific transport of Meinherr Fritz.

The real work of their sinister night ride was over. Fritz and his mail
bag and his mules came as a gentle relaxation, grateful after die arduous
duties of their profession. Twenty miles to the southeast stood a train
with a killed engine, hysterical passengers, and a looted express and mail
car. That represented the scripus occupation of Hondo Bill and his gang.
With a fairly rich prize of currency and silver the robbers were making a
wide detour to the west through the less populous country, intending to
seek safety in Mexico by means of some fordable spot on the Rio Grande.
The booty from the train had melted the desperate bushrangers to jovial
and happy skylarkers.

Trembling with outraged dignity and no little personal apprehension,
Fritz climbed out to the road after replacing his suddenly removed spec-
tacles. The band had dismounted and were singing, capering, and whoop-
ing, thus expressing their satisfied delight in the life of a jolly outlaw.
Rattlesnake Rogers, who stood at the heads of the mules, jerked a little

256 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

too vigorously at the rein of the tender-mouthed Donder, who reared and
emitted a loud, protesting snort of pain. Instantly Fritz, with a scream of
anger, flew at the bulky Rogers and began assiduously to pommel that
surprised free-booter with his fists.

"Villain!" shouted Fritz, "dog, bigstiff! Dot mule he has a soreness by
his mouth. I vill knock off your shoulders mit your head — robber-mans!"

"Yi-yi!" howled Rattlesnake, roaring with laughter and ducking his
head, "somebody git this here sourkrout ofT'n me!"

One of the band jerked Fritz back by the coat-tail, and the woods rang
with Rattlesnake's vociferous comments.

"The dog-goned little wienerwurst," he yelled, amiably. "He's not so
much of a skunk, for a Dutchman. Took up for his animile plum quick,
didn't he? I like to see a man like his hoss, even if it is a mule. The dad-
blamed little Limburger he went for me, didn't he! Whoa, now, muley —
I ain't a-goin' to hurt your mouth agin any more.'1

Perhaps the mail would not have been tampered with had not Ben
Moody, the lieutenant, possessed certain wisdom that seemed to promise
more spoils.

"Say, Cap," he said, addressing Hondo Bill, "there's liable to be good
pickings in these mail sacks. IVe done some hoss tradin' with these
Dutchmen around Fredericksburg, and I know the style of the varmints.
There's big money goes through the mails- to that town. Them Dutch risk
a thousand dollars sent wrapped in a piece of paper before they'd pay
the banks to handle the money."

Hondo Bill, six feet two, gentle of voice and impulsive in action, "was
dragging the sacks from the rear of the wagon before Moody had finished
his speech. A knife shone in his hand, and they heard the ripping sound
as it bit through the tough canvas. The outlaws crowded around and
began tearing open letters and packages, enlivening their labors by swear-
ing affably at the writers, who seemed to have conspired to confute the
prediction of Ben Moody. Not a dollar was found in the Fredericksburg
mail.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hondo Bill to the mail-
carrier in solemn tones, "to be packing around such 'a lot of old, trashy
paper as this. What d'you mean by it, anyhow? Where do you Dutchers
keep your money at?"

The Ballinger mail sack opened like a cocoon under Hondo's knife. It
contained but a handful of mail. Fritz had been fuming with terror and
excitement until this sack was reached. He now remembered Lena's
letter, He addressed the leader of the band, asking him that that par-
ticular missive be spared. :

"Much obliged, Dutch," he said to the disturbed carrier. "I guess that's
the letter we want Got spondulicks in it, ain't it? Here shejs. Make a
light, boys."

A CHAPARRAL PRINCE 257

Hondo found and tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others
stood about, lighting twisted-up letters one from another. Hondo gazed
with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the
angular German script.

"Whatever is this you've humbugged us with, Dutchy? You call this
here a valuable letter? That's a mighty low-down trick to play on your
friends what come along to help you distribute your mail."

"That's Chiny writing" said Sandy Grundy, peering over Hondo's
shoulder.

"You're off your kazip," declared another of the gang, an effective
youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs, and nickel plating. "That's short-
hand. I seen 'em do it once in court."

"Ach, no, no, no — dot is German," said Fritz. "It is no more as a litde
girl writing a letter to her mamma. One poor little girl, sick and vorking
hard avay from home. Ach! it is a shame. Good Mr. Robber-man, you vill
please let me have dot letter?"

"What the devil do you take us for, old Pretzels" said Hondo with
sudden and surprising severity. "You ain't presumin' to insinuate that we
gents ain't possessed of sufficient politeness for to take an interest in the
miss's health are you? Now, you go on, and you read that scratchin'
out loud and in plain United States language to this here company of edu-
cated society."

Hondo twirled his six-shooter by its trigger guard and stood towering
above the little German, who at once began to read the letter, translating
the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in absolute
silence, listening intently.

"How old is that kid?" asked Hondo when the letter was done.

"Eleven," said Fritz.

"And where is she at?"

"At dose rock quarries — working. Ach, niein Gott — little Lena, 'she
speak of drowning. I do not know if she vill do it, but if she shall I
schwear I vill dot Peter Hildesmuller shoot mit a gun."

"You Dutchers," said Hondo Bill, his voice swelling with fine con-
tempt, "make me plenty tired. Hirin' out your kids to work when they
ought to be playin' dolls in the sand. You're a hell of a sect of people. I
reckon we'll fix your clock for a while just to show what we think of your
old cheesy nation. Here, boys!"

Hondo Bill parleyed aside briefly with his band, and then they seized
Fritz and conveyed him off the road to one side. Here they bound him
fast to a tree with a couple of .lariats. His team they tied to another tree
near by. ,

"We ain't going to hurt you bad," said Hondo, reassuringly. " 'T won't
hurt you to be tied up for a while. We will now pass you the time of

258 BOOKII HEARTOFTHEWEST

day, as it is up to us to depart. Ausgespielt— nixcumrous, Dutchy. Don't
get any more impatience."

Fritz heard a great squeaking of saddles as the men mounted their
horses. Then a loud yell and a great clatter of hoofs as they galloped pell-
mell back along the Fredericksburg road.

For more than two hours Fritz sat against his tree, tightly but not
painfully bound. Then from the reaction after his exciting adventure he
sank into slumber. How long he slept he knew not, but he was at last
awakened by a rough shake. Hands were untying his ropes. He was lifted
to his feet, dazed, confused in mind, and weary of body. Rubbing his
eyes, he looked and saw that he was again in the midst of the same band
of terrible bandits. They shoved him up to the seat of his wagon and
placed the lines in his hands.

"Hit it out for home, Dutch," said Hondo Bill's voice, commandingly.
"YouVe given us lots of trouble and we're pleased to see the back of your
neck. Spiel! Zwei bier! Vamoose!"

Hondo reached out and gave Blitzen a smart cut with his quirt.

The little mules sprang ahead, glad to be moving again. Fritz urged
them along, himself dizzy and muddled over his fearful adventure.

According to schedule time, he should have reached Fredericksburg
at daylight. As it was, he drove down the long street of the town at eleven
o'clock A.M. He had to pass Peter Hildesmuller's house on his way to the
post-office. He stopped his team at the gate and called. But Frau Hil-
desmuller was watching for him. Out rushed the whole family of Hildes-
mullers.

Frau Hildesmuller, fat and flushed, inquired if he had a letter from
Lena, and then Fritz raised his voice and told the tale of his adventure.
He told the contents of the letter that the robber had made him read,
and then Frau Hildesmuller broke into wild weeping. Her little Lena
drown herself! Why had they sent her from home? What could be done?
Perhaps it would be too late by the time they could send for her now.
Peter Hildesmuller dropped his meerschaum on the walk and it shivered
into pieces.

"Woman!" he roared at his wife, "why did you let that child go away?
It is your fault if she comes home to us no more."

Every one knew that it was Peter Hildesmuller's fault, so they paid no
attention to his words.

A moment afterward a strange, faint voice was heard to call : "Mamma!"
Frau Hildesmuller at first thought it was Lena's spirit calling, and then
she rushed to the rear of Fritz's covered wagon, and, with a loud shriek of
joy, caught up Lena herself, covering her pale little face with kisses and
smothering her with hugs. Lena's eyes were heavy with the deep slumber
of exhaustion, but she smiled and lay close to the one she had longed to
see. There among the mail sacks, covered in a nest of strange blankets

THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE 259

and comforters, she had lain asleep until wakened by the voices around
her.

Fritz stared at her with eyes that bulged behind his spectacles.

"Gott in Himmel!" he shouted. "How did you get in that wagon? Am
I going crazy as well as to be murdered and hanged by robbers this day?"

"You brought her to us, Fritz," cried Frau Hildesmuller. "How can we
ever thank you enough ?"

"Tell mamma how you came in Fritz's wagon,'* said Frau Hildesmuller.

"I don't know," said Lena. "But I know how I got away from the hotel.
The Prince brought me."

"By the Emperor's crown!" shouted Fritz, "we are all going crazy."

"I always knew he would come," said Lena, sitting down on her bundle
of bedclothes on the sidewalk. "Last night he came with his armed
knights and captured the ogre's castle. They broke the dishes and kicked
down the doors. They pitched Mr. Maloney into a barrel of rain water
and threw flour all over Mrs. Maloney. The workmen in the hotel jumped
out of the windows and ran into the woods when the knights began firing
their guns. They wakened me up and I peeped down the stair. And then
the Prince came up and wrapped me in the bedclothes and carried me
out. He was so tall and strong and fine. His face was as rough as a scrub-
bing brush, and he talked soft and kind and smelled of schnapps. He took
me on his horse before him and we rode away among the knights. He
held me close and I went to sleep that way, and didn't wake up till I got
home."

"Rubbish!" cried Fritz Bergmann. "Fairy tales! How did you come
from the quarries to my wagon?"

"The Prince brought me," said Lena, confidently.

And to this day the good people of Fredericksburg haven't been able
to make her give any other explanation.

THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE

Calliope Catesby was in his humors again. Ennui was upon him. This
goodly promontory, the earth— particularly that portion of it known as
Quicksand— was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapors.
Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soHloquy;
my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at the millinery
bills of his women folk. Such recourse was insufficient to the denizens of
Quicksand, Calliope, especially, was wont to express his ennui according
to his lights.

Over night Calliope had hung out signals of approaching low spirits.
He had kicked his own dog on the porch of the Occidental Hotel, and

260 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

refused to apologize. He had become capricious and fault-finding in con-
versation. While strolling about he reached often for twigs of mesquite
and chewed the leaves fiercely. That was always an ominous act. Another
symptom alarming to those who were familiar with the different stages
of his doldrums was his increasing politeness and a tendency to use formal
phrases. A husky softness succeeded the usual penetrating drawl in his
tones. A dangerous courtesy marked his manners. Later, his smile became
crooked, the left side of his mouth slanting upward, and Quicksand got
ready to stand from under.

At this stage Calliope generally began to drink. Finally, about mid-
night, he was seen going homeward, saluting those whom he met with
exaggerated but inoffensive courtesy. Not yet was Calliope's melancholy
at the danger point. He would seat himself at the widow of the room
he occupied over Silvester's tonsorial parlors and there chant lugubrious
and tuneless ballads until morning, accompanying the noises by appro-
priate maltreatment of a jingling guitar. More magnanimous than Nero,
he would thus give musical warning of the forthcoming municipal up-
heaval that Quicksand was scheduled to endure.

A quiet, amiable man was Calliope Catesby at other times — quiet to
indolence, and amiable to worthlessness. At best he was a loafer and a
nuisance ; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible occupa-
tion was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove the
beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch prop-
erty. Originally he came from one of the Gulf States, his lank six feet,
slurring rhythm of speech, and sectional idioms giving evidence of his
birthplace.

And yet, after taking on Western adjustments, this languid pine-box
whittler, cracker barrel hugger, shady corner lounger of the cotton fields
and sumac hills of the South became famed as a bad man among men
who had made a life-long study of the art of truculence.

At nine the next morning Calliope was fit. Inspired by his own bar-
barous melodies and the contents of his jug, he was ready primed to
gather fresh laurels from the diffident brow of Quicksand. Encircled and
criss-crossed with cartridge belts, abundantly garnished with revolvers,
and copiously drunk, he poured forth into Quicksand's main street. Too
chivalrous to surprise and capture a town by silent sortie, he paused at
the nearest corner and emitted his slogan — that fearful, brassy yell, so
reminiscent of the steam piano, that had gained for him the classic appel-
lation that had superseded his own baptismal name. Following close upon
his vociferation came three shots from his forty-five by way of limbering
up the guns and testing his aim. A yellow dog, the personal property of
Colonel Swazey, the proprietor of the Occidental, fell feet upward in
the dust with one farewell yelp. A Mexican who was crossing the street
from the Blue Front grocery, carrying in his hand a bottle of kerosene.

THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE 261

was stimulated to a sudden and admirable burst of speed, still grasping
the neck" of the shattered bottle. The new gilt weathercock on Judge
Riley's lemon and ultra-marine two-story residence shivered, flapped,
and hung by a splinter, the sport of the wanton breezes.

The artillery was in trim. Calliope's hand was steady. The high, cairn
ecstasy of habitual battle was upon him, though slightly embittered by
the sadness of Alexander in that his conquests were limited to the small
world of Quicksand.

Down the street went Calliope, shooting right and left. Glass fell like
hail; dogs vamosed; chickens flew, squawking; feminine voices shrieked
concernedly to youngsters at large. The din was perforated at intervals
by the staccato of the Terror's guns, and was drowned periodically by the
brazen screech that Quicksand knew so well. The occasion of Calliope's
low spirits were legal holidays in Quicksand. All along the main street
in advance- of his coming clerks were putting up shutters and closing
doors. Business would languish for a space. The right of way was Cal-
liope's, and as he advanced, observing the dearth of opposition and the
few opportunities for distraction, his ennui perceptibly increased.

But some four squares farther down lively preparations were being
made to minister to Mr. Catesby's love for interchange of compliments
and repartee. On the previous night numerous messengers had hastened
to advise Buck Patterson, the city marshal, of Calliope's impending erup-
tion. The patience of that official, often strained in extending leniency
toward the disturber's misdeeds, had been overtaxed. In Quicksand
some indulgence was accorded the natural ebullitioa of human nature.
Providing that the lives of the more useful citizens were not recklessly
squandered, or too much property needlessly laid waste, the community
sentiment was against a too strict enforcement of the law. But Calliope
had raised the limit. His outbursts had been too frequent and too violent
to come within the classification of a normal and sanitary relaxation of
spirit.

Buck Patterson had been expecting and awaiting in his little ten-by-
twelve frame office that preliminary yell anouncing that Calliope was
feeling blue. When the signal came the City Marshal rose to his feet and
buckled on his guns. Two deputy sheriffs and three citizens who had
proven the edible qualities of fire also stood up, ready to bandy with
Calliope's leaden jocularities.

"Gather that fellow in," said Buck Patterson, setting for the lines of
the campaign. "Don't have no talk, but shoot as soon as you can get a
show. Keep behind cover and bring him down. He's a nogood 'un. It's up
to Calliope to turn up his toes this time, I reckon. Go to him all spraddled
out, boys. And don't git too reckless, for what Calliope shoots at he hits,"

Buck Patterson, tall, muscular, and solemn-faced, with his bright "City
Marshal" badge shining on the breast of his blue flannel shirt, gave his

262 BOOKII HEART OF THE WEST

posse directions for the onslaught upon Calliope. The plan was to accom-
plish the downfall of the Quicksand Terror without loss to the attaching
party, if possible.

The splenetic Calliope, unconscious of retributive plots, was steaming
down the channel, cannonading on either side, when he suddenly became
aware of breakers ahead. The City Marshal and one of the deputies rose
up behind some dry-goods boxes half a square to the front and opened
fire. At the same time the rest of the posse, divided, shelled him from
two side streets up which they were cautiously manoeuvring from a well-
executed detour.

The first volley broke the lock of one of Calliope's guns, cut a neat
underbit in his right ear, and exploded a cartridge in his crossbelt, scorch-
ing his ribs as it burst. Feeling braced up by this unexpected tonic to
his spiritual depression, Calliope executed , a fortissimo note from his
upper registers, and returned the fire like an echo. The upholders of the
law dodged at his flash, but a. trifle too late to save one of the deputies
a bullet just above the elbow, and the marshal a bleeding cheek from a
splinter that a ball tore from a box he had ducked behind.

And now Calliope met the enemy's tactics in kind. Choosing with a
rapid eye the street from which the weakest and least accurate fire had
come, he invaded it a double-quick, abandoning the unprotected middle
of the street. With rare cunning the opposing force in that direction — one
of the deputies and two of the valorous volunteers — waited, concealed by
beer barrels, until Calliope had passed their retreat, and then peppered
him from the rear. In another moment they were reinforced by the mar-
shal and his other men, and then Calliope felt that in order to successfully
prolong the delights of the controversy he must find some means of re-
ducing the great odds against him. His eye fell upon a structure that
seemed to hold out this promise, providing he could reach it.

Not far away was the little railroad station, its building a strong box
house, ten by twenty feet, resting upon a platform four feet above ground.
Windows were in each of its walls. Something like a fort it might become
to a man thus sorely pressed by superior numbers.

Calliope made a bold and rapid spurt for it, the marshal's crowd ""smok-
ing" him as he ran. He reached die haven in safety, the station agent
leaving the building by a window, like a flying squirrel, as the garrison
entered the door.

Patterson and his supporters halted under protection of a pile of lum-
ber and held consultations. In the station was an unterrified desperado
who was an excellent shot and carried an abundance of ammunition. For
thirty yards on each side of the besieged was a stretch of bare, open
ground. It was a sure thing that the man who attempted to enter that
unprotected area would be stopped by one of Calliope's bullets;

The City Marshal was resolved. He had decided that Calliope Catesby

THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE 263

should no more wake the echoes o£ Quicksand with his strident whoop.
He had so announced. Officially and personally he felt imperatively
bound to put the soft pedal on that instrument of discord. It played bad
tunes.

Standing near was a hand truck used in the manipulation of small
freight. It stood by a shed full of sacked wool, a consignment from one
of the sheep ranches. On this truck the marshal and his men piled three
heavy sacks of wool. Stooping low. Buck Patterson started for Calliope's
fort, slowly pushing this loaded truck before him for protection. The
posse, scattering broadly, stood ready to nip the besieged in case he
should show himself in an effort to repel the juggernaut of justice that
was creeping upon him. Only once did Calliope make demonstration-
He fired from a window and some tufts of wool spurted from the mar-
shal's trustworthy bulwark. The return shots from the posse pattered
against the window frame of the fort. No loss resulted on either side.

The marshal was too deeply engrossed in steering his protected battle-
ship to be aware of the approach of the morning train until he was
within a few feet of the platform. The train was coming up on the other
side of it. It stopped only one minute at Quicksand. What an opportunity
it would offer to Calliope! He had only to step out the other door, mount
the train, and away.

Abandoning his breastworks, Buck, with his gun ready, dashed up the
steps and into the room, driving open the closed door with one heave
of his weighty shoulder. The members of the posse heard one shot fired
inside, and then there was silence.

At length the wounded man opened his eyes. After a blank space he
again could see and hear and feel and think. Turning his eyes about, he
found himself lying on a wooden bench. A tall man with a perplexed
countenance, wearing a big badge with "City Marshal" engraved upon
it, stood over him. A little old woman in black, with a wrinkled face and
sparkling black eyes was holding a wet handkerchief against one of his
temples. He was trying to get these facts fixed in his mind and connected
with past events, when the old woman began to talk.

"There now, gr£at, big, strong man! That bullet never tetched ye!
Jest skeeted along the side of your head and sort of paralyzed ye for a
spell. I've heerd of sech things afor! con-cussion isk what they names it.
Abel Wadkins used to kill squirrels that way— barkin' em, Abe called it.
You jest been barked, sir, and you'll be all right in a little bit. Feel lots
better already, don't ye! You just lay still a while longer and let me bathe
your, head. You don't know me, I reckon, and 'tain't surprisin' that you
shouldn't. I come in on that train from Alabama to 'see my son. Big son,
ain't he? Lands! you wouldn't hardly think he'd ever been a baby, would
ye? This is my son, sir,"

264 BOOK II HEARTOFTHEWEST

Half turning, the old woman looked up at the standing man, her worn
face lighting with a proud and wonderful smile. She reached out one
veined and calloused hand and took one of her son's. Then smiling
cheerily down at the prostrate man, she continued to dip the handkerchief
in the waiting-room tin washbasin and gently apply it to his temple. She
had the benevolent garrulity of old age.

"I ain't seen my son before/' she continued, "in eight years. One of my
nephews, Elkanah Price, he's a conductor on one of them railroads, and
he got me a pass to come out here. I can stay a whole week on it, and
then it'll take me back again. Jest think, now, that little boy of mine has
got to be a officer — a city marshal of a whole town! That's something
like a constable, ain't it? I never knowed he was a officer; he didn't say
nothin' about it in his letters. I reckon he thought his old mother'd be
skeered about the danger he was in. But, laws! I never was much of a
hand to git skeered. 'Tain't no use. I heard them guns a-shootin' while I
was gittin' off them cars, and I see smoke a-comin' out of the depot, but
I jest walked right along. Then I see son's f^ce lookin' out through the
window. I knowed him at oncet. He met me at the door, and squeezed
me 'most to death. And there you was, sir, a-lyin' there jest like you was
dead, and I 'lowed we'd see what might be done to help sot you up."

"I think I'll sit up now," said the concussion patient. "I'm feeling
pretty fair by this time."

He sat, somewhat weakly yet, leaning against the wall. He was a
rugged man, big-boned and straight. His eyes, steady and keen, seemed
to linger upon the face of the man standing so still above him. His look
wandered often from the face he studied to the marshal's badge upon the
other's breast.

"Yes, yes, you'll be all right," said the old woman, patting his arm, "if
you don't get to cuttin' up ^gin, and havin' folks shootin' at ,you. Son
told me about you, sir, while you was layin* senseless on the floor. Don't
you take it as meddlesome fer an old woman with a son as big as you to
talk about it. And you mustn't hold no grudge ag'in my son for havin'
to shoot at ye. A officer has got to take up for the law— it's his duty— and
them that acts bad and lives wrong has to suffer. Don't blame my son any,
sir — 'tain't his fault* He's always been a good boy — good when he was
growin' up, and kind and 'bedient and well-behaved. Won't you let me
advise you, sir, not to do so no more? Be a good man, and leave liquor
alone and live peaceably and godly. Keep away from bad company and
work honest and sleep sweet/'

The black-mittened hand of the old pleader gently touched the breast
of the man she addressed. Very earnest and candid her old, worn face
looked. In her rusty black dress and antique bonnet she sat, near the close
of a long life, and epitomized the experience of the world. Still the man

THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE 265

to whom she spoke gazed above her head, contemplating the silent son
of the old mother.

"What does the marshal say?" he asked. "Does he believe the advice
is good? Suppose the marshal speaks up and says if the talk's all right?"

The tall man moved uneasily. He fingered the badge on his breast for
a moment, and then he put an arm around the old woman and drew her
close to him. She smiled the unchanging mother smile of three-score
years, and patted his big brown hand with her crooked, mittened fingers
while her son spake.

"I say this," he said, looking squarely into the eyes of the other man,
"that if I was in your place I'd follow it. If I was a drunken, desp'rate
character, without shame or hope, I'd follow it. If I was in your place
and you was in mine I'd say: 'Marshal, I'm willin' to swear if you'll give
me the chance I'll quit the racket. I'll drop the tanglefoot and the gun
play, and won't play hoss no more. I'll be a good citizen and go to work
and quit my foolishness. So help me God!' That's what I'd say to you
if you was marshal and I was in your place."

"Hear my son talkin'," said the old woman, softly. "Hear him, sir. You
promise to be good and he won't do you no harm. Forty-one year ago
his heart first beat ag'in mine, and it's beat true ever since."

The other man rose to his feet, trying his limbs and stretching his
muscles.

"Then," said he, "if you was in my place and said that, and I was mar-
shal, I'd say: 'Go free, and do your best to keep your promise."

"Lawsy!" exclaimed the old woman, in a sudden flutter, "ef I didn't
clear forget that trunk of mine! I see a man settin' it on the platform
jest as I seen son's face in the window, and it went plum out of my head.
There's eight jars of home-made quince jam in that trunk that I made
myself. I wouldn't have nothin' happen to them jars for a red apple."

Away to the door she trotted, spry and anxious, and then Calliope
Catesby spoke out to Buck Patterson:

"I just couldn't help it, Buck. I seen her through the window a-comin'
in. She had never heard a word 'bout my tough ways. I didn't have the
nerve to let her know I was a worthless cuss bein' hunted down by the
community. There you was lyin' where my shot laid you, like you was
dead. The idea struck me sudden, and I just took your badge off and
fastened it onto myself, and I fastened my reputation onto you. I told
her I was the marshal and you was a holy terror. You can take your
badge back now. Buck."

With shaking fingers Calliope began to unfasten the disc of metal from
his shirt.

"Easy there!" said Buck Patterson. "You keep that badge right where
it is, Calliope Catesby. Don't you dare to take it of? till the day your
mother leaves this town. You'll be city marshal of Quicksand as long as

266 BOOK II HEART OF THE WEST

she's here to know it. After I stir around town a bit and put 'em on I'll
guarantee that nobody won't give the thing away to her. And say, you
leather-headed, rip-roarin', low-down son of a locoed cyclone, you fol-
low that advice she gave me! I'm goin' to take some of it myself, too,"

"Buck," said Calliope, feelingly, "ef I don't I hope I may "

"Shut up,'J said Buck. "She's a-comin' back."

BOOK

GRAFTER

THE OCTOPUS MAROONED

"A trust is its weakest point," said Jeff Peters.

"That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such
as, 'Why is a policeman?' "

"It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust and a
policeman. My remark was an epitogram — an axis — a kind of mulct'em in
parvo. What it means is that a trust is like an egg, and it is not like an
egg. If you want to break an egg you have to do it from the outside. The
only way to break up a trust is from the inside. Keep sitting on it until
it hatches. Look at the brood of young colleges and libraries that's chirp-
ing and peeping all over the country. Yes, sir, every trust bears in its own
bosom the seeds of its destruction like a rooster that crows near a Georgia
colored Methodist camp meeting, or a Republican announcing himself
a candidate for governor of Texas."

268 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

I asked Jeff, jestingly, if he had ever, during his checkered, plaided,
mottled, pied and dappled career, conducted an enterprise of the class
to which the wor "trust" had been applied. Somewhat to my surprise
he acknowledged the corner.

"Once," said he. "And the state seal of New Jersey never bit into a
charter that opened up a solider and safer piece of legitimate octopusing.
We had everything in our favor— wind, water, police, nerve, and a clean
monopoly of an article indispensable to the public. There wasn't a trust
buster on the globe that could have found a weak spot in our scheme. It
made Rockefeller's little kerosene speculation look like a bucket shop.
But we lost out."

"Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose," I said.

"No, sir, it was just as I said. We were self-curbed. It was a case of
auto-suppression. There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennyson
says.

"You remember I told you that me and Andy Tucker was partners for
some years. That man was the most talented conniver at stratagems I
ever saw. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hand he took it
as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way. Andy was
educated, too, besides having a lot of useful information. He had acquired
a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk for hours on any
subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had been in every line of
graft from lecturing on Palestine with a lot of magic lantern pictures of
the annual Custom-made Clothiers' Association convention at Atlantic City
to flooding Connecticut with bogus wood alcohol distilled from nutmegs.

"One spring me and Andy had been over in Mexico on a flying trip
during which a Philadelphia capitalist had paid us $2,500 for a half inter-
est in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all right. The
other half interest must have been worth two or three hundred thousand,
I often wondered who owned that mine.

"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes
against a litde town in Texas on the bank of the Rio Grande. The name
of it was Bird City; but it wasn't. The town had about 2,000 inhabitants,
mostly men. I figured out that their principal means of existence was in
living close to tall chaparral. Some of 'em were stockmen and some
gamblers and some horse peculators and plenty were in the smuggling
line. Me and Andy put up at a hotel that was built like something be-
tween a roof-garden and a sectional book-case. It began to rain the day
we got there. As the saying is, Juniper Aquarius was sure turning on the
water plugs on Mount Amphibious. •

"Now, there were three saloons in Bird City, though neither Andy nor
me drank. But we could see the townspeople making a triangular pro-
cession from one to another all day and half the night. Everybody seemed
to know what to do with, as much money as they had.

THE OCTOPUS MAROONED 269

"The third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so me
and Andy walked out to the edge of the town to view the mudscape.
Bird City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that
used to be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream and
its old bed was cracking and giving away, when we saw it, on account of
the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time. That
man's intellects was never idle. And then he unfolds to me a instantaneous
idea that has occurred to him. Right there was organized a trust; and we
walked back into town and put it on the market.

"First we went to the main saloon in Bird City, called the Blue Snake,
and bought it. It cost us $1,200. And then we dropped in, casual, at Mex-
ican Joe's place, referred to the rain, and bought him out for {500. The
other one came easy at $400.

"The next morning Bird City woke up and found itself an island. The
river had busted through its old channel, and the town was surrounded
by roaring torrents. The rain was still raining, and there was heavy clouds
in the northwest that presaged about six more mean annual rainfalls
during the next two weeks. But the worst was yet to come.

"Bird City hopped out of its nest, waggled its pinfeathers and strolled
out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe's place was closed and like-
wise the other little 'dobe life saving station. So, naturally the body politic
emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and ports helium for the Blue Snake.
And what does it find there?

"Behind one end of the bar sits JefFersonian Peters, octopus, with a
six-shooter on each side of him, ready to make change or corpses as the
case may be. There are three bartenders; and on the wall is a ten-foot
sign reading i 'All Drinks One Dollar.' Andy sits on the safe in his neat
blue suit and gold-banded cigar, on the lookout for emergencies. The
town marshal is there with two deputies to keep order, having been prom-
ised free drinks by the trust.

"Well, sir, it took Bird City just ten minutes to realize that it was in
a cage. We expected trouble; but there wasn't any. The citizens saw
that we had 'em. The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and it
would be two weeks at least before the river would be fordable. So they
began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on the bar till it sounded
like a selection on the xylophone.

"There was about 1,500 grown-up adults in Bird City that has arrived
at years of indiscretion; and the majority of 'em required from three to
twenty drinks a day to make life endurable. The Blue Snake was the
only place where they could get 'em till the flood subsided. It was beauti-
ful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

"About ten o'clock the silver dollars dropping on the bar slowed down
to playing two-steps and marches instead of jigs. But I looked out the
window and saw a hundred or two of our customers standing in line at

270 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

Bird City Savings and Loan Co., and I knew they were borrowing more
money to be sucked in by the clammy tendrils of the octopus.

"At the fashionable hour of noon everybody went home to dinner. We
told the bartenders to take advantage of the lull, and do the same. Then
me and Andy counted the receipts. We had taken in $1,300. We calcu-
lated that if Bird City would only remain an island for two weeks the
trust would be able to endow the Chicago University with a new dormi-
tory of padded cells for the faculty, and present every worthy poor man
in Texas with a farm, provided he furnished the site for it.

"Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem at our success, the rudi-
ments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and premo-
nitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the house.

" 'Jeff,* says he, "I don't suppose that anywhere in the world you could
find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treading the prole-
tariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker, incorporated. We have
sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in the sole apoplectic re-
gion. No?1

" Well,' says I, 'it does look as if we would have to take up gastritis
and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves. This little turn
in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can stand it,' says I. I'd
rather batten than bant any day.'

"Andy pours himself out four fingers of our best rye and does with it
as was so intended. It was the first drink I had ever known him to take.

" 'By way of liberation/ says he, 'to the gods/

"And then after thus doing umbrage to the heathen diabetes he drinks
another to our success. And then he begins to toast the trade, beginning
with Raisuli and the Northern Pacific, and on. down the line to the little
ones like the school book combine and the oleomargarine outrages and
the Lehigh Valley and Great Scott Coal Federation.

" It's all right, Andy,' says I, 'to drink the health of our brother monop-
olies, but don't overdo the wassail. You know our most eminent and
loathed multi-corruptionists live on weak tea and dog biscuits.'

"Andy went in the back room awhile and came out dressed in his best
clothes. There was a kind of murderous and soulful look of gentle riotous-
ness in his eye that I didn't like. I watched him to see what turn the
whiskey was going to take in him. There are two times when you never
can tell what is going to happen. One is when a man takes his first drink;
and the other is when a woman takes her latest.

"In less than an hour Andy's skate had turned to an ice yacht. He was
outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he
was impromptu and full of unexpectedness.

" 'Jeff/ says he, 'do you know that I'm a crater — a living crater?'

" 'That's a self-evident hypothesis/ says I. 'But you're not Irish. Why
don't you say "creature," according to the rules and syntax of America?'

THE OCTOPUS MAROONED 27!

"Tm the crater of a volcano,' says he. Tm all aflame and crammed
inside with an assortment of words and phrases that have got to have an
exodus. I can feel millions of synonyms and parts of speech rising in me,'
says he, 'and I've got to make a speech of some sort. Drink,' says Andy,
'always drives me to oratory.'

" 'It could do no worse/ says I.

" 'From my earliest recollections,' says he, 'alcohol seemed to stimulate
my sense of recitation and rhetoric. Why, in Bryan's second campaign,'
says Andy, 'they used to give me three gin rickeys and I'd speak for two
hours longer than Billy himself could on the silver question. Finally they
persuaded me to take the gold cure.'

" 'If you've got to get rid of your excess verbiage,' says I, Vhy not go
out on the river bank and speak a piece ? It seems to me there was an old
spellbinder named Cantharides that used to go out and disincorporate
himself of his windy numbers along the seashore.'

" 'No,' says Andy, 'I must have an audience. I feel like if I once turned
loose people would begin to call Senator Beveridge the Grand Young
Sphinx of the Wabash. I've got to get an audience together, Jeff, and get
this oral distension assuaged or it may turn in on me and I'd go about
feeling like a deckle-edge edition de luxe of Mrs. E. D. E. N. South-
worth.'

" 'On what special subject of the theorems and topics does your desire
for vocality seem to be connected with?' I asks.

" 'I ain't particular,' says Andy. 'I am equally good and varicose on all
subjects. I can take up the matter of Russian immigration, or the poetry
of John W. Keats, or the tariff, or Kabyle literature, or drainage, and
make my audience weep, cry, sob and shed tears by turns.'

" 'Well, Andy,' says I, 'if you are bound to get rid of this accumulation
of vernacular suppose you go out in town and work it on some indulgent
citizen. Me and the boys will take care of the business. Everybody will
be through dinner pretty soon, and salt pork and beans makes a man
pretty thirsty. We ought to take in $1,500 more by midnight.'

"So, Andy goes out of the Blue Snake, and I see him stopping men
on the street and talking to 'em. By and by he has half a dozen in a bunch
listening to him; and pretty soon I see him waving his arms and elocuting
at a good-sized crowd on a corner. When he walks away they string out
after him, talking all the time; and he leads 'em down the main street
of Bird City with more men joining the procession as they go. It reminded
me of the old legerdemain that I'd read in books about the Pied Piper of
Heidsieck charming the children away from the town.

"One o'clock came; and then two, and three got under the wire for
place; and not a Bird citizen came in for a drink. The streets were de-
serted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There was
only a light drizzle falling then.

272 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake
to scrape the mud off his boots.

"Tardner,9 says I, 'what has happened? This morning there was hectic
gaiety afoot; and now it seems more like one of them ruined cities of Tyre
and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the main port-
cullis.5

" 'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's wool ware-
house listening to your side-kicker make a speech. He is some gravy on
delivering himself of audible sounds relating to matters and conclusions/
says the man.

" 'Well, I hope hell adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,* says I, 'for trade
languishes.'

"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock two Mex-
icans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro. We
put him to bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with his hands
and feet.

"Then I locked up the cash and went out to see what had happened. I
met a man who told me all about it. Andy had made the finest two hour
speech that had ever been heard in Texas, he said, or anywhere else in
the world.

" 'What was it about?" I asked,

" 'Temperance,' says he. 'And when he got through, every man in Bird
City signed the pledge for a year.' "

JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET

Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making money
as there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston, S. C,

Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he sold lini-
ments and cough cures on street corners, living hand to mouth, heart
to heart with the people, throwing heads or tails with fortune for his last
coin.

"I struck Fisher Hill, Arkansaw," said he, "in buckskin suit, moccasins,
long hair and a thirty-carat diamond ring that I got from an actor in
Texarkana. I don't know what he ever did with the pocket knife I
swapped him for it.

"I was Dr. Waugh-hoo, the celebrated Indian medicine man. I carried
only one best bet just then, and that was Resurrection Bitters. It was made
of life-giving plants and herbs accidentally discovered by Ta-qua-la, the
beautiful wife of the chief of the Choctaw Nation, while gathering truck
to garnish a platter of boiled dog for the annual corn dance.

"Business hadn't been good at the last town, so I only had five dollars.

JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET 273

I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for a half gross of
eight ounce bottles and corks. I had the labels and ingredients in my
valise, left over from the last town. Life began to look rosy again after
I got in my hotel room with the water running from the tap, and the
Resurrection Bitters lining up on the table by the dozen.

"Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars' worth of fluid extract of cin-
chona and a dime's worth of aniline in that half-gross of bitters. I've gone
through towns years afterwards and had folks ask for 'em again.

"I hired a wagon that night and commenced selling the bitters on Main
Street. Fisher Hill was a low, malarial town; and a compound hypo-
thetical pneumo-cardiac anti-scorbutic tonic was just what I diagnosed
the crowd as needing. The bitters started off like sweetbreads-on-toast at
a vegetarian dinner. I had sold two dozen at fifty cents apiece when I
felt somebody pull my coat tail. I knew what that meant; so I climbed
down and sneaked a five-dollar bill into the hand of a man with a German
silver star on his lapel.

" 'Constable,' says I, 'it's a fine night.5

" 'Have you got a city license,' he asks, 'to sell this illegitimate essence
of spooju that you flatter by the name of medicine?'

" 'I have not,' says I. 'I didn't know you had a city. If I can find it to-
morrow I'll take one out if it's necessary.'

" Til have to close you up till you do,' says the constable.

"I quit selling and went back to the hotel. I was talking to the land-
lord about it.

" 'Oh, you won't stand no show in Fisher Hill,' says he. 'Dr. Hoskins,
the only doctor here, is a brother-in-law of the Mayor, and they^won't
allow no fake doctors, to practice in town.'

" 'I don't practice medicine,' says I, Tve got a State peddler's license,
and I take out a city one wherever they demand it/ , ;

"I went to the Mayor's office the next morning and they told me he
hadn't showed up yet. They didn't know when he'd be down. So Doc
Waugh-hoo hunches down again in a hotel chair and lights a jimpson-
weed regalia, and waits.

"By and by a young man in a blue necktie slips into the chair next to
me and asks the time.

" 'Half -past ten' says I, 'and you are Andy Tucker. I've seen you work.
Wasn't it you that put up the Great Cupid Combination package, on the
Southern States? Let's see, it was a Chilian diamond engagement ring,
a wedding ring, a potato masher, a bottle of soothing syrup and Dorothy
Venaon — all for fifty cents.'

"Andy was pleased to hear that I remembered him. He was a good
street man; and he was more than that — he respected his profession, and
he was satisfied with 300 per cent, profit. He had plenty of offers to go

274 BOOK III THE .GENTLE GRAFTER

into the illegitimate drug and garden seed business; but he was never to
be tempted off of the straight path. •

"I wanted a partner, so Andy and me agreed to go out together. I told
him about the situation on Fisher Hill and how finances^ was low on
account of the local mixture of politics and jalap. Andy had just got in on
the train that morning. He was pretty low himself, and was going to
cavass the town for a few dollars to build a new battleship by popular
subscription at Eureka Springs. So we went out and sat on the porch and
talked it over.

"The next morning at eleven o'clock when I was sitting there alone, an
Uncle Tom shuffles into the hotel and asked for the doctor to come and
see Judge Banks, who, it seems, was the mayor and a mighty sick man.

" Tm no doctor/ says I. Why don't you go and get the doctor?'

" 'Boss/ says he. 'Doc Hoskin am done gone twenty miles in the country
to see some sick persons. He's de only doctor in de town, and Massa
Banks am powerful bad off. He sent me to ax you to please, suh, come.'

" 'As man to man/ says I, 111 go and look him over.' So I put a bottle
of Resurrection Bitters in my pocket and goes up on the hill to the
mayor's mansion, the finest house in town, with a mansard roof and two
cast-iron dogs on the lawn,

"This Mayer Banks was in bed all but his whiskers and feet. He was
making internal noises that would have had everybody in San Francisco
hiking for the parks. A young man was standing by the bed holding a cup
of water.

" 'Doc/ says the Mayor. Tm awful sick. Pm about to die. Can't you
do nothing for me?'

" cMr. Mayor/ says I, Tm not a regular preordained disciple of S. Q.
Lapius, I never took a course in a medical college/ says I. I've just come
as a fellow man to see if I could be of any assistance/

" Tm deeply obliged/ says he. 'Doc Waugh-hoo, this is my nephew, Mr.
Biddle. He has tried to alleviate my distress, but without success. Oh,
Lordy! Ow-ow-ow!!' he sings out.

"I nods at Mr. Biddle and sets down by the bed and feels the mayor's
pulse. 'Let me see your liver— your tongue, I mean/ says I. Then I turns
up the lids of his eyes and looks close at the pupils of 'em.

" 'How long have you been sick ? ' I asked.

"'I was taken down — ow-ouch — last night/ says the Mayor. 'Gimme
something for it, Doc, won't you ?'

" 'Mr. Fiddle/ says I, 'raise the window shade a bit, will you?*

" 'Biddle/ says the young man. 'Do you feel like you could eat some ham
and eggs, Uncle James ? '

" 'Mr. Mayor/ says I, after laying my ear to his right shoulder blade and
listening, 'you've got a bad attack of super-inflammation of the: right
clavicle of the harpsichord!'

JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET 275

" 'Good Lord!' says he, with a groan. 'Can't you rub something on it, or
set it or anything?'

"I picks up my hat and starts for the door.

" 'You ain't going, Doc?' says the Mayor with a howl. 'You ain't going
away and leave me to die with this — superfluity of the clapboards, are
you?'

" 'Common humanity, Dr. Whoa-ha,' says Mr. Biddle, 'ought to prevent
your deserting a fellow-human in distress.'

" 'Dr. Waugh-hoo, when you get through plowing/ says I. And then
I walks back to the bed and throws back my long hair.

" 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'there is only one hope for you. Drugs will do you
no good. But there is another power higher yet, although drugs are high
enough,' says I.

" 'And what is that?' says he.

" 'Scientific demonstrations,' says I. 'The triumph of mind over sarsa-
parilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness except what is pro-
duced when we ain't feeling well. Declare yourself in arrears. Demon-
strate.'

"'What is this paraphernalia you speak of, Doc?' says the Mayor. 'You
ain't a Socialist, are you?'

" 'I am speaking,' says I, 'of the great doctrine of psychic financiering —
of the enlightened school of long-distance, sub-conscientious treatment of
fallacies and meningitis — of that wonderful in-door sport known as per-
sonal magnetism.'

" 'Can you work it, Doc?' asks the Mayor.

" Tm one of the Sole Sanhedrims and Ostensible Hooplas of the Inner
Pulpit,' says I. 'The lame talk and the blind rubber whenever I make a
pass at *em. I am a medium, a coloratura hypnotist and a spirituous
control. It was only through me at the recent seances at Ann Arbor that
the last president of the Vinegar Bitters Company could revisit the earth
to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling medicine on
the streets,' says I, 'to the poor. I don't practice personal magnetism on
them. I do not drag it in the dust,' says I, 'because they haven't got the
dust.'

" 'Will you treat my case?' asks the Mayor.

" 'Listen,' says I. 'I've had a good deal of trouble with medical societies
everywhere I've been. I don't practice medicine. But, to save your life,
I'll give you the psychic treatment if you'll agree as mayor not to push
the license question.'

" 'Of course I will/ says he. 'And now get to work, Doc, for them pains
are coming on again.'

"'My fee will be $250.00, cure guaranteed in two treatments/ says
I.

" 'All right/ says the Mayor. Til pay it. I guess my life's worth that
much.'

276 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

"I sat down by the bed and looked him straight in the eye.

"'Now/ says I, 'get your mind off the disease. You ain't sick. You
haven't got a heart or a clavicle or a funny bone or brains or anything,
You haven't got any pain. Declare error. Now you feel the pain that you
didn't have leaving, don't you?J

" 1 do feel some little better, Doc,' says the Mayor, ^darned if I don't.
Now state a few lines about my not having this swelling in my left side, and
I think I could be propped up and have some sausage and buckwheat
cakes.'

"I made a few passes with my hands.

" 'Now,5 says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of the peri-
helion has subsided. You're getting sleepy. You can't hold your eyes open
any longer. For the present the disease is checked. Now, you are asleep.'

"The Mayor shut his eyes slowly and began to snore.

" 'You observe, Mr. Tiddle/ says I, 'the wonder of modern science.*

" 'Biddle/ says he. 'When will you give uncle the rest of the treatment,
Dr. Pooh-pooh?'

" 'Waugh-hoo/ says I. Til come back at eleven to-morrow. When he
wakes up give him eight drops of turpentine and three pounds of steak.
Good morning.'

"The next morning I went back on time. Well, Mr. Riddle/ says I,
when he opened the bedroom door, 'and how is uncle this morning?'

" 'He seems much better/ says the young man.

"The Mayor's color and pulse was fine. I gave him another treatment,
and he said the last of the pain left him.

" 'Now/ says I, 'you'd better stay in bed for a day or two, and you'll be
all right. It's a good thing I happened to be in Fisher Hill, Mr. Mayor/
says I, 'for all the remedies in the cornucopia that the regular schools
of medicine use couldn't have saved you. And now that error has flew and
pain proved a perjurer, let's allude to a cheerfuller subject— say the fee
of $250. No checks, please, I hate to write my name on the back of a
check almost as bad as I do on the front.'

"Tve got the cash here/ says the Mayor, pulling a pocket book from
under his pillow.

"He counts out five fifty-dollar notes and holds 'em in his hand.

" 'Bring the receipt/ he says to Biddle.

"I signed the receipt and the Mayor handed me the money. I put it in
my inside pocket careful.

" 'Now do your duty, officer/ says the Mayor, grinning much unlike
a sick man.

"Mr. Biddle lays his hand on my arm.

" Tou're under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters/ says he, 'for prac-
tising medicine without authority under the State law.'

"Who are you?' I asks.

MODERN RURAL SPORTS 277

" Til tell you who he is,' says the Mayor, sitting up in bed. 'He's a
detective employed by the State Medical Society. He's been following you
over five counties. He came to me yesterday and we fixed up this scheme
to catch you. I guess you won't do any more doctoring around these
parts, Mr. Fakir. What was it you said I had, Doc?5 the Mayor laughs,
'compound — well it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess, anyway.'

" 'A detective/ says I.

" 'Correct,' says Biddle. Til have to turn you over to the sheriff.'

" 'Let's see you do it,' says I, and I grabs Biddle by the throat and half
throws him out the widow, but he pulls a gun and sticks it under my
chin, and I stand still. Then he puts handcuffs on me, and takes the money
out of my pocket.

" *I witness,' says he, 'that they're the same bills that you and I marked,
Judge Banks. I'll turn them over to the sheriff when we get to his office,
and he'll send you a receipt. They'll have to be used as evidence in the
case.'

" 'All right, Mr. Biddle/ says the Mayor. 'And now, Doc Waugh-hoo/
he goes on, 'why don't you demonstrate? Can't you pull the cork out of
your magnetism with your teeth and hocus-pocus them handcuffs off?*

" 'Come on, officer,' says I, dignified, 'I may as well make the best of it*
And then I turns to old Banks and ratdes my chains.

" 'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'the time will come soon when you'll believe that
personal magnetism is a success. And you'll be sure that it succeeded in
this case, too.'

"And I guess it did.

"When we got nearly to the gate, I says: 'We might meet somebody

now Andy. I reckon you better take 'em off, and ' Hey? Why, of

course it was Andy Tucker. That was his scheme; and that's how we got
the capital to go into business together."

MODERN RURAL SPORTS

Jeff Peters must be reminded. Whenever he is called upon, pointedly, for
a story, he will maintain that his life has been as devoid of incident as the
longest of Trollope's novels. But lured, he will divulge. Therefore I cast
many and divers flies upon the current of his thoughts before I feel a
nibble.

"I notice," says I, "that the Western farmers, in spite of their prosperity,
are running after their old populistic idols again."

"It's the running season," said Jeff, "for farmers, shad, maple trees and
the Connemaugh River. I know something about farmers. I thought I
struck one once that had got out of the rut; but Andy Tucker proved

278 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

to me I was mistaken. 'Once a farmer, always a sucker/ said Andy. 'He's
the man that's shoved into the front row among bullets, ballots and the
ballet. He's the funny-bone and gristle of the country/ said Andy, 'and
I don't know who we would do without him.'

"One morning me and Andy wakes up with sixty-eight cents between
us in a yellow pine hotel on the edge of the predigested hoecake belt of
Southern Indiana. How we got off the train there the night before I
can't tell you; for she went through the village so fast that what looked
like a saloon to us through the car window turned out to be a composite
view of a drug store and a water tank two blocks apart.- Why we got off
at the first station we could, belongs to a little oroide gold watch and
Alaska diamond deal we failed to pull off the day before, over the Ken-
tucky line.

"When I woke up I heard roosters crowing, and smelt something like
the fumes of nitro-muriatic acid and heard something heavy fall on the
floor below us, and a man swearing.

" 'Cheer up, Andy/ says I. 'We're in a rural community. Somebody has
just tested a gold brick downstairs. Well go out and get what's coming to
us from a farmer; and then yoicks! and away.'

"Farmers was always a kind of reserve fund to me. Whenever I was in
hard luck I'd go to the crossroads, hook a finger in a farmer's suspender,
recite the prospectus of my swindle in a mechanical kind of a way, look
over what he had, give him back his keys, whetstone, and papers that was
of no value except to owner, and stroll away without asking any ques-
tions. Farmers are not fair game to me as high up in our business as me
and Andy was; but there was times when we found 'em useful just as
Wall Street does the Secretary of the Treasury now and then.

"When we went downstairs we saw we was in the midst of the finest
farming section we ever see. About two miles away on a hill was a big
white house in a grove surrounded by a widespread agricultural agglom-
eration of fields and barns and pastures and out-houses.

" 'Whose house is that?' we asked the landlord.

" 'That/ says he, 'is the domicile and the arboreal, terrestrial and horti-
cultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett one of our county's most
progressive citizens/

"After breakfast me and Andy, with eight cents capital left, casts the
horoscope of the rural potentate.

" 'Let me go alone/ says I. 'Two of us against one farmer would look
as onesided as Roosevelt using both hands to kill a grizzly/

'* 'All right/ says Andy. 'I like to be a true sport even when I'm only
collecting redates from the rutabag raisers. What bait are you going to
use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.

" 'Oh/ says I, 'the first thing that come to hand in the suit case. I reckon
I'll take along some of the new income tax receipts; and the recipe for

MODERN RURAL SPORTS 279

making clover honey out of clabber and apple peelings; and the order
blanks for the McGuffey's readers, which afterwards turn out to be
McCormick reapers; and the pearl necklace found on the train; and a
pocket-size goldbrick; and a "

" 'That'll be enough,' says Andy. 'Any one of the lot ought to land on
Ezra. And, say, Jeff, make that succotash fancier give you nice, clean new
bills. It's a disgrace to our Department of Agriculture, Civil Service and
Pure Food Law the kind of stuff some of these farmers hand out to us.
I've had to take rolls from 'em that looked like bundles of microbe cul-
tures captured out of a Red Cross ambulance/

"So, I goes to a livery stable and hires a buggy on my looks. I drove
out to the Plunkett farm and hitched. There was a man sitting on the
front steps of the house. He had on a white flannel suit, a diamond ring,
golf cap and a pink ascot tie. 'Summer boarder,' says I to myself.

" Td like to see Farmer Ezra Plunkett,' says I to him.

" 'You see him/ says he. 'What seems to be on your mind?'

"I never answered a word. I stood still, repeating to myself the rollick-
ing lines of that merry jingle, 'The Mari with the Hoe/ When I looked
at this farmer, the little devices I had in my pocket for buncoing the
pushed-back brows seemed as hopeless as trying to shake down the
Beef Trust with a mittimus and a parlor rifle.

" 'Well/ says he, looking at me close, 'speak up. I see the left pocket of
your coat sags a good deal. Out with the goldbrick first. I'm rather more
interested in the bricks than I am in the trick sixty-day notes and the
lost silver mine story/

"I had a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas of rati-
ocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my handker-
chief off it.

'"One dollar and eighty cents/ says the farmer, hefting it in his
hand. 'Is it a trade?*

" 'The lead in it is worth more than that/ says I, dignified. I put it back
in my pocket.

" 'All right/ says he. 'But I sort of wanted it for the collection I'm start-
ing. I got a $5000 one last week for $2.io/

"Just then a telephone bell rings in the house.

" 'Come in, Bunk/ says the farmer, 'and look at my place. It's kind of
lonesome here sometimes. I think that's New York calling/

"We went inside. The room looked like a Broadway stockbroker's —
light-oak desks, two 'phones, Spanish leather upholstered chairs and
couches, oil paintings in gilt frames a foot deep and a ticker hitting off
the news in one corner.

'"Hello, hello!' says the funny farmer. *Is that the Regent Theatre?
Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre. Reserve four orchestra seats for
Friday evening— my usual ones. Yes; Friday— good-bye/

280 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

" *I run over to New York every two weeks to see a show,' says the
farmer, hanging up the receiver. 'I catch the eighteen-hour flyer at Indi-
anapolis, spend ten hours in the heyday of night on the Yappian Way,
and get home in time to see the chickens go to roost forty-eight hours
later. Oh, the pristine Hubbard squasherino of the cave-dwelling period
is getting geared up some for the annual meeting of the Don't-Blow-Out-
the-Gas Association, don't you think, Mr. Bunk?'

" 'I seem to perceive,' says I, 'a kind of hiatus in the agrarian traditions
in which, heretofore, I have reposed confidence.'

"'Sure, Bunk,' says he. The yellow primrose on the river's brim is
getting to look to us Reubs like a holiday edition de luxe of the Language
of Flowers with deckle edges and frontispiece.'

"Just then the telephone calls him again.

" 'Hello, hello!' says he. 'Oh, that's Perkins, at Milldale. I told you $800
was too much for that horse. Have you got him there? Good. Let me
see him. Get away from the transmitter. Now make him trot in a circle.
Faster. Yes, I can hear him. Keep on— faster yet. . . . That'll do. Now
lead him up to the phone. Closer. Get his nose nearer. There. Now wait.
No; I don't want that horse. What? No; not at any price. He interferes;
and he's windbroken. Good-bye.'

" 'Now, Bunk/ says the farmer, 'do you begin to realize that agriculture
has had a hair cut? You belong in a bygone era. Why, Tom Lawson him-
self knows better than to try to catch an up-to-date agriculturist napping.
It's Saturday, the Fourteenth, on the farm, you bet. Now, look here, and
see how we keep up with the day's doings.'

"He shows me a machine on a table with two things for your ears like
the penny-in-the-slot affairs. I puts it on and listens. A female voice
starts up reading headlines of murders, accidents, and other political
casualties.

" What you hear,' says the farmer, 'is a synopsis of to-day's news in
the New York, Chicago. St. Louis and San Francisco papers. It is wired
in to our Rural News Bureau and served hot to subscribers. On this
table you see the principal dailies and weeklies of the country. Also a
special service of advance sheets of the monthly magazines.'

"I picks up one sheet and sees that it's headed: 'Special Advance
Proofs. In July, 1909, the Century will say'— and so forth.

"The farmer rings up somebody — his manager, I reckon — and tells
him to let the herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and to sow the poo-
acre field in wheat: and to have 200 extra cans ready at the station for the
milk trolley car. Then he passes the Henry Clays and sets out a bottle of
green chartreuse, and goes over and looks at the ticker tape.

" 'Consolidated Gas up two points,' says he. 'Oh, very well.'

" 'Ever monkey with copper?' I asks.

MODERN RURAL SPORTS 281

" 'Stand back!' says he, raising his hand, 'or I'll call the dog. I told you
not to waste your time/

"After a while he says: 'Bunk, if you don't mind my telling you, your
company begins to cloy slightly. I've got to write an article on the
Chimera of Communism for a magazine, and attend a meeting of the
Race Track Association this afternoon. Of course you understand by now
that you can't get my proxy for your Remedy, whatever it may be.'

"Well, sir, all I could think of to do was to go out and get in the buggy.
The horse turned round and took me back to the hotel. I hitched him and
went in to see Andy. In his room I told him about this farmer, word for
word; and I sat picking at the table cover like one bereft of sagaciousness.

" 'I don't understand it,' say I, humming a sad and foolish little song
to cover my humiliation.

"Andy walks up and down the room for a long time, biting the left
end of his mustache as he does when in the act of thinking.

" 'Jeff/ says he, finally, 'I believe your story of this expurgated rustic;
but I am not convinced. It looks incredulous to me that he could not have
inoculated himself against all the preordained systems of bucolic bunco.
Now, you never regarded me as a man of special religious proclivities,
did you, Jeff?' says Andy.

" 'Well,' says I, 'No. But/ says I, not to wound his feelings, 'I have also
observed many church members whose said proclivities were not so out-
wardly developed that they would show on a white handkerchief if you
rubbed *em with it.'

"'I have always been a deep student of nature from creation down,'
says Andy, 'and I believe in an ultimatum design of Providence. Farmers
was made for a purpose; and that was to furnish a livelihood to men like
me and you. Else why was we given brains? It is my belief that the
manna that the Israelites lived on for forty years in the wilderness was
only a figurative word for farmers; and they kept up the practice to this
day. And now,' says Andy, 'I am going to test my theory "Once a farmer,
always a come-on," in spite of the veneering and the orifices that a
spurious civilization has brought to him,'

" You'll fail, same as I did,' says I. 'This one's shook off the shackles of
the sheep-fold. He's entrenched behind the advantages of electricity,
education, literature and intelligence/

" Til try,' said Andy. 'There are certain Laws of Nature that Free Rural
Delivery can't overcome.'

"Andy fumbles around awhile in the closet and comes out dressed in
a suit with brown and yellow checks as big as your hand. His vest is red
with blue dots, and he wears a high silk hat. I noticed he'd soaked his
sandy mustache in a kind of blue ink.

" 'Great Barnums?' says I. 'You're a ringer for a circus thimblerig man.'

282 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

" 'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I come back.
I won't be long.'

"Two hours afterwards Andy steps in the room and lays a wad of
money on the table.

" 'Eight hundred and sixty dollars/ says he. 'Let me tell you. He was in.
He looked me over and began to guy me. I didn't say a word, but got out
the walnut shells and began to roll the little ball on the table. I whistled
a tune or two, and then I started up the old formula.

" 'Step up lively, gentleman,' says I, 'and watch the little ball. It costs
you nothing to look. There you see it, and there you don't. Guess where
the little joker is. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye.'

" 'I steals a look at the farmer man. I see the sweat coming out on his
forehead. He goes over and closes the front door and watches me some
more. Directly he says : "I'll bet you twenty I can pick the shell the ball's
under now."

" 'After that/ goes on Andy, 'there is nothing new to relate. He only
had $860 in cash in the house. When I left he followed me to the gate.
There was tears in his eyes when he shook hands.

" * "Bunk," ' says he, * "thank you for the only real pleasure I've had in
years. It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an
agriculturist. God bless you." ' "

Here Jeff Peters ceased, and I inferred that his story was done.

"Then you think " I began.

"Yes," said Jeff. "Something like that. You let the farmers go ahead and
amuse themselves with politics. Farming's a lonesome life; and they've
been against the shell game before."

THE CHAIR OF P H I L A N TH R O M A T H E M A T I C S

"I see that the cause of Education has received the princely gift of more
than fifty millions of dollars," said I.

I was gleaning the stray items from the evening papers while Jeff
Peters packed his briar pipe with plug cut.

"Which same," said Jeff, "calls for a new deck, and a recitation by the
entire class in philanthromathematics."

"Is that an allusion?" I asked.

"It is," said Jeff. "I never told you about the time when me and Andy
Tucker was philanthropists, did I? It was eight years ago in Arizona.
Andy and me was out in the Gila Mountains with a two-horse wagon
prospecting for silver. We struck it, and sold out to parties in Tucson
for $25,000. They paid our check at the bank in silver — a thousand dollars
in a sack. We loaded it in our wagon and drove east a hundred miles

THE CtfAIR OF PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS 283

before we recovered our presence of intellect. Twenty-five thousand
dollars don't sound like so much when you're reading the annual report
of the Pennsylvania Railroad or listening to an actor talking about his
salary; but when you can raise up a wagon sheet and kick around your
bootheel and hear every one of 'em ring against another it makes you feel
like you was a night-and-day bank with the clock striking twelve.

"The third day we drove into one of the most specious and tidy little
towns that Nature or Rand and McNally ever turned out. It was in the
foothills, and mitigated with trees and flowers and about 2,000 head of
cordial and dilatory inhabitants. The town seemed to be called Flores-
ville, and Nature had not contaminated it with many railroads, fleas or
Eastern tourists.

"Me and Andy deposited our money to the credit of Peters and Tucker
in the Esperanza Savings Bank, and got rooms at the Skyview Hotel.
After supper we lit up, and sat out on the gallery and smoked. Then was
when the philanthropy idea struck me. I suppose every grafter gets it
sometime.

"When a man swindles the public out of a certain amount he begins
to get scared and wants to return part of it. And if you'll watch close
and notice the way his charity runs youll see that he tries to restore it to
the same people he got it from. As a hydrostatical case, take, let's say,
A. A made his millions selling oil to poor students who sit up nights
studying political economy and methods for regulating the trusts. So, back
to the universities and colleges goes his conscience dollars,

"There's B got his from the common laboring man that works with
his hands and tools. How's he to get some of the remorse fund back into
their overalls?

"'Aha!' says B, Til do it in the name of Education. I've skinned the
laboring man/ says he to himself, 'but, according to the old proverb,
"Charity covers a multitude of skins." '

"So he puts up eighty million dollars' worth of libraries; and the boys
with the dinner pail that builds 'em gets the benefit.

" 'Where's the books ?* asks the reading public.

" 1 dinna ken/ says B. 'I offered ye libraries; and there they are. I sup-
pose if Fd given ye preferred steel trust stock instead ye'd have wanted
the water in it set out in cut glass decanters. Hoot, for ye!'

"But, as I said, the owning of so much money was beginning to give
me philanthropitis. It was the first time me and Andy had ever made a
pile big enough to make us stop and think how we got it.

" 'Andy,' says I, 'we're wealthy— not beyond the dreams of average; but
in our humble way we are comparatively as rich as Greasers. I feel as if
Fd like to do something for as well as* to humanity.'

" 'I was thinking the same thing, Jeff,' says he. 'We've been gouging
the public for a long time with all kinds of little schemes for selling self-

284 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

igniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke Smith presi-
dential campaign buttons. I'd like, myself, to hedge a bet or two in the
graft game if I could do it without actually banging the cymbalines in
the Salvation Army or teaching a bible class by the Bertillon system.'

"'What'll we do?' says Andy. 'Give free grub to the poor or send a
couple of thousand to George Cortelyou ? '

"'Neither,' says I. 'We've got too much money to be implicated in
plain charity; and we haven't got enough to make restitution. So, we'll
look about for something that's about half way between the two.5

"The next day in walking around Floresville we see on a hill a big red
brick building that appears to be disinhabited. The citizens speak up and
tell us that it was begun for a residence several years before by a mine
owner. After running up the house he finds he only had $2.80 left to
furnish it with, so he invests that in whiskey and jumps off the roof on a
spot where he now requiescats in pieces.

"As soon as me and Andy saw that building the same idea struck both
of us. We would fix it up with lights and pen wipers and professors, and
put an iron dog and statues of Hercules and Father John on the lawn, and
start one of the finest free educational institutions in the world right there.

"So we talks it over to the prominent citizens of Floresville, who falls in
fine with the idea. They give a banquet in the engine house to us, and
we make our bow for the first time as benefactors to the cause of progress
and enlightenment. Andy makes an hour-and-a-half speech on the subject
of irrigation in Lower Egypt, and we have a moral tune on the phono-
graph and pineapple sherbet.

"Andy and me didn't lose any time in philanthropping. We put every
man in town that could tell a hammer from a step ladder to work on the
building, dividing it up into class rooms and lecture halls. We wire to
Frisco for a carload of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders, diction-
aries, chairs for the professors, slates, skeletons, sponges, twenty-seven
cravenetted gowns and caps for the senior class, and an open order for
all the truck that goes with a first-class university. I took it on myself to
put a campus and a curriculum on the list; but the telegraph operator
must have got the words wrong, being an ignorant man, for when the
goods come we found a can of peas and a curry-comb among 'em.

"While the weekly papers was having chalkplate cuts of me and Andy
we wired an employment agency in Chicago to express us f. o. b., six pro-
fessors immediately — one English literature, one up-to-date dead lan-
guages, one chemistry, one political economy — democrat preferred — one
logic, and one wise to painting, Italian and music, with union card. The
Esperanza bank guaranteed salaries, which was to run between $800 and
$800.50.

"Well, sir, we finally got in shape. Over the front door was carved the
words: 'The World's University; Peters & Tucker, Patrons and Pro-

THE CHAIR OF PH I L AN THRO M A THEM A T I C S 285

prietors.' And when September the first got a cross-mark on the calendar,
the comeons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the tri-weekly ex-
press from Tucson. They was mostly young, spectacled and red-headed,
with sentiments divided between ambition and food. Andy and me got
'em billeted on the Floresvillians and then laid for the students.

"They came in bunches. We had advertised the University in all the
state papers, and it did us good to see how quick the country responded.
Two hundred and nineteen husky lads aging along from 18 up to chin
whiskers answered the clarion call of free education. They ripped open
that town, sponged the seams, turned it, lined it with new mohair; and
you couldn't have told it from Harvard or Goldfields at the March term
of court.

"They marched up and down the streets waving flags with the World's
University colors — ultramarine and blue — and they certainly made a
lively place of Floresville. Andy made them a speech from the balcony of
the Skyview Hotel, and the whole town was out celebrating.

"In about two weeks the professors got the students disarmed and
herded into classes. I don't believe there's any pleasure equal to being
a philanthropist. Me and Andy bought high silk hats and pretended to
dodge the two reporters of the Floresville Gazette. The paper had a man
to kodak us whenever we appeared on the street, and ran our pictures
every week over the column headed 'Educational Notes.' Andy lectured
twice a week at the University; and afterward I would rise and tell a
humorous story. Once the Gazette printed my picture with Abe Lincoln
on one side and Marshall P. Wilder on the other.

"Andy was as interested in philanthropy as I was. We used to wake up
of nights and tell each other new ideas for booming the University.

" 'Andy,' says I to him one day, 'there's something we overlooked. The
boys ought to have dromedaries/

"'What's that?' Andy asks.

" 'Why, something to sleep in, of course,' says I. 'All colleges have 'em.'

" 'Oh, you mean pajamas/ says Andy.

'"I do not,' says L 'I mean dromedaries/ But I never could make
Andy understand; so we never ordered 'em. Of course, I meant them long
bedrooms in colleges where the scholars sleep in a row.

"Well, sir, the World's University was a success. We had scholars from
five States and territories, and Floresville had a boom. A new shooting
gallery and a pawn shop and two more saloons started; and the boys got
up a college yell that Went this way :

"Raw raw, raw, ' "Bow-wow-wow,
Done, done, done, Haw-hee-haw,

Peters, Tucker, World University,
Lots of fun. Hip hurrah!

286 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

"The scholars was a fine lot of young men, and me and Andy was as
proud of 'em as if they belonged to our own family.

"But one day about the last of October Andy come to me and asks if I
have any idea how much money we had left in the bank. I guesses about
sixteen thousand. 'Our balance/ says Andy, 'is $821.62.'

"'What!' says I, with a kind of a yell. 'Do you mean to tell me that
them infernal clod-hopping, dough-headed, pup-faced, goose-brained,
gate-stealing, rabbit-eared sons of horse thieves have soaked us for that
much ? '

" 'No less/ says Andy.

" 'Then, to Helvetia with philanthropy/ says I.

" 'Not necessarily/ says Andy. 'Philanthropy/ says he, 'when run on a
good business basis is one of the best grafts going. I'll look into the matter
and see if it can't be straightened out.'

"The next week I am looking over the payroll of our faculty when I
run across a new name — Professor James Darnley McCorkle, chair of
mathematics; salary $100 per week. I yells so loud that Andy runs in
quick.

" What's this/ says I. 'A professor of mathematics at more than $5,000
a year? How did this happen? Did he get in through the window and
appoint himself ? '

" 'I wired to Frisco for him a week ago/ says Andy. 'In ordering the
faculty we seemed to have overlooked the chair of mathematics.*

" 'A good thing we did/ says I. 'We can pay his salary two weeks, and
then our philanthropy will look like the ninth hole on the Skibo golf
links.'

" 'Wait a while/ says Andy, 'and see how things turn out. We have
taken up too noble a cause to draw out now. Besides, the further I gaze
into the retail philanthropy business the better it looks to me. I never
thought about investigating it before. Come to think of it now/ goes on
Andy, 'all the philanthropists I ever knew had plenty of money. I ought
to have looked into that matter long ago, and located which was the
cause and which was the effect.'

"I had confidence in Andy's chicanery in financial affairs, so I left the
whole thing in his hands. The University was flourishing fine, and me and
Andy kept our silk hats shined up, and Floresville kept on heaping honors
on us like we was millionaires instead of almost busted philanthropists.

"The students kept the town lively and prosperous. Some stranger
came to town and started a faro bank over the Red Front livery stable,
and began to amass money in quantities. Me and Andy strolled up one
night and piked a dollar or two for sociability. There were about fifty of
our students there drinking rum punches and shoving high stacks of
blues and reds about the table as the dealer turned the cards up.

" 'Why, dang it, Andy/ says I, 'these free-school-hunting, gander-headed,

THE HAND THAT RILES THE WORLD 287

silk-socked little sons of sapsuckers have got more money than you and
me ever had. Look at the rolls they're pulling out of their pistol pockets!'

" 'Yes,5 says Andy, 'a good many of them are sons of wealthy miners
and stockmen. It's very sad to see *em wasting their opportunities this
way.'

"At Christmas all the students went home to spend the holidays. We
had a farewell blowout at the University and Andy lectured on 'Modern
Music and Prehistoric Literature of the Archipelagos.' Each one of the
faculty answered to toasts and compared me and Andy to Rockefeller and
the Emperor Marcus Autolycus. I pounded on the table and yelled for
Professor McCorkle; but it seems he wasn't present on the occasion. I
wanted a look at the man that Andy thought could earn $100 a week in
philanthropy that was on the point of making an assignment.

"The students all left on the night train; and the town sounded as quiet
as the campus of a correspondence school at midnight. When I went to
the hotel I saw a light in Andy's room and I opened the door and walked
in.

"There sat Andy and the faro dealer at a table dividing a two-foot high
stack of currency in thousand-dollar packages.

" 'Correct/ says Andy. Thirty-one thousand apiece. Come in, Jeff/ says
he. 'This is our share of the profits of the first half of the scholastic term
of the World's University, incorporated and philanthropated. Are you
convinced now,' says Andy, 'that philanthropy when practiced in a busi-
ness way is an art that blesses him who gives as well as him who receives?'

" 'Great!' says I, feeling fine. I'll admit you are the doctor this time/

" 'Well be leaving on the morning train,' says Andy. 'You'd better get
your collars and cuffs and press clippings together.'

"'Great!' says I. Til be ready. But, Andy/ says I, 'I wish I could have
met that Professor James Darnley McCorkle before he went I had a
curiosity to know that man.'

" 'That'll be easy/ says Andy, turning around to the faro dealer.

" 'Jim/ says Andy, 'shake hands with Mr. Peters." "

THE HAND THAT RILES THE WORLD

"Many of our great men/* said I (apropos of many things), "have declared
that they owe their success to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant
woman."

"I know," said Jeff Peters. "I've read in history and mythology about
Joan of Arc and Mme. Yale and Mrs. Caudle and Eve and other noted
females of the past. But, in my opinion, the woman of to-day is of little
use in politics or business. What's she best in, anyway?— men make the

288 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

best cooks, milliners, nurses, housekeepers, stenographers, clerks, hair-
dressers and launderers. About the only job left that a woman can beat
a man in is female impersonator in vaudeville."

"I would have thought," said I, "that occasionally, anyhow, you would
have found the wit and intuition of woman valuable to you in your lines
of-er-business."

"Now, wouldn't you," said Jen0, with an emphatic nod — "wouldn't you
have imagined that? But a woman is an absolutely unreliable partner in
any straight swindle. She's liable to turn honest on you when you are
depending upon her most. I tried 'em once,"

"Bill Humble, an old friend of mine in the Territories, conceived the
illusion that he wanted to be appointed United States Marshal At that
time me and Andy was doing a square, legitimate business of selling
walking canes. If you unscrewed the head of one and turned it up to your
mouth a half pint of good rye whiskey would go trickling down your
throat to reward you for your act of intelligence. The deputies was annoy-
ing me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me about his officious
aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshal might help along the
firm of Peters & Tucker.

" 'Jeff/ says Bill to me, 'you are a man of learning and education, be-
sides having knowledge and information concerning not only rudiments
but facts and attainments.'

" 'I do/ says I, 'and I have never regretted it. I am not one,' says I, 'who
would cheapen education by making it free. Tell me/ says I, 'which is
of the most value to mankind, literature or horse racing?'

'"Why — er— , playing the po — I mean, of course, the poets and the
great writers have got the call, of course/ says Bill

" 'Exactly/ says I. 'Then why do the master minds of finance philan-
thropy/ says I, 'charge us $2 to get into a race-track and let us into a
library free? Is that distilling into the masses/ says I, 'a correct estimate
of the relative value of the two means of self -culture and disorder?'

" 'You are arguing outside of my faculties of sense and rhetoric/ says
Bill. What I wanted you to do is to go to Washington and dig out this
appointment for me. I haven't no ideas of cultivation and intrigue. I'm
a plain citizen and I need the job. I've killed seven men/ says Bill; 'I've
got nine children; I've been a good Republican ever since the first of May;
I can't read nor write, and I see no reason why I ain't illegible for the
office. And I think your partner, Mr. Tucker/ goes on Bill, 'is also a man
of sufficient ingratiation and connected system of mental delinquency to
assist you in securing the appointment. I will give you preliminary/ says
Bill, '$1,000 for drinks, bribes and carfare in Washington. If you land
the job I will pay you $1,000 more, cash down, and guarantee you im-
punity in boot-legging whiskey for twelve months. Are you patriotic to
the West enough to help me put this thing through the White-washed

THE HAND THAT RILES THE WORLD 289

Wigwam of the Great Father of the most eastern flag station of the
Pennsylvania Railroad?' says Bill

"Well, I talked to Andy about it, and he liked the idea immense. Andy
was a man of an involved nature. He was never content to plod along, as
I was, selling to the peasantry some little tool like a combination steak
beater, shoe horn, marcel waver, monkey wrench, nail file, potato masher
and Multum in Parvo tuning fork. Andy had the artistic temper, which
is not to be judged as a preacher's or a moral man's is by purely com-
mercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and strikes out for Wash-
ington.

"Says I to Andy, when we get located at a hotel on South Dakota
Avenue, G. S. S. W. 'Now Andy, for the first time in our lives we've got
to do a real dishonest act. Lobbying is something we've never been used
to; but we've got to scandalize ourselves for Bill Humble's sake. In a
straight and legitimate business,' says I, 'we could afford to introduce a
little foul play and chicanery, but in a disorderly and heinous piece of mal-
practice like this it seems to me that the straightforward and aboveboard
way is the best. I propose,5 says I, 'that we hand over $500 of this money
to the chairman of the national campaign committee, get a receipt, lay
the receipt on the President's desk and tell him about Bill. The President
is a man who would appreciate a candidate who went about getting
office that way instead of pulling wires.

"Andy agreed with me, but after we talked the scheme over with the
hotel clerk we give that plan up. He told us that there was only one way
to get an appointment in Washington, and that was through a lady
lobbyist. He gave us the address of one he recommended, a Mrs. Avery,
who he said was high up in sociable and diplomatic rings and circles.

"The next morning at 10 o'clock me and Andy called at her hotel, and
was shown up to her reception room.

"This Mrs. Avery was a solace and a balm to the eyesight. She had hair
the color of the back of a twenty-dollar gold certificate, blue eyes and a
system of beauty that would make the girl on the cover of a July maga-
zine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.

"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and dia-
mond rings and ear bobs. Her arms was bare; and she was using a desk
telephone with one hand, and drinking tea with the other.

" 'Well, boys/ says she after a bit, 'what is it?'

"I told her in as few words as possible what we wanted for Bill, and
the price we could pay.

"'Those western appointments,' says she, 'are easy, Le'me see, now,'
says she, 'who could put that through for us. No use fooling with Terri-
torial delegates. I guess/ says she, 'that Senator Sniper would be about
the man. He's from somewheres in the West. Let's see how he stands on

2QO BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

my private menu card.' She takes some papers out of a pigeonhole with
the letter 'S' over it.

" 'Yes/ says she, 'he's marked with a star; that means "ready to serve.'*
Now, let's see. "Age 55; married twice; Presbyterian, likes blondes, Tol-
stoi, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third bottle of wine."
Yes,' she goes on, 1 am sure I can have your friend, Mr. Bummer, ap-
pointed Minister to Brazil.'

" 'Humble/ says I: 'And United States Marshal was the berth.'

" 'Oh, yes/ says Mrs. Avery. 'I have so many deals of this sort I some-
times get them confused. Give me all the memoranda you have of the
case, Mr. Peters, and come back in four days. I think it can be arranged
by then.'

"So me and Andy goes back to our hotel and waits. Andy walks up
and down and chews die left end of his mustache.

" 'A woman of high intellect and perfect beauty is the rare thing, Jeff/
says he.

" 'As rare/ says I, 'as an omelet made from the eggs of the fabulous
bird known as the epidermis/ says I.

" CA woman like that,' says Andy, 'ought to lead a man to the highest
positions of opulence and fame.'

" 'I misdoubt/ says I, 'if any woman ever helped a man to secure a job
any more than to have his meals ready promptly and spread a report that
the other candidate's wife had once been a shoplifter. They are no more
adapted for business and politics/ says I, 'than Algernon Charles Swin-
burne is to be floor manager at one of Chuck Connor's annual balls. I
know/ says I to Andy, 'that sometimes a woman seems to step out into
the kalsomine light as the charge d'affaires of her man's political job.
But how does it come out? Say, they have a neat little berth somewhere
as foreign consul of record to Afghanistan or lockkeeper on the Delaware
and Raritan Canal. One day this man finds his wife putting on her over-
shoes and three months' supply of bird seed into the canary's cage. "Sioux
Falls?" he asks with a kind of hopeful look in his eye. "No, Arthur/' says
she, "Washington. We're wasted here," says she. "You ought to be Toady
Extraordinary to the Court of St. Bridget or Head Porter of the Island of
Porto Rico. I'm going to see about it."

"'Then this lady/ I says to Andy, 'moves against the authorities at
Washington with her baggage and munitions, consisting of five dozen
indiscrinjinating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet when
sjl&e was 15; a letter of introduction from King Leopold to the Smithsonian
Institution, and a pink silk costume with canary colored spats.

"'Well, and then what?* I goes. 'She has the letters printed in the eve-
ning papers that match her costume, she lectures at an informal tea given
in the palm room of the B. & O. Depot and then calls on the President.
The ninth Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-

THE HAND THAT RILES THE WORLD 291

camp of the Blue Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting
there to grasp her by the hands— and feet. They carry her out to S. W. B.
street and leave her on a cellar door. That ends it. The next time we hear
of her she is writing postal cards to the Chinese Minister asking him to
get Arthur a job in a tea store.'

" Then/ says Andy, 'you don't think Mrs. Avery will land the Marshal-
ship for Bill?'

"'I do not,' says I. 'I do not wish to be a septic, but I doubt if she can
do as well as you and me could have done.'

" 'I don't agree with you/ says Andy. I'll bet you she does. I'm proud
of having a higher opinion of the talent and the powers of negotiation of
ladies.'

"We was back at Mrs. Avery's hotel at the time she appointed. She was
looking pretty and fine enough, as far as that went, to make any man let
her name every officer in the country. But I hadn't much faith in looks,
so I was certainly surprised when she pulls out a document with the great
seal of the United States on it, and 'William Henry Humble' in a fine, big
hand on the back.

" Tou might have had it the next day, boys,' says Mrs, Avery, smiling.
'I hadn't the slightest trouble in getting it,' says she. *I just asked for it,
that's all. Now, I'd like to talk to you a while,' she goes on, 'but I'm
awfully busy, and I know you'll excuse me. I've got an Ambassadorship,
two Consulates and a dozen other minor applications to look after. I can
hardly find time to sleep at all You'll give my compliments to Mr.
Humble when you get home, of course.'

"Well, I handed her the $500, which she pitched into her desk drawer
without counting. I put Bill's appointment in my pocket and me and
Andy made our adieus.

"We started back for the Territory the same day. We wired Bill: *J°b
landed; get the tall glasses ready,' and we felt pretty good.

"Andy joshed me all the way about how little I knew about women.

" 'All right/ says I. Til admit that she surprised me. But it's the first
time I ever knew one of 'em to manipulate a piece of business on time
without getting it bungled up in some way/ says I.

"Down about the edge of Arkansas I got out Bill's appointment and
looked it over, and then I handed it to Andy to read. Andy read it, but
didn't add any remarks to my silence.

"The paper was for Bill, all right, an a genuine document, but it
appointed him post-master of Dade City, Fla*

"Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill's appoint-
ment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward Lake Superior.

"I never saw Bill Humble after that."

292 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY

"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much con-
fidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners or coeducators in the
most innocent line of graft they are not trustworthy."

"They deserve the compliment," said L "I think they are entitled to
be called the honest sex."

"Why shouldn't they be?" said Jeff. "They've got the other sex either
grafting or working overtime for 'em. They're all right in business until
they get their emotions or their hair touched up too much. Then you
want to have a flat-footed, heavy-breathing man with sandy whiskers, five
kids and a building and loan mortgage ready as an understudy to take her
desk. Now there was that widow lady that me and Andy Tucker engaged
to help us in that little matrimonial agency scheme we floated out in
Cairo.

"When you've got enough advertising capital — say a roll as big as the
little end of a wagon tongue— there's money in matrimonial agencies. We
had about $6,000 and we expected to double it in two months, which is •
about as long as a scheme like ours can be carried on without taking out
a New Jersey charter.

"We fixed up an advertisement that read about like this:

"Charming widow, beautiful, home loving, 32 years, possessing $3,000
cash and owing valuable country property, would remarry. Would prefer
a poor man with affectionate disposition to one with means, as she realizes
that the solid virtues are oftenest to be found in the humble walks of life.
No objection to elderly man or one of homely appearance if faithful and
true and competent to manage property and invest money with judg-
ment. Address, with particulars.

Lonely,
Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, 111.

" 'So far, so pernicious,' says I, when we had finished the literary con-
coction. 'And now,' says I, < where is the lady ?'

"Andy gives me one of his looks of calm irritation.

" 'Jeff/ says he, 'I thought you had lost them ideas of realism in your
art. Why should there be a lady? When they sell a lot of watered stock
on Wall Street would you expect to find a mermaid in it? What has a
matrimonial ad got to do with a lady?'

" 'Now listen/ says I. 'You know my rule3 Andy, that in all my illegiti-
mate inroads against the legal letter of the law the article sold must be
existent, visible, producible. In that way and by a careful study of city

THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY 293

ordinances and train schedules I have kept out of all trouble with the po-
lice that a five-dollar bill and a cigar could not square. Now, to work this
scheme we've got to be able to produce bodily a charming widow or its
equivalent with or without the beauty, hereditaments and appurtenances
set forth in the catalogue and writ of errors, or hereafter be held by a
justice of the peace/

" 'Well,' says Andy, reconstructing his mind, 'maybe it would be safer
in case the post office or the peace commission should try to investigate
our agency. But where,5 he says, 'could you hope to find a widow who
would waste time on a matrimonial scheme that had no matrimony in it?'

"I told Andy that I thought I knew of the exact party. An old friend of
mine, Zeke Trotter, who used to draw soda water and teeth in a tent
show, had made his wife a widow a year before by drinking some dys-
pepsia cure of the old doctor's instead of the liniment that he always got
boozed up on, I used to stop at their house often, and I thought we could
get her to work with us.

" 'Twas only sixty miles to the little town where she lived, so I jumped
out on the I. C. and finds her in the same cottage with the same sun-
flowers and roosters standing on the washtub. Mrs. Trotter fitted our ad
first rate except, maybe, for beauty and age and property valuation. But
she looked feasible and praiseworthy to the eye, and it was a kindness to
Zeke's memory to give her the job.

"'Is this an honest deal you are putting on, Mr. Peters?1 she asks me
when I tell her what we want. *

"'Mrs. Trotter?' says I, 'Andy Tucker and me have computed the cal-
culation that 3,000 men in this broad and fair country will endeavor to
secure your fair hand and ostensible money and property through our
advertisement. Out of that number something like thirty hundred will
expect to give you in exchange, if they should win you, the carcass of a
lazy and mercenary loafer, a failure in life, a swindler and contemptible
fortune seeker.

" 'Me and Andy,5 says I, 'propose to teach these preyers upon society a
lesson. It was with difficulty,' says I, 'that me and Andy could refrain
from forming a corporation under the title of the Great Moral and Mil-
lennial Malevolent Matrimonial Agency. Does that satisfy you?'

" 'It does, Mr. Peters,' says she. 'I might have known you wouldn't have
gone into anything that wasn't opprobrious. But what will my duties be?
Do I have to reject personally these 3,000 ramscallions you speak of, or can
I throw them out in bunches ?'

" 'Your job, Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'will be practically a cynosure. You
will live at a quiet hotel and will have no work to do. Andy and I will
attend to all the correspondence and business end of it.

" 'Of course,5 says I, 'some of the more ardent and impetuous suitors
who can raise the railroad fare may come to Cairo to personally press their

294 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

suit or whatever function of a suit they may be wearing. In that case you
will be probably put to the inconvenience of kicking them out face to
face, We will pay you $25 per week and hotel expenses/

" 'Give me five minutes/ says Mrs. Trotter, 'to get my powder rag
and leave the front door key with a neighbor and you can let my salary
begin/

"So I conveys Mrs. Trotter to Cairo and establishes her in a family
hotel far enough away from mine and Andy's quarters to be unsuspicious
and available, and I tell Andy.

" 'Great/ says Andy. 'And now that your conscience is appeased as to
the tangibility and proximity of the bait, and leaving mutton aside, sup-
pose we revenoo a noo fish/

"So, we began to insert our advertisement in newspapers covering the
country far and wide. One ad was all we used. We couldn't have used
more without hiring so many clerks and marcelled paraphernalia that
the sound of the gum chewing would have disturbed the Postmaster-
General.

"We placed $2,000 in a bank to Mrs. Trotter's credit and gave her the
book to show in case anybody might question the honesty and good faith
of the agency. I knew Mrs. Trotter was square and reliable and it was
safe to leave it in her name.

"With that one ad Andy and me put in twelve hours a day answering
letters.

"About one hundred a day was what came in. I never knew there was
so many large hearted but indigent men in the country who were willing
to acquire a charming widow and assume the burden of investing her
money.

"Most of them admitted that they ran principally to whiskers and lost
jobs and were misunderstood by the world, but all of 'em were sure
that they were so chock full of affection and manly qualities that the
widow would be making the bargain of her life to get 'em.

"Every applicant got a reply from Peters & Tucker informing him
that the widow had been deeply impressed by his straightforward and in-
teresting letter and requesting them to write again stating more particu-
lars; and enclosing photograph if convenient. Peters & Tucker also in-
formed the applicant that their fee for handing over the second letter to
their fair client would be $2, enclosed therewith.

"There you see the simple beauty of the scheme. About 90 per cent, of
them domestic foreign noblemen raised the price somehow and sent it in.
That was all there was to it. Except that me and Andy complained an
amount about being put to the trouble of slicing open them envelopes, and
taking the money out.

"Some few clients called in person. We sent 'em to Mrs. Trotter and
she did the rest; except for three or four who came back to strike us for

THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY 295

carfare. After the letters began to get in from the r. f. d. districts Andy
and me were taking in about $200 a day.

"One afternoon when we were busiest and I was stuffing the two and
ones into cigar boxes and Andy was whistling 'No Wedding Bells for
Her' a small, slick man drops in and runs his eyes over the walls like he
was on the trail of a lost Gainesborough painting or two. As soon as I
saw him I felt a glow of pride, because we were running our business on
the level.

" 'I see you have quite a large mail to-day/ says the man.

"I reached and got my hat.

" 'Come on,' says I. 'We've been expecting you. I'll show you the goods.
How was Teddy when you left Washington ? '

"I took him down to the Riverview Hotel and had him shake hands
with Mrs. Trotter. Then I showed him her bank book with the $2,000 to
her credit.

" It seems to be all right,' says the Secret Service.

" 'It is,' says I. 'And if you're not a married man I'll leave you to talk
a while with the lady. We won't mention the two dollars.'

" 'Thanks,' says he. 'If I wasn't, I might. Good day, Mr. Peters.'

"'Toward the end of three months we had taken in something over
$5,000, and we saw it was time to quit. We had a good many complaints
made to us; and Mrs. Trotter seemed to be tired of the job. A good many
suitors had been calling to see her, and she didn't seem to like that.

"So we decides to pull out, and I goes down to Mrs. Trotter's hotel to
pay her last week's salary and say farewell and get her check for $2,000.

"When I get there I found her crying like a kid that don't want to go
to school.

'"Now, now,' says I, 'what's it all about? Somebody sassed you or you
getting homesick ?"

" 'No, Mr. Peters/ says she. Til tell you. You was always a friend of
Zeke's, and I don't mind. Mr. Peters, I'm in love. I just love a man so hard
I can't bear not to get him. He's just the ideal I've always had in mind.'

" 'Then take him,' says I. 'That is, if it's a mutual case. Does he return
the sentiment according to the specifications and painfulness you have
described?'

" 'He does/ says she. 'But he's one of the gentlemen that's been coming
to see me about the advertisement and he won't marry me unless I give
him the $2,000. His name is William Wilkinson.' And then she goes off
again in the agitations and hysterics of romance.

"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'there's no man more sympathizing with a
woman's affections than I am. Besides, you was once a life partner of one
of my best friends. If it was left to me I'd say take this $2,000 and the
man of your choice and be happy.

" 'We could afford to do that, because we have cleaned up over $5,000

296 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

from these suckers that wanted to marry you. But/ says I, 'Andy Tucker
is to be consulted.

" 'He is a good man, but keen in business. He is my equal^partner finan-
cially. I will talk to Andy,' says I, 'and see what can be done/

"I goes back to our hotel and lays the case before Andy,

" 'I was expecting something like this all the time/ says Andy. 'You
can't trust a woman to stick by you in any scheme that involves her emo-
tions and preferences.'

" 'It's a sad thing, Andy/ says I, 'to think that we've been the cause of
the breaking of a woman's heart.'

"'It is/ says Andy, 'and I tell you what I'm willing to do Jeff. You've
always been a man of a soft and generous disposition. Perhaps I've been
too hard and worldly and suspicious. For once I'll meet you half way. Go
to Mrs. Trotter and tell her to draw the $2,000 from the bank and give it
to this man she's infatuated with and be happy.'

"I jumps and shakes Andy's hand for five minutes, and then I goes
back to Mrs. Trotter and tells her, and she cries as hard for joy as she
did for sorrow.

"Two days afterward me and Andy packed to go.

" 'Wouldn't you like to go down and meet Mrs. Trotter once before we
leave?' I asks him. 'She'd like mightily to know you and express her
encomiums and gratitude.'

" 'Why, I guess not/ says Andy. 1 guess we'd better hurry and catch
that train.'

"I was strapping our capital around me in a memory belt like we always
carried it, when Andy pulls a roll of large bills out of his pocket and
asks me to put 'em with the rest.

"What's this?' says I.

" It's Mrs. Trotter's two thousand/ says Andy.

" 'How do you come to have it ? ' I asks.

" 'She gave it to me/ says Andy. Tve been calling on her three evenings
a week for more than a month.*

" 'Then you are William Wilkinson?' says I.

" 'I was/

A MIDSUMMER MASQUERADE

"Satan," said Jeff Peters, "is a hard boss to work for. When other people
are having their vacation is when he keeps you the busiest. As old Dr.
Watts or St. Paul or some other diagnostician says: 'He always finds some-
body for idle hands to do/

"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker,

A MIDSUMMMER MASQUERADE 297

tried to take a layoff from our professional and business duties; but it
seems that our work followed us wherever we went.

"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his responsibili-
ties and enjoy himself. On the 3ist of May he wraps mosquito netting and
tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his niblick, breviary and fishing pole and
hikes for Lake Como or Atlantic City according to the size of the loud-
ness with which he has been called by his congregation. And, sir, for three
months he don't have to think about business except to hunt around in
Deuteronomy and Proverbs and Timothy to find texts to cover and excul-
pate such little midsummer penances as dropping a couple of looey door
on rouge or teaching a Presbyterian widow to swim.

"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer vacation
that wasn't one.

"We was tired of finance and all the branches of unsanctified ingenuity.
Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever stopped working, began to make
noises like a tennis cabinet.

"'Heigh ho!' says Andy. Tm tired. I've got that steam up the yacht
Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf and indict my soul,
as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del Val or give
a knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do something sum-
mery and outside the line of routine and sand-bragging/

" 'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the profession before
you can taste the laurels that crown the footprints of the great captains
of industry. Now, what I'd like, Andy,' says I, 'would be a summer so-
journ in a mountain village far from scenes of larceny, labor and over-
capitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or so of sinlessness ought to
leave us in good shape to begin again to take away the white man's bur-
dens in the fall.'

"Andy fell in with the rest cure idea at once, so we struck the general
passenger agents of all the railroads for summer resort literature and took
a week to study out where we should go. I reckon the first passenger
ageiit in the world was that man Genesis. But there wasn't much competi-
tion in his day, and when he said : 'The Lord made the earth in six days,
and all very good,' he hadn't any idea to what extent the press agents of
the summer hotels would plagiarize from him later on.

"When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United
States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El Paso, and from Skagway to Key
West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new laid-
eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open plumbing and
tennis; and all within two hours' ride,

"So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our
trunk and takes the 6 o'clock Tortoise Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of a
dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North
Carolina.

298 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn,
and thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the
rocks and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees,
and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white
dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office
and some scenery set at an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.

"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down
the walk to greet us ? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the
best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the Southwest.

"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air
of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by telling
us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I introduces
Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will go around at
meetings of boards of directors and old associates like us three were. Old
Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of a summer house in the yard near
the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with his
mighty right.

" 'Gents/ says he, Tm glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out of a
scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street work, so I leased this dog~d#ys
emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before the
season opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from the "Duke
of Marlborough, each wanting to engage board for part of the summer.

" 'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery
It would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose names are famous
from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a lot of
handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these dis-
tinguished boarders during the summer, except in places where it leaked,
and I sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and Charlotte and
Fish Dam and Bowling Green.

"'And now look up there on the porch, gents/ says Smoke-'em-out,
*at them disconsolate specimens of their fair sex waiting for the arrival of
the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to cellar
with hero worshippers,

"'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there's three
high school graduates between 37 and 42; there's two literary old maids
and one that can't write; there's a couple of society women and a lady
from Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corncrib, and Fve
put cots in the hayloft for the cook and the society editress of the Chatta-
nooga Opera Glass. You see how names draw, gents.'

" Well/ says I, "how is it that you don't seem to be biting your thumbs
at good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'

" CI ain't through/ says Smoke-'em-out. 'Yesterday was the day for the
advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down to the depot to welcome
'em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train, both carrying

A MIDSUMMMER MASQUERADE 299

bags full of croquet mallets and these magic lanterns with pushbuttons.

" 'I compare these integers with the original signatures to the letters —
and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my poor eyesight. In-
stead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena explorer
was none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from Asheville.
And the Duke of Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of Mur-
freesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked 'em
both back on the train and watched 'em depart from the lowlands, the low.

" 'Now you see the fix I'm in, gents,' goes on Smoke-'em-out Smithers.
'I told the ladies that the notorious visitors had been detained on the road
by some unavoidable circumstances that made a noise like an ice jam and
an heiress, but they would arrive a day or two later. When they find out
that they've been deceived/ says Smoke-'em-out, 'every yard of cross-
barred muslin and natural waved switch in the house will pack up and
leave. It's a hard deal,' says old Smoke-'em-out.

"'Friend/ says Andy, touching the old man on the aesophagus, 'why
this jeremiad when the polar regions and the portals of Blenheim are
conspiring to hand you prosperity on a hall-marked silver salver? We
have arrived,'

"A light breaks out on Smoke-'em-out's face.

"'Can you do it, gents?' he asks. 'Could ye do it? Could ye play the
polar man and the little duke for the nice ladies? Will ye do it?'

"I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral
and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about
10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband
sophistries and parables when they came out.

"'Listen/ says Andy to old Smoke-'emout. 'Can we do it? You behold
before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest equipped men on earth for
inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand or
swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost, but me
and Jeff Peters/ says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If you say so,
we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And you'll find/ says
Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of the title r61es from the
aurora borealis to the ducal portcullis.'

"Old Smoke-'em-out is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn
by an arm apiece, telling us on the way that the finest fruits of the can
and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long as
we would stay.

"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says : 'Ladies, I have the honor to intro-
duce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and the famous inventor
of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary/

"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy
bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to register. And then
we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the rooms

300 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina real
mountain dew.

"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic
metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on air-
ships when stimulated.

"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the
porch, where the ladies are to begin to earn our keep. We sit in two
special chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their
rockers close around us.

"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn out, sir?'

"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I
was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't tell from her ques-
tion whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial expeditions.
So I gave an answer that would cover both cases.

"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out— right smart of a freeze
out, ma'am.'

"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew
which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I
wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that he
was trying to be the mouthpiece of the entire British nobility and of
Arctic exploration from Sir John Franklin down. It was the union of com
whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D. Howletts
admires so much.

" 'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, CI am truly glad to visit
America. I do not consider the magna charta,' says he, 'or gas balloons or
snow-shoes in any way a detriment to the beauty and charm of your
American women, skyscrapers or the architecture of your icebergs.
The next time,9 says Andy, 'that I go after the North Pole all the Vander-
bilts in Greenland won't be able to turn me out in the cold — I mean make
it hot for me.'

" 'Tell us about one of your trips, Lieutenant,' says one of the normals.

"'Sure, says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was in the
spring of last year that I sailed the Castle of Blenheim up to latitude 87
degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record. Ladies,' says Andy, 'it was a sad
sight to see a Duke allied by a civil and liturgical chattel mortgage to one
of your first families lost in a region of semiannual days.' And then he
goes on, 'At four bells we sighted Westminster Abbey, but there was not
a drop to eat. At noon we threw out five sandbags, and the ship rose
fifteen knots higher. At midnight/ continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed.
Sitting on a cake of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was snow
and ice. Six times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the
calendar so we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy,
with a lot of anguish in his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down the
hatchway, into the cabin. And then '

SHEARING THE WOLF 30!

" 'What then, Lieutenant?* says a schoolma'am, excitedly.

"Andy gives a loud sob.

" 'The Duchess shook me/ he cries out, and slides out of the chair and
weeps on the porch.

"Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left
the next morning. The landlord wouldn't speak to us for two days, but
when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.

"So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away
from Crow Knob with $1,100, that we enticed out of old Smoke-'em-out
playing seven up.*3

SHEARING THE WOLF

Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession were
under discussion.

"The only times," said he, "that me and Andy Tucker ever had any
hiatuses in our cordial intents was when we differed on the moral aspects
of grafting. Andy had his standards and I had mine. I didn't approve of
all of Andy's schemes for levying contributions from the public, and he
thought I allowed my conscience to interfere too often for the financial
good of the firm. We had high arguments sometimes. Once one word led
on to another till he said I reminded him of Rockefeller.

" 'I know how you mean that, Andy,' says I, 'but we have been friends
too long for me to take offense, at a taunt that you will regret when you
cool off. I have yet,' says I, 'to shake hands with a subpoena server/

"One summer me and Andy decided to rest up a spell in a fine little
town in the mountains of Kentucky called Grassdale. We was supposed
to be horse drovers, and good decent citizens besides, taking a summer
vacation. The Grassdale people liked us, and me and Andy declared a
secession of hostilities, never so much as floating the fly leaf of a rubber
concession prospectus or flashing a Brazilian diamond while we was there.

"One day the leading hardware merchant of Grassdale drops around
to the hotel where me and Andy stopped, and smokes with us, sociable,
on the side porch. We knew him pretty well from pitching quoits in the
afternoons in the court house yard. He was a loud, red man, breathing
hard, but fat and respectable beyond all reason,

"After we talk on all the notorious themes of the day, this Murkison
— for such was his entitlements — takes a letter out of his coat pocket in
a careful, careless way and hands it to us to read.

"'Now, what do you think of that?3 he says laughing — 'a letter like
that to ME!'

"Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to read it

302 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

through. It was one of them old-time typewritten green goods letters
explaining how for $1,000 you could get $5,000 in bills that an expert
couldn't tell from the genuine; and going on to tell how they were made
from plates stolen by an employee of the Treasury at Washington.

" Think of 'em sending a letter like that to ME!' says Murkison again.

" 'Lots of good men get 'em,5 says Andy. If you don't answer the first
letter they let you drop. If you answer it they write again asking you to
come on with your money and do business.'

" 'But think of 'em writing to ME!' says Murkison.

"A few days later he drops around again.

" 'Boys,' says he, 'I know you are right or I wouldn't confide in you.
I wrote to them rascals again just for fun. They answered and told me to
come on to Chicago. They said telegraph to J. Smith when I would start.
When I get there I'm to wait on a certain street corner till a man in a
gray suit comes along and drops a newspaper in front of me. Then I am
to ask how the water is, and he knows it's me and I know it's him.'

* 'Ah, yes,' says Andy, gaping, 'it's the same old game. I've often read
about it in the papers. Then he conducts you to the private abattoir in
the hotel, where Mr. Jones is already wailing. They show you brand-new
real money and sell you all you want at five to one. You see 'em put it in
a satchel for you and know it's there. Of course it's brown paper when
you come to look at it afterward.'

" 'Oh, they couldn't switch it on me,' says Murkison. 'I haven't built up
the best paying business in Grassdale without having witticisms about
me. You say it's real money they show you, Mr. Tucker?"

" 'I've always — I see by the papers that it always is,' says Andy.

" 'Boys/ says Murkison, Tve got it in my mind that them fellows can't
fool me. I think I'll put a couple of thousand in my jeans and go up there
and put it all over 'em. If Bill Murkison gets his eyes once on them bills
they show him he'll never take 'em off of 'em. They offer $5 for $i, and
they'll have to stick to the bargain if I tackle 'em. That's the kind of trader
Bill Murkison is. Yes, I jist believe I'll drop up Chicago way and take a
5 to i shot on J. Smith. I guess the waterll be fine enough.'

"Me and Andy tries to get this financial misquotation out of Murkison's
head, but we might as well have tried to keep the man who rolls peanuts
with a toothpick from betting on Bryan's election. No, sir; he was going
to perform a public duty by catching these green goods swindlers at
their own game. Maybe it would teach 'em a lesson.

"After Murkison left us me and Andy sat a while prepondering over
our silent meditations and heresies of reason. In our idle hours we always
improved our higher selves by ratiocination and mental thought.

" 'Jeff,' says Andy after a long time, 'quite unseldom I have seen fit to
impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about
your conscientious way of doing business. I may have been often wrong.

SHEARING THE WOLF 303

But here is a case where I think we can agree. I feel that it would be
wrong for us to allow Mr. Murkison to go alone to meet those Chicago
green goods men. There is but one way it can end. Don't you think we
would both feel better if we was to intervene in some way and prevent
the doing of this deed?"

"I got up and shook Andy Tucker's hand hard and long.

" 'Andy/ says I, 1 may have had one or two hard thoughts about the
heartlessness of your corporation, but I retract 'em now. You have a kind
nucleus at the interior of your exterior after all. It does you credit. I was
just thinking the same thing that you have expressed. It would not be
honorable or praiseworthy,' says I, 'for us to let Murkison go on with this
project he has taken up. If he is determined to go let us go with him and
prevent this swindle from coming off.*

"Andy agreed with me; and I was glad to see that he was in earnest
about breaking up this green goods scheme.

"'I don't call myself a religious man,' says I, 'or a fanatic in moral
bigotry, but I can't stand still and see a man who has built up a business
by his own efforts and brains and risk be robbed by an unscrupulous
trickster who is a menace to the public good/

" 'Right, Jeff,' says Andy. 'We'll stick right along with Murkison if he
insist on going and block this funny business. I'd hate to see any money
dropped in it as bad as you would.*

"Well, we went to see Murkison.

"'No, boys,' says he. 'I can't consent to let the song of this Chicago
siren waft by me on the summer breeze. I'll fry some fat out this ignis
fatuus or burn a hole in the skillet. But I'd be plumb diverted to death to
have you all go along with me. Maybe you could help some when it comes
to cashing in the ticket to that 5 to i shot. Yes, I'd really take it as a pas-
time and regalement if you boys would go along too.'

"Murkison gives it out in Grassdale that he is going for a few days with
Mr. Peters and Mr. Tucker to look over some iron ore property in West
Virginia. He wires J. Smith that he will set foot in the spider web on a
given date; and the three of us lights out for Chicago.

"On the way Murkison amuses himself with premonitions and advance
pleasant recollections.

" 'In a gray suit,' says he, *on the southwest corner of Wabash Avenue
and Lake Street. He drops the paper, and I ask how the water is. Oh, my,
my, my!' And then he laughs all over for five minutes.

"Sometimes Murkison was serious and tried to talk himself out of his
cogitations, whatever they was.

"'Boys/ says he, 'I wouldn't have this to get out in Grassdale for ten
times a thousand dollars. It would ruin me there. But I know you all are
all right. I think it's the duty of every citizen/ says he, 'to try to do up
these robbers that prey upon the public. Ill show 'em whether the water's

304 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

fine. Five dollars for one—that's what J. Smith offers, and hell have to
keep his contract if he does business with Bill Murkison.'

"We got into Chicago about 7 P.M. Murkison was to meet the gray man
at half-past 9. We had dinner at a hotel and then went up to Murkison's
room to wait for the time to come.

" 'Now boys,' says Murkison, let's get our gumption together and inoc-
ulate a plan for defeating the enemy. Suppose while I'm exchanging airy
bandage with the gray capper you gents come along, by accident, you
know, and holler: "Hello, Murk!!" and shake hands with symptoms of
surprise and familiarity. Then I take the capper aside and tell him you
all are Jenkins and Brown of Grassdale, groceries and feed, good men and
maybe willing to take a chance while away from home/

" ' "Bring 'cm along," hell say, of course, "if they care to invest.'' Now,
how does that scheme strike you?'

" 'What do you say, Jeff?' says Andy, looking at me.

"'Why, 111 tell you what I say,' says 1. 'I say let's settle this thing right
here now. I don't see any use of wasting any more time.' I took a nickel-
plated .38 out of my pocket and clicked the cylinder around a few times.

"'You undevout, sinful, insidious hog,' says I to Murkison, 'get out that
two thousand and lay it on the table. Obey with velocity,' says I, 'for
otherwise alternatives are impending. I am preferably a man of mildness
but now and then I find myself in the middle of extremities. Such men
as you,' I went on after he had laid the money out, 'is what keeps the jails
and court houses going. You come up here to rob these men t»f their
money. Does it excuse you?' I asks, 'that they were trying to skin^you?
No, sir; you was going to rob Peter to stand off Paul. You are ten times
worse,' says I, 'than that green goods man. You go to church at home and
pretend to be a decent citizen, but you'll come to Chicago and commit
larceny from men that have built up a sound and profitable business by
dealing with such contemptible scoundrels as you have tried to be to-day.
How do you know/ says I, 'that that green goods man hasn't a large
family dependent upon his extortions? It's you supposedly respectable
citizens who are always on the lookout to get something for nothing,' says
I, 'that support the lotteries and wild-cat mines and stock exchanges and
wire tappers of this country. If it wasn't for you they'd go out of business.
The green goods man you was going to rob,' says I, 'studied maybe for
years to learn his trade. Every turn he makes he risks his money and
liberty and maybe his life. You come up here all sanctified and vanoplied
with respectability and a pleasing post office address to swindle him. If
he gets the money you can squeal to the police. If you get it he hocks the
gray suit to buy supper and says nothing. Mr. Tucker and me sized you
up,' says I, 'and came along to see that you got what you deserved. Hand
over the money/ says I, 'you grass-fed hypocrite.'

"I put the two thousand, which was all in $20 bills, in my inside pocket.

INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY 305

" 'Now get out your watch,' says I to Murkison. 'No, I don't want it,*
says I. 'Lay it on the table and you sit in that chair till it ticks off an hour.
Then you can go. If you make any noise or leave any sooner we'll hand-
bill you all over Grassdale. I guess your high position there is worth more
than $2,000 to you.'

"Then me and Andy left.

"On the train Andy was a long time silent. Then he says : 'Jeff, do you
mind my asking you a question?'

" 'Two,* says I, 'or forty/

"'Was that the idea you had/ says he, cwhen we started out with
Murkison?'

'"Why certainly/ says I. 'What else could it have been? Wasn't it
yours, too? *

"In about half an hour Andy spoke again. I think there are times when
Andy don't exactly understand my system of ethics and moral hygiene.

" 'Jeff/ saYs he, 'some time when you have the leisure I wish you'd
draw off a diagram and footnotes of that conscience of yours. I'd like to
have it to refer to occasionally.' "

INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY

"I hope someday to retire from business/' said Jeff Peters; "and when I
do I don't want anybody to be able to say that I ever got a dollar of any
man's money without giving him a quid pro rata for it. I've always man-
aged to leave a customer some little gewgaw to paste in his scrapbook or
stick between his Seth Thomas clock and the wall after we are through
trading.

"There was one time I came near having to break this rule of mine and
do a profligate and illaudable action, but I was saved from it by the laws
and statutes of our great and profitable country.

"One summer me and Andy Tucker, my partner, went to New York
to lay in our annual assortment of clothes and gents* furnishings. We was
always pompous and regardless dressers, finding that looks went further
than anything else in our business, except maybe our knowledge of rail-
road schedules and an autograph photo of the President that Loeb sent
us, probably by mistake, Andy wrote a nature letter once and sent it in
about animals that he had seen caught in a trap lots of times. Loeb must
have read it 'triplets/ instead of 'trap lots/ and sent the photo. Anyhow,
it was useful to us to show people as a guarantee of good faith.

"Me and Andy never cared much to do business in New York. It was
too much like pothunting. Catching suckers in that town, is like dynamit-
ing a Texas lake for bass. All you have to do anywhere between the North

306 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

and East rivers is to stand in the street with an open bag marked, 'Drop
packages of money here. No checks or loose bills taken.' You have a cop
handy to club pikers who try to chip in post office orders and Canadian
money, and that's all there is to New York for a hunter who loves his
profession. So me and Andy used to just nature fake the town. We'd get
out our spyglasses and watch the woodcocks along the Broadway swamps
putting plaster casts on their broken legs, and then we'd sneak away with-
out firing a shot.

"One day in the papier mache palm room of a chloral hydrate and hops
agency in a side street about eight inches off Broadway me and Andy had
thrust upon us the acquaintance of a New Yorker. We had beer together
until we discovered that each of us knew a man named Hellsmith, travel-
ling for a stove factory in Duluth. This caused us to remark that the world
was a very small place, and then this New Yorker busts his string and
takes off his tin foil and excelsior packing and starts in giving us his Ellen
Terris, beginning with the time he used to sell shoelaces to the Indians
on the spot where Tammany Hall now stands.

"This New Yorker had made his money keeping a cigar store in Beek-
man Street, and he hadn't been above Fourteenth Street in ten years.
Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time has gone by when a true sport
will do anything to a man with whiskers. No grafter except a boy who is
soliciting subscribers to an illustrated weekly to win the prize air rifle, or
a widow, would have the heart to tamper with the man behind with the
razor. He was a typical city.Reub — I'd bet the man hadn't been out of
sight of a skyscraper in twenty-five years.

"Well, presently this metropolitan backwoodsman pulls out a roll of
bills with an old blue sleeve elastic fitting tight around it and opens it up.

" There's $5,000, Mr. Peters/ says he, shoving it over the table to me,
'saved during my fifteen years of business. Put that in your pocket and
keep it for me, Mr. Peters. I'm glad to meet you gentlemen from the
West, and I may take a drop too much. I want you to take care of my
money for me. Now, let's have another been'

" 'You'd better keep this yourself/ says I. 'We are strangers to you, and
you can't trust everybody you meet. Put your roll back in your pocket/
says I. 'And you'd better run along home before some farmhand from the
Kaw River bottoms strolls in here and sells you a copper mine/

"'O, I don't know/ says Whiskers, 1 guess Little Old New York can
take care of herself. I guess I know a man that's on the square when I
see him. I've always found the Western people all right. I ask you as a
favor, Mr. Peters/ says he, 'to keep that roll in your pocket for me. I know
a gentleman when I see him. And now let's have some more beer/

"In about ten minutes this fall of manna leans back in his chair and
snores, Andy looks at me and says: 'I reckon I'd better stay with him for
five minutes or so, in case the waiter conies in.'

INNOC.ENTS OF BROADWAY 307

"I went out the side door and walked half a block up the street. And
then I came back and sat down at the table.

" 'Andy/ says I, 'I can't do it. It's too much like swearing off taxes. I
can't go off with this man's money without doing something to earn it
like taking advantage of the Bankrupt act or leaving a bottle of eczema
lotion in his pocket to make it look more like a square deal/

" 'Well/ says Andy, 'it does seem kind of hard on one's professional
pride to lope off with, a bearded pard's competency, especially after he
has nominated you custodian of his bundle in the sappy insouciance of
his urban indiscrimination. Suppose we wake him up and see if we can
formulate some commercial sophistry by which he will be enabled to give
us both his money and a good excuse/

"We wakes up Whiskers. He stretches himself and yawns out the
hypothesis that he must have dropped off for a minute. And then he says
he wouldn't mind sitting in at a little gentleman's game of poker. He used
to play some when he attended high school in Brooklyn; and as he was
out for a good time, why — and so forth.

"Andy brights up a little at that, for it looks like it might be a solution
to our financial troubles. So we all three go to our hotel further down
Broadway and have the cards and chips brought up to Andy's room. I
tried once more to make this Babe in the Horticultural Gardens take his
five thousand. But no.

" 'Keep that little roll for me, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'and oblige. Ill ask
you f er it when I want it. I guess I know when I'm among friends. A man
that's done business on Beekman Street for twenty years, right in the
heart of the wisest little old village on earth, ought to know what he's
about. I guess I can tell a gentleman from a con man or a flimflammer
when I meet him. I've got some odd change, in my clothes — enough to
start the game with, I guess/

"He goes through his pockets and rains $20 gold certificates on the table
till it looked like a $10,000 'Autumn Day in a Lemon Grove' picture by
Turner in the salons. Andy almost smiled.

"The first round that was dealt, this boulevardier slaps down his hand,
claims low and jack and big casino and rakes in the pot.

"Andy always took a pride in his poker playing. He got up from the
table and looked sadly out of the window at the street cars.

"'Well, gentlemen,' says the cigar man, 1 don't blame yqu for not
wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine points of the game, I guess, it's
been sp long since I indulged. Now, how long are you gentlemen going
to be in the city?'

"I told him about a week longer. He says that'll suit him fine. His
cousin is coming over from Brooklyn that evening and they are going to
see the sights of New York. His cousi^ he says, is in the artificial limb
and lead casket business, and hasn't crossed the bridge in eight years.

308 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

They expect to have the time of their lives, and he winds up by asking
me to keep his roll of money for him till next day. I tried to make him
take it, but it only insulted him to mention it.

"Til use what IVe got in loose change/ says he. 'You keep the rest for
me. I'll drop in on you and Mr. Tucker to-morrow afternoon about 6 or
7,' says he, 'and we'll have dinner together. Be good.'

"After Whiskers had gone Andy looked at me curious and doubtful.

" Well, Jeff/ says he, 'it looks like the ravens are trying to feed us two
Elijahs so hard that if we turned 'em down again we ought to have the
Audubon society after us. It won't do to put the crown aside too often. I
know this is something like paternalism but don't you think Opportunity
has skinned its knuckles about enough knocking at our door?'

"I put my feet on the table and my hands in my pockets, which is an
attitude unfavorable to frivolous thoughts.

" 'Andy,' says I, 'this man with the hirsute whiskers has got us in a
predicament. We can't move hand or foot with his money. You and me
have got a gentleman's agreement with Fortune that we can't break.
WeVe done business in the West where it's more of a fair game. Out
there the people we skin are trying to skin us, even the farmers and
the remittance men that the magazines send out to write up Gold-
fields. But there's little sport in New York City for rod, reel or gun. They
hunt here with either one of two things — a slungshot or a letter of intro-
duction. The town has been stocked so full of carp that the game fish are
all gone. If you spread a net here, do you catch legitimate suckers in it,
such as the Lord intended to be caught— fresh guys who know it all,
sports with a little coin and the nerve to play another man's game, street
crowds out for the fun of dropping a dollar or two and village smarties
who know just where the little pea is? No, sir,' says I. 'What the grafters
live on here is widows and orphans, and foreigners who save up a bag of
money and hand it over the first counter they see with an iron railing to
it, and factory girls and little shopkeepers that never leave the block they
do business on. That's what they call suckers here. They're nothing but
canned sardines, and all the bait you need to catch 'em is a pocketknife
and a soda cracker.

'"Now, this cigar man,5 I went on, *is one of the types. He's lived
twenty years on one street without learning as much as you would in
getting a once-over shave from a lockjawed barber in a Kansas crossroads
town. But he's a New Yorker, and he'll brag about that all the time when
he isn't picking up live wires or getting in front of street cars or paying
out money to wire-tappers or standing under a safe that's being hoisted
into a sky-scraper. When a New Yorker does loosen up,' says I, 'it's like
the spring decomposition of the ice jam in the Allegheny River. He'll
swamp you with cracked ice and backwater if you don't get out of the
way.

INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY 309

" 'It's mighty lucky for us, Andy/ says I, 'that this cigar exponent with
the parsley dressing saw fit to bedeck us with his childlike trust and
altruism. For/ says I, 'this money of his is an eyesore to my sense o£
rectitude and ethics. We can't take it, Andy; you know we can't,' says I,
'for we haven't a shadow of a title to it— not a shadow. If there was the
least bit of a way we could put in a claim to it I'd be willing to see him
start in for another twenty years and make another $5,000 for himself, but
we haven't sold him anything, we haven't been embroiled in a trade or
anything commercial. He approached us friendly,5 says I, 'and with blind
and beautiful idiocy laid the stuff in our hands. Well have to give it back
to him when he wants it.'

" Tour arguments,' says Andy, 'are past criticism or comprehension.
No, we can't walk off with the money — as things now stand. I admire
your conscious way of doing business, Jeff/ says Andy, 'and I wouldn't
propose anything that wasn't square in line with your theories of morality
and initiative.

" 'But I'll be away to-night and most of to-morrow, Jeff/ says Andy,
'I've got some business affairs that I want to attend to. When this free
greenbacks party comes in to-morrow afternoon hold him here till I
arrive. We've all got an engagement for dinner, you know/

"Well, sir, about 5 the next afternoon in trips the cigar man, with his
eyes half open.

" 'Been having a glorious time, Mr. Peters/ says he. 'Took in all the
sights. I tell you New York is the onliest only. Now if you don't mind/
says he, 111 lie down on that couch and doze off for about nine minutes
before Mr. Tucker comes. I'm not used to being up all night. And to-
morrow, if you don't mind, Mr. Peters, 111 take that five thousand. I met
a man last night that's got a sure winner at the race-track to-morrow.
Excuse me for being so impolite as to go asleep, Mr. Peters/

"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes him-
self and begins to snore, while I sit there musing over things and wishing
I was back in the West, where you could always depend on a customer
fighting to keep his money hard enough to let your conscience take it
from him.

"At half-past 5 Andy come in and sees the sleeping form.

" I've been over to Trenton/ says Andy, pulling a document out of
his pocket. 'I think I've got this matter fixed up all right, Jeff. Look at

d**-' , . ^ i.

"I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter issued by the

State of New Jersey to 'The Peters & Tucker Consolidated and Amal-
gamated Aerial Franchise Development Company, Limited/

" 'It's to buy up rights of way for airship lines/ explained Andy. "The
Legislature wasn't in session, but I found a man at a postcard stand in
the lobby that kept a stock of charters on hand. There are 100,000 shares/

310 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

says Andy, 'expected to reach a par value of $i. I had one blank certificate
of stock printed,'

"Andy takes out the blank and begins to fill it in with a fountain pen.

"The whole bunch/ says he, 'goes to our friend in dreamland for
$5,000. Did you learn his name?*

" 'Make it out to bearer,' says I.

"We put the certificate of stock in the cigar man's hand and went out
to pack our suit cases.

"On the ferryboat Andy says to me: 'Is your conscience easy about tak-
ing the money now, Jeff?'

"Why shouldn't it be?' says I. 'Are we any better than any other
Holding Corporation?' "

CONSCIENCE IN ART

"I never could hold my partner, Andy Tucker, down to legitimate ethics
of pure swindling," said Jeff Peters to me one day.

"Andy had too much imagination to be honest. He used to devise
schemes of money-getting so fraudulent and high-financial that they
wouldn't have been allowed in the bylaws of a railroad rebate system.

"Myself, I never believed in taking any man's dollars unless I gave him
something for it — something in the way of rolled gold jewelry, garden
seeds, lumbago lotion, stpck certificates, stove polish or a crack on the
head to show for his money. I guess I must have had New England
ancestors away back and inherited some of their stanch and rugged fear
of the police.

"But Andy's family tree was in different kind. I don't think he could
have traced his descent any further back than a corporation.

"One summer while we was in the middle West, working down the
Ohio valley with a line of family albums, headache powders and roach
destroyer, Andy takes one of his notions of high and actionable finan-
ciering.

" 'Jd?,J says he, Tve been thinking that we ought to drop these rutabaga
fanciers and give our attention to something more nourishing and pro-
lific. If we keep on snapshooting these hinds for their egg money we'll be
classed as nature fakers. How about plunging into the fastnesses of the
skyscraper country and biting some big bull caribous in the chest?'

" Well,' says I, 'you. know my idiosyncrasies. I prefer a square, non-
illegal style of business such as we are carrying on now. When I take
money I want to leave some tangible object in the other fellow's hands
for him to gaze at and to distract his attention from my spoor, even if it's
only a Komical Kuss Trick Finger Ring for Squirting Perfume in a

CONSCIENCE IN ART 3!!

Friend's Eye. But if you've got a fresh idea, Andy,' says I, let's have a
look at it. I'm not so wedded to petty graft that I would refuse something
better in the way of a subsidy.'

" 'I was thinking/ says Andy, 'of a little hunt without horn, hound or
camera among the great herd of the Midas Americanus, commonly known
•as the Pittsburg millionaires.'

"In New York?' I asks,

" 'No, sir,' says Andy, 'in Pittsburg. That's their habitat. They don't
like New York. They go there now and then just because it's expected
of 'em.'

" 'A Pittsburg Millionaire in New York is like a fly in a cup of hot
coffee — he attracts attention and comment, but he don't enjoy it. New
York ridicules him for "blowing" so much money in that town of sneaks
and snobs, and sneers. The truth is, he don't spend anything while he is
there. I saw a memorandum of expenses for a ten days* trip to Bunkum
Town made by a Pittsburg man worth $15,000,000 once. Here's the way
he set it down:

R. R. fare to and from $ 21 oo

Cab fare to and from hotel 2 oo

Hotel bill @ $5 per day 50 oo

Tips 5,750 oo

TOTAL $5,823 oo

" That's the voice of New York,' goes on Andy. 'The town's nothing
but a head waiter. If you tip it too much it'll go and stand by the door
and make fun of you to the hat check boy. When a Pittsburger wants to
spend money and have a good time he stays at home. That's where we'll
go to catch him/

"Well, to make a dense story more condensed, me and Andy cached
our paris green and antipyrine powders and albums in a friend's cellar,
and took the trail to Pittsburg. Andy didn't have any especial prospectus
of chicanery and violence drawn up, but he always had plenty of con-
fidence that his immoral nature would rise to any occasion that presented
itself.

"As a concession to my ideas of self-preservation and rectitude he
promised that if I should take an active and incriminating part in any
little business venture that we might work up, there should be something
actual and cognizant to the senses of touch, sight, taste or smell to trans-
fer to the victim for the money so my conscience might rest easy. After
that I felt better and entered more cheerfully into the foul play.

"'Andy,' says I, as we strayed through the smoke along the cinder-
path they call Smithfield Street, 'had you figured out how we are going
to get acquainted with these coke kings and pig iron squeezers? Not

312 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

that I would decry my own worth or system o£ drawing-room deportment,
and work with the olive fork and pie knife,' says I, 'but isn't the entree
nous into the salons of the stogie smokers going to be harder than you
imagined?'

" 'If there's any handicap at all/ says Andy, 'it's our own refinement
and inherent culture. Pittsburg millionaires are a fine body of plain,
wholehearted, unassuming, democratic men.

" They are rough but uncivil in their manners, and though their ways
are boisterous and unpolished, under it all they have a great deal of im-
politeness and discourtesy. Nearly every one of 'em rose from obscurity/
says Andy, 'and they'll live in it till the town gets to using smoke con-
sumers. If we act simple and unaffected and don't go too far from the
saloons and keep making a noise like an import duty on steel rails we
won't have any trouble in meeting some of 'em socially/

"Well, Andy and me drifted about town three or four days getting our
bearings. We got to knowing several millionaires by sight.

"One used to stop his automobile in front of our hotel and have a quart
of champagne brought out to him, When the waiter opened it he'd turn
it up to his mouth and drink it out of the bottle. That showed he used to
be a glass-blower before he made his money.

"One evening Andy failed to come to the hotel for dinner. About n
o'clock he came into my room.

"'Landed one, Jeff,' says he. Twelve millions. Oil, rolling mills, real
estate and natural gas. He's a fine man; no airs about him. Made all his
money in the last five years. He's got professors posting him up now on
education— art and literature and haberdashery and such things.

" When I saw him he'd just won a bet o£ $10,000 with a Steel Corpora-
tion man that there'd be four suicides in the Allegheny rolling mills
to-day. So everybody in sight had to walk up and have drinks on him.
He took a fancy to me and asked me to dinner with him. We went to a
restaurant in Diamond Alley and sat on stools and had sparkling Moselle
and clam chowder and apple fritters.

"Then he wanted to show me his bachelor apartment on Liberty
Street. He's got ten rooms over a fish market with privilege of the bath
on the next floor above. He told me it cost him $18,000 to furnish his
apartment, and I believe it.

" 'He's got $40,000 worth of pictures in one room, and $20,000 worth of
curios and antiques in another. His name's Scudder, and he's 45, and
taking lessons on the piano and 15,000 barrels of oil a day out of his wells.'

" SA11 right,' says I. 'Preliminary canter satisfactory. But, kay vooly, voo ?
What good is the art junk to us? And the oil?'

"'Now, that man,' says Andy, sitting thoughtfully on the bed, 'ain't
what you would call an ordinary scutt. When he was showing me his
cabinet of art curios his face lighted up like the door of a coke oven. He

CONSCIENCE IN ART 313

says that if some of his big deals go through he'll make J. P. Morgan's
collection of sweatshop tapestry and Augusta, Me., beadwork look like the
contents of an ostrich's craw thrown on a screen by a magic lantern.

" 'And then he showed me a little carving,' went on Andy, 'that any-
body could see was a wonderful thing. It was something like 2,000 years
old, he said. It was a lotus flower with a woman's face in it carved out
of solid piece of ivory.

"'Scudder looks it up in a catalogue and describes it. An Egyptian
carver named Khafra made two of 'em for King Rameses II about the
year B.C. The other one can't be found. The junkshops and antique
bugs have rubbered all Europe for it, but it seems to be out of stock.
Scudder paid $2,000 for the one he has.'

" 'Oh, well,' says I, 'this sounds like the purling of a rill to me. I thought
we came here to teach the millionaires business, instead of learning art
from 'em?'

'"Be patient,' says Andy, kindly. 'Maybe we will see a rift in the
smoke ere long.'

"All the next morning Andy was out. I didn't see him until about
noon. He came to the hotel and called me into his room across the hall. He
pulled a roundish bundle about as big as a goose egg out of his pocket
and unwrapped it. It was an ivory carving just as he had described the
millionaire's to me.

" 'I went in an old second-hand store and pawnshop a while ago,' says
Andy, 'and I see this half hidden under a lot of old daggers and truck.
The pawnbroker said he'd had it several years and thinks it was soaked
by some Arabs or Turks or some foreign dubs that used to live down
by the river.

" 'I offered him $2 for it, and I must have looked like I wanted it, for
he said it would be taking the pumpernickel out of his children's mouths
to hold any conversation that did not lead up to a price of $335. I finally
got it for $25.

" 'Jeff,' goes on Andy, 'this is the exact counterpart of Scudder's carving.
It's absolutely a dead ringer for it. He'll pay $2,000 for it as quick as he'd
tuck a napkin under his chin. And why shouldn't it be the genuine other
one, anyhow, that the old gypsy whittled out?'

"'Why not, indeed?' says I. 'And how shall we go about compelling
him to make a voluntary purchase of it?'

"Andy had his plan all ready, and I'll tell you how we carried it out*

"I got a pair of blue spectacles, put on my black frock coat, rumpled my
hair up and became Prof. Pickleman. I went to another hotel, registered,
and sent a telegram to Scudder to come to see me at once on important
art business. The elevator dumped him on me in less than an hour. He
was a foggy man with a clarion voice, smelling of Connecticut wrappers
and naphtha.

314 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

" 'Hello, Profess!' he shouts, 'How's your conduct?'

"I rumpled my hair some more and gave him a blue glass stare.

"'Sir/ says I. 'Are you Cornelius T. Scudder? Of Pittsburg, Pennsyl-
vania?'

" CI am,' says he. 'Come out and have a drink.'

"'I have neither the time nor the desire/ says I, 'for such harmful and
deleterious amusements. I have come from New York/ says I, 'on a
matter of busi— on a matter of art.

"'I learned there that you are the owner of an Egyptian ivory carving
of the time of Rameses II., representing the head of Queen Isis in a lotus
flower. There were only two of such carvings made. One has been lost
for many years. I recently discovered and purchased the other in a pawn
—in an obscure museum in Vienna, I wish to purchase yours. Name your
price.'

" 'Well, the great ice jams, Profess!' says Scudder. 'Have you found the
other one? Me sell? No. I don't guess Cornelius Scudder needs to sell
anything that he wants to keep. Have you got the carving with you,
Profess ?*

"I shows it to Scudder. He examines it careful all over.

"It's the article/ says he. 'It's a duplicate of mine, every line and curve
of it Tell you what I'll do/ he says. 1 won't sell but I'll buy. Give you
$2,500 for yours/

" 'Since you won't sell, I will/ says I. 'Large bills please. I'm a man of
few words. I must return to New York to-night. I lecture to-morrow at
the aquarium/

"Scudder sends a check down and the hotel cashes it. He goes off with
the piece of antiquity and I hurry back to Andy's hotel, according to
arrangement.

"Andy is walking up and down the room looking at his watch.

"'Well?' he says.

" Twenty-five hundred/ says I. 'Cash.'

" 'We've got just eleven minutes/ says Andy, 'to catch the B. & O.
westbound. Grab your baggage/

'"What's the hurry?" says I. 'It was a square deal. And even if it was
only an imitation of the original carving it'll take him some time to find
it out. He seemed to be sure it was the genuine article/

" 'It was/ says Andy. 'It was his own. When I was looking at his curios
yesterday he stepped out of the room for a moment and I pocketed it.
Now, will you pick up your suit case and hurry?'

" "Then/ says I, 'why was that story about finding another one in the
pawn '

" 'Oh/ says Andy> 'out of respect for that conscience of yours. Come

THE MAN HIGHER UP 315

THE MAN HIGHER UP

Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of Provenzano's restaurant,
Jeff Peters was explaining to me the three kinds of graft.

Every winter Jeff comes to New York to eat spaghetti, to watch the
shipping in East River from the depths of his chinchilla overcoat, and to
lay in a supply of Chicago-made clothing at one of the Fulton Street
stores. During the other three seasons he may be found further west—
his range is from Spokane to Tampa. In his profession he takes a pride
which he supports and defends with a serious and unique philosophy
of ethics. His profession is no new one. He is an incorporated* uncap-
italized, unlimited asylum for the reception of the restless and unwise
dollars of his fellow men.

In the wilderness of stone in which Jeff seeks his annual lonely holiday
he is glad to palaver of his many adventures, as a boy will whistle after
sundown in a wood. Wherefore, I mark on my calendar the time of his
coming, and open a question of privilege at Provenzano's concerning the
little wine-stained table in the corner between the rakish rubber plant and
the framed palazzio della something on the wall.

"There are two kinds of grafts," said Jeff, "that ought to be wiped out
by law. I mean Wall Street speculation, and burglary."

"Nearly everybody will agree with you as to one of them," said I, with
a laugh.

"Well, burglary ought to be wiped out, too," said Jeff; and I wondered
whether the laugh had been redundant.

"About three months ago," said Jeff, "it was my privilege to become
familiar with a sample of each of the aforesaid branches of illegitimate
art. I was sine qua grata with a member of the housebreakers' union and
one of the John D. Napoleons of finance at the same time."

"Interesting combination," said I, with a yawn. "Did I tell you I bagged
a duck and a ground squirrel at one shot last week over in the Ramapos?"
I knew well how to draw Jeff's stories.

"Let me tell you first about these barnacles that clog the wheels of
society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye,"
said Jeff, with the pure gleam of the muck-raker in his own.

"As I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There are two
times in a man's life when he does this — when he's dead broke, and when
he's rich.

"Now and then the most legitimate business runs out of luck. It was
out in Arkansas I made the wrong turn at a cross-road, and drives into
this town of Peavine by mistake. It seems I had already assaulted and

316 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

disfigured Peavine the spring of the year before. I had sold $600 worth
of young fruit trees there— plums, cherries, peaches and pears. The
Peaviners were keeping an eye on the country road and hoping I might
pass that way again. I drove down Main Street as far as the Crystal Palace
drug-store before I realized I had committed ambush upon myself and
my white horse Bill.

"The Peaviners took me by surprise and Bill by the bridle and began
a conversation that wasn't entirely disassociated with the subject of fruit
trees. A committee of 'em ran some trace-chains through the armholes
of my vest and escorted me through their gardens and orchards.

"Their fruit trees hadn't lived up to their labels. Most of 'em had turned
out to be persimmons and dogwoods, with a grove or two of blackjacks
and poplars. The only one that showed any signs of bearing anything
was a fine young cottonwood that had put forth a hornet's nest and half
of an old corset-cover.

"The Peaviners protracted our fruitless stroll to the edge of town. They
took my watch and money on account; and they kept Bill and the wagon
as hostages. They said the first time one of them dogwood trees put forth
an Amsden's June peach I might come back and get ^ my things.^Then
they took off the trace-chains and jerked their thumbs in the direction of
the Rocky Mountains; and I struck a Lewis and Clark lope for the
swollen rivers and impenetrable forests.

"When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into an
unidentified town on the A., T. & S. F. railroad. The Peaviners hadn't
left anything in my pockets except a plug of chewing—they wasn't ^ after
my life— and that saved it. I bit off a chunk and sits down on a pile of
ties by the track to recogitate my sensations of thought and perspicacity.

"And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at the
town; and off it drops a black bundle that rolls for twenty yards in a
cloud of dust and then gets up and begins to spit soft coal and inter-
jections. I see it is a young man broad across the face, dressed more for
Pullmans than freights, and with a cheerful kind of smile in spite of it
all that made Phoebe Snow's job look like a chimney-sweep's.

"Tall off?' says I.

'"Nunk/ says he. 'Got off. Arrived at my destination. What town is
this?'

" 'Haven't looked it up on the map yet/ says I. £I got in about five
minutes before you did. How does it strike you?*

" 'Hard,' says he, twisting one of his arms around. 'I believe that shoul-
der—no, it's all right.'

"He stoops over to brush the dust off his clothes, when out of his pocket
drops a fine, nine-inch burglar's steel jimmy. He picks it up and looks
at me sharp, and then grins and holds out his hand.

" 'Brother/ says he, 'greetings. Didn't I see you in Southern Missouri

THE MAN HIGHER UP 317

last summer selling colored sand at half-a-dollar a teaspoonful to put into
lamps to keep the oil from exploding?'

" 'Oil/ says I, 'never explodes. It's the gas that forms that explodes.* But
I shakes hands with him, anyway.

" 'My name's Bill Bassett/ says he to me, 'and if you'll call it profes-
sional pride instead of conceit, I'll inform you that you have the pleasure
of meeting the best burglar that ever set a gum-shoe on ground drained
by the Mississippi River.5

"Well, me and this Bill Bassett sits on the ties and exchanges brags
as artists in kindred lines will do. It seems he didn't have a cent, either,
and we went into close caucus. He explained why an able burglar some-
times had to travel on freights by telling me that a servant girl had played
him false in Little Rock, and he was making a quick get-away.

" 'It's part of my business,' says Bill Bassett, 'to play up to the ruffles
when I want to make a riffle as Raffles. Tis loves that makes the bit go
'round. Show me a house with the swag in it and a pretty parlor-maid,
and you might as well call the silver melted down and sold, and me spill-
ing truffles and that Chateau stuff on the napkin under my chin, while
the police are calling it an inside job just because the old lady's nephew
teaches a Bible class. I first make an impression on the girl/ says Bill, 'and
when she lets me inside I make an impression on the locks. But this one
in Little Rock done me/ says he. 'She saw me taking a trolley ride with
another girl, and when I came 'round on the night she was to leave the
door open for me it was fast. And I had keys made for the doors upstairs.
But, no sir. She had sure cut off my locks. She was a Delilah/ says Bill
Bassett.

"It seems that Bill tried to break in anyhow with his jimmy, but the
girl emitted a succession of bravura noises like the top-riders of a tally-ho,
and Bill had to take all the hurdles between there and the depot. As he
had no baggage they tried hard to check his departure, but he made a
train that was just pulling out.

"Well/ says Bill Bassett, when we had exchanged memoirs of our
dead lives, 'I could eat. This town don't look like it was kept under a
Yale lock. Suppose we commit some mild atrocity that will bring in
temporary expense money. I don't suppose you've brought along any
hair tonic or rolled gold watch-chains, or similar law-defying swindles
that you could sell on the plaza to the pikers of the paretic populace,
have you?'

" 'No/ says I, 'I left an elegant line of Patagonian diamond earrings
and rainy-day sunbursts in my valise at Peavine. But they're to stay there
till some of them black-gum trees begin to glut the market with yellow
clings and Japanese plums. I reckon we can't count on them unless we
take Luther Burbank in for a partner/

" 'Very well/ says Bassett, 'we'll do the best we can. Maybe after dark

318 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady, and open the Farmers and Drovers
Marine Bank with it.1

"While we were talking, up pulls a passenger train to the depot near
by. A person in a high hat gets off on the wrong side of the train and
comes tripping down the track towards us. He was a little, fat man with
a big nose and rat's eyes, but dressed expensive, and carrying a hand-
satchel careful, as if it had eggs or railroad bonds in it. He passes by us
and keeps on down the track, not appearing to notice the town.

" 'Come on/ says Bill Bassett to me, starting after him.

"'Where?' I asks.

"'Lordy!' says Bill, 'had you forgot you was in the desert? Didn't you
see Colonel Manna drop down right before your eyes? Don't you hear
the rustling of General Raven's wings? I'm surprised at you, Elijah.*

"We overtook the stranger in the edge of some woods, and, as it was
after sun-down and in a quiet place, nobody saw us stop him. Bill takes
the silk hat off the man's head and brushes it with his sleeve and puts
it back.

" 'What does this mean, sir?* says the man.

" 'When I wore one of these,' says Bill, 'and felt embarrassed, I always
done that. Not having one now I had to use yours. I hardly know how
to begin, sir, in explaining our business with you, but I guess we'll try
your pockets first.'

"Bill Bassett felt in all of them, and looked disgusted.

'"Not even a watch/ he says. 'Ain't you ashamed of yourself, you
whited sculpture? Going about dressed like a head-waiter, and financed
like a Count. You haven't even got carfare. What did you do with your
transfer?*

"The man speaks up and says he has no assets or valuables of any sort.
But Bassett takes his hand-satchel and opens it. Out comes some collars
and socks and a half a page of a newspaper clipped out. Bill reads the
clipping careful, and holds out his hand to the held-up party.

"'Brother/ says he, 'greetings! Accept the apologies of friends. I am
Bill Bassett, the burglar. Mr. Peters, you must make the acquaintance of
Mr. Alfred E. Ricks. Shake hands. Mr. Peters/ says Bill, 'stands about
halfway between me and you, Mr. Ricks, in the line of havoc and corrup-
tion. He always gives something for the money he gets. Tm glad to meet
you, Mr. Ricks — you and Mr. Peters. This is the first time I ever attended
a full gathering of the National Synod of Sharks — housebreaking, swin-
dling, and financiering all represented. Please examine Mr. Ricks'
credentials, Mr. Peters/

"The piece of newspaper that Bill Bassett handed me had a good
picture of this Ricks on it. It was a Chicago paper, and it had obloquies
of Ricks in every paragraph. By reading it over I harvested the intelli-
gence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of the State

THE MAN HIGHER UP 319

of Florida that lies under water into town lots and sold 'em to alleged
innocent investors from his magnificently furnished offices in Chicago.
After he had taken in a hundred thousand or so dollars one of these fussy
purchasers that are always making trouble (I've had 'em actually try gold
watches I've sold 'em with acid) took a cheap excursion down to the land
where it is always just before supper to look at his lot and see if it didn't
need a new paling or two on the fence, and market a few lemons in
time for the Christmas present trade. He hires a surveyor to find his lot
for him. They run the line out and find the flourishing town of Paradise
Hollow, so advertised, to be about 40 rods and 16 poles S., 27° E. of the
middle of Lake Okeechobee. This man's lot was under thirty-six feet of
water, and, besides, had been preempted so long by the alligators and
gars that his title looked fishy.

"Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot for Al-
fred E. Ricks as the morning after a prediction of snow by the weather
bureau. Ricks defied the allegation, but he couldn't deny the alligators.
One morning the papers came out with a column about it, and Ricks came
out by the fire-escape. It seems the alleged authorities had beat him to
the safe-deposit box where he kept his winnings, and Ricks has to west-
ward ho! with only feet wear and a dozen 15^ English pokes in his
shopping bag. He happened to have some mileage left in his book, and
that took him as far as the town in the wilderness where he was spilled out
on me and Bill Bassett as Elijah III with not a raven in sight for any of us.

"Then this Alfred E. Ricks lets out a squeak that he is hungry, too,
and denies the hypothesis that he is good for the value, let alone the price,
of a meal. And so, there was the three of us, representing, if we had a
mind to draw syllogisms and parabolas, labor and trade and capital. Now,
when trade has no capital there isn't a dicker to be made. And when
capital has no money there's a stagnation in steak and onions. That put
it up to the man with the jimmy.

" 'Brother bushrangers,' says Bill Bassett, 'never yet, in trouble, did I
desert a pal. Hard by, in yon wood, I seem to see unfurnished lodgings.
Let us go there and wait till dark.'

"There was an old, deserted cabin in the grove, and we three took
possession of it. After dark Bill Bassett tells us to wait, and goes out for
half an hour. He comes back with a armful of bread and spare ribs and

pies.

" 'Panhandled 'em at a farmhouse on Washita Avenue,' says he. 'Eat,
drink, and be leary.'

"The full moon was coming up bright, so we sat on the floor of the
cabin and ate in the light of it. And this Bill Bassett begins to brag.

" 'Sometimes,' says he, with his mouth full of country produce, 'I lose
all patience with you people that think you are higher up in the profession

320 BOOK. Ill THE GENTLE GRAFTER

than I am. Now, what could either o£ you have done in the present emer-
gency to set us on otir feet again? Could you do it, Ricksy?'

" 1 must confess, Mr. Bassett/ says Ricks, speaking nearly inaudible
out of a slice of pie, 'that at this immediate juncture I could not, perhaps,
promote an enterprise to relieve the situation. Large operations, such as
I direct, naturally require careful preparation in advance. I *

" 1 know, Ricksy/ breaks in Bill Bassett. 'You needn't finish. You need
$500 to make the first payment on a blond typewriter, and four roomsful
of quartered oak furniture. And you need $500 more for advertising con-
tracts. And you need two weeks' time for the fish to begin to bite. Your
line of relief would be about as useful in an emergency as advocating
municipal ownership to cure a man suffocated by eighty-cent gas. And
your graft ain't much swifter, Brother Peters,' he winds up,

" 'Oh/ says I, 'I haven't seen you turn anything into gold with your
wand yet, Mr. Good Fairy. 'Most anybody could rub the magic ring for
a little leftover victuals/

• " 'That was only getting the pumpkin ready/ says Bassett, braggy and
cheerful. 'The coach and sixll drive up to the door before you know it,
Miss Cinderella. Maybe you've got some scheme under your sleeve-
holders that will give us a start/

" 'Son/ says I, Tm fifteen years older than you are, and young eaough.
yet to take out an endowment policy. I've been broke before. We can
see the lights of that town not half a mile away. I learned under Montague
Silver, the greatest street man that ever spoke from a wagom. There are
hundreds of men walking those streets this moment with grease spots
on their clothes. Give me a gasoline lamp, a dry-goods box, and a two-
dollar bar of white castile soap, cut into little '

'"Where's your two dollars?' snickered Bill Bassett into my discourse.
There was no use arguing with that burglar.

" "No/ he goes on; "you're both babes-in-the-wood. Finance has closed
the mahogany desk, and trade has put the shutters up. Both of you look
to labor to start the wheels going. All right. You admit it. To-night I'll
show you what Bill Bassett can do/

"Bassett tells me and Ricks not to leave the cabin till he comes back,
even if it's daylight, and then he starts off toward town, whistling gay.

"This Alfred E. Ricks pulls off his shoes and his coat, lays a silk hand-
kerchief over his hat, and lays down on the floor.

" 'I think I will endeavor to secure a little slumber/ he squeaks. 'The
day has been fatiguing. Good-night, my dear Mr. Peters/

" 'My regards to Morpheus/ says I. 'I think 111 sit up a while/

"About two o'clock, as near as I could guess by my watch in Peavine,
home comes our laboring man and kicks up Ricks, and calls us to the
streak of bright moonlight shining in the cabin door. Then he spreads

THEMANHIGHERUP 32!

out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and begins
to cackle over the nest-egg like a hen.

" Til tell you a few things about that town,' says he. 'It's named Rocky
Springs, and they're building a Masonic temple, and it looks like the
Democratic candidate for mayor is going to get soaked by a Pop, and
Judge Tucker's wife, who has been down with pleurisy, is some better.
I had a talk on these lilliputian thesises before I could get a siphon in the
fountain of knowledge that I was after. And there's a bank there called
the Lumberman's Fidelity and Plowman's Savings Institution. It closed
for business yesterday with $23,000 cash on hand. It will open this morn-
ing with $18,000— all silver—that's the reason I didn't bring more. There
you are, trade and capital. Now, will you be bad?'

" 'My young friend,' says Alfred E. Ricks, holding up his hands, 'have
you robbed this bank? Dear me, dear me!'

" 'You couldn't call it that,' says Bassett. ' "Robbing" sounds harsh. All
I had to do was to find out what street it was on. That town is so quiet
that I could stand on the corner and hear the tumblers clicking in that
safe lock — "right to 45, left twice to 80; right once to 60; left to 15" — as
plain as the Yale captain giving orders in the football dialect. Now, boys,'
says Bassett, 'this is an early rising town. They tell me the citizens are all
up and stirring before daylight. I asked what for, and they said because
breakfast was ready at that time. And what of merry Robin Hood? It
must be Yoicks! and away with the tinkers' chorus. I'll stake you. How
much do you want? Speak up. Capital'

" 'My dear young friend,' says this ground squirrel of a Ricks, standing
on his hind legs and juggling nuts in his paws, 'I have friends in Denver
who would assist me. If I had a hundred dollars I '

"Bassett unpins a package of the currency and throws five twenties
to Ricks.

" 'Trade, how much ?' he says to me.

" Tut your money up, Labor,' says I. 'I never yet drew upon honest toil
for its hard-earned pittance. The dollars I get are surplus ones that are
burning the pockets of damfools and greenhorns. When I stand on a
street corner and sell a solid gold diamond ring to a yap for $3.00, 1 make
just $2.60. And I know he's going to give it to a girl in return for all the
benefits accruing from a $125.00 ring. His profits are $122.00. Which of
us is the biggest fakir?'

" 'And when you sell a poor woman a pinch of sand for fifty cents to
keep her lamp from exploding,' says Bassett, 'what do you figure her
gross earnings to be, with sand at forty cents a ton?*

" 'Listen,' says I. 'I instruct her to keep her lamp clean and well filled.
If she does that it can't burst. And with the sand in it she knows it can't
and she don't worry. It's kind of Industrial Christian Science. She pays

322 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

fifty cents, and gets both Rockefeller and Mrs. Eddy on the job. It ain't
everybody that can let the gold-dust twins do their work.'

"Alfred E. Ricks all but licks the dust off of Bill Bassett's shoes.

" 'My dear young friend/ says he, 'I will never forget your generosity.
Heaven will reward you. But let me implore you to turn from your ways
of violence and crime.'

" 'Mousie,' says Bill, 'the hole in the wainscoting for yours. Your dogmas
and inculcations sound to me like the last words of a bicycle pump. What
has your high moral, elevator-service system of pillage brought you to?
Penuriousness and want. Even Brother Peters, who insists upon con-
taminating the art of robbery with theories of commerce and trade,
admitted he was on the lift. Both of you live by the gilded rule. Brother
Peters,' says Bill, 'you'd better choose a slice of this embalmed currency.
You're welcome.*

"I told Bill Bassett once more to put this money in his pocket, I never
had the respect for burglary that some people have. I always gave some-
thing for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle of a
souvenir to remind 'em not to get caught again.

"And then Alfred E. Ricks grovels at Bill's feet again, and bids us
adieu. He says he will have a team at a farmhouse, and drive to the station
below, and take the train for Denver. It salubrified the atmosphere when
that lamentable boll-worm took his departure. He was a disgraced every
non-industrial profession in the country. With all his big schemes and
fine offices he had wound up unable even to get an honest meal except
by the kindness of a strange and maybe unscrupulous burglar. I was glad
to see him go, though I felt a little sorry for him, now that he was ruined
forever. What could such a man do without a big capital to work with?
Why, Alfred E. Ricks, as we left him, was as helpless as a turtle on its
back. He couldn't have worked a scheme to beat a little girl out of a
penny slate-pencil.

"When me and Bill Bassett was left alone I did a little sleight-of-mind
turn in my head with a trade secret at the end of it. Thinks I, I'll show
this Mr, Burglar Man the difference between business and labor. He
had hurt some of my professional self-adulation by casting his Persians
upon commerce and trade.

" 'I won't take any of your money as a gift, Mr. Bassett,' says I to him,
'but if you'll pay my expenses as a travelling companion until we get
out of the danger zone of the immoral deficit you have caused in this
town's finances to-night I'll be obliged.'

"Bill Bassett agreed to that, and we hiked westward as soon as we could
catch a safe train.

"When we got to a town in Arizona called Los Perros I suggested that
we once more try our luck on terra-cotta. That was the home of Montague
Silver, my old instructor, now retired from business. I knew Monty

THE MAN HIGHER UP 323

would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing 'round
in the locality. Bill Bassett said all towns looked alike to him as he worked
mainly in the dark. So we got off the train in Los Perros, a fine little town
in the silver region.

"I had an elegant little sure thing in the way of a commercial sling
shot that I intended to hit Bassett behind the ear with. I wasn't going to
take his money while he was asleep, but I was going to leave him with a
lottery ticket that would represent in experience to him $4,755 — I think
that was the amount he had when we got off the train. But the first time I
hinted to him about an investment, he turns on me and disencumbers
himself of the following terms and expressions.

" 'Brother Peters,' says he, 'it ain't a bad idea to go into an enterprise
of some kind, as you suggest. I think I will. But if I do it will be such a
cold proposition that nobody but Robert E. Peary and Charlie Fairbanks
will be able to sit on the board of directors.'

" 'I thought you might want to turn your money over,' says I.

" 'I do,' says he, 'frequently. I can't sleep on one side all night. I'll tell
you, Brother Peters,' says he, Tm going to start a poker room. I don't
seem to care for the humdrum in swindling, such as peddling egg-beaters
and working off breakfast food on Barnum and Bailey for sawdust to
strew in their circus rings. But the gambling business/ says he, 'from
the profitable side of the table is a good compromise between swiping
silver spoons and selling penwipers at a Waldorf-Astoria charity bazaar.'

'"Then/ says I, 'Mr. Bassett, you don't care to talk over my little
business proposition?'

" 'Why/ says he, 'do you know, you can't get a Pasteur institute to start
up within fifty miles of where I live. I bite so seldom/

"So, Bassett rents a room over a saloon and looks around for some furni-
ture and chromos. The same night I went to Monty Silver's house, and
he let me have $200 on my prospects. Then I went to the only store in
Los Perros that sold playing cards and bought every deck in the house.
The next morning when the store opened I was there bringing all the
cards back with me. I said that my partner that was going to back me
in the game had changed his mind; and I wanted to sell the cards back
again. The storekeeper took 'em at half price.

"Yes, I was seventy-five dollars loser up to that time. But while I had
the cards that night I marked every one in every deck. That was labor.
And then trade and commerce had their innings, and the bread I had
cast upon the waters began to come back in the form of cottage pudding
with wine sauce.

"Of course I was among the first to buy chips at Bill Bassett's game. He
had bought the only cards there was to be had in town; and I knew the
back of every one of them better than I know the back of my head when
the barber shows me my haircut in the two mirrors.

324 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

"When the game closed I had the five thousand and a few odd dollars,
and all Bill Bassett had was the wanderlust and a black cat he had bought
for a mascot. Bill shook hands with me when I left

"'Brother Peters,' says he, 1 have no business being in business. I was
preordained to labor. When a No. i burglar tries to make a James out
of his jimmy he perpetrates an improfundity. You have a well-oiled and
efficacious system of luck at cards/ says he. Teace go with you.' And I
never afterward sees Bill Bassett again."

"Well, Jeff," said I, when the Autolycan adventurer seemed to have
divulged the gist of his tale, "I hope you took care of the money. That
would be a respecta— -that is a considerable working capital if you should
choose sorne day to settle down to some sort of regular business."

"Me?" said Jeff, virtuously, "You can bet I've taken care of that five
thousand."

He tapped his coat over the region of his chest exultantly.

"Gold mining stock," he explained, "every cent of it. Shares par value
one dollar. Bound to go up 500 per cent within a year. Nonassessable.
The Blue Gopher Mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better get in your-
self if you've any spare dollars on hand."

"Sometimes," said I, "these mines are not "

"Oh, this one's solid as an old goose," said Jeff. "Fifty thousand dollars'
worth of ore in sight, and 10 per cent monthly earnings guaranteed."

He drew a long envelope from his pocket and cast it on the table.

"Always carry it with me," said he. "So the burglar can't corrupt or the
capitalist break in and water it."

I looked at the beautifully engraved certificate of stock.

"In Colorado, I see," said I. "And, by the way, Jeff, what was the name
of the little man who went to Denver— the one you and Bill met at the
station?"

"Alfred E. Ricks," said Jeff, "was the toad's designation."

"I see," said I, "the president of this mining company signs himself
A. L. Fredericks. I was wondering "

"Let me see that stock," said Jeff quickly, almost snatching it from me.

To mitigate, even though slightly, the embarrassment I summoned
the waiter and ordered another bottle of the Barbera. I thought it was
the least I could do.

A TEMPERED WIND

The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the side of Bucking-
ham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when I see

A TEMPERED WIND 325

Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of a busi-
ness block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would in endeavor-
ing to assuage a team of runaway mules.

I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman, .having
his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched to posts. Then
in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner, and runs to
the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at the imaginary
dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitious team of chimerical
quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to the third-story room
again, and I see that the lettering on the window is "The Farmers* Friend
Loan Company."

By and by Straw-top comes down again, and I crossed the street to meet
him, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir, when I got close I could see where he
overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans and cowhide
boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the rye straw stuck
over; his ear looked like it belonged to the property man of the Old
Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got the best of me.

"Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite.
"I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I couldn't I guess they're halfway back
to the farm by now."

"Gosh blame them darned mules," says Straw-top, in a voice so good
that I nearly apologized; "they're a'lus bustin' loose." And then he looks
at me close, and then he takes off his hayseed hat, and says, in a different
voice:

"I'd like to shake hands with Parleyvoo Pickens, the greatest street
man in the West, barring only Montague Silver, which you can no more
than allow,"

I let him shake hands with me.

"I learned under Silver," I said; "I don't begrudge him the lead. But
what's your graft, son? I admit that the phantom flight of the non-existing
animals at which you remarked 'Whoa!' has puzzled me somewhat. How
do you win out on the trick?"

Buckingham Skinner blushed.

"Pocket money," says he; "that's all. I am temporarily unfinanced. This
little coup de rye straw is good for forty dollars in a town of this size.
How do I work it? Why, I involve myself, as you perceive, in the loath-
some apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas Stubblefield—
a name impossible to improve upon. I repair nosily to the office of some
loan company conveniently located in the third-floor, front. There I lay
my hat and yarn gloves on the floor and ask to mortgage my farm for
$2,000 to pay for my sister's musical education in Europe. Loans like that
always suit the loan companies. It's ten to one that when the note falls
due die foreclosure will be leading the semiquavers by a couple o£ lengths.

"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of tide; but I suddenly

326 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

hear my team running away. I run to the window and eniite the word —
or exclamation, whichever it may be — viz, 'Whoa!' Then I rush down-
stairs and down the street, returning in a few minutes. 'Dang them
mules/ I says; 'they done run away and busted the double tree and two
traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money along.
Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'

"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits for the
manna to drop.

" 'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobster-colored party in the specs
and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by accepting this ten-dollar bill until
to-morrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten. Well be pleased
to accommodate you in the matter of this loan.'

"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as I
said, only for temporary loose change."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for his mortification,
"in case of an emergency. Of course, it's small compared to organizing
a trust or bridge whist, but even the Chicago University had to be started
in a small way."

"What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.

"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. Oleum
Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss Warbler's Bird Call,
a small lot of the aew queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget,
consisting of a rolled-gold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian
lily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fifty engraved
visiting cards — no two names alike — all for the sum of 38 cents."

"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down
in Texas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler, made of compressed
wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they like
to burns niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. And
just when I was doing the best they strikes oil down there and puts me
out of business. Your machine's too slow, now, pardner/ they tells me. 'We
can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum before your old flint-and-
tinder truck can get him warm enough to perfess religion.* And so I gives
up the kindler and drifts up here to K. C. This little curtain-raiser you
seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with the simulated farm and the hypothetical
team, ain't in my line at all, and I'm ashamed you found me working it."

"No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunk
on a loan corporation for even so small a sum as ten dollars, when he is
financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It's too much
like borrowing money without paying it back."

I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as ever
stood over the axles and breathed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we
gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some time,
and offers to go partners.

A TEMPERED WIND 327

"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find me will-
ing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of your proposition.
I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw in my hair and
assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars. Actually, Mr. Pick-
ens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the Great Occidental All-Star
One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."

This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I
am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying
elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and
sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human
works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and
poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the pris-
matic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous trifle to the man
with the hoe without noticing the beautiful - harmony there is between
gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme; it was so full of
outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.

We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and
I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.

"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her
pompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayon
portrait canvassers for this."

Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to
see Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to
be the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her — no peroxide,
patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant ways
— the kind of a lady for the place.

"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.

"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and
romantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' look
like second-story work."

We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business
partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her place as
stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into some-
thing respectable.

This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kind
of a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copybook
maxims and psalms and proverbs and Esau's fables. They seem to kind
of hit off human nature. Our peaceful little swindle was constructed on
the old saying: "The whole push loves a lover."

One evening Buck and Miss Malloy drives up like blazes in a buggy
to a farmer's door. She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm — always
clinging to his arm. Anyone can see that she is a peach and of the cling
variety. They claim they are eloping for to be married on account of
cruel parents. They ask where they can find a preacher. Farmer says,

328 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

"B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend Abels, four miles
over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on her apron and
rubbers through her specs.

Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way joggs Parleyvoo
Pickens in a gig> dressed in black, white necktie, long face, sniffing his
nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling a long-meter doxol-

ogy,

"B'jinks I " says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now! "

It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to Little
Bethel school-house for to preach next Sunday.

The young folks will have it they must be married, for pa is pursuing
them with the plow mules and the buckboard. So the Reverend Green,
after hesitation, marries 'em in farmer's parlor, And farmer grins and
has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a bit and pats the
bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo Pickens, the wrong reverend, writes
out a marriage certificate, and farmer and farmeress sign it as ^witnesses.
And the parties of the first, second, and third part gets in their vehicles
and rides away. Oh, that was an idyllic graft! True love and the lowing
kine and the sun shining on the red barns— it certainly had all other
impostures I know about beat to a batter.

I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Mmloy at
about twenty farm-houses. I hated to think how the romance was going
to fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned tip in banks
where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notes of
hand they'd signed, running from $300 to $500.

On the 1 5th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss Malloy
nearly cried with joy. You don't often see a tenderhearted girl or one that
was so bent on doing right.

"Boys/' says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "this stake
comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's ball. It gives me a
chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estate business when
you fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in on this neat little
proposition for removing the cuticle of the rutabaga propagators I'm
afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was about to accept a place in
one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazaars, where they build a parsonage by
selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a cream-puff for seventy-five cents
and calling it a Business Men's Lunch,

"Now I can go into a square, honest business and give all them queer
jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a palm reading and clair-
voyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, Egyptian Sorceress, I shall give
everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication. Good-by,
boys. Take my advice and go into some decent fake, Get friendly with
the police and newspapers and you'll be all right."

So then we all shook hands, and Miss Malloy left us. Me and Buck also

A TEMPERED WIND 329

rose up and sauntered off a few hundred miles; for we didn't care to be
around when them marriage certificates fell due.

With about $4,000 between us we hit that bumptious little town off the
New Jersey coast they call New York.

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-
on-the-Hudson. Cosmopolitan they call it. You bet. So's a piece of fly-
paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet
out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"—
that's what they sing.

There's enough Reubs walk down Broadway in one hour to buy up a
week's output of the factory in Augusta, Maine, that makes Knaughty
Knovelties and the little Phine Phun oroide gold finger ring that sticks
a needle in your friend's hand.

You'd think New York people was all wise; but no. They don't get a
chance to learn. Everything's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are baled
hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off from
the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other ?

It's no place for an honest grafter with a small capital. There's too big
a protective tariff on bunco. Even when Giovanni sells a quart of warm
worms and chestnut hulls he has to hand out a pint to an insectivorous
cop. And the hotel man charges double for everything in the bill that he
sends by the patrol wagon to the altar where the duke is about to marry
the heiress.

But old Badville-near-Coney is the ideal burg for a refined piece of
piracy if you can pay the bunco duty. Imported grafts come pretty high.
The custom-house officers that look after it carry clubs, and it's hard to
smuggle in even a bib-and-tucker swindle to work Brooklyn with unless
you can pay the toll. But now, me and Buck, having capital, descends
upon New York to try and trade the metropolitan backwoodsmen a
few glass beads for real estate just as the Vans did a hundred or two years
ago.

At an East Side hotel we gets acquainted with Romulus G. Atterbury,
a man with the finest head for financial operations I ever saw. It was all
bald and glossy except for gray side whiskers. Seeing that head behind an
office railing, and you'd deposit a million with it without a receipt. This
Atterbury was well dressed, though he ate seldom; and the synopsis of
his talk would make the conversation of a siren sound like a cab driver's
kick. He said he used to be a member of the Stock Exchange, but some
of the big capitalists got jealous and formed a ring that forced him to
sell his seat.

Atterbury got to liking me and Buck and he begun to throw on the
canvas for us some of the schemes that had caused his hair to evacuate.
He had one scheme for starting a National Bank on $45 that made the
Mississippi Bubble look as solid as a glass marble. He talked this to us

330 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

for three days, and when his throat was good and sore we told him about
the roll we had. Atterbury borrowed a quarter from us and went out and
got a box of throat lozenges and started all over again. This time he talked
bigger things, and he got us to see 'em as he did. The scheme he laid out
looked like a sure winner, and he talked me and Buck into putting our
capital against his burnished dome of thought. It looked all right ^for a
kid-gloved graft. It seemed to be just about an inch and a half outside of
the reach of the police, and as money-making as a mint. It was just what
me and Buck wanted— a regular business at a permanent stand, with an
open air spieling with tonsillitis on the street corners every evening.

So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices down in
the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda Gold Bond and
Investment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in his pri-
vate room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr. Buck-
ingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, with his
high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside of an
instantaneous reach for his hat.

And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G.
Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main office room
dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a pompa-
dour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.

There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere of
varnish and culpability.

At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of- an ordinary man,
attired with unscrupulous plainness, sitting with his feet up, eating apples,
with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That man is no other than
Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, the vice-president of the
company.

"No recherche rags for me," I says to Atterbury when we was organiz-
ing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a plain man," says I, "and I
do not use pajamas, French, or military hair-brushes. Cast me for the role
of the rhinestone-in-the-rough or I don't go on exhibition. If you can use
me in my natural, though displeasing form, do so."

"Dress you up?" says Atterbury; "I should say not! Just as you are
you're worth more to the business than a whole roomful of the things
they pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the part of the solid but
disheveled capitalist from the Far West. You despise the conventions.
YouVe got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative,
homely, rough, shrewd, saving— that's your pose. It's a winner in New
York. Keep you feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody
comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawer of
your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."

I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain
capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited apple peelings

A TEMPERED WIND 33!

to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made Hetty Green
look like a spendthrift I could hear Atterbury saying to victims, as he
smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our vice-president, Colo-
nel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments . . , delightfully plain
manners, but . . . could sign his check for half a million . . . simple as
a child . . . wonderful head . . . conservative and careful almost to a
fault."

Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood
all of it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company was
a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in the
profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest— we had to have
that— of the shares at 50 cents a hundred— just what the printer charged
us — and the jrest went to the public at a dollar each. The company guaran-
teed the stockholders a profit of tea per cent each month, payable on the
last day thereof.

When any stockholder had paid in as much as $100, the company issued
him a Gold Bond and he became a bondholder. I asked Atterbury one
day what benefits and appurtenances these Gold Bonds was to an investor
more so than the immunities and privileges enjoyed by the common
sucker who only owned stock. Atterbury picked up one of them Gold
Bonds, all gilt and lettered up with flourishes and a big red seal tied
with a blue ribbon in bowknot, and he looked at me like his feelings
was hurt.

"My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Think
of a thousand homes made happy by possessing one of these beautiful
gems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the household where
one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the what-not, or is
chewed by the baby, caroling gleefully upon the floor! Ah, I see your eye
growing moist. Colonel— I have touched you, have I not?"

"You have not," says I, "for I've been watching you. The moisture
you see is apple juice. You can't expect one man to act as a human cider-
press and an art connoisseur too."

Atterbury attended to the details of the concern. As I understand it,
they was simple, The investors in stock paid in their money, and — well, I
guess that's all they had to do. The company received it, and— I don't call
to mind anything else. Me and Buck knew more about selling corn salve
than we did about Wall Street, but even we could see how the Golconda
Gold Bond Investment Company was making money. You take in
money and pay back ten percent of it; it's plain enough that you make a
clean, legitimate profit of 90 percent, less expenses as long as the fish bite.

Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks
an eye at him and says: <rYou was to furnish the brains. Do you call it
good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
Think again* I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine die,

332 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and Pickens,
we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned increment as it
incremates."

It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture; $1,500
more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew his business.
"Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day longer than
that and we'll have to either go under or go under an alias. By that time
we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a money belt and a lower berth
for me, and the yellow journals and the furniture men can pick the bones."

Our ads, done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-
press dailies of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.

"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause
a Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot sum-
mer. The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and
the Harlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the street-car fenders
and the Answers to Correspondents columns and the pickpocket notices
are made for. We want our ads. in the biggest city dailies, top of column,
next to editorials on radium and pictures of the girl doing health' exercises."

Pretty soon the money begins to roll in. Buck didn't have to pretend to
be busy; his desk was piled high up with money orders and checks and
greenbacks. People began to drop in the office and buy stock every day.

Most of the shares went in small amounts — $10 and $25 and $50, and a
good many $2 and $3 lots. And the bald and inviolate cranium of Presi-
dent Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel
Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, con-
sumes so many apples that the pellings hang to the floor from the mahog-
any garbage chest that he calls his desk.

Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being
troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept the money
in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought much of
banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the stock we'd
sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. We had nearly
$50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high as prize
fighters out of training.

One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat and flip-
pant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with a bright
eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury looking
like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.

"Know that man ? " he asked us.

We said we didn't.

"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but Til bet
enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaper
reporter."

"What did he want?" asks Buck.

A TEMPERED WIND 333

"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying
some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one
of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper. You
can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like a gimlet,
smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and knowing more
than L. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together — if that ain't a reporter
I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind detectives and post-
office inspectors — I talk to 'em eight minutes and then sell *em stock —
but them reporters take the starch out of my collar. Boys, I recommend
that we declare a dividend and fade away. The signs point that way."

Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop swearing and
stand still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always
pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've heard, and
strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and nervous all day.

The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-
thirty. On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a
column on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the
way that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late
George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a rich,
racy kind of guying style that might amuse most anybody except a stock-
holder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad treasurer
and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president of the Gol-
conda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real sudden and
quick that their days might be longer upon the land.

Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and
in the hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which is
already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got Golconda
stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged they'd been
reading the papers, too.

We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn't
quite the kind pf a gang we supposed had been investing. They all
looked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots of young
girls that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was old men
that looked like war veterans, and some was crippled, and a good many
was just kids— bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was
workingmen in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. No one of the gang
looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was a peanut stand. But
they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as you please.

I saw a queer kind of pale look come on Buck's face when he sized
up the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking woman and says:
"Madam, do you own any of this stock?"

"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was all I
had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at home now and I
haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some. The

334 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

circulars said you could draw it at any time. But they say now I will lose
it all."

There was a smart kind of a kid in the gang— I will guess he was a
newsboy. "I got in twenty-fT mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's
silk hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a man
tells me dey can't do dat and be on the square? Is dat straight? Do you
guess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"

Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb dis-
tracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for the time
they lost coming to see about it.

There was one girl— a pretty one— in a red shawl, crying in the corner
like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.

"It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking all over,
"though I've been two years saving it up; but Jakey won't marry me now.
He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know J—J— Jakey. She's got $400 in the sav-
ings bank. Ai, ai, ai " she sings out.

Buck looks all around with that same funny look on his face. And then
we see leaning against the wall, puffing at his pipe, with his eye shining
at us, this newspaper reporter. Buck and me walks over to him.

"You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do you mean
to carry it? Anything more up your sleeve?"

"Oh, I'm just waiting around," says the reporter, smoking away, "in
case any news turns up. It's up to your stockholders now. Some of them
might complain, you know. Isn't that the patrol wagon now" he says,
listening to a sound outside. "No," he goes on, "that's Doc Whittleford's
old cadaver coupe from the Roosevelt. I ought to know that gong. Yes, I
suppose I've written some interesting stuflf at times."

"You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news in your
way."

Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meant
before he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer — I knew what he meant
They don't make them any better than Buck.

"Pick," says he looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out of our
line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa Steinfeld?"

"YouVe got to vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." And
I starts for the safe deposit vaults.

I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck
and me takes the journalist reporter around to another door and we let
ourselves into one of the office rooms.

"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still, and
Fll give you an interview. You see before you two grafters from Grafters-
ville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brass jewelry,
hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines, Connecticut
Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and albums in every town from Old Point

A TEMPERED WIND 335

Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar whenever we saw
one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went after the simoleon in
the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the corner of the kitchen
hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard — 'fussily decency
averni'— which means it's an easy slide from the street faker's dry goods
box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that slide, but we didn't know
exactly what was at the botom of it. Now, you ought to be wise, but you
ain't. You've got New York wiseness, which means that you judge a man
by the outside of his clothes. That ain't right. You ought to look at the
lining and seams and the button-holes. While we are waiting for the
patrol wagon you might get out your little stub pencil and take notes for
another funny piece in the paper."

And then Buck turns to me and says: "I don't care what Atterbury
thinks. He only puts in brains, and if he gets his capital out he's lucky.
But what do you say, Pick?"

"Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know who was
buying the stock."

"All right," says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door into
the main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through the
railing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes 'em a short
speech.

"All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool back. Don't
shove so. Get in a line— a line— not a pile. Lady, will you please stop
bleating? Your money's waiting for you. Here, sonny, don't climb over
that railing; your dimes are safe. Don't cry, sis; you ain't out a cent. Get
in line, I say. Here, Pick, come and straighten 'em out and let 'em through
and out by the other door.n

Buck tales of! his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head, and
lights up a reina victoria. He sits at the table with the boodle before him,
all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders strung out and
marches 'em, single file, through from the main room; and the reporter
passes 'em out of the side door into the hall again. As they go by, Buck
takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds, paying 'em cash, dollar for dollar,
the same as they paid in. The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond
and Investment Company can't hardly believe it. They almost grabs the
money out of Buck's hands. Some of the women keep on crying for it's
a custom of the sex to cry when they have sorrow, to weep when they
have joy, and to shed tears whenever they find themselves without either.

The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosoms
of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flap their dry
goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as the currency goes
down in the ladies' department of the "Old Domestic Lisle-Thread Bank."

Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the
loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leave

336 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

the money invested. "Salt away that chicken feed in your duds and skip
along/* says Buck. "What business have you got investing in bonds ? The
tea-pot or the crack in the wall behind the clock for your hoard of
pennies."

When the pretty girl in the red shawl cashes in Buck hands her an
extra twenty.

"A wedding present," says our treasurer, "from the Golconda Com-
pany. And say — if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectful dis-
tance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby au-
thorized to knock a couple inches of it off."

When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper re-
porter and shoves the rest of the money over to him.

"You begun this,5* says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books,
showing every share and bond issued. Here's the money to cover, except
what we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guess you'll
do the square thing on account of your paper. This is the best way we
know how to settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-weary vice-pres-
ident are going to follow the example of our revered president, and skip.
Now, have you got enough news for to-day, or do you want to interview
us on etiquette and the best way to make over an old taffeta skirt?"

"News!" says the newspaper man, taking his pipe out; "do you think
I could use this? I don't want to lose my job. Suppose I go around to
the office and tell *em this happened. Whatllthe managing editor say?
He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come back when I
get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea serpent wiggling up Broad-
way, but I haven't got the nerve to try ?em with a pipe like this. A get-
rich-quick — excuse me — gang giving back the boodle! Oh, no. I'm not
on the comic supplement."

"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on the
door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you know 'em. We
never allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and take
nickels off of kids. In the lines of graft we worked we took money from
the people the Lord made to be buncoed — sports and rounders and smart
Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars to throw away,
and fanners that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters didn't come
around and play with 'em when they sold their crops. We never cared to
fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir. We got too much re-
spect for the profession and for ourselves. Good-by to you, Mr. Receiver."

"Here!" says the journalist reporter: "wait a minute. There's a broker
I know on the next floor. Wait till I put this truck in his safe. I want you
fellows to take a drink on me before you go."

"On you?" says Buck, winking solemn. "Don't you go and try to make
*em believe at the office you said that. Thanks. We can't spare the time,
I reckon. So long."

HOSTAGES TO MOMUS 337

And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the Gol-
conda Company went into involuntary liquefaction.

If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to a
little bum hotel over near the West Side ferry landings. We was in a
little back room, and I was filling up a gross of six-ounce bottles with
hydrant water colored red with aniline and flavored with cinnamon. Buck
was smoking, contented, and he wore a decent brown derby in place of
his silk hat.

"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that we
got Brady to loan us his horse and wagon for a week. We'll rustle up a
stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey. Bald heads
ain't popular over there on account of the mosquitoes."

Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for labels.

"Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on hand."

"Buy some more," says Buck.

We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money to
settle our hotel bill in the morning and pay our passage over the ferry.

"Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I, after looking.

"What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season
is just opening up in the Hackensack low grounds. What's hair, anyway,
if you have to shake it off?"

We posted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and Buck says:

"Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain't
it, Pick?"

"You bet," says I.

HOSTAGES TO MOMUS

I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but onec. But, one time,
as I say, I reversed the decision of the revised statutes and undertook a
thing that I'd have to apologize for even under the New Jersey trust laws.

Me and Caligula Polk of Muskogee in the Creek Nation, was down in
the Mexican State of Tamaulipas running a peripatetic lottery and monte
game. Now, selling lottery tickets is a government graft in Mexico, just
like selling forty-eight cents' worth of postage-stamps for forty-nine cents
is over here. So Uncle Porfirio he instructs the rurales to attend our case.

Rurales? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental
crayon portraits of the worthy constable with a tin star and a gray goatee.
The rurales — well, if we'd mount our Supreme Court on broncos, arm
'em with Winchesters, and start 'em out after John Doe et al. we'd have
about the same thing. •

: When the rurdtes started for us we istarted for the States. They chased

338 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

us as far as Matamoras. We hid in a brickyard; and that night we swum
the Rio Grande, Caligula with a brick in each hand, absent-minded,
which he drops upon the soil of Texas, forgetting he had 'em.

From there we migrated to San Antone, and then over to New Or-
leans where we took a rest. And in that town of cotton bales and other
adjuncts to female beauty we made the acquaintance of drinks invented
by the Creoles during the period of Louey Cans, in which they are still
served at the side doors. The most I can remember of this town is that me
and Caligula and a Frenchman name McCarty— wait a minute; Adolph
McCarty-— was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back trad-
ing-stamps due on tie Louisiana Purchase, when somebody hollers that
the johndarms are coming. I have an insufficient recollection of buying
two yellow tickets through a window; and I seemed to see a man swing a
lantern and say "All aboard!" I remembered no more, except that the
train butcher was covering me and Caligula up with Augusta J. Evans's
works and figs.

When we become revised, we find that we have collided up against
the State of Georgia at a spot hitherto unaccounted for in time tables ex-
cept by an asterisk, which means that trains stop every other Thursday
on signal by tearing up a rail. We was waked up in a yellow pine hotel
by the noise of flowers and the smell of birds. Yes, sir, for the wind was
banging sunflowers as big as buggy wheels against the weatherboarding
and the chicken coop was right under the window. Me and Caligula
dressed and went downstairs. The landlord was shelling peas on the
front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and Hongkong in com-
plexion though in other respects he seemed amenable in the exercise of
his sentiments and features.

Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man, though red-
haired and impatient of painfulness of any kind, speaks up.

"Pardner," says he, "good-morning, and be darned to you. Would you
mind telling us why we are at? We know the reason we are where, but
can't exactly figure out on account of at what place."

"Well, geudemen," says the landlord, *1 reckoned you-all would be
inquiring this morning. You all dropped off of the nine-thirty train here
last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smart in liquor.
I can inform you that you are now in the town of Mountain Valley, in the
State of Georgia."

"On top of that/' says Caligula, "don't say that we can't have anything
to eat.*'

"Sit down, gentlemen," says the landlord, "and in twenty minutes I'll
call you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere in town."

That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a yellow-
ish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and flexible
sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets out a dish of

HOSTAGES TO MOMTJS 339

the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so me and Caligula
makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food that enabled every Johnny
Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearly four years at a stretch.

"The wonder to me is," says Caligula, "that Uncle Robert Lee's boys
didn't chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson's Bay.
It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!"

"Hog and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this section."

"Then," says Caligula, "they ought to keep it where it belongs. I
thought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogee at
the St. Lucifer House, I'd show you some breakfast grub. Antelope
steaks and fried liver to begin on, and venison cutlest with chili con carne
and pineapple fritters, and then some sardines and mixed pickles; and top
it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle of beer. You won't find a
layout like that on the bill of affairs of any of your Eastern restauraws."

"Too lavish," says I. "I've travelled, and I'm unprejudiced. There'll
never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long
enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over to Nor-
folk for his rolls, and reaches up to Vermont and digs a slice of butter
out of a spring-house, and then turns over a beehive close to a white
clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty close to
making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount Olympia."

"Too ephemeral," says Caligula. "I'd want ham and eggs, or rabbit
stew, anyhow, for a chaser. What do you consider the most edifying and
casual in the way of a dinner?"

"I've been infatuated from time to time," I answers, "with fancy rami-
fications of grub such as terrapins, lobsters, reed birds, jambolaya, and
canvas-covered ducks; but after all there's nothing less displeasing to me
than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on a balcony in sound of the
Broadway street cars, with a hand-organ playing down below, and the
boys hollering extras about the latest suicide. For the wine, give me a
reasonable Pony Cany. And that's all, except a demi-tasse!9

"Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a con-
niseer; and when you go around with a demi-tasse you are naturally bound
to buy 'em stylish grub."

"It's a great town for epicures," says I. "You'd soon fall into their ways
if you was there."

"I've heard it was/' says Caligula. "But I reckon I wouldn't I can pol-
ish my fingernails all they need myself."

II After breakfast we went out on the front porch, lighted up two of
the landlord's flor de upas perfectos, and took a look at Georgia.

The installment of scenery visible to the eye looked might poor. As
far as we could see with red hills all washed down with gullies and scat-
tered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all that

340 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

kept the rail fences from falling down. About fifteen miles over to the
north was a little range of well-timbered mountains.

That town of Mountain Valley wasn't going. About a dozen people
permeated along the sidewalks; but what you saw mostly was rain-bar-
rels and roosters, and boys poking around with sticks in piles of ashes
made by burning the scenery of Uncle Tom shows.

And just then there passes down on the other side of the street a high
man in a long black coat and a beaver hat. All the people in sight bowed,
and some crossed the street to shake hands with him; folks came out of
stores and houses to holler at him; women leaned out of windows and
smiled; and all the kids stopped playing to look at him. Our landlord
stepped out on the porch and bent himself double like a carpenter's rule,
and sung out, "Good-morning, Colonel," when he was a dozen yards
gone by.

"And is that Alexander, pa?" says Caligula to the landlord; "and why
is he called great?"

"That, gentlemen," says the landlord, "is no less than Colonel Jack-
son T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Rail-
road, mayor of Mountain Valley, and chairman of the Perry County
board of immigration and public improvements."

"Been away a good many years, hasn't he?" I asked.

"No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the post-office for his
mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him thus every morn-
ing. The colonel is our most prominent citizen. Besides the height of the
stock of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns a thousand acres
of that land across the creek. Mountain Valley delights, sir, to honor a
citizen of such wealth and public spirit."

For an hour that afternoon Caligula sat on the back of his neck on
the porch and studied a newspaper, which was unusual in a man who
despised print. When he was through he took me to the end of the porch
among the sunlight and drying dishtowels. I knew that Caligula had
invented a new graft. For he chewed the ends of his mustache and ran
the left catch of his suspenders up and down, which was his way.

"What is it now?" I asks. "Just so it ain't floating mining stocks or
raising Pennsylvania pinks, we'll talk it over/'

"Pennsylvania pinks? Oh, that refers to a coin-raising scheme of the
Keystoners. They burn the soles of old women's feet to make them tell
where their money's hid."

Caligula's words in business was always few and bitter.

"You see them mountains," said he, pointing. "And you seen that
colonel man that owns railroads and cuts more ice when he goes to the
post-office than Roosevelt does when he cleans 'em out. What we're
going to do is to kidnap the latter into the former, and inflict a ransom
of ten thousand dollars."

HOSTAGES TO MOMUS 34!

"Illegality," says I, shaking my head.

"I knew you'd say that," says Caligula. "At first sight it does seem
to jar peace and dignity But it don't. I got the idea out of that newspaper.
Would you commit aspersions on a equitable graft that the United States
itself has condoned and indorsed and ratified?"

"Kidnapping," says I, "is an immoral function in the derogatory list of
the statutes If the United States upholds it, it must be a recent enactment
of ethics, along with race suicide and rural delivery."

"Listen," says Caligula, "and I'll explain the case set down in the
papers. Here was a Greek citizen named Burdick Harris," says he,
"captured for a graft by Africans; and the United States sends two gun-
boats to the State of Tangiers and makes the King of Morocco give up
seventy thousand dollars to Raisuli."

"Go slow," says I. "That sounds too international to take in all at
once. It's like 'thimble, thimble, who's got the naturalization papers?' "

" Twas press despatches from Constantinople," says Caligula. "You'll
see, six months from now. They'll be confirmed by the monthly maga-
zines; and then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside of photos
of the Mount Pelee eruption photos in the while-you-get-your-hair-cut
weeklies. It's all right, Pick. This African man Raisuli hides Burdick
Harris up in the mountains, and advertises his price to the governments
of different nations. Now you wouldn't think for a minute," goes on
Caligula, "that John Hay would have chipped in and helped this graft
along if it wasn't a square game, would you?"

"Why, no," says I. "I've always stood right in with Bryan's policies,
and I couldn't consciously say a word against the Republican administra-
tion just now. But if Harris was a Greek, on what system of international
protocols did Hay interfere?"

"It ain't exactly set forth in the papers," says Caligula. "I suppose it's
a matter of sentiment. You know he wrote this poem, 'Little Breeches';
and them Greeks wear little or none. But anyhow, John Hay sends the
Brooklyn and the Olympia over, and they cover Africa with thirty-inch
guns. And then Hay cables after the health of the persona grata. 'And
how are they this morning?' he wires. Is Burdick Harris alive yet, or
Mr. Raisuli dead?' And the King of Morocco sends up the seventy thou-
sand dollars, and they turn Burdick Harris loose. And there's not half the
hard feelings among the nations about this little kidnapping matter as
there was about the peace congress. And Burdick Harris says to the
reporters, in the Greek language, that he's often heard about the United
States, and he admires Roosevelt next to Raisuli, who is one of the whitest
and most gentlemanly kidnappers that he ever worked alongside of. So
you see, Pick," winds up Caligula, "we've got the law of nations on our
side. We'll cut this colonel man out of the herd, and corral him in them

342 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

Me mountains, and stick up heirs and assigns for ten thousand
dollars."

"Well, you seldom little red-headed territorial terror," I answers, you
can't bluff your uncle Tecumseh Pickens! I'll be your company in this
graft. But I misdoubt if you've absorbed the inwardness of this Burdick
Harris case, Calig; and if on any morning we get a telegram from the
Secretary of State asking about the health of the scheme, I propose to
acquire the most propinquitous and celeritous mule in this section and
gallop diplomatically over into the neighboring and peaceful nation of
Alabama."

HI Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch
of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T. Rock-
ingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covered with
bushes and trees that you could only reach by a secret path that we cut
up the side of it. And the only way to reach the mountain was to follow
up the bend of a branch that wound among the elevations.

Then I took in hand an important subdivision of the proceedings. I
went up to Atlanta on the train and laid in a two-hundred-and-fif ty-dollar
supply of the most gratifying and efficient lines of grub that money
could buy. I always was an admirer of viands in their more palliative and
revised stages. Hog and hominy are not only inartistic to my stomach,
but they give indigestion to my moral sentiments. And I thought of
Colonel Jackson T, Rockingham, president of the Sunrise & Edenville
Tap Railroad, and how he would miss the luxury of his home "fare as is
so famous among wealthy Southerners. So I sunk half of mine and
Caligula's capital in as elegant a layout of fresh and canned provisions as
Burdick Harris or any other professional kidnappee ever saw in a camp.

I put another hundred in a couple of cases of Bordeaux, two quarts of
cognac, two hundred Havana regalias with gold bands, and a camp stove
and stools and folding cots. I wanted Colonel Rockingham to be com-
fortable; and I hoped after he gave up the ten thousand dollars he would
give me and Caligula as good a name for gentlemen and entertainers as
the Greek man did the friend of his that made the United States his bill
collector against Africa. When the goods came down from Atlanta, we
hired a wagon, moved them up on the little mountain, and established
camp. And then we laid for the colonel.

We caught him one morning about two miles out from Mountain
Valley, on his way to look after some of his burnt umber farm land. He
was an elegant old gentleman, as thin and tall as a trout rod, with
frazzled shirt-cuffs and specs on a black string. We explained to him,
brief and easy, what we wanted; and Caligula showed him, careless, the
handle of his forty-five under his coat.

"What?" says Colonel Rockingham. "Bandits in Perry County, Georgia!

HOSTAGES TO MOMUS 343

I shall see that the board of immigration and public improvements hears
of this!"

"Be so unfoolhardy as to climb into that buggy," says Caligula, "by
order of the board of perforation and public depravity. This is a business
meeting, and we're anxious to adjourn sine qua non"

We drove Colonel Rockingham over the mountain and up the side of
it as far as the buggy could go. Then we tied the horse, and took our
prisoner on foot up to the camp.

"Now, colonel," I says to him, "we're after the ransom, me and my
partner; and no harm will come to you if the King of Mor — if your
friends send up the dust. In the meantime, we are gentlemen the same
as you. And if you give us your word not to try to escape, the freedom of
the camp is yours."

"I give you my word," says the colonel.

"All right," says I; "and now it's eleven o'clock and me and Mr. Polk
will proceed to inoculate the occasion with a few well-timed trivialities
in the line o£ grub."

"Thank you," says the colonel; "I believe I could relish a slice of bacon
and a plate of hominy."

"But you won't," says I, emphatic. "Not in this camp. We soar in
higher regions than them occupied by your celebrated but repulsive dish."

While the colonel read his paper, me and Caligula took off our coats
and went in for a little luncheon de luxe just to show him. Caligula was
a fine cook of the Western brand. He could toast a buffalo or fricassee a
couple of steers as easy as a woman could make a cup of tea. He was gifted
in the way of knocking together edibles when haste and muscle and
quantity was to be considered. He held the record west of the Arkansas
River for frying pancakes with his left hand, broiling venison cutlets with
his right and skinning a rabbit with his teeth at the same time. But I
could do things en casserole and a la Creole, and handle the oil and
tabasco as gently and nicely as a French chef.

So at twelve o'clock we had a hot lunch ready that looked like a
banquet on a Mississippi River steamboat. We spread it on the tops of two
or three big boxes, opened two quarts of the red wine, set the olives and
a canned oyster cocktail and a ready-made Martini by the colonel's plate,
and called him to grub.

Colonel Rockingham drew up his campstool, wiped off his specs, and
looked at the things on the table. Then I thought he was swearing; and
I felt mean because I hadn't taken more pains with the victuals. But he
wasn't; he was asking a blessing; and me and Caligula hung our heads
and I saw a tear drop from the colonel's eye into his cocktail

I never saw a man eat with so much earnestness and application—
not hastily like a grammarian or one of the canal, but slow and appre-
ciative, like a anaconda, or a real vive bonjour.

344 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

In an hour and a half the colonel leaned back. I brought him a pony
of brandy and his black coffee, and set the box of Havana regalias on the
table.

"Gentlemen," says he, blowing out the smoke and trying to breathe it
back again, "when we view the eternal hills and the smiling and benef-
icent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator who "

"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attention to
now"; and I brought out paper and pen and ink and laid 'em before him.
"Who do you want to send to for the money ? " I asks.

"I reckon," says he, after thinking a bit, "to the vice-president of our
railroad, at the general offices of the Company in Edenville,"

"How far is it to Edenville from here?" I asked.

" About ten miles," says he.

Then I dictated these lines, and Colonel Rockingham wrote them out:

I am kidnapped and held a prisoner by two desperate outlaws in a place
which is useless to attempt to find. They demand ten thousand dollars
at once for my release. The amount must be raised immediately, and
these directions followed. Come alone with the money to Stony Creek,
which runs out of Blacktop Mountains. Follow the bed of the creek till
you come to a big flat rock on the left bank, on which is marked across in
red chalk. Stand on the rock and wave a white flag. A guide will come
to you and conduct you to where I am held. Lose no time.

After the colonel had finished this, he asked permission to tack on a
postscript about how white he was being treated, so the railroad wouldn't
feel uneasy in its bosom about him. We agreed to that. He wrote down
that he had just had lunch with the two desperate ruffians; and then he
set down the whole bill of fare, from cocktails to coffee. He wound up
with the remark that dinner would be ready about six, and would probably
be a more licentious and intemperate affair than lunch.

Me and Caligula read it, and decided to let it go; for we, being cooks,
were amenable to praise, though it sounded out of place on a sight draft
for ten thousand dollars.

I took the letter over to the Mountain Valley road and watched for
a messenger. By and by a colored equestrian came along on horseback,
riding toward Edenville. I gave him a dollar to take the letter to the
railroad offices; and then I went back to camp,

IV About four o'clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting as

lookout, calls to me:

"I have to report a white shirt signaling on the starboard bow, sir."

I went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in an

alpaca coat and no collar.

"Gentlemen," says Colonel Rockingham, "allow me to introduce my

HOSTAGES TO MOMUS 345

brother. Captain Duval C. Rockingham, vice-president of the Sunrise &
Edenville Tap Railroad."

"Otherwise the King of Morocco," says I. "I reckon you don't mind
my counting the ransom, just as a business formality."

"Well, no, not exactly," says the fat man, "not when it comes. I turned
that matter over to our second vice-president. I was anxious after Brother
Jackson's safetiness. I reckon hell be along right soon. What does that
lobster salad you mentioned taste like, Brother Jackson?"

"Mr. Vice-President," says I, "you'll oblige us by remaining here till
the second V. P. arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don't want
any roadside speculators selling tickets."

In half an hour Caligula sings out again:

"Sail ho! Looks like an apron on a broomstick."

I perambulated down the cliff again, and escorted up a man six foot
three, with a sandy beard and no other dimensions that you could notice.
Thinks I to myself, if he's got ten thousand dollars on his person it's in
one bill and folded lengthwise.

"Mr. Patterson G. Coble, our second vice-president," announces the
colonel.

"Glad to know you, gentlemen," says this Coble. "I came up to dis-
seminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our general passenger
agent, is now negotiating a peach-crate full of our railroad bonds with
the Perry County Bank for a loan. My dear Colonel Rockingham, was
that chicken gumbo or cracked goobers on the bill of fare in your note?
Me and the conductor of fifty-six was having a dispute about it."

"Another white wings on the rocks!" hollers Caligula. "If I see any
more I'll fire on 'em and swear they was torpedo-boats!"

The guide goes down again, and convoys into the lair a person in blue
overalls carrying an amount of inebriety and a lantern. I am so sure that
this is Major Tucker that I don't even ask him until we* are up above;
and then I discover that it is Uncle Timothy, the yard switchman at
Edenville, who is sent ahead to flag our understandings with the gossip
that Judge Prendergast, the railroad's attorney, is in the process of
mortgaging Colonel Rockingham's farming lands to make up the ransom.

While he is talking, two men crawl from under the bushes into camp,
and Caligula, with no white flag to disinter him from his plain duty,
draws his gun. But again Colonel Rockingham intervenes and introduces
Mr. Jones and Mr. Batts, engineer and fireman of train number forty-two.

"Excuse us," says Batts, "but me and Jim have hunted squirrels all
over this mounting, and we don't need no white flag. Was that straight,
colonel, about the plum pudding and pineapples and real store cigars?"

"Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!" howls Caligula. "Suppose it's
the firing line of the freight conductors and brakeman."

"My last trip down," says I, wiping off my face. "If the S. & E. T.

346 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

wants to run an excursion up here just because we kidnapped their
president, let 'em. We'll put out our sign. "The Kidnapper's Cafe
and Trainmen's Home.' "

This time I caught Major Tallahassee Tucker by his own confession,
and I felt easier. I asked him into the creek, so I could drown him if he
happened to be a track-walker or caboose porter. All the way up the
mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a thing that his
intelligence in life had skipped.

Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he had
raised the ransom.

"My dear sir," says he, "I succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty
thousand dollars' worth of the bonds of our railroad, and "

"Never mind just now, major," says I. "It's all right, then. Wait till after
dinner, and we'll settle the business. All of you gentlemen/' I continues
to the crowd "are invited to stay to dinner. We have mutually trusted one
another, and the white flag is supposed to wave over the proceedings."

"The correct idea," says Caligula, who was standing by me. "Two
baggage-masters and a ticket agent dropped out of a tree while you was
below the last time. Did the major man bring the money?"

"He says/5 1 answered, "that he succeeded in negotiating the loan/'

If any cooks ever earned ten thousand dollars in twelve hours me and
Caligula did that day. At six o'clock we spread the top of the mountain
with as fine a dinner as the personnel of any railroad ever engulfed. We
opened all the wine, and we concocted entrees and pieces de resistance,
and stirred up little savory chef de cuisines and organized a mass of grub
such as has seldom instigated out of canned and bottled goods. The
railroad gathered around it, and the wassail and diversions was intense.

After the feast me and Caligula, in the line of business, takes Major
Tucker to one side and talks ransom. The major pulls out an agglom-
eration of currency about the size of the price of a town lot in the suburbs
of Rabbitville, Arizona, and makes this outcry.

"Gentlemen," says he, "the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville railroad
has depreciated some. The best I could do with thirty thousand dollars'
worth of the bonds was to secure a loan of eighty-seven dollars and fifty
cents. On the farming lands of Colonel Rockingham, Judge Prendergast
was able to obtain, on a ninth mortgage, the sum of fifty dollars. You will
find the amount, one hundred and thirty-seven fifty, correct."

"A railroad president," said I, looking this Tucker in the eye, "and
the owner of a thousand acres of land; and yet "

"Gentlemen," says Tucker, "the railroad is ten miles long. There don't
any train run on it except when the crew goes out in the pines and gath-
ers enough lightwood knots to get up steam. A long time ago, when
times was good, the net earnings used to run as high as eighteen dollars
a week. Colonel Rockingham's land has been sold for taxes thirteen

THE ETHICS OF PIG 347

times. There hasn't been a peach crop in this part of Georgia for two
years. The wet spring killed the watermelons. Nobody around here has
money enough to buy fertilizer; and land is so poor the corn crop failed,
and there wasn't enough grass to support the rabbits. All the people have
had to eat in this section for over a year is hog and hominy, and "

"Pick," interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, "what are you go-
ing to do with that chicken-feed?"

I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over to
Colonel Rockingham and slaps him on the back.

"Colonel," says I, "I hope you've enjoyed our little joke. We don't
want to carry it too far. Kidnappers! Well, wouldn't it tickle your uncle?
My name's Rhinegelder, and I'm a nephew of Chauncey Depew. My
friend's a second cousin of the editor of Puc\, So you can see. We are
down South enjoying ourselves in our humorous way. Now, there's two
quarts of cognac to open yet, and then the joke's over."

What's the use to go into details? One or two will be enough. I re-
member Major Tallahassee Tucker playing on a jew's-harp, and Caligula
waltzing with his head on the watch pocket of a tall baggage-master. I
hesitate to refer to the cake-walk done by me and Mr. Patterson G. Coble
with Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham between us.

And even on the next morning, when you wouldn't think it possible,
there was a consolation for me and Caligula. We knew that Raisuli him-
self never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with the
Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.

THE ETHICS OF PIG

On an east-bound train I went into the smoker and found Jefferson Pe-
ters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use
his cerebrum and cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time.

Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by widows
and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage. His favorite disguise is that
of the target-bird at which the spendthrift or the rockless investor may shy
a few inconsequentional dollars. He is readily vocalized by tobacco; so,
with the aid of two thick and easy-burning brevas I got the story of his
latest Autolycan adventure.

"In my line of business," said Jeff, "the hardest thing is to find an up-
right, trustworthy, strictly honorable partner to work a graft with. Some
of the best men I ever worked with in a swindle would resort to trickery
at times.

"So, last summer, I thinks I will go over into this section of country
where I hear the serpent has not entered, and see if I can find a part-

348 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

ner naturally gifted with a talent for crime, but not yet contaminated by
success.

"I found a village that seemed to show the right kind of a layout. The
inhabitants hadn't found out that Adam had been dispossessed, and were
going right along naming the animals and killing snakes just as if they
were in the Garden of Eden. They call this town Mount Nebo, and it's
up near the spot where Kentucky and West Virginia and North Carolina
corner together. Them States don't meet? Well, it was in that neighbor-
hood, anyway.

"After putting in a week proving I wasn't a revenue officer, I went
over to the store where the rude fourflushers of the hamlet lied, to see if I
could get a line on the kind of man I wanted.

"'Gentlemen,' says I, after we had rubbed noses and gathered 'round
the dried-apple barrel 'I don't suppose there's another community in the
whole world into which sin and chicanery has less extensively permeated
than this. Life here, where all the woman are brave and propitious and all
the men honest and expedient, must, indeed, be an idol. It reminds me,'
says I, 'of Goldstein's beautiful ballad entitled "The Deserted Village,"
which says:

111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey;

What art can drive its charms away?
The judge rode slowly down the lane, mother.

For I'm to be Queen of the May.'

" 'Why, yes, Mr. Peters,' says the storekeeper. 'I reckon we air about as
moral and torpid a community as there be on the mounting, according to
censuses of opinion; but I reckon you ain't ever met Rufe Tatum.'

" Why, no,' says the town constable, 'he can't hardly have even That
air Rufe is shore the monstrousest scalawag that has escaped hangin' on
the galluses. And that puts me in mind that I ought to have turned Rufe
out of the lockup day before yesterday. The thirty days he got for killin'
Yance Goodloe was up then. A day or two more won't hurt Rufe any,
though.'

" 'Shucks, now,' says I, in the mountain idiom, 'don't tell me there's a
man in Mount Nebo as bad as that.'

" 'Worse,' says the storekeeper. 'He steals hogs/

'1 think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the con-
stable turned him out I got acquainted with him and invited him out on
the edge of town to sit on a log and talk business.

"What I wanted was a partner with a natural rural make-up to play a
part in some little one-act outrages that I was going to book with the Pit-
fall & Gin circuit in some of the Western towns; and this R. Tatum was
born for the role as sure as nature cast Fairbanks for the stuff that kept
Eliza from sinking into the river.

THE ETHICS OF PIG 349

"He was about the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue
eyes like the china dog on the mantelpiece that Aunt Harriet used to play
with when she was a child. His hair waved a little bit like the statue of the
dinkus-thrower in the vacation at Rome, but the color of it reminded you
of the 'Sunset in the Grand Canon, by an American Artist/ that they
hang over the stove-pipe holes in the salongs. He was the Reub, without
needing a touch. You'd have known him for one, even if you'd seen him
on the vaudeville stage with one cotton suspender and a straw over his ear.

"I told him what I wanted, and found him ready to jump at the job.

" 'Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of manslaugh-
ter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished in the way of indirect brigandage
or non-actionable thriftiness that you could, point to, with or without
pride, as an evidence of your qualifications for the position?*

" 'Why,' says he, in his kind of Southern system of procrastinated ac-
cents, 'hain't you heard tell? There ain't any man, black or white, in the
Blue Ridge that can tote off a shoat as easy as I can without bein' heard,
seen, or cotched. I can lift a shoat,' he goes on, 'out of a pen, from under
a porch, at the trough, in the woods, day or night, anywhere or anyhow,
and I guarantee nobody won't hear a squeal It's all in the way you 'grab
hold of 'em and carry 'em afterwards. Some day,* goes on this gentle de-
spoiler of pig-pens, 'I hope to become reckernized as the champion shoat-
stealer of the world/

" 'It's proper to be ambitious,' says I; 'and hog-stealing will do very well
for Mount Nebo; but in the outside world, M. Tatum, it would be con-
sidered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State Gas. How-
ever, it will do as a guarantee of good faith. We'll go into partnership. I've
got a thousand dollars cash capital; and with that homeward-plods atmos-
phere of yours we ought to be able to win out a few shares of Soon
Parted, preferred, in the money market."

"So I attaches Rufe, and we go away from Mount Nebo down into the
lowlands. And all the way I coach him for his part in the grafts I had in
mind. I hap! idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was feel-
ing all to the Ponce de Leon, besides having so many new schemes up
my sleeve that I had to wear kimonos to hold *em.

"I intended to assume a funnel shape and mow a path nine miles wide
through the farming belt of the Middle West; so we headed in that direc-
tion. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley Brothers'
circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into town and pound-
ing the Belgian blocks with their .hand-pegged sabots as artless and arbi-
trary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan durria. I never pass a circus with-
out pulling the valve-cord and coming down for a little Key West money;
so I engaged a couple of rooms and board for Rufe and me at a house
near the circus grounds run by a widow lady named Peevy. Then I took
Rufe to a clothing store and.gent's-outfitted him. He showed up strong, as

350 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

I knew he would, after he was rigged up in the ready-made rutabaga rega-
lia. Me and old Misfitzky stuffed him into a bright blue suit with a Nile-
green visible plaid effect, and riveted on a fancy vest of a light Tuskegee
Normal tan color, a red necktie, and the yellowest pair of shoes in town.

"They were the first clothes Rufe had ever worn except the gingham
layette and the butternut top-dressing of his native kraal, and he looked
as self-conscious as an Igorrote with a new nose-ring.

"That night I went down to the circus tents and opened a small shell
game. Rufe was to be the capper. I gave him a roll of phony currency to
bet with and kept a bunch of it in a special pocket to pay his winnings
out of. No; I didn't mistrust him; but I simply can't manipulate the
ball to lose when I see real money bet. My fingers go on a strike every
time I try it.

"I set up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to
guess which shell the little pea was under. The unlettered hinds gathered
in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another
to bet. Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed up and called
the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives to get them started. But,
no Rufe. I'd seen him two or three times walking about and looking at
the side-show pictures with his mouth full of peanut candy; but he never
came nigh.

"The crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without a cap-
per is like fishing without bait. I closed the game with only forty-two dol-
lars of the unearned increment, while I had been counting on yanking
the yeomen for two hundred at least. I went home at eleven and went to
bed. I supposed that the circus had proved too alluring for Rufe, and that
he had succumbed to it, concert and all; but I meant to give him a lecture
on general business principles in the morning.

"Just after Morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress
I hears a houseful of unbecoming and ribald noises like a youngster
screeching with green-apple colic. I opens my door and calls out in the
hall for the widow lady, and when she sticks her head out, I says : "Mrs.
Peevy, ma'am, would you mind choking off that kid of yours so that hon-
est people can get their rest?'

"'Sir/ says she, 'it*s no child of mine. It's the pig squealing that
your friend Mr. Tatum brought home to his room a couple of hours
ago. And if you are uncle or second cousin or brother to it, I'd appreciate
your stopping its mouth, sir, yourself, if you please.'

"I put on some of the polite outside habiliments of external society
and went into Rufe's room. He had gotten up and lit his lamp, and was
pouring some milk into a tin pan on the floor for a dingy-white, half-
grown, squealing pig.

"'How is this, Rufe?' says I. Tou flimflammed in your part of the

THE ETHICS OF PIG 35!

work to-night and put the game on crutches. And how do you explain the
pig? It looks like back-sliding to me.'

" 'Now, don't be too hard on me, Jeff/ says- he. 'You know how long
I've been used to stealing shoats. It's got to be a habit with me. And to-
night, when I see such a fine chance, I couldn't help takin' it.'

" Well,' says I, 'maybe you're really got kleptopigia. -And maybe when
we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind to higher and more re-
munerative misconduct. Why you should want to stain your soul with
such a distasteful, feeble-minded, perverted, roaring beast as that I can't
understand.'

" 'Why, Jeff,5 says he, 'you ain't in sympathy with shoats. You don't
understand 'em like I do. This here seems to me to be an animal of more
than common powers of ration and intelligence. He walked half across
the room on his hind legs a while ago/

" 'Well, I'm going back to bed/ says I. 'See if you can impress it upon
your friend's ideas -of intelligence that he's not to make so much noise.'

" 'He was hungry/ says Rufe. 'He'll go to sleep and keep quiet now.'

"I always get up before breakfast and read the morning paper when-
ever I happen to be within the radius of a Hoe cylinder or a Washington
hand-press. The next morning I got up early, and found a Lexington
daily on the front porch where the carrier had thrown it. The first thing I
saw in it was a double-column ad. on the front page that read like this:

FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

The above amount will be paid, and no questions asked, for the
return, alive and uninjured, of Beppo, the famous European educated
pig, that strayed or was stolen from the side-show tents of Binkley
Bros/ circus last night.

GEO. B. TAPLEY, Business Manager
At the circus grounds.

"I folded up the paper flat, put it into my inside pocket, and went to
Rufe's room. He was nearly dressed, and was feeding the pig the rest
of the milk and some apple-peelings.

" 'Well, well, well, good-morning all/ I says, hearty and amiable. 'So
we are up? And piggy is having his breakfast. What had you intended
doing with that pig, Rufe?'

" 'I'm going to crate him up/ says Rufe, 'and express him to ma in
Mount Nebo. Hell be company for her while I am away.'

" 'He's a mighty fine pig/ says I, scratching him on the back.

" 'You called him a lot of names last night/ says Rufe.

" 'Oh, well/ says I, 'he looks better to me this morning. I was raised on
a farm, and I'm very fond of pigs. I used to go to bed at sundown so I
never saw one by lamplight before. Tell you what 111 do, Rufe/ I says.
I'll give you ten dollars for that pig/

352 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

" 'I reckon I wouldn't sell this shoat,' says he. If it was any other one
I might.'

" 'Why not this one?' I asked, fearful that he might know something.

" 'Why, because,' says he, 'it was the grandest achievement of my life.
There ain't airy other man that could have done it. If I ever have a fire-
side and children, I'll sit beside it and tell 'em how their daddy toted off
a shoat from a whole circus full of people. And maybe my grandchildren,
too. They'll certainly be proud a whole passel. Why,' says he, 'there was
two tents, one openin' into the other. This shoat was on a platform, tied
with a little chain. I seen a giant and a lady with a fine chance of bushy
white hair in the other tent. I got the shoat and crawled out from under
the canvas again without him squeakin' as loud as a mouse. I put him
under my coat, and I must have passed a hundred folks before I got out
where the streets was dark. I reckon I wouldn't sell that shoat, Jeff. I'd
want ma to keep it, so there'd be a witness to what I done.'

" The pig won't live long enough,' I says, 'to use as an exhibit in your
senile fireside mendacity. Your grandchildren will have to take your word
for it. I'll give you one hundred dollars for the animal.'

"Rufe looked at me astonished.

"The shoat can't be worth anything like that to you/ he says. 'What
do you want him f or ? ' * l

" 'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'y°u wouldn't
think that I've got an artistic side to my temper. But I have. I'm a col-
lector of pigs. I've scoured the world for unusual pigs. Over in the Wabash
Valley, I've got a hog ranch with most every specimen on it from a Me-
rino to a Poland China. This looks like a blooded pig to me, Rufe,' says L
1 believe it's a genuine Berkshire. That's why I'd like to have it.'

" 'I'd shore like to accommodate you,' says he, 'but I've got the artistic
tenement, too. I don't see why.it ain't art when you can steal a shoat bet-
ter than anybody else can. Shoats is a kind of inspiration and genius with
me. Specially this one. I wouldn't take two hundred and fifty for that
animal.'

" 'Now, listen,' says I, wiping off my forehead, It's not so much a mat-
ter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is philan-
thropy. Being a connoisseur and disseminator of pigs, I wouldn't feel like
I'd done my duty to the world unless I added that Berkshire to my collec-
tion. Not intrinsically, but according to the ethics of pigs as friends and
coadjutors of mankind, I offer you five hundred dollars for the animal.'

" 'Jeff,' says this pork esthete, *it ain't money; it's sentiment with me.'

" 'Seven hundred,' says L

" Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, £and 111 crush the sentiment out of
my heart.'

"I went under my clothes for my money-belt, and 'counted him out
forty twenty-dollar gold certificates.

THE ETHICS OF PIG 353

" Til just take him into my own room/ says I, 'and lock him up till af-
ter breakfast.'

"I took the pig by the hind leg. He turned on a squeal like the steam
calliope at the circus.

" 'Let me tote him in for you,' says Rufe; and he picks up the beast un-
der one arm, holding his snout with the other hand, and packs him into
my room like a sleeping baby.

"After breakfast Rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery ever
since I got his trousseau, says he believes he will amble down to Misfitz-
kyjs and look over some royal-purple socks. And then I got as busy as a
one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper. I found an
old negro man with an express wagon to hire; and we tied the pig in a
sack and drove down to the circus grounds.

"I found George B. Tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. He
was a fattish man with an immediate eye, in a black skull-cap with a four-
ounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.

" 'Are you George B. Tapley?' I asks.

" 'I swear it,' says he.

"Well, I've got it/ says I.

" 'Designate,' says he. 'Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python
or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo ?'

" 'Neither/ says I. 'I've got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in that
wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this morn-
ing. I'll take the five thousand in large bills, if it's handy/

"George B. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went into
one of the side-shows. In there was a jet black pig with a pink ribbon
around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man was
feeding him.

"'Hey, Mac,' calls G. B. 'Nothing wrong with the world-wide this
morning, is there?'

"'Him? No,' says the man. 'He's got an appetite like a chorus girl at

I A.M.'

" 'How'd you get this pipe?' says Tapley to me. 'Eating too many pork
chops last night?'

"I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.

"Take/ says he. 'Don't know anything about it. You've beheld
with your own eyes the marvelous, world-wide porcine wonder of
the four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal
meal, unstrayed and unstole. Good-morning.'

"I was beginning to see. I got in the wagon and told Uncle Ned to
drive to the most adjacent orifice of the nearest alley. There I took out
my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his sights, and
gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley twenty
feet ahead of his squeal.

354 BOOK III THE GENTLE GRAFTER

"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the news-
paper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I got the advertising
man to his window.

"To decide a bet,' says I, 'wasn't the man who had this ad. put in
last night short and fat, with long black whiskers and a club-foot?'

"'He was not,' says the man. 'He would measure about six feet by
four and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies of
the conservatory.5

"At dinner time I went back to Mrs. Peevy's.

"'Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes back?' she
asks.

" 'If you do, ma'am/ says I, 'you'll more than exhaust for firewood all
the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the outside of it.'

"So there, you see," said Jefferson Peters in conclusion "how hard it is
ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner."

"But," I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, "the rule should
work both ways. If you had offered to divide the reward you would not
have lost "

Jeff' s look of dignified reproach stopped me.

"That don't involve the same principles at all," said he. "Mine was a
legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. Buy low and sell high — don't
Wall Street indorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs — what's the difference?
Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"

BOOK

OF DESTINY

ROADS OF DESTINY

I go to seek on many roads

What is to be.

True heart and strong, with love to light —
Will they not bear me in the fight
To order, shun or wield or mould

My Destiny?

UNPUBLISHED POEMS OF DAVID MIGNOT

The song was over. The words were David's; the air, one of the country-
side. The company about the inn table applauded heartily, for the young
poet paid for the wine. Only the notary, M. Papineau, shook his head a
little at the lines, for he was a man of books, and he had not drunk with
the rest.

356 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

David went out into the village street, where the night air drove the
wine vapor from his head. And then he remembered that he and Yvonne
had quarrelled that day, and that he had resolved to leave his home that
night to seek fame and honor in the great world outside.

"When my poems are on every man's tongue," he told himself, in a fine
exhilaration, "she will, perhaps, think of the hard words she spoke this
day."

Except the roysterers in the tavern, the village folk were abed. David
crept softly into his room in the shed of his father's cottage and made a
bundle of his small store of clothing. With this upon a staff, he set his
face outward upon the road that ran from Vernoy.

He passed his father's herd of sheep huddled in their nightly pen—
the sheep he herded daily, leaving them to scatter while he wrote verses
on scraps of paper. He saw a light yet shining in Yvonne's window, and a
weakness shook his purpose of a sudden. Perhaps that light meant that

she rued, sleepless, her anger, and that morning might But, no! His

decision was made. Vernoy was no place for him. Not one soul there could
share his thoughts. Out along that road lay his fate and his future.

Three leagues across the dim, moonlit champaign ran the road,
straight as a plowman's furrow. It was believed in the village that the road
ran to Paris, at least; and this name the poet whispered often to himself
as he walked. Never so far from Vernoy had David travelled before.

THE LEFT BRANCH Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a
puzzle. It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
stood, uncertain, for a while, and then too\ the road to the left.

Upon this more important highway were, imprinted in the dust, wheel
tracks left by the recent passage of some vehicle. Some half an hour later
these traces were verified by the sight of a ponderous carriage mired in a
little brook at the bottom of a steep hill. The driver and postilions were
shouting and tugging at the horses' bridles. On the road at one side stood a
huge black-clothed man and a slender lady wrapped in a long, light cloak.

David saw the lack of skill in the efforts of the servants. He quietly
assumed control of the work. He directed the outriders to cease their
clamor at the horses and to exercise their strength upon the wheels. The
driver alone urged the animals with his familiar voice; David himself
heaved a powerful shoulder at the rear of the carriage, and with one
harmonious tug the great vehicle rolled up on solid ground. The out-
riders climbed to their places.

David stood for a moment upon one foot. The huge gentleman waved
a hand. "You will enter the carriage," he said, in a voice large, like him-
self, but smoothed by art and habit. Obedience belonged in the path of
such a voice. Brief as was the young poet's hesitation, it was cut shorter
still by a renewal of the command. David's foot went to the step. In the

ROADS OF DESTINY 357

darkness he perceived dimly the form of the lady upon the rear seat. He
was about to seat himself opposite, when the voice again swayed him to
its will. "You will sit at the lady's side."

The gentleman swung his great weight to the forward seat. The car-
riage proceeded up the hill. The lady was shrunk, silent, into her corner.
David could not estimate whether she was old or young, but a delicate,
mild perfume from her clothes stirred his poet's fancy to the belief that
there was loveliness beneath the mystery. Here was an adventure such as
he had often imagined. But as yet he held no key to it, for no word was
spoken while he sat with his impenetrable companions.

In an hour's time David perceived through the window that the vehi-
cle traversed the street of some town. Then it stopped in front of a closed
and darkened house, and a postilion alighted to hammer impatiently
upon the door. A latticed window above flew wide and a night-capped
head popped out.

"Who are ye that disturb honest folk at this time of night? My house
is closed. Tis too late for profitable travellers to be abroad. Cease knock-
ing at my door, and be off."

"Open!" spluttered the postilion, loudly; "open for Monseigneur the
Marquis de Beaupertuys."

"Ah!" cried the voice above. "Ten thousand pardons, my lord. I did
not know — the hour is so late — at once shall the door be opened, and the
house placed at my lord's disposal."

Inside was heard the clink of chair and bar, and the door was flung
open. Shivering with chill and apprehension, the landlord of the Silver
Flagon stood, half clad, candle in hand, upon the threshold.

David followed the marquis out of the carriage. "Assist the lady," he
was ordered. The poet obeyed. He felt her small hand tremble as he
guided her descent. "Into the house," was the next command.

The room was the long dining-hall of the tavern. A great oak table ran
down its length. The huge gentleman seated himself in a chair at the
nearer end. The lady sank into another against the wall, with an air of
great weariness. David stood, considering how best he might now take
his leave and continue upon his way.

"My lord," said the landlord, bowing to the floor, "h-had I ex-expected
this honor, entertainment would have been ready. T-t-there is wine and
cold fowl and m-m-maybe- "

"Candles," said the marquis, spreading the fingers of one plump
white hand in a gesture he had.

"Y-yes, my lord," He fetched half a dozen candles, lighted them, and
set them upon the table.

"If monsieur would, perhaps, deign to taste a certain Burgundy-
there is a cask "

"Candles," said monsieur, spreading his fingers.

35^ BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Assuredly — quickly — I fly, my lord."

A dozen more lighted candles shone in the hall. The great bulk of the
marquis overflowed his chair. He was dressed in fine black from head to
foot save for the snowy ruffles at his wrist and throat. Even the hilt and
scabbard of his sword were black. His expression was one of sneering
pride. The ends of an upturned moustache reached nearly to his mocking
eyes.

The lady sat motionless, and now David perceived that she was young,
and possessed a pathetic and appealing beauty. He was startled from the
contemplation of her forlorn loveliness by the booming voice of the mar-
quis.

"What is your name and pursuit?"

"David Mignot. I am a poet."

The moustache of the marquis curled nearer to his eyes.

"How do you live?"

"I am also a shepherd; I guarded my father's flock," David answered,
with his head high, but a flush upon his cheek.

"Then listen, master shepherd and poet, to the fortune you have blun-
dered upon to-night This lady is my niece, Mademoiselle Lucie de
Varennes. She is of noble descent and is possessed of ten thousand francs
a year in her own right. As to her charms, you have but to observe for
yourself. If the inventory pleases your shepherd's heart, she becomes your
wife at a word. Do not interrupt me. To-night I conveyed her to the cha-
teau of the Comte de Villemaur, to whom her hand had been promised.
Guests were present; the priest was waiting; her marriage to one eligi-
ble in rank and fortune was ready to be accomplished. At the altar this
demoiselle, so meek and dutiful, turned upon me like a leopardess,
charged me with cruelty and crimes, and broke, before the gaping priest,
the troth I had plighted for her. I swore there and then, by ten thousand
devils, that she should marry the first man we met after leaving the cha-
teau, be he prince, charcoal-burner, or thief. You, Shepherd, are the first.
Mademoiselle must be wed this night. If not you, then another. You have
ten minutes in which to make your decision. Do not vex me with words
or questions. Ten minutes, shepherd; and they are speeding."

The marquis drummed loudly with his white fingers upon the table.
He sank into a veiled attitude of waiting. It was as if some great house
had shut its doors and windows against approach. David would have
spoken, but the huge man's bearing stopped his tongue. Instead, he stood
by the lady's chair and bowed.

"Mademoiselle," he said, and he marvelled to find his words flowing
easily before so much elegance and beauty. "You have heard me say I
was a shepherd. I have also had the fancy, at times, that I am a poet. If it
be the test of a poet to adore and cherish the beautiful, that fancy is now
strengthened. Can I serve you in any way, mademoiselle?"

The young woman looked up at him with eyes dry and mournful. His

ROADS OF DESTINY 359

frank, glowing face, made serious by the gravity of the adventure, his
strong, straight figure and the liquid sympathy in his blue eyes, perhaps,
also, her imminent need of long-denied help and kindness, thawed her
to sudden tears.

"Monsieur," she said, in low tones, "you look to be true and kind. He
is my uncle, the brother of my father, and my only relative. He loved my
mother, and he hates me because I am like her. He has made my life one
long terror. I am afraid of his very looks, and never before dared to dis-
obey him. But to-night he would have married me to a man three times
my age. You will forgive me for bringing this vexation upon you, mon-
sieur. You will, of course, decline this mad act he tries to force upon you.
But let me thank you for your generous words, at least. I have had none
spoken to me in so long."

There was now something more than generosity in the poet's eyes.
Poet he must have been, for Yvonne was forgotten; this fine, new love-
liness held him with its freshness and grace. The subtle perfume from
her filled him with strange emotions. His tender look fell warmly upon
her. She leaned to it, thirstily.

"Ten minutes," said David, "is given me in which to do what I would
devote years to achieve. I will not say I pity you, mademoiselle; it would
not be true— I love you. I cannot ask love from you yet, but let me rescue
you from this cruel man, and, in time, love may come. I think I have a
future, I will not always be a shepherd. For the present I will cherish you
with all my heart and make your life less sad. Will you trust your fate to
me, mademoiselle ? "

"Ah, you would sacrifice yourself from pity!'*

"From love. The time is almost up, mademoiselle."

"You will regret it, and despise me."

"I will live only to make you happy, and myself worthy of you."

Her fine small hand crept into his from beneath her cloak.

"I will trust you," she breathed, "with my life. And— and love— may
not be so far off as you think. Tell him. Once away from the power of his
eyes I may forget."

David went and stood before the marquis. The black figure stirred,
and the mocking eyes glanced at the great hall clock.

"Two minutes to spare. A shepherd requires eight minutes to decide
whether he will accept a bride of beauty and income! Speak up, shep-
herd, do you consent to become mademoiselle's husband?"

"Mademoiselle," said David, standing proudly, "has done me the
honor to yield to my request that she become my wife."

"Well said!" said the mafquis. "You have yet the making of a courtier
in you, master shepherd. Mademoiselle could have drawn a worse prize,
after all. And now to be done with the affair as quick as the Church and
the devil will allow!"

360 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

He struck the table soundly with his sword hilt. The landlord came,
knee-shaking, bringing more candles in the hope of anticipating the great
lord's whims. "Fetch a priest," said the marquis, "a priest; do you under-
stand? In ten minutes have a priest here, or "

The landlord dropped his candles and flew.

The priest came heavy-eyed and ruffled. He made David Mignot and
Lucie de Varennes man and wife, pocketed a gold piece that the mar-
quis tossed him, and shuffled out again into the night.

* Wine," ordered the marquis, spreading his ominous fingers at the host.

"Fill glasses," he said, when it was brought. He stood up at the head
of the table in the candlelight, a black mountain of venom and conceit,
with something like the memory of an old love turned to poison in his
eye, as it fell upon his niece.

"Monsieur Mignot," he said, raising his wine-glass, "drink after I say
this to you: You have taken to be your wife one who will make your life
a foul and wretched thing. The blood in her is an inheritance running
black lies and red ruin. She will bring you shame and anxiety. The devil
that descended to her is there in her eyes and skin and mouth that stoop
even to beguile a peasant. There is your promise, monsieur poet, for a
happy life. Drink your wine. At last, mademoiselle, I am rid of you."

The marquis drank. A little grievous cry, as if from a sudden wound,
came from the girl's lips. David, with his glass in his hand, stepped for-
ward three paces and faced the marquis. There was little of a shepherd
in his bearing.

"Just now," he said calmly, "you did me the honor to call me 'mon-
sieur/ May I hope, therefore, that my marriage to mademoiselle has
placed me somewhat nearer to you in — let us say, reflected rank — has
given me the right to -stand more as an equal to monseigneur in a certain
little piece of business I have in my mind?"

"You may hope, shepherd," sneered the marquis.

"Then," said David, dashing his glass of wine into the contemptuous
eyes that mocked him, "perhaps you will condescend to fight me."

The fury of the great lord outbroke in one sudden curse like a blast
from a horn. He tore his sword from its black sheath; he called to the
hovering landlord: "A sword there, for this lout!" He turned to the lady,
with a laugh that chilled her heart, and said: "You put much labor upon
me, madame, It seems I must find you a husband and make you a widow
in the same night."

"I know not sword-play," said David. He flushed to make the confes-
sion before his lady.

" 'I know not sword-play,' " mimicked the marquis. "Shall we fight
like peasants with oaken cudgels? Hola! Francois, my pistols!"

A postilion brought two shining great pistols ornamented with carven
silver from the carriage holsters. The marquis tossed one upon the table

ROADS OF DESTINY 361

near David's hand. "To the other end of the table," he cried; "even a
shepherd may pull a trigger. Few of them attain the honor to die by the
weapon of a De Beaupertuys."

The shepherd and the marquis faced each other from the ends of the
long table. The landlord, in an ague of terror, clutched the air and stam-
mered: "M-M-Monseigneur, for the love of Christ! not in my house! —

do not spill blood— it will ruin my custom " The look of the marquis,

threatening him, paralyzed his tongue.

"Coward," cried the lord of Beaupertuys, "cease chattering your teeth
long enough to give the word for us, if you can."

Mine host's knees smote the floor. He was without a vocabulary. Even
sounds were beyond him. Still, by gestures he seemed to beseech peace
in the name of his house and custom.

"I will give the word," said the lady, in a clear voice. She went up to
David and kissed him sweetly. Her eyes were sparkling bright, and color
had come to her cheek. She stood against the wall, and the two men lev-
elled their pistols for her count* '

"Un — deux — trois!"

The two reports came so nearly together that the candles flickered but
once. The marquis stood, smiling, the fingers of his left hand resting,
outspread, upon the end of the table. David remained erect, and turned
his head very slowly, searching for his wife with his eyes. Then, as a
garment falls from where it is hung, he sank, crumpled, upon the floor.

With a little cry of terror and despair, the widowed maid ran and
stooped above him. She found his wound, and then looked up with her
old look of pale melancholy. "Through his heart," she whispered. "Oh,
his heart!"

"Come," boomed the great voice of the marquis, "out with you to the
carriage! Daybreak shall not find you on my hands. Wed you shall be
again, and to a living husband, this night. The next we come upon, my
lady, highwayman or peasant. If the road yields no other, then the churl
that opens my gates. Out with you to the carriage!"

The marquis, implacable and huge, the lady wrapped again in the mys-
tery of her cloak, the postilion bearing the weapons — all moved out to the
waiting carriage. The sound of its ponderous wheels rolling away echoed
through the slumbering village. In the hall of the Silver Flagon the dis-
tracted landlord wrung his hands above the slain poet's body, while the
flames of the four and twenty candles danced and flickered on the table.

THE RIGHT BRANCH Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a
puzzle. It joined with another and a larger road at right angles. David
stood, uncertain, for a while, and then too\ the road to the right.

Whither it led he knew not, but he was resolved to leave Vernoy far
behind that night. He travelled a league and then passed a large cha-

362 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

teau which showed testimony o£ recent entertainment. Lights shone from
every window; from the great stone gateway ran a tracery of wheel
tracks drawn in the dust by the vehicles of the guests.

Three leagues farther and David was weary. He rested and slept for
a while on a bed of pine boughs at the roadside. Then up and on again
along the unknown way.

Thus for five days he travelled the great road, sleeping upon Nature's
balsamic beds or in peasants' ricks, eating of their black, hospitable bread,
drinking from streams or the willing cup of the goat-herd.

At length he crossed a great bridge and set his foot within the smiling
city that has crushed or crowned more poets than all the rest of the world.
His breath came quickly as Paris sang to him in a little undertone her
vital chant of greeting—the hum of voice and foot and wheel.

High up under the eaves of an old house in the Rue Conti, David paid
for lodging, and set himself, in a wooden chair, to his poems. The street,
once sheltering citizens of import and consequence, was now given over
to those who ever follow in the wake of decline.

The houses were tall and still possessed of a ruined dignity, but many
of them were empty save for dust and the spider. By night there was the
clash of steel and the cries of brawlers straying restlessly from inn to inn.
Where once gentility abode was now but a rancid and rude incontinence.
But here David found housing commensurate to his scant purse. Daylight
and candlelight found him at pen and paper.

One afternoon he was returning from a foraging trip to the lower
world, with bread and curds and a bottle of thin wine. Halfway up his
dark stairway he met—or rather came upon, for she rested on the stair —
a young woman of a beauty that should balk even the justice of a poet's
imagination. A loose, dark cloak, flung open, showed a rich gown be-
neath. Her eyes changed swiftly with every little shade of thought. Within
one moment they would be round and artless like a child's, and long and
cozening like a gypsy's. One hand raised her gown, undraping a nude
shoe, high-heeled, with its ribbons dangling, untied. So heavenly she was,
so unfitted to stoop, so qualified to charm and command! Perhaps she had
seen David coming, and had waited for his help there.

Ah, would monsieur pardon that she occupied the stairway, but the
shoe! — the naughty shoe! Alas! it would not remain tied. Ah! if monsieur
would be so gracious!

The poet's fingers trembled as he tied the contrary ribbons. Then he
would have fled from the danger of her presence, but the eyes grew long
and cozening, like a gypsy's, and held him. He leaned against the balus-
trade, clutching his bottle of sour wine.

"You have been so good," she said, smiling. "Does monsieur, perhaps,
live in the house?"

"Yes, madame. I — I think so, madame."

ROADS OF DESTINY 363

"Perhaps in the third story, then?"

"No, madame; higher up."

The lady fluttered her fingers with the least possible gesture of impa-
tience.

"Pardon. Certainly I am not discreet in asking. Monsieur will forgive
me? It is surely not becoming that I should inquire where he lodges."

"Madame, do not say so. I live in the "

"No, no, no; do not tell me. Now I see that I erred. But I cannot lose
the interest I feel in this house and all that is in it. Once it was my home.
Often I come here but to dream of those happy days again. Will you let
that be my excuse?"

"Let me tell you, then, for you need no excuse," stammered the poet.
"I live in the top floor — the small room where the stairs turn."

"In the front room?" asked the lady, turning her head sidewise.

"The rear, madame."

The lady sighed, as if with relief.

"I will detain you no longer, then, monsieur," she said, employing the
round and artless eye. "Take good care of my house. Alas! only the memo-
ries of it are mine now. Adieu, and accept my thanks for your courtesy."

She was gone, leaving but a smile and a trace of sweet perfume. David
climbed the stairs as one in slumber. But he awoke from it, and the smile
and the perfume lingered with him and never afterward did either seem
quite to leave him. This lady of whom he knew nothing drove him to
lyrics of eyes, chansons o£ swiftly conceived love, odes to curling hair, and
sonnets to slippers on slender feet.

Poet he must have been, for Yvonne was forgotten; this fine, new love-
liness held him with its freshness and grace. The subtle perfume about her
filled him with strange emotions.

On a certain night three persons were gathered about a table in a room
on the third floor of the same house. Three chairs and the table and a
lighted candle upon it was all the furniture. One of the persons was a
huge man, dressed in black, His expression was one of sneering pride.
The ends of his upturned moustache reached nearly to his mocking eyes.
Another was a lady, young and beautiful, with eyes that could be round
and artless, like a child's, or long and cozening, like a gypsy's, but were
now keen and ambitious, like any other conspirator's. The third was a
man of action, a combatant, a bold and impatient executive, breathing fire
and steel. He was addressed by the others as Captain Desrolles.

This man struck the table with his fist, and said, with controlled vio-
lence:

"To-night. To-night as he goes to midnight mass. I am tired of the
plotting that gets nowhere. I am sick of signals and ciphers and secret
meetings and such baragouin. Let us be honest traitors. If France is to be

364 BOOKIV ROADS OF DESTINY

rid of him, let us kill in the open, and not hunt with snares and traps.
To-night, I say. I back my words. My hand will do the deed. To-night, as
he goes to mass/'

The lady turned upon him a cordial look. Woman, however wedded
to plots, must ever thus bow to rash courage. The big man stroked his
upturned moustache.

"Dear captain," he said, in a great voice, softened by habit, "this time
I agree with" you. Nothing is to be gained by waiting. Enough of the
palace guards belong to us to make the endeavor a safe one."

"To-night," repeated Captain Desrolles, again striking the table, "You
have heard me, marquis; my hand will do the deed."

"But now," said the huge man, softly, "comes a question. Word must
be sent to our partisans in the palace, and a signal agreed upon. Our
stanchest men must accompany the royal carriage. At this hour what
messenger can penetrate so far as the south doorway? Ribout is stationed
there; once a message is placed in his hands, all will go well."

"I will send the message," said the lady.

"You, countess ?" said the marquis, raising his eyebrows. "Your devo-
tion is great, we know, but "

"Listen!" exclaimed the lady, rising and resting her hands upon the
table; "in a garret of this house lives a youth from the provinces as guile-
less and tender as the lambs he tended there. I have met him twice or
thrice upon the stairs. I questioned him, fearing that he might dwell too
near the room in which we are accustomed to meet. He is mine, if I will.
He writes poems in his garret, and I think he dreams of me. He will do
what I say. He shall take the message to the palace."

The marquis rose from his chair and bowed. "You did not permit me to
finish my sentence, countess," he said. "I would have said; "Your devotion
is great, but your wit and charm are infinitely greater.' "

While the conspirators were thus engaged, David was polishing some
lines addressed to his amorette d'escalter. He heard a timorous knock at
his door, and opened it, with a great throb, to behold her there, panting
as one in straits, with eyes wide open and artless, like a child's.

"Monsieur," she breathed, "I come to you in distress. I believe you to
be good and true, and I know of no other help. How I flew through the
streets among the swaggering men! Monsieur, my mother is dying. My
uncle is a captain of guards in the palace of the king. Some one must fly
to bring him. May I hope "

"Mademoiselle/* interrupted David, his eyes shining with the desire
to do her service, "your hopes shall be my wings. Tell me how I may
reach him/'

The lady thrust a sealed paper into his hand,

"Go to the south gate — the south gate, mind — and say to the guards
there, 'The falcon has left his nest.' They will pass you, and you will go

ROADS OF DESTINY 365

to the south entrance to the palace. Repeat the words, and give this letter
to the man who will reply 'Let him strike when he will.' This is the pass-
word, monsieur, entrusted to me by my uncle, for now when the country
is disturbed and men plot against the king's life, no one without it can
gain entrance to the palace grounds after nightfall. If you will, monsieur,
take him this letter so that my mother may see him before she closes her
eyes."

"Give it me," said David, eagerly. "But shall I let you return home
through the streets alone so late? I "

"No, no— fly. Each moment is like a precious jewel. Some time," said
the lady, with eyes long and cozening, like a gypsy's, "I will try to thank
you for your goodness."

The poet thrust the letter into his breast, and bounded down the stair-
way. The lady, when he was gone, returned to the room below.

The eloquent eyebrows of the marquis interrogated her.

"He is gone," she said, "as fleet and stupid as one of his own sheep, to
deliver it."

The table shook again from the batter of Captain Desrolles's fist.

"Sacred name!" he cried; "I have left my pistols behind! I can trust no
others."

"Take this," said the marquis, drawing from beneath his cloak a shin-
ing, great weapon, ornamented with carven silver. "There are none truer.
But guard it closely, for it bears my arms and crest, and already I am sus-
pected. Me, I must put many leagues between myself and Paris this night.
To-morrow must find me in my chateau. After you, dear countess."

The marquis puffed out the candle. The lady, well cloaked, and the two
gentlemen softly descended the stairway and flowed into the crowd that
roamed along the narrow pavements of the Rue Conti.

David sped. At the south gate of the king's residence a halberd was
laid to his breast, but he turned its point with the words: "The falcon has
left his nest."

"Pass, brother," said the guard, "and go quickly."

On the south steps of the palace they moved to seize him, but again
the mot de passe charmed the watchers. One among them stepped forward

and began : "Let him strike " But a flurry among the guards told of a

surprise. A man of keen look and soldierly stride suddenly pressed
through them and seized the letter which David held in his hand. "Come
with me," he said, and led him inside the great hall. Then he tore open
the letter and read it. He beckoned to a man uniformed as an officer of
musketeers, who was passing. "Captain Tetreau, you will have the guards
at the south entrance and the south gate arrested and confined. Place
men known to be loyal in their places." To David he said: "Come with
me."

He conducted him through a corridor and an anteroom into a spacious

366 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

chamber, where a melancholy man, sombrely dressed, sat brooding in a
great leather-covered chair. To that man he said:

"Sire, I have told you that the palace is as full of traitors and spies as a
sewer is of rats. You have thought, sire, that it was my fancy. This man
penetrated to your very door by their connivance. He bore a letter which
I have intercepted. I have brought him here that your majesty may no
longer think my zeal excessive."

"I will question him," said the king, stirring in his chair. He looked at
David with heavy eyes dulled by an opaque film. The poet bent his knee.

"From where do you come?" asked the king.

"From the village of Vernoy, in the province of Eure-et-Loir, sire."

"What do you follow in Paris?"

"I — I would be a poet, sire."

"What did you in Vernoy?"

"I minded my father's flock of sheep."

The king stirred again, and the film lifted from his eyes.

"Ah! in the fields?"

"Yes, sire."

"You lived in the fields; you went out in the cool of the morning and
lay among the hedges in the grass. The flock distributed itself upon the
hillside; you drank of the living stream; you ate your sweet brown bread
in the shade; and you listened, doubtless, to blackbirds piping in the grove,
Is not that so, shepherd?"

"It is, sire," answered David, with a sigh; "and to the bees at the flow-
ers, and, maybe, to the grape gatherers singing on the hill."

"Yes, yes," said the king, impatiently; "maybe to them; but surely to
the blackbirds. They whistled often, in the grove, did they not?"

"Nowhere, sire, so sweetly as in Eure-et-Loir. I have endeavored to ex-
press their song in some verses that I have written."

"Can you repeat those verses?" asked the king eagerly. "A long time
ago I listened to the blackbirds. It would be something better than a king-
dom if one could rightly construe their song. And at night you drove the
sheep to the fold and then sat, in peace and tranquillity, to your pleasant
bread. Can you repeat those verses, shepherd?"

"They run this way, sire," said David, with respectful ardor:

"Lazy shepherd, see your lambkins "Hear us calling from the tree-tops.

Skip, ecstatic, on the mead; See us swoop upon your flock;

See the firs dance in the breezes. Yield us wool to make our nests warm

Hear Pan blowing at his reed. . In the branches of the "

"If you please your majesty," interrupted a harsh voice, "I will ask a
question or two of this • rhymester. There is little time to spare. I crave
pardon, sire, if my anxiety for your safety offends."

"The loyalty," said the king, "of the Duke d'Aumale is too well proven

ROADS OF DESTINY 367

to give offence." He sank into his chair, and the film came again over his
eyes.

"First," said the duke, "I will read you the letter he brought:

"To-night is the anniversary of the dauphin's death. If he goes, as is his
custom, to midnight mass to pray for the soul of his son, the falcon will
strike, at the corner of the Rue Esplanade. If this be his intention, set a
red light in the upper room at the southwest corner of the palace, that the
falcon may take heed.

"Peasant," said the duke, sternly, "you have heard these words. Who
gave you this message to bring?"

"My lord duke/' said David, sincerely, "I will tell you. A lady gave it
me. She said her mother was ill, and that this writing would fetch her
uncle to her bedside. I do not know the meaning of the letter, but I will
swear that she is beautiful and good."

"Describe the woman," commanded the duke, "and how you came to
be her dupe."

"Describe her!" said David with a tender smile. "You would command
words to perform miracles. Well, she is made of sunshine and deep shade.
She is slender, like the alders, and moves with their grace. Her eyes
change while you gaze into them; now round, and then half shut as the
sun peeps between two clouds. When she comes, heaven is all about her;
when she leaves, there is chaos and a scent of hawthorn blossoms. She
came to me in the Rue Conti, number twenty-nine."

"It is the house," said the duke, turning to the king, "that we have been
watching. Thanks to the poet's tongue, we have a picture of the infamous
Countess Quebedaux."

"Sire and my lord duke," said David, earnestly, "I hope my poor words
have done no injustice. I have looked into that lady's eyes. I will stake my
life that she is an angel, letter or no letter."

The duke looked at him steadily. "I will put you to the proof," he said,
slowly. "Dressed as the king, you shall, yourself, attend mass in his car-
riage at midnight. Do you accept the test?"

David smiled. "I have looked into her eyes/' he said. "I had my proof
there* Take yours how you will."

Half an hour before twelve the Duke d'Aumale, with his own hands,
set a red lamp in a southwest window of the palace. At ten minutes to
the hour, David? leaning on his arm, dressed as the king, from top to toe,
with his head bowed in his cloak, walked slowly from the royal apart-
ments to the waiting carriage. The duke assisted him inside and closed
the door. The carriage whirled away along its route to the cathedral.

On the qui vive in a house at the corner of the Rue Esplanade was

368 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

Captain Tetreau with twenty men, ready to pounce upon the conspirators
when they should appear.

But it seemed that, for some reason, the plotters had slightly altered
their plans. When the royal carriage had reached the Rue Christopher,
one square nearer than the Rue Esplanade, forth from it burst Captain
Desrolles, with his band of would-be regicides, and assailed the equipage.
The guards upon the carriage, though surprised at the premature attack,
descended and fought valiantly. The noise of conflict attracted the force
of Captain Tetreau, and they came pelting down the street to the rescue.
But, in the meantime, the desperate Desrolles had torn open the door of
the king's carriage, thrust his weapon against the body of the dark figure
inside, and fired.

Now, with loyal reinforcements at hand, the street rang with cries and
the rasp of steel, but the frightened horses had dashed away. Upon the
cushions lay the dead body of the poor mock king and poet, slain by a ball
from the pistol of Monseigneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys.

THE MAIN ROAD Three leagues, then, the road ran, and turned into a puz-
zle. It pined with another and a larger road at right angles. David stood,
uncertain, for a while, and then sat himself to rest upon its side.

Whither those roads led he knew not. Either way there seemed to lie
a great world full of chance and peril. And then, sitting there, his eye fell
upon a bright star, one that he and Yvonne had named for theirs, That
set him thinking of Yvonne, and he wondered if he had not been too
hasty. Why should he leave her and his home because a few hot words
had come between them? Was love so brittle a thing that jealousy, the
very proof of it, could break it? Mornings always brought a cure for the
little heartaches of evening. There was yet time for him to return home
without any one in the sweetly sleeping village of Vernoy being the wiser.
His heart was Yvonne's; there where he had lived always he could write
his poems and find his happiness.

David rose, and shook off his unrest and the wild mood that had
tempted him. He set his face steadf astly back along the road he had come.
By the time he had retravelled the road to Vernoy, his desire to rove was
gone. He passed the sheepfold, and the sheep scurried, with a drumming
flutter, at his late footsteps, warming his heart by the homely sound. He
crept without noise into his little room and lay there, thankful that his
feet had escaped the distress of new roads that night.

How well he knew woman's heart! The next evening Yvonne was at
the well in the road where the young congregated in order that the cure
might have business. The corner of her eye was engaged in a search for
David, albeit her set mouth seemed unrelenting. He saw the look; braved
the mouth, drew from it a recantation and, later, a kiss as they walked
homeward together.

ROADS OF DESTINY 369

Three months afterward they were married. David's father was shrewd
and prosperous. He gave them a wedding that was heard of three leagues
away. Both the young people were favorites in the village. There was a
procession in the streets, a dance on the green; they had the marionettes
and a tumbler out from Dreux to delight the guests.

Then a year, and David's father died. The sheep and the cottage
descended to him. He already had the seemliest wife in the village.
Yvonne's milk pails and her brass kettles were bright— pufl they blinded
you in the sun when you passed that way. But you must keep your eyes
upon her yard, for flower beds were so neat and gay they restored to you
your sight. And you might hear her sing, aye, as far as the double chest-
nut tree above Pere Gruneau's blacksmith forge.

But a day came when David drew out paper from a long-shut drawer,
and began to bite the end of a pencil. Spring had come again and touched
his heart. Poet he must have been, for now Yvonne was well-nigh forgot-
ten. This fine new loveliness of earth held him with its witchery and
grace. The perfume from her woods and meadows stirred him strangely.
Daily had he gone forth with his flock, and brought it safe at night. But
now he stretched himself under the hedge and pieced words together on
his bits of paper. The sheep strayed, and the wolves, perceiving that diffi-
cult poems make easy mutton, ventured from the woods and stole his
lambs.

David's stock of poems grew larger and his flock smaller. Yvonne's nose
and temper waxed sharp and her talk blunt. Her pans and kettles grew
dull, but her eyes had caught their flash. She pointed out to the poet that
his neglect was reducing the flock and bringing woe upon the household.
David hired a boy to guard the sheep, locked himself in the little room
in the top of the cottage, and wrote more poems. The boy, being a poet
by nature, but not furnished with an outlet in the way of writing, spent
his time in slumber. The wolves lost no time in discovering that poetry
and sleep are practically the same; so the flock steadily grew smaller.
Yvonne's ill temper increased at an equal rate. Sometimes she would
stand in the yard and rail at David through his high window. Then you
could hear her as far as the double chestnut tree above Pere Gruneau's
blacksmith forge.

M. Papineau, the kind, wise, meddling old notary, saw this, as he saw
everything at which his nose pointed. He went to David, 'fortified himself
with a great pinch of snuff, and said:

"Friend Mignot, I affixed the seal upon the marriage certificate of your
father. It would distress me to be. obliged to attest a paper signifying the
bankruptcy of his son. But that is what you are coming to. I speak as an
old friend. Now, listen to what I have to say. You have your heart set, I
perceive, upon poetry. At Dreux, I have a friend, one Monsieur Bril—
Georges Bril He lives in a little cleared space in a houseful of books. He

370 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

is a learned man; he visits Paris each year; he himself has written books.
He will tell you when the catacombs were made, how they found out the
names of the stars, and why the plover has a long bill. The meaning and
the form of poetry is to him as intelligent as the baa of a sheep is to you.
I will give you a letter to him, and you shall take him your poems and let
him read them. Then you will know if you shall write more, or give your
attention to your wife and business/*

"Write the letter," said David. "I am sorry you did not speak of this
sooner/'

At sunrise the next morning he was on the road to Dreux with the
precious roll of poems under his arm. At noon he wiped the dust from
his feet at the door of Monsieur Bril. That learned man broke the seal of
M. Papineau's letter, and sucked up its contents through his gleaming
spectacles as the sun draws water. He took David inside to his study and
sat him down upon a little island beat upon by a sea of books.

Monsieur Bril had a conscience. He flinched not even at a mass of
manuscript the thickness of a finger length and rolled to an incorrigible
curve. He broke the back of the roll against his knee and began to read.
He slighted nothing; he bored into the lump as a worm into a nut, seek-
ing for a kernel.

Meanwhile, David sat, marooried, trembling in the spray of so much
literature. It roared in his ears. He held no chart or compass for voyaging
in that sea. Half the world, he thought, must be writing books.

Monsieur Bril bored to the last page of the poems. Then he took off his
spectacles and wiped them with his handkerchief.

"My old friend, Papineau, is well?" he asked.

"In the best of health," said David.

"How many sheep have you, Monsieur Mignot?"

"Three hundred and nine, when I counted them yesterday. The flock
has had ill fortune. To that number it has decreased from eight hundred
and fifty."

"You have a wife and a home, and lived in comfort. The sheep br6ught
you plenty. You went into the fields with them and lived in the keen air
and ate the sweet bread of contentment. You had but to be vigilant and
recline there upon nature's breast, listening to the whistle of the blackbirds
in the grove. Am I right thus far?"

"It was so," said David.

"I have read all your verses," continued Monsieur Bril, his eyes wan-
dering about his sea of books as if he conned the horizon for a sale. "Look
yonder, through that window, Monsieur Mignot; tell me what you see in
that tree."

"I see a crow," said David, looking.

"There is a bird," said Monsieur Bril, "that shall assist me where I am
disposed to shirk a duty. You know that bird, Monsieur Mignot; he is the

ROADS OF DESTINY 371

philosopher of the air. He is happy through submission to his lot. None
so merry or full-crawed as he with his whimsical eye and rollicking step.
The fields yield him what he desires. He never grieves that his plumage
is not gay, like the oriole's. And you have heard, Monsieur Mignot, the
notes that nature has given him? Is the nightingale any happier, do you
think?"

David rose to his feet. The crow cawed harshly from his tree.

"I thank you, Monsieur Bril," he said, slowly. "There was not, then,
one nightingale note among all those croaks?"

"I could not have missed it," said Monsieur Bril, with a sigh. "I read
every word. Live your poetry, man; do not try to write it any more."

"I thank you," said David, again. "And now I will be going back to my
sheep."

"If you would dine with me," said the man of books, "and overlook the
smart of it, I will give you reasons at length."

"No," said the poet, "I must be back in the fields cawing at my sheep."

Back along the road to Vernoy he trudged with his poems under his
arm. When he reached his village he turned into the shop of one Zeigler,
a Jew out of Armenia, who sold anything that came to his hand.

"Friend," said David, "wolves from the forest harass my sheep on the
hills. I must purchase firearms to protect them. What have you?"

"A bad day, this, for me, friend Mignot," said Zeigler, spreading his
hands, "for I perceive that I must sell you a weapon that will not fetch a
tenth of its value. Only last week I bought from a peddler a wagon full of
goods that he procured at a sale by a commissionaire of the crown. The
sale was of the chateau and belongings of a great lord — I know not his
title — who has been banished for conspiracy against the king. There are
some choice firearms in the lot. This pistol — oh, a weapon fit for a prince!
— it shall be only forty francs to you, friend Mignot — if I lost ten by the
sale. But perhaps an arquebuse "

"This will do," said David, throwing the money on the counter, "Is it
charged?"

"I will charge it," said Zeigler. "And, for ten francs more, add a store
of powder and ball."

David laid his pistol under his coat and walked to his cottage. Yvonne
was not there. Of late she had taken to gadding much among the neigh-
bors. But a fire was glowing in the kitchen stove. David opened the door
of it and thrust his poems in upon the coals. As they blazed up they
made a singing, harsh sound in the flue.

"The song of the crow!" said the poet.

He went up to his attic room and closed the door. So quiet was the
village that a score of people heard the roar of the great pistol. They
flocked thither, and up the stairs where the smoke, issuing, drew their
notice.

372 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

The man laid the body of the poet upon his bed, awkwardly arranging
it to conceal the torn plumage of the poor black crow. The women chat-
tered in a luxury of zealous pity. Some of them ran to tell Yvonne.

M. Papineau5 whose nose had brought him there among the first, picked
up the weapon and ran his eye over its silver mountings with a mingled
air of connoisseurship and grief.

"The arms," he explained, aside, to the cure, "and crest of Monsei-
gneur, the Marquis de Beaupertuys."

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE

Not the least important of the force of the Weymouth Bank was Uncle
Bushrod. Sixty years had Uncle Bushrod given of faithful service to the
house of Weyrnouth as chattel, servitor, and friead. Of the color of the
mahogany bank furniture was Uncle Bushrod— thus dark was he exter-
nally; white as the uninked pages of the bank ledgers was his soul. Emi-
nently pleasing to Uncle Bushrod would the comparison have been; for
to him the only institution in existence worth considering was the Wey-
mouth Bank, of which he was something between porter and generalis-
simo-in-charge.

Weymouth lay, dreamy and umbrageous, among the low foothills along
the brow of a Southern valley. Three banks there were in Weymouth-
ville. Two were hopeless, misguided enterprises, lacking the presence and
prestige of a Weymouth to give them glory. The third was The Bank,
managed by the Weymouths — and Uncle Bushrod. In the old Weymouth
homestead — the red brick, white-porticoed mansion, the first to your right
as you crossed Elder Creek, coming into town — lived Mr. Robert Wey-
mouth (the president of the bank), his widowed daughter, Mrs. Vesey —
called "Miss Letty" by every one — and her two children, Nan and Guy.
There, also in a cottage on the grounds, resided Uncle Bushrod and Aunt
Malindy, his wife. Mr. William Weymouth (the cashier of the bank)
lived in a modern, fine house on the principal avenue.

Mr. Robert was a large, stout man, sixty-two years of age, with a
smooth, plump face, long iron-gray hair and fiery blue eyes. He was high-
tempered, kind, and generous, with a youthful smile and a formidable,
stern voice that did not always mean what it sounded like. Mr. William
was a milder man, correct in deportment and absorbed in business. The
Weymouths formed The Family of Weymouthville, and were looked up
to, as was their right of heritage.

Uncle Bushrod was the bank's trusted porter, messenger, vassal, and
guardian. He carried a key to the vault, just as Mr. Robert and Mr.
William did. Sometimes there was ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand dollars

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE 373

in sacked silver stacked on the vault floor. It was safe with Uncle Bushrod.
He was a Weymouth in heart, honesty, and pride.

Of late Uncle Bushrod had not been without worry. It was on account
of Marse Robert. For nearly a year Mr. Robert had been known to in-
dulge in too much drink. Not enough, understand, to become tipsy, but
the habit was getting a hold upon him, and every one was beginning to
notice it. Half a dozen times a day he would leave the bank and step
around to the Merchants' and Planters5 Hotel to take a drink. Mr. Rob-
ert's usual keen judgment and business capacity became a little impaired.
Mr. William, a Weymouth, but not so rich in experience, tried to dam the
inevitable backflow of the tide, but with incomplete success. The deposits
in the Weymouth Bank dropped from six figures to five. Past-due paper
began to accumulate, owing to injudicious loans. No one cared to address
Mr. Robert on the subject of temperance. Many of his friends said that the
cause of it had been the death of his wife some two years before. Others
hesitated on account of Mr. Robert's quick temper, which was extremely
apt to resent personal interference of such a nature. Miss Letty and the
children noticed the change and grieved about it. Uncle Bushrod also wor-
ried, but he was one of those who would not have dared to remonstrate,
although he and Marse Robert had been raised almost as companions. But
there was a heavier shock coming to Uncle Bushrod than that caused by
the bank president's toddies and juleps.

Mr. Robert had a passion for fishing, which he usually indulged when-
ever the season and business permitted. One day, when reports had been
coming in relating to the bass and perch, he announced his intention of
making a two- or three-days' visit to the lakes. He was going down, he
said, to Reedy Lake with Judge Archinard, an old friend.

Now, Uncle Bushrod was treasurer of the Sons and Daughters of the
Burning Bush. Every association he belonged to made him treasurer with-
out hesitation. He stood AAi in colored circles. He was understood
among them to be Mr. Bushrod Weymouth, of the Weymouth Bank.

The night following the day on which Mr. Robert mentioned his in-
tended fishing-trip the old man woke up and rose from his bed at twelve
o'clock, declaring he must go down to the bank and fetch the pass-book
of the Sons and Daughters, which he had forgotten to bring home.
The bookkeeper had balanced it for him that day, put the cancelled
checks in it, and snapped two elastic bands around it. He put but one
band around other pass-books.

Aunt Malindy objected to the mission at so late an hour, denouncing
it as foolish and unnecessary, but Uncle Bushrod was not to be deflected
from duty.

"I done told Sister Adaline Hoskins," he said, "to come by here for dat
book to-morrow mawnin* at sebin o'clock, for to kar' it to de meetin'
of de bo'd of 'rangements, and dat book gwine to be here when she come.'*

374 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

So, Uncle Bushrod put on his old brown suit, got his thick hickory
stick, and meandered through the almost deserted streets of Weymouth-
ville. He entered the bank, unlocking the side door, and found the pass-
book where he had left it in the little back room used for private con-
sultations, where he always hung his coat. Looking about casually, he
saw that everything was as he had left it, and was about to start for home
when he was brought to a standstill by the sudden rattle of a key in the
front door. Some one came quickly in, closed the door softly, and entered
the counting-room through the door in the iron railing.

That division of the bank's space was connected with the back room
by a narrow passage-way, now in deep darkness.

Uncle Bushrod, firmly gripping his hickory stick, tiptoed gently up
this passage until he could see the midnight intruder into the sacred
precincts of the Weymouth Bank. One dim gas-jet burned there, but even
in its nebulous light he perceived at once that the prowler was the
bank's president.

Wondering, fearful, undecided what to do, the old colored man stood
motionless in the gloomy strip of hallway, and waited developments.

The vault, with its big iron door, was opposite him. Inside that was
the safe, holding the papers of value, the gold and currency of the bank.
On the floor of the vault was, perhaps, eighteen thousand dollars in silver.

The president took his key from his pocket, opened the vault and went
inside, nearly closing the door behind him. Uncle Bushrod saw, through
the narrow aperture, the flicker of a candle. In a minute or two — it seemed
an hour to the watcher— Mr. Robert came out, bringing with him a large
hand-satchel, handling it in a careful but hurried manner, as if fearful that
he might be observed. With one hand he closed and locked the vault door.

With a reluctant theory forming itself beneath his wool, Uncle Bush-
rod waited and watched, shaking in his concealing shadow.

Mr. Robert set the satchel softly upon a desk, and turned his coat
collar up about his neck and ears. He was dressed in a rough suit of gray,
as if for travelling. He glanced with frowning intentness at the big
office clock above the burning gas-jet, and then looked lingeringly about
the bank— lingeringly and fondly, Uncle Bushrod thought, as one who
bids farewell to dear and familiar scenes. :

Now he caught up his burden again and moved promptly and softly
out of the bank by the way he had come locking the front door behind
him.

For a minute or longer Uncle Bushrod was as stone in his tracks. Had
that midnight rifler of safes and vaults been any other on earth than the
man he was, the old retainer would have rushed upon him and struck to
save the Weymouth property, But now the watcher's soul was tortured by
the poignant dread of something worse than mere robbery. He was seized
by an accusing terror that said the Weymouth name and the Weymouth
honor was about to be lost. Marse Robert robbing the bank! What else

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE 375

could it mean? The hour of the night, the stealthy visit to the vault, the
satchel brought forth full and with expedition and silence, the prowler's
rough dress, his solicitous reading of the clock, and noiseless departure—
what else could it mean ?

And then to the turmoil of Uncle Bushrod's thoughts came the cor-
roborating recollection of preceding events— -Mr. Robert's increasing in-
temperance and consequent many moods of royal high spirits and stern
tempers; the casual talk he had heard in the bank of the decrease in busi-
ness and difficulty in collecting loans. What else could it all mean but that
Mr. Robert Weymouth was an absconder— -was about to fly with the
bank's remaining funds, leaving Mr. William, Miss Letty, little Nan,
Guy, and Uncle Bushrod to bear the disgrace?

During one minute Uncle Bushrod considered these things, and then
he awoke to sudden determination and action.

"Lawd! Lawd!" he moaned aloud, as he hobbled hastily toward the
side door. "Sech a come-off after all dese here years of big doin's and fine
doin's. Scan'lous sights upon de yearth when de Weymouth fambly done
turn out robbers and 'bezzlers! Time for Uncle Bushrod to clean out
somebody's chicken-coop and eben matters up. Oh, Lawd! Marse
Robert, you ain't gwine do dat, 'N Miss Letty an' dem chillum so proud
and talkin' Weymouth, Weymouth,' all de time! I'm gwine to stop you
ef I can. 'Spec you shoot Mr. Nigger's head off ef he fool wid you, but
I'm gwine stop you ef I can."

Uncle Bushrod, aided by his hickory stick, impeded by his rheumatism,
hurried down the street toward the railrod station, where the two lines
touching Weymouthville met. As he had expected and feared, he saw
there Mr. Robert, standing in the shadow of the building, waiting for the
train. He held the satchel in his hand.

When Uncle Bushrod came within twenty yards of the bank president,
standing like a huge, gray ghost by the station wall, sudden perturbation
seized him. The rashness and audacity of the thing he had come to do
struck him fully. He would have been happy could he have turned and
fled from the possibilities of the famous Weymouth wrath. But again he
saw, in his fancy, the white reproachful face of Miss Letty, and the
distressed looks of Nan and Guy, should he fail in his duty and they
questioned him as to his stewardship.

Braced by the thought, he approached in a straight line, clearing his
throat and pounding with his stick so that he might be early recognized.
Thus he might avoid the likely danger of too suddenly surprising the
sometimes hasty Robert.

"Is that you, Bushrod?" called the clamant, clear voice o£the gray ghost

"Yes, suh, Marse Robert" .

"What the devil are you doing out at this time of night?"

For the first time in his life, Uncle Bushrod told Marse Robert a false-

376 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

hood. He could not repress it. He would have to circumlocute a little. His
nerve was not equal to a direct attack.

"I done been down, suh, to see oY Aunt M'ria Patterson. She taken sick
in de night, and I kyar'ed her a bottle of M'lindy's medercine. Yes, suh.*'

"Humph!" said Robert. "You better get home out of the night air. It's
damp. You'll hardly be worth killing to-morrow on account of your
rheumatism. Think it'll be a clear day, Bushrod?"

"I low it will, suh. De sun sot red las' night."

Mr. Robert lit a cigar in the shadow, and the smoke looked like his
gray ghost expanding and escaping into the night air. Somehow, Uncle
Bushrod could barely force his reluctant tongue to the dreadful subject.
He stood, awkward, shambling, with his feet upon the gravel and fum-
bling with his stick. But then, afar off— three miles away, at the Jimtown
switch — he heard the faint whistle of the coming train, the, one that was
to transport the Weymouth name into the regions of dishonor and shame.
All fear left him. He took off his hat and faced the chief of the clan he
served, the great, royal, kind, lofty, terrible Weymouth,— he bearded him
there at the brink of the awful thing that was about to happen.

"Marse Robert," he began, his voice quavering a little with the stress
of his feelings, "you 'member de day dey-all rode de tunnament at Oak
Lawn ? De day, suh, dat you win in de ridin', and you crown Miss Lucy
de queen?"

"Tournament?" said Mr. Robert, taking his cigar from j^is njputh,
"Yes, I remember very well the — but what the deuce are you talking about
tournaments here at midnight for? Go 'long home, Bushrod. I believe
you're sleepwalking."

"Miss Lucy tetch you on de shoulder," continued the old man, never
heeding, "wid a s'ord, and say: *I mek you a knight, Suh Robert— rise up,
pure and fearless and widout reproach.' Dat what Miss Lucy say. Dat's
been a long time ago, but me nor you ain't forgot it. And den dar's an-
other time we ain't forgot — de time when Miss Lucy lay on her las' bed.
She sent for Uncle Bushrod, and she say: 'Uncle Bushrod, when I
die, I want you to take good care of Mr. Robert. Seem like' — so Miss Lucy
say — 'he listen to you mo' dan to anybody else. He apt to be mighty
fractious sometimes, and maybe he cuss you when you try to 'suade him
but he need somebody what understand him to be 'round wid him. He
am like a little child sometimes* — so Miss Lucy say, wid her eyes shinin'
in her po', thin face — 'but he always been' — dem was her words — 'my
knight, pure and fearless and widout reproach.' "

Mr. Robert began to mask, as was his habit, a tendency to softhearted-
ness with a spurious anger.

"You — you old windbag!" he growled through a cloud of swirling
cigar smoke. "I believe you are crazy, I told you to go home, Bushrod.
Miss Lucy said that, did she? Well, we haven't kept the scutcheon very

THE GUARDIAN OF THE ACCOLADE 377

clear. Two years ago last week, wasn't it, Bushrod, when she died? Con-
found it! Are you going to stand there all night gabbing like a coffee-
colored gander?"

The train whistled again. Now it was at the water tank, a mile away.

"Marse Robert," said Uncle Bushrod, laying his hand on the satchel
that the banker held. "For Gawd's sake, don't take dis wid you. I knows
what's in it. I knows where you got it in de bank. Don' kyar it wid you.
Dey's big trouble in dat valise for Miss Lucy and Miss Lucy's child's
chillun. Hit's bound to destroy de name of Weymoudi and bow dem dat
own it wid shame and triberlation, Marse Robert, you can kill dis ole
nigger ef you will, but don't take away dis 'er' valise. If I ever crosses over
de Jordan, what I gwine to say to Miss Lucy when she ax me: 'Uncle
Bushrod, wharf o' didn' you take good care of Mr. Robert?'"

Mr. Robert Weymouth threw away his cigar and shook free one arm
with that peculiar gesture that always preceded his outbursts of irascibility.
Uncle Bushrod bowed his head to the expected storm, but he did not
flinch. If the house of Weymouth was to fall, he would fall with it. The
banker spoke, and Uncle Bushrod blinked with surprise. The storm was
there, but it was suppressed to the quietness of a summer breeze.

"Bushrod," said Mr. Robert, in a lower voice than he usually employed,
"you have overstepped all bounds. You have presumed upon the leniency
with which you have been treated to meddle unpardonably. So you know
what is in this satchel! Your long and faithful service is some excuse, but
— go home, Bushrod — not another word!"

But Bushrod grasped the satchel with a firmer hand. The headlight of
the train was lightening the shadows about the station. The roar was
increasing, and folks were stirring about at the track side.

"Marse Robert, gimme dis 'er' valise. I got a right, suh, to talk to you
dis 'er' way. I slaved for you and 'tended to you from a child up. I went
th'ough de war as yo* body-servant tell we whipped de Yankees and sent
5em back to de No'th. I was at yo' weddin', and I was n* fur away when
yo' Miss Letty was bawn. And Miss Letty's chillun, dey watches to-day
for Uncle Bushrod when he comes home ever* evenin'. I been a' Wey-
mouth, all 'cept in color and entitlements. Both of us is old, Marse Robert.
'Tain't goin' to be long tell we gwine to see Miss Lucy and has to give an
account of our doin's. De ole nigger man won't be 'spected to say much
mo' dan he done all he could by de fambly dat owned him. But de Wey-
mouths, dey must say dey been livin' pure and fearless and widout re-
proach. Gimme dis valise, Marse Robert — I'm gwine to hab it. I'm gwine
to take it back to the bank and lock it up in de vault. I'm gwine to do Miss
Lucy's biddin'. Turn *er loose, Marse Robert."

The train was standing at the station. Some men were pushing trucks
along the side. Two or three sleepy passengers got off and wandered away
into the night. The conductor stepped to the gravel, swung his lantern and

37 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

called: "Hello, Frank!" at some one invisible. The bell clanged, the brakes
hissed, the conductor drawled: "All aboard!"

Mr. Robert released his hold on the satchel Uncle Bushrod hugged it
to his breast with both arms, as a lover clasps his first beloved.

"Take it back with you, Bushrod," said Mr. Robert, thrusting his hands
into his pockets. "And let the subject drop — now mind! You've said
quite enough. Fm going to take this train. Tell Mr. William I will be
back on Saturday. Good-night."

The banker climbed the steps of the moving train and disappeared
in a coach. Uncle Bushrod stood motionless, still embracing the precious
satchel. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving in thanks to the
Master above for the salvation of the Weymouth honor. He knew Mr.
Robert would return when he said he would. The Weymouths never
lied. Nor now, thank the Lord! could it be said that they embezzled the
money in banks.

Then awake to the necessity for further guardianship of Weymouth
trust funds, the old man started for the bank with the redeemed satchel.

Three hours from Weymouthville, in the gray dawn, Mr. Robert
alighted from the train at a lonely flag-station. Dimly he could see the
figure of a man waiting on the platform and the shape of a spring-wagon,
team and driver. Half a dozen lengthy bamboo fishing-poles projected
from the wagon's rear.

"You're here, Bob/' said Judge Archinard, Mr. Robert's old friend and
schoolmate. "It's going to be a royal day for fishing. I thought you said —
why, didn't you bring along the stuff?"

The president of the Weymouth Bank took off his hat and rumpled
his gray locks.

"Well, Ben, to tell the truth, there's an infernally presumptuous old
nigger belonging in my family that broke up the arrangement. He came
down to the depot and vetoed the whole proceeding. He means all right,
and — well, I reckon he is right. Somehow, he had found out what I had
along— though I hid it in the bank vault and sneaked it out at midnight.
I reckon he has noticed that I've been indulging a little more than a
gentleman should, and he laid for me with some reaching arguments.

"I'm going to quit drinking," Mr. Robert concluded. "I've come to the
conclusion that a man can't keep it up and be quite what he'd like to be
— 'pure and fearless and without reproach' — that's the way old Bushrod
quoted it"

"Well, I'll have to admit," said the judge, thoughtfully, as they climbed
into the wagon, "that the old darkey's argument can't conscientiously be
overruled."

"Still," said Mr. Robert, with a ghost of a sigh, "there was two quarts

THE DISCOUNTERS OF MONEY 379

of the finest old silk-velvet Bourbon in that satchel you ever wet your lips
with."

THE DISCOUNTERS OF MONEY

The spectacle of the money-caliphs of the present day going about Bagdad-
on-the-Subway trying to relieve the wants of the people is enough to make
the great Al Raschid turn Haroun in his grave. If not so, then the asser-
tion should do so, the real caliph having been a wit and a scholar and
therefore a hater of puns.

How properly to alleviate the troubles of the poor is one of the greatest
troubles of the rich. But one thing agreed upon by all professional philan-
thropists is that you must never hand over any cash to your subject. The
poor are notoriously temperamental; and when they get money they ex-
hibit a strong tendency to spend it for stuffed olives and enlarged crayon
portraits instead of giving it to the instalment man.

And still, old Haroun had some advantages as an eleemosynarian. He
took around with him on his rambles his vizier, Giafar (a vizier is a com-
posite of a chauffeur, a secretary of state, and a night-and-day bank), and
old Uncle Mesrour, his executioner, who toted a snickersnee. With this
entourage a caliphing tour could hardly fail to be successful. Have you
noticed lately any newspaper articles headed, "What Shall We Do With
Our Ex-Presidents?" Well, now, suppose that Mr. Carnegie should engage
him and Joe Gans to go about assisting in the distribution of free librar-
ies? Do you suppose any town would have the hardihood to refuse one?
That caliphalous combination would cause two libraries to grow where
there had been only one set of E. P. Roe's works before.

But, as I said, the money-caliphs are handicapped. They have the idea
that earth has no sorrow that dough cannot heal; and they rely upon it
solely. Al Raschid administered justice, rewarded the deserving, and pun-
ished whomsoever he disliked on the spot. He was the originator of the
short-story contest. Whenever he succored any chance pick-up in the
bazaars he always made the succoree tell the sad story of his life. If the
narrative lacked construction, style, and esprit he commanded his vizier
to dole him out a couple of thousand ten-dollar notes of the First National
Bank of the Bosphorus, or else gave him a soft job as Keeper of the Bird
Seed for the Bulbuls in the Imperial Gardens. If the story was a cracker-
jack, he had Mesrour, the executioner, whack off his head. The report
that Haroun Al Raschid is yet alive and is editing the magazine that your
grandmother used to subscribe for lacks confirmation.

And now follows the Story of the Millionaire, the Inefficacious In-
crement, and the Babes Drawn from the Wood.

380 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

Young Howard Pilkins, the millionaire, got his money ornithologically.
He was a shrewd judge of storks, and got in on the ground floor at the
residence of his immediate ancestors, the Pilkins Brewing Company. For
his mother was a partner in the business. Finally old man Pilkins died
from a torpid liver, and then Mrs. Pilkins died from worry on account of
torpid delivery-wagons — and there you have young Howard Pilkins with
4,000,000, and a good fellow at that. He was an agreeable, modestly ar-
rogant young man, who implicitly believed that money could but any-
thing that the world had to offer. And Bagdad-on-the-Subway for a
long time did everything possible to encourage his belief.

But the Rat-trap caught him at last; he heard the spring snap, and
found his heart in a wire cage regarding a piece of cheese whose other
name was Alice von der Ruysling.

The Von der Ruyslings still live in that little square about which so
much has been said, and in which so little had been done. To-day you
hear of Mr. Tilden's underground passage, and you hear of Mr. Gould's
elevated passage, and that about ends the noise in the world made by
Gramercy Square. But once it was different. The Von der Ruyslings live
there yet, and they received the first \ey ever made to Gramercy Par^.

You shall have no description of Alice v. d. R. Just call up in your mind
the picture of your own Maggie or Vera or Beatrice, straighten her nose,
soften her voice, tone her down and then tone her up, make her beautiful
and unattainable — and you have a faint dry-point etching of Alice. The
family owned a crumbly brick house and a coachman named Joseph in a
coat of many colors, and a horse so old that he claimed to belong to the
order of the Perissodactyla, and had toes instead of hoofs. In the year
1898 the family had to buy a new set of harness for the PerissodactyL Be-
fore using it they made Joseph smear it over with a mixture of ashes and
soot. It was the Von der Ruysling family that bought the territory be-
tween the Bowery and East River and Rivington Street and the Statue of
Liberty, in the year 1649, from an Indian chief for a quart of passementerie
and a pair of Turkey-red portieres designed for a Harlem flat. I have
always admired that Indian's perspicacity and good taste. All this is
merely to convince you that the Von der Ruyslings were exactly the kind
of poor aristocrats that turn down their noses at people who have money.
Oh, well, I don't mean that; I mean people who have just money.

One evening Pilkins went down to the red brick house in Gramercy
Square, and made what he thought was a proposal to Alice v. d. R. Alice,
with her nose turned down, and thinking of his money, considered it a
proposition, and refused it and him. Pilkins, summoning all his resources
as any good general would have done, made an indiscreet reference to
the advantages that his money would provide. That settle it. The lady
turned so cold that Walter Wellman himself would have waited until
spring to make a dash for her in a dog-sled.

THE DISCOUNTERS OF MONEY 381

But Pilkins was something of a sport himself. You can't fool all the
millionaires every time the ball drops on the Western Union Building.

"If, at any time/' he said to A. v. d. R., "you &d that you would Uke to
reconsider your answer, send me a rose like that."

Pilkins audaciously touched a Jacque rose that she wore loosely in her
hair.

"Very well," said she. "And when I do, you will understand by it that
either you or I have learned something new about the purchasing power
of money. You've been spoiled, my friend. No, I don't think I could
marry you. To-morrow I will send you back the presents you have given
me.'*

"Presents!" said Pilkins in surprise. *1 never gave you a present in my
life. I would like to see a full-length portrait of the man that you would
take a present from. Why, you never would let me send you flowers or
candy or even art calendars."

"You've forgotten," said Alice v. d. R., with a little smile. "It was a
long time ago when our families were neighbors. You were seven, and I
was trundling my doll on the sidewalk. You gave me a little gray, hairy
kitten, with shoe-buttony eyes. Its head came off and it was full of candy.
You paid five cents for it— you told me 'so. I haven't the candy to return
to you — I hadn't developed a conscience at three, so I ate it. But I have
the kitten yet, and I will wrap it up neatly to-night and send it to you
tomorrow."

Beneath the lightness of Alice v. d. R.'s talk the steadfastness of her
rejection showed firm and plain. So there was nothing left for him but to
leave the crumbly red brick house, and be off with his abhorred millions.

On his way back, Pilkins walked through Madison Square. The hour
hand on the clock hung about eight; the air was stingingly cool, but not
at the freezing point. The dim little square seemed like a great, cold,
unroofed room, with its four walls of houses, spangled with thousands
of insufficient lights. Only a few loiterers huddled here and there on the
benches.

But suddenly Pilkins came upon a youth brave and, as if conflicting
with summer sultriness, coatless, his white shirt-sleeves conspicuous in
the light from the globe of an electric. Close at his side was a girl, smiling,
dreamy, happy. Around her shoulders was, palpably, the missing coat of
the cold-defying youth. It appeared to be a modern panorama of the
Babes in the Wood, revised and brought up to date, with the exception
that the robins hadn't turned up yet with the protecting leaves.

With delight the money-caliphs view a situation that they think is re-
lievable while you wait.

Pilkins sat on the bench, one seat removed from the youth. He glanced
cautiously and saw (as men do see; and women — oh! never can) that
they were of the same order.

382 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

Pilkins leaned over after a short time and spoke to the youth, who
answered smilingly, and courteously. From general topics the conversation
concentrated to the bed-rock of grim personalities. But Pilkins did it as
delicately and heartily as any caliph could have done. And when it came
to the point, the youth turned to him soft-voiced and with his un-
diminished smile.

"I don't want to seem unappreciative, old man/' he said, with a youth's
somewhat too-early spontaneity of address, "but, you see, I can't accept
anything from a stranger. I know you're all right, and I'm tremendously
obliged, but I couldn't think of borrowing from anybody. You see, I'm
Marcus Clayton— the Claytons of Roanoke County, Virginia, you know.
The young lady is Miss Eva Bedford— I reckon you've heard of the Bed-
fords. She's seventeen and one of the Bedfords of Bedford County. We've
eloped from home to get married, and we wanted to see New York. We
got in this afternoon. Somebody got my pocketbook on the ferry-boat,
and I had only three cents in change outside of it. I'll get some work
somewhere to-morrow, and well get married."

"But, I say, old man," said Pilkins, in confidential low tones, "you
can't keep the lady out here in the cold all night. Now, as for hotels "

"I told you," said the youth, with a broader smile, "that I didn't have
but three cents. Besides, if I had a thousand, we'd have to wait here
until morning. You can understand that, of course. I'm much obliged, but
I can't take any of your money. Miss Bedford and I have lived an out-
door life, and we don't mind a little cold. I'll get work of some kind to-
morrow. We've got a paper bag of cakes and chocolates, and we'll get
along all right."

"Listen," said the millionaire, impressively. "My name is Pilkins, and
I'm worth several million dollars. I happen to have in my pockets about
$800 or $900 in cash. Don't you think you are drawing it rather fine when
you decline to accept as much of it as will make you and the young
lady comfortable at least for the night?"

"I can't say, sir, that I do think so/' said Clayton of Roanoke County.
"I've been raised to look at such things differently. But Fm mightily
obliged to you, just the same."

"Then you force me to say good-night," said the millionaire.

Twice that day had his money been scorned by simple ones to whom
his dollars had appeared as but tin tobacco-tags. He was no worshipper
of the actual minted coin or stamped paper, but he had always believed
in its almost unlimited power to purchase.

Pilkins walked away rapidly, and then turned abruptly and returned
to the bench where the young couple sat. He took off his hat and began to,
speak. The girl looked at him with the same sprightly glowing interest
that she had been giving to the lights and statuary and sky-reaching build-
ings that made the old square seem so far away from Bedford County.

THE DISCOUNTERS OF MONEY 383

"Mr. — er— -Roanoke," said Pilkins, "I admire your — your indepen —
your idiocy so much that I'm going to appeal to your chivalry. I believe
that's what you Southerners call it when you keep a lady sitting outdoors
on a bench on a cold night just to keep your old, out-of-date pride going.
Now, I've a friend— a lady— whom I have known all my life— who lives a
few blocks from here — with her parents and sisters and aunts, and all that
kind of endorsement, of course. I am sure this young lady would be happy
and pleased to put up— that is, to have Miss— er— Bedford give her the
pleasure of having her as a guest for the night. Don't you think, Mr.
Roanoke, of — er — Virginia, that you could unbend your prejudices
that far?"

Clayton of Roanoke rose and held out his hand.

"Old man," he said. "Miss Bedford will be much pleased to accept
the hospitality of the lady you refer to."

He formally introduced Mr. Pilkins to Miss Bedford. The girl looked
at him sweetly and comfortably. "It's a lovely evening, Mr. Pilkins—
don't you think so?" she said slowly.

Pilkins conducted them to the crumbly red brick house of the Von der
Ruyslings. His card brought Alice downstairs wondering. The runaways
were sent into the drawing-room, while Pilkins told Alice all about it in
the hall.

"Of course, I will take her in," said Alice. "Haven't those Southern
girls a thoroughbred air? Of course, she will stay here. You will look after
Mr. Clayton, of course."

"Will I?" said Pilkins, delightedly. "Oh, yes, 111 look after him! As a
citizen of New York, and therefore a part owner of its public parks, I'm
going to extend to him the hospitality of Madison Square tonight. He's
going to sit there on a bench till morning. There's no use arguing with
him. Isn't he wonderful? I'm glad you'll look after the little lady, Alice.
I tell you those Babes in the Wood made my — that is, er — made Wall
Street and the Bank of England look like penny arcades."

Miss von der Ruysling whisked Miss Bedford of Bedford County up
to restful regions upstairs. When she came down, she put an oblong
small pasteboard box into Pilkins* hands.

"Your present," she said, "that I am returning to you."

"Oh, yes, I remember," said Pilkins, with a sigh, "the woolly kitten."

He left Clayton on a park bench, and shook hands with him heartily.

"After I get work," said the youth, "I'll look you up. Your address is
on your card, isn't it? Thanks. Well, good-night. I'm awfully obliged to
you for your kindness. No, thanks, I don't smoke. Good-night."

In his room, Pilkins opened the box and took out the staring, funny
kitten, long ago ravaged of his candy and minus one shoe-button eye.
Pilkins looked at it sorrowfully.

"After all," he said, "I don't believe that just money alone wil

384 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

And then he gave a shout and dug into the bottom of the box for some-
thing else that had been the kitten's resting-place— a crushed but red,
red, fragrant, glorious, promising Jacqueminot rose.

THE ENCHANTED PROFILE

There are few Caliphesses. Women are Scheherazades by birth, predilec-
tion, instinct, and arrangement of the vocal cords. The thousand and one
stories are being told every day by hundreds of thousands of viziers'
daughters to their respective sultans. But the bow-string will get some of
'em yet if they don't watch out.

I heard a story, though, of one Lady Caliph. It isn't precisely an Arabian
Nights story, because it brings in Cinderella, who flourished her dishrag
in another epoch and country. So, if you don't mind the mixed dates
(which seem to give it an Eastern flavor, after all), well get along.

In New York there is an old, old hotel. You have seen woodcuts of it
in the magazines. It was built — let's see— at a time when there was noth-
ing above Fourteenth Street except the old Indian trail to Boston and
Hammerstein's office. Soon the old hostelry will be torn down. And, as
the stout walls are riven apart and the bricks go roaring down the chutes,
crowds of citizens will gather at the nearest corners and weep over the
destruction of a dear old landmark. Civic pride is strong in New Bag-
dad; and the wettest weeper and the loudest howler against the icono-
clasts will be the man (originally from Terre Haute) whose fond mem-
ories of the old hotel are limited to his having been kicked out from its
free-lunch counter in 1873.

At the hotel always stopped Mrs. Maggie Brown. Mrs. Brown was a
bony woman of sixty, dressed in the rustiest black, and carrying a hand-
bag made, apparently, from the hide of the original animal that Adam
decided to call an alligator. She always occupied1 a small parlor and bed-
room at the top of the hotel at a rental of two dollars per day. And
always, while she was there, each day came hurrying to see her many
men, sharp-faced, anxious-looking, with only seconds to spare. For Maggie
Brown was said to be the third richest woman in the world; and these
solicitous gentlemen were only the city's wealthiest brokers and business
men seeking trifling loans of half a dozen millions or so from the dingy
old lady with the prehistoric handbag.

The stenographer and typewriter of the Acropolis Hotel (there! I've
let the name of it out!) was Miss Ida Bates. She was a holdover from
the Greek classics. There wasn't a flaw in her looks. Some old-timer
in paying his regards to a lady said: "To have loved her was a liberal
education." Well, even to have looked over the black hair and neat white

THE ENCHANTED PROFILE 385

shirtwaist of Miss Bates was equal to a full course in any correspondence
school in the country. She sometimes did a little typewriting for me and,
as she refused to take the money in advance, she came to look upon me as
something of a friend and protege. She had unfailing kindliness and good
nature; and not even a whitelead drummer or a fur importer had ever
dared to cross the dead line of good behavior in her presence. The en-
tire force of the Acropolis, from the owner, who lived in Vienna, down to
the head porter, who had been bedridden for sixteen years, would have
sprung to her defence in a moment.

One day I walked past Miss Bates's little sanctum Remingtorium, and
saw in her place a black-haired unit — unmistakably a person — pounding
with each of her forefingers upon the keys. Musing on the mutability of
temporal affairs, I passed on. The next day I went on a two weeks'
vacation. Returning, I strolled through the lobby of the Acropolis, and
saw, with a little warm glow of auld lang syne, Miss Bates, as Grecian
and kind and flawless as ever, just putting the cover on her machine. The
hour for closing had come; but she asked me in to sit for a few minutes
in the dictation chair. Miss Bates explained her absence and return to
the Acropolis Hotel in words identical with or similar to these following:

"Well, Man, how are the stories coming?"

"Pretty regularly," said I. "About equal to their going."

"I'm sorry/' said she. "Good typewriting is the main thing in a story.
You've missed me, haven't you?"

"No one," said I, "whom I have ever known knows as well as you do
how to space properly belt buckles, semicolons, hotel guests, and hair-
pins. But you've been away too. I saw a package of peppermint-pepsin
in your place the other day."

"I was going to tell you about it," said Miss Bates, "if you hadn't inter-
rupted me.

"Of course, you know about Maggie Brown, who stops here. Well,
she's worth $40,000,000. She lives in Jersey in a ten-dollar flat. She's al-
ways got more cash on hand than half a dozen business candidates for
vice-president. I don't know whether she carries it in her stocking or not,
but I know she's mighty popular down in the part of the town where
they worship the golden calf.

"Well, about two weeks ago, Mrs. Brown stops at the door and rub-
bers at me for ten minutes. I'm sitting with my side to her, striking off
some manifold copies of a copper-mine proposition for a nice old man
from Tonopah. But I always see everything all around me. When I'm
hard at work I can see things through my side-combs; and I can leave
one button unbuttoned in the back of my shirtwaist and see who's behind
me. I didn't look around, because I make from eighteen to twenty dollars
a week, and I didn't have to.

"That evening at knocking-off time she sends for me to come up to her

386 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

apartment. I expected to have to typewrite about two thousand words of
notes-of-hand, liens, and contracts, with a ten-cent tip in sight; but I
went. Well, Man, I was certainly surprised. Old Maggie Brown had
turned human.

" 'Child,5 says she, 'you're the most beautiful creature I ever saw in my
life. I want you to quit your work and come and live with me. I've no kith
or kin,' says she, 'except a husband and a son or two, and I hold no com-
munication with any of 'em. They're extravagant burdens on a hard-
working woman. I want you to be a daughter to me. They say I'm stingy
and mean, and the papers print lies about my doing my own cooking and
washing. It's a lie,' she goes on. 'I put my washing out, except the hand-
kerchiefs and stockings and petticoats and collars, and light stuff like that.
I've got forty million dollars in cash and stocks and bonds that are as
negotiable as Standard Oil, preferred, at a church fair. Pm a lonely old
woman and I need companionship. You're the most beautiful human
being I ever saw,' says she. Will you come and live with me? Ill show
'em whether I can spend money or not' she says.

"Well, Man, what would you have done? Of course, I fell to it. And,
to tell you the truth, I began to like old Maggie. It wasn't all on account
of the forty millions and what she could do for me. I was kind of lone-
some in the world, too. Everybody's got to have somebody they can ex-
plain to about the pain in their left shoulder and how fast patent-leather
shoes wear out when they begin to crack. And you can't talk about such
things to men you meet in hotels — they're looking for just such openings.

"So I gave up my job in the hotel and went with Mrs. Brown. I cer-
tainly seemed to have a mash on her. She'd look at me for half an hour at
a time when I was sitting, reading, or looking at the magazines.

"One time I says to her: 'Do I remind you of some deceased relative
or friend of your childhood, Mrs. Brown? I've noticed you give me a
pretty good optical inspection from time to time/

" Tou have a face,' she says, 'exactly like a dear friend of mine—the
best friend I ever had. But I like you for yourself, child, too/ she says.

"And say, Man, what do you suppose she did? Loosened up like a
Marcel wave in the surf at Coney. She took me to a swell dressmaker and
gave her & la carte to fit me out — money no object. They were rush orders,
and madame locked the front door and put the whole force to work.

"Then we moved to — where do you think? — no; guess again — that's
right-Miie Hotel Botiton. We had a six-room apartment; and it cost
$100 a day. I saw the bill. I began to love that old lady.

"And then, Man, when my dresses began to come in — oh, I won't tell
you about 'em! you couldn't understand. And I began to call her Aunt
Maggie. YouVe read about Cinderella, of course. Well, what Cinderella
said when the prince fitted that 3% A on her foot was a hard-luck story
compared to the things I told myself.

THE ENCHANTED PROFILE 387

"Then Aunt Maggie says she is going to give me a coming-out banquet
in the Bonton that'll make moving Vans of all the old Dutch families on
Fifth Avenue.

" Tve been out before, Aunt Maggie,' says I. 'But I'll come out again.
But you know/ says I, 'that this is one of the swellest hotels in the city.
And you know — pardon me — that it's hard to get a bunch of notables to-
gether unless you've trained for it.*

" 'Don't fret about that, child,' says Aunt Maggie. 'I don't send out in-
vitations— I issue orders. I'll have fifty guests here that couldn't be brought
together again at any reception unless it were given by King Edward or
William Travers Jerome. They are men, of course, and all of 'em either
owe me money or intend to. Some of their wives won't come, but a good
many will.'

"Well, I wish you could have been at that banquet. The dinner service
was all gold and cut glass, There were about forty men and eight ladies
present besides Aunt Maggie and I. You'd never have known the third
richest woman in the world. She had on a new black silk dress with so
much passementerie on it that it sounded exactly like a hailstorm I heard
once when I was staying all night with a girl that lived on a top-floor
studio.

"And my dress! — say, Man, I can't waste the words on you. It was all
hand-made lace — where there was any of it at all — and it cost $300. 1 saw
the bill. The men were all baldheaded or white-sidewhiskered, and they
kept up a running fire of light repartee about 3-per cent, and Bryan and
the cotton crop.

"On the left of me was something that talked like a banker, and on
my right was a young fellow who said he was a newspaper artist. He was
the only — well, I was going to tell you.

"After the dinner was over Mrs. Brown and I went up to the apart-
ment. We had to squeeze our way through a mob of reporters all the
way through the halls. That's one of the things money does for you. Say,
do you happen to know a newspaper artist named Lathrop — a tall man
with nice eyes and an easy way of talking? No, I don't remember what
paper he works on. Well, all right.

"When we got upstairs Mrs. Brown telephones for the bill right away.
It came, and it was $600. I saw the bill. Aunt Maggie fainted. I got her
on a lounge and opened the bead-work.

"'Child/ says she, when she got back to the world, 'what was it? A
raise of rent or an income-tax ? '

" 'Just a little dinner/ says I. 'Nothing to worry about — hardly a drop
in the bucket-shop. Sit up and take notice — a dispossess notice, if there's
no other kind/

"But, say, Man, do you know what Aunt Maggie did? She got cold
feetl She hustled me out of that Hotel Bonton at nine the next morning.

388 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

We went to a rooming-house on the lower West Side. She rented one
room that had water on the floor below and light on the floor above. After
we got moved all you could see in the room was about $1,500 worth of
new swell dresses and a one-burner gas-stove.

"Aunt Maggie had had a sudden attack of the hedges. I guess every-
body has got to go on a spree once in their life. A man spends his on
highballs, and a woman gets woozy on clothes. But with forty million
dollars — say! I'd like to have a picture of— but, speaking of pictures, did
you ever run across a newspaper artist named Lathrop — a tall — oh? I asked
you that before, didn't I ? He was mighty nice to me at the dinner. His
voice just suited me. I guess he must have thought I was to inherit some
of Aunt Maggie's money.

"Well, Mr. Man, three days of that light-housekeeping was plenty for
me. Aunt Maggie was affectionate as ever. She'd hardly let me get out
of her sight. But let me tell you. She was a hedger from Hedgersville,
Hedger County. Seventy-five cents a day was the limit she set. We cooked
our own meals in the room. There I was, with a thousand dollars* worth
of the latest things in clothes, doing stunts over a one-burner gas-stove.

"As I say, on the third day I flew the coop. I couldn't stand for throwing
together a fifteen-cent kidney stew while wearing, at the same time, a
$150 house-dress, with Valenciennes lace insertion. So I goes into the
closet and puts on the cheapest dress Mrs. Brown had bought for me — it's
the one I've got on now— -not so bad for $75, is it? I'd left all my own
clothes in my sister's flat in Brooklyn.

" 'Mrs. Brown, formerly "Aunt Maggie," ' says I to her, CI am going to
extend my feet alternately, one after the other, in such a manner and
direction that this tenement will recede from me in the quickest possible
time. I am no worshipper of money,* says I, 'but there are some things I
can't stand. I can stand the fabulous monster that I've read about that
blows hot birds and cold bottles with the same breath. But I can't stand
a quitter,' says I. 'They say you've got forty million dollars — well, you'll
never have any less. And I was beginning to like you, too,' says I.

"Well, the late Aunt Maggie kicks till the tedrs flow. She offers to
move into a swell room with a two-burner stove and running water.

"Tve spent an awful lot of money, child,' says she. 'We'll have to
economize for a while. You're the most beautiful creature I ever laid
eyes on,' she says, 'and I don't want you to leave me.*

"Well, you see me, don't you? I walked straight to the Acropolis and
asked for my job back, and I got it. How did you say your writings were
getting along? I know you've lost out some by not having me to typewrite
'em. Do you ever have *em illustrated? And, by the way, did you ever
happen to know a newspaper artist—oh, shut up! I know I asked you
before. I wonder what paper he works on? It's funny, but I couldn't help
thinking that he wasn't thinking about the money he might have been

"NEXT TO READING MATTER" 389

thinking I was thinking I'd get from old Maggie Brown. If I only knew
some of the newspaper editors I'd "

The sound of an easy footstep came from the doorway. Ida Bates saw
who it was with her back-hair comb. I saw her turn pink, perfect statue
than she was — a miracle that I share with Pygmalion only.

"Am I excusable?" she said to me— adorable petitioner that she be-
came. "It's—it's Mr. Lathrop. I wonder if it really wasn't the money— -I
wonder, if after all, he "

Of course, I was invited to the wedding. After the ceremony I dragged
Lathrop aside.

"You an artist," said I, "and haven't figured out why Maggie Brown
conceived such a strong liking for Miss Bates— that was? Let me show
you."

The bride wore a simple white dress as beautifully draped as the
costumes of the ancient Greeks. I took some leaves from one of the
decorative wreaths in the little parlor, and made a chaplet of them, and
placed them on nee Bates' shining chestnut hair, and made her turn her
profile to her husband.

"By jingo!" said he. "Isn't Ida's head a dead ringer for the lady's head
on the silver dollar?"

NEXT TO READING MATTER

He compelled my interest as he stepped from the ferry at Desbrosses
Street. He had the air of being familiar with hemispheres and worlds,
of entering New York as the lord of a demesne who revisited it after
years of absence. But I thought that, with all his air, he had never before
set foot on the slippery cobblestones of the City of Too Many Caliphs.

He wore loose clothes of strange bluish drab color, and a conservative,
round Panama hat without the cock-a-loop indentations and cants with
which Northern fanciers disfigure the tropic head-gear. Moreover, he was
the homeliest man I have ever seen. His ugliness was less repellent than
startling — arising from a sort of Lincolnian ruggedness and irregularity
of feature that spellbound you with wonder and dismay. So may have
looked afrites or the shapes metamorphosed from the vapor of the fisher-
man's vase. As he afterward told me, his name was Judson Tate; and he
may as well be called so at once. He wore his green silk tie through a
topaz ring; and he carried a cane made of the vertebrae of a shark.

Judson Tate accosted me with some large and casual inquiries about the
city's streets and hotels, in the manner of one who had but for the moment
forgotten the trifling details. I could think of no reason for dispraising my
own quiet hotel in the downtown district; so the mid-morning of the

39° BOOK.IV ROADS OF DESTINY

night found us already victualed and drinked (at my expense), and ready
to be chaired and tobaccoed in a quiet corner of the lobby.

There was something on Judson Tate's mind, and, such as it was, he
tried to convey it to me. Already he had accepted me as his friend; and
when I looked at his great, snuff-brown first-mate's hand, with which
he brought emphasis to his periods, within six inches of my nose, I
wondered if, by any chance, he was as sudden in conceiving enmity
against strangers.

When this man began to talk I perceived in him a certain power. His
voice was a persuasive instrument, upon which he played with a some-
what specious but effective art. He did not try to make you forget his
ugliness; he flaunted it in your face and made it part of the charm of his
speech. Shutting your eyes, you would have trailed after this rat-catcher's
pipes at least to the walls of Hamelin. Beyond that you would have had
to be more childish to follow. But let him play his own tune to the words
set down, so that if all is too dull, the art of music may bear the blame.

"Women/* said Judson Tate, "are mysterious creatures."

My spirits sank. I was not there to listen to such a world-old hy-
pothesis— to such a time-worn, long-ago-refuted, bald, feeble, illogical,
vicious, patent sophistry — to an ancient, baseless, wearisome, ragged, un-
founded, insidious falsehood originated by women themselves, and by
them insinuated, foisted, thrust, spread, and ingeniously promulgated
into the ears of mankind by underhanded, secret, and deceptive methods,
for the purpose of argumenting, furthering, and reinforcing their own
charms and designs.

"Oh, I don't know!" said I, vernacularly.

"Have you ever heard of Oratama?" he asked.

"Possibly," I answered. "I seem to recall a toe dancer — or a suburban
addition — or was it a perfume? — of some such name."

"It is a town," said Judson Tate, "on the coast of a foreign country of
which you know nothing and could understand less. It is a country
governed by a dictator and controlled by revolutions and insubordination.
It was there that a great life-drama was played, with Judson Tate, the
homeliest man in America, and Fergus McMahan, the handsomest ad-
venturer in history or fiction, and Senorita Anabela Zamora, the beautiful
daughter of the alcalde of Oratama, as chief actors. And, another thing—
nowhere else on the globe except in the department of Trienta y tres in
Uruguay does the chuchula plant grow. The products of the country I
speak of are valuable woods, dye-stuffs, gold, rubber, ivpry, and cocoa."

"I was not aware," said I, "that South America produced any ivory."

"There you are twice mistaken," said Judson Tate, distributing the
words over at least an octave of his wonderful voice. "I did not say that
the country I spoke of was in South America — I mu§t be careful, my dear
man; I have been in politics there^ you know. But, even so— I have

NEXT TO READING MATTER 3QI

played chess against its president with a set carved from the nasal bones
of the tapir — one of our native specimens of the order of perissodactyle
ungulates inhabiting the Cordilleras — which was as pretty ivory as you
would care to see.

"But it was of romance and adventure and the ways of women that
I was going to tell you, and not of zoological animals.

"For fifteen years I was the ruling power behind old Sancho Benavides,
the Royal High Thumbscrew of the republic. You've seen his picture in
the papers—a mushy black man with whiskers like the notes on a Swiss
music-box cylinder, and a scroll in his right hand like the ones they write
births on in the family Bible. Well, that chocolate potentate used to be
the biggest item of interest anywhere between the color line and the
parallels of latitude. It was three throws, horses, whether he was to wind
up in the Hall of Fame or the Bureau of Combustibles. He'd have been
sure called the Roosevelt of the Southern Continent if it hadn't been
that Grover Cleveland was President at the time. He'd hold office a
couple of terms, then he'd sit out for a hand — always after appointing his
own successor for the interims.

"But it was not Benavides, the Liberator, who was making all this fame
for himself. Not him. It was Judson Tate. Benavides was only the chip
over the bug. I gave him the tip when to declare war and increase import
duties and wear his state trousers. But that wasn't what I wanted to tell
you. How did I get to be It? I'll tell you. Because I'm the most gifted
talker that ever made vocal sounds since Adam first opened his eyes,
pushed aside the smelling-salts, and asked: 'Where am I?'

"As you observe, I am about the ugliest man you ever saw outside the
gallery of photographs of the New England early Christian Scientists. So,
at an early age, I perceived that what I lacked in looks I must make up
in eloquence. That IVe done. I get what I go after. As the back-stop and
still small voice of old Benavides I made all the great historical powers-
behind-the-throne, such as Talleyrand, Mrs. de Pompadour, and Loeb,
look as small as the minority report of a Duma. I could talk nations into
or out of debt, harangue armies to sleep in the battlefield, reduce insur-
rections, inflammations, taxes, appropriations or surpluses with a few
words, and call up the dogs of war or the dove of peace with the same
bird-like whistle. Beauty and epaulettes and curly moustaches and Grecian
profiles in other men were never in my way. When people first look at
me they shudder. Unless they are in the last stages of angina pectoris they
are mine in ten minutes after I begin to talk. Women and men — I win
'em as they come. Now, you wouldn't think women would fancy a man
with a face like mine, would you ? "

"Oh, yes, Mr. Tate," said I. "History is bright and fiction dull with
homely men who have charmed women. There seems "

392 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Pardon me," interrupted Judson Tate, "but you don't quite under-
stand. You have yet to hear my story.

"Fergus McMahan was a friend of mine in the capital. For a handsome
man I'll admit he was the duty-free merchandise. He had blond curls
and laughing blue eyes and was featured regular. They said he was a
ringer for the statue they call Herr Mees, the god of speech and eloquence
resting in some museum in Rome. Some German anarchist, I suppose.
They are always resting and talking.

"But Fergus was no talker. He was brought up with the idea that to
be beautiful was to make good. His conversation was about as edifying as
listening to a leak dropping in a tin dish-pan at the head of the bed when
you want to go to sleep. But he and me got to be friends — maybe because
we was so opposite, don't you think? Looking at the Hallowe'en mask
that I call my face when I'm shaving seemed to give Fergus pleasure; and
I'm sure that whenever I heard the feeble output of throat noises that he
called conversation I felt contented to be a gargoyle with a silver tongue.

"One time I found it necessary to go down to this coast town of Ora-
tama to straighten out a lot of political unrest and chop off a few heads
in the customs and military departments. Fergus, who owned the ice and
sulphur-match concessions of the republic, says hell keep me company.

"So, in a jangle of mule-train bells, we gallops into Oratama, and the
town belonged to us as much as Long Island Sound doesn't belong to
Japan when T. R. is at Oyster Bay. I say us; but I mean me. Everybody
for four nations, two oceans, one bay and isthmus, and five archipelagoes
around had heard of Judson Tate. Gentleman adventurer, they called me.
I had been written up in five columns of the yellow journals, 40,000 words
(with marginal decorations) in a monthly magazine, and a stickful on the
twelfth page of the New York Times. If the beauty of Fergus McMahan
gained any part of our reception in Oratama, 111 eat the price-tag in my
Panama. It was me that they hung out paper flowers and palm branches
for. I am not a jealous man; I am stating facts. The people were Nebu-
chadnezzars; they bit the grass before me; there was no dust in the
town for them to bite. They bowed down to Judson Tate. They knew that
I was the power behind Sancho Benavides. A word from me was more
to them than a whole deckle-edged library from East Aurora in sectional
bookcases was from anybody else. And yet there are people who spend
hours fixing their faces — rubbing in cold cream and massaging the mus-
cles (always toward the eyes) and taking in the slack with tincture of
benzoin and electrolyzing moles— to what end? Looking handsome. Oh,
what a mistake! It's the larynx that the beauty doctors ought to work on.
It's words more than warts, talk more than talcum, palaver more than
power, blarney more than bloom that counts — the phonograph instead of
the photograph. But I was going to tell you.

"The local Astors put me and Fergus up at the Centipede Club, a

NEXT TO READING MATTER5' 393

frame building built on posts sunk in the surf. The tide's only nine
inches. The Little Big High Low Jack-in-the-game of the town came
around and kowtowed. Oh, it wasn't to Herr Mees. They had heard
about Judson Tate.

"One afternoon me and Fergus McMahan was sitting on the seaward
gallery of the Centipede, drinking iced rum and talking,

" 'Judson/ says Fergus, 'there's an angel in Ortama.'

" 'So long/ says I, 'as it ain't Gabriel, why talk as if you had heard a
trump blow?5

" 'It's the Sefiorita Anabela Zamora/ says Fergus. 'She's— she's— she's
as lovely as — as hell!*

"'Bravo!' says I, laughing heartily. 'You have a true lover's eloquence
to paint the beauties of your inamorata. You remind me,' says I, 'of
Faust's wooing of Marguerite— that is, if he wooed her after he went
down the trap-door of the stage.'

" 'Judson/ says Fergus, 'you know you are as beautiless as a rhinoc-
eros. You can't have any interest in women. I'm awfully gone on Miss
Anabela. And that's why I'm telling you.'

"'Oh, seguramente! say I. 'I know I have a front elevation like an
Aztec god that guards a buried treasure that never did exist in Jefferson
County, Yucatan. But there are compensations. For instance, I am It
in this country as far as the eye can reach, and then a few perches and
poles. And again/ says I, 'when I engage people in a set-to of oral, vocal,
and laryngeal utterances, I do not usually confine my side of the
argument to what may be likened to a cheap phonographic reproduction
of the ravings of a jellyfish.5

" 'Oh, I know/ says Fergus, amiable, 'that I'm not handy at small talk.
Or large, either. That's why I'm telling you. I want you to help me.'

" 'How can I do it?' I asked.

"*I have subsidized/ says Fergus, 'the services of Sefiorita Anabela's
duenna, whose name is Francesca. You have a reputation in this country,
Judson/ says Fergus, 'of being a great man and a hero/

" 'I have/ says I. 'And I deserve it.'

"'And I/ says Fergus, 'am the best-looking man between the arctic
circle and antarctic ice pack.'

"'With limitations/ says I, 'as to physiognomy and geography, I
freely concede you to be.'

" 'Between the two of us/ says Fergus, 'we ought to land the Sefiorita
Anabela Zamora. The lady, as you know, is of an old Spanish family,
and further than looking at her driving in the family carruaje of after-
noons around the plaza, or catching a glimpse of her through a barred
window of evenings, she is as unapproachable as a star/

" 'Land her for which one of us ? ' says I.

" 'For me, of course/ says Fergus. 'You've never seen her. Now, I've

394 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

had Francesca point me out to her as being you on several occasions. When
she sees me on the plaza, she thinks she's looking at Don Judson Tate,
the greatest hero, statesman, and romantic figure in the country. With
your reputation and my looks combined in one man, how can she resist
him? She's heard all about your thrilling history, of course. And she's
seen me. Can any woman want more?' asks Fergus McMahan.

"'Can she do with less?' I ask. 'How can we separate our mutual at-
tractions, and how shall we apportion the proceeds?3

"Then Fergus tells me his scheme.

"The house o£ the alcalde, Don Luis Zamora, he says, has a patio, of
course — a kind of inner courtyard opening from the street. In an angle of
it is his daughter's window — as dark a place as you could find. And what
do you think he wants me to do ? Why, knowing my freedom, charm, and
skilfulness of tongue, he proposes that I go into the patio at midnight,
when the hobgoblin face of me cannot be seen, and make love to her for
him—for the pretty man that she has just seen on the plaza, thinking him
to be Don Judson Tate.

"Why shouldn't I do it for him — for my friend, Fergus McMahan? For
him to ask me was a compliment — an acknowledgment of his own short-
comings.

" 'You little, lily-white, fine-haired, highly polished piece of dumb sculp-
ture,' says I, Til help you. Make your arrangements and get me in the
dark outside her window and my stream of conversation opened up1 with
the moonlight tremolo stop turned on, and she's yours.'

" 'Keep your face hid, Jud,' says Fergus. 'For heaven's sake, keep your
face hid. I'm a friend of yours in all kinds of sentiment, but this is a
business deal. If I could talk I wouldn't ask you. But seeing me and
listening to you I don't see why she can't be landed.'

"'By you?' says I.

" 'By me,' says Fergus.

"Well, Fergus and the duenna, Francesca, attended to the details. And
one night they fetched me a long black cloak with a high collar, and
led me to the house at midnight. I stood by the window in the patio until
I heard a voice as soft and sweet as an angel's whisper on the other side
of the bars. I could see only a faint, white-clad shape inside; and, true
to Fergus, I pulled the collar of my cloak high up, for it was July in the
wet season, and the nights were chilly. And, smothering a laugh as I
thought of the tongue-tied Fergus, I began to talk.

"Well, sir, I talked an hour at the Senorita Anabela, I say cat' because
it was not 'with.' Now and then she would say: 'Oh, Senor,' or 'Now,
ain't you foolin'?' or T know you don't mean that/ and such things as
women will when they are being rightly courted. Both of us knew
English and Spanish; so in two languages I tried to win the heart of the
lady for my friend Fergus. But for the bars to the window I could have

NEXT TO READING MATTER 395

done it in one. At the end of the hour she dismissed me and gave me a
big, red rose, I handed it over to Fergus when I got home.

"For three weeks every third or fourth night I impersonated my friend
in the patio at the window of Senorita Anabela. At last she admitted that
her heart was mine, and spoke of having seen me every afternoon when
she drove in the plaza. It was Fergus she had seen, of course. But it was
my talk that won her. Suppose Fergus had gone there and tried to make
a hit in the dark with his beauty all invisible, and not a word to say for
himself!

"On the last night she promised to be mine— that is, Fergus's. And she
put her hand between the bars for me to kiss. I bestowed the kiss and
took the news to Fergus.

" Tou might have left that for me to do/ says he.

" That'll be your job hereafter/ says I. 'Keep on doing that and don't
try to talk. Maybe after she thinks she's . in love she won't notice the
difference between real conversation and the inarticulate sort of droning
that you give forth.'

"Now, I had never seen Senorita Anabela. So, the next day Fergus asks
me to walk with him through the plaza and view the daily promenade
and exhibition of Oratama society, a sight that had no interest for me.
But I went; and children and dogs took to the banana groves and man-
grove swamps as soon as they had a look at my face.

" 'Here she comes/ said Fergus, twirling his moustache — 'the one in
white, in the open carriage with the black horse.'

"I looked and felt the ground rock under my feet. For Senorita Ana-
bela Zamora was the most beautiful woman in the world, and the only
one from that moment on, so far as Judson Tate was concerned. I saw at
a glance that I must be hers and she mine forever. I thought of my face
and nearly fainted; and then I thought of my other talents and stood up-
right again. And I had been wooing her for three weeks for another
man!'

"As Senorita Anabela's carriage rolled slowly past, she gave Fergus
a long, soft glance from the corners of her night-black eyes, a glance that
would have sent Judson Tate up into heaven in a rubber-tired chariot.
But she never looked at me. And that handsome man only ruffles his
curls and smirks and prances like a lady-killer at my side.

" 'What do you think of her, Judson?' asks Fergus, with an air.

" 'This much/ says I. 'She is to be Mrs. Judson Tate. I am no man to
play tricks on a friend* So take your warning.'

"I thought Fergus would die laughing.

'"Well, well, well/' said he, 'you old dough-face! Struck too, are you?
That's great! But you're too late, Francesca tells me that Anabela talks of
nothing but me, day and night. Of course, I'm awfully obliged to you for
making .tjiat chin-music to her of evenings. But, do you know, I've
an idea that I could have done it as well myself.'

396 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

" 'Mrs. Judson Tate,' says I. 'Don't forget the name. You've had the
use of my tongue to go with your good looks, my boy. You can't lend me
your looks; but hereafter my tongue is my own. Keep your mind on the
name that's to be on the visiting cards two inches by three and a half —
"Mrs. Judson Tate." That's all.'

" 'All right/ says Fergus, laughing again. Tve talked with her father,
the alcalde, and he's willing. He's to give a baile to-morrow evening in his
new warehouse. If you were a dancing man, Jud, I'd expect you around
to meet the future Mrs. McMahan/

"But on the next evening, when the music was playing loudest at the
Alcalde Zamora's baile , into the room steps Judson Tate in new white
linen clothes as if he were the biggest man in the whole nation, which he
was.

"Some of the musicians jumped off the key when they saw my face,
and one or two of the timidest senoritas let out a screech or two. But up
prances the alcalde and almost wipes the dust off my shoes with his fore-
head. No mere good looks could have won me that sensational entrance.

" 'I hear much, Senor Zamora,' says I, 'of the charm of your daughter.
It would give me great pleasure to be presented to her/

"There were about six dozen willow rocking-chairs, with pink tidies
tied on to them, arranged against the walls. In one of them sat Sefiorita
Anabela in white Swiss and red slippers, with pearls and fire flies in her
hair. Fergus was at the other end of the room trying to break away from
two maroons and a claybank girl.

"The alcalde leads me up to Anabela and presents me. When she took
the first look at my face she dropped her fan and nearly turned her chair
over from the shock. But Pm used to that.

"I sat down by her and began to talk. When she heard me speak she
jumped, and her eyes got as big as alligator pears. She couldn't strike a
balance between the tones of my voice and the face I carried. But I kept
on talking in the key of C, which is the ladies' key; and presently she sat
still in her chair and a dreamy look came into her eyes. She was coming
my way. She knew of Judson Tate, and what a big man he was, arid the
big things he had done; and that was in my favor. But, of course, it was
some shock to her to find out that I was not the pretty man that had
been pointed out to her as the great Judson. And then I took the Spanish
language, which is better than English for certain purposes, and played
on it like a harp of a thousand strings. I ranged from the second G below
the staff up to F-sharp above it. I set my voice to poetry, art, romance,
flowers, and moonlight, I repeated some of the verses that I had mur-
mured to her in the dark at her window; and I knew from a sudden soft
sparkle in her eye that she recognized in my voice the tones o£ her mid-
night mysterious wooer.

"Anyhow, I had Fergus McMahan going. Oh, the vocal is the true

397

art— no doubt about that. Handsome is as handsome palavers. That's the
renovated proverb.

"I took Senorita Anabela for a walk in the lemon grove while Fergus,
disfiguring himself with an ugly frown, was waltzing with the claybank
girl. Before we returned I had permission to come to her window in the
patio the next evening at midnight and talk some more.

"Oh, it was easy enough. In two weeks Anabela was engaged to me,
and Fergus was out. He took it calm, for a handsome man, and told me he
wasn't going to give in.

" 'Talk may be all right in its place, Judson,' he says to me, 'although
I've never thought it worth cultivating. But/ says he, 'to expect mere
words to back up successfully a face like yours in a lady's good graces is
like expecting a man to make a square meal on the ringing of a dinner-
bell.'

"But I haven't begun on the story I was going to tell you yet

"One day I took a long ride in the hot sunshine, and then took a bath
in the cold waters of a lagoon on the edge of the town before I'd cooled
off.

"That evening after dark I called at the alcalde's to see Anabela. I was
calling regular every evening then, and we were to be married in a month.
She was looking like a bulbul, a gazelle, and a tea-rose, and her eyes
were as soft and bright as two quarts of cream skimmed off from the
Milky Way. She looked at my rugged features without any expression of
fear or repugnance. Indeed, I fancied that I saw a look of deep admiration
and affection, such as she had cast at Fergus on the plaza.

"I sat down, and opened my mouth to tell Anabela what she loved to
hear — that she was a trust, monopolizing all the loveliness of earth. I
opened my mouth, and instead of the usual vibrating words of love and
compliment, there came forth a faint wheeze such as a baby with croup
might emit. Not a word— not a syllable — not an intelligible sound. I had
caught cold in my laryngeal regions when I took my injudicious bath.

"For two hours I sat trying to entertain Anabela. She talked a certain
amount, but it was perfunctory and diluted. The nearest approach I made
to speech was to formulate a sound like a clam trying to sing 'A Life on
the Ocean Wave' at low tide. It seemed that Anabela's eyes did not rest
upon me as often as usual. I had nothing with which to charm her ears.
We looked at pictures and she played the guitar occasionally, very badly.
When I left, her parting manner seemed cool—or at least thoughtful.

"This happened for five evenings consecutively.

"On the sixth day she ran away with Fergus McMahan.

"It was known that they fled in a sailing yacht bound for Belize. I was
only eight hours behind them in a small steam launch belonging to the
Revenue Department.

"Before I sailed, I rushed into the botica of old Manuel Iquito, a half-

398 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

breed Indian druggist. I could not speak, but I pointed to my throat and
made a sound like escaping steam. He began to yawn. In an hour, ac-
cording to the customs of the country, I would have been waited on. I
reached across the counter, seized him by the throat, and pointed again
to my own. He yawned once more, and thrust into my hand a small
bottle containing a black liquid.

" 'Take one small spoonful every two hours/ says he.

"I threw him a dollar and skinned for the steamer.

"I steamed into the harbor at Belize thirteen seconds behind the yacht
that Anabela and Fergus were on. They started for the shore in a dory
just as my skiff was lowered over the side. I tried to order my sailormen
to row faster, but the sounds died in my larynx before they came to the
light. Then I thought of old Iquito's medicine, and I got out his bottle
and took a swallow of it.

"The two boats landed at the same moment. I walked straight up to
Anabela and Fergus. Her eyes rested upon me for an instant; then she
turned them, full of feeling and confidence, upon Fergus. I knew I could
not speak, but I was desperate. In speech lay my only hope. I could not
stand beside Fergus and challenge comparison in the way of beauty.
Purely involuntarily, my larynx and epiglottis attempted to reproduce the
sounds that my mind was calling upon my vocal organs to send forth.

"To my intense surprise and delight the words rolled forth beautifully
cleaar, resonant, exquisitely modulated, full of power, espression, and
long-repressed emotion.

" 'Senorita Anabela/ says I, 'may I speak with you aside for a moment?'

"You don't want details about that, do you? Thanks. The old elo-
quence had come back all right. I led her under a cocoanut palm and put
my old verbal spell on her again,

" 'Judson/ says she, 'when you are talking to me I can hear nothing else
— I can see nothing else — there is nothing and nobody else in the world
for me.5

"Well, that's about all of the story. Anabela went back to Oratama in
the steamer with me. I never heard what became of Fergus. I never saw
him any more. Anabela is now Mrs. Judson Tate. Has my story bored
you much?'*

"No/5 said I. "I am always interested in psychological studies. A human
heart — and especially a woman's — is a wonderful thing to contemplate."

"It is," said Judson Tate. "And so are the trachea and the bronchial
tubes of man. And the larynx, too. Did you ever make a study of the
windpipe?"

"Never/* said I. "But I have taken much pleasure in your story. May
I ask after Mrs. Tate, and inquire of her present health and whereabouts."

"Oh, sure/' said Judson Tate. "We are living in Bergen Avenue, Jersey
City. The climate down in Oratama didn't suit Mrs. T. I don't suppose

NEXT TO READING MATTER 399

you ever dissected the arytenoid cartilages of the epiglottis, did you?"

"Why, no," said I, "I am no surgeon."

"Pardon me," said Judson Tate, "but every man should know enough of
anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health. A sudden cold
may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary ves-
icles which may result in a serious affection of the vocal organs."

"Perhaps so," said I, with some impatience; "but that is neither here
nor there. Speaking of the strange manifestations of the affection of
women, I "

"Yes, yes," interrupted Judson Tate, "they have peculiar ways. But,
as I was going to tell you: when I went back to Oratama I found out
from Manuel Iquito what was in that mixture he gave me for my lost
voice. I told you how quick it cured me. He made that stuff from the
chuchula plant. Now, look here."

Judson Tate drew an oblong white pasteboard box from his pocket.

"For any cough," he said, "or cold, or hoarseness, or bronchial affection
whatsoever, I have here the greatest remedy in the world. You see the
formula printed on the box. Each tablet contains licorice, 2 grains; balsam
tolu, i/io grain; oil of anise, 1/20 minim; oil of tar, 1/60 minim; oleo-
resin of cubebs, 1/60 minim; fluid extract of chuchula, i/io minim.

"I am in New York," went on Judson Tate, "for the purpose of organiz-
ing a company to market the greatest remedy for throat affections ever
discovered. At present I am introducing the lozenges in a small way.
I have here a box containing four dozen, which I am selling for the small
sum of fifty cents. If you are suffering "

I got up and went away without a word. I walked slowly up to the
little park near my hotel, leaving Judson Tate alone with his conscience.
My feelings were lacerated. He had poured gently upon me a story that
I might have used. There was a little of the breath of life in it, and some
of the synthetic atmosphere that passes, when cunningly tinkered, in the
marts. And, at the last it had proven to be a commercial pill, coated with
the sugar of fiction. The worst of it was that I could not offer it for sale.
Advertising departments and counting-rooms look down upon me. And
it would never do for the literary. Therefore I sat upon a bench with other
disappointed ones until my eyelids drooped.

I went to my room, and, as my custom is, read for an hour stories in
my favorite magazines. This was to get my mind back to art again.

And as I read each story, I threw the magazines sadly and hopelessly,
one by one, upon the floor. Each author, without one exception to bring
balm to my heart, wrote liltingly and sprightly a story of some particular
make of motor-car that seemed to control the sparking plug of his genius.

And when the last one was hurled from me I took heart,

"If readers can swallow so many proprietary automobiles," I said to

400 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

myself, "they ought not to strain at one o£ Tate's Compound Magic
Chuchula Bronchial Lozenges."

And so if you see this story in print you will understand that business
is business, and that if Arts gets very far ahead of Commerce, she will
have to get up and hustle.

I may as well add, to make a clean job of it, that you can't buy the
chuchula plant in the drug stores.

ART AND THE BRONCO

Out of the wilderness had come a painter. Genius, whose coronations
alone are democratic, had woven a chaplet of chaparral for the brow of
Lonny Briscoe. Art, whose divine woven expression flows impartially from
the fingertips of a cowboy or a dilettante emperor, had chosen for a
medium the Boy Artist of the San Saba. The outcome, seven feet by
twelve of besmeared canvas, stood, gilt-framed, in the lobby of the Capitol.

The legislature was in session; the capital city of that great Western
state was enjoying the season of activity and profit that the congregation
of the solons bestowed. The boarding houses were corralling the easy
dollars of the gamesome lawmakers. The greatest state in the West, an
empire in area and resources, had arisen and repudiated the old libel or
barbarism, lawbreaking, and bloodshed. Order reigned within her bor-
ders. Life and property were as safe there, sir, as anywhere among the
corrupt cities of the effete East. Pillow-shams, churches, strawberry feasts
and habeas corpus flourished. With impunity might the tenderfoot venti-
late his "stovepipe" or his theories of culture. The arts and sciences re-
ceive nurture and subsidy. And, therefore, it behooved the legislature of
this great state to make appropriation for the purchase of Lonny Briscoe's
immortal painting.

Rarely has the San Saba country contributed to the spread of the fine
arts. Its sons have excelled in the soldier graces, in the throw of the lariat,
the manipulation of the esteemed .45, the intrepidity of the one-card draw,
and the nocturnal stimulation of towns from undue lethargy; but, hitherto,
it had not been famed as a stronghold of aesthetics. Lonny Briscoe's brush
had removed that disability. Here, among the limestone rocks, the suc-
culent cactus, and the drought-parched grass of that arid valley, had been
born the Boy Artist. Why he came to woo art is beyond postulation. Be-
yond doubt, some spore of the afflatus must have sprung up within him
in spite of the desert soil of San Saba. The tricksy spirit of creation
must have incited him to attempted expression and then have sat hilarious
among the white-hot sands of the valley, watching its mischievous work.

ART AND THE BRONCO 401

For Lonny's picture, viewed as a thing of art, was something to have
driven away dull care from the bosoms of the critics.

The painting — one might almost say panorama — was designed to por-
tray a typical Western scene, interest culminating in a central animal
figure, that of a stampeding steer, life-size, wild-eyed, fiery, breaking
away in a mad rush from the herd that, close-ridden by a typical cow-
puncher, occupied a position somewhat in the right background of the
picture. The landscape presented fitting and faithful accessories. Chapar-
ral, mesquite, and pear were distributed in just proportions. A Spanish
dagger-plant, with its waxen blossoms in a creamy aggregation as large
as a water-bucket, contributed floral beauty and variety. The distance was
undulating prairie, bisected by stretches of the intermittent streams pe-
culiar to the region lined with the rich green of live-oak and water-elm. A
richly mottled rattlesnake lay coiled beneath a pale green clump of prickly
pear in the foreground. A third of the canvas was ultramarine and lake
white — the typical Western sky and the flying clouds, rainless and feathery.

Between two plastered pillars in the commodious hallway near the door
of the chamber of representatives stood the painting. Citizens and law-
makers passed there by twos and groups and sometimes crowds to gaze
upon it. Many— perhaps a majority of them— had lived the prairie life and
recalled easily the familiar scene. Old cattlemen stood, reminiscent and
candidly pleased, chatting with brothers of former camps and trails of the
days it brought back to mind. Art critics were few in the town, and there
was heard none of that jargon of color, perspective, and feeling such as
the East loves to use as a curb and a rod to the pretensions of the artist.
Twas a great picture, most of them agreed, admiring the gilt frame —
larger than any they had ever seen.

Senator Kinney was the picture's champion and sponsor. It was he who
so often stepped forward and asserted, with the voice of a bronco buster,
that it would be a lasting blot, sir, upon the name of this great state if it
should decline to recognize in a proper manner the genius that had so bril-
liantly transferred to imperishable canvas a scene so typical of the great
sources of our state's wealth and prosperity, land — and — er— live-stock.

Senator Kinney represented a section of the state in the extreme West
— 400 miles from the San Saba country — but the true lover of art is not
limited by metes and bounds. Nor was Senator Mullens, representing the
San Saba country, lukewarm in his belief that the state should purchase
the painting of his constituent. He was advised that the San Saba
country was unanimous in its admiration of the great painting by one of
its own denizens. Hundreds of connoisseurs had straddled their broncos
and ridden miles to view it before its removal to the capital. Senator
Mullens desired reelection, and he knew the importance of the San Saba
vote. He also knew that with the help of Senator Kinney — who was a
power in the legislature — the thing could be put through. Now, Senator

402 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

Kinney had an irrigation bill that he wanted passed for the benefit of his
own section, and he knew Senator Mullens could render him valuable
aid and information, the San Saba country already enjoying the benefits
of similar legislation. With these interests happily dovetailed, wonder at
the sudden interest in art at the state capital must, necessarily, be small
Few artists have uncovered their first picture to the world under happier
auspices than did Lonny Briscoe.

Senators Kinney and Mullens came to an understanding in the matter
of irrigation and art while partaking of long drinks in the cafe of the
Empire Hotel.

"H'm!" said Senator Kinney, "I don't know. I'm no art critic, but it
seems to me the thing won't work. It looks like the worst kind of a
chromo to me. I don't want to cast any reflections upon the artistic talent
of your constituent, Senator, but I, myself, wouldn't give six bits for the
picture—without the frame. How are you going to cram a thing like that
down the throat of a legislature that kicks about a little item in the ex-
pense bill of six hundred and eighty-one dollars for rubber erasers for
only one term? It's wasting time. I'd like to help you, Mullens, but they'd
laugh us out of the Senate chamber if we were to try it."

"But you don't get the point/' said Senator Mullens, in his deliberate
tones, tapping Kinney 's glass with his long forefinger. "I have my own
doubts as to what the picture is intended to represent, a bullfight Dr a
Japanese allegory, but I want this legislature to make an appropriation to
purchase. Of course, the subject of the picture should have been in the
state historical line, but it's too late to have the paint scraped off and
changed. The state won't miss the money and the picture can be
stowed away in a lumber-room where it won't annoy any one. Now,
here's the point to work on, leaving art to look after itself — the chap that
painted the picture is the grandson of Lucien Briscoe."

"Say it again," said Kinney, leaning his head thoughtfully. *'O£ the old,
original Lucien Briscoe?"

"Of him. The man who,' you know. The man who carved the state out
of the wilderness. The man who settled the Indians. The man who
cleaned out the horse thieves. The man who refused the crown. The
state's favorite son. Do you see the point now?"

"Wrap up the picture," said Kinney. "It's as good as sold. Why didn't
you say that at first, instead of philandering along about art. I'll resign my
seat in the Senate and go back to chain-carrying for the county surveyor
the day I can't make this state buy a picture calcimined by a grandson of
Lucien Briscoe. Did you ever hear of a special appropriation for the pur-
chase of a home for the daughter of One-Eyed Smothers? Well, that went
through like a motion to adjourn, and old One-Eyed never killed half as
many Indians as Briscoe did. About what figure had you and the calci-
miner agreed upon to sandbag the treasury for?"

ART AND THE BRONCO 403

"I thought," said Mullens, "that maybe five hundred-

"Five hundred!" interrupted Kinney, as he hammered on his glass for
a lead pencil and looked around for a waiter. "Only five hundred for a red
steer on the hoof delivered by a grandson of Lucien Briscoe! Where's your
state pride, man? Two thousand is what it'll be. You'll introduce the bill
and I'll get up on the floor of the Senate and wave the scalp of every In-
dian old Lucien ever murdered. Let's see, there was something else proud
and foolish he did, wasn't there? Oh, yes; he declined all emoluments and
benefits he was entitled to. Refused his head-right and veteran donation
certificates. Could have been governor, but wouldn't. Declined a pension.
Now's the state's chance to pay up. It'll have to take the picture, but then
it deserves some punishment for keeping the Briscoe family waiting so
long. We'll bring this thing up about the middle of the month, after the
tax bill is settled. Now, Mullens, you send over, as soon 'as you can, and
get me the figures on the cost of those irrigation ditches and the statistics
about the increased production per acre. I'm going to need you when that
bill of mine comes up. I reckon well be able to pull along pretty well to-
gether this session and maybe others to come, eh, Senator?"

Thus did fortune elect to smile upon the Boy Artist of the San Saba.
Fate had already done her share when she arranged his atoms in the cos-
mogony of creation as the grandson of Lucien Briscoe.

The original Briscoe had been a pioneer both as to territorial occupa-
tion and in certain acts prompted by a great and simple heart. He had
been one of the first settlers and crusaders against the wild forces of na-
ture, the savage and the shallow politician. His name and memory were
revered equally with any upon the list comprising Houston, Boone, Crock-
ett, Clark, and Green. He had lived simply, independently, and unvexed
by ambition. Even a less shrewd man than Senator Kinney could have
prophesied that his state would hasten to honor and reward his grandson,
come out of the chaparral at even so late a day.

And so, before the great picture by the door of the chamber of repre-
sentatives at frequent times for many days could be found the breezy, n>
bust form of Senator Kinney and be heard his clarion voice reciting the
past deeds of Lucien Briscoe in connection with the handiwork of his
grandson. Senator Mullens's work was more subdued in sight and sound,
but directed along identical lines.

Then, as the day for the introduction of the bill for appropriation draws
nigh, up from the San Saba country rides Lonny Briscoe and a loyal lobby
of cowpunchers, bronco-back, to boost the cause of art and glorify the
name of friendship, for Lonny is one of them, a knight of stirrup and
chaparreras, as handy with the lariat and .45 as he is with brush and pal-
ette.

On a March afternoon the lobby dashed with a whoop, into town. The
cowpunchers had adjusted their garb suitable from that prescribed for the

404 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

range to the more conventional requirements of town. They had conceded
their leather chaparreras and transferred their six-shooters and belts from
their persons to the horns of their saddles. Among them rode Lonny, a
youth of twenty-three, brown, solemn-faced, ingenuous, bowlegged, ret-
icent, bestriding Hot Tamales, the most sagacious cow pony west of the
Mississippi. Senator Mullens had informed him of the bright prospects of
the situation; had even mentioned— so great was his confidence in the
capable Kinney— the price that the state would, in all likelihood, pay. It
seemed to Lonny that fame and fortune were in his hands. Certainly, a
spark of the divine fire was in the little brown centaur's breast, for he was
counting the two thousand dollars as but a means to future development
of his talent. Some day he would paint a picture even greater than this—
one, say, twelve feet by twenty, full of scope and atmosphere and action.

During the three days that yet intervened before the coming of the date
fixed for the introduction of the bill, the centaur lobby did valiant serv-
ice. Coatless, spurred, weather-tanned, full of enthusiasm expressed in
bizarre terms, they loafed in front of the painting with tireless zeal. Rea-
soning not unshrewdly, they estimated that their comments upon its fidel-
ity to nature would be received as expert evidence. Loudly they praised
the skill of the painter whenever there were ears near to which such evi-
dence might be profitably addressed. Lem Perry, the leader of the claque,
had a somewhat set speech, being uninventive in the construction of new
phrases.

"Look at the two-year-old, now," he would say, waving a cinnamon-
brown hand toward the salient point of the picture. "Why, dang my hide,
the critter's alive, I can jest hear him lumpety-lump,' a-cuttin' away from
the herd, pretendin' he's skeered. He's a mean scamp, that there steer.
Look at his eyes a-wallin' and his tail a-wavin'. He's true and nat'ral to life.
He's jest hankerin' fur a cow pony to round him up and send him scoot-
in' back to the bunch. Dang my hide! jest look at that tail of his'n
a-wavin'. Never knowed a steer to wave his tail any other way, dang my
hide ef I did."

Jud Shelby, while admitting the excellence of the steer, resolutely con-
fined himself to open admiration of the landscape, to the end that tie en-
tire picture receive its meed of praise.

"That piece of range," he declared, "is a dead ringer for Dead Hoss
Valley. Same grass, same lay of the land, same old Whipper-will Creek
skallyhootin' in and out of them motts of timber. Them buzzards on the
left is circlin' 'round over Sam Kildrake's old paint hoss that killed hisself
overdrinkin' on a hot day. You can't see the hoss for that mott of ellums
on the creek, but he's thar. Anybody that was goin' to look for Dead Hoss
Valley and come across this picture, why, he'd jest light oflf'n his bronco
and hunt a place to camp."

Skinny Rogers, wedded to comedy, conceived a complimentary little
piece of acting that never failed to make an impression. Edging quite near

ART AND THE BRONCO 405

to the picture, he would suddenly, at favorable moments, emit a piercing
and awful "Yi-yi!" leap high and away, coming down with a great stamp
of heels and whirring of rowels upon die stone-flagged floor.

"Jeeming Christopher!"— so ran his lines— "thought that rattler was a
gin-u-ine one. Ding baste my skin if I didn't. Seemed to me I heard him
rattle. Look at the blamed, unconverted insect a-layin' under that pear.
Little more, and somebody would a-been snake-bit"

With these artful dodges, contributed by Lonny's faithful coterie, with
the sonorous Kinney perpetually sounding the picture's merits, and with
the solvent prestige of the pioneer Briscoe covering it like a precious var-
nish, it seemed that the San Saba country could not fail to add a reputation
as an art centre to its well-known superiority in steer-roping contests and
achievements with the precarious busted flush. Thus was created for the
picture an atmosphere, due rather to externals than to the artist's brush,
but through it the people seemed to gaze with more admiration. There
was a magic in the name of Briscoe that counted high against faulty tech-
nique and crude coloring. The old Indian fighter and wolf slayer would
have smiled grimly in his happy hunting grounds had he known that his
dilettante ghost was thus figuring as an art patron two generations after
his uninspired existence.

Came the day when the Senate was expected to pass the bill of Senator
Mullens appropriating two thousand dollars for the purchase of the pic-
ture. The gallery of the Senate chamber was early pre-empted by Lonny
and the San Saba lobby. In the front row of chairs they sat, wild-haired,
self-conscious, jingling, creaking, and rattling, subdued by the majesty of
the council hall.

The bill was introduced, went to the second reading, and then Senator
Mullens spoke for it dryly, tediously, and at length. Senator Kinney then
arose, and the welkin seized the bell-rope preparatory to ringing. Oratory
was at that time a living thing; the world- had not quite come to measure
its questions by geometry and the multiplication table. It was the day of
the silver tongue, the sweeping gesture, the decorative apostrophe, the
moving peroration.

The Senator spoke. The San Saba contingent sat, breathing hard, in the
gallery, its disordered hair hanging down to its eyes, its sixteen-ounce hats
shifted restlessly from knee to knee. Below, the distinguished Senators ei-
ther lounged at their desks with the abandon of proven statesmanship or
maintained correct attitudes indicative of a first term.

Senator Kinny spoke for an hour. History was his theme — history miti-
gated by patriotism and sentiment. He referred casually to the picture in
the outer hall — it was unnecessary, he said, to dilate upon its merits — the
Senators had seen for themselves. The painter of the picture was the
grandson cif Lucien Briscoe. Then came the word-pictures of Briscoe's Me
set forth in thrilling colors. His rude and venturesome life, his simple-

406 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

minded love for the commonwealth he helped to upbuild, his contempt
for rewards and praise, his extreme and sturdy independence, and the
great services he had rendered the state. The subject of the oration was
Lucien Briscoe; the painting stood in the background serving simply as a
means, now happily brought forward, through which the state might be-
stow a tardy recompense upon the descendant of its favorite son. Frequent
enthusiastic applause from the Senators testified to the well reception of
the sentiment.

The bill passed without an opposing vote. To-morrow it would be taken
up by the House. Already was it fixed to glide through that body on rub-
ber tires, Blandford, Grayson, and Plummer, all wheel-horses and orators,
and provided with plentiful memoranda concerning the deeds of pioneer
Briscoe, had agreed to furnish the motive power.

The San Saba lobby and its protege stumbled awkwardly down the
stairs and out into the Capitol yard. Then they herded closely and gave
one yell of triumph. But one of them— Buck-Kneed Summers it was— hit
the key with the thoughtful remark:

"She cut the mustard," he said, "all right. I reckon they're goin'^to buy
Lon's steer. I ain't right much on the parlyment'ry but I gather that's what
the signs added up. But she seems to me, Lonny, the argyment ran prin-
cipal to grandfather, instead of paint. It's reasonable calculatin' that you
want to be glad you got the Briscoe brand on you, my son."

That remark clinched in Lonny's mind an unpleasant, vague suspicion
to the same effect. His reticence increased, and he gathered grass from the
ground, chewing it pensively. The picture as a picture had been humilia-
tingly absent from the Senator's arguments. The painter had been held
up as a grandson, pure and simple. While this was gratifying on certain
lines, it made art look little and slab-sided. The Boy Artist was thinking.

The hotel Lonny stopped at was near the Capitol. It was near to the one
o'clock dinner hour when the appropriation had been passed by the Sen-
ate. The hotel clerk told Lonny that a famous artist from New York had
arrived in town that day and was in the hotel. He was on his way west-
ward to New Mexico to study the effect of sunlight upon the ancient walls
of the Zufiis. Modern stone reflects light. Those ancient building materials
absorb it. The artist wanted this effect in a picture he was painting and
was travelling two thousand miles to get it.

Lonny sought this man out after dinner and told his story. The artist
was an unhealthy man, kept alive by genius and indifference to life. He
went with Lonny to the Capitol and stood there before the picture. The
artist pulled his beard and looked unhappy.

"Should like to have your sentiments," said Lonny, "just as they run
out of the pen."

"It's the way they'll come," said the painter man. "I took three different
kinds of medicine before dinner — by the tablespoonf ul. The taste still lin-

ART AND THE BRONCO 407

gers. I am primed for telling the truth. You want to know if the picture
is, or if it isn't?"

"Right," said Lonny. "Is it wool or cotton? Should I paint some more
or cut it out and ride herd a-plenty?"

"I heard a rumor during pie," said the artist, "that the state is about to
pay you two thousand dollars for this picture."

"It's passed the Senate," said Lonny, "and the House rounds it up
to-morrow."

"That's lucky," said the pale man. "Do you carry a rabbit's foot?"

"No," said Lonny, "but it seems I had a grandfather. He's considerable
mixed up in the color scheme. It took me a year to paint that picture. Is
she entirely awful or not? Some says, now, that that steer's tail ain't badly
drawed. They think it's proportioned nice. Tell me."

The artist glanced at Lonny's wiry figure and nut-brown skin. Some-
thing stirred him to a passing irritation.

"For Art's sake, son," he said fractiously, "don't spend any more money
for paint. It isn't a picture at all. It's a gun. You hold up the state with
it, if you like, and get your two thousand, but don't get in front of any
more canvas. Live under it. Buy a couple of hundred ponies with the
money— I'm told they're that cheap—and ride, ride, ride. Fill your lungs
and eat and sleep and be happy. No more pictures. You look healthy.
That's genius. Cultivate it." He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes to
three. Four capsules and one tablet at three. That's all you wanted to
know, isn't it?"

At three o'clock the cowpunchers rode up for Lonny, bringing Hot
Tamales, saddled. Traditions must be observed. To celebrate the passage
of the bill by the Senate the gang must ride wildly through the town,
creating uproar and excitement. Liquor must be partaken of, the suburbs
shot up, and the glory of the San Saba country vociferously proclaimed. A
part of the programme had been carried out in the saloons on the way up.

Lonny mounted Hot Tamales, the accomplished little beast prancing
with fire and intelligence. He was glad to feel Lonny's bowlegged grip
against his ribs again. Lonny was his friend, and he was willing to do
things for him.

"Come on, boys," said Lonny, urging Hot Tamales into a gallop with
his knees. With a whoop, the inspired lobby tore after him through the
dust. Lonny led his cohorts straight for the Capitol. With a wild yell, the
gang indorsed his now evident intention of riding into it. Hooray for
San Saba!

Up the six broad, limestone steps clattered the broncos of the cow-
punchers. Into the resounding hallway they pattered, scattering in dismay
those passing on foot. Lonny, in the lead, shoved Hot Tamales direct for
the great picture. At that hour a downpouring, soft light from the second-
story windows bathed the big canvas. Against the darker background of

400 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

the hall the painting stood out with valuable effect. In spite of the defects
of the art you could almost fancy that you gazed out upon a landscape.
You might well flinch a step from the convincing figure of the life-sized
steer stampeding across the grass. Perhaps it thus seemed to Hot Tamales.
The scene was in his line. Perhaps he only obeyed the will of his rider.
His ears pricked up; he snorted. Lonny leaned forward in the saddle
and elevated his elbows, wing-like. Thus signals the cowpuncher to his
steed to launch himself full speed ahead. Did Hot Tamales fancy he saw
a steer, red and cavorting, that should be headed off and driven back to
herd? There was a fierce clatter of hoofs, a rush, a gathering of steely
flank muscles, a leap to the jerk of the bridle rein, and Hot Tamales, with
Lonny bending low in the saddle to dodge the top of the frame, ripped
through the great canvas like a shell from a mortar, leaving the cloth
hanging in ragged shreds about a monstrous hole.

Quickly Lonny pulled up his pony, and rounded the pillars. Spectators
came running, too astounded to add speech to the commotion. The
sergeant-at-arms of the House came forth, frowned, looked ominous, and
then grinned. Many of the legislators crowded out to observe the tumult.
Lonny's cowpunchers were stricken to silent horror by his mad deed.

Senator Kinny happened to be among the earliest to emerge. Before
he could speak Lonny leaned in his saddle as Hot Tamales pranced,
pointed his quirt at the Senator, and said, calmly :

"That was a fine speech you made to-day, mister, but you might as well
let up on that 'propriation business. I ain't askin* the state to give me
nothin'. I thought I had a picture to sell to it, but it wasn't one. You
said a heap of things about Grandfather Briscoe that makes me kind of
proud I'm his grandson. Well, the Briscoes ain't takin' presents from the
state yet. Anybody can have the frame that wants it. Hit her up, boys."

Away scuttled the San Saba delegation out o£ the hall, down the steps,
along the dusty street.

Halfway to the San Saba country they camped that night. At bed-
time Lonny stole away from the campfire and sought Hot Tamales,
placidly eating grass at the end of his stake rope. Lonny hung upon his
neck, and his art aspirations went forth forever in one long, regretful
sigh. But as he thus made renunciation his breath formed a word or two.

"You was the only one, Tamales, what seen anything in it. It did look
like a steer, didn't it, old hoss?"

PHOEBE

"You are a man of many novel adventures and varied enterprises," I said
to Captain Patricio Malone. "Do you believe that the possible element of

PHOEBE 409

good luck or bad luck — if there is such a thing as luck — has influenced
your career or persisted for or against you to such an extent that you were
forced to attribute results to the operation of the aforesaid good luck or
bad luck?"

This question (of almost the dull insolence of legal phraseology) was
put while we sat in Rousselin's little red-tiled cafe near Congo Square in
New Orleans.

Brown-faced, white-hatted, finger-ringed captains of adventure came
often to Rousselin's for the cognac. They came from sea and land, and
were chary of relating the things they had seen — not because they were
more wonderful than the fantasies of the Ananiases of print, but because
they were so different. And I was a perpetual wedding-guest, always
striving to cast my buttonhole over the finger of one of these mariners
of fortune. This Captain Malone was a Hiberno-Iberian Creole who had
gone to and fro in the earth and walked up and down in it. He looked
like any other well-dressed man of thirty-five whom you might meet,
except that he was hopelessly weather-tanned, and wore on his chain an
ancient ivory-and-gold Peruvian charm against evil, which has nothing at
all to do with his story.

"My answer to your question," said the captain, smiling, "will be to
tell you the story of Bad-Luck Kearny. That is, if you don't mind hearing
it."

My reply was to pound on the table for Rousselin.

"Strolling along Tchoupitoulas Street one night," began Captain Ma-
lone, "I noticed, without especially taxing my interest, a small man walk-
ing rapidly toward me. He stepped upon a wooden cellar door, crashed
through it, and disappeared. I rescued him from a heap of soft coal below.
He dusted himself briskly, swearing fluently in a mechanical tone, as an
underpaid actor recites the gipsy's curse. Gratitude and the dust in his
throat seemed to call for fluids to clear them away. His desire for liquida-
tion was expressed so heartily that I went with him to a cafe down the
street where we had some vile vermouth and bitters.

"Looking across that little table I had my first clear sight of Francis
Kearny. He was about five feet seven, but as tough as a cypress knee.
His hair was darkest red, his mouth such a mere slit that you wondered
how the flood of his words came rushing from it. His eyes were the
brightest and lightest blue and the hopefullest that I ever saw. He gave
the double impression that he was at bay and that you had better not
crowd him further.

" 'Just in from a gold-hunting expedition on the coast of Costa Rica,'
he explained. 'Second mate of a banana steamer told me the natives were
panning out enough from the beach sands to buy all the rum, red calico,
and parlor melodeons in the world. The day I got there a syndicate named
Incorporated Jones gets a government concession to all minerals from a

410 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

given point. For a next choice I take coast fever and count green and
blue lizards for six weeks in a grass hut. I had to be notified when I was
well, for the reptiles were actually there. Then I shipped back as third
cook on a Norwegian tramp that blew up her boiler two miles below
Quarantine. I was due to bust through that cellar door here to-night, so I
hurried the rest of the way up the river, roustabouting on a lower coast
packet that made a landing for every fisherman that wanted a plug of
tobacco. And now I'm here for what comes next. And it'll be along, it'll
be along/ said this queer Mr. Kearny; 'it'll be along on the beams of my
bright but not very particular star/

"From the first die personality of Kearny charmed me. I saw in him
the bold heart, the restless nature, and the valiant front against the buffets
of fate that make his countrymen such valuable comrades in risk and
adventure. And just then I was wanting such men. Moored at a fruit
company's pier I had a 5oo-ton steamer ready to sail the next day with a
cargo of sugar, lumber, and corrugated iron for a port in— well, let us call
the country Esperando — it has not been long ago, and the name of Patricio
Malone is still spoken there when its unsettled politics are discussed.
Beneath the sugar and iron were packed a thousand Winchester rifles.
In Aguas Frias, the capital, Don Rafael Valdevia, Minister of War,
Esperando's greatest-hearted and most able patriot, awaited my coming.
No doubt you have heard, with a smile, of the insignificant wars and
uprisings in those little tropic republics. They make but a faint clamor
against the din of great nations' battles; but down there, under all the
ridiculous uniforms and petty diplomacy and senseless countermarching
and intrigue, are to be found statesmen and patriots. Don Rafael Val-
devia was one. His great ambition was to raise Esperando into peace and
honest prosperity and the respect of the serious nations. So he waited for
my rifles in Aguas Frias. But one would think I am trying to win a recruit
in you! No; it was Francis Kearny I wanted. And so I told him, speaking
long over our execrable vermouth, breathing the stifling odor from garlic
and tarpaulins, which, as you know, is the distinctive flavor of cafes in the
lower slant of our city. I spoke of the tyrant President Cruz and the
burdens that his greed and insolent cruelty laid upon the people. And at
that Kearny's tears flowed. And then I dried them with a picture of the
fat rewards that would be ours when the oppressor should be overthrown
and the wise and generous Valdevia in his seat. Then Kearny leaped to
his feet and wrung my hand with the strength of a roustabout. He was
mine, he said, till the last minion of the hated despot was hurled from the
highest peaks of the Cordilleras into the sea.

"I paid the score and we went out. Near the door Kearny's elbow
overturned an upright glass showcase, smashing itjinto little bits. I paid
the storekeeper the price he asked.

PHOEBE 411

" 'Come to my hotel for the night,' I said to Kearny. 'We sail to-morrow
at noon.'

"He agreed; but on the sidewalk he fell to cursing again in the dull,
monotonous, glib way that he had done when I pulled him out of the
coal cellar.

" 'Captain,' said he, 'before we go any further, it's no more than fair
to tell you that I'm known from Baffin's Bay to Tierra del Fuego as
"Bad-Luck" Kearny. And I'm It. Everything I get into goes up in the air
except a balloon. Every bet I ever made I lost except when I coppered
it. Every boat I ever sailed on sank except the submarines. Everything I
was ever interested in went to pieces except a patent bombshell that I
invented. Everything I ever took hold of and tried to run I ran into the
ground except when I tried to plough. And that's why they call me Bad-
Luck Kearny. I thought I'd tell you.'

"'Bad-luck,' said I, 'or what goes by the name, may now and then
tangle the affairs of any man. But if it persists beyond the estimate of
what we may call the "averages" there must be a cause for it.'

"'There is,' said Kearny, emphatically, 'and when we walk another
square I will show it to you.'

"Surprised, I kept by his side until we came to Canal Street and out into
the middle of its great width.

"Kearny seized me by an arm and pointed a tragic fore-finger at a
rather brilliant star that shone steadily about thirty degrees above the
horizon.

" 'That's Saturn,' said he, 'the star that presides over bad luck and evil
and disappointment and nothing doing and trouble. I was born under
that star. Every move I make, up bobs Saturn and blocks it. He's the hoo-
doo planet of the heavens. They say he's 73,000 miles in diameter and no
solider body than split-pea soup, and he's got as many disreputable and
malignant rings as Chicago. Now, what kind of a star is that to be born
under?'

"I asked Kearny where he had obtained all this astonishing knowledge.

" 'From Azrath, the great astrologer of Cleveland, Ohio,' said he. 'That
man looked at a glass ball and told me my name before I'd taken a chair.
He prophesied the date of my birth and death before I'd said a word.
And then he cast my horoscope, and the sidereal system socked me in
the solar plexus. It was bad luck for Francis Kearny from A to Izard and
for his friends that were implicated with him. For that I gave up ten
dollars. This Azrath was sorry, but he respected his profession too much
to read the heavens wrong for any man. It was night time, and he showed
me which Saturn was, and how to find it in different balconies and
longitudes.

" 'But Saturn wasn't all. He was only the man higher up. He furnishes

412 BOOKIV ROADSOFDESTINY

so much bad luck that they allow him a gang of deputy sparklers to help
hand it out. They're circulating and revolving and hanging around the
main supply all the time, each one throwing the hoodoo on his own
particular district.

" 'You see that ugly little red star about eight inches above and to the
right o£ Saturn?" Kearny asked me. Well, that's her. That's Phrebe. She's
got me in charge. "By the day of your birth," says Azrath to me, "y°ur
life is subjected to the influence of Saturn. By the hour and minute of it
you must dwell under the sway and direct authority of Phoebe, the ninth
satellite." So said this Azrath/ Kearny shook his fist viciously skyward.
'Curse her, she's done her work well/ said he. 'Ever since I was astrolo-
gized, bad luck has followed me like my shadow, as I told you. And for
many years before. Now, Captain, I've told you my handicap as a man
should. If you're afraid this evil star of mine might cripple your scheme,
leave me out of it.'

"I reassured Kearny as well as I could. I told him that for the time we
would banish both astrology and astronomy from our heads. The manifest
valor and enthusiasm of the man drew me. 'Let us see what a little
courage and diligence will do against bad luck/ I said. 'We will sail
to-morrow for Esperando.*

"Fifty miles down the Mississippi our steamer broke her rudder. We
sent for a tug to tow us back and lost three days. When we struck trj^
blue waters of the Gulf, all the storm clouds of the Atlantic seemed 'to
have concentrated above us. We thought surely to sweeten those leaping
waves with our sugar, and to stack our arms and lumber on the floor of
the Mexican Gulf.

"Kearny did not seek to cast off one iota of the burden of our danger
from the shouders of his fatal horoscope. He weathered every storm on
deck, smoking a black pipe, to keep which alight rain and sea-water
seemed but as oil. And he shook his fist at the black clouds behind which
his baleful star winked its unseen eye. When the skies cleared one eve-
ning> he reviled his malignant guardian with grim humor.

"'On watch, aren't you, you red-headed vixen? Out making it hot for
little Francis Kearny and his friends, according to Hoyle. Twinkle,
twinkle, little devil! You're a lady, aren't you? — dogging a man with bad
luck just because he happened to be born while your boss was floorwalker.
Get busy and sink the ship, you one-eyed banshee. Phoebe! H'm! Sounds
as mild as a milkmaid. You can't judge a woman by her name. Why
couldn't I have had a man star? I can't make the remarks to Phoebe that
I could to a man. Oh, Phoebe, you be— blasted!5

"For eight days gales and squalls and water-spouts beat us from our
course. Five days only should have landod us in Esperando. Our Jonah
swallowed the bad credit of it with appealing frankness; but that scarcely
lessened the hardships our cause was made to suffer.

PHOEBE 413

"At last one afternoon we steamed into the calm estuary of the little Rio
Escondido. Three miles up this we crept, feeling for the shallow channel
between the low banks that were crowded to the edge with gigantic trees
and riotous vegetation. Then our whistle gave a little toot, and in five
minutes we heard a shout and Carlos — my brave Carlos Quintana —
crashed through the tangled vines waving his cap madly for joy.

"A hundred yards away was his camp, where three hundred chosen
patriots of Esperando were awaiting our coming. For a month Carlos had
been drilling them there in the tactics of war, and filling them with the
spirit of revolution and liberty.

" 'My Captain — compadre mio!' shouted Carlos, while yet my boat was
being lowered. 'You should see them in the drill by companies — in the
column wheel— in the march by fours— they are superb! Also in the
manual of arms — but, alas! performed only with sticks of bamboo. The
guns, captain — say that you have brought the guns!1

" 'A thousand Winchesters, Carlos,' I called to him. 'And two Catlings.'

" 'Vdlgame Dios!' he cried, throwing his cap in the air. 'We shall sweep
the world!'

"At that moment Kearny tumbled from the steamer's side into the
river. He could not swim, so the crew threw him a rope and drew him
back aboard. I caught his eye and his look of pathetic but still bright and
undaunted consciousness of his guilty luck. I told myself that although
he might be a man to shun, he was also one to be admired.

"I gave orders to the sailing-master that the arms, ammunition, and
provisions were to be landed at once. That was easy in the steamer's boats,
except for the two Gatling guns. For their transportation ashore we car-
ried a stout flatboat, brought for the purpose in the steamer's hold.

"In the meantime I walked with Carlos to the camp and made the
soldiers a little speech in Spanish, which they received with enthusiasm;
and then I had some wine and a cigarette in Carlos's tent. Later we
walked back to the river to see how the unloading was being conducted.

"The small arms and provisions were already ashore, and the petty
officers had squads of men conveying them to camp. One Gatling had
been safely landed; the other was just being hoisted over the side of the
vessel as we arrived. I noticed Kearny darting about on board, seeming
to have the ambition of ten men, and to be doing the work of five. I think
his zeal bubbled over when he saw Carlos and me. A rope's end was
swinging loose from some part of the tackle. Kearny leaped impetuously
and caught it. There was a crackle and a hiss and a smoke of scorching
hem, and the Gatling dropped straight as a plummet through the bottom
of the flatboat and buried itself in twenty feet of water and five feet of
river mud.

"I turned my back on the scene. I heard Carlos's loud cries as if from
some extreme grief too poignant for words. I heard the complaining

414 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

murmur of the crew and the maledictions of Torres, the sailing-master—
I could not bear to look.

"By night some degree of order had been restored in camp. Military
rules were not drawn strictly, and the men were grouped about the fires
of their several messes, playing games of chance, singing their native
songs, or discussing with voluble animation the contingencies of our
march upon the capital.

"To my tent, which had been pitched for me close to that of my chief
lieutenant, came Kearny, indomitable, smiling, bright-eyed, bearing no
traces of the buffets of his evil star. Rather was his aspect that of a heroic
martyr whose tribulations were so high-sourced and glorious that he even
took a splendor and a prestige from them.

" Well, Captain,' said he, 'I guess you realize that Bad-Luck Kearny
is still on deck. It was a shame, now, about that gun. She only needed
to be slewed two inches to clear the rail; and that's why I grabbed that
rope's end. Who'd have thought that a sailor—even a Sicilian lubber on
a banana coaster— would have fastened a line in a bow-knot? Don't think
I'm trying to dodge the responsibility, Captain. It's my luck/

" 'There are men, Kearny,' said I, gravely, £who pass through life blam-
ing upon luck and chance the mistakes that result from' their own faults
and incompetency. I do not say that you are such a man. But if all your
mishaps are traceable to that tiny star, the sooner we endow our colleges
with chairs of moral astronomy, the better.'

" It isn't the size of the star that counts/ said Kearny; It's the quality.
Just the way it is with women. That's why they gave the biggest planets
masculine names, and the little stars feminine ones — to even things up
when it comes to getting their work in. Suppose they had called my star
Agamemnon or Bill McCarty or something like that instead of Phoebe.
Every time one of those old boys touched their calamity button and sent
me down one of their wireless pieces of bad luck, I could talk back and
tell 'em what I thought of 'em in suitable terms. But you can't address
such remarks to a Phoebe.'

" 'It pleases you to make a joke of it, Kearny/ said I, without smiling.
'But it is no joke to me to think of my Catling mired in the river ooze.'

" 'As to that/ said Kearny, abandoning his light mood at once, 'I have
already done what I could. I have had some experience in hoisting stone
in quarries. Torres and I have already spliced three hawsers and stretched
them from the steamer's stern to a tree on shore. We will rig a tackle and
have the gun on terra firma before noon to-morrow.'

"One could not remain long at outs with Bad-Luck Kearny.

" *Once more,' said I to him, 'we will waive this question of luck. Have
you ever had experience in drilling raw troops?'

"'I was first sergeant and drill-master,' said Kearny, 'in the Chilean
army for one year. And captain of artillery for another.'

PHOEBE 415

" 'What became of your command?' I asked.

" 'Shot down to a man/ said Kearny, 'during the revolutions against
Balmaceda.'

"Somehow the misfortunes of the evil-starred one seemed to turn to me
their comedy side. I lay back upon my goat's-hide cot and laughed until
the woods echoed. Kearny grinned. *I told you how it was/ he said.

" 'To-morrow/ I said, *I shall detail one hundred men under your com-
mand for manual-of-arms drill and company evolutions. You will rank
as lieutenant. Now, for God's sake, Kearny/ I urged him, 'try to combat
this superstition if it is one. Bad luck may be like any other visitor — pre-
ferring to stop where it is expected. Get your mind off stars. Look upon
Esperando as your planet of good fortune.'

" 'I thank you, Captain/ said Kearny quietly. 'I will try to make it the
best handicap I ever ran.'

"By noon the next day the submerged Catling was rescued, as Kearny
had promised. Then Carlos and Manuel Ortiz and Kearny (my lieu-
tenants) distributed Winchesters among the troops and put them through
an incessant rifle drill. We fired no shots, blank or solid, for of all coasts
Esperando is the stillest; and we had no desire to sound any warnings in
the ear of that corrupt government until they should carry with them
the message of Liberty and the downfall of Oppression.

"In the afternoon came a mule-rider bearing a written message to me
from Don Rafael Valdevia in the capital, Aguas Frias.

"Whenever that man's name comes to my lips, words of tribute to his
greatness, his noble simplicity, and his conspicuous genius follow irre-
pressibly. He was a traveller, a student of peoples and governments, a
master of sciences, a poet, an orator, a leader, a soldier, a critic of the
world's campaigns and the idol of the people of Esperando. I had been
honored by his friendship for years. It was I who first turned his mind to
the thought that he should leave for his monument a new Esperando — a
country freed from the rule of unscrupulous tyrants, and a people made
happy and prosperous by wise and impartial legislation. When he had
consented he threw himself into the cause with the undivided zeal with
which he endowed all of his acts. The coffers of his fortune were opened
to those of us to whom were entrusted the secret moves of the game. His
popularity was already so great that he had practically forced President
Cruz to offer him the portfolio of Minister of War.

"The time, Don Rafael said in his letter, was ripe. Success, he prophe-
sied, was certain. The people were beginning to clamor publicly against
Cruz's misrule. Bands of citizens in the capital were even going about of
nights hurling stones at public buildings and expressing their dissatisfac-
tion. A bronze statue of President Cruz in the Botanical Gardens had been
lassoed about the neck and overthrown. It only remained for me to arrive

416 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

with my force and my thousand rifles, and for himself to come forward and
proclaim himself the people's savior, to overthrow Cruz in a single day.
There would be but a half-hearted resistance from the six hundred govern-
ment troops stationed in the capital. The country was ours. He presumed
that by this time my steamer had arrived at Quintana's camp. He proposed
the eighteenth of July for the attack. That would give us six days in which
to strike camp and march to Aguas Frias. In the meantime Don Rafael
remained my good friend and compadre en la causa de la libertad.

"On the morning of the i4th we began our march toward the sea-
following range of mountains, over the sixty-mile trail to the capital.
Our small arms and provisions were laden on pack mules. Twenty men
harnessed to each Catling gun rolled them smoothly along the flat, allu-
vial lowlands. Our troops, well shod and well fed, moved with alacrity
and heartiness. I and my three lieutenants were mounted on the tough
mountain ponies of the country.

"A mile out of camp one of the pack mules, becoming stubborn, broke
away from the train and plunged from the path into the thicket. The
alert Kearny spurred quickly after it and intercepted its flight. Rising in
his stirrups, he released one foot and bestowed upon the mutinous animal
a hearty kick. The mule tottered and fell with a crash broadside upon the
ground. As we gathered around it, it walled its great eyes almost humanly
toward Kearny and expired. That was bad; but worse, to our minds, was
the concomitant disaster. Part of the mule's burden had been one hundred
pounds of the finest coffee to be had in the tropics. The bag burst and
spilled the priceless brown mass of the ground berries among the dense
vines and weeds of the swampy land. Mala suertel When you take away
from an Esperandan his coffee, you abstract his patriotism and 50 per
cent, of his value as a soldier. The men began to rake up the precious
stuff; but I beckoned Kearny back along the trail where they would not
hear. The limit had been reached.

"I took from my pocket a wallet of money and drew out some bilk.

" sMr. Kearny,* said I, 'here are some funds belonging to Don Rafael
Valdevia, which I am expending in his cause. I know of no better service
it can buy for him than this. Here is one hundred dollars. Luck or no
luck, we part company here. Star or no star, calamity seems to travel by
your side. You will return to the steamer. She touches at Amotapa to
discharge her lumber and iron, and then puts back to New Orleans.
Hand this note to the sailing-master, who will give you passage.' I wrote on
a leaf torn from my book, and placed it and the money in Kearny's hand.

" 'Good-bye/ I said, extending my own. 'It is not that I am displeased
with you; but there is no place in this expedition for — let us say, the
Senorita Phoebe.5 1 said this with a smile, trying to smooth the thing for
him. 'May you have better luck, companero.'

"Kearny took the money and the paper.

PHOEBE 417

" 'It was just a little touch,' said he, 'just a little lift with the toe of my
boot— but what's the odds?— that blamed mule would have died if I had
only dusted his ribs with a powder puff. It was my luck. Well, Captain,
I would have liked to be in that little fight with you over in Aguas Frias.
Success to the cause. Adios!'

"He turned around and set off down the trail without looking back.
The unfortunate mule's pack-saddle was transferred to Kearny's pony,
and we again took up the march.

"Four days we journeyed over the foot-hills and mountains, fording icy
torrents, winding around the crumbling brows of ragged peaks, creeping
along the rocky flanges that overlooked awful precipices, crawling breath-
lessly over tottering bridges that crossed bottomless chasms.

"On the evening of the seventeenth we camped by a little stream on
the bare hills five miles from Aguas Frias. At daybreak we were to take
up the march again.

"At midnight I was standing outside my tent inhaling the fresh cold
air. The stars were shining bright in the cloudless sky, giving the heavens
their proper aspect of illimitable depth in distance when viewed from
the vague darkness of the blotted earth. Almost at its zenith was the
planet Saturn; and with a half-smile I observed the sinister red sparkle
of his malignant attendant — the demon star of Kearny's ill luck. And
then my thoughts strayed across the hills to the scene of our coming
triumph where the heroic and noble Don Rafael awaited our coming to
set a new and shining star in the firmament of nations.

"I heard a slight rustling in the deep grass to my right. I turned and
saw Kearny coming toward me. He was ragged and dew-drenched and
limping. His hat and one boot were gone. About one foot he had tied
some makeshift of cloth and grass. But his manner as he approached was
that of a man who knows his own virtues well enough to be superior to
rebuffs.

" 'Well, sir,' I said, staring at him coldly, 'if there is anything in per-
sistence, I see no reason why you should not j succeed in wrecking and
ruining us yet.'

" 'I kept half a day's journey behind/ said Kearny, fishing out a stone
from the covering of his lame foot, 'so the bad luck wouldn't touch you.
I couldn't help it, Captain; I wanted to be in on this game. It was a pretty
tough trip, especially in the department of the commissary. In the low
grounds there were always bananas and oranges. Higher up it was worse;
but your men left a good deal of goat meat hanging on the bushes in the
camps. Here's your hundred dollars. You're nearly there now, Captain.
Let me in on the scrapping to-morrow.'

" 'Not for a hundred times a hundred would I have the tiniest thing
go wrong with my plans now,' I said, 'whether caused by evil planets
or the blunders of mere man. But yonder is Augas Frias, five miles away,

418 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

and a clear road. I am of the mind to defy Saturn and all his satellites to
spoil our success now. At any rate, I will not turn away to-night as weary
a traveller and as good a soldier as you are, Lieutenant Kearny. Manuel
Ortiz's tent is there by the brightest fire. Rout him out and tell him to
supply you with food and blankets and clothes. We march again at day-
break/

"Kearny thanked me briefly but feeling and moved away.

"He had gone scarcely a dozen steps when a sudden flash ^ of bright
light illumined the surrounding hills; a sinister, growing, hissing sound
like escaping steam filled my ears. Then followed a roar as of distant
thunder, which grew louder every instant. This terrifying noise culmi-
nated in a tremendous explosion, which seemed to rock the hills as an
earthquake would; the illumination waxed to a glare so fierce that I
clapped my hands to my eyes to save them. I thought the end of the
world had come. I could think of no natural phenomenon that^ would
explain it. My wits were staggering. The deafening explosion trailed off
into the rumbling roar that had preceded it; and through this I heard
the frightened shouts of my troops as they stumbled from their resting
places and rushed wildly about. Also I heard the harsh tones of Kearny's
voice crying: 'They'll blame it on me, of course, and what the devil it is,
it's not Francis Kearny that can give you an answer.'

"I opened my eyes. The hills were still there, dark and solid. It had
not been, then, a volcano or an earthquake, I looked up at the sky and
saw a comet-like trail crossing the zenith and extending westward— a
fiery trail waning fainter and narrower each moment.

" 'A meteorl'I called aloud. £A meteor has fallen. There is no danger/

"And then all other sounds were drowned by a great shout from
Kearny's throat. He had raised both hands above his head and was stand-
ing tiptoe.

"THCEBE'S GONE!' he cried, with all his lungs. 'She's busted and
gone to hell. Look, Captain, the little red-headed hoodoo has blown her-
self to smithereens. She found Kearny too tough to handle, and she
puffed up with spite and meanness till her boiler blew up. It'll be Bad-
Luck Kearny no more. Oh, let us be joyful!

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty busted, and that'll be all!

"I looked up, wondering, and picked out Saturn in his place. But the
small red twinkling luminary in his vicinity, which Kearny had pointed
out to me as his evil star, had vanished. I had seen it there but half an
hour before; there was no doubt that one of those awful and mysterious
spasms of nature had hurled it from the heavens.

"I clapped Kearny on the shoulder.

PHOEBE 419

"Tittle man,' said I, let this clear the way for you. It appears that
astrology has failed to subdue you. Your horoscope must be cast anew
with pluck and loyalty for controlling stars. I play you to win. Now, get
to your tent, and sleep. Daybreak is the word.'

"At nine o'clock on the morning of the eighteenth of July I rode into
Aguas Frias with Kearny at my side. In his clean linen suit and with his
military poise and keen eye he was a model of a fighting adventurer. I
had visions of him riding as commander of President Valdevia's body-
guard when the plums of the new republic should begin to fall.

"Carlos followed with the troops and supplies. He was to halt in a
wood outside the town and remain concealed there until he received the
word to advance.

"Kearny and I rode down the Calle Ancha toward the residencia of
Don Rafael at the other side of the town. As we passed the superb white
buildings of the University of Esperando, I saw at an open window the
gleaming spectacles and bald head of Herr Bergowitz, professor of the
natural sciences and friend of Don Rafael and of me and of the cause.
He waved his hand to me, with his broad, bland smile.

"There was no excitement apparent in Aguas Frias. The people went
about leisurely as at all times; the market was thronged with bare-
headed women buying fruit and came; we heard the twang and tinkle
of string bands in the patios of the cantinas. We could see that it was
a waiting game that Don Rafael was playing.

"His residencia was a large but low building around a great court-
yard in grounds crowded with ornamental trees and tropic shrubs. At
his door an old woman who came informed us that Don Rafael had not
yet risen.

" 'Tell him,5 said I, 'that Captain Malone and a friend wish to see him
at once. Perhaps he has overslept.'

"She came back looking frightened.

" 'I have called/ she said, 'and rung his bell many times, but he does
not answer.'

"I knew where his sleeping-room was. Kearny .and I pushed by her
and went to it. I put my shoulder against the thin door and forced it open.

"In an armchair by a great table covered with maps and books sat
Don Rafael with his eyes closed. I touched his hand. He had been dead
many hours. On his head above one ear was a wound caused by a heavy
blow. It had ceased to bleed long before.

"I made the old woman call a mozo, and dispatched him in haste to
fetch Herr Bergowitz.

"He came, and we stood about as if we were half stunned by the awful
shock. Thus can the letting of a few drops of blood from one man's veins
drain the life of a nation.

420 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Presently Herr Bergowitz stooped and picked up a darkish stone the
size of an orange which he saw under the table. He examined it closely
through his great glasses with the eye of science,

" 'A fragment/ said he, 'of detonating meteor. The most remarkable
one in twenty years exploded above this city a little after midnight this
morning/

"The professor looked quickly up at the ceiling. We saw the blue sky
through a hole the size of an orange nearly above Don Rafael's chair.

"I heard a familiar sound, and turned. Kearny had thrown himself on
the floor and was babbling his compendium of bitter, blood-freezing
curses against the star of his evil luck.

"Undoubtedly Phoebe had been feminine. Even when hurtling on
her way to fiery dissolution and everlasting doom, the last word had been
hers."

Captain Malone was not unskilled in narrative. He knew the point
where a story should end. I sat reveling in his effective conclusion when
he aroused me by continuing:

"Of course," said he, "our schemes were at an end. There was no one
to take Don Rafael's place. Our little army melted away like dew before
the sun.

"One day after I had returned to New Orleans I related this story to a
friend who holds a professorship in Tulane University.

"When I had finished he laughed and asked whether I had any knowl-
edge of Kearny's luck afterward. I told him no, that I had seen him no
more; but that when he left me, he had expressed confidence that his
future would be successful now that his unlucky star had been over-
thrown.

" 'No doubt/ said the professor, 'he is happier not to know one fact.
If he derives his bad luck from Phoebe, the ninth satellite of Saturn, that
malicious lady is still engaged in overlooking his career. The star close to
Saturn that he imagined to be her was near that planet simply by the
chance of its orbit— probably at different times he has regarded many
other stars that happened to be in Saturn's neighborhood as his evil one.
The real Phoebe is visible only through a very good telescope/

"About a year afterward," continued Captain Malone, "I was walking
down a street that crossed the Poydras Market. An immensely stout, pink-
faced lady in black satin crowded me from the narrow sidewalk with a
frown. Behind her trailed a little man laden to the gunwhales with
bundles and bags of goods and vegetables.

"It was Kearny— but changed. I stopped and shook one of his hands,
which still clung to a bag of garlic and red peppers.

" 'How is the luck old compmero?* I asked him. I had not the heart
to tell him the truth about his star.

" 'Well,' said he^ 'I am married, as you may guess/

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER 42!

"'Francis!' called the big lady, in deep tones, 'are you going to stop in
the street talking all day?'

" 'I am coming, Phoebe dear,' said Kearny hastening after her."

Captain Malone ceased again.

"After all, do you believe in luck?" I asked.

"Do you?" answered the captain, with his ambiguous smile shaded by
the brim of his soft straw hat.

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER

The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid's fault, for he should
have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was
past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one's credit at twenty is to
blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.

It happened in old Justo Valdo's gambling house. There was a poker
game at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often
where men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was
a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke
had cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscre-
tion, and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder. For, the unfortunate
combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a high-blooded youth from
the cow ranches, of about the Kid's own age and possessed of friends and
champions. His blunder in missing the Kid's right ear only a sixteenth
of an inch when he pulled his gun did not lessen the indiscretion of the
better marksman.

The Kid, not being equipped with a retinue, nor bountifully supplied
with personal admirers and supporters — on account of a rather umbra-
geous reputation, even for the border— considered it not incompatible with
his indisputable gameness to perform that judicious tractional act known
as "pulling his freight."

Quickly the avengers gathered and sought him. Three of them over-
took him within a rod of the station. The Kid turned and showed his
teeth in that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his deeds
of insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without making it
necessary for him even to reach for his weapon.

But in this affair the Kid had not felt the grim thirst for encounter
that usually urged him on to battle. It had been a purely chance row,
born of the cards and certain epithets impossible for a gentleman to brook
that had passed between the two. The Kid had rather liked the slim,
haughty, brown-faced young chap whom his bullet had cut off in the
first pride of manhood. And now he wanted no more blood. He wanted
to get away and have a good long sleep somewhere in the sun on the

422 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

mesquite grass with his handkerchief over his face. Even a Mexican
might have crossed his path in safety while he was in this mood.

The Kid openly boarded the north-bound passenger train that de-
parted five minutes later. But at Webb, a few miles out, where it was
flagged to take on a traveller, he abandoned that manner of escape. There
were telegraph stations ahead; and the Kid looked askance at electricity
and steam. Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety.

The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him. But the Kid knew
that he was of the Coralitos outfit from Hidalgo; and that the punchers
from that ranch were more relentless and vengeful than Kentucky ^feud-
ists when wrong or harm was done to one of them, So, with the wisdom
that has characterized many great fighters, the Kid decided to pile up as
many leagues as possible of chaparral and pear between himself and the
retaliation of the Coralitos bunch.

Near the station was a store; and near the store, scattered among the
mesquite and elms, stood the saddled horses of the customers. Most of
them waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping heads. But
one, a long-legged roan with a curved neck, snorted and pawed the turf.
Him the Kid mounted, gripped with his knees, and slapped gently with
the owner's own quirt.

If the slaying of the temerarious card-player had cast a cloud over
the Kid's standing as a good and true citizen, this last act of his veiled his
figure in the darkest shadows of disrepute. On the Rio Grande border if
you take a man's life you sometimes take trash; but if you take his horse,
you take a thing the loss of which renders him poor, indeed, and which
enriches you not— if you are caught. For the Kid there was no turning
back now.

With the springing roan under him he felt little care or uneasiness.
After a five-mile gallop he drew into the plainsman's jogging trot, and
rode north-eastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He knew the
country well— its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great
wilderness of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches
where one might find safe entertainment. Always he bore to the east; for
the Kid had never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to lay his hand upon
the mane of the great Gulf, the gamesome colt of the greater waters.

So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus Christi, and looked
out across the gentle ripples of a quiet sea.

Captain Boone, of the schooner Flyaway, stood near his skiff, which
one of his crew was guarding in the surf. When ready to sail he had
discovered that one of the necessaries of life, in the parallelogrammatic
shape of plug tobacco, had been forgotten. A sailor had been dispatched
for the missing cargo. Meanwhile the captain paced the sands, chewing
profanely at his pocket store.

A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down to the water's edge.

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER ^423

His face was boyish, but with a premature severity that hinted at a man's
experience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the sun and wind
of an outdoor life had burned it to a "coffee-brown. His hair was as black
and straight as an Indian's; his face had not yet been upturned to the
humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and steady blue. He carried
his left arm somewhat away from his body, for pearl handled .455 are
frowned upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when packed in
the left armhole of one's vest. He looked beyond Captain Boone at the
gulf with the impersonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese emperor.

"Thinkin' of buyin' that *ar gulf, buddy?'" asked the captain, made
sarcastic by his narrow escape from the tobaccoless voyage.

"Why, no/* said the Kid gently, "I reckon not. I never saw it before.
I was just looking at it. Not thinking of selling it, are you?"

"Not this trip," said the captain. "Ill send it to you C.O.D. when I
get back to Buenas Tierras. Here comes that capstan-footed lubber with
the chewin'. I ought to've weighed anchor an hour ago."

'Is that your ship out there?" asked the Kid.

"Why, yes," answered the captain, "if you want to call a schooner a
ship, and I don't mind lyin*. But you better say Miller and Gonzales,
owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K. Boone,
skipper."

"Where are you going to ?" asked the refugee,

"Buenas Tierras, coast of South America — I forget what they called the
country the last time I was there. Cargo — lumber, corrugated iron, and
machetes."

"What kind of a country is it?" asked the Kid— "hot or cold?"

"Warmish, buddy," said the captain. "But a regular Paradise Lost for
elegance of scenery and be-yooty of geography. Ye're wakened every
morning by the sweet singin' of red birds with seven purple tails, and
the sighin' of breezes in the posies and roses. And the inhabitants never
work, for they can reach out and pick steamer baskets of the choicest
hothouse fruit without gettin' out of bed. And there's no Sunday and no
ice and no rent and no troubles and no use and no nothin'. It's a great
country for a man to go to sleep with, and wait for somethin' to turn up.
The bananys and oranges and hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat
comes from there."

"That sounds to me!" said the Kid, at last betraying interest "Whatll
the expressage be to take me out there with you?"

"Twenty-four dollars," said Captain Boone; "grub and transportation.
Second cabin. I haven't got a first cabin."

"You've got my company," said the Kid, pulling out a buckskin bag.

With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo for his regular
"blowout." The duel in Valdos's had cut short his season of hilarity, but

424 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

it had left him with nearly $200 for aid in the flight that it had made
necessary.

"All right, buddy," said the captain. "I hope your ma won't blame me
for this little childish escapade of yours." He beckoned to one of the boat's
crew. "Let Sanchez lift you out to the skiff so you won't get your feet
wet/'

Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet
drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired
state of beatitude — a state where he sang ancient maudlin vaudeville songs
and pelted his screaming parrot with banana peels — until the middle of
the afternoon. So, when he looked up from his hammock at the sound of a
slight cough, and saw the Kid standing in the door of the consulate, he
was still in a condition to extend the hospitality and courtesy due from
the representative of a great nation. "Don't disturb yourself," said the Kid
easily. "I just dropped in. They told me it was customary to light at your
carnp before starting in to round up the town. I just came in on a ship
from Texas."

"Glad to see you, Mr. ," said the consul.

The Kid laughed.

"Sprague Dalton," he said. "It sounds funny to me to hear it. I'm exiled
the Llano Kid in the Rio Grande country/'

"I'm Thacker," said the consul. "Take that cane-bottom chair. Now
if you've come to invest, you want somebody to advise you. These dingies
will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you don't understand
their ways. Try a cigar?"

"Much obliged," said the Kid, "but if it wasn't for my corn shucks and
the little bag in my back pocket I couldn't live a minute." He took out
his "makings," and rolled a cigarette.

"They speak Spanish here," said the consul. "You'll need an inter-
preter. If there's anything I can do, why, I'd be delighted. If you're buy-
ing fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort, you'll want some-
body who knows the ropes to look out for you."

"I speak Spanish," said the Kid, "abut nine times better than I do
English. Everybody speaks it on the range where I come from. And I'm
not in the market for anything."

"You speak Spanish?" said Thacker, thoughtfully. He regarded the
Kid absorbedly.

"You look like a Spaniard, too," he continued. "And you're from
Texas. And you can't be more than twenty or twenty-one. I wonder if
you've got any nerve."

"You got a deal of some kind to put through?" asked the Texan, with
unexpected shrewdness.

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER 425

"Are you open to a proposition?" said Thacker.

"What's the use to deny it?" said the Kid. "I got into a little gun frolic
down in Laredo, and plugged a white man. There wasn't any Mexican
handy. And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just for to
smell the morning-glories and marigolds. Now, do you sabe?"

Thacker got up and closed the door.

"Let me see your hand," he said.

He took the Kid's left hand, and examined the back of it closely.

"I can do it/' he said, excitedly. "Your flesh is as hard as wood and as
healthy as a baby's. It will heal in a week."

"If it's a fist fight you want to back me for," said the Kid, "don't put
your money up yet. Make it gun work, and 111 keep you company. But
no bare-handed scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, for me."

"It's easier than that," said Thacker, "Just step here, will you?"

Through the window he pointed to a two-story white-stuccoed house
with wide galleries rising amid the deep-green tropical foliage on a
wooded hill that sloped gently from the sea.

"In that house," said Thacker, "a fine old Castilian gentleman and his
wife are yearning to gather you into their arms and fill your pockets with
money. Old Santos Urique lives there. He owns half the gold-mines in
the country."

"You haven't been eating loco weed, have you?" asked the Kid.

"Sit down again," said Thacker, "and I'll tell you. Twelve years ago
they lost a kid. No, he didn't die — although most of 'em here do from
drinking the surface water. He was a wild little devil, even if he wasn't
but eight years old. Everybody knows about it. Some Americans who
were through here prospecting for gold had letters to Senor Urique,
and the boy who was a favorite with them. They filled his head with
big stories about the States; and about a month after they left, the kid
disappeared, too. He was supposed to have stowed himself away among
the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and gone to New Orleans, He
was seen once afterward in Texas, it was thought, but they never heard
anything more of him. Old Urique has spent thousands of dollars having
him looked for. The madam was broken up worst of all. The kid was
her life. She wears mourning yet. But they say she believes hell come back
to her some day, and never gives up hope. On the back of the boy's left
hand was tattooed a flying eagle carrying a spear in his claws. That's old
Urique's coat of arms or something that he inherited in Spain.5*

The Kid raised his left hand slowly and gazed at it curiously.

"That's it," said Thacker, reaching behind the official desk for his
bottle of smuggled brandy. "You're not so slow. I can do it. What was I
consul at Sandakan for? I never knew till now. In a week 111 have the
eagle bird with the frog-sticker blended in so you'd think you were born

426 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

with it. I brought a set of the needles and ink just because I was sure
you'd drop in some day, Mr. Dalton."

"Oh, hell;* said the Kid. "I thought I told you my name!"

"All right, 'Kid,' then. It won't be that long, How does 'Senorito
Urique' sound, for a change?" t

"I never played son any that I remember of, said the Kid. It 1 had
any parents to mention they went over the divide about the time I gave
my first bleat. What is the plan of your round-up?"

Thacker leaned back against the wall and held his glass up to the light.

"We've come now," said he, "to the question of how far you're willing
to go in a little matter of the sort."

"I told you why I came down here," said the Kid simply.

"A good answer," said the consul. "But you won't have to go that far.
Here's the scheme. After I get the trade-mark tattooed on your hand I'll
notify old Urique. In the meantime I'll furnish you with all of the family
history I can find out, so you can be studying up points to talk about.
You've got the looks, you speak the Spanish, you know the facts, you
can tell about Texas, you've got the tattoo mark. When I notify them
that the rightful heir has returned and is waiting to know whether he
will be received and pardoned what will happen? They'll simply rush
down here and fall on your neck, and the curtain goes down for refresh-
ments and a stroll in the lobby."

"I'm waiting," said the Kid. "I haven't had my saddle off in your camp
long, pardner, and I never met you before; but if you intend to let it go
at a parental blessing, why, I'm mistaken in my man, that's all."

"Thanks," said the consul. "I haven't met anybody in a long time that
keeps up with an argument as well as you do. The rest of it is simple. If
they take you in only for a while it's long enough. Don't give 'em time
to hunt up the strawberry mark on your left shoulder. Old Urique keeps
anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in his house all the time in a little safe
that you could open with a shoe buttoner. Get it. My skill as a tattooer is
worth half the boodle. We go halves and catch a tramp steamer for Rio
Janeiro. Let the United States go to pieces if it can't get along without
my services. Que dice, senor?"

"It sounds to me!" said the Kid, nodding his head. "I'm out for the
dust."

"All right, then," said Thacker. "You'll have to keep close until we get
the bird on you. You can live in the back room here. I do my own cook-
ing, and I'll make you as comfortable as a parsimonious government will
allow me."

Thacker had set the time at a week, but it was two weeks before the
design that he patiently tattooed upon the Kid's hand was to his notion.
And then Thacker called a muchacho, and dispatched this note to the
intended victim:

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER 427

El Senor Don Santos Urique,

La Casa Blanca,
My Dear Sir:

I beg permission to inform you that there is in my house as a
temporary guest a young man who arrived in Buenas Tierras from
the United States some days ago. Without wishing to excite any hopes
that may not be realized, I think there is a possibility of his being
your long-absent son. It might be well for you to call and see him. If
he is, it is my opinion that his intention was to return to his home,
but upon arriving here, his courage failed him from doubts as to how
he would be received. Your true servant,

Thompson Thacker

Half an hour afterward — quick time for Buenas Tierras — Senor
Urique's ancient landau drove to the consul's door, with the bare-footed
coachman beating and shouting at the team of fat, awkward horses.

A tall man with a white moustache alighted, and assisted to the
ground a lady who was dressed and veiled in unrelieved black.

The two hastened inside, and were met by Thacker with his best
diplomatic bow. By his desk stood a slender young man with clear-cut,
sunbrowned features and smoothly brushed black hair.

Senora Urique threw back her heavy veil with a quick gesture. She
was past middle age, and her hair was beginning to silver, but her full,
proud figure and clear olive skin retained traces of the beauty peculiar
to the Basque province. But, once you had seen her eyes, and compre-
hended the great sadness that was revealed in their deep shadows and
hopeless expression, you saw that the woman lived only in some memory.

She bent upon the young man a long look of the most agonized ques-
tioning. Then her great black eyes turned, and her gaze rested upon his
left hand. And then with a sob, not loud, but seeming to shake the room,
she cried "Hijo miol" and caught the Llano Kid to her heart.

A month afterward the Kid came to the consulate in response to a
message sent by Thacker.

He looked the young Spanish caballero. His clothes were imported,
and the wiles of the jewellers had not been spent upon him in vain. A
more than respectable diamond shone on his finger as he rolled a shuck
cigarette.

"What's doing?" asked Thacker.

"Nothing much," said the Kid calmly. "I eat my first iguana steak
to-day. They're them big lizards, you sabe? I reckon, though, that frijoles
and side bacon would do me about as well. Do you care for iguanas,

"No, nor for some other kinds of reptiles," said Thacker.
Thacker?59

428 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

It was three in the afternoon, and in another hour he would be in his
state of beatitude.

"It's time you were making good, sonny," he went on, with an ugly
look on his reddened face. "You're not playing up to me square. You've
been the prodigal son for four weeks now, and you could have had veal
for every meal on a gold dish if you'd wanted it. Now, Mr. Kid, do you
think it's right to leave me out so long on a husk diet? What's the
trouble? Don't you get your filial eyes on anything that looks like cash
in the Casa Blanca? Don't tell me you don't. Everybody knows where
old Urique keeps his stuff. It's U. S. currency, too; he don't accept any-
thing else. What's doing? Don't say 'nothing' this time."

"Why, sure," said the Kid, admiring his diamond, "there's plenty of
money up there. I'm no judge of collateral in bunches, but I will under-
take for to say that I've seen the rise of $50,000 at a time in that tin grub
box that may adopted father calls his safe. And he lets me^ carry the key
sometimes just to show me that he knows I'm the real little Francisco
that strayed from the herd a long time ago."

"Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Thacker angrily. "Don't you
forget that I can upset your apple-cart any day I want to. If old Urique
knew you were an impostor, what sort of things would happen to you?
Oh, you don't know this country, Mr. Texas Kid. The laws here have
got mustard spread between 'em. These people here'd stretch you out
like a frog that had been stepped on, and give you about fifty sticks at
every corner of the plaza. And they'd wear every stick out, too. What was
left of you they'd feed to alligators."

"I might as well tell you now, pardner," said the Kid, sliding down low
on his steamer chair, "that things are going to stay just as they are.
They're about right now."

"What do you mean?" asked Thacker, rattling the bottom of his glass
on his desk.

"The scheme's off," said the Kid. "And whenever you have the pleasure
of speaking to me address me as Don Francisco Urique. I'll guarantee I'll
answer to it. Well let Colonel Urique keep his money. His little tin safe
is as good as the time-locker in the First National Bank of Laredo as far
as you and me are concerned."

"You're going to throw me down, then, are you?" said the consul.

"Sure," said the Kid, cheerfully. "Throw you down. That's it. And
now I'll tell you why. The first night I was up at the colonel's house they
introduced me to a bedroom. No blankets on the floor — a real room, with
a bed and things in it. And before I was asleep, in comes this artificial
mother of mine and tucks in the covers. Tanchito/ she says, 'my little
lost one, God has brought you back to me. I bless His name forever.' It
was that, or some truck like that, she said. And down comes a drop or
two of rain and hits me on the nose. And all that stuck by me, Mr.

THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE 429

Thacker. And it's been that way ever since. And it's got to stay that way.
Don't you think that it's for what's in it for me, either, that I say so. If
you have any such ideas keep 'em to yourself, I haven't had much truck
with women in my life, and no mothers to speak of, but here's a lady
that we've got to keep fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm, a
low-down wolf, and die devil may have sent me on this trail instead of
God, but I'll travel it to the end. And now, don't forget that I'm Don
Francisco Urique whenever you happen to mention my name."

'Til expose you to-day, you— you double-dyed traitor," stammered
Thacker.

The Kid arose and, without violence, took Thacker by the throat with
a hand of steel, and shoved him slowly into a corner. Then he drew
from under his left arm his pearl-handled .45 and poked the cold muzzle
of it against the consul's mouth.

"I told you why I come here," he said, with his old freezing smile. "If
I leave here, you'll be the reason. Never forget it, pardner. Now, what
is my name?"

"Er— - Don Francisco Urique," gasped Thacker.

From outside came a sound of wheels, and the shouting of someone,
and the sharp thwacks of a wooden whipstock upon the backs of fat
horses.

The Kid put up his gun, and walked toward the door. But he turned
again and came back to the trembling Thacker, and held up his left
hand with its back toward the consul.

"There's one more reason," he said, slowly, "why things have got to
stand as they are. The fellow I killed in Laredo had one of them same
pictures on his left hand."

Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique rattled to the door.
The coachman ceased his bellowing. Senora Urique, in a voluminous gay
gown of white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward with a happy look
in her great soft eyes.

"Are you within, dear son?" she called, in the rippling Castilian.

"Madre mia, yo vengo [mother, I come]," answered the young Don
Francisco Urique.

THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE

For some months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas
border along the Rio Grande. Peculiarly striking to the optic nerve was
this notorious marauder. His personality secured him the title of "Black
Eagle, the Terror of the Border." Many fearsome tales are on record
concerning the doings of him and his followers. Suddenly, in the space

430 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

of a single minute, Black Eagle vanished from earth. He was never heard
of again. His own band never even guessed the mystery of his disappear-
ance. The border ranches and settlements feared he would come again
to ride and ravage the mesquite flats. He never will. It is to disclose the
fate of Black Eagle that this narrative is written.

The initial movement of the story is furnished by the foot of a bar-
tender in St. Louis. His discerning eye fell upon the form of Chicken
Ruggles as he pecked with avidity at the free lunch. Chicken was a
"hobo." He had a long nose like the bill of a fowl, an inordinate appetite
for poultry, and a habit of gratifying it without expense, which accounts
for the name given him by his fellow vagrants.

Physicians agree that the partaking of liquids at meal times is not a
healthy practice. The hygiene of the saloon promulgates the opposite.
Chicken had neglected to purchase a drink to accompany his meal. The
bartender rounded the counter, caught the injudicious diner by the ear
with a lemon squeezer, led him to the door and kicked him into the
street.

Thus the mind of Chicken was brought to realize the signs of coming
winter. The night was cold; the stars shone with unkindly brilliancy;
people were hurrying along the streets in two egotistic, jostling streams.
Men had donned their overcoats, and Chicken knew to an exact per-
centage the increased difficulty of coaxing dimes from those buttoned-in
vest pockets. The time had come for his annual exodus to the South.

A little boy, five or six years old, stood looking with covetous eyes in a
confectioner's window. In one small hand he held an empty two-ounce
vial; in the other he grasped tightly something flat and round, with a
shining milled edge. The scene presented a field of operations commen-
surate to Chicken's talents and daring. After sweeping the horizon to
make sure that no official tug was cruising near, he insidiously accosted
his prey. The boy, having been early taught by his household to regard
altruistic advances with extreme suspicion, received the overtures coldly.

Then Chicken knew that he must make one of those desperate, nerve-
shattering plunges into speculation that fortune sometimes requires of
those who would win her favor. Five cents was his capital, and this he
must risk against the chance of winning what lay within the close grasp
of the youngster's chubby hand. It was a fearful lottery, Chicken knew.
But he must accomplish his end by strategy, since he had a wholesome
terror of plundering infants by force. Once, in a park, driven by hunger,
he had committed an onslaught upon a bottle of peptonized infant's food
in the possession of an occupant of a baby carriage. The outraged infant
had so promptly opened its mouth and pressed the button that . com-
municated with the welkin that help arrived, and Chicken did his thirty
days in a snug coop. Wherefore he was, as he said, "leary of kids."

Beginning artfully to question the boy concerning his choice of sweets,

THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE 43!

he gradually drew out the information he wanted. Mamma said he was
to ask the drug-store man for ten cents' worth of paregoric in the bottle;
he was to keep his hand shut tight over the dollar; he must not stop to
talk to any one in the street; he must ask the drug-store man to wrap
up the change and put it in the pocket of his trousers. Indeed, they had
pockets — two of them! And he liked chocolate creams best.

Chicken went into the store and turned plunger. He invested his entire
capital in C. A. N. D. Y. stocks, simply to pave the way to the greater
risk following.

He gave the sweets to the youngster, and had the satisfaction of per-
ceiving that confidence was established. After that it was easy to obtain
leadership of the expedition, to take the investment by the hand and
lead it to a nice drug store he knew of in the same block. There Chicken,
with a parental air, passed over the dollar and called for the medicine,
while the boy crunched his candy, glad to be relieved of the responsibility
of the purchase. And then the successful investor searching his pockets,
found an overcoat button — the extent of his winter trousseau — and, wrap-
ping it carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding
juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him benev-
olently on the back — for Chicken's heart was as soft as those of -his
feathered namesakes — the speculator quit the market with a profit of
1,700 per cent, on his invested capital.

Two hours later an Iron Mountain freight engine pulled out of the
railroad yards, Texas bound, with a string of empties. In one of the cattle
cars, half buried in excelsior, Chicken lay at ease. Beside him in his nest
was a quart bottle of very poor whisky and a paper bag of bread and
cheese. Mr. Ruggles, in his private car, was on his trip south for the win-
ter season.

For a week that car was trundled southward, shifted, laid over, and ma-
nipulated after the manner of rolling stock,, but Chicken stuck to it,
leaving it only at necessary times to satisfy his hunger and thirst. He
knew it must go down to the cattle country, and San Antonio, in the
heart of it, was his goal. There the air was salubrious and mild; the people
indulgent and long-suffering. The bartenders there would not kick him. If
he should eat too long or too often at one place they would swear at him
as if by rote and without heat. They swore so drawlingly, and they rarely
paused short of their fdl vocabulary, which was copious, so that Chicken
had often gulped a good meal during the process of the vituperative pro-
hibition. The season there was always spring-like; the plazas were
pleasant at night, with music and gayety: except during the slight and
infrequent cold snaps one could sleep comfortably out of doors in case
the interiors should develop inhospitallty.

At Texarkana his car was switched to the I. and G. N. Then still south-
ward it trailed until, at length, it crawled across the Colorado bridge at

43^ BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

Austin, and lined out, straight as an arrow, for the run to San Antonio.

When the freight halted at that town Chicken was fast asleep. In ten
minutes the train was off again for Laredo, the end of the road. Those
empty cattle cars were for distribution along the line at points from which
the ranches shipped their stock.

When Chicken awoke his car was stationary. Looking out between the
slats he saw it was a bright, moonlit night. Scrambling out, he saw his
car with three others abandoned on a little siding in a wild and lonesome
country. A cattle pen and chute stood on one side of the track. The rail-
road bisected a vast, dim ocean of prairie, in the midst of which Chicken,
with his futile rolling stock, was as completely stranded as was Robinson
with his land-locked boat.

A white post stood near the rails. Going up to it, Chicken read the
letters at the top, S. A. 90. Laredo was nearly as far to the south. He was
almost a hundred miles from any town. Coyotes began to yelp in the
mysterious sea around him. Chicken felt lonesome. He had lived in Bos-
ton without an education, in Chicago without nerve, in Philadelphia
without a sleeping place, in New York without a pull, and in Pittsburg
sober, and yet he had never felt so lonely as now.

Suddenly through the intense silence, he heard the whicker of a horse.
The sound came from the side of the track toward the east, and Chicken
began to explore timorously in that direction. He stepped high along
the mat of curly mesquite grass, for he was afraid of everything there
might be in this wilderness — snakes, rats, brigands, centipedes, mirages,
cowboys, fandangoes, tarantulas, tamales — he had read of them in the
story papers. Rounding a clump of prickly pear that reared high its fan-
tastic and menacing array of rounded heads, he was struck to shivering
terror by a snort and a thunderous plunge, as the horse, himself startled,
bounded away some fifty yards, and then resumed his grazing. But here
was the one thing in the desert that Chicken did not fear. He had been
reared on a farm; he had handled horses, understood them, and could ride.

Approaching slowly and speaking soothingly, he followed the animal,
which, after its first flight, seemed gentle enough, and secured the end
of the twenty-foot lariat that dragged after him in the grass. It required
him but a few moments to contrive the rope into an ingenious nose-
bridle, after the style of the Mexican borsaL In another he was upon
the horse's back and off at a splendid lope, giving the animal free choice
of direction. "He will take me some where,*' said Chicken to himself.

It would have been a thing of joy, that untrammelled gallop over the
moonlit prairie, even to Chicken, who loathed exertion, but that his
mood was not for it. His head ached; a growing thirst was upon him; the
"somewhere" whither his lucky mount might convey him was full of
dismal peradventure.

And now he noted that the horse moved to a definite goal. Where the

THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE 433

prairie lay smooth he kept his course straight as an arrow's toward the
east. Deflected by hill or arroyo or impracticable spinous brakes, he
quickly flowed again into the current, charted by his unerring instinct.
At last, upon the side of a gentle rise, he suddenly subsided to a com-
placent walk. A stone's cast away stood a little mott of coma trees ; beneath
it a jacal such as the Mexicans erect — a one-room house of upright poles
daubed with clay and roofed with grass or tule reeds. An experienced
eye would have estimated the spot as the headquarters of a small sheep
ranch. In the moonlight the ground in the nearby corral showed pul-
verized to a level smoothness by the hoofs of the sheep. Everywhere was
carelessly distributed the paraphernalia of the place — ropes, bridles, sad-
dles, sheep pelts, wool sacks, feed troughs, and camp litter. The barrel
of drinking water stood in the end of the two-horse wagon near the door.
The harness was piled, promiscuous, upon the wagon tongue, soaking
up the dew.

Chicken slipped to earth, and tied the horse to a tree. He halloed again
and again, but the house remained quiet. The door stood open, and he
entered cautiously. The light was sufficient for him to see that no one
was at home. He struck a match and lighted a lamp that stood on a table.
The room was that of a bachelor ranchman who was content with the
necessaries of life. Chicken rummaged intelligently until he found what
he had hardly dared hope for — a small brown jug that still contained
something near a quart of his desire.

Half an hour later, Chicken — now a gamecock of hostile aspect-
emerged from the house with unsteady steps. He had drawn upon the
absent ranchman's equipment to replace his own ragged attire. He wore
a suit of coarse brown ducking, the coat being a sort of rakish bolero,
jaunty to a degree. Boots he had donned, and spurs that whirred with
every lurching step. Buckled around him was a belt full of cartridges with
a big six-shooter in each of its two holsters.

Prowling about, he found blankets, a saddle and bridle with which he
caparisoned his steed. Again mounting, he rode swiftly away, singing
a loud and tuneless song.

Bud King's band of desperadoes, outlaws and horse and cattle thieves
were in camp at a secluded spot on the bank of the Frio. Their depreda-
tions in the Rio Grande country, while no bolder than usual, had been
advertised more extensively, and Captain Kinney's company of rangers
had been ordered down to look after diem. Consequently, Bud King, who
was a wise general, instead of cutting out a hot trail for the upholders of
the law, as his men wished to do, retired for the time to the prickly fast-
nesses of the Frio valley.

Though the move was a prudent one, and not incompatible with Bud's
well-known courage, it raised dissension among the members of the band.
In fact, while they thus lay ingloriously perdu in the brush, the question

434 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

o£ Bud King's fitness for the leadership was argued, with closed doors, as
it were, by his followers. Never before had Bud's skill or efficiency been
brought to criticism; but his glory was waning (and such is glory's fate)
in the light of a newer star. The sentiment of the band was crystallizing
into the opinion that Black Eagle could lead them with more luster,
profit, and distinction.

This Black Eagle— sub-titled the "Terror of the Border"— -had been a
member of the gang about three months.

One night while they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a
solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among them.
The newcomer was of portentous and devastating aspect. A beak-like
nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of bristling, blue-black
whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce. He was spurred, sombreroed,
booted, garnished with revolvers, abundandy drunk, and very much un-
afraid. Few people in the country drained by the Rio Bravo would have
cared thus to invade alone the camp of Bud King. But this fell bird
swooped fearlessly upon them and demanded to be fed.

Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy
pass your way you must feed him before you shoot him. You must empty
your larder into him before you empty your lead. So the stranger of un-
declared intentions was set down to a mighty feast.

A talkative bird he was, full of most marvellous loud tales and exploits,
and speaking a language at times obscure but never colorless. He w*as
a new sensation to Bud King's men, who rarely encountered new types.
They hung, delighted, upon his vainglorious boasting, the spicy strange-
ness of his lingo, his contemptuous familiarity with life, the world, and
remote places, and the extravagant frankness with which he conveyed
his sentiments.

To their guest the band of outlaws seemed to be nothing more than a
congregation of country bumpkins whom he was "stringing for grub"
just as he would have told his stories at the back door of a farmhouse to
wheedle a meal. And, indeed, his ignorance was not without excuse, for
the "bad man" of the Southwest does not run to extremes. Those brigands
might justly have been taken for a little party of peaceable rustics as-
sembled for a fish-fry or pecan gathering. Gentle of manner, slouching
of gait, soft-voiced, unpicturesquely clothed; not one of them presented
to the eye any witness of the desperate records they had earned.

For two days the glittering stranger within the camp was feasted.
Then, by common consent, he was invited to become a member of the
band. He consented, presenting for enrollment the prodigious name o£
"Captain Montressor." This was immediately overruled by the band, and
"Piggy" substituted as a compliment to the awful and insatiate appetite
of its owner.

THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE 435

Thus did the Texas border receive the most spectacular brigand that
ever rode its chaparral.

For the next three months Bud King conducted business as usual, es-
caping encounters with law officers and being content with reasonable
profits. The band ran off some very good companies of horses from the
ranges, and a few bunches of fine cattle which they got safely across the
Rio Grande and disposed of to fair advantage. Often the band would
ride into the little villages and Mexican settlements, terrorizing the in-
habitants and plundering for the provisions and ammunition they needed.
It was during these bloodless raids that Piggy's ferocious aspect and
frightful voice gained him a renown more widespread and glorious than
those other gentle-voiced and sad-faced desperadoes could have acquired
in a lifetime.

The Mexicans, most apt in nomenclature, first called him The Black
Eagle, and used to frighten the babes by threatening them with tales of
the dreadful robber who carried off little children in his great beak. Soon
the name extended, and Black Eagle, the Terror of the Border, became
a recognized factor in exaggerated newspaper reports and ranch gossip.

The country from the Nueces to the Rio Grande was a wild but fertile
stretch, given over to the sheep and cattle ranches. Range was free; the
inhabitants were few; the law was mainly a letter, and the pirates met
with little opposition until the flaunting and garish Piggy gave the band
undue advertisement. Then Kinney's ranger company headed for those
precincts, and Bud King knew that it meant grim and sudden war or else
temporary retirement. Regarding the risk to be unnecessary, he drew
off his band to an almost inaccessible spot on the bank of the Frio.
Wherefore, as has been said, dissatisfaction arose among the members,
and impeachment proceedings against Bud were premeditated, with
Black Eagle in high favor for the succession. Bud King was not unaware
of the sentiment, and he called aside Cactus Taylor, his trusted lieuten-
ant, to discuss it.

"If the boys," said Bud, "ain't satisfied with me, I'm willin5 to step
out. They're buckin' against my way of handlin' Jem. And 'specially be-
cause I concludes to hit the brush while Sam Kinney is ridin' the line.
I saves *em from bein' shot or sent up on a state contract, and they up
and says I'm no good."

"It ain't so much that," explained Cactus, "as it is they're plum locoed
about Piggy. They want them whiskers and that nose of his to split the
wind at the head of the column."

"There's somethin* mighty seldom about Piggy," declared Bud, mus-
ingly. "I never yet see anything on the hoof that he exactly grades up
with. He can shore holler a plenty, and he straddles a hoss from where
you laid the chunk. But he ain't never been smoked yet. You know, Cac-
tus, we ain't had a row since he's been with us, Piggy's all right for

43^ BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

skearin' the greaser kids and layin' waste a cross-roads store. I reckon
he's the finest canned oyster buccaneer and cheese pirate that ever was,
but how's his appetite for fightin'? Pve knowed some citizens you'd
think was starvin' for trouble get a bad case of dyspepsy the first dose
of lead they had to take."

, "He talks all spraddled out/' said Cactus, " 'bout the rookuses he's
been in. He claims to have saw the elephant and hearn the owl."

"I know," replied Bud, using the cow-puncher's expressive phrase of
skepticism., "but it sounds to me!"

This conversation was held one night in camp while the other mem-
bers of the band — eight in number — were sprawling around the fire, lin-
gering over their supper. When Bud and Cactus ceased talking they
heard Piggy's formidable voice holding forth to the others as usual while
he was engaged in checking, though never satisfying, his ravening appetite.

"Wat's de use," he was saying, "of chasin' little red cowses and bosses
'round for t'ousands of miles? Dere ain't nuttin' in it. Gallopin' t'rough
dese bushes and briers, and gettin* a t'irst dat a brewery couldn't put out,
and missin' meals! Say! You know what I'd do if I was main finger of
dis bunch? I'd stick up a train. I'd blow de express car and make hard
dollars where you guys get wind. Youse makes me tired. Dis sook-cow
kind of cheap sport gives me a pain."

Later on, a deputation waited on Bud. They stood on one leg, chewed
mesquite twigs and circumlocuted, for they hated to hurt his feelings.
Bud foresaw their business, and made it easy for them. Bigger risks and
larger profits was what they wanted.

The suggestion of Piggy's about holding up a train had fired their
imagination and increased their admiration for the dash and boldness of
the instigator. They were such simple, artless, and custom-bound bush-
rangers that they had never before thought of extending their habits be-
yond the running off of live-stock and the shooting of such of their ac-
quaintances as ventured to interfere.

Bud acted "on the level," agreeing to take a subordinate place in the
gang until Black Eagle should have been given a trial as leader.

After a great deal of consultation, studying of time-tables and dis-
cussion of the country's topography, the time and place for carrying out
their new enterprise was decided upon. At that time there was a feed-
stuff famine in Mexico and a cattle famine in certain parts of the United
States, and there was a brisk international trade. Much money was being
shipped along the railroads that connected the two republics. It was
agreed that the most promising place for the contemplated robbery was
at Espina, a little station on the I. and G. N., about forty miles north of
Laredo. The train stopped there one minute; the country around was
wild and unsettled; the station consisted of but one house in which the
agent lived*

THE PASSING OF BLACK EAGLE 437

Black Eagle's band set out, riding by night. Arriving in the vicinity of
Espina they rested their horses all day in a thicket a few miles distant.

The train was due at Espina at 10:30 P.M. They could rob the train
and be well over the Mexican border with their booty by daylight the
next morning.

To do Black Eagle justice, he exhibited no signs of flinching from the
responsible honors that had been conferred upon him.

He assigned his men to their respective posts with discretion, and
coached them carefully as to their duties. On each side of the track four
of the band were to lie concealed in the chaparral. Gotch-Ear Rodgers
was to stick up the station agent. Bronco Charlie was to remain with the
horses, holding them in readiness. At a spot where it was calculated the
engine would be when the train stopped, Bud King was to lie hidden on
one side, and Black Eagle himself on the other. The two would get the
drop on the engineer and fireman, force them to descend and proceed
to the rear. Then the express car would be looted, and the escape made.
No one was to move until Black Eagle gave the signal by firing his re-
volver. The plan was perfect.

At ten minutes to train time every man was at his post, effectually
concealed by the thick chaparral that grew almost to the rails. The night
was dark and lowering, with a fine drizzle falling from the flying gulf
clouds. Black Eagle crouched behind a bush within five yards of the
track. Two six-shooters were belted around him Occasionally he drew a
large black bottle from his pocket and raised it to his mouth.

A star appeared far down the track which soon waxed into the head-
light of the approaching train. It came on with an increasing roar; the
engine bore down upon the ambushing desperadoes with a glare and a
shriek like some avenging monster come to deliver them to justice. Black
Eagle flattened himself upon the ground. The engine, contrary to their
calculations, instead of stopping between him and Bud King's place of
concealment, passed fully forty yards farther before it came to a stand.

The bandit leader rose to his feet and peered around the bush. His
men all lay quiet, awaiting the signal. Immediately opposite Black Eagle
was a thing that drew his attention. Instead of being a regular passenger
train it was a mixed one. Before him stood a box car, the door of which,
by some means, had been left slightly open. Black Eagle went up to it
and pushed the door farther open. An odor came forth — a damp, rancid,
familiar, musty, intoxicating, beloved odor stirring strongly at old mem-
ories of happy days and travels. Black Eagle sniffed at the witching smell
as the returned wanderer smells of the rose that twines his boyhood's
cottage home. Nostalgia seized him. He put his hand inside. Excelsior —
dry, springy, curly, soft, enticing, covered the floor. Outside the drizzle
had turned to a chilling rain.

The train bell clanged. The bandit chief unbuckled his belt and cast

438 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

it, with its revolvers, upon the ground. His spurs followed quickly, and
his broad sombrero. Black Eagle was moulting. The train started with a
rattling jerk. The ex-Terror of the Border scrambled into the box car
and closed the door. Stretched luxuriously upon the excelsior, with the
black bottle clasped closely to his breast, his eyes closed, and a foolish,
happy smile upon his terrible features Chicken Ruggles started upon his
return trip.

Undisturbed, with the band of desperate bandits lying motionless,
awaiting the signal to attack, the train pulled out from Espina. As its
speed increased, and the black masses of chaparral went whizzing past
on either side, the express messenger, lighting his pipe, looked through
his window and remarked, feelingly:

"What a jim-dandy place for a hold-up!"

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION

A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was as-
siduously stiching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the
wareen handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning
by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served
nearly ten months of a four-year sentence. He had expected to stay only
about three months, at the longest When a man with as many friends
on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the "stir" it is
hardly worth while to cut his hair.

"Now, Valentine," said the warden, "you'll go out in the morning.
Brace up, and make a man of yourself. You're not a bad fellow at heart.
Stop cracking safes, and live straight."

"Me?" said Jimmy, in surprise. "Why, I never cracked a safe in my
life."

"Oh, no," laughed the warden. "Of course not. Let's see, now. How
was it you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it be-
cause you wouldn't prove an alibi for fear of compromising somebody in
extremely high-toned society? Or was it simply a case of a mean old jury
that had it in for you? It's always one or the other with you innocent
victims."

"Me?" said Jimmy, still blankly virtuous. "Why, warden, I never was
in Springfield in my life!"

"Take him back, Cronin," smiled the warden, "and fix him up with
outgoing clothes. Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him come
to the bull-pen. Better think over my advice, Valentine."

At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the war-

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION 439

den's outer office. He had on a suit of the villainously fitting, ready-made
clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes that the state furnishes to its
discharged compulsory guests.

The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill with
which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good citizenship
and prosperity. The warden gave him a cigar, and shook hands. Valen-
tine, 9762, was chronicled on the books "Pardoned by Governor," and
Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine.

Disregarding the song of the birds, the waving green trees, and the
smell of the flowers, Jimmy headed straight for a restaurant. There he
tasted the first sweet joys of liberty in the shape of a broiled chicken and
a bottle of white wine— followed by a cigar a grade better than the one
the warden had given him. From there he proceeded leisurely to the
depot. He tossed a quarter into the hat of a blind man sitting by the door,
and boarded his train. Three hours set him down in a little town near
the state line. He went to the cafe of one Mike Dolan and shook hands
with Mike, who was alone behind the bar.

"Sorry we couldn't make it sooner, Jimmy, me boy/' said Mike. "But
we had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor
nearly balked. Feeling all right ? "

"Fine," said Jimmy. "Got my key?"

He got his key and went upstairs, unlocking the door of a room at
the rear. Everything was just as he had left it. There on the floor was still
Ben Price's collar-button that had been torn from that eminent detective's
shirt-band when they had overpowered Jimmy to arrest him.

Pulling out from the wall a folding-bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the
wall and dragged out a dust-covered suitcase. He opened this and gazed
fondly at the finest set of burglar's tools in the East. It was a complete
set, made of specially tempered steel, the latest designs in drills, punches,
braces and bits, jimmies, clamps, and augers, with two or three novelties
invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride. Over nine hundred

dollars they had cost him to have made at , a place where they make

such things for the profession.

In half an hour Jimmy went downstairs and through the cafe. He was
now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes, and carried his dusted
and cleaned suitcase in his hand*

"Got anything on?" asked Mike Dolan, genially.

"Me?" said Jimmy, in a puzzled tone. "I don't understand. I'm repre-
senting the New York Amalgamated Short Snap Biscuit Cracker and
Frazzled Wheat Company."

This statement delighted Mike to such an extent that Jimmy had to
take a seltzer-and-milk on the spot. He never touched "hard" drinks.

A week after the release of Valentine, 9762, there was a neat job of

440 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

safe-burglary done in Richmond, Indiana, with no clue to the author. A
scant eight hundred dollars was all that was secured. Two weeks after
that a patented, improved, burglar-proof safe in Logansport was opened
like a cheese to the tune of fifteen hundred dollars, currency; securities
and silver untouched. That began to interest the rogue-catchers. Then an
old-fashioned bank-safe in Jefferson City became active and threw out
of its crater an eruption of bank-notes amounting to five thousand dollars.
The loses were now high enough to bring the matter up into Ben Price's
class of work. By comparing notes, a remarkable similarity in the meth-
ods of the burglaries was noticed. Ben Price investigated the scenes of the
robberies, and was heard to remark:

"That's Dandy Jim Valentine's autograph. He's resumed business.
Look at that combination knob— jerked out as easy as pulling up a rad-
ish in wet weather. He's got the only clamps that can do it. And look
how clean those tumblers were punched out! Jimmy never has to drill
but one hole. Yes, I guess I want Mr. Valentine. Hell do his bit next
time without any short-time or clemency foolishness."

Ben Price knew Jimmy's habits. He had learned them while working
up the Springfield case. Long jumps, quick get-aways, no confederates,
and a taste for good society — these ways had helped Mr. Valentine to
become noted as a successful dodger of retribution. It was given out that
Ben Price had taken up the trail of the elusive cracksman, and other
people with burglar-proof safes felt more at ease.

One afternoon Jimmy Valentine and his suitcase climbed out of the
mail-hack in Elmore, a little town five miles off the railroad down in the
black-jack country of Arkansas. Jimmy, looking like an athletic young
senior just home from college, went down the board sidewalk toward
the hotel.

A young lady crossed the street, passed him at the corner and entered
a door over which was the sign "The Elmore Bank." Jimmy Valentine
looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man. She
lowered her eyes and colored slightly. Young men of Jimmy's style and
looks were scarce in Elmore.

Jimmy collared a boy that was loafing on the steps of the bank as if he
were one of the stock-holders, and began to ask him questions about the
town, feeding him dimes at intervals. By and by the young lady came
out, looking royally unconscious of the young man with the suitcase, and
went her way.

"Isn't that young lady Miss Polly Simpson?" asked Jimmy, with spe-
cious guile.

"Naw," said the boy. "She's Annabel Adams. Her pa owns this bank.
What'd you come to Elmore for? Is that a gold watch-chain? Fm going
to get a bulldog. Got any more dimes?"

Jimmy went to the Planter* Hotel, registered as Ralph D. Spencer,

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION 441

and engaged a room. He leaned on the desk and declared his platform
to the clerk. He said he had come to Elmore to look for a location to go
into business. How was the shoe business, now, in the town? He had
thought of the shoe business. Was there an opening?

The clerk was impressed by the clothes and manner of Jimmy. He,
himself, was something of a pattern of fashion to the thinly gilded youth
of Elmore, but he now perceived his shortcomings. While trying to
figure out Jimmy's manner of tying his four-in-hand he cordially gave in-
formation.

Yes, there ought to be a good opening in the shoe line. There wasn't
an exclusive shoe-store in the place. The dry-goods and general stores
handled them. Business in all lines was fairly good. Hoped Mr. Spencer
would decide to locate in Elmore. He would find it a pleasant town to
live in, and the people very sociable.

Mr. Spencer thought he would stop over in the town a few days and
look over the situation. No, the clerk needn't call the boy. He would
carry up his suitcase, himself; it was rather heavy.

Mr. Ralph Spencer, the phoenix that arose from Jimmy Valentine's
ashes — ashes left by the flame of a sudden and alternative attack of love
— remained in Elmore, and prospered. He opened a shoe-store and se-
cured a good run of trade.

Socially he was also a success, and made, many friends. And he accom-
plished the wish of his heart. He met Miss Annabel Adams, and became
more and more captivated by her charms.

At the end of a year the situation of Mr. Ralph Spencer was this: he
had won the respect of the community, his shoe-store was flourishing,
and he and Annabel were engaged to be married in two weeks. Mr.
Adams, the typical, plodding, country banker, approved of Spencer.
Annabel's pride in him almost equalled her affection. He was as much
at home in the family of Mr. Adams and that of Annabel's married sis-
ter as if he were already a member.

One day Jimmy sat down in his room and wrote this letter, which he
mailed to the safe address of one of his old friends in St. Louis:

Dear Old Pal:

I want you to be at Sullivan's place, in Little Rock,, next Wednes-
day night at nine o'clock. I want you to wind up some little matters
for me. And, also, I want to make you a present of rny kit of tools. I
know you'll be glad to get them — you couldn't duplicate the lot for a
thousand dollars. Say, Billy, I've quit the old business — a year ago. I've
got a nice store. I'm making an honest living, and I'm going to marry
the finest girl on earth two weeks from now. It's the only life, Billy —
the straight one. I wouldn't touch a dollar of another man's money
now for a million. After I get married I'm going to sell out and go
West, where there won't be so much danger of having old scores

442 BOOKIV ROADS OF DESTINY

brought up against me. I tell you, Billy, she's an angel. She believes
in me; and I wouldn't do another crooked thing for the whole world.
Be sure to be at Sully 's, for I must see you. I'll bring along the tools
with me.

Your old friend.

Jimmy

On the Monday night after Jimmy wrote this letter, Ben Price jogged
unobtrusively into Elmore in a livery buggy. He lounged about town in
his quiet way until he found out what he wanted to know. From the
drug-store across the street from Spencer's shoe-store he got a good look
at Ralph D. Spencer.

"Going to marry the banker's daughter are you, Jimmy?" said Ben
to himself, softly. "Well, I don't know!"

The next morning Jimmy took breakfast at the Adamses. He was
going to Little Rock that day to order his wedding-suit and buy some-
thing nice for Annabel. That would be the first time he had left town
since he came to Elmore. It had been more than a year now since those
last professional "jobs," and he thought he could safely venture out.

After breakfast quite a family party went down town together — Mr.
Adams, Annabel, Jimmy, and Annabel's married sister with her two
little girls, aged five and nine. They came by the hotel where Jimmy still
boarded, and he ran up to his room and brought along his suitcase. Then
they went on to the bank. There stood Jimmy's horse and buggy and
Dolph Gibson, who was going to drive him over to the railroad station.

All went inside the high, carved oak railings into the banking-room
—Jimmy included, for Mr. Adams's future son-in-law was welcome any-
where. The clerks were pleased to be greeted by the good-looking, agree-
able young man who was going to marry Miss Annabel. Jimmy set his
suitcase down. Annabel, whose heart was bubbling with happiness and
lively youth, put on Jimmy's hat and picked up the suitcase. "Wouldn't
I make a nice drummer?" said Annabel. "My! Ralph, how heavy it is.
Feels like it was full of gold bricks."

"Lot of nickel-plated shoe-horns in there," said Jimmy, cooly, "that
I'm going to return. Thought I'd save express charges by taking them
up. I'm getting awfully economical."

The Elmore Bank had just put in a new safe and vault. Mr. Adams
was very proud of it, and insisted on an inspection by every one. The
vault was a small one, but it had a new patented door. It fastened with
three solid steel bolts thrown simultaneously with a single handle, and
had a time-lock. Mr. Adams beamingly explained its workings to Mr.
Spencer, who showed a courteous but not too intelligent interest. The two
children, May and Agatha, were delighted by the shining metal and
funny clock and knobs.

While they were thus engaged Ben Price sauntered in and leaned on

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION 443

his elbow, looking casually inside between the railings. He told the teller
that he didn't want anything; he was just waiting for a man he knew.

Suddenly there was a scream or two from the women, and a commo-
tion. Unperceived by the elders, May, the nine-year-old girl, in a spirit
of play, had shut Agatha in the vault. She had then shot the bolts and
turned the knob of the combination as she had seen Mr. Adams do.

The old banker sprang to the handle and tugged at it for a moment.
"The door can't be opened," he groaned. "The clock hasn't been wound
nor the combination set."

Agatha's mother screamed again, hysterically.

"Hush!" said Mr. Adams, raising his trembling hand. "All be quiet
for a moment, Agatha!" he called as loudly as he could: "Listen to me."
During the following silence they could just hear the faint sound of the
child wildly shrieking in the dark vault in a panic of terror.

"My precious darling!" wailed the mother. "She will die of fright!
Open the door! Oh, break it open! Can't you men do something?"

"There isn't a man nearer than Little Rock who can open that door/'
said Mr. Adams, in a shaky voice. "My God! Spencer, what shall we do?
That child — she can't stand it long in there. There isn't enough air, and,
besides, she'll go into convulsions from fright."

Agatha's mother, frantic now, beat the door of the vault with her
hands. Somebody wildly suggested dynamite. Annabel turned to Jimmy,
her large eyes full of anguish, but not yet despairing. To a woman noth-
ing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

"Can't you do something, Ralph — try, won't you?"

He looked at her with a queer, soft smile on his lips and in his keen
eyes.

"Annabel," he said, "give me that rose you are wearing, will you?"

Hardly believing that she heard him aright, she unpinned the bud
from the bosom of her dress, and placed it in his hand. Jimmy stuffed it
into his vest-pocket, threw off his coat and pulled up his shirt-sleeves.
With that act Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took
his place.

"Get away from the door, all of you," he commanded, shortly.

He set his suitcase on the table, and opened it out flat. From that
time on he seemed to be unconscious of the presence of any one else. He
laid out the shining, queer implements swiftly and orderly, whistling
softly to himself as he always did when at work. In a deep silence and
immovable, the others watched him as if under a spell.

In a minute Jimmy's pet drill was biting smoothly into the steel door.
In ten minutes — breaking his own burglarious record — he threw back the
bolts and opened the door.

Agatha, almost collapsed, but safe, was gathered into her mother's arm

Jimmy Valentine put on his coat, and walked outside the railings

444 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

toward the front door. As he went he thought he heard a far-away voice
that he once knew call "Ralph!" But he never hesitated.

At the door a big man stood somewhat in his way.

"Hello, Ben!" said Jimmy, still with his strange smile. "Got around at
last, have you? Well, let's go. I don't know that it makes much differ-
ence, now."

And then Ben Price acted rather strangely.

"Guess you're mistaken, Mr. Spencer," he said. "Don't believe I rec-
ognize you. Your buggy's waiting for you, ain't it?"

And Ben Price turned and strolled down the street.

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME

Robbins, reporter for the Picayune, and Dumars, of L* Abeille—fat old
French newspaper that has buzzed for nearly a century — were good
friends, well proven by years of ups and downs together. They were
seated where they had a habit of meeting— in the little, Creole-haunted
cafe of Madame Tibault, in Dumaine Street If you know the place, you
will experience a thrill of pleasure in recalling it to mind. It is small and
dark, with six little polished tables, at which you may sit and drink the
best coffee in New Orleans, and concoctions of absinthe equal to
Sazerac's best. Madame Tibault, fat and indulgent, presides at the desk,
and takes your money. Nicolette and Meme, Madame's nieces, in charm-
ing bib aprons, bring the desirable beverages.

Dumars, with true Creole luxury, was sipping his absinthe, with half-
closed eyes, in a swirl of cigarette smoke. Robbins was looking over the
morning Pic., detecting, as young reporters will, the gross blunders in the
make-up, and the envious blue-pencilling his own stuff had received.
This item, in the advertising columns, caught his eye, and with an ex-
clamation of sudden interest he read it aloud to his friend.

PUBLIC AUCTION. — At three o'clock this afternoon there will be sold
to the highest bidder all the common property of the Little Sisters of Sa-
maria, at the home of the Sisterhood, in Bonhomme Street. The sale
will dispose of the building, ground, and the complete furnishings of
the house and chapel, without reserve.

This notice stirred the two friends to a reminiscent talk concerning an
episode in their journalistic career that had occurred about two years
before. They recalled the incidents, went over the old theories, and dis-
cussed it anew from the different perspective time had brought.

There were no other customers in the cafe. Madame's fine ear had

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME 445

caught the line of their talk, and she carne over to their table— for had it
not been her lost money — her vanished twenty thousand dollars — that
had set the whole matter going?

The three took up the long-abandoned mystery, threshing over the old,
dry chaff of it. It was in the chapel of this house of the Litde Sisters of
Samaria that Robbins and Dumars had stood during that eager, fruitless
news search of theirs, and looked upon the gilded statue of the Virgin.

"Thass so, boys," said Madame, summing up. "Thass ver' wicked
man, M'sieur Morin. Everybody shall be cert' he steal those money I plaze
in his hand to keep safe. Yes. He's boun' spend that money, somehow."
Madame turned a broad and comprehensive smile upon Dumars. "I
ond'stand you, M'sieur Dumars, those day you come ask me fo* tell
ev'ything I know 'bout M'sieur Morin. Ah! yes, I know most time when
those men lose money you say 'Cherchez la jemme* — there is somewhere
the woman. But not for M'sieur Morin. No, boys. Before he shall die, he
is like one saint. You might's well, M'sieur Dumars, go try find those
money in those statue of Virgin Mary that M'sieur Morin present at those
p'tite scsurs, as try find one jcmme"

At Madame Tibault's last words, Robbins started slightly and cast a
keen sidelong glance at Dumars. The Creole sat> unmoved, dreamily
watching the spirals of his cigarette smoke.

It was then nine o'clock in the morning and, a few minutes later, the
two friends separated, going different ways to their day's duties. And
now follows the brief story of Madame Tibault's vanished thousands:

New Orleans will readily recall to mind the circumstances attendant
upon the death of Mr. Gaspard Morin, in that city. Mr. Morin was an
artistic goldsmith and jeweller in the old French Quarter, and a man held
in the highest esteem. He belonged to one of the oldest French families,
and was of some distinction as an antiquary and historian. He was a
bachelor, about fifty years of age. He lived in quiet comfort, at one of
those rare old hostelries in Royal Street. He was found in his rooms., one
morning, dead from unknown causes.

When his affairs came to be looked into, it was found that he was
practically insolvent, his stock of goods and personal property barely—
but nearly enough to free him from censure — covering his liabilities.
Following came the disclosure that he had been intrusted with the sum
of twenty thousand dollars by a former upper servant in the Morin fam-
ily, one Madame Tibault, which she had received as a legacy from rela-
tives in France,

The most searching scrutiny by friends and the legal authorities failed
to reveal the disposition of the money. It had vanished, and left no trace.
Some weeks before his death, Mr. Morin had drawn the entire amount,
in gold coin, from the bank where it had been placed while he looked

446 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

about (he told Madame Tibault) for a safe investment. Therefore, Mr.
Morin's memory seemed doomed to bear the cloud of dishonety, while
Madame was, of course, disconsolate.

Then it was that Robbins and Dumars, representing their respective
journals, began one of those pertinacious private investigations which, of
late years, the press has adopted as a means to glory and the satisfaction
of public curiosity.

"Cherchez la jemme" said Dumars.

"That's the ticket!" agreed Robbins. "All roads lead to the eternal
feminine. We will find the woman."

They exhausted the knowledge of the staff of Mr. Morin's hotel, from
the bellboy down to the proprietor. They gently, but inflexibly, pumped
the family of the deceased as far as his cousins twice removed. They art-
fully sounded the employees of the late jeweller, and dogged his custom-
ers for information concerning his habits. Like bloodhounds they traced
every step of the supposed defaulter, as nearly as might be, for years along
the limited and monotonous paths he had trodden.

At the end of their labors, Mr. Morin stood, an immaculate man. Not
one weakness that might be served up as a criminal tendency, not one
deviation from the path of rectitude, not even a hint of a predilection for
the opposite sex, was found to be placed to his debit. His life had been as
regular and austere as a monk's; his habits, simple and unconcealed.
Generous, charitable, and a model in propriety, was the verdict of all
who knew him.

"What, now?" asked Robbins, fingering his empty notebook.

"Cherchez la femme" said Dumars, lighting a cigarette. "Try Lady
Bellairs."

This piece of femininity was the race-track favorite of the season. Be-
ing feminine, she was erratic in her gaits, and there were a few heavy
losers about town who had believed she could be true. The reporters ap-
plied for information.

Mr. Morin? Certainly not. He was never ever a spectator at the races.
Not that kind of a man. Surprised the gentlemen should ask.

"Shall we throw it up?" suggested Robbins, "and let the puzzle de-
partment have a try?"

"Cherchez la jemme" hummed Dumars, reaching for a match. "Try
the Little Sisters of What-d'-you-call-'em."

It had developed, during the investigation, that Mr. Morin had held
this benevolent order in particular favor. He had contributed liberally
toward its support and had chosen its chapel as his favorite place of pri-
vate worship. It was said that he went there daily to make his devo-
tions at the altar. Indeed, toward the last of his life his whole mind
seemed to have fixed itself upon religious matters, perhaps to the detri-
ment of his worldly affairs.

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME 447

Thither went Robbins and Dumars, and were admitted through the
narrow doorway in the blank stone wall that frowned upon Bonhomme
Street. An old woman was sweeping the chapel. She told them that Sis-
ter Felicite, the head of the order, was then at prayer at the altar in the al-
cove. In a few moments she would emerge. Heavy, black curtains
screened the alcove. They waited.

Soon the curtains were disturbed, and Sister Felicite came forth. She
was tall, tragic, bony, and plain-featured, dressed in the black gown and
severe bonnet of the sisterhood.

Robbins, a good rough-and-tumble reporter, but lacking the delicate
touch, began to speak.

They represented the press. The lady had, no doubt, heard of the
Morin affair. It was necessary, in justice to that gentleman's memory, to
probe the mystery of the lost money. It was known that he had come
often to this chapel. Any information, now, concerning Mr. Morin's hab-
its, tastes, the friends he had, and so on, would be of value in doing
him posthumous justice.

Sister Felicite had heard. Whatever she knew would be willingly told,
but it was very little. Monsieur Morin had been a good friend to the or-
der, sometimes contributing as much as a hundred dollars. The sister-
hood was an independent one, depending entirely upon private contri-
butions for the means to carry on its charitable work. Mr. Morin had
presented the chapel with silver candlesticks and an altar cloth. He came
every day to worship in the chapel, sometimes remaining for an hour.
He was a devout Catholic, consecrated to holiness. Yes, and also in the
alcove was a statue of the Virgin that he had himself modeled, cast, and
presented to the order. Oh, it was cruel to cast a doubt upon so good a
man!

Robbins was also profoundly grieved at the imputation. But, until it
was found what Mr. Morin had done with Madame Tibault's money, he
feared the tongue of slander would not be stilled. Sometimes — in fact,
very often — in affairs of the kind there was — er — as the saying goes — er
— a lady in the case. In absolute confidence, now — if — perhaps

Sister Felicite's large eyes regarded him solemnly.

"There was one woman," she said, slowly, "to whom he bowed —
whom he gave his heart."

Robbins fumbled rapturously for his pencil.

"Behold the woman!" said Sister Felicite, suddenly, in deep tones.

She reached a long arm and swept aside the curtain of the alcove. In
there was a shrine, lit to a glow of soft color by the light pouring through
a stained-glass window. Within a deep niche in the bare stone wall stood
an image of the Virgin Mary, the color of pure gold.

Dumars, a conventional Catholic, succumbed to the dramatic in the
act. He bowed his head for an instant and made the sign of the cross.
The somewhat abashed Robbins, murmuring an indistinct apology,

448 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

backed awkwardly away. Sister Felicite drew back the curtain, and the re-
porters departed.

On the narrow stone sidewalk of Bonhomme Street, Robbins turned
to Dumars, with unworthy sarcasm.

"Well, what next? Churchy law fern?"

"Absinthe," said Dumars.

With the history of the missing money thus partially related, some
conjecture may be formed of the sudden idea that Madame Tibault's
words seemed to have suggested to Robbins's brain.

Was it so wild a surmise — that the religious fanatic had offered up his
wealth— or, rather, Madame Tibault's— in the shape of a material
symbol of his consuming devotion? Stranger things have been done in
the name of worship. Was it not possible that the lost thousands were
molded into the lustrous image? That the goldsmith had formed it of
the pure and precious metal, and set it there, through some hope of a
perhaps disordered brain to propitiate the saints and pave the way to his
own selfish glory?

That afternoon, at five minutes to three, Robbins entered the chapel
door of the Little Sisters of Samaria. He saw, in the dim light, a crowd of
perhaps a hundred people gathered to attend the sale. Most of them
were members of various religious orders, priests and churchmen, come
to purchase the paraphernalia of the chapel, lest they fall into desecrat-
ing hands. Others were business men and agents come to bid upon the
realty. A clerical-looking brother had volunteered to wield the hammer,
bringing to the office of auctioneer the anomaly of choice diction and
dignity of manner.

A few of the minor articles were sold, and then two assistants brought
forward the image of the Virgin.

Robbins started the bidding at ten dollars. A stout man, in an eccle-
siastical garb, went to fifteen. A voice from another part of the crowd
raised to twenty. The three bid alternately, raising by bids of five, until
the offer was fifty dollars. Then the stout man dropped out, and Rob-
bins, as a sort of coup de mam, went to a hundred.

"One hundred and fifty/' said the other voice.

"Two hundred," bid Robbins, boldly.

"Two-fifty," called his competitor, promptly.

The reporter hesitated for the space of a lightning flash, estimating
how much he could borrow from the boys in the office, and screw from
the business manager from his next month's salary,

"Three hundred," he offered.

"Three-fifty," spoke up the other, in a louder voice — a voice that sent
Robbins diving suddenly through the crowd in its direction, to catch Du-
mars, its owner, ferociously by the collar.

"You unconverted idiot!" hissed Robbins, close to his ear — "pooll"

CHERCHEZ LA FEMME 449

"Agreed!" said Dumars, coolly. "I couldn't raise three hundred and
fifty dollars with a search-warrant, but I can stand half. What you come
bidding against me for?"

"I thought I was the only fool in the crowd," explained Robbins.

No one else bidding, the statue was knocked down to the syndicate at
their last offer. Dumars remained with the prize, while Robbins hurried
forth to wring from the resources and credit of both the prize. He soon
returned with the money, and the two musketeers loaded their precious
package into a carriage and drove with it to Dumars 's room, in old Char-
tres Street, near by. They lugged it, covered with a cloth, up the stairs,
and deposited it on a table. A hundred pounds it weighed, if an ounce,
and at that estimate, according to their calculation, if their daring theory
were correct, it stood there, worth twenty thousand golden dollars.

Robbins removed the covering, and opened his pocket-knife.

"Sacrtl" muttered Dumars, shuddering. "It is the Mother of Christ.
What would you do?"

"Shut up, Judas!" said Robbins, coldly. "It's too late for you to be
saved now."

With a firm hand, he clipped a slice from the shoulder of the image.
The cut showed a dull, grayish metal, with a thin coating of gold leaf.

"Lead!" announced Robbins, hurling his knife to the floor — "gilded!"

"To the devil with it!" said Dumars forgetting his scruples. "I must
have a drink."

Together they walked moodily to the cafe of Madame Tibault, two
squares away.

It seemed that Madame's mind had been stirred that day to fresh rec-
ollections of the past services of the two young men in her behalf.

"You mustn't sit by those table," she interposed, as they were about to
drop into their accustomed seats. "Thass so, boys. But no. I mek you
come at this room, like my tres bans amis. Yes. I goin' mek for you my-
self one anisette and one cafe royale ver' fine. Ah! I lak treat my fren'
nize. Yes. Plis come in this way."

Madame led them into the little back room, into which she sometimes
invited the especially favored of her customers. In two comfortable arm-
chairs, by a big window that opened upon the courtyard, she placed
them, with a low table between. Bustling hospitably about, she began
to prepare the promised refreshments.

It was the first time the reporters had been honored with admission to
the sacred precincts. The room was in dusky twilight, flecked with
gleams of the polished fine woods and burnished glass and metal that
the Creoles love. From the little courtyard a tiny fountain sent in an in-
sinuating sound of trickling waters, to which a banana plant by the win-
dow kept time with its tremulous leaves.

Robbins, an investigator by nature, sent a curious glance roving about

450 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

the room. From some barbaric ancestor, Madame had inherited a pen-
chant for the crude in decoration.

The walls were adorned with cheap lithographs— florid libels upon
nature, addressed to the taste of the bourgeoisie-— birthday cards, garish
newspaper supplements, and specimens of art-advertising calculated to
reduce the optic nerve to stunned submission. A patch of something un-
intelligible in the midst of the more candid display puzzled Robbins,
and he rose and took a step nearer, to interrogate it at closer range. Then
he leaned weakly against the wall, and called out:

"Madame Tibault! Oh, madame! Since when— oh! since when have
you been in the habit of papering your walls with five thousand dollar
United States four per cent, gold bonds? Tell me— is this a Grimm's
fairy tale, or should I consult an oculist?"

At his words, Madame Tibault and Dumars approached.

"HVhat you say?" said Madame, cheerily, "H'what you say, M'sieur
Robbin'? Bon! Ah those nize li'l peezes papier! One tarn I think those
wa't you call calendair, wiz ze li'l day of mom' below. But, no. Those
wall is broke in those plaze, M'sieur Robbin', and I plaze those li'l
peezes papier to conceal ze crack. I did think the couleur harm'nize so
well with the wall papier. Where I get them from? Ah, yes, I remem'
ver' well. One day M'sieur Morin, he come at my house— thass 'bout one
mont' before he shall die — thass 'long 'bout tarn he promise fo' inves' those
money fo* me. M'sieur Morin, he leave those li'l peezes papier in those ta-
ble, and say ver' much 'bout money thass hard for me to ond'stan. Mais I
never see those money again. Thass ver' wicked man, M'sieur Morin.
H'what you call those peezes papier, M'sieur Robbin'— bonl"

Robbins explained.

"There's your twenty thousand dollars, with coupons attached," he
said, running his thumb around the edge of the four bonds. "Better get
an expert to peel them oil for you. Mister Morin was all right. I'm going
out to get my ears trimmed.'*

He dragged Dumars by the arm into the outer room. Madame was
screaming for Nicolette and Meme to come and observe the fortune re-
turned to her by M'sieur Morin, the best of men, that saint in glory.

"Marsy," said Robbins. "I'm going on a jamboree. For three days the
esteemed Pic. will have to get along without my valuable services. I ad-
vise you to join me. Now, that green stuff you drink is no good. It stim-
ulates thought. What we want to do is to forget to remember. I'll intro-
duce you to the only lady in this case that is guaranteed to produce the
desired results. Her name is Belle of Kentucky, twelve-year-old Bourbon.
In quarts. How does the idea strike you?"
"Allans!" said Dumars. "Cherchez la femme"

FRIENDS IN SAN ROSARIO 45!

FRIENDS IN SAN ROSARIO

The west-bound stopped at San. Rosario on time at 8:20 A.M. A man with
a thick black-leather wallet under his arm left the train and walked rap-
idly up the main street o£ the town. There were other passengers who
also got off at San Rosario, but they either slouched limberly over to the
railroad eating-house or the Silver Dollar saloon, or joined the groups of
idlers about the station.

Indecision had no part in the movements of the man with the wallet,
He was short in stature, but strongly built, with very light, closely
trimmed hair, smooth, determined face, and aggressive, gold-rimmed
nose glasses. He was well dressed in the prevailing Eastern style. His air
denoted a quiet but conscious reserve force, if not actual authority.

After walking a distance of three squares he came to the center of the
town's business area. Here another street of importance crossed the main
one, forming the hub of San Rosario 's life and commerce. Upon one cor-
ner stood the postoffice. Upon another Rubensky's Clothing Emporium.
The other two diagonally opposing corners were occupied by the town's
two banks, the First National and the Stockmen's National. Into the First
National Bank of San Rosario the newcomer walked, never slowing his
brisk step until he stood at the cashier's window. The bank opened for
business at nine, and the working force was already assembled, each
member preparing his department for the day's business. The cashier was
examining the mail when he noticed the stranger standing at his window.

"Bank doesn't open 'til nine," he remarked, curtly, but without feeling.
He had had to make that statement so often to early birds since San Ro-
sario adopted city banking hours.

"I am well aware of that," said the other man, in cool, brittle tones.
"Will you kindly receive my card?"

The cashier drew the small, spotless parallelogram inside the bars of
his wicket, and read:

J.RaNETTLEWICK

NATIONAL BANK EXAMINER

"Oh — er — will you walk around inside, Mr. — er— Netdewick. Your first
visit — didn't know your business, of course. Walk right around, please."

The examiner was quickly inside the sacred precincts of the bank,
where he was ponderously introduced to each employee in turn by Mr.
Edlinger, the cashier — a middle-aged gentleman of deliberation, discre-
tion, and method.

452 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"I was kind of expecting Sam Turner round again, pretty soon," said
Mr. Edlinger. "Sam's been examining us now for about four years. I
guess you'll find us all right, though considering the tightness in business.
Not overly much money on hand, but able to stand the storms, sir, stand
the storms.'*

"Mr. Turner and I have been ordered by the Comptroller to exchange
districts," said the examiner, in his decisive, formal tones. "He is cover-
ing my old territory in southern Illinois and Indiana. I will take the cash
first, please."

Perry Dorsey, the teller, was already arranging his cash on the counter
for the examiner's inspection. He knew it was right to a cent, and he had
nothing to fear, but he was nervous and flustered. So was every man in
the bank. There was something so icy and swift, so impersonal and un-
compromising about this man that his very presence seemed an accusation.
He looked to be a man who would never make nor overlook an error.

Mr. Nettlewick first seized the currency, and with a rapid, almost jug-
gling motion, counted it by packages. Then he spun the sponge cup to-
ward him and verified the count by bills. His thin, white fingers flew like
some expert musician's upon the keys of a piano. He dumped the gold
upon the counter with a crash, and the coins whined and sang as they
skimmed across the marble slab from the tips of his nimble digits. The
air was full of fractional currency when he came to the halves and quar-
ters. He counted the last nickel and dime. He had the scales brought, and
he weighed every sack of silver in the vault. He questioned Dorsey con-
cerning each of the cash memoranda — certain checks, charge slips, etc.,
carried over from the previous day's work — with unimpeachable courtesy,
yet with something so mysteriously momentous in his frigid manner, that
the teller was reduced to pink cheeks and a stammering tongue.

This newly imported examiner was so different from Sam Turner. It
had been Sam's way to enter the bank with a shout, pass the cigars, and
tell the latest stories he had picked up on his rounds. His customary
greeting to Dorsey had been, "Hello, Perry! Haven't skipped out with
the boodle yet, I see." Turner's way of counting the cash had been differ-
ent too. He would finger the packages of bills in a tired kind of way, and
then go into the vault and kick over a few sacks of silver, and the thing
was done. Halves and quarters and dimes? Not for Sam Turner. "No
chicken feed for me," he would say when they were set before him. "I'm
not in the agricultural department." But, then, Turner was a Texan, an
old friend of the bank's president, and had known Dorsey since he was
a baby.

While the examiner was counting the cash, Major Thomas B. Kingman
— known to every one as "Major Tom" — the president of the First Na-
tional, drove up to the side door with his old dun horse and buggy, 'and
came inside. He saw the examiner busy with the money, and, going into

FRIENDS IN SAN ROSARIO 453

the little "pony corral," as he called it, in which his desk was railed off,
he began to look over his letters.

Earlier, a little incident had occurred that even the sharp eyes of the
examiner had failed to notice. When he had begun his work at the cash
counter, Mr. Edlinger had winked significantly at Roy Wilson, the youth-
ful bank messenger, and nodded his head slightly toward the front door.
Roy understood, got his hat and walked leisurely out, with his collector's
book under his arm. Once outside, he made a beeline for the Stockmen's
National. That bank was also getting ready to open. No customers had,
as yet, presented themselves.

"Say, you people!" cried Roy, with the familiarity of youth and long
acquaintance, "you want to get a move on you. There's a new bank ex-
aminer over at the First, and he's a stem-winder. He's counting nickels
on Perry, and he's got the whole outfit bluffed. Mr. Edlinger gave me the
tip to let you know."

Mr. Buckley, president of the Stockmen's National—a stout, elderly
man, looking like a farmer dressed for Sunday — heard Roy from his pri-
vate office at the rear and called him.

"Has Major Kingman come down to the bank yet?" he asked of the
boy.

"Yes, sir, he was just driving up as I left," said Roy.

"I want you to take him a note. Put it into his own hands as soon as
you get back."

Mr. Buckley sat down and began to write.

Roy returned and handed to Major Kingman the envelope containing
the note. The major read it, folded it, and slipped it into his vest pocket.
He leaned back in his chair for a few moments as if he were meditating
deeply, and then rose and went into the vault. He came out with the
bulky, old-fashioned leather note case stamped on the back in gilt letters,
"Bills Discounted." In this were the notes due the bank with their attached
securities, and the major, in his rough way, dumped the lot upon his desk
and began to sort them over.

By this time Netdewick had finished his count of the cash. His pencil
fluttered like a swallow over the sheet of paper on which he had set his
figures. He opened his black wallet, which seemed to be also a kind of
secret memorandum book, made a few rapid figures in it, wheeled and
transfixed Dorsey with the glare of his spectacles. That look seemed to
say: "You're safe this time, but "

"Cash all correct," snapped the examiner. He made a dash for the
individual bookkeeper., and, for a few minutes there was a fluttering of
ledger leaves and a sailing of balance sheets through the air.

"How often do you balance your pass-books?" he demanded, suddenly.

"Er — once a month," faltered the individual bookkeeper, wondering
how many years they would give him.

454 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"All right," said the examiner, turning and charging upon the general
bookkeeper, who had the statements of his foreign banks and their recon-
cilement memoranda ready. Everything there was found to be all right.
Then the stub book of the certificates of deposit. Flutter— flutter— zup—
zip— check! All right, list of over-drafts, please. Thanks. H'm-m. Un-
signed bills of the bank next. All right.

Then came the cashier's turn, and easy-going Mr. Edlinger rubbed his
nose and polished his glasses nervously under the quick fire of questions
concerning the circulation, undivided profits, bank real estate, and stock
ownership.

Presently Nettlewick was aware of a big man towering above him at
his elbow— a man sixty years of age, rugged and hale, with a rough, griz-
zled beard, a mass of gray hair, and a pair of penetrating blue eyes that
confronted the formidable glasses of the examiner without a flicker.

"Er— Major Kingman, our president— er— Mr. Nettlewick," said the
cashier.

Two men of very different types shook hands. One was a finished
product of the world of straight lines, conventional methods, and formal
affairs. The other was something freer, wider, and nearer to nature. Tom
Kingman had not been cut to any pattern. He had been mule-driver,
cowboy, ranger, soldier, sheriff, prospector and cattleman. Now, when he
was bank president, his old comrades from the prairies, of the saddle,
tent, and trail, found no change in him. He had made his fortune when
Texas cattle were at the high tide of value, and had organized the First
National Bank of San Rosario. In spite of his largeness of heart and
sometimes unwise generosity toward his old friends, the bank had pros-
pered, for Major Tom Kingman knew men as well as he knew cattle.
Of late years the cattle business had known a depression, and the major's
bank was one of the few whose losses had not been great.

"And now," said the examiner, briskly, pulling out his watch, "the last
thing is the loans. We will take them up now, if you please."

He had gone through the First National at almost record-breaking
speed — but thoroughly, as he did everything. The running order of the
bank was smooth and clean, and that had facilitated his work. There was
but one other bank in the town. He received from the Government a fee
of twenty-five dollars for each bank that he examined. He should be able
to go over those loans and discounts in half an hour. If so, he could exam-
ine the other bank immediately afterward, and catch the 11:45, the only
other train that day in the direction he was working. Otherwise, he would
have to spend the night and Sunday in this uninteresting Western town.
That was why Mr. Nettlewick was rushing matters.

"Come with me, sir," said Major Kingman, in his deep voice, that
united the Southern drawl with the rhythmic twang of the West. "We

FRIENDS IN SAN ROSARIO 455

will go over them together. Nobody in the bank knows those notes as I
do. Some of 'em are a little wobbly on their legs, and some are mavericks
without extra many brands on their backs, but they'll 'most all pay out
at the round-up,"

The two sat down at the president's desk. First, the examiner went
through the notes at lightning speed, and added up their total, finding it
to agree with the amount of loans carried on the bo'ok of daily balances.
Next, he took up the larger loans, inquiring scrupulously into the condi-
tion of their endorsers or securities. The new examiner's mind seemed to
course and turn and make unexpected dashes hither and thither like a
bloodhound seeking a trail. Finally he pushed aside all the notes except
a few, which he arranged in a neat pile before him, and began a dry,
formal little speech.

"I find, sir, the condition of your bank to be very good, considering
the poor crops and the depression in the cattle interests of your state. The
clerical work seems to be done accurately and punctually. Your past-due
paper is moderate in amount, and promises only a small loss. I would
recommend the calling in of your large loans, and the making of only
sixty and ninety day or call loans until general business revives. And now,
there is one thing more, and I will have finished with the bank. Here are
six notes aggregating something like $40,000. They are secured, according
to their faces, by various stocks, bonds, shares, etc., to the value of $70,000.
Those securities are missing from the notes to which they should be at-
tached. I suppose you have them in the safe or vault. You will permit me
to examine them."

Major Tom's light-blue eyes turned unflinchingly toward the examiner.

"No, sir/' he said, in a low but steady tone; "those securities are neither
in the safe nor the vault. I have taken them. You may hold me personally
responsible for their absence."

Nettlewick felt a slight thrill. He had not expected this. He had struck
a momentous trail when the hunt was drawing to a close.

"Ah!" said the examiner. He waited a moment, and then continued:
"May I ask you to explain more definitely?"

"The securities were taken by trie," repeated the major. "It was not for
my own use, but to save an old friend in trouble. Come in here, sir, and
we'll talk it over."

He led the examiner into the bank's private office at the rear, and
closed the door. There was a desk, and a table, and half-a-dozen leather-
covered chairs. On the wall was the mounted head of a Texas steer with
horns five feet from tip to tip. Opposite hung the major's old cavalry saber
that he had carried at Shiloh and Fort Pillow.

Placing a chair for Nettlewick, the major seated himself by the window,
from which he could see the post-office and the carved limestone front of

456 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

the Stockmen's National. He did not speak at once, and Nettlewick felt,
perhaps, that the ice should be broken by something so near its own tem-
perature as the voice of official warning.

"Your statement/' he began, "since you have failed to modify it,
amounts, as you must know, to a very serious thing. You are aware,
also, of what my duty must compel me to do. I shall have to go before the
United States Commissioner and make "

"I know, I know," said Major Tom, with a wave of his hand. "You
don't suppose I'd run a bank without being posted on national banking
laws and the revised statutes! Do your duty. I'm not asking any favors.
But I spoke of my friend. I did want you to hear me tell about Bob."

Nettlewick settled himself in his chair. There would be no leaving San
Rosario for him that day. He would have to telegraph to the Comptroller
of the Currency; he would have to swear out a warrant before the United
States Commissioner for the arrest of Major Kingman; perhaps he would
be ordered to close the bank on account of the loss of the securities. It
was not the first crime the examiner had unearthed. Once or twice the
terrible upheaval of human emotions that his investigations had loosed had
almost caused a ripple in his official calm. He had seen bank men kneel and
plead and cry like women for a chance — an hour's time — the overlooking
of a single error. One cashier had shot himself at his desk before him. None
of them had taken it with the dignity and coolness of this stern old West-
erner. Nettlewick felt that he owed it to him at least to listen if he wished
to talk. With his elbow on the arm of his chair, and his square chin resting
upon the fingers of his right hand, the bank examiner waited to hear the
confession of the president of the First National Bank of San Rosario.

"When a man's your friend," began Major Tom, somewhat didactically,
"for forty years, and tried by water, fire, earth, and cyclones, when you
can do him a little favor you feel like doing it." ,

("Embezzle for him $70,000 worth of securities," thought the exam-
iner.)

"We were cowboys together, Bob and I," continued the major, speaking
slowly, and deliberately, and musingly, as if his thoughts were rather
with the past than the critical present, "and we prospected together for
gold and silver over Arizona, New Mexico, and a good part of California,
We were both in the war of sixty-one, but in different commands. We've
fought Indians and horse thieves side by side; we've starved for weeks in
a cabin in the Arizona mountains, buried twenty feet deep in snow;
we've ridden herd together when the wind blew so hard the lightning
couldn't strike — well, Bob and I have been through some rough spells
since the first time we met in the branding camp of the old Anchor-Bar
ranch. And during that time we've found it necessary more than once to
help each other out of tight places. In those days it was expected of a man
to stick to his friend, and he didn't ask any credit for it. Probably next day

FRIENDS IN SAN ROSARIO 457

you'd need him to get at your back and help stand off a band of Apaches,
or put a tourniquet on your leg above a rattlesnake bite and ride for
whisky. So, after all, it was give and take, and if you didn't stand square
with your pardner, why, you might be shy one when you needed him.
But Bob was a man who was willing to go further than that. He never
played a limit.

"Twenty years ago I was sheriff of this county and I made Bob my
chief deputy. That was before the boom in cattle when we both made our
stake. I was sheriff and collector, and it was a big thing for me then. I
was married, and we had a boy and a girl — a four and a six year old.
There was a comfortable house next to the courthouse, furnished by the
county, rent free, and I was saving some money. Bob did most of the office
work. Both of us had seen rough times and plenty of rustling and danger,
and I tell you it was great to hear the rain and the sleet dashing against
the windows of nights, and be warm and safe and comfortable, and know
you could get up in the morning and be shaved and have folks call you
'mister.' And then, I had the finest wife and kids that ever struck the
range, and my old friend with me enjoying the first fruits of prosperity
and white shirts, and I guess I was happy. Yes, I was happy about that
time."

The major sighed and glanced casually out of the window. The bank
examiner changed his position, and leaned his chin upon his other hand.

"One winter," continued the major, "the money for the county taxes
came pouring in so fast that I didn't have time to take the stuff to the
bank for a week. I just shoved the checks into a cigar box and the money
into a sack, and locked them in the big safe that belonged in the sheriff's
office.

"I had been overworked that week, and was about sick, anyway. My
nerves were out of order, and my sleep at night didn't seem to rest me.
The doctor had some scientific name for it, and I was taking medicine*
And so, added to the rest, I went to bed at night with that money on my
mind. Not that there was much need of being worried, for the safe was
a good one, and nobody but Bob and I knew the combination. On Friday
night there was about $6,500 in cash in the bag. On Saturday morning I
went to the office as usual. The safe was locked, and Bob was writing at
his desk. I opened the safe, and the money was gone. I called Bob, and
roused everybody in the courthouse to announce the robbery. It struck me
that Bob took it pretty quiet, considering how much it reflected upon both
him and me.

"Two days went by and we never got a clew. It couldn't have been
burglars, for the safe had been opened by the combination in the proper
way. People must have begun to talk, for one afternoon in comes Alice —
that's my wife — and the boy and girl, and Alice stamps her foot, and her
eyes flash, and she cries out, 'The lying wretches — Tom, Tom!' and I

45^ BOOK IV ROADS OP DESTINY

catch her in a faint, and bring her 'round little by little, and she lays her
head down and cries and cries for the first time since she took Tom King-
man's name and fortunes. And Jack and Zilla— the youngsters— they were
always: wild as tiger's cubs to rush at Bob and climb all over him whenever
they were allowed to come to the courthouse— they stood and kicked their
little shoes, and herded together like scared partridges. They were having
their first trip down into the shadows of life. Bob was working at his desk,
and he got up and went out without a word. The grand jury was in session
then, and the next morning Bob went before them and confessed that he
stole the money. He said he lost it in a poker game. In fifteen minutes they
had found a true bill and sent me the warrant to arrest the man with
whom I'd been closer than a thousand brothers for many a year.

"I did it, and then I said to Bob, pointing: 'There's my house, and
here's my office, and up there's Maine, and out that way is California, and
over there is Florida — and that's your range 'til court meets. You're in my
charge, and I take the responsibility. You be here when you're wanted.'

" 'Thanks, Tom,' he said, kind of carelessly; 'I was sort of hoping you
wouldn't lock me up. Court meets next Monday, so, if you don't object,
I'll just loaf around the office until then. I've got one favor to ask, if it
isn't too much. If you'd let the kids come out in the yard once in a while
and have a romp I'd like it.'

"'Why not?' I answered him. 'They're welcome, and so are you. And
come to my house the same as ever.' You see, Mr. Nettlewick, you
can't make a friend of a thief, but neither can you make a thief of a friend,
all at once."

The examiner made no answer. At that moment was heard the shrill
whistle of a locomotive pulling into the depot. That was the train on the
little, narrow-gauge road that struck into San Rosario from the south.
The major cocked his ear and listened for a moment, and looked at his
watch. The narrow-gauge was in on time — 10:35. ^he maj°r continued.

"So Bob hung around the office, reading the papers and smoking. I put
another deputy to work in his place, and, after a while, the first excitement
of the case wore off.

"One day when we were alone in the office Bob came over to where I
was sitting. He was looking sort of grim and blue — the same look he used
to get when he'd been up watching for Indians all night or herd-riding.

" 'Tom,' says he, 'it's harder than standing off redskins; it's harder than
lying in the lava desert forty miles from water; but I'm going to stick it
out to the end. You know that's been my style. But if you'd tip me the
smallest kind of a sign — if you'd just say, "Bob I understand," why, it
would make it lots easier.'

"I was surprised. 'I don't know what you mean, Bob,' I said. 'Of
course, you know that I'd do anything under the sun to help you that I
could. But you've got me guessing.'

FRIENDS IN SAN ROSARIO 459

" 'All right, Tom,' was all he said, and he went back to his newspaper
and lit another cigar.

"It was the night before the court met when I found out what he
meant. I went to bed that night with the same old, light-headed, nervous
feeling come back upon me. I dropped off to sleep about midnight. When
I woke I was standing half dressed in one of the courthouse corridors.
Bob was holding one of my arms, our family doctor the other and Alice
was shaking me and half crying. She had sent for the doctor without my
knowing it, and when he came they had found me out of bed and miss-
ing, and had begun a search.

" 'Sleep-walking,' said the doctor.

"All of us went back to the house, and the doctor told us some re-
markable stories about the strange things people had done while in that
condition. I was feeling rather chilly after my trip out, and, as my wife was
out of the room at the time, I pulled open the door of an old wardrobe
that stood in the room and dragged out a big quilt I had seen in
there. With it tumbled out the bag of money for stealing which Bob was
to be tried — and convicted — in the morning.

"'How the jumping rattlesnakes did that get there?5 I yelled, and all
hands must have seen how surprised I was. Bob knew in a flash.

" 'You darned old snoozer,' he said, with the old-time look on his face,
'I saw you put it there. I watched you open the safe and take it out, and I
followed you. I looked through the window and saw you hide it in that
wardrobe/

" 'Then, you blankety-blank, flop-eared, sheep-headed coyote, what did
you say you took it for ? '

" 'Because/ said Bob, simply, 1 didn't know you were asleep.'

"I saw him glance toward the door of the room where Jack and Zilla
were, and I knew then what it meant to be a man's friend from Bob's
point of view."

Major Tom paused, and again directed his glance out o£ the window.
He saw someone in the Stockmen's National Bank reach and draw a
yellow shade down the whole length of its plate-glass, big front window,
although the position of the sun did not seem to warrant such a defensive
movement against its rays.

Nettlewick sat up straight in his chair. He had listened patiently, but
without consuming interest, to the major's story. It had impressed him as
irrelevant to the situation, and it could certainly have no effect upon the
consequences. Those Western people, he thought, had an exaggerated
sentimentality. They were not business-like. They needed to be protected
from their friends. Evidently the major had concluded. And what he had
said amounted to nothing.

"May I ask," said the examiner, "if you have anything further to say
that bears directly upon the question of those abstracted securities?"

460 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Abstracted securities, sir!" Major Tom turned suddenly in his chair,
his blue eyes flashing upon the examiner. "What do you mean, sir ?"

He drew from his coat pocket a batch of folded papers held together
by a rubber band, tossed them into Nettlewick's hands, and rose to his feet.

"You'll find those securities there, sir, every stock, bond, and share of
'em. I took them from the notes while you were counting the cash. Ex-
amine and compare them for yourself."

The major led the way back into the banking room. The examiner,
astounded, perplexed, nettled, at sea, followed. He felt that he had been
made the victim of something that was not exactly a hoax, but that left
him in the shoes of one who had been played upon, used, and then dis-
carded, without even an inkling of the game. Perhaps, also, his official
position had been irreverently juggled with. But there was nothing he
could take hold of. An official report of the matter would be an absurdity.
And, somehow, he felt that he would never know anything more about
the matter than he did then.

Frigidly, mechanically, Nettlewick examined the securities, found them
to tally with the notes, gathered his black wallet, and rose to depart.

"I will say," he protested, turning the indignant glare of his glasses
upon Major Kingman, "that your statements— your misleading state-
ments, which you have not condescended to explain — do not appear to be
quite the thing, regarded either as business or humor. I do not understand
such motives or actions."

Major Tom looked down at him serenely and not unkindly.

"Son," he said, "there are plenty of things in the chaparral, and on the
prairies, and up the canons that you don't understand. But I want to
thank you for listening to a garrulous old man's prosy story. We old
Texans love to talk about our adventures and our old comrades, and the
home folks have long ago learned to run when we begin with 'Once upon
a time,' so we have to spin our yarns to the stranger within our gates."

The major smiled, but the examiner only bowed coldly, and abruptly
quitted the bank. They saw him travel diagonally across the street in a
straight line and enter the Stockmen's National Bank.

Major Tom sat down at his desk and drew from his vest pocket the note
Roy had given him. He had read it once, but hurriedly, and now, with
something like a twinkle in his eyes, he read it again. These were the
words he read:

Dear Tom:

I hear there's one of Uncle Sam's greyhounds going through you,
and that means that we'll catch him inside of a couple of hours, maybe.
Now, I want you to do something for me. We've got just $2,200 in the
bank, and the law requires that we have $20,000. I let Ross and Fisher
have $18,000 late yesterday afternoon to buy up that Gibson bunch of
cattle. They'll realize $40,000 in less than thirty days on the transaction,

THE FOURTH IN SALVADOR 461

but that won't make my cash on hand look any prettier to that bank ex-
aminer. Now, I can't show him those notes, for they're just plain notes
of hand without any security in sight, but you know very well that Pink
Ross and Jim Fisher are two of the finest white men God ever made,
and they'll do the square thing. You remember Jim Fisher — he was
the one who shot that faro dealer in El Paso. I wired Sam Bradshaw's
bank to send me $20,000, and it will get in on the narrow-gauge at
10:35. You can't let a bank examiner in to count $2,200 and close your
doors. Tom, you hold that examiner. Hold him. Hold him if you have
to rope him and sit on his head. Watch our front window after the
narrow-gauge gets in, and when we've got the cash inside we'll pull
down the shade for a signal. Don't turn him loose till then. I'm
counting on you, Tom.

Your Old Pard,

Bob Buckley,
Prest. Stockmen's National

The major began to tear the note into small pieces and throw them
into his waste basket. He gave a satisfied little chuckle as he did so.

"Confounded old reckless cowpuncher!" he growled, contentedly,
"that pays him some on account for what he tried to do for me in the
sheriffs office twenty years ago."

THE FOURTH IN SALVADOR

On a summer's day, while the city was rocking with the din and red
uproar of patriotism, Billy Casparis told me this story.

In his way, Billy is Ulysses, Jr. Like Satan, he comes from going to
and fro upon the earth and walking up and down in it. To-morrow
morning while you are cracking your breakfast egg he may be off with
his little alligator grip to boom a town site in the middle of Lake Okee-
chobee or to trade horses with the Patagonians.

We sat at a little, round table, and between us were glasses holding big
lumps of ice, and above us leaned an artificial palm. And because our scene
was set with the properties of the one they recalled to his mind, Billy
was stirred to narrative.

"It reminds me," said he, "of a Fourth I helped to celebrate down in
Salvador. 'Twas while I was running an ice factory down there, after I
unloaded that silver mine I had in Colorado. I had what they called a
'conditional concession.' They made me put up a thousand dollars cash
forfeit that I would make ice continuously for six months. If I did that I
could draw down my ante. If I failed to do so the government took the pot.
So the inspectors kept dropping in, trying to catch me without the goods.

4^2 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"One day when the thermometer was at no, the clock at half-past one,
and the calendar at July third, two of the little, brown, oily nosers in red
trousers slid in to make an inspection. Now, the factory hadn't turned out
a pound of ice in three weeks, for a couple of reasons. The Salvador
heathen wouldn't buy it; they said it made things cold they put it in. And
I couldn't make any more, because I was broke. All I was holding on for
was to get down my thousand so I could leave the country. The six
months would be up on the sixth of July.

"Well, I showed 'em all the ice I had. I raised the lid of a darkish vat,
and there was an elegant loo-pound block of ice, beautiful and convincing
to the eye. I was about to close down the lid again when one of those
brunette sleuths flops down on his red knees and lays a slanderous and
violent hand on my guarantee of good faith. And in two minutes more
they had dragged out on the floor that fine chunk of molded glass that
had cost me fifty dollars to have shipped down from Frisco.

"'Ice-y?' says the fellow that played me the dishonorable trick; 'verree
warm ice-y. Yes. The day is that hot, senor. Yes. Maybeso it is of desira-
bleness to leave him, out to get the cool. Yes/

11 Yes/ says I, 'yes/ for I knew they had me. 'Touching's believing,
ain't it, boys? Now there's some might say the seats of your trousers
are sky blue, but 'tis my opinion they are red. Let's apply the tests of the
laying on of hands and feet.' And so I hoisted both those inspectors out of
the door on the toe of my shoe, and sat down to cool off on my block of
disreputable glass.

"And, as I live without oats, while I sat there, homesick for money
and without a cent to my ambition, there came on the breeze the most
beautiful smell my nose had entered for a year. God knows where it came
from in that backyard of a country — it was a bouquet of soaked lemon
peel, cigar stumps, and stale beer— exactly the smell of Goldbrick Char-
ley's place on Fourteenth Street where I used to play pinochle of after-
noons with the third-rate actors. And that smell drove my troubles
through me and clinched 'ern at the back. I began to long for my country
and feel sentiments about it; and I said words about Salvador that you
wouldn't think could come legitimate out of an ice factory.

"And while I was sitting there, down through the blazing sunshine in
his clean, white clothes comes Maximilian Jones, an American interested
in rubber and rosewood.

"'Great carrambos!* says I, when he stepped in, for I was in a bad
temper, 'didn't I have catastrophes enough? I know what you want You
want to tell me that story again about Johnny Ammiger and the widow
on the train. YouVe told it nine times already this month/

" 'It must be the heat/ says Jones, stopping in the door, amazed. Toor
Billy. He's got bugs. Sitting on ice, and calling his best friends pseudo-
nyms. Hi! — muchachol' Jones called my force of employees, who was sit-

THE FOURTH IN SALVADOR 463

ting in the sun, playing with his toes, and told him to put on his trousers
and run for the doctor,

" 'Come back,' says I. 'Sit down, Maxy, and forget it. Tis not ice you
see, nor a lunatic upon it. 'Tis only an exile full of homesickness sitting
on a lump of glass that's just cost him a thousand dollars. Now, what was
it Johnny said to the widow first? I'd like to hear it again, Maxy — honest.
Don't mind what I said.'

"Maximilian Jones and I sat down and talked. He was about as sick of
the country as I was, for the grafters were squeezing him for half the
profits of his rosewood and rubber. Down in the bottom of a tank of water
I had a dozen bottles of sticky Frisco beer; and I fished these up, and we
fell to talking about home and the flag and Hail Columbia and home-
fried potatoes; and the drivel we contributed would have sickened any
man enjoying those blessings. But at that time we were out of 'em. You
can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife
till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on
a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

"And sitting there me and Maximilian Jones, scratching at our prickly
heat and kicking at the lizards on the floor, became afflicted with a dose
of patriotism and affection for our country. There was me, Billy Casparis,
reduced from a capitalist to a pauper by over-addiction to my glass (in the
lump), declares my trouble off for the present and myself to be an un-
crowned sovereign of the greatest country on earth. And Maximilian
Jones pours out whole drug stores of his wrath on oligarchies and poten-
tates in red trousers and calico shoes. And we issues a declaration of inter-
ference in which we guarantee that the fourth day of July shall be cele-
brated in Salvador with all the kinds of salutes, explosions, honors of war,
oratory, and liquids known to tradition. Yes, neither me nor Jones
breathed with soul so dead. There shall be rucuses in Salvador, we say,
and the monkeys had better climb the tallest cocoanut trees and the fire
department get out its red sashes and two tin buckets.

"About this time into the factory steps a native man incriminated by
the name of General Mary Esperanza Dingo. He was some pumpkin both
in politics and color, and the friend of me and Jones. He was full of polite-
ness and a kind of intelligence, having picked up the latter and managed
to preserve the former during a two years' residence in Philadelphia study-
ing medicine. For a Salvadorian he was not such a calamitous little man,
though he always would play jack, queen, king, ace, deuce for a straight.

"General Mary sits with us and has a bottle. While he was in the States
he had acquired a synopsis of the English language and the art of admir-
ing our institutions. By and by the General gets up and tiptoes to the
doors and windows and other stage entrances, remarking *Hist!' at each
one. They all do that in Salvador before they ask for a drink of water or

464 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

the time of day, being conspirators from the cradle and matinee idols by
proclamation.

"'Hist!' says General Dingo again, and then he lays his chest on the
table quite like Gaspard the Miser. 'Good friends, senores, to-morrow will
be the great day of Liberty and Independence. The hearts of Americans
and Salvadorians should beat together. Of your history and your great
Washington I know. Is it not so?'

"Now, me and Jones thought that nice of the General to remember
when the Fourth came. It made us feel good. He must have heard the
news going round in Philadelphia about that disturbance we had with
England.

" 'Yes,' says me and Maxy together, £we knew it. We were talking about
it when you came in. And you can bet your bottom concession that there'll
be fuss and feathers in the air to-morrow. We are few in numbers, but
the welkin may as well reach out to push the button, for it's got to ring.5

"'I, too, shall assist,5 says the General, thumping his collar-bone. CI, too,
am on the side of Liberty. Noble Americans, we will make the day one
to be never forgotten.*

" Tor us American whisky,' says Jones— 'none of your Scotch smoke
or anisada or Three Star Hennessey to-morrow. We'll borrow the consul's
flag; old man Billfinger shall make orations, and we'll have a barbecue on
the plaza.*

" 'Fireworks/ says I, 'will be scarce; but we'll have all the cartridges
in the shops for our guns. I've got two navy sixes I brought from Denver.*

" 'There is one cannon,' said the General; 'one big cannon that will go
"BOOM!" And three hundred men with rifles to shoot.'

'"Oh, say!' says Jones, 'Generalissimo, you're the real silk elastic. We'll
make it a joint international celebration. Please, General, get a white
horse and a blue sash and be grand marshal.'

" 'With my sword,' says the General, rolling his eyes, *I shall ride at the
head of the brave men who gather in the name of Liberty.'

"'And you might,' we suggest, 'see the comandante and advise him
that we are going to prize things up a bit. We Americans, you know, are
accustomed to using municipal regulations for gun wadding when we
line up to help the eagle scream. He might suspend the rules for one
day. We don't want to get in the calaboose for spanking his soldiers if they
get in our way, do you see?'

"'Hist!* says General Mary. 'The comandante is with us, heart and
soul. He will aid us. He is one of us.'

"We made all the arrangements that afternoon. There was a 'buck
coon from Georgia in Salvador who had drifted down there from a busted-
up colored colony that had been started on some possumless land in
Mexico. As soon as he heard us say 'barbecue' he wept for joy and groveled
on the ground. He dug his trench on the plaza, and got half a beef on the

THE FOURTH IN SALVADOR 465

coals for an all-night roast. Me and Maxy went to see the rest of the
Americans in the town and they all sizzled like a seidlitz with joy at the
idea of solemnizing an old-time Fourth.

"There were six of us all together — Martin Dillard, a coffee planter;
Henry Barnes, a railroad man; old man Billfinger, an educated tintype
taker; me and Jonesy, and Jerry, the boss of the barbecue. There was also
an Englishman in town named Sterrett, who was there to write a book
on Domestic Architecture of the Insect World. We felt some bashfulness
about inviting a Britisher to help crow over his own country, but we de-
cided to risk it, out of our personal regard for him.

"We found Sterrett in pajamas working at his manuscript with a bottle
of brandy for a paper weight.

" 'Englishman,' says Jones, 'let us interrupt your disquisition on bug
houses for a moment. To-morrow is the Fourth of July. We don't want
to hurt your feelings, but we're going to commemorate the day when we
licked you by a little refined debauchery and nonsense — something that
can be heard about five miles off. If you are broad-gauged enough to taste
whisky at your own wake, we'd be pleased to have you join us.'

" 'Do you know,' says Sterrett, setting his glasses on his nose, 'I like your
cheek in asking me if I'll join you; blast me if I don't. You might have
known I would, without asking. Not as a traitor to my own country, but
for the intrinsic joy of a blooming row.'

"On the morning of the Fourth I woke up in that old shanty of an ice
factory feeling sore. I looked around at the wreck of all I possessed, and
my heart was full of bile. From where I lay on my cot I could look
through the window and see the consul's old ragged Stars and Stripes
hanging over his shack. 'You're all kinds of a fool, Billy Casparis,' I says to
myself; 'and of all your crimes against sense it does look like this idea of
celebrating the Fourth should receive the award of demerit. Your business
is busted up, your thousand dollars is gone into the kitty of this corrupt
country on that last bluff you made, you've got just fifteen Chili dollars
left, worth forty-six cents each at bedtime last night and steadily going
down. To-day you'll blow in your last cent hurrahing for that flag, and to-
morrow you'll be living on bananas from the stalk and screwing your
drinks out of your friends. What's the flag done for you ? While you were
under it you worked for what you got. You wore your finger nails down
skinning suckers, and salting mines, and driving bears and alligators off
your town lot additions. How much does patriotism count for on deposit
when the little man with the green eye-shade in the savings-bank adds up
your book? Suppose you were to get pinched over here in this irreligious
country for some little crime or other, and appealed to your country for
protection — what would it do for you? Turn your appeal over to a com-
mittee of one railroad man, an army officer, a member of each labour un-
ion, and a colored man to investigate whether any of your ancestors were

466 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

ever related to a cousin o£ Mark Hanna, and then file the papers in the
Smithsonian Institution until after the next election. That's the kind o£ a
sidetrack the Stars and Stripes would switch you on to/

"You can see that I was feeling like an indigo plant; but after^I washed
my face in some cool water, and got out my navys and ammunition, and
started up to the Saloon of the Immaculate Saints where we were to meet,
I felt better. And when I saw those other American boys come swaggering
into the trysting plac^-cool, easy, conspicuous fellows, ready to risk any
kind of a one-card draw, or to fight grizzlies, fire, or extradition, I began
to feel glad I was one of 'em. So, I says to myself again: 'Billy, you've got
fifteen dollars and a country left this morning— blow in the dollars and
blow up the town as an American gentleman should on Independence

Day.'

'It is my recollection that we began the day along conventional lines.
The six of us— -for Sterrett was along— made progress among the cantinas
divesting the bars as we went of all strong drink bearing American labels.
We kept informing the atmosphere as to the glory and preeminence of
the United States and its ability to subdue, out-jump, and eradicate the
other nations of the earth. And, as the findings of American labels grew
more plentiful, we became more contaminated with patriotism. Maxi-
milian Jones hopes that our late foe, Mr. Sterrett, will not take offense at
our enthusiasm. He sets down his botde and shakes Sterrett's hand. *As
white man to white man/ says he, 'denude our uproar of the slightest
taint of personality. Excuse us for Bunker Hill, Patrick Henry, and Wal-
dorf Astor, and such grievances as might lie between us as nations.*

"'Fellow hoodlums/ says Sterrett, 'on behalf of the Queen I ask you
to cheese it. It is an honor to be a guest at disturbing the peace under the
American flag. Let us chant the passionate strains of "Yankee Doodle"
while the senor behind the bar mitigates the occasion with another round
of cochineal and aqua fords.*

"Old Man Billfinger, being charged with a kind of rhetoric, makes
speeches every time we stop. We explained to such citizens as we hap-
pened to step on that we were celebrating the dawn of our private brand
of liberty, and to please enter such inhumanities as we might commit on
the list of unavoidable casualties.

"About eleven o'clock our bulletins read: 'A considerable rise in tem-
perature, accompanied by thirst and other alarming symptoms.' We
hooked arms and stretched our line across the narrow streets, all of us
armed with Winchesters and navys for purposes of noise and without
malice. We stopped on a street corner and fired a dozen or so rounds, and
began a serial assortment of United States whoops and yells, probably
the first ever heard in that town.

"When we made that noise things began to liven up. We heard a pat-
tering up a side street, and here came General Mary Esperanza Dingo
on a white horse with a couple of hundred brown boys following him in

THE FOURTH IN SALVADOR 467

red undershirts and bare feet, dragging guns ten feet long. Jones and me
had forgot all about General Mary and his promise to help us celebrate.
We fired another salute and gave another yell, while the General shook
hands with us and waved his sword.

" 'Oh, General,' shouts Jones, 'this is great. This will be a real pleasure
to the eagle. Get down and have a drink/

"'Drink?' says the general. 'No. There is no time to drink. Viva la
Libertad!'

" 'Don't forget E Pluribus Unum!' says Henry Barnes.

" 'Viva it good and strong,' says I. 'Likewise viva George Washington.
God save the Union, and,' I says, bowing to Sterrett, 'don't discard the
Queen.'

"'Thanks,' says Sterrett. The next round's mine. All in to the bar
Army, too.'

"But we were deprived of Sterrett's treat by a lot of gunshot several
squares away, which General Dingo seemed to think he ought to look
after. He spurred his old white plug up that way, and the soldiers
scuttled along after him.

" 'Mary is a real tropical bird," says Jones. 'He's turned out the infantry
to help us do honor to the Fourth. Well get that cannon he spoke of after
a while and fire some window-breakers with it. But just now I want some
of that barbecued beef. Let us on to the plaza.'

"There we found the meat gloriously done, and Jerry waiting, anxious.
We sat around on the grass, and got hunks of it on our tin plates. Maxi-
milian Jones, always made tender-hearted by drink, cried some because
George Washington couldn't be there to enjoy the day. 'There was a man
I lave, Billy/ he says, weeping on my shoulder. 'Poor George! To think
he's gone, and missed the fireworks. A little more salt, please, Jerry.'

"From what we could hear, General Dingo seemed to be kindly con-
tributing some noise while we feasted. There were guns going off around
town, and pretty soon we heard that cannon go 'BOOM!' just as he said
it would. And then men began to skim along the edge of the plaza, dodg-
ing in among the orange trees and houses. We certainly had things stirred
up in Salvador. We felt proud of the occasion and grateful to General
Dingo. Sterrett was about to take a bite off a juicy piece of rib when a
bullet took it away from his mouth.

"'Somebody's celebrating with ball cartridges,' says he, reaching for
another piece. 'Little over-zealous for a non-resident patriot, isn't it?'

" 'Don't mind it,' I says to him. ' 'Twas an accident. They happen, you
know, on the Fourth. After one reading of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence in New York I've known the S. R. O. sign to be hung out at all
the hospitals and police stations.'

"But then Jerry gives a howl and jumps up with one hand clapped to
the back of his leg where another bullet has acted over-zealous. And then

468 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

comes a quantity o£ yells, and round a corner and across the plaza gallops
General Mary Esperanza Dingo embracing the neck of his horse, with
his men running behind him, mostly dropping their guns by way of dis-
charging ballast. And chasing 'em all is a company of feverish little war-
riors wearing blue trousers and caps.

" 'Assistance, amigos' the General shouts, trying to stop his horse. 'As-
sistance, in the name of Liberty!5

" 'That's the Companfa Azul, the President's bodyguard/ says Jones.
*What a shamel! They've jumped on poor old Mary just because he was
helping us to celebrate. Come on, boys, it's our Fourth;— -do we let that
little squad of A. D. T.'s break it up?'

" 'I vote No,' says Martin Dillard, gathering his Winchester. It's the
privilege of an American citizen to drink, drill, dress up, and be dreadful
on the Fourth of July, no matter whose country he's in.'

" 'Fellow citizens!' says old man Billfinger, In the darkest hour of Free-
dom's birth, when our brave forefathers promulgated the principles of
undying liberty, they never expected that a bunch of blue jays like that
should be allowed to bust up an anniversary. Let us preserve and protect
the Constitution.'

"We made it unanimous, and then we gathered our guns and assaulted
the blue troops in force. We fired over their heads, and then charged *em
with a yell, and they broke and ran. We were irritated at having our bar-
becue disturbed, and we chased 'em a quarter of a mile. Some of 'em
we caught and kicked hard. The General rallied his troops and joined in
the chase. Finally they scattered in a thick banana grove, and we couldn't
flush a single one. So we sat down and rested.

"If I were to be put, severe, through the third degree, I wouldn't be
able to tell much about the rest of the day. I mind that we pervaded the
town considerable, calling upon the people to bring out more armies for
us to destroy. I remember seeing a crowd somewhere, and a tall man that
wasn't Billfinger making a Fourth of July speech from a balcony. And
that was about all.

"Somebody must have hauled the old ice factory up to where I was,
and put it around me, for there's where I was when I woke up the next
morning. As soon as I could recollect my name and address I got up and
held an inquest My last cent was gone. I was all in.

"And then a neat black carriage drives to the door, and out steps Gen-
eral Dingo and a bay man in a silk hat and tan shoes.

" Tes,' says I to myself, *I see it now. You're the Chief de Policeos and
High Lord Chamberlain of the Calaboostim; and you want Billy Cas-
pans for excess of patriotism and assault with intent. All right. Might as
well be in jail, anyhow.'

"But it seems that General Mary is smiling, and the bay man shakes
my hand, and speaks in the American dialect

THE EMANCIPATION OF BILLY 469

"'General Dingo has informed me, Senor Casparis, of your gallant
service in our cause. I desire to thank you with my person. The bravery of
you and the other senores Americanos turned the struggle for liberty in
our favor. Our party triumphed. The terrible battle will live forever in
history/

"'Battle?5 says I; 'what battle?' and I ran my mind back along his-
tory, trying to think.

" 'Senor Casparis is modest/ says General Dingo. 'He led his brave
compadres into the thickest of the fearful conflict. Yes. Without their aid
the revolution would have failed.*

" 'Why, now/ says I, 'don't tell me there was a revolution yesterday.
That was only a Fourth of "

"But right there I abbreviated. It seemed to me it might be best.

" 'After the terrible struggle/ says the bay man, 'President Bolano was
forced to fly. Today Caballo is President by proclamation. Ah, yes. Be-
neath the new administration I am the head of the Department of Mer-
cantile Concessions. On my file I find one report, Senor Casparis, that
you have not made ice in accord with your contract.' And here the bay
man smiles at me, 'cute.

" 'Oh, well/ says I, 'I guess the report's straight. I know they caught me.
That's all there is to it.'

" 'Do not say so/ says the bay man. He pulls off a glove and goes over
and lays his hand on that chunk of glass.

" 'Ice/ says he, nodding his head, solemn.

"General Dingo also steps over and feels of it.

" 'Ice/ says the General; Til swear to it.*

'"If Senor Casparis/ says the bay man, 'will present himself to the
treasury on the sixth day of this month he will receive back the thousand
dollars he did deposit as a forfeit. Adios, senor!

"The General and the bay man bowed themselves out, and I bowed as
often as they did.

"And when the carriage rolls away through the sand I bows once more,
deeper than ever, till my hat touches the ground. But this time 'twas not
intended for them. For, over their heads, I saw the old flag fluttering in
the breeze above the consul's roof; and 'twas to it I made my profoundest
salute."

THE EMANCIPATION OF BILLY

In the old, old, square-porticoed mansion, with the wry window-shutters
and the paint peeling off in discolored flakes lived one of the last of the
war governors.

470 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

The South has forgotten the enmity of the great conflict, but it refuses
to abandon its old traditions and idols. In "Governor" Pemberton, as he
was still fondly called, the inhabitants of Elmvile saw the relic of their
state's ancient greatness and glory. In his day he had been a man large in
the eye of his country. His state had pressed upon him every honor within
its gift. And now when he was old, and enjoying a richly merited re-
pose outside the swift current of public affairs, his townsmen loved to do
him reverence for the sake of the past.

The Governor's decaying "mansion" stood upon the main street of Elm-
ville within a few feet of its rickety paling-fence. Every morning the
Governor would descend the steps with extereme care and deliberation—
on account of his rheumatism— and then the click of his gold-headed cane
would be heard as he slowly proceeded up the rugged brick sidewalk, He
was now nearly seventy-eight, but he had grown old gracefully and beau-
tifully. His rather long, smooth hair and flowing, parted whiskers were
snow-white. His full-skirted frock-coat was always buttoned snugly about
his tall, spare figure. He wore a high, well-kept silk hat— known as a
"plug" in Elmville— and nearly always gloves. His manners were punctili-
ous, and somewhat overcharged with courtesy.

The Governor's walks up Lee Avenue, the principal street, developed
in their course into a sort of memorial, triumphant procession. Everyone
he met saluted him with a profound respect. Many would remove their hats.
Those who were honored with his personal friendship would pause to
shake hands, and then you would see exemplified the genuine beau ideal
Southern courtesy.

Upon reaching the corner of the second square from the mansion, the
Governor would pause. Another street crossed the avenue there, and
traffic, to the extent of several farmers' wagons and a peddler's cart or two,
would rage about the junction. Then the falcon eye of General Deffen-
baugh would perceive the situation, and the General would hasten, with
ponderous solicitude, from his office in the First National Bank building
to the assistance of his old friend.

When the two exchanged greetings the decay of modern manners
would become accusingly apparent. The General's bulky and command-
ing figure would bend lissomely at a point where you would have re-
garded its ability to do so with incredulity. The Governor's cherished
rheumatism would be compelled, for the moment, to give way before a
genuflexion brought down from the days of the cavaliers. The Governor
would take the General's arm and be piloted safely between the hay-
wagons and the sprinkling-cart to the other side of the street. Proceeding
to the post-office in the care of his friend, the esteemed statesman would
there hold an informal levee among the citizens who were come for their
morning mail. Here, gathering two or three prominent in law^ politics, or
family, the pageant would make a stately progress along the Avenue,

THE EMANCIPATION OF BILLY 471

stopping at the Palace Hotel where, perhaps, would be found upon the
register the name of some guest deemed worthy of an introduction to the
state's venerable and illustrious son. If any such were found, an hour or
two would be spent in recalling the faded glories of the Governor's long-
vanished administration.

On the return march the General would invariably suggest that, His
Excellency being no doubt fatigued, it would be wise to recuperate for
a few minutes at the Drug Emporium of Mr. Appleby R. Fentress (an
elegant gentleman, sir—one of the Catham County Fentresses— so many
of our best-blooded families have had to go into trade, sir, since the war).

Mr. Appleby R. Fentress was a connoisseur in fatigue. Indeed, if he
had not been, his memory alone should have enabled him to prescribe,
for the majestic invasion of his pharmacy was a casual happening that
had surprised him almost daily for years. Mr. Fentress knew the formula
of, and possessed the skill to compound, a certain potion antagonistic to
fatigue, the salient ingredient of which he described (no doubt in pharma-
ceutical terms) as "genuine old hand-made Clover Leaf '59, Private
Stock/'

Nor did the ceremony of administering the potion ever vary. Mr. Fen-
tress would first compound two of the celebrated mixtures — one for the
Governor, and the other for the General to "sample." Then the Governor
would make this little speech in his high, piping, quavering voice:

"No, sir— -not one drop until you have prepared one for yourself and
joined us, Mr. Fentress. Your father, sir, was one of my most valued sup-
porters and friends during My Administration, and any mark of esteem I
can confer upon his son is not only a pleasure but a duty, sir."

Blushing with delight at the royal condescension, the druggist would
obey, and all would drink to the General's toast: "The prosperity of our
grand old state, gentlemen-— the memory of her glorious past — the health
of her Favorite Son."

Some one of the Old Guard was always at hand to escort the Governor
home. Sometimes the General's business duties denied him the privilege,
and then Judge Broomfield or Colonel Titus, or one of die Ashford
County Slaughters would be on hand to perform the rite.

Such were the observances attendant upon the Governor's morning
stroll to the post-office. How much more magnificent, impressive, and
spectacular, then, was the scene at public functions when the General
would lead forth the silver-haired relic of former greatness, like some rare
and fragile waxwork figure, and trumpet his pristine eminence to his
fellow citizens!

General Deffenbaugh was the Voice of Elmville. Some said he was
Elmville. At any rate, he had no competitor as the Mouthpiece. He owned
enough stock in the Daily Banner to dictate its utterance, enough shares
in the First National Bank to be the referee of its loans, and a war record

47^ BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

that left him without a rival for first place at barbecues, school commence-
ments, and Decoration Days. Besides these acquirements he was possessed
with endowments. His personality was inspiring and triumphant. Un-
disputed sway had molded him to the likeness of a fatted Roman em-
peror. The tones of his voice were not otherwise than clarion. To say that
the General was public-spirited would fall short of doing him justice. He
had spirit enough for a dozen publics. And as. a sure foundation for it all,
he had a heart that was big and stanch. Yes; General Deffenbaugh was
Elmville.

One little incident that usually occurred during the Governor's morning
walk has had its chronicling delayed by more important matters. The
procession was accustomed to halt before a small brick office on the Ave-
nue, fronted by a short flight of steep wooden steps. A modest tin sign
over the door bore the words: "Wm, B. Pemberton: Attorney-at-Law."

Looking inside, the General would roar: "Hello, Billy, my boy." The
less-distinguished members of the escort would call: "Morning, Billy."
The Governor would pipe: "Good-morning, William."

Then a patient-looking little man with hair turning gray along the
temples would come down the steps and shake hands with each one of
the party. All Elmville shook hands when it met.

The formalities concluded, the little man would go back to his table,
heaped with law books and papers, while the procession would proceed.

Billy Pemberton was, as his sign declared, a lawyer, by profession. By
occupation and common consent he was the Son of his Father. This was
the shadow in which Billy lived, the pit out of which he had unsuccess-
fully striven for years to climb and, he had come to believe, the grave
in which his ambitions were desdned to be buried. Filial respect and duty
he paid beyond the habit of most sons, but he aspired to be known and
appraised by his own deeds and worth.

After many years of tireless labor he had become known in certain
quarters far from Elmville as a master of the principles of the law. Twice
he had gone to Washington and argued cases before the highest tribunal
with such acute logic and learning that the silken gowns on the bench had
rustled from the force of it. His income from his practice had grown until
he was able to support his father, in the old family mansion (which
neither o£ them would have thought of abandoning, rickety as it was)
in the comfort and almost the luxury of the old extravagant days. Yet, he
remained to Elmville as only "Billy" Pemberton, the son of our distin-
guished and honored fellow-townsman, "ex-Governor Pemberton." Thus
was he introduced at public gatherings where he sometimes spoke, halt-
ingly and prosily, for his talents were too serious and deep for extempore
brilliancy; thus was he presented to strangers and to the lawyers who
made the circuit of the courts; and so the Daily Banner referred to him
in print. To be "the son of " was his doom. Whatever he should accom-

THE EMANCIPATION OF BILLY 473

plish would have to be sacrificed upon the altar of this magnificent but
fatal parental precedence.

The peculiarity and the saddest thing about Billy's ambition was that
the only world he thirsted to conquer was Elmville. His nature was diffi-
dent and unassuming. National or State honors might have oppressed
him. But, above all things, he hungered for the appreciation of the friends
among whom he had been born and raised. He would not have plucked
one leaf from the garlands that were so lavishly bestowed upon his father,
he merely rebelled against having his own wreaths woven from those
dried and self-same branches. But Elmville "Billied" and "sonned" him
to his concealed but lasting chagrin, until at length he grew more reserved
and formal and studious than ever.

There came a morning when Billy found among his mail a letter from
a very high source, tendering him the appointment to an important
judicial position in the new island possessions of our country. The honor
was a distinguished one, for the entire nation had discussed the probable
recipients of these positions, and had agreed that the situation demanded
only men of the highest character, ripe learning, and evenly balanced
mind.

Billy could not subdue a certain exultation at this token of the success
of his long and arduous labors, but, at the same time, a whimsical smile
lingered around his mouth, for he foresaw in which Elmville would place
tie credit. "We congratulate Governor Pemberton upon the mark of
appreciation conferred upon his son" — "Elmville rejoices with our hon-
ored citizen, Governor Pemberton, at his son's success" — "Put her
there Billy!" — "Judge Billy Pemberton, sir; son of our State's war hero
and the people's pride!" — these were the phrases, printed and oral, con-
jured up by Billy's prophetic fancy. Grandson of his State, and step-
child of Elmville — thus had fate fixed his kinship to the body politic.

Billy lived with his father in the old mansion. The two and an elderly
lady — a distant relative — comprised the family. Perhaps, though, old Jeff,
the Governor's ancient colored body-servant, should be included. Without
doubt, he would have claimed the honor. There were other servants, but
Thomas Jefferson Pemberton, sah, was a member of "de f ambly."

Jeff was the one Elmvillian who gave to Billy the gold of approval un-
mixed with the alloy of paternalism. To him "Mars William" was the
greatest man in Talbot County. Beaten upon though he was by the
shining light that emanates from an ex-war governor, and loyal as he re-
mained to the old regime, his faith and admiration were Billy's. As valet
to a hero, and a member of the family, he may have had superior op-
portunities for judging.

Jeff was the first one to whom Billy revealed the news. When he
reached home for supper Jeff took his "plug" hat and smoothed it before
hanging it upon the hall-rack.

474 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Dar now!" said the old man: "I knowed it was er comin', I knowed
it was gwine ter happen. Er Judge, you says, Mars William? Dem Yan-
kees done made you er judge? It's high time, sah, dey was doin' somep'n
to make up for dey rescality endurin' de war. I boun' dey holds a confab
and says: 'Le's make Mars William Pemberton er judge, and dat'll settle
it.' Does you have to go away down to dem Fillypines, Mars William, or
kin you judge 'em from here?"

"I'd have to live there most of the time of course," said Billy.

"I wonder what de Gubnor gwine say 'bout dat," speculated Jeff.

Billy wondered too.

After supper, when the two sat in the library, according to their habit,
the Governor smoking his clay pipe and Billy his cigar, the son dutifully
confessed to having been tendered the appointment.

For a long time the Governor sat, smoking, without making any com-
ment. Billy reclined in his favorite rocker, waiting, perhaps still flushed
with satisfaction over the tender that had come to him, unsolicited, in his
dingy little office, above the heads of the intriguing, time-serving, clamor-
ous multitude.

At last the Governor spoke; and, though his words were seemingly
irrelevant, they were to the point. His voice had a note of martyrdom
running through its senile quaver.

"My rheumatism has been growing steadily worse these past months,
William."

"I am sorry. Father," said Billy, gently.

"And I am nearly seventy-eight. I am getting to be an old man. I can
recall the names of but two or three who were in public life during My
Administration, What did you say is the nature of this position that is
offered you, William?"

"A Federal judgeship, Father. I believe it is considered to be a some-
what flattering tender. It is outside of politics and wire-pulling, you know."

"No doubt, no doubt. Few of the Pembertons have engaged in profes-
sional life for nearly a century. None of them have ever held Federal
positions. They have been landowners, slave-owners, and planters on a
large scale. One or two of the Derwents — your mother's family — were in
the law. Have you decided to accept this appointment, William?"

"I am thinking it over," said Billy, slowly, regarding the ash of his
cigar.

"You have been a good son to me," continued the Governor, stirring
his pipe with the handle of a penholder.

"I've been your son all my life," said Billy, darkly.

"I am often gratified," piped the Governor, betraying a touch of com-
placency, "by being congratulated upon having a son with such sound
and sterling qualities. Especially in this, our native town, is your name
linked with mine in the talk of our citizens."

THE EMANCIPATION OF BILLY 475

"I never knew anyone to forget the vinculum," murmured Billy, un-
intelligibly.

"Whatever prestige/' pursued the parent, "I may be possessed of, by
virtue of my name and services to the state, has been yours to draw upon
freely. I have not hesitated to exert it in your behalf whenever oppor-
tunity offered. And you have deserved it, William. You've been the best
of sons. And now this appointment comes to take you away from me. I
have but a few years left to live. I am almost dependent upon others now,
even in walking and dressing. What would I do without you, my son?"

The Governor's pipe dropped to the floor. A tear trickled from his eye.
His voice had risen, and crumbled to a weakling falsetto, and ceased. He
was an old, old man about to be bereft of the son that cherished him.

Billy rose, and laid his hand upon the Governor's shoulder.

"Don't worry, father," he said, cheerfully. "Fm not going to accept.
Elmville is good enough for me* I'll write to-night and decline it.*'

At the next interchange of devoirs between the Governor and General
Deflfenbaugh on Lee Avenue, His Excellency, with a comfortable air
of self -satisfaction, spoke of the appointment that had been tendered to
Billy.

The General whistled.

"That's a plum for Billy,5* he shouted. "Who'd have thought that Billy
— but, confound it, it's been in him all the time. It's a boost for Elmville.
It'll send real estate up. It's an honor to our state. It's a compliment to the
South. We've all been blind about Billy. When does he leave? We must
have a reception. Great Catlings! that job's eight thousand a year!
There's been a car-load of lead-pencils worn to stubs figuring on those
appointments. Think of it! Our little, wood-sawing, mealy-mouthed
Billy! Angel unawares doesn't begin to express it. Elmville is disgraced
forever unless she lines up in a hurry for ratification and apology."

The venerable Moloch smiled fatuously. He carried the fire with which
to consume all these tributes to Billy, the smoke of which would ascend
as an incense to himself.

"William," said the Governor, with modest pride, "has declined the
appointment. He refuses to leave me in my old age. He is a good son."

The General swung around and laid a large forefinger upon the bosom
of his friend. Much of the General's success had been due to his dexterity
in establishing swift lines of communication between cause and effect. .

"Governor," he said, with a keen look in his big, ox-like eyes, "you've
been complaining to Billy about your rheumatism."

"My dear General," replied the Governor, stiffly, "my son is forty-two.
He is quite capable of deciding such questions for himself. And I, as his
parent, feel it my duty to state that your remark about — er — rheumatism
is a mighty poor shot from a very small bore, sir, aimed at a purely per-
sonal and private affliction."

476 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"I£ you will allow me," retorted the General, "you've afflicted the
public with it for some time; and 'twas no small bore, at that."

This first tiff between the two old comrades might have grown into
something more serious but for the fortunate interruption caused by the
ostentatious approach of Colonel Titus and another one of the court
retinue from the right county, to whom the General confided the coddled
statesman and went his way.

After Billy had so effectually entombed his ambitions, and taken the
veil, so to speak, in a sonnery, he was surprised to discover how much
lighter of heart and happier he felt. He realized what a long, restless
struggle he had maintained, and how much he had lost by failing to cull
the simple but wholesome pleasures by the way. His heart warmed now
to Elmville and the friends who had refused to set him upon a pedestal.
It was better, he began to think, to be "Billy " and his father's son, and to
be hailed familiarly by cheery neighbors and grown-up playmates, than
to be "Your Honor," and sit among strangers, hearing, maybe, through
the arguments of learned counsel, that old man's feeble voice crying:
"What would I do without you, my son?"

Billy began to surprise his acquaintances by whisding as he walked up
the street; others he astounded by slapping them disrespectfully upon
their backs and raking up old anecdotes he had not had the time to
recollect for years. Though he hammered away at his law cases as
thoroughly as ever, he found more time for relaxation and the compariy
of his friends. Some of the younger set were actually after him to join
the golf club. A striking proof of his abandonment to obscurity was his
adoption of a most undignified, rakish little soft hat, reserving the "plug"
for Sundays and state occasions. Billy was beginning to enjoy Elmville,
though that irreverent burgh had neglected to crown him with bay and
myrtle.

All the while uneventful peace pervaded Elmville. The Governor con-
tinued to make his triumphal parades to the post-office with the General
as chief marshal, for the slight squall that had rippled their friendship
had, to all indications, been forgotten by both.

But one day Elmville woke to sudden excitement. The news had come
that a touring presidential party would honor Elmville by a twenty-
minute stop. The Executive had promised a five-minute address from the
balcony of the Palace Hotel.

Elmville arose as one man—that man being, of course, General Def-
fenbaugh— to receive becomingly the chieftain of all the clans. The train
with the tiny Stars and Stripes fluttering from the engine pilot arrived.
Elmville had done her best. There were bands, flowers, carriages, uni-
forms, banners, and committees without end. High-school girls in white
frocks impeded the steps of the party with roses strewn nervously in
bunches. The chieftain had seen it all before — scores of times. He could

THE ENCHANTED KISS 477

have pictured it exactly in advance, from the Blue-and-Gray speech down
to the smallest rosebud. Yet his kindly smile of interest greeted Elmville's
display as if it had been the only and original.

In the upper rotunda of the Palace Hotel the town's most illustrious
were assembled for the honor of being presented to the distinguished
guests previous to the expected address. Outside, Elmville's inglorious but
patriotic masses filled the streets.

Here, in the hotel General Deffenbaugh was holding in reserve Elm-
ville's trump card. Elmville knew; for the trump was a fixed one, and its
lead consecrated by archaic custom.

At the proper moment Governor Pemberton, beautifully venerable,
magnificently antique, tall, paramount, stepped forward upon the arm
of the General.

Elmville watched and harked with bated breath. Never until now —
when a Northern President of the United States should clasp hands with
ex-war-Governor Pemberton— would the breach be entirely closed— would
the country be made one and indivisible — no North, not much -South,
very little East, and no West to speak of. So Elmville excitedly scraped
kalsomine from the walls of the Palace Hotel with its Sunday best, and
waited for the Voice to speak.

And Billy! We had nearly forgotten Billy. He was cast for Son, and
he waited patiently for his cue. He carried his "plug" in his hand, and felt
serene. He admired his father's striking air and pose. After all, it was a
great deal to be son of a man who could so gallantly hold the position of
a cynosure for three generations.

General DefJenbaugh cleared his throat. Elmville opened its mouth,
and squirmed. The chieftain with the kindly, fateful face was holding out
his hand, smiling. Ex-war-Governor Pemberton extended his own across
the chasm. But what was this the General was saying?

"Mr. President, allow me to present to you one who has the honor to
be the father of our foremost distinguished citizen, learned and honored
jurist, beloved townsman, and model Southern gentleman— the Honorable
William B. Pemberton."

THE ENCHANTED KISS

But a clerk in the Cut-rate Drug Store was Samuel Tansey, yet his slender
frame was a pad that enfolded the passion of Romeo, the gloom of Lara,
the romance of D'Artagnan, and the desperate inspiration of Melnotte.
Pity, then, that he had been denied expression, that he was doomed to the
burden of utter timidity and diffidence, that Fate had set him tongue-tied

478 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

and scarlet before the muslin-clad angels whom he adored and vainly
longed to rescue, clasp, comfort, and subdue.

The clock's hands were pointing close upon the hour of ten while
Tansey was playing billiards with a number of his friends. On alternate
evenings he was released from duty at the store after seven o'clock. Even
among his fellow men Tansey was timorous and constrained. In his im-
agination he had done valiant deeds and performed acts of distinguished
gallantry; but in fact he was a shallow youth of twenty-three, with an
over-modest demeanor and scant vocabulary,

When the clock struck ten, Tansey hastily laid down his cue and struck
sharply upon the show-case with a coin for the attendant to come and
receive the pay for his score.

"What's your hurry, Tansey?" called one. "Got another engagement?'*

"Tansey got an engagement!" echoed another. "Not on your life.
Tansey's got to get home at ten by Mother Peek's orders."

"It's no such thing," chimed in a pale youth, taking a large cigar from
his mouth; "Tansey's afraid to be late because Miss 'Katie might come
downstairs to unlock the door, and kiss him in the hall."

This delicate piece of raillery sent a fiery tingle into Tansey's blood,
for the indictment was true— barring the kiss. That was a thing to dream
of; to wildly hope for; but too remote and sacred a thing to think of
lightly.

Casting a cold and contemptuous look at the speaker — a punishment
commensurate with his own diffident spirit—Tansey left the room, de-
scending the stairs into the street.

For two years he had silently adored Miss Peek, worshipping her
from a spiritual distance through which her attractions took on stellar
brightness and mystery. Mrs. Peek kept a few choice boarders, among
whom was Tansey. The other young men romped with Katie, chased
her with crickets in their fingers, and "jollied" her with an irreverent
freedom that turned Tansey's heart into cold lead in his bosom. The
signs of his adoration were few— a tremulous "Good morning," stealthy
glances at her during meals, and occasionally (Oh, rapture!) a blushing,
delirious game of cribbage with her in the parlor on some rare evening
when a miraculous lack of engagement kept her at home. Kiss him in
the hall! Aye, he feared it, but it was an ecstatic fear such as Elijah
must have felt when the chariot lifted him into the unknown.

But to-night the gibes of his associates had stung him to a feeling of
forward, lawless mutiny; a defiant, challenging, atavistic recklessness.
Spirit of corsair, adventurer, lover, poet, Bohemian, possessed him. The
stars he saw above him seemed no more unattainable, no less high, than
the favor of Miss Peek or the fearsome sweetness of her delectable lips.
His fate seemed to him strangely dramatic and pathetic, and to call for

THE ENCHANTED KISS 479

a solace consonant with its extremity* A saloon was near by, and to this
he flitted, calling for absinthe— beyond doubt the drink most adequate to
his mood—the tipple of the roue, the abandoned, the vainly sighing lover.

Once he drank of it, and again, and then again until he felt a strange,
exalted sense of non-participation in worldly affairs pervade him. Tansey
was no drinker; his consumption of three absinthe anisettes within almost
as few minutes proclaimed his unproficiency in the art; Tansey was
merely flooding with unproven liquor his sorrows; which record and
tradition alleged to be drownable.

Coming out upon the sidewalk, he snapped his fingers defiantly in
the direction of the Peek homestead, turned the other way, and voyaged,
Columbus-like, into the wilds of an enchanted street. Nor is the figure
exorbitant, for, beyond his store the foot of Tansey had scarcely been set
for years — store and boarding-house; between these ports he was char-
tered to run, and contrary currents had rarely deflected his prow.

Tansey aimlessly protracted his walk, and, whether it was his unf amili-
arity with the district, his recent accession of audacious errantry, or the
sophistical whisper of a certain green-eyed fairy, he came to last to tread
a shuttered, blank, and echoing thoroughfare, dark and unpeopled. And,
suddenly, this way came to an end (as many streets do in the Spanish-
built, archaic town of San Antohe), butting its head against an imminent,
high, brick wall. No— the street still lived! To the right and to the left
it breathed through slender tubes of exit— narrow, somnolent ravines,
cobble paved and unlighted. Accommodating a rise in the street to the
right was reared a phantom flight of five luminous steps of limestone,
flanked by a wall of the same height and of the same material.

Upon one of these steps Tansey seated himself and bethought him of
his love, and how she might never know she was his love. And of Mother
Peek, fat, vigilant and kind; not unpleased, Tansey thought, that he and
Katie should play cribbage in the parlor together. For the Cut-rate had
not cut his salary, which, sordidly speaking, ranked him star boarder
at the Peeks'. And he thought of Captain Peek, Katie's father, a man he
dreaded and abhorred; a genteel loafer and spendthrift, battening upon
the labor of his women-folk; a very queer fish, and, according to repute,
not of the freshest.

The night had turned chill and foggy. The heart of the town, with its
noises, was left behind. Reflected from the high vapors, its distant lights
were manifest in quivering, cone-shaped streamers, in questionable
blushes of unnamed colors, in unstable, ghostly waves 6f far, electric
flashes. Now that the darkness was become more friendly, the wall
against which the street splintered developed a stone coping topped
with an armature of spikes. Beyond it loomed what appeared to be the
acute angles of mountain peaks, pierced here and there by little lambent

480 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

parallelograms. Considering this vista, Tansey at length persuaded him-
self that the seeming mountains were, in fact, the convent of Santa Mer-
cedes, with which ancient and bulky pile he was better familiar from
different coigns of view. A pleasant noise of singing in his ears reenf orced
his opinion. High, sweet, holy carolling, far and harmonious and uprising,
as of sanctified nuns at their responses, At what hour did the Sisters sing?
He tried to think— was it six, eight, twelve? Tansey leaned his back
against the limestone wall and wondered. Strange things followed. The
air was full of white, fluttering pigeons that circled about, and settled
upon the convent wall. The wall blossomed with a quantity of shining
green eyes that blinked and peered at him from the solid masonry. A
pink, classic nymph came from an excavation in the cavernous road and
danced, barefoot and airy, upon the ragged flints. The sky was traversed
by a company of beribboned cats, marching in stupendous, aerial pro-
cession. The noise of singing grew louder; an illumination of unseason-
able fireflies danced past, and strange whispers came out of the dark
without meaning or excuse.

Without amazement Tansey took note of these phenomena. He was
on some new plane of understanding, though his mind seemed to him
clear and, indeed, happily tranquil.

A desire for movement and exploration seized him: he rose and
turned into the black gash of street to his right. For a time the high wall
formed one of its boundaries, but farther on, two rows of black-windowed
houses closed it in.

Here was the city's quarter once given over to the Spaniard. Here were
still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing cold and
indomitable against the cejitury. From the murky fissure, the eye saw,
flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of his Moorish balconies.
Through stone archways breaths of dead, vault-chilled air coughed upon
him; his feet struck jingling iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a
cycle. Along these paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had
caracoled and serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk and the
pioneer's rifle were already uplifted to expel him from a continent. And
Tansey, stumbling through this old-world dust, looked up, dark as it was,
and saw Andalusian beauties glimmering on the balconies. Some of
them were laughing and listening to the goblin music that still followed;
others harked fearfully through the night, trying to catch the hoof beats of
caballeros whose last echoes from those stones had died away a century
ago. Those women were silent, but Tansey heard the jangle of horseless
bridle-bits, the whirr of riderless rowels, and, now and then, a muttered
malediction in a foreign tongue. But he was not frightened. Shadows, nor
shadows of sounds could daunt him. Afraid? No. Afraid of Mother Peek ?
Afraid to face the girl of his heart? Afraid of tipsy Captain Peek? Nay!
nor of these apparitions, nor of that spectral singing that always pursued

THE ENCHANTED KISS 481

him. Singing! He would show them! He lifted up a strong and untuneful
voice:

"When you hear them bells go tingalingling,"

serving notice upon those mysterious agencies that if it should come to a
face-to-face encounter

"There'll be a hot time
In the old town
To-night!"

How long Tansey consumed in treading this haunted byway was not
clear to him, but in time he emerged into a more commodious avenue.
When within a few yards of the corner he perceived, through a window,
that a small confectionery of mean appearance was set in the angle. His
same glance that estimated its meagre equipment, its cheap soda-water
fountain and stock of tobacco and sweets, took cognizance of Captain
Peek within lighting a cigar at a swinging gaslight.

As Tansey rounded the corner Captain Peek came out, and they met
vis-a-vis. An exultant joy filled Tansey when he found himself sustaining
the encounter with implicit courage. Peek, indeed! He raised his hand,
and snapped his fingers loudly.

It was Peek himself who quailed guiltily before the valiant mien of the
drug clerk. Sharp surprise and a palpable fear bourgeoned upon the
Captain's face. And, verily, that face was one to rather call up such ex-
pressions upon the faces of others. The face of a libidinous heathen idol,
small eyed, with carven folds in the heavy jowls, and a consuming, pagan
license in its expression. In the gutter just beyond the store Tansey saw a
closed carriage standing with its back toward him and a motionless driver
perched in his place.

"Why, it's Tansey!" exclaimed Captain Peek. "How are you, Tansey?
H-have,a cigar, Tansey?"

"Why, it's Peek!" cried Tansey, jubilant at his own temerity. "What
deviltry are you up to now, Peek? Back streets and a closed carriage! Fie!
Peek!"

"There's no one in the carriage/' said the Captain, smoothly.

"Everybody out of it is in luck," continued Tansey, aggressively. "I'd
love for you to know, Peek, that I'm not stuck on you. You're a bottle-
nosed scoundrel."

"Why, the little rat's drunk!" cried the Captain, joyfully; "only drunk,
and I thought he was on! Go home, Tansey, and quit bothering grown
persons on the street."

But just then a white-clad figure sprang out of the carriage, and a shrill
voice — Katie's voice — sliced the air: "Sam! Sam! — help me, Sam!"

Tansey sprang toward her, but Captain Peek interposed his bulky

482 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

form. Wonder of wonders! the whilom spiritless youth struck out with
his right, and the hulking Captain went over in a swearing heap. Tansey
flew to Katie, and took her in his arms like a conquering knight. She
raised her face, and he kissed her— violets! electricity! caramels! cham-
pagne! Here was the attainment of a dream that brought no disenchant-
ment.

"Oh3 Sam," cried Katie, when she could, "I knew you would come to
rescue me. What do you suppose the mean things were going to do with
me?"

"Have your picture taken," said Tansey, wondering at the foolishness

of his remark. . n

"No, they were going to eat me. I heard them talking about it

"Eat you!" said Tansey, after pondering a moment. "That can't be;
there's no plates,"

But a sudden noise warned him to turn. Down upon him were bearing
the Captain and a monstrous long-bearded dwarf in a spangled cloak and
red trunk-hose. The dwarf leaped twenty feet and clutched him. The
Captain seized Katie and hurled her, shrieking, back into the carriage,
himself followed, and the vehicle dashed away. The dwarf lifted Tansey
high above his head and ran with him into the store. Holding him with
one hand, he raised the lid of an enormous chest half filled with cakes
of ice, flung Tansey inside, and closed down the cover.

The force of the fall must have been great, for Tansey lost conscious-
ness. When his faculties revived his first sensation was one of severe cold
along his back and limbs. Opening his eyes, he found himself to be seated
upon the lime-stone steps still facing the wall and convent of Santa Mer-
cedes. His first thought was of the ecstatic kiss from Katie. The out-
rageous villainy of Captain Peek, the unnatural mystery of the situation,
his preposterous conflict with the improbable dwarf— these things roused
and angered him, but left no impression of the unreal.

Til go back there to-morrow/ he grumbled aloud, "and knock the
head of? that comic-opera squab. Running out and picking up perfect
strangers, and shoving them into cold storage!"

But the kiss remained uppermost in his mind. "I might have done that
long ago," he mused. "She liked it, too. She called me 'Sam' four times.
Ill not go up that street again. Too much scrapping. Guess 111 move
down the other way. Wonder what she meant by saying they were going
to eat her!'*

Tansey began to feel sleepy, but after a while he decided to move along
again. This time he ventured into the street to his left. It ran level for
a distance, and then dipped gentry downward, opening into a vast, dim,
barren space— the old Military Plaza. To his left, some hundred yards
distant, he saw a cluster of flickering lights along the Plaza's border. He
knew the locality at once.

THE ENCHANTED KISS 483

Huddled within narrow confines were the remnants of the once-
famous purveyors of the celebrated Mexican national cookery. A few
years before, their nightly encampments upon the historic Alamo Plaza,
in the heart of the city, had been a carnival, a saturnalia that was re-
nowned throughout the land. Then the caterers numbered hundreds; the
patrons thousands. Drawn by the coquettish senoritas, the music of the
weird Spanish minstrels, and the strange piquant Mexican dishes served
at a hundred competing tables, crowds thronged the Alamo Plaza all
night. Travellers, rancheros, family parties, gay gasconading rounders,
sight-seers and prowlers of polygolt, owlish San Antone mingled there at
the centre of the city's fun and frolic. The popping of corks, pistols, and
questions; the glitter of eyes, jewels, and daggers; the ring of laughter
and coin — these were the order of the night.

But now no longer. To sorne half-dozen tents, fires, and tables had
dwindled the picturesque festival, and these had been relegated to an
ancient disused plaza.

Often had Tansey strolled down to these stands at night to partake
of the delectable chtli-con-carne , a dish evolved by the genius of Mexico,
composed of delicate meats minced with aromatic herbs and the poign-
ant chili Colorado — a compound full of singular savor and a fiery zest de-
lightful to the Southron's palate.

The titillating odor of this concoction came now, on the breeze, to the
nostrils of Tansey, awakening in him hunger for it. As he turned in that
direction he saw a carriage dash up to the Mexicans' tents out of the
gloom of the Plaza. Some figures moved back and forward in the uncer-
tain light of the lanterns, and then the carriage was driven swiftly away.

Tansey approached, and sat at one of the tables covered with gaudy
oilcloth. Traffic was dull at the moment. A few half-grown boys noisily
fared at another table; the Mexicans hung listless and phlegmatic about
their wares. And it was still. The night hum of the city crowded to the
wall of dark buildings surrounding the Plaza, and subsided to an .indef-
inite buzz through which sharply perforated the crackle of the languid
fires and the rattle of fork and spoon. A sedative wind blew from the
southeast. The starless firmament pressed down upon the earth like a
leaden cover.

In all that quiet Tansey turned his head suddenly, and saw, without
disquietude, a troop of spectral horsemen deploy into the Plaza and
charge a luminous line of infantry that advanced to sustain the shock. He
saw the fierce flame of cannon and small arms, but heard no sound. The
careless victuallers lounged vacantly, ,not deigning to view the conflict.
Tansey mildly wondered to what nations these mute combatants might
belong; turned his back to them and ordered his chili and coffee from
the Mexican woman who advanced to serve him. This woman was old
and careworn; her face was lined like the rind of a cantaloupe. She

404 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

fetched the viands from a vessel set by the smouldering fire, and then re-
tired to a tent, dark within, that stood near by.

Presently Tansey heard a turmoil in the tent; a wailing, broken-
hearted pleading in the harmonious Spanish tongue, and then two fig-
ures tumbled out into the light of the lanterns. One was the old woman;
the other was a man clothed with a sumptuous and flashing splendor.
The woman seemed to clutch and beseech from him something against
his will. The man broke from her and struck her brutally back into the
tent, where she lay, whimpering and invisible. Observing Tansey, he
walked rapidly to the table where he sat. Tansey recognized him to be
Ramon Torres, a Mexican, the proprietor of the stand he was patronizing

Torres was a handsome, nearly full-blooded descendant of the Span-
ish, seemingly about thirty years of age, and of a haughty, but extremely
courteous demeanor. To-night he was dressed with signal magnificence.
His costume was that of a triumphant matador, made of purple velvet
almost hidden by jeweled embroidery. Diamonds of enormous size
flashed upon his garb and his hands. He reached for a chair, and, seating
himself at the opposite side of the table, began to roll a finical cigarette.

"Ah, Meester Tansee," he said, with a sultry fire in his silky, black1
eye, "I give myself pleasure to see you this evening. Meester Tansee, you
have many times come to eat at my table. I theenk you a safe man—a
verree good friend. How much would it please you to leeve forever?"

"Not come back any more?" inquired Tansey.

"No; not leave— leeve; the not-to-die."

"I would call that," said Tansey, "a snap."

Torres leaned his elbows upon the table, swallowed a mouthful of
smoke, and spake— each word being projected in a little puff of gray.

"How old do you theenk I am, Meester Tansee?"

"Oh, twenty-eight or thirty."

"Thees day," said the Mexican, "ees my birthday. I am four hundred
and three years of old to-day."

"Another proof," said Tansey, airily, "of the healthfulness of our
climate."

"Eet is not the air. I am to relate to you a secret of verree fine value.
Listen me, Meester Tansee. At the age of twenty-three I arrive in Mexico
from Spain. When? In the year fifteen hundred nineteen, with the
soldados of Hernando Cortez. I come to thees country seventeen fifteen.
I saw your Alamo reduced. It was like yesterday to me. Three hundred
ninety-six year ago I learn the secret always to leeve. Look at these clothes
I wear — at these diamantes. Do you theenk I buy them with the money
I make with selling the chili-con-carne, Meester Tansee?"

"I should think not," said Tansey, promptly. Torres laughed loudly.

"Valgame Diosl but I do. But it not the kind you eating now. I make
a deeferent kind, the eating of which makes men to always leeve. What

THE ENCHANTED KISS 485

do you think! One thousand people I supply — diez pesos each one pays
me the month. You see! ten thousand pesos everee month! Que diablosl
how not I wear the fine ropol You see that old woman try to hold me
back a little while ago? That ees my wife. When I marry her she is
young— seventeen ytzrs—bonita—. Like the rest she ees become old and—
what you say!— -tough? I am the same— young all the time. To-night I
resolve to dress myself and find another wife befitting my age. This old
woman try to scr-r-ratch my face. Ha! Ha! Meester Tansee — same way
they do entre los Americanos!'

"And this health-food you spoke of?" said Tansey.

"Hear me/' said Torres, leaning over the table until he lay flat upon
it; "eet is the chili-con-carne made not from the beef or the chicken, but
from the flesh of the senorita — young and tender. That ees the secret.
Everee month you must eat it, having care to do so before the moon is
full, and you will not die any times. See how I trust you, friend Tansee!
To-night I have bought one young ladee — veree pretty — so fina, gorda,
blandital To-morrow the chili will be ready. Ahora si! One thousand dol-
lars I pay for thees young ladee. From an Americano I have bought — a
veree tip-top man — el Capitan Pee\ — Que es, Senor?"

For Tansy had sprung to his feet, upsetting the chair. The words of
Katie reverberated in his ears: "They're going to eat me, Sam." This,
then, was the monstrous fate to which she had been delivered by her un-
natural parent. The carriage he had seen drive up from the Plaza was
Captain Peek's. Where was Katie? Perhaps already

Before he could decide what to do a loud scream came from the tent.
The old Mexican woman ran out, a flashing knife in her hand. "I have
released her," she cried. "You shall kill no more. They will hang you—
ingrato — encantador!1'

Torres, with a hissing exclamation, sprang at her.

"Ramoncito!" she shrieked; "once you loved me."

The Mexican's arm raised and descended. "You are old," he cried;
and she fell and lay motionless.

Another scream; the flaps of the tent were flung aside, and there stood
Katie, white with fear, her wrists still bound with a cruel cord.

"Sam!" she cried, "save me again!"

Tansey rounded the table, and flung himself, with superb nerve, upon
the Mexican. Just then a clangor began; the clocks of the city were tolling
the midnight hour. Tansey clutched at Torres, and, for a moment, felt in
his grasp the crunch of velvet and the cold facets of the glittering gems.
The next instant, the bedecked caballero turned in his hands to a
shrunken, leather-visaged, white-bearded, old, old screaming mummy,
sandalled, ragged, four hundred and three. The Mexican woman was
crawling to her feet, and laughing. She shook her brown hand in the
face of the whining vie jo.

486 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Go, now," she cried, "and seek your senorita. It was I, Ramoncito,
who brought you to this. Within each moon you eat of the life-giving
chili. It was I that kept the wrong time for you. You should have eaten
yesterday instead of to-morrow. It is too late. Off with you, hombre! You
are too old for me!"

"This,5* decided Tansey, releasing his hold of the graybeard, "is a pri-
vate family matter concerning age, and no business of mine."

With one of the table knives he hastened to saw asunder the fetters of
the fair captive; and then, for the second time that night he kissed Katie
Peek — tasted again the sweetness, the wonder, the thrill of it, attained
once more the maximum of his incessant dreams.

The next instant an icy blade was driven deep between his shoulders;
he felt his blood slowly congeal; heard the senile cackle of the perennial
Spaniard; saw the Plaza rise and reel till the zenith crashed into the
horizon — and knew no more.

When Tansey opened his eyes again he was sitting upon those self-
same steps gazing upon the dark bulk of the sleeping convent. In the
middle of his back was still the acute, chilling pain. How had he been
conveyed back there again? He got stiffly to his feet and stretched his
cramped limbs. Supporting himself against the stonework he revolved in
his mind the extravagant adventures that had befallen him each time he
had strayed from the steps that night. In reviewing them certain features
strained his credulity. Had he really met Captain Peek or Katie or the
unparalleled Mexican in his wanderings — had he really encountered them
under commonplace conditions and his over-stimulated brain had sup-
plied the incongruities? However that might be, a sudden, elating
thought caused him an intense joy. Nearly all of us have, at some point
in our lives — either to excuse our own stupidity or placate our consciences
—promulgated some theory of fatalism. We have set up an intelligent
Fate that works by codes and signals. Tansey had done likewise; and
now he read, through the night's incidents, the finger-prints of destiny.
Each excursion that he had made had led to the one paramount finale —
to Katie and that kiss, which survived and grew strong and intoxicating
in his memory. Clearly, Fate was holding up to him the mirror that
night, calling him to observe what awaited him at the end of whichever
road he might take. He immediately turned, and hurried homeward.

Clothed in an elaborate, pale blue wrapper, cut to fit, Miss Katie Peek
reclined in an arm-chair before a waning fire in her room. Her little,, bare
feet were thrust into house-shoes rimrned with swan's down. By the
light of a small lamp she was attacking the society news of the latest Sun-
day paper. Some happy substance, seemingly indestructible, was being
rhythmically crushed between her small white teeth. Miss Katie read of
functions and furbelows, but she kept a vigilant ear for outside sounds

A DEPARTMENTAL CASE 487

and a frequent eye upon the clock over the mantel. At every footstep upon
the asphalt sidewalk her smooth, round chin would cease for a moment
its regular rise and fall, and a frown of listening would pucker her pretty
brows.

At last she heard the latch of the iron gate click. She sprang up,
tripped swiftly to the mirror, where she made a few of those feminine,
flickering passes at her front hair and throat which are warranted to hyp-
notize the approaching guest.

The door-bell rang. Miss Katie, in her haste, turned the blaze of the
lamp lower instead of higher, and hastened noiselessly downstairs into
the hall She turned the key, the door opened, and Mr. Tansey side-
stepped in.

"Why, the i-de-a!" exclaimed Miss Katie, "is this you, Mr. Tansey?
It's after midnight. Aren't you ashamed to wake me up at such an hour
to let you in? You're just awful!"

"I was late," said Tansey, brilliantly.

"I should think you were! Ma was awfully worried about you. When
you weren't in by ten, that hateful Tom McGill said you were out calling
on another — said you were out calling on some young lady. I just de-
spise Mr. McGill. Well, I'm not going to scold you any more, Mr. Tan-
sey, if it is a little late — Oh! I turned it the wrong way!"

Miss Katie gave a little scream. Absent-mindedly she had turned the
blaze of the lamp entirely out instead of higher. It was very dark.

Tansey heard a musical, soft giggle, and breathed an entrancing odor
of heliotrope. A groping light hand touched his arm.

"How awkward I was! Can you find your way — Sam?"

"I — I think I have a match, Miss K-Katie."

A scratching sound; a flame; a glow of light held at arm's length by
the recreant follower of Destiny illuminating a tableau which shall end
the ignominious chronicle — a maid with unkissed, curling, contemptuous
lips slowly lifting the lamp chimney and allowing the wick to ignite; then
waving a scornful and abjuring hand toward the staircase — the unhappy
Tansey erstwhile champion in the prophetic lists of fortune, ingloriously
ascending to his just and certain doom, while (let us imagine) half within
the wings stands the imminent figure of Fate jerking wildly at the wrong
strings, and mixing things up in her usual able manner.

A DEPARTMENTAL CASE

In Texas you may travel a thousand miles in a straight line. If your
course is a crooked one, it is likely that both the distance and your rate of
speed may be vastly increased. Clouds there sail serenely against the

488 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

wind. The whippoorwill delivers its disconsolate cry with the notes ex-
actly reversed from those of the Northern brother. Given a drought and a
subsequently lively rain, and lo! from a glazed and stony soil will spring
in a single night blossomed lilies, miraculously fair. Tom Green County
was once the standard of measurement. I have forgotten how many New
Jerseys and Rhode Islands it was that could have been stowed away and
lost in its chaparral. But the legislative axe has slashed Tom Green into a
handful of counties hardly larger than European kingdoms. The legisla-
ture convenes at Austin, near the centre of the state; and, while the rep-
resentative from Rio Grande country is gathering his palm leaf fan and
his linen duster to set out for the capital, the Pan-handle solon winds
his muffler above his well-buttoned overcoat and kicks the snow from
his well-greased boots ready for the same journey. All this merely to hint
that the big ex-republic of the Southwest forms a sizable star on the flag,
and to prepare for the corollary that things sometimes happen there un-
cut to pattern and unfettered by metes and bounds.

The Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History of the State
of Texas was an official of no very great or very small importance. The
past tense is used, for now he is Commissioner of Insurance alone. Sta-
tistics and history are no longer proper nouns in the government records.

In the year 188-, the governor appointed Luke Coonrod Standifer
to be the head of this department. Standifer was then fifty-five years of
age, and a Texan to the core. His father had been one of the state's
earliest settlers and pioneers. Standifer himself had served the common-
wealth as Indian fighter, soldier, ranger, and legislator. Much learning he
did not claim, but he had drunk pretty deep of die spring of experience.

If other grounds were less abundant, Texas should be well up in the
lists of glory as the grateful republic. For both as republic and state, it has
busily heaped honors and solid rewards upon its sons who rescued it
from the wilderness.

Wherefore and therefore, Luke Coonrod Standifer, son of Ezra Standi-
fer, ex-Terry ranger, simon-pure democrat, and lucky dweller in an un-
represented portion of the politico-geographical map, was appointed
Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History.

Standifer accepted the honor with some doubt as to the nature of the
office he was to fill and his capacity for filling it— but he accepted, and
by wire. He immediately set out from the little country town where he
maintained (and was scarcely maintained by) a somnolent and unfruit-
ful office of surveying and map-drawing. Before departing, he had looked
under the Fs, SX and H's in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" what infor-
mation and preparation toward his official duties that those weighty vol-
umes afforded.

A few weeks of incumbency diminished the new commissioner's awe
of the great and important office he had been called upon to conduct. An

A DEPARTMENTAL CASE 489

increasing familiarity with its workings soon restored him to his ac-
customed placid course o£ life. In his office was an old spectacled clerk—
a consecrated, informed, able machine, who held his desk regardless of
changes of administrative heads. Old Kauffman instructed his new
chief gradually in the knowledge of the department without seeming to
do so, and kept the wheels revolving without the slip of a cog.

Indeed, the Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History carried no
great heft of the burden of state. Its main work was the regulating of the
business done in the state by foreign insurance companies, and the letter
of the law was its guide. As for statistics — well, you wrote letters to
county officers, and scissored other people's reports, and each year you
got out a report of your own about the corn crop and the cotton crop and
pecans and pigs and black and white population, and a great many col-
umns of figures headed "bushels" and "acres" and "square miles," etc. —
and there you were. History? The branch was purely a receptive one*
Old ladies interested in the science bothered you some with long reports
of proceedings of their historical societies. Some twenty or thirty people
would write you each year that they had secured Sam Houston's pocket-
knife of Santa Ana's whisky-flask or Davy Crockett's rifle — all absolutely
authenticated — and demanded legislative appropriation to purchase. Most
of the work in the history branch went into pigeonholes.

One sizzling August afternoon the commissioner reclined in his office
chair, with his feet upon the long, official table covered with green bil-
liard cloth. The commissioner was smoking a cigar, and dreamily re-
garding the quivering landscape framed by the window that looked upon
the treeless capitol grounds. Perhaps he was thinking of the rough and
ready life he had led, of the old days of breathless adventure and move-
ment, of the comrades who now trod other paths or had ceased to tread
any, of the changes civilization and peace had brought, and, maybe, com-
placently, of the snug and comfortable camp pitched for him under the
dome of the capitol of the state that had not forgotten his services.

The business of the department was lax. Insurance was easy. Statistics
were not in demand. History was dead. Old Kauffman, the efficient and
perpetual clerk, had requested an infrequent half-holiday, incited to the
unusual dissipation by the joy of having successfully twisted the tail of a
Connecticut insurance company that was trying to do business contrary
to the edicts of the great Lone Star State.

The office was very still. A few subdued noises trickled in through the
open door from the other departments — a dull tinkling crash from the
treasurer's office adjoining, as a clerk tossed a bag of silver to the floor
of the vault — the vague intermittent , clatter of a dilatory typewriter — a
dull tapping from the state geologist's quarters as if some woodpecker
had flown in to bore for his prey in the cool of the massive building—
and then a faint rustle, and the light shuffling of the well-worn shoes

490 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

along the hall, the sounds ceasing at the door toward which the com-
missioner's lethargic back was presented. Following this, the sound of a
gentle voice speaking words unintelligible to the commissioner's some-
what dormant comprehension, but giving evidence o£ bewilderment and
hesitation.

The voice was feminine; the commissioner was of the race of cavaliers
who make salaam before the trail of a skirt without considering the
quality of its cloth.

There stood in the door a faded woman, one of the numerous sister-
hood of the unhappy. She was dressed all in black— poverty's perpetual
mourning for lost joys. Her face had the contours of twenty and the
lines of forty. She may have lived that intervening score of years in a
twelve-month. There was about her yet an aurum of indignant, unap-
peased, protesting youth that shone faintly through the premature veil of
unearned decline.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said the commissioner, gaining his feet to
the accompaniment of a great creaking and sliding of his chair.

"Are you the governor, sir?'* asked the vision of melancholy.

The commissioner hesitated at the end of his best bow, with his hand
in the bosom of his double-breasted "frock." Truth at last conquered.

"Well, no, ma'am. I am not the governor. I have the honor to be Com-
missioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History. Is there anything, ma'am,
I can do for you? Won't you have a chair, ma'am?"

The lady subsided into the chair handed her, probably from purely
physical reasons. She wielded a cheap fan — last token of gentility to be
abandoned. Her clothing seemed to indicate a reduction almost to ex-
treme poverty. She looked at the man who was not the governor, and saw
kindliness and simplicity and a rugged, unadorned courtliness emanating
from a countenance tanned, and toughened by forty years of outdoor life.
Also, she saw that his eyes were clear and strong and blue. Just as they
had been when he used them to skim the horizon for raiding Kiowas
and Sioux. His mouth was as set and firm as it had been on that day
when he bearded the old Lion Sam Houston himself, and defied him
during that season when secession was the theme. Now, in bearing and
dress, Luke Coonrod Standifer endeavored to do credit to the important
arts and sciences of Insurance, Statistics, and History. He had abandoned
the careless dress of his country home. Now, his broad-brimmed black
slouch hat, and his long-tailed "frock" made him not the least imposing
of the official family, even if his office was reckoned to stand at the tail
of the list.

"You wanted to see the governor, ma'am?" asked the commissioner,
with a deferential manner he always used toward the fair sex.

"I hardly know," said the lady, hesitatingly. "I suppose so." And then,
suddenly drawn by the sympathetic look of the other, she poured forth
the story of her need.

A DEPARTMENTAL CASE 49!

It was a story so common that the public has come to look at its
monotony instead of its pity. The old tale of an unhappy married life —
made so by a brutal, conscienceless husband, a robber, a spendthrift, a
moral coward, and a bully, who failed to provide even the means of the
barest existence. Yes, he had come down in the scale so low as to strike
her. It happened only the day before — there was the bruise on one temple
— she had offended his highness by asking for a little money to live on.
And yet she must needs, womanlike, append a plea for her tyrant — he
was drinking; he had rarely abused her thus when sober.

"I thought," mourned this pale sister of sorrow, "that maybe the state
might be willing to give me some relief. I've heard of such things being
done for the families of old settlers. I've heard tell that the state used to
give land to the men who fought for it against Mexico, and settled up the
country, and helped drive out the Indians. My father did all of that, and
he never received anything. He never would take it. I thought the gov-
vernor would be the one to see, and that's why I came. If Father was en-
titled to anything, they might let it come to me."

"It's possible, ma'am," said Standifer, "that such might be the case. But
'most all the veterans and settlers got their land cerificates issued and
located long ago. Still, we can look that up in the land office and be sure.
Your father's name, now, was "

"Amos Colvin, sir."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Standifer, rising and unbuttoning his tight
coat, excitedly. "Are you Amos Colvin's daughter? Why, ma'am, Amos
Colvin and me were thicker than two hoss thieves for more than ten
years! We fought Kiowas, drove cattle, and rangered side by side nearly
all over Texas. I remember seeing you once before now. You were a kid,
about seven, a-riding a little yellow pony up and down. Amos and me
stopped at your home for a little grub when we were trailing that band of
Mexican cattle thieves down through Karnes and Bee. Great tarantulas!
and you're Amos Colvin's little girl! Did you ever hear your father men-
tion Luke Standifer— just kind of casually—as if he'd met me once or
twice?"

A little pale smile flitted across the lady's white face.

"It seems to me," she said, "that I don't remember hearing him talk
about much else. Every day there was some story he had to tell about
what he and you had done. Mighty near the last thing I heard him tell was
about the time when the Indians wounded him, and you crawled out to
him through the grass, with a canteen of water while they "

"Yes, yes— well— oh, that wasn't anything," said Standifer, "hem-
ming" loudly and buttoning his coat again briskly. "And now, ma'am,
who was the infernal skunk— I beg your pardon, ma'am— who was the
gentleman you married?"

"Benton Sharp."

The commissioner plumped down again into his chair with a groan.

492 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

This gentle, sad little woman in the rusty black gown the daughter o£
his oldest friend, the wife of Benton Sharp! Benton Sharp, one of the
most noted "bad" men in that part ot the state — a man who had been a
cattle thief, an outlaw, a desperado, and was now a gambler, a swagger-
ing bully, who plied his trade in the larger frontier towns, relying upon
his record and tie quickness of his gun play to maintain his supremacy.
Seldom did anyone take the risk of going "up against" Benton Sharp.
Even the law officers were content to let him make his own terms of
peace. Sharp was a ready and an accurate shot, and as lucky as a brand-
new penny at coming clear of scrapes. Standifer wondered how this pil-
laging eagle ever came to be mated with Amos Colvin's little dove and
expressed his wonder.

Mrs. Sharp sighed.

"You see, Mr. Standifer, we didn't know anything about him, and he
can be very pleasant and kind when he wants to. We lived down in the
little town of Goliad. Benton came riding down that way and stopped
there a while. I reckon I was some better looking then than I am now. He
was good to me for a whole year after we were married. He insured his
life for me for five thousand dollars. But for the last six months he has
done everything but kill me. I often wish he had done that, too. He got
out of money for a while, and abused me shamefully for not having any-
thing he could spend. Then Father died and left me the little home in
Goliad. My husband made me sell that and turned me out into the world.
I've barely been able to live, for I'm not strong enough to work. Lately,
I heard he was making money in San Antonio, so I went there, and found
him, and asked for a little help. This," touching the livid bruise on her
temple, "is what he gave me. So I came on to Austin to see the governor.
I once heard Father say that there was some land or a pension coming
to him from the state that he never would ask for."

Luke Standifer rose to his feet, and pushed his chair back. He looked
rather perplexedly around the big office with its handsome furniture.

"It's a long trail to follow," he said> slowly, "trying to get back dues
from the government. There's red tape and lawyers and rulings and evi-
dences and courts to keep you waiting. I'm not certain," continued the
commissioner, with a profoundly meditative frown, "whether this depart-
ment that I'm the boss of has any jurisdiction or not. It's only Insurance,
Statistics, and History, ma'am, and it don't sound as if it would cover the
case. But sometimes a saddle blanket can be made to stretch. You keep
your seat, just for a few minutes, ma'am, till I step into the next room
and see about it."

The state treasurer was seated within his massive, complicated rail-
ings, reading a newspaper. Business for the day was about over. The
clerks lolled at their desks, awaiting the closing hour. The Commissioner
of Insurance, Statistics, and History entered, and leaned in at the window.

The treasurer, a little, brisk old man, with snow-white moustache and

A DEPARTMENTAL CASE 493

beard, jumped up youthfully and came forward to greet Standifer. They
were friends of old.

"Uncle Frank/' said the commissioner, using the familiar name by
which the historic treasurer was addressed by every Texan, "how much
money have you got on hand?55

The treasurer named the sum of the last balance down to the odd
cents— something more than a million dollars.

The commissioner whistled lowly, and his eyes grew hopefully bright.

"You know, or else you've heard of, Amos Colvin, Uncle Frank?"

"Knew him well," said the treasurer, promptly. "A good man. A valu-
able citizen. One of the settlers in the Southwest."

"His daughter," said Standifer, "is sitting in my office. She's penniless.
She's married to Benton Sharp, a coyote and a murderer. He's reduced
her to want and broken her heart. Her father helped build up this state,
and it's the state's turn to help his child. A couple of thousand dollars
will buy back her home and let her live in peace. The State of Texas
can't afford to refuse it. Give me the money. Uncle Frank, and I'll give it
to her right away. We'll fix up the red-tape business afterward."

The treasurer looked a little bewildered.

"Why, Standifer," he said, "you know I can't pay a cent out of the
treasury without a warrant from the comptroller. I can't disburse a dollar
without a voucher to show for it."

The commissioner betrayed a slight impatience.

"Ill give you a voucher," he declared. "What's this job they've given
me for? Am I just a knot on a mesquite stump? Can't my office stand
for it? Charge it up to Insurance and the other two sideshows. Don't
Statistics show that Amos Colvin came to this state when it was in the
hands of Greasers and rattlesnakes and Comanches, and fought day and
night to make a white man's country of it? Don't they show that Amos
Colvin's daughter is brought to ruin by a villain who's trying to pull down
what you and I and old Texans shed our blood to build up? Don't His-
tory show that the Lone Star State never yet failed to grant relief to the
suffering and oppressed children of the men who made her the grandest
commonwealth in the Union? It Statistics and History don't bear out the
claim of Amos Colvin's child I'll ask the next legislature to abolish my
office. Come, now, Uncle Frank, let her have the money. I'll sign the
papers officially, if you say so; and then if the governor or the comptroller
or the janitor or anybody else makes a kick, by the Lord I'll refer the
matter to the people, and see if they won't indorse the act."

The treasurer looked sympathetic but shocked. The commissioner's
voice had grown louder as he rounded off the sentences that, however
praiseworthy they might be in sentiment, reflected somewhat upon the
capacity of the head of a more or less important department of state. The
clerks were beginning to listen.

494 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Now, Standifer," said the treasurer, soothingly, "y°u know I'd like
to help in this matter, but stop and think a moment, please. Every cent
in the treasury is expended only by appropriation made by the legislature,
and drawn out by checks issued by the comptroller. I can't control the
use of a cent of it. Neither can you. Your department isn't disbursive— it
isn't even administrative — it's purely clerical. The only way for the lady
to obtain relief is to petition the legislature, and "

"To the devil with the legislature," said Standifer, turning away.

The treasurer called him back.

"I'd be glad, Standifer, to contribute a hundred dollars personally to-
ward the immediate expenses of Colvin's daughter." He reached for his
pocketbook.

"Never mind, Uncle Frank/' said the commissioner, in a softer tone.
"There's no need of that. She hasn't asked for anything of that sort yet.
Besides, her case is in my hands. I see now what a little rag-tag, bob-tail,
gotch-eared department I've been put in charge of. It seems to be about
as important as an almanac or a hotel register. But while I'm running it,
it won't turn away any daughters of Amos Colvin without stretching its
jurisdiction to cover, if possible. You want to keep your eye on the
Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History."

The commissioner returned to his office, looking thoughtful. He opened
and closed an inkstand on his desk many times with extreme and undue
attention before he spoke. "Why don't you get a divorce?" he asked,
suddenly.

"I haven't the money to pay for it," answered the lady.

"Just at present," announced the commissioner, in a formal tone, "the
powers of my department appear to be considerably stringhalted. Statis-
tics seem to be overdrawn at the bank, and History isn't good for a square
meal. But you've come to the right place, ma'am. The department will
see you through. Where did you say your husband is, ma'am?"

"He was in San Antonio yesterday. He is living there now/*

Suddenly the commissioner abandoned his official air. He took the
faded little woman's hands in his, and spoke in the old voice he used on
the trail and around campfires.

"Your name's Amanda, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"I thought so. I've heard your dad say it often enough. Well, Amanda,
here's your father's best friend, the head of a big office in the state gov-
ernment, that's going to help you out of your troubles. And here's the
old bush-whacker and cowpuncher that your father has helped out of
scrapes time and time again wants to ask you a question. Amanda, have
you got enough money to run you for the next two or three days?"
Mrs. Sharp's white face flushed the least bit.
"Plenty, sir— for a few days."

A DEPARTMENTAL CASE 49$

"All right, then, ma'am. Now you go back where you are stopping here,
and you come to the office again the day after to-morrow at four o'clock
in the afternoon. Very likely by that time there will be something definite
to report to you/' The commissioner hesitated, and looked a trifle embar-
rassed. "You said your husband had insured his life for $5,000. Do you
know whether the premiums have been kept paid upon it or not?"

"He paid for a whole year in advance about five months ago," said Mrs.
Sharp. "I have the policy and receipts in my trunk."

"Oh, that's all right, then," said Standifer. "It's best to look after things
of that sort. Some day they may come in handy."

Mrs. Sharp departed, and soon afterward Luke Standifer went down to
the little hotel where he boarded and looked up the railroad time-table
in the daily paper. Half an hour later he removed his coat and vest, and
strapped a peculiarly constructed pistol holster across his shoulders,
leaving the receptacle close under his left armpit. Into the holster he
shoved a short-barreled .44-calibre revolver. Putting on his clothes again,
he strolled down to the station and caught the five-twenty afternoon train
for San Antonio.

The San Antonio Express of the following morning contained this
sensational piece of news:

BENTON SHARP MEETS HIS MATCH

THE MOST NOTED DESPERADO IN SOUTHWEST TEXAS SHOT TO DEATH
IN THE GOLD FRONT RESTAURANT — PROMINENT STATE OFFICIAL
SUCCESSFULLY DEFENDS HIMSELF AGAINST THE NOTED BULLY —
MAGNIFICENT EXHIBITION OF QUICK GUN PLAY.

Last night about eleven o'clock Benton Sharp, with two other men,
entered the Gold Front Restaurant and seated themselves at a table.
Sharp had been drinking, and was loud and boisterous, as he always was
when under the influence of liquor. Five minutes after the party was
seated a tall, well-dressed, elderly gentleman entered the restaurant. Few
present recognized the Honorable Luke Standifer, the recently appointed
Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History.

Going over to the same side where Sharp was, Mr. Standifer prepared
to take a seat at the next table. In hanging his hat upon one of the hooks
along the wall he let it fall upon Sharp's head. Sharp turned, being in an
especially ugly humor, and cursed the other roundly. Mr. Standifer apolo-
gized calmly for the accident, but Sharp continued his vituperations. Mr.
Standifer was observed to draw near and speak a few sentences to the
desperado in so -low a tone that no one else caught the words. Sharp
spra&g up, wild with rage. In the meantime Mr. Standifer had stepped
some yards away, and was standing quietly with his arms folded across
the breast of his loosely hanging coat*

496 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

With that impetuous and deadly rapidity that made Sharp so dreaded,
he reached for the gun he always carried in his hip pocket— a movement
that has preceded the death of at least a dozen men at his hands. Quick
as the motion was, the bystanders assert that it was met by the most
beautiful exhibition of lightning gun-pulling ever witnessed in the South-
west. As Sharp's pistol was being raised— and the act was really quicker
than the eye could follow— a glittering .44 appeared as if by some con-
juring trick in the right hand of Mr. Standifer, who, without a perceptible
movement of his arm, shot Benton Sharp through the heart. It seems
that the new Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics, and History has been
an old-time Indian fighter and ranger for many years, which accounts
for the happy knack he has of handling a .44.

It is not believed that Mr. Standifer will be put to any inconvenience
beyond a necessary formal hearing to-day, as all the witnesses who were
present unite in declaring that the deed was done in self-defense.

When Mrs. Sharp appeared at the office of the commissioner, according
to appointment, she found that gentleman calmly eating a golden russet
apple. He greeted her without embarrassment and without hesitation at
approaching the subject that was the topic of the day.

"I had to do it, ma'am," he said, simply, "or get it myself. Mr. Kauff-
man," he added, turning to the old clerk, "please look up the records of
the Security Life Insurance Company and see if they are all right.'*

"No need to look," grunted Kauffman, who had everything in his head.
"It's all O. K. They pay all losses within ten days."

Mrs. Sharp soon rose to depart. She had arranged to remain in town
until the policy was paid. The commissioner did not detain her. She was
a woman, and he did not know just what to say to her at present. Rest and
time would bring her what she needed.

But, as she was leaving, Luke Standifer indulged himself in an official
remark:

"The Department of Insurance, Statistics, and History, ma'am, has done
the best it could with your case. 'Twas a case hard to cover according to
red tape. Statistics failed, and History missed fire, but, if I may be per-
mitted to say it, we came out particularly strong on Insurance."

THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI

Grandemont Charles was a little Creole gentleman, aged thirty-four, with
a bald spot on the top of his head and the manners of a prince. By day
he was a clerk in a cotton broker's office in one of those cold, rancid
mountains of oozy brick, down near the levee in New Orleans. By night,

THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI 497

in his three-story-high chambre garnie in the old French Quarter he was
again the last male descendant of the Charles family, that noble house
that had lorded it in France, and had pushed its way smiling, rapiered,
and courtly into Louisiana's early and brilliant days. Of late years the
Charleses had subsided into the more republican but scarcely less royally
carried magnificence and ease of plantation life along the Mississippi.
Perhaps Grandemont was even Marquis de Brasse. There was that title
in the family. But a marquis on seventy-five dollars per month! Vraimentl
Still, it has been done on less.

Grandemont had saved out of his salary the sum of six hundred dollars.
Enough, you would say, for any man to marry on. So, after a silence of
two years on that subject, he reopened that most hazardous question to
Mile. Adele Fauquier, riding down to Meade d'Or, her father's planta-
tion. Her answer was the same that it had been any time during the last
ten years: "First find my brother, Monsieur Charles."

This time he had stood before her, perhaps discouraged by a love so
long and hopeless, being dependent upon a contingency so unreasonable,
and demanded to be told in simple words whether she loved him or no.

Adele looked at him steadily out of her gray eyes that betrayed no
secrets and answered, a little more softly:

"Grandemont, you have no right to ask that question unless you can
do what I ask of you. Either bring back brother Victor to us or the proof
that he died."

Somehow, though five times thus rejected, his heart was not so heavy
when he left. She had not denied that she loved. Upon what shallow
waters can the bark of passion remain afloat! Or, shall we play the doc-
trinaire, and hint that at thirty-four the tides of life are calmer and cog-
nizant of many sources instead of but one — as at four-and-twenty ?

Victor Fauquier would never be found. In those early days of his dis-
appearance there was money to the Charles name, and Grandemont had
spent the dollars as if they were picayunes in trying to find the lost youth.
Even then he had had small hope of success, for the Mississippi gives up
a victim from its oily tangles only at the whim of its malign will.

A thousand times had Grandemont conned in his mind the scene of
Victor's disappearance. And, at each time that Adele had set her stubborn
but pitiful alternative against his suit, still clearer it repeated itself in his
brain.

The boy had been the family favorite: daring, winning, reckless. His
unwise fancy had been captured by a girl on the plantation— the daughter
of an overseer. Victor's family was in ignorance of the intrigue, as far as it
had gone. To save them the inevitable pain that his course promised,
Grandemont strove to prevent it. Omnipotent money smoothed the way.
The overseer and his daughter left, between a sunset and dawn, for an
undesignated bourne. Grandemont was confident that this stroke would

49$ BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

bring the boy to reason. He rode over to Meade d'Or to talk with him.
The two strolled out of the house and grounds, crossed the road, and,
mounting the levee, walked its broad path while they conversed. A thun-
dercloud was hanging, imminent, above, but, as yet, no rain fell. At
Grandemont's disclosure of his interference in the clandestine romance,
Victor attacked him, in a wild and sudden fury. Grandemont, though of
slight frame, possessed muscles of iron. He caught the wrists amid a
shower of blows descending upon him, bent the lad backward and
stretched him upon the levee path. In a little while the gust of passion
was spent, and he was allowed to rise. Calm now, but a powder mine
where he had been but a whiff of the tantrums, Victor extended his hand
toward the dwelling house of Meade d'Or.

"You and they," he cried, "have conspired to destroy my happiness.
None of you shall ever look upon my face again.'*

Turning, he ran swiftly down the levee, disappearing in the darkness,
Grandemont followed as well as he could, calling to him, but in vain. For
longer than an hour he pursued the search. Descending the side of the
levee, he penetrated the rank density of weeds and willows that under-
grew the trees until the river's edge, shouting Victor's name. There was
never an answer, though once he thought he heard a bubbling scream
from the dun waters sliding past. Then the storm broke, and he returned
to the house drenched and dejected.

There he explained the boy's absence sufficiently, he thought, not
speaking of the tangle that had led to it, for he hoped that Victor would
return as soon as his anger had cooled. Afterward, when the threat was
made good and they saw his face no more, he found it difficult to alter
his explanations of that night, and there clung a certain mystery to the
boy's reasons for vanishing as well as to the manner of it.

It was on that night that Grandemont first perceived a new and singu-
lar expression in Adele's eyes whenever she looked at him. And through
the years following that expression was always there. He could not read
it, for it was born of a thought she would never otherwise reveal.

Perhaps, if he had known that Adele had stood at the gate on that
unlucky night, where she had followed, lingering to await the return of
her brother and lover, wondering why they had chosen so tempestuous an
hour and so black a spot to hold converse — if he had known that a
sudden flash of lightning had revealed to her sight that short, sharp
struggle as Victor was sinking under his hands, he might have explained
everything, and she

I know not what she would have done. But one thing is clear — there
was something besides her brother's disappearance between Grandemont's
pleadings for her hand and Adele's "yes." Ten years had passed, and what
she had seen during the space of that lightning flash remained an in-
delible picture. She had loved her brother, but was she holding out for

THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI 499

the solution o£ that mystery or for the "Truth"! Women have been
known to reverence it, even as an abstract principle. It is said there have
been a few who, in the matter of their affections, have considered a life
to be a small thing as compared with a lie. That I do not know. But, I
wonder, had Grandemont cast himself at her feet crying that his hand had
sent Victor to the bottom of that inscrutable river, and that he could no
longer sully his love with a lie, I wonder if— I wonder what she would
have done!

But, Grandemont Charles, Arcadian little gentleman, never guessed the
meaning of that look in Adele's eyes; and from this last bootless payment
of his devoirs he rode away as rich as ever in honor and love, but poor in
hope.

That was in September. It was during the first winter month that
Grandemont conceived his idea of the renaissance. Since Adele would
never be his, and wealth without her were useless trumpery, why need
he add to that hoard of slowly harvested dollars? Why should he even
retain that hoard ?

Hundreds were the cigarettes he consumed over his claret, sitting at
the little polished tables in the Royal street cafes while thinking over his
plan. By and by he had it perfect. It would cost, beyond doubt, all the
money he had, but — le jeu vaut la chandelk — for some hours he would be
once more a Charles of Charleroi. Once again should the nineteenth of
January, that most significant day in the fortunes of the house of Charles,
be fittingly observed. On that date the French king had seated a Charles
by his side at table; on that date Armand Charles, Marquis de Brasse,
landed, like a brilliant meteor, in New Orleans; it was the date of his
mother's wedding; of Grandemont's birth. Since Grandemont could
remember until the breaking up of the family that anniversary had been
the synonym for feasting, hospitality, and proud commemoration.

Charleroi was the old family plantation, lying some twenty miles down
the river. Years ago the estate had been sold to discharge the debts of its
too-bountiful owners. Once again it had changed hands, and now the
must and mildew of litigation had settled upon it. A question of heirship
was in the courts, and die dwelling house of Charleroi, unless the tales
told of ghostly powdered and laced Charleses haunting its unechoing
chambers were true, stood uninhabited.

Grandemont found the solicitor in chancery who held the keys pending
the decision. He proved to be an old friend of the family. Grandemont
explained briefly that he desired to rent the house for two or three days.
He wanted to give a dinner at his old home to a few friends. That was all.

"Take it for a week— a month, if you will," said the solicitor; "but do
not speak to me of rental." With a sigh he concluded: "The dinners I
have eaten under that roof, mon ftls!"

There came to many of the old-established dealers in furniture, china,

500 BOOKIV ROAPS OF DESTINY

silverware, decorations, and household fittings at their stores on Canal,
Chartres, St. Charles and Royal streets, a quiet young man with a little
bald spot on the top of his head, distinguished manners, and the eye of a
connoisseur, who explained what he wanted. To hire the complete and
elegant equipment of a dining-room, hall, reception-room, and cloak-
rooms. The goods were to be packed and sent, by boat, to the Charleroi
landing, and would be returned within three or four days. All damage or
loss to be promptly paid for.

Many of those old merchants knew Grandemont by sight, and the
Charleses of old by association. Some of them were of Creole stock and
felt a thrill of responsive sympathy with the magnificently indiscreet
design of this impoverished clerk who would revive but for a moment
the ancient flame of glory with the fuel of his savings.

"Choose what you want," they said to him. "Handle everything care-
fully. See that the damage bill is kept low, and the charges for the loan
will not oppress you."

To the wine merchants next; and here a doleful slice was lopped from
the six hundred. It was an exquisite pleasure to Grandemont once more
to pick among the precious vintages. The champagne bins lured him
like the abodes of sirens, but these he was forced to pass. With his six
hundred he stood before them as a child with a penny stands before a
French doll But he bought with taste and discretion of other wines —
Chablis, Moselle, Chateau d'Or, Hochheimer, and port of right age and
pedigree.

The matter of the cuisine gave him some studious hours until he
suddenly recollected Andre — Andre, their old chef — the most sublime
master of French Creole cookery in the Mississippi Valley. Perhaps he
was yet somewhere about the plantation. The solicitor had told him that
the place was still being cultivated, in accordance with a compromise
agreement between the litigants.

On the next Sunday after the thought Grandemont rode, horseback,
down to Charleroi. The big, square house with its two long ells looked
blank and cheerless with its closed shutters and doors.

The shrubbery in the yard was ragged and riotous. Fallen leaves from
the grove littered the walks and porches. Turning down the lane at the
side of the house, Grandemont rode on to the quarters of the plantation
hands. He found the workers streaming back from church, careless,
happy, and bedecked in gay yellows, reds, and blues.

Yes, Andre was still there; his wool a little grayer, his mouth as wide;
his laughter as ready as ever. Grandemont told him of his plan, and the
old chef swayed with pride and delight. With a sigh of relief, knowing
that he need have no further concern until the serving of that dinner was
announced, he placed in Andre's hands a liberal sum for the cost of it,
giving carte blanche for its creation.

THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI 501

Among the blacks were also a number of the old house servants.
Absalom, the former major domo, and a half-dozen of the younger men,
once waiters and attaches of the kitchen, pantry, and other domestic
departments, crowded around to meet "M'shi Grande!9 Absalom guaran-
teed to marshal, of these, a corps of assistants that would perform with
credit the serving of the dinner.

After distributing a liberal largesse among the faithful, Grandemont
rode back to town well pleased. There were many other smaller details
to think of and provide for, but eventually the scheme was complete, and
now there remained only the issuance of the invitations to his guests.

Along the river within the scope of a score of miles dwelt some half-
dozen families with whose princely hospitality that of the Charleses had
been contemporaneous. They were the proudest and most august of the
old regime. Their small circle had been a brilliant one; their social rela-
tions close and warm; their houses full of rare welcome and discriminat-
ing bounty. Those friends, said Grandemont, should once more, if never
again, sit at Charleroi on a nineteenth of January to celebrate the festal
day of his house.

Grandemont had his cards of invitation engraved. They were expen-
sive, but beautiful. In one particular their good taste might have been
disputed; but the Creole allowed himself that one feather in the cap of
his fugacious splendor. Might he not be allowed, for the one day of the
renaissance, to be "Grandemont du Ptiy Charles, of Charleroi"? He sent
the invitations out early in January so that the guests might not fail to
receive due notice.

At eight o'clock in the morning of the nineteenth, the lower coast
steamboat River Belle gingerly approached the long unused landing at
Charleroi. The bridge was lowered, and a swarm of the plantation hands
streamed along the rotting pier, bearing ashore a strange assortment of
freight. Great shapeless bundles and bales and packets swathed in cloths
and bound with ropes; tubs and urns of palms, evergreens, and tropical
flowers; tables, mirrors, chairs, couches, carpets, and pictures — all care-
fully bound and padded against the dangers of transit.

Grandemont was among them, the busiest there. To the safe convey-
ance of certain large hampers eloquent with printed cautions to delicate
handling he gave his superintendence, for they contained the fragile
china and glassware. The dropping of one of those hampers would have
cost him more than he could have saved in a year.

The last article unloaded, the River Belle backed off and continued her
course down stream. In less than an hour everything had been conveyed
to the house. And came then Absalom's task, directing the placing of the
furniture and wares. There was plenty of help, for that day was always a
holiday in Charleroi, and the Negroes did not suffer the old traditions
to lapse. Almost the entire population of the quarters volunteered their

502 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

aid. A score of piccaninnies were sweeping at the leaves in the yard. In
the big kitchen at the rear Andre was lording it with his old-time mag-
nificence over his numerous sub-cooks and scullions. Shutters were flung
wide; dust spun in clouds; the house echoed to voices and the tread of
busy feet. The prince had come again, and Charleroi woke from its
long sleep.

The full moon, as she rose across the river that night and peeped above
the levee, saw a sight that had been long missing from her orbit. The
old plantation house shed a soft and alluring radiance from every window.
Of its two-score rooms only four had been refurnished — the large recep-
tion chamber, the dining hall, and two smaller rooms for the convenience
of the expected guests. But lighted wax candles were set in the windows
of every room.

The dining hall was the chej-d'oeuvre. The long table, set with twenty-
five covers, sparkled like a winter landscape with its snowy napery and
china and the icy gleam of crystal. The chaste beauty of the room had
required small adornment. The polished floor burned to a glowing ruby
with the reflection of candlelight. The rich wainscoting reached halfway
to the ceiling. Along and above this had been set the relieving lightness
of a few water-color sketches of fruit and flower.

The reception chamber was fitted in a simple but elegant style. Its
arrangement suggested nothing of the fact that on the morrow the rooms
would again be cleared and abandoned to the dust and the spider. The
entrance hall was imposing with palms and ferfns and the light of an
immense candelabrum.

At seven o'clock Grandemont, in evening dress, with pearls — a family
passion — in his spotless linen, emerged from somewhere. The invitations
had specified eight as the dining hour. He drew an armchair upon the
porch, and sat there, smoking cigarettes and half dreaming.

The moon was an hour high. Fifty yards back from the gate stood the
house, under its noble grove. The road ran in front, and then came the
grass-grown levee and the insatiate river beyond. Just above the levee top
a tiny red light was creeping down and a tiny green one was creeping up.
Then the passing steamers saluted, and the hoarse din startled the drowsy
silence of the melancholy lowlands. The stillness returned, save for the
little voices of the night— the owl's recitative, the capriccio of the crickets,
the concerto of the frogs in the grass. The piccaninnies and the dawdlers
from the quarters had been dismissed to their confines, and the melee
of the day was reduced to an orderly and intelligent silence. The six
colored waiters, in their white jackets, paced, cat-footed, about the table,
pretending to arrange where all was beyond betterment. Absalom, in black
and shining pumps, posed, superior, here and there where the lights set
off his grandeur. And Grandemont rested in his chair, waiting for his
guests.

THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI 503

He must have drifted into a dream— and an extravagant one— for he
was master of Charleroi and Adele was his wife. She was coming out
to him now; he could hear her steps; he could feel her hand upon his
shoulder

"Pardon mot, M'shi Grande" — it was Absalom's hand touching him, it
was Absalom's voice, speaking the patois of the blacks— "but it is eight
o'clock."

Eight o'clock. Grandemont sprang up. In the moonlight he could see
the row of hitching-posts outside the gate. Long ago the horses of the
guests should have stood there. They were vacant.

A chanted roar of indignation, a just, waxing bellow of affront and dis-
honored genius came from Andre's kitchen, filling the house with rhyth-
mic protest. The beautiful dinner, the pearl of a dinner, the little excellent
superb jewel of a dinner! But one moment more of waiting and not even
the thousand thunders of black pigs of the quarters would touch it!

"They are a little late," said Grandemont, calmly. "They will come
soon. Tell Andre to hold back dinner. And ask him if, by some chance, a
bull from the pastures has broken, roaring, into the house."

He seated himself again to his cigarettes. Though he had said it, he
scarcely believed Charleroi would entertain company that night. For the
first time in history the invitation of a Charles had been ignored. So
simple in courtesy and honor was Grandemont and, perhaps, so serenely
confident in the prestige of his name, that the most likely reasons for his
vacant board did not occur to him.

Charleroi stood by a road traveled daily by people from those planta-
tions whither his invitations had gone. No doubt even on the day before
the sudden reanimation of the old house they had driven past and ob-
served the evidences of long desertion and decay. They had looked at the
corpse of Charleroi and then at Grandemont's invitations, and, though the
puzzle or tasteless hoax or whatever the thing meant left them perplexed,
they would not seek its solution by the folly of a visit to that deserted
house.

The moon was now above the grove, and the yard was pied with deep
shadows save where they lightened in the tender glow of outpouring
candlelight. A crisp breeze from the river hinted at the possibility of
frost when the night should have become older. The grass at one side
of the steps was specked with the white stubs of Grandemont's cigarettes.
The cotton-broker's clerk sat in his chair with the smoke spiralling above
him. I doubt that he once thought of the little fortune he had so impo-
tently squandered. Perhaps it was compensation enough for him to sit
thus at Charleroi for a few retrieved hours. Idly his mind wandered in
and out many fanciful paths of memory. He smiled to himself as a para-
phrased line of Scripture strayed into his mind: "A certain poor man
made a feast."

504 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

He heard the sound of Absalom coughing a note of summons. Grande-
tnont stirred. This time he had not been asleep—only drowsing.

"Nine o'clock, M'shi Grande'/ said Absalom in the uninflected voice
of a good servant who states a fact unqualified by personal opinion.

Grandemont rose to his feet. In their time all the Charleses had been
proven, and they were gallant losers.

"Serve dinner/' he said, calmly. And then he checked Absalom's move-
ment to obey, for something clicked the gate latch and was coming down
the walk towards the house. Something that shuffled its feet and muttered
to itself as it came. It stopped in the current of light at the foot of the
steps and spake, in the universal whine of the gadding mendicant.

"Kind sir, could you spare a poor, hungry man, out of luck, a little to
eat? And to sleep in the corner of a shed? For"— the thing concluded,
irrelevantly — "I can sleep now. There are no mountains to dance reels in
the night; and the copper kettles are all scoured bright. The iron band is
still around my ankle, and a link, if it is your desire I should be chained."

It set a foot upon the step and drew up the rags that hung upon the
limb. Above the distorted shoe, caked with dust of a hundred leagues,
they saw the link and the iron band. The clothes of the tramp were
wrecked to piebald tatters by sun and rain and wear. A mat of brown,
tangled hair and beard covered his head and face, out of which his eyes
stared distractedly. Grandemont noticed that he carried in one hand a
white, square card.

"What is that? "he asked.

"I picked it up, sir, at the side of the road/' The vagabond handed the
card to Grandemont. "Just a little to eat, sir. A little parched corn, a
tortilla, or a handful of beans. Goat's meat I cannot eat. When I cut their
throats they cry like children/*

Grandemont held up the card. It was one of his own invitations to
dinner. No doubt someone had cast it away from a passing carriage after
comparing it with the tenantless house at Charleroi.

"From the hedges and highways bid them come/' he said to himself,
softly smiling. And then Absalom: "Send Louis to me."

Louis, once his own body-servant, came promptly, in his white jacket.

"This gentleman/' said Grandemont, "will dine with me. Furnish him
with bath and clothes. In twenty minutes have him ready and dinner
served."

Louis approached the disreputable guest with the suavity due to a
visitor to Charleroi, and spirited him away to inner regions.

Promptly, in twenty minutes, Absalom announced dinner, and, a
moment later, the guest was ushered into the dining hall where Grande-
mont waited, standing, at the head of the table. The attentions of Louis
had transformed the stranger into something resembling the polite

THE RENAISSANCE AT CHARLEROI 505

animal. Clean linen and an old evening suit that had been sent down
from town to clothe a waiter had worked a miracle with his exterior
Brush and comb had partially subdued the wild disorder of his hair. Now
he might have passed for no more extravagant a thing than one of those
poseurs in art and music who affect such oddity of guise. The man's
countenance and demeanor, as he approached the table, exhibited nothing
of the awkwardness or confusion to be expected from his Arabian Nights
change. He allowed Absalom to seat him at Grandemont's right hand
with the manner of one thus accustomed to be waited upon.

"It grieves me," said Grandemont, "to be obliged to exchange names
with a guest. My own name is Charles."

"In the mountains," said the wayfarer, "they call me Gringo. Along
the roads they call me Jack."

"I prefer the latter," said Grandemont. "A glass of wine with you, Mr.
Jack."

Course after course was served by the supernumerous waiters. Grande-
mont, inspired by the results of Andre's exquisite skill in cookery and his
own in the selection of wines, became the model host, talkative, witty,
and genial The guest was fitful in conversation. His mind seemed to be
sustaining a succession of waves of dementia followed by intervals of
comparative lucidity. There was the glassy brightness of recent fever^ in
his eyes. A long course of it must have been the cause of his emaciation
and weakness, his distracted mind, and the dull pallor that showed even
through the tan of wind and sun.

"Charles," he said to Grandemont— for thus he seemed to interpret
his name— -"you never saw the mountains dance, did you?"

"No, Mr. Jack," answered Grandemont, gravely, "the spectacle has
been denied me. But, I assure you, I can understand it must be a diverting
sight. The big ones, you know, white with snow on the tops, waltzing—
decollete, we may say."

"You first scour the kettles," said Mr. Jack, leaning toward him ex-
citedly, "to cook the beans in the morning, and you lie down on a blanket
and keep quite still Then they come out and dance for you. You would
go out and dance with them but you are chained every night to the centre
pole of the hut. You believe the mountains dance, don't you, Charlie?"

"I contradict no traveler's tales," said Grandemont, with a smile.

Mr. Jack laughed loudly. He dropped his voice to a confidential whisper.

"You are a fool to believe it," he went on. "They don't really dance.
It's the fever in your head. It's the hard work and the bad water that does
it. You are sick for weeks and there is no medicine. The fever comes on
every evening, and then you are as strong as two men. One night the
compania are lying drunk with mescal They have brought back sacks of
silver dollars from a ride, and they drink to celebrate. In the night you

506 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

file the chain in two and go down the mountain. You walk for miles — "
hundreds of them. By and by the mountains are all gone, and you come to
the prairies. They do not dance at night; they are merciful, and you sleep.
Then you come to the river, and it says things to you. You follow it down,
down, but you can't find what you are looking for."

Mr. Jack leaned back in his chair, and his eyes slowly closed. The food
and wine had steeped him in a deep calm. The tense strain had been
smoothed from his face. The languor of repletion was claiming him.
Drowsily he spoke again.

"It's bad manners— I know—to go to sleep— at table— but— that was—
such a good dinner — Grande, old fellow."

Grande! The owner of the name started and set down his glass. How
should this wretched tatterdemalion whom he had invited, Caliph-like,
to sit at his feast know his name?

Not at first, but soon, little by little, the suspicion, wild and unreason-
able as it was, stole into his brain. He drew out his watch with hands
that almost balked him by their trembling, and opened the back case.
There was a picture there — a photograph fixed to the inner side.

Rising, Grandemont shook Mr. Jack by the shoulder. The weary guest
opened his eyes. Grandemont held the watch.

"Look at this picture, Mr. Jack. Have you ever "

"My sister AdUd"

The vagrant's voice rang loud and sudden through the room. He
started to his feet, but Grandemont's arms were about him, and Grande-
mont was calling him "Victor I—Victor Fauquier! Merci, merci, man
Dieul"

Too far overcome by sleep and fatigue was the lost one to talk that
night. Days afterward, when the tropic calentura had cooled in his veins,
the disordered fragments he had spoken were completed in shape and
sequence. He told the story of his angry flight, of toils and calamities on
sea and shore, of his ebbing and flowing fortune in southern lands, and
of his latest peril when, held a captive, he served menially in a stronghold
of bandits in the Sonora Mountains of Mexico. And of the fever that
seized him there and his escape and delirium, during which he strayed,
perhaps led by some marvelous instinct, back to the river on whose bank
he had been born. And of the proud and stubborn thing in his blood that
had kept him silent through all those years, clouding the honor of one,
though he knew it not, and keeping apart two loving hearts. "What a
thing is love!" you may say. And if I grant it, you shall say, with me:
"What a thing is pride!"

On a couch in the reception chamber Victor lay, with a dawning
understanding in his heavy eyes and peace in his softened countenance.
Absalom was preparing a lounge far the transient master of Charleroi,

who, to-morrow, would be again the clerk of a cotton broker, but also

"To-morrow," Grandemont was saying, as he stood by the couch of his

ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT 507

guest, speaking the words with his face shining as must have shone the
face of Elijah's charioteer when he announced the glories of that heavenly
journey — "To-morrow I will take you to Her."

ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT

This is the story of the man manager, and how he held his own until the
very last paragraph.

I had it from Sully Magoon, viva voce. The words are indeed his; and
if they do not constitute truthful fiction my memory should be taxed with
the blame.

It is not deemed amiss to point out, in the beginning, the stress that
is laid upon the masculinity of the manager. For, according to Sully, the
term when applied to the feminine division of mankind has precisely an
opposite meaning. The woman manager (he says) economizes, saves,
oppresses her household with bargains and contrivances, and looks sourly
upon any pence that are cast to the fiddler for even a single jig-step on
life's arid march. Wherefore her menfolk call her blessed and praise her;
and then sneak out the back door to see the Gilhooly Sisters do a buck-
and-wing dance.

Now, the man manager (I still quote Sully) is a Caesar without a
Brutus. He is an autocrat without responsibility, a player who imperils
no stake of his own. His office is to enact, to reverberate, to boom, to
expand, to out-coruscate — profitably, if he can. Bill-paying and growing
gray hairs over results belong to his principals. It is his to guide the risk,
to be the Apotheosis of Front, the three-tailed Bashaw of Bluff, the Essen-
tial Oil of Razzle-Dazzle.

We sat at luncheon, and Sully Magoon told me. I asked for particulars.

"My old friend Denver Galloway was a born manager," said Sully.
"He first saw the light of day in New York at three years of age. He
was born in Pittsburgh, but his parents moved East the third summer
afterward.

"When Denver grew up, he went into the managing business. At the
age of eight he managed a news-stand for the Dago that owned it. After
that he was manager at different times of a skating-rink, a livery-stable,
a policy game, a restaurant, a dancing academy, a walking match, a
burlesque company, a drygoods store, a dozen hotels and summer re-
sorts, an insurance company, and a district leader's campaign. That
campaign, when Coughlin was elected on the East Side, gave Denver
a boost. It got him a job as manager of a Broadway hotel, and for a while
he managed Senator O'Grady's campaign in the nineteenth.

"Denver was a New Yorker all over. I think he was out of the city just

508 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

twice before the time I'm going to tell you about. Once he went rabbit-
shooting in Yonkers. The other time I met him just landing from a North
River ferry. 'Been out West on a big trip, Sully, old boy,' said he: 'Gad!
Sully, I had no idea we had such a big country. It's immense. Never con-
ceived o£ the magnificence of the West before. It's gorgeous and glorious
and infinite. Makes the East seem cramped and little. It's a grand thing
to travel and get an idea of the extent and resources of our country.'

"I'd made several little runs out to California and down to Mexico and
up through Alaska, so I sits down with Denver for a chat about the things
he saw.

" 'Took in the Yosemite, out there, of course?' I asks.

" Well— no, says Denver, 1 don't think so. At least, I don't recollect it.
You see, I only had three days, and I didn't get any farther west than
Youngstown, Ohio.'

"About two years ago I dropped into New York with a little fly-paper
proposition about a Tennessee mica mine that I wanted to spread out in
a nice, sunny window, in the hopes of catching a few. I was coming out
of a printing-shop one afternoon with a batch of fine, sticky prospectuses
when I ran against Denver coming around a corner. I never saw him
looking so much like a tiger-lily. He was as beautiful and new as a trellis
of sweet peas, and as rollicking as a clarinet solo. We shook hands, and
he asked me what I was doing, and I gave him the outlines of the scandal
I was trying to create in mica.

" Tooh, pooh! for your mica,' says Denver. 'Don't you know better,
Sully, then to bump up against the coffers of little old New York with
anything as transparent as mica? Now, you come with me over to the
Hotel Brunswick. You're just the man I was hoping for. I've got some-
thing there in sepia and curled hair that I want you to look at.*

" 'You putting up at the Brunswick?' I asks.

" 'Not a cent,' says Denver, cheerful. 'The syndicate that owns the hotel
puts up. I'm manager.'

"The Brunswick wasn't one of them Broadway pot-houses all full of
palms and hyphens and flowers and costumes—kind of a mixture of
lawns and laundries. It was on one of the East Side avenues; but it was a
solid, old-time caravansary such as the Mayor of Skaneateles or the
Governor of Missouri might stop at. Eight stories high it stalked up, with
new striped awnings, and the electric had it as light as day.

'"I've been manager here for a year,' says Denver, as we drew nigh.
'When I took charge,' says he, 'nobody nor nothing ever stopped at the
Brunswick. The clock over the clerk's desk used to run for weeks without
winding. A man fell dead with heart-disease on the sidewalk in front of
it one day, and when they went to pick him up he was two blocks away.
I figured out a scheme to catch the West Indies and South American
trade. I persuaded the owners to invest a few more thousands, and I put

ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT 509

every cent of it in electric light, cayenne pepper, gold-leaf, and garlic. I
got a Spanish-speaking force of employees and a string band; and there
was talk going around of a cockfight in the basement every Sunday.
Maybe I didn't catch the nut-brown gang! From Havana to Patagonia
the Don Sefiors knew about the Brunswick. We get the high-fliers from
Cuba and Mexico and the couple of Americas farther south; and they've
simply got the boodle to bombard every bullfinch in the bush with.'

"When we get to the hotel, Denver stops me at the door.

" There's a little liver-colored man,' says he, 'sitting in a big leather
chair to your right, inside. You sit down and watch him for a few minutes,
and then tell me what you think.'

"I took a chair, while Denver circulates around in the big rotunda.
The room was about full of curly-headed Cubans and South American
brunettes of different shades; and the atmosphere was international with
cigarette smoke, lit up by diamond rings and edged off with a whisper
of garlic.

"That Denver Galloway was sure a relief to the eye. Six feet two he
was, red-headed, and pink-gilled as a sun-perch. And the air he had!
Court of Saint James, Chauncey Olcott, Kentucky colonels, Count of
Monte Cristo, grand opera — all these things he reminded you of when he
was doing the honors. When he raised his finger the hotel porters and
bell-boys skated across the floor like cockroaches, and even the clerk
behind the desk looked as meek and unimportant as Andy Carnegie.

"Denver passed around, shaking hands with his guests, and saying over
the two or three Spanish words he knew until it was like a coronation
rehearsal or a Bryan barbecue in Texas.

"I watched the little man he told me to. 'Twas a little foreign person
in a double-breasted frock-coat, trying to touch the floor with his toes.
He was the color of vici kid, and his whiskers was like excelsior made
out of mahogany wood. He breathed hard, and he never once took his
eyes off of Denver. There was a look of admiration and respect on his
face like you see on a boy that's following a champion baseball team, or
the Kaiser William looking at himself in a glass.

"After Denver goes his rounds he takes me into his private office.

" * What's your report on the dingy I told you to watch?' he asks.

" Well,' says I, 'if you was as big a man as he takes you to be, nine
rooms and bath in the Hall of Fame, rent free till October ist, would be
about your size.'

"'You've caught the idea,' says Denver. Tve given him the wizard
grip and the cabalistic eye. The glamor that emanates from yours truly
has enveloped him like a North River fog. He seems to think that Senor
Galloway is the man who. I guess they don't raise 74-inch sorrel-tops with
romping ways down in his precinct. Now, Sully,' goes on Denver, 'if you
was asked, what would you take the little man to be?'

510 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

y/ says I, 'the barber around the corner or, if he's royal, the king
of the boot-blacks.'

" 'Never judge by looks,' says Denver; 'he's the dark-horse candidate
for president of a South American republic.'

" Well,' says I, 'he didn't look quite that bad to me.'

"Then Denver draws his chair up close and gives out his scheme.

" 'Sully,' says he, with seriousness and levity, Tve been a manager of
one thing and another for over twenty years. That's what I was cut out
for— to have somebody else to put up tie money and look after the repairs
and the police and taxes while I run the business. I never had a dollar of
my own invested in my life. I wouldn't know how it felt to have the
dealer rake in a coin of mine. But I can handle other people's stuff and
manage other people's enterprises. I've had an ambition to get hold of
something big— something higher than hotels and lumber-yards and local
politics. I want to be manager of something way up — like a railroad or
a diamond trust or an automobile factory. Now here comes this little
man from the tropics with just what I want, and he's offered me the
job/

'"What job?' I asks. 'Is he going to revive the Georgia Minstrels or
open a cigar store?'

" 'He's no 'coon,' says Denver, severe. 'He's General Rompiro — General
Josey Alfonso Sapolio Jew-Ann Rompiro — he has his cards printed by a
news-ticker. He's the real thing, Sully, and he wants me to manage his
campaign— he wants Denver C. Galloway for a president-maker. Think
of that, Sully! Old Denver romping down to the tropics, plucking lotos-
flowers and pineapples with one hand and making presidents with the
other! Won't it make Uncle Mark Hanna mad? And I want you to go
too, Sully. You can help me more than any man I know. I've been herd-
ing that brown man for a month in the hotel so he wouldn't stray down
around Fourteenth Street and get roped in by that crowd of refugee
tamale-eaters down there. And he's landed, and D. C. G. is manager of
General J. A. S. J. Rompiro's presidential campaign in the great republic
of— what's its name?"

"Denver gets down an atlas from a shelf, and we have a look at the
afflicted country. 'Twas a dark blue one, on the west coast, about the size
of a special delivery stamp.

** 'From what the General tells me,' says Denver, 'and from what I can
gather from the encyclopaedia and by conversing with the janitor of the
Astor Library, it'll be as easy to handle the vote of that country as it
would be for Tammany to get a man named Geoghan appointed on the
White Wings force.'

" 'Why don't General Rumptyro stay at home,' says I, 'and manage his
own canvass?'

" Tou don't understand South American politics/ says Denver, getting

ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT JII

out the cigars. 'It's this way. General Rompiro had the misfortune of
becoming a popular idol. He distinguished himself by leading the army
in pursuit of a couple of sailors who had stolen the plaza — or the car-
ramba, or something belonging to the government. The people called
him a hero and the government got jealous. The president sends for the
chief of the Department of Public Edifices. "Find me a nice, clean adobe
wall," says he, "and stand Senor Rompiro up against it. Then call out a
file of soldiers and — then let him be up against it." Something,' goes on
Denver, 'like the way they've treated Hobson and Carrie Nation in our
country. So the General had to flee. But he was thoughtful enough to
bring along his roll. He's got sinews of war enough to buy a battleship
and float her off in the christening fluid.'

" 'What chance has he got to be president?'

" 'Wasn't I just giving you his rating?' says Denver. 'His country is one
of the few in South America where the presidents are elected by popular
ballot. The General can't go there just now. It hurts to be shot against a
wall. He needs a campaign manager to go down and whoop things up
for him — to get the boys in line and the new two-dollar bills afloat and
the babies kissed and the machine in running order. Sully, I don't want
to brag, but you remember how I brought Coughlin under the wire for
leader of the nineteenth ? Ours was the banner district. Don't you suppose
I know how to manage a little monkey-cage of a country like that? Why,
with the dough the General's willing to turn loose I could put two more
coats of Japan varnish on him and have him elected Governor of Georgia.
New York has got the finest lot of campaign managers in the world,
Sully, and you give me a feeling of hauteur when you cast doubts on my
ability to handle the political situation in a country so small that they have
to print the names of the towns in the appendix and footnotes.'

"I argued with Denver some. I told him that politics down in that
tropical atmosphere was bound to be different from the nineteenth dis-
trict; but I might just as well have been a Congressman from North
Dakota trying to get an appropriation for a lighthouse and a coast survey.
Denver Galloway had ambitions in the manager line, and what I said
didn't amount to as much as a fig-leaf at the National Dressmakers' Con-
vention. Til give you three days to cogitate about going,' says Denver;
'and I'll introduce you to General Rompiro to-morrow, so you can get his
ideas drawn right from the rose wood/

"I put on my best reception-to-Booker-Washington manner the next
day and tapped the distinguished rubber-plant for what he knew.

"General Rompiro wasn't so gloomy inside as he appeared on the sur-
face. He was polite enough; and he exuded a number of sounds that
made a fair stagger at arranging themselves into language. It was
English he aimed at, and when his system of syntax reached your mind it
wasn't past you to understand it. If you took a college professor's maga-

512 BOOKIV ROADSOFDESTINY

zine essay and a Chinese laundryman's explanation of a lost shirt and
jumbled 'em together, you'd have about what the General handed you out
for conversation. He told me all about his bleeding country, and what they
were trying to do for it before the doctor came. But he mostly talked of
Denver C. Galloway.

" 'Ah, senor/ says he, 'that is the most fine of mans. Never I have seen
one man so magnifico, so gr-r-rand, so conformable to make done things
so swiftly by other mans. He shall make other mans do the acts and him-
self to order and regulate, until we arrive at seeing accomplishments of
a suddenly. Oh, yes, senor. In my countree there is not such mans of so
beegness, so good talk, so compliments, so strongness of sense and such.
Ah, that Senor Galloway!'

" Tes,' says I, 'old Denver is the boy you want. He's managed every
kind of business here except filibustering, and he might as well complete
the list/

"Before the three days was up I decided to join Denver in his cam-
paign. Denver got three months' vacation from his hotel owners. For a
week we lived in a room with the General, and got all the pointers about
his country that we could interpret from the noises he made. When we
got ready to start, Denver had a pocket full of memorandums, and letters
from the General to his friends, and a list of names and addresses of loyal
politicians who would help along the boom of the exiled popular idol.
Besides these liabilities we carried assets to the amount of $20,000 in
assorted United States currency. General Rompiro looked like a burnt
effigy, but he was Br'er Fox himself when it came to the real science of
politics.

" 'Here is moneys/ says the General, 'of a small amount. There is more
with me — moocho more. Plentee moneys shall you be supplied, Senor
Galloway. More I shall send you at all times that you need. I shall desire
to pay feefty — one hundred thousand pesos, if necessario, to be elect. How
no? Sacramento! If that I am president and do not make one meelion
dolla in the one year you shall keek me on that side! — valgame Dios!'

"Denver got a Cuban cigar-maker to fix up a little cipher code with
English and Spanish words, and gave the General a copy, so we could
cable him bulletins about the election, or for more money, and then we
were ready to start. General Rompiro escorted us to the steamer. On the
pier he hugged Denver around the waist and sobbed. "Noble mans,' says
he, 'General Rompiro propels into you his confidence and trust. Go, in
the hands of the saints to do the work for your friend. Viva la libertadl'

" 'Sure,' says Denver. 'And viva la liberality an' la soaperino and hoch
der land of the lotus and the vote us. Don't worry, General. We'll have
you elected as sure as bananas grow upside down/

" 'Make pictures on me/ pleads the General— 'make pictures on me for
money as it is needful/

ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT 513

"'Does he want to be tattooed, would you think?' asks Denver, wrin-
kling up his eyes.

"'Stupid!' says I. 'He wants you to draw on him for election expenses.
It'll be worse than tattooing. More like an autopsy.'

"Me and Denver steamed down to Panama, and then hiked across the
Isthmus, and then by steamer again down to the town of Espiritu on the
coast of the General's country.

"That was a town to send J. Howard Payne to the growler. I'll tell you
how you could make one like it. Take a lot of Filipino huts and a couple
of hundred brick-kilns and arrange 'em in squares in a cemetery. Cart
down all the conversatory plants in the Astor and Vanderbilt green-
houses, and stick 'em about wherever there's room. Turn all the Bellevue
patients and the barbers' convention and the Tuskegee school loose in the
streets, and run the thermometer up to 120 in the shade. Set a fringe of
the Rocky Mountains around the rear, let ir rain, and set the whole
business on Rockaway Beach in the middle of January — and you'd have
a good imitation of Espiritu.

"It took me and Denver about a week to get acclimated. Denver sent
out the letters the General had given him, and notified the rest of the
gang that there was something doing at the captain's office. We set up
headquarters in an old 'dobe house on a side street where the grass was
waist high. The election was only four weeks of?; but there wasn't any
excitement. The home candidate for president was named Roadrickeys.
This town of Espiritu wasn't the capital any more than Cleveland, Ohio,
is the capital of the United States, but it was the political centre where
they cooked up revolutions, and made up the slates.

"At the end of the week Denver says the machine is started running.

" 'Sully/ says he, 'we've got a walkover. Just because General Rompiro
ain't Don Juan-on-the-spot the other crowd ain't at work. They're as full
of apathy as a territorial delegate during the chaplain's prayer. Now we
want to introduce a little hot stuff in the way of campaigning, and we'll
surprise 'em at the polls.5

" 'How are you going to go about it?' I asks.

" 'Why, the usual way,' says Denver, surprised. 'We'll get the orators
on our side out every night to make speeches in the native lingo, and
have torch-light parades under the shade of the palms, and free drinks,
and buy up all the brass bands, of course, and — well, I'll turn the baby-
kissing over to you, Sully — I've seen a lot of 'em/

"'What else? 'says I.

"'Why, you know/ says Denver. 'We get the heelers out with the
crackly two-spots, and coal-tickets, and orders for groceries, and have a
couple of picnics out under the banyan trees, and dances in the Firemen's
Hall— and the usual things. But first of all, Sully, I'm going to have the
biggest clam-bake down on the beach that was ever seen south of the

514 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

tropic of Capricorn. I figured that out from the start. We'll stuff the whole
town and the jungle folk for miles around with clams. That's the first
thing on the programme. Suppose you go out now, and make the ar-
rangements for that. I want to look over the estimates the General made
of the vote in the coast districts.'

"I had learned some Spanish in Mexico, so I goes out, as Denver says,
and in fifteen minutes I come back to headquarters.

" 'If there ever was a clam in this country nobody ever saw it/ 1 says.

"'Great sky-rockets!' says Denver, with his mouth and eyes open. 'No
clams? How in the— who ever saw a country without clams? What kind
of a— how's an election to be pulled off without a clam-bake, I'd like to
know? Are you sure there's no clams, Sully?'

" 'Not even a can,' says I.

" 'Then for God's sake go out and try to find out what the people here
do eat. We've got to fill 'em up with grub of some kind.'

"I went out again. Sully was manager. In half an hour I gets back.

" 'They eat,* says I, 'tortillas, cassava, carne de chivo, arroz con pello,
aquacates, zapates, yucca, and huevos fritos.'

"'A man that would eat them things' says Denver getting a little
mad, 'ought to have his vote challenged.'

"In a few more days the campaign managers from the other towns
came sliding into Espiritu. Our headquarters was a busy place. We had
an interpreter, and ice-water, and drinks, and cigars, and Denver flashed
the General's roll so often that it got so small you couldn't have bought
a Republican vote in Ohio with it.

"And then Denver cabled to General Rompiro for ten thousand dollars
more and got it.

"There were a number of Americans in Espiritu, but they were all in
business or grafts of some kind, and wouldn't take any hand in politics,
which was sensible enough. But they showed me and Denver a fine time,
and fixed us up so we could get decent things to eat and drink. There
was one American, named Hicks, used to come and loaf at the head-
quarters. Hicks had had fourteen years of Espiritu. He was six feet four
and weighed in at 135. Cocoa was his line; and coast fever and the climate
had taken all the life out of him. They said he hadn't smiled in eight
years. His face was three feet long, and it never moved except when he
opened it to take quinine. He used to sit in our headquarters and kill
fleas and talk sarcastic.

"1 don't take much interest in politics/ says Hicks, one day, 'but I'd
like you to tell me what you're trying to do down here, Galloway?'

"'We're boosting General Rompiro, of course,' says Denver. 'We're
going to put him in the presidential chair. I'm his manager.'

" 'Well,' says Hicks, 'if I was you I'd be a little slower about it. You've
got a long time ahead of you, you know.'

ON BEHALF OF THE MANAGEMENT 515

" 'Not any longer than I need,' says Denver.

"Denver went ahead and worked things smooth. He dealt out money
on the quiet to his lieutenants, and they were always coming after it.
There was free drinks for everybody in town, and bands playing every
night, and fireworks, and there was a lot of heelers going around buying
up votes day and night for the new style of politics in Espiritu, and every-
body liked it.

"The day set for the election was November 4th. On the night before
Denver and me were smoking our pipes in headquarters, and in comes
Hicks and unjoints himself, and sits in a chair, mournful. Denver is
cheerful and confident. 'Rompiro will win in a romp/ says he. 'We'll
carry the country by 10,000. It's all over but the vivas. To-morrow will tell
the tale.'

" 'What's going to happen to-morrow?' asks Hicks.

" 'Why, the presidential election, of course,' says Denver.

'"Say,1 says Hicks, looking kind of funny, 'didn't anybody tell you
fellows that the election was held a week before you came? Congress
changed the date to July 27. Roadrickeys was elected by 17,000. I thought
you was booming old Rompiro for next term, two years from now. Won-
dered if you was going to keep such a hot lick that long.'

"I dropped my pipe on the floor. Denver bit the stem off of his. Neither
of us said anything.

"And then I heard a sound like somebody ripping a clapboard off of a
barn-roof. 'Twas Hicks laughing for the first time in eight years."

Sully Magoon paused while the waiter poured us black coffee.

"You friend was, indeed, something of a manager," I said.

"Wait a minute," said Sully, "I haven't given you any idea of what he
could do yet. That's all to come.

"When we got back to New York there was General Rompiro waiting
for us on the pier. He was dancing like a cinnamon bear, all impatient
for the news, for Denver had just cabled him when we would arrive and
nothing more.

"'Am I elect?* he shouts. 'Am I elect, friend of mine? Is it that mine
country have demand General Rompiro for the president? The last dollar
of mine have I sent you that last time. It is necessario that I am elect. I
have no more money. Am I elect, Senor Galloway?'

"Denver turns to me.

" 'Leave me with old Rompey, Sully,' he says. 'I've got to break it to
him gently. 'Twould be indecent for other eyes to witness the operation.
This is the time, Sully,' says he, 'when old Denver has got to make good
as a jollier and a silver-tongued sorcerer, or else give up all the medals
he's earned.'

"A couple of days later I went around to the hotel. There was Denver
in his old place looking like a hero of two historical novels, and telling

516 BOOK. IV ROADS OF DESTINY

'em what a fine time he's had down on his orange plantation in Florida.

" 'Did you fix things up with the General?' I ask him.

" 'Did I?' says Denver. 'Come and see.'

"He takes me by the arm and walks me to the dining-room door. There
was a little chocolate-brown fat man in a dress suit, with his face shining
with joy as he swelled himself and skipped about the floor. Danged if
Denver hadn't made General Rompiro head waiter of the Hotel Bruns-
wick!"

"Is Mr. Galloway still in the managing business?" I asked, as Mr.
Magoon ceased.

Sully shook his head.

"Denver married an auburn-haired widow that owns a big hotel in
Harlem. He just helps around the place/'

WHISTLING DICK S CHRISTMAS STOCKING

It was with much caution that Whistling Dick slid back the door of the
box-car> for Article 5716, City Ordinances, authorized (perhaps unconsti-
tutionally) arrest on suspicion, and he was familiar of old with this ordi-
nance. So, before climbing out, he surveyed the field with all the care of
a good general.

He saw no change since his last visit to this big, almsgiving, long-
suffering city of the South, the cold weather paradise of the tramps. The
levee where his freight-car stood was pimpled with dark bulks of mer-
chandise. The breeze reeked with the well-remembered, sickening smell
of the old tarpaulins that covered bales and barrels. The dun river slipped
along among the shipping with an oily gurgle. Far down toward Chal-
mette he could see the great bend in the stream, outlined by the row of
electric lights. Across the river Algiers lay, a long, irregular blot, made
darker by the dawn which lightened the sky beyond. An industrious tug
or two, coming for some early sailing ship, gave a few appalling toots,
that seemed to be the signal for breaking day. The Italian luggers were
creeping nearer their landing, laden with early vegetables and shellfish.
A vague roar, subterranean in quality, from dray wheels and street cars,
began to make itself heard and felt; and the ferryboats, the Mary Anns
of water craft, stirred sullenly to their menial morning tasks.

Whistling Dick's red hair popped suddenly back into the car. A sight
too imposing and magnificent for his gaze had been added to the scene,
A vast, incomparable policeman rounded a pile of rice sacks and stood
within twenty yards of the car. The daily miracle of the dawn, now being
performed above Algiers, received the flattering attention of this specimen
of municipal official splendor. He gazed with unbiased dignity at the

WHISTLING DICK'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING 517

faintly glowing colors until, at last, he turned to them his broad back, as
if convinced that legal interference was not needejl, and the sunrise might
proceed unchecked. So he turned his face to the rice bags, and, drawing
a flat flask from an inside pocket, he placed it to his lips and regarded
the firmament.

Whistlihg Dick, professional tramp, possessed a half-friendly acquaint-
ance with this officer. They had met several times before on the levee at
night, for the officer, himself a lover of music, had been attracted by the
exquisite whistling of the shiftless vagabond. Still, he did not care, under
the present circumstances, to renew the acquaintance. There is a differ-
ence between meeting a policeman upon a lonely wharf and whistling a
few operatic airs with him, and being caught by him crawling out of
a freight-car. So Dick waited, as even a New Orleans policeman must
move on some time— perhaps it is a retributive law of nature — and before
long "Big Fritz" majestically disappeared between the trains of cars.

Whistling Dick waited as long as his judgment advised, and then slid
swiftly to the ground. Assuming as far as possible the air of an honest
laborer who seeks his daily toil, he moved across the network of railway
lines, with the intention of making his way by quiet Girod Street to a
certain bench in Lafayette Square, where, according to appointment, he
hoped to rejoin a pal known as "Slick," this adventurous pilgrim having
preceded him by one day in a cattle-car into which a loose slat had enticed
him.

As Whistling Dick picked his way where night still lingered among
the big, reeking, musty warehouses, he gave way to the habit that had
won for him his tide. Subdued, yet clear, with each note as true and
liquid as a bobolink's, his whistle tinkled about the dim, cold mountains
of brick like drops of rain falling into a hidden pool. He followed an air,
but it swam mistily into a swirling current of improvisation. You could
cull out the trill of mountain brooks, the staccato of green rushes shiver-
ing above the chilly lagoons, the pipe of sleepy birds.

Rounding a corner, the whistler collided with a mountain of blue and
brass.

"So," observed the mountain calmly, "you are already pack. Und dere
vill not pe frost before two veeks yet! Und you haf forgotten how to
vistle. Dere was a valse note in dot last bar."

"Watcher know about it?" said Whistling Dick, with tentative famili-
arity; "you wit yer little Gherman-band nixcumrous chunes. Watcher
know about music? Pick yer ears, and listen agin. Here's de way I
whistled it— see?"

He puckered his lips, but the big policeman held up his hand.

"Shtop," he said, "und learn der right way. Und learn also dot a rolling
shtone can't vistle for a cent.**

Big Fritz's heavy moustache rounded into a circle, and from its depths

518 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

came a sound deep and mellow as that from a flute. He repeated a few
bars of the air the tramp had been whistling. The rendition was cold, but
correct, and he emphasized the note he had taken exception to.

"Dot p is p natural, and not p vlat. Py der vay, you petter pe glad I
meet you. Von hour later, und I vould haf to put you in a gage to vistle
mit der chail pirds. Der orders are to bull all der pums after sunrise."

"To which?"

"To bull der pums — eferybody mitout risible means. Dirty days is der
price, or fifteen tollars."

"Is dat straight, or a game you givin' me?"

"It's der pest tip you efer had. I gif it to you pecause I pelief you are
not so bad as der rest. Und pecause you can vistle 'Der Freischiitz' bezzer
dan I myself gan. Don't run against any more bolicemans aroundt der
corners, but go away from town a few tays. Goot-pye."

So Madame Orleans had at last grown weary of the strange and ruffled
brood that came yearly to nestle beneath her charitable pinions.

After the big policeman had departed, Whistling Dick stood for an
irresolute minute, feeling all the outraged indignation of a delinquent
tenant who is ordered to vacate his premises. He had pictured to him-
self a day of dreamful ease when he should have joined his pal; a day
of lounging on the wharf, munching the bananas and cocoanuts scattered
ia unloading the fruit steamers; and then a feast along the free-lunch
counters from which the easy-going owners were too good-natured or too
generous to drive him away, and afterward a pipe in one of the little
flowery parks and a snooze in some shady corner of the wharf. But here
was a stern order to exile, and one that he knew must be obeyed. So, with
a wary eye open for the gleam of brass buttons, he began to retreat
toward a rural refuge. A few days in the country need not necessarily
prove disastrous. Beyond the possibility of a slight nip of frost, there was
no formidable evil to be looked for.

However, it was with a depressed spirit that Whistling Dick passed
the old French market on his chosen route down the river. For safety's
sake he still presented to the world his portrayal of the part of the worthy
artisan on his way to labor. A stall-keeper in the market, undeceived,
hailed him by the generic name of his ilk, and "Jack" halted, taken by
surprise. The vendor, melted by this proof of his own acuteness, bestowed
a foot of Frankfurter and half a loaf, and thus the problem of breakfast
was solved.

When the streets, from topographical reasons, began to shun the river
bank the exile mounted to the top of the levee, and on its well-trodden
path pursued his way. The suburban eye regarded him with cold suspi-
cion, individuals reflected the stern spirit of the city's heartless edict. He
missed the seclusion of the crowded town and the safety he could always
find in the multitude.

WHISTLING DICK'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING 519

At Chalmette, six miles upon his desultory way, there suddenly menaced
him a vast and bewildering industry. A new port was being established;
the dock was being built, compresses were going up; picks and shovels
and barrows struck at him like serpents from every side. An arrogant
foreman bore down upon him, estimating his muscles with the eye of a
recruiting-sergeant. Brown men and black men all about him were toiling
away. He fled in terror.

By noon he had reached the country of the plantations, the great, sad,
silent levels bordering the mighty river. He overlooked fields of sugar-
cane so vast that their farthest limits melted into the sky. The sugar-
making season was well advanced, and the cutters were at work; the
wagons creaked drearily after them; the Negro teamsters inspired the
mules to greater speed with mellow and sonorous imprecations. Dark-
green groves, blurred by the blue of distance, showed where the planta-
tion-houses stood. The tall chimneys of the sugar-mills caught the eye
miles distant, like lighthouses at sea.

At a certain point Whistling Dick's unerring nose caught the scent of
frying fish. Like a pointer to a quail, he made his way down the levee side
straight to the camp of a credulous and ancient fisherman, whom he
charmed with song and story, so that he dined like an admiral, and then
like a philosopher annihilated the worst three hours of the day by a nap
under the trees.

When he awoke and again continued his hegira, a frosty sparkle in
the air succeeded the drowsy warmth of the day, and as this portent of a
chilly night translated itself to the brain of Sir Peregrine, he lengthened
his stride and bethought him of shelter. He traveled a road that faithfully
followed the convolutions of the levee, running along its base, but whither
he knew not. Bushes and rank grass crowded it to the wheel ruts, and
out of this ambuscade of pests of the lowlands swarmed after him, hum-
ming a keen vicious soprano. And as the night grew nearer, although
colder, the whine of the mosquitoes became a greedy, petulant snarl that
shut out all other sounds. To his right, against the heavens, he saw a
green light moving, and, accompanying it, the masts and funnels of a big
incoming steamer, moving as upon a screen at a magic-lantern show. And
there were mysterious marshes at his left, out of which came queer
gurgling cries and a choked croaking. The whistling vagrant struck up a
merry warble to offset these melancholy influences, and it is likely that
never before, since Pan himself jiggered it on his reeds, had such sounds
been heard in those depressing solitudes.

A distant clatter in the rear quickly developed into the swift beat of
horses' hoofs, and Whistling Dick stepped aside into the dew-wet grass
to clear the track. Turning his head, he saw approaching a fine team of
stylish grays drawing a double surrey. A stout man with a white
moustache occupied the front seat, giving all his attention to the rigid

520 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

lines in his hands. Behind him sat a placid, middle-aged lady and a bril-
liant-looking girl hardly arrived at young ladyhood. The lap-robe had
slipped partly from the knees of the gentleman driving, and Whistling
Dick saw two stout canvas bags between his feet — bags such as, while
loafing in cities, he had seen warily transferred between express wagons
and bank doors. The remaining space in the vehicle was filled with
parcels of various sizes and shapes.

As the surrey swept even with the sidetracked tramp, the bright-eyed
girl, seized by some merry, madcap impulse, leaned out toward him with
a sweet, dazzling smile, and cried, "Mer-ry Christ-mas!" in a shrill, plain-
tive treble.

Such a thing had not often happened to Whistling Dick, and he felt
handicapped in devising the correct response. But lacking time for reflec-
tion, he let his instinct decide, and snatching off his battered derby, he
rapidly extended it at arm's length, and drew it back with a continuous
motion, and shouted a loud, but ceremonious, "Ah, there!" after the flying
surrey.

The sudden movement of the girl had caused one of the parcels to
become unwrapped, and something limp and black fell from it into the
road. The tramp picked it up and found it to be a new black silk stock-
ing, long and fine and slender. It crunched crisply, and yet with a luxu-
rious softness, between his fingers.

"Ther bloomin' little skeezicks!" said Whistling Dick, with a broad
grin bisecting his freckled face. "Wot d'yer think of dat, now! Mer-ry
Chris-mus! Sounded like a cuckoo clock, dat's what she did. Dem guys
is swells, too, bet yer life, an' der old 'un stacks dem sacks of dough
down under his trotters like dey was common as dried apples. Been
shoppin* fer Chrismus, and de kid's lost one of her new socks w'ot she
was goin* to hold up Santy wid. De bloomin' little skeezicks! Wit' her
'Mer-ry Chris-mus!' W'ot 'd yer t'ink! Same as to say, 'Hello, Jack, how
goes it?' and as swell as Fift' Av'noo, and as easy as a blowout in
Cincinnat'."

Whistling Dick folded the stocking carefully and stuffed it into his
pocket.

It was nearly two hours later when he came upon signs of habitation.
The buildings of an extensive plantation were brought into view by a
turn in the road. He easily selected the planter's residence in a large
square building with two wings, with numerous good-sized, well-lighted
windows, and broad verandas running around its full extent. It was set
upon a smooth lawn, which was faintly lit by the far-reaching rays of the
lamps within. A noble grove surrounded it, and old-fashioned shrubbery
grew thickly about the walls and fences. The quarters of the hands and
the mill buildings were situated at a distance in the rear.

The road was now enclosed on each side by a fence, and presently, as

WHISTLING DICK'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING 521

Whistling Dick drew nearer the houses, he suddenly stopped and sniffed
the air.

"If dere ain't a hobo stew cookin* somewhere in dis immediate pre-
cinct/* he said to himself, "me nose has quit tellin' 'de trut5."

Without hesitation he climbed the fence to windward. He found him-
self in an apparently disused lot, where piles of old bricks were stacked,
and rejected, decaying lumber. In a corner he saw the faint glow of a fire
that had become little more than a bed of living coals, and he thought he
could see some dim human forms sitting or lying about it. He drew
nearer, and by the light of a little blaze that suddenly flared up he saw
plainly the fat figure of a ragged man in an old brown sweater and cap.

"Dat man," said Whistling Dick to himself softly, "is a dead ringer for
Boston Harry. I'll try him wit' de high sign."

H whistled one or two bars of a rag-time melody, and the air was
immediately taken up, and then quickly ended with a peculiar run. The
first whistler walked confidently up to the fire. The fat man looked up
and spake in a loud, asthmatic wheeze:

"Gents, the unexpected but welcome addition to our circle is Mr.
Whistling Dick, an old friend of mine for whom I fully vouches. The
waiter will lay another cover at once. Mr. W. D. will join us at supper,
during which function he will enlighten us in regard to the circumstances
that give us the pleasure of his company.'*

"Chewin' de stuffin' out'n de dictionary, as usual, Boston," said Whis-
tling Dick; "but t'anks all de same for de invitashun. I guess I finds mee-
self here about de same way as yous guys. A cop gimme de tip dis morn-
in'. Yous workin* on dis farm?"

"A guest," said Boston sternly, "shouldn't never insult his entertainers
until he's filled up wid grub. 'Tain't good business sense. Workin'!— but
I will restrain myself. We five— me, Deaf Pete, Blinky, Goggles, and
Indiana Tom — got put on to this scheme of Noo Orleans to work visiting
gentlemen upon her dirty streets, and we hit the road last evening just
as the tender hues of twilight had flopped down upon the daisies and
things. Blinky, pass the empty oyster-can at your left to the empty gentle-
man at your right."

For die next ten minutes the gang of roadsters paid their undivided
attention to the supper. In an old five-gallon kerosene can they had
cooked a stew of potatoes, meat, and onions which they partook of from
smaller cans they had found scattered about the vacant lot.

Whistling Dick had known Boston Harry of old, and knew him to be
one of the shrewdest and most successful of his brotherhood. He looked
like a prosperous stock-drover or a solid merchant from some country
village. He was stout and hale, with a ruddy, always smoothly shaven
face. His clothes were strong and neat, and he gave special attention to
his decent-appearing shoes. During the past ten years he had acquired a

522 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

reputation for working a larger number of successfully managed con-
fidence games than any of his acquaintances, and he had not a day's work
to be counted against him. It was rumored among his associates that he
had saved a considerable amount of money. The four other men were
fair specimens of the slinking, ill-clad, noisome genus who carried their
labels of "suspicious" in plain view.

After the bottom of the large can had been scraped, and pipes lit at
the coals, two of the men called Boston aside and spake with him lowly
and mysteriously. He nodded decisively, and dien said aloud to Whistling
Dick:

"Listen, sonny, to some plain talky-talk. We five are on a lay. I've
guaranteed you to be square, and you're to come in on the profits equal
with the boys, and you've got to help. Two hundred hands on this planta-
tion are expecting to be paid a week's wages to-morrow morning. To-
morrow's Christmas, and they want to lay off. Says the boss: 'Work from
five to nine in the morning to get a train load of sugar off, and I'll pay
every man cash down for the week and a day extra.' They say: 'Hooray
for the boss! It goes/ He drives to Noo Orleans to-day, and fetches back
the cold dollars. Two thousand and seventy-four fifty is the amount. I got
the figures from a man who talks too much, who got 'em from the book-
keeper. The boss of this plantation thinks he's going to pay this wealth
to the hands. He's got it down wrong; he's going to pay it to us. It's
going to stay in the leisure class, where it belongs. Now, half of this haul
goes to me, and the other half the rest of you may divide. Why the
difference? I represent the brains. It's my scheme. Here's the way we're
going to get it. There's some company at supper in the house, but they'll
leave about nine. They've just happened in for an hour or so. If they don't
go pretty soon, we'll work the scheme anyhow. We want all night to get
away good with the dollars. They're heavy. About nine o'clock Dear
Pete and Blinky'll go down the road about a quarter beyond the house,
and set fire to a big cane-field there that the cutters haven't touched yet.
The wind's just right to have it roaring in two minutes. The alarm '11 be
given, and every man Jack about the place will be down there in ten
minutes, fighting fire. That'll leave the money sacks and the women alone
in the house for us to handle. You've heard cane burn? Well, there's
mighty few women who can screech loud enough to be heard above its
crackling. The thing's dead safe. The only danger is in being caught before
we can get far enough away with the money. Now, if you "

"Boston," interrupted Whistling Dick, rising to his feet, "t'anks for de
grub yous fellers has given me, but I'll be movin' on now."

"What do you mean?" asked Boston, also rising.

"W'y, you can count me outer dis deal. You oughter know that. I'm
on de bum all right enough, but dat other t'ing don't go wit' me. Burglary
is no good. Til say good night and many t'anks fer "

WHISTLING DICK'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING 523

Whistling Dick had moved away a few steps as he spoke, but he
stopped very suddenly. Boston had covered with a short revolver o£
roomy calibre.

"Take your seat," said the tramp leader. 'Td feel mighty proud of
myself if I let you go and spoil the game. You'll stick right in this camp
until we finish the job. The end of that brick pile is your limit. You go
two inches beyond that, and I'll have to shoot. Better take it easy, now.'*

"It's my way of doin'," said Whistling Dick. "Easy goes. You can
depress de muzzle of dat twelve-incher, and run 'em back on de trucks.
I remains, as de newspapers say, 'in yer midst.' "

"All right," said Boston, lowering his piece, as the other returned and
took his seat again on a projecting plank in a pile of timber. "Don't try
to leave; that's all. I wouldn't miss this chance even if I had to shoot an
old acquaintance to make it go. I don't want to hurt anybody specially,
but this thousand dollars I'm going to get will fix me for fair. I'm going
to drop the road, and start a saloon in a little town I know about. I'm
tired of being kicked around."

Boston Harry took from his pocket a cheap silver watch and held it
near the fire.

"It's a quarter to nine," he said. "Pete, you and Blinky start. Go down
the road past the house and fire the cane in a dozen places. Then strike
for the levee, and come back on it, instead of the road, so you won't meet
anybody. By the tune you get back the men will all be striking out for
the fire, and we'll break for the house and collar the dollars. Everybody
cough up what matches he's got."

The two surly tramps made a collection of all the matches in the party,
Whistling Dick contributing his quota with propitiatory alacrity, and then
they departed in the dim starlight in the direction of the road.

Of die three remaining vagrants, two, Goggles and Indiana Tom,
reclined lazily upon convenient lumber and regarded Whistling Dick
with undisguised disfavor. Boston, observing that the dissenting recruit
was disposed to remain peaceably, relaxed a little of his vigilance; Whis-
tling Dick arose presently and strolled leisurely up and down keeping
carefully within the territory assigned him.

"Dis planter chap," he said, pausing before Boston Harry, "w'ot makes
yer t'ink he's got de tin in de house wit* *im?"

"I'm advised of the facts in the case," said Boston. "He drove to Noo
Orleans and got it, I say, to-day. Wnat to change your mind now and
come in?"

"Naw, I was just askin'. Wot kind o' team did de boss drive?"

"Pair of grays."

"Double surrey?"

"Yep."

"Women folks along?n

524 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"Wife and kid. Say, what morning paper are you trying to pump news
for?"

"I was just conversin' to pass de time away. I guess dat team passed me
in de road dis evenin'. Dat's all."

As Whistling Dick put his hands into his pockets and continued his
curtailed beat up and down by the fire, he felt the silk stocking he had
picked up in the road.

"Ther bloomin' little skeezicks," he muttered, with a grin.

As he walked up and down he could see, through a sort of natural
opening or lane among the trees, the planter's residence some seventy-five
yards distant. The side of the house toward him exhibited spacious, well-
lighted windows through which a soft radiance streamed, illuminating
the broad veranda and some extent of the lawn beneath.

"What's that you said?" asked Boston, sharply.

"Oh, nuttin' 't all," said Whistling Dick, lounging carelessly and kicking
meditatively at a little stone on the ground.

"Just as easy," continued the warbling vagrant softly to himself, "an5
sociable an* swell, an' sassy, wit* her 'Mer-ry Chris-mus/ Wot d'yer t'ink,
now!"

Dinner, two hours late, was being served in the Bellemeade plantation
dining-room.

The dining-room and all its appurtenances spoke of an old regime that
was here continued rather than suggested to the memory. The plate
was rich to the extent that its age and quaintness alone saved it from
being showy; there were interesting names signed in the corners of the
pictures on the walls; the viands were of the kind that bring a shine into
the eyes of gourmets. The service was swift, silent, lavish, as in the days
when the waiters were assets like the plate. The names by which the
planter's family and their visitors addressed one another were historic in
the annals of two nations. Their manners and conversation had that most
difficult kind of ease — the kind that still preserves punctilio. The planter
himself seemed to be the dynamo that generated the larger portion of
the gaiety and wit. The younger ones at the board found it more than
difficult to turn back on him his guns of raillery and banter. It is true, the
young men attempted to storm his works repeatedly, incited by the hope
of gaining the approbation of their fair companions; but even when they
sped a well-aimed shaft, the planter forced them to feel defeat by the
tremendous discomfiting thunder of the laughter with which he accom-
panied his retorts. At the head of the table, serene, matronly, benevolent,
reigned the mistress of the house, placing here and there the right smile,
the right word, the encouraging glance.

The talk of the party was too desultory, too evanescent to follow, but
at last they came to the subject of the tramp nuisance, one that had of

WHISTLING DICK'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING 525

late vexed the plantations for many miles around. The planter seized
the occasion to direct his good-natured fire of raillery at the mistress,
accusing her of encouraging the plague. "They swarm up and down the
river every winter," he said. "They overrun New Orleans, and we catch
the surplus, which is generally the worst part. And, a day or two ago,
Madame New Orleans, suddenly discovering that she can't go shopping
without brushing her skirts against great rows of the vagabonds sunning
themselves on the banquettes, says to the police, *Catch 'em all,' and
the police catch a dozen or two, and the remaining three or four thousand
overflow up and down the levees, and madame there"— pointing tragically
with the carving-knife at her — "feeds them. They won't work, 'they defy
my overseers, and they make friends with my dogs; and you, madame,
feed them before my eyes, and intimidate me when I would interfere.
Tell us, please, how many to-day did you thus incite to future laziness and
depredation?"

"Six, I think," said madame, with a reflective smile; "but you know two
of them offered to work, for you heard them yourself."

The planter's disconcerting laugh rang out again.

"Yes, at their own trades. And one was an artificial-flower maker, and
the other a glass-blower. Oh, they were looking for work! Not a hand
would they consent to lift to labor of any other kind."

"And another one," continued the soft-hearted mistress, "used quite
good language. It was really extraordinary for one of his class. And he
carried a watch. And had lived in Boston. I don't believe they are all bad.
They have always seemed to me to rather lack development. I always
look upon them as children with whom wisdom has remained at a stand-
still while whiskers have continued to grow. We passed one this evening
as we were driving home who had a face as good as it was incompetent.
He was whistling the intermezzo from 'Cavalleria' and blowing the spirit
of Mascagni himself into it."

A bright-eyed young girl who sat at the left of the mistress leaned over
and said in a confidential undertone:

"I wonder, Mamma, if that tramp we passed on the road found my
stocking, and do you think he will hang it up to-night? Now I can hang
up but one. Do you know why I wanted a new pair of silk stockings
when I have plenty? Well, old Aunt Judy says, if you hang up two that
have never been worn, Santa Glaus will fill one with good things, and
Monsieur Pambe will place in the other payment for all the words you
have spoken — good or bad — on the day before Christmas. That's why I've
been unusually nice and polite to everyone to-day. Monsieur Pambe, you
know, is a witch gentleman! he n

The words of the young girl were interrupted by a startling thing.

Like the wraith of some burned-out shooting star, a black streak came
crashing through the window-pane and upon the table, where it shivered

526 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

into fragments a dozen pieces of crystal and china ware, and then glanced
between the heads of the guests to the wall, imprinting therein a deep,
round indentation, at which, to-day, the visitor to Bellemeade marvels
as he gazes upon it and listens to this tale as it is told.

The women screamed in many keys, and the men sprang to their feet,
and would have laid their hands upon their swords had not the verities
of chronology forbidden.

The planter was the first to act; he sprang to the intruding missile and
held it up to view.

"By Jupiter!" he cried. "A meteoric shower of hosiery! Has communi-
cation at last been established with Mars?"

"I should say— -ahem!— Venus," ventured a young gentleman visitor,
looking hopefully for approbation toward the unresponsive young-lady
visitors.

The planter held at arm's length the unceremonious visitor — a long
dangling black stocking. "It's loaded," he announced.

As he spoke he reversed the stocking, holding it by the toe, and down
from it dropped a roundish stone, wrapped about by a piece of yellowish
paper. "Now for the first interstellar message of the century!" he cried;
and nodding to the company, who had crowded about him, he adjusted
his glasses with provoking deliberation, and examined it closely. When
he finished he had changed from the jolly host to the practical, decisive
man of business. He immediately struck a bell, and said to the silent-
footed mulatoo man who responded: "Go and tell Mr. Wesley to get
Reeves and Maurice and about ten stout hands they can rely upon, and
come to the hall door at once. Tell him to have the men arm themselves,
and bring plenty of ropes and plough lines. Tell him to hurry." And then
he read aloud from the paper these words:

To the Gent of de Hous:

Dere is five tuff hoboes xcept meself in the vaken lot near de road
war de old brick piles is. Dey got me stuck up wid a gun see and I
taken dis means of comunikaten. 2 of der lads is gone down to set fire
to de cain field below de house and when yous fellers goes to turn de
hoes on it de hole gang is goin to rob de house of de money too gotto
pay off wit say git a move on ye say de kid dropt dis sock in der rode
tel her mery crismus de same as she told me. Ketch de bums down de
rode first and den sen a relefe core to get me out of soke youres truly,

Whistlen Dick

There was some quiet, but rapid, manuevering at Bellemeade during
the ensuing half hour, which ended in five disgusted and sullen tramps
being captured and locked securely in an out-house pending the coming
of the morning and retribution. For another result, the visiting young
gentlemen had secured the unqualified worship of the visiting young

WHISTLING DICK'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING 527

ladies by their distinguished and heroic conduct. For still another, behold
Whistling Dick, the hero, seated at the planter's table, feasting upon
viands his experience had never before included, and waited upon by
admiring femininity in shapes of such beauty and "swellness" that even
his ever-full mouth could scarcely prevent him from whistling. He was
made to disclose in detail his adventure with the evil gang of Boston
Harry, and how he cunningly wrote the note and wrapped it around
the stone and placed it in the toe of the stocking, and, watching his
chance, sent it silently, with a wonderful centrifugal momentum, like a
comet, at one of the big lighted windows of the dining-room.

The planter vowed that the wanderer should wander no more; that
his was a goodness and an honesty that should be rewarded, and that a
debt of gratitude had been made that must be paid; for had he not saved
them from a doubtless imminent loss, and maybe a greater calamity? He
assured Whistling Dick that he might consider himself a charge upon
the honor of Bellemeade; that a position suited to his powers would be
found for him at once, and hinted that the way would be heartily
smoothed for him to rise to as high places of emolument and trust as the
plantation afforded.

But now, they said, he must be weary, and the immediate thing to con-
sider was rest and sleep. So the mistress spoke to a servant, and Whistling
Dick was conducted to a room in the wing of the house occupied by the
servants. To this room, in a few minutes, was brought a portable tin bath-
tub filled with water, which was placed on a piece of oiled cloth upon the
floor. There the vagrant was left to pass the night.

By the light of the candle he examined the room. A bed, with the covers
neatly turned back, revealed snowy pillows and sheets. A worn, but clean,
red carpet covered the floor. There was a dresser with a beveled mirror,
a washstand with a flowered bowl and pitcher; the two or three chairs
were softly upholstered. A little table held books, papers, and a day-old
cluster of roses in a jar. There were towels on a rack and soap in a white
dish.

Whistling Dick set his candle on a chair and placed his hat carefully
under the table. After satisfying what we must suppose to have been his
curiosity by a sober scrutiny, he removed his coat, folded it, and laid it
upon the floor, near the wall, as far as possible from the unused bathtub.
Taking his coat for a pillow, he stretched himself luxuriously upon the
carpet.

When, on Christmas morning, the first streaks of dawn broke above
the marshes, Whistling Dick awoke and reached instinctively for his hat.
Then he remembered that the skirts of Fortune had swept him into their
folds on the night previous, and he went to the window and raised it, to
let the fresh breath of the morning cool his brow and fix the yet dream-
like memory of his good luck within his brain.

528 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

As he stood there, certain dread and ominous sounds pierced the fearful
hollow of his ear.

The force of plantation workers, eager to complete the shortened task
allotted to them, were all astir. The mighty din of the ogre Labor shook
the earth, and the poor tattered and forever disguised Prince in search
of his fortune held tight to the window-sill even in the enchanted castle,
and trembled.

Already from the bosom of the mill came the thunder of rolling barrels
of sugar, and (prison-like sounds) there was a great rattling of chains as
the mules were harried with stimulant imprecations to their places by
the wagon-tongues. A little vicious "dummy" engine, with a train of flat
cars in tow, stewed and fumed on the plantation tap of the narrow-gauge
railroad, and a toiling, hurrying, hallooing stream of workers were dimly
seen in the half darkness loading the train with the weekly output of
sugar. Here was a poem, an epic— nay, a tragedy—with work, the curse
of the world, for its theme.

The December air was frosty, but the sweat broke out upon Whistling
Dick's face. He thrust his head out of the window and looked down.
Fifteen feet below him, against the wall of the house, he could make out
that a border of flowers grew, and by that token he overhung a bed of
soft earth.

Softly as a burglar goes, he clambered out upon the sill, lowered him-
self until he hung by his hands alone, and then dropped safely. No one
seemed to be about upon this side of the house. He dodged low and
skimmed swiftly across the yard to the low fence. It was an easy matter
to vault this, for a terror urged him such as lifts the gazelle over the thorn
bush when the lion pursues. A crash through the dew-drenched weeds on
the roadside, a clutching, slippery rush up the grassy side of the levee to
the footpath at the summit, and — he was free!

The east was blushing and brightening. The wind, himself a vagrant
rover, saluted his brother upon the cheek. Some wild geese, high above,
gave cry. A rabbit skipped along the path before him, free to turn to the
right or to the left as his mood should send him. The river slid past, and
certainly no one could tell the ultimate abiding place of its waters.

A small, ruffled, brown-breasted bird, sitting upon a dogwood sapling,
began a soft, throaty, tender little piping in praise of the dew which
entices foolish worms from their holes; but suddenly he stopped, and sat
with his head turned sidewise, listening.

From the path along the levee there burst forth a jubilant, stirring,
buoyant, thrilling whistle, loud and keen and clear as the cleanest notes
of the piccolo. The soaring sound rippled and trilled and arpeggioed as
the songs of wild birds do not; but it had a wild free grace that, in a way,
reminded the small brown bird of something familiar, but exactly what
he could not tell. There was in it the bird call, or reveille, that all birds

THE HALBERDIER OF THE LITTLE RHEINSCHLOSS 529

know; but a great waste of lavish, unmeaning things that art had added
and arranged, besides, and that were quite puzzling and strange; and the
little brown bird sat with his head on one side until the sound died away
in the distance.

The little bird did not know that the part of that strange warbling that
he understood was just what kept the warbler without his breakfast; but
he knew very well that the part he did not understand did not concern
him, so he gave a little flutter of his wings and swooped down like a
brown bullet upon a big fat worm that was wriggling along the levee
path.

THE HALBERDIER OF THE LITTLE RHEINSCHLOSS

Go sometimes into the Bierhalle and restaurant called Old Munich. Not
long ago it was a resort of interesting Bohemians, but now only artists
and musicians and literary folk frequent it. But the Pilsener is yet good,
and I take some diversion from the conversation of Waiter No. 18.

For many years the customers of Old Munich have accepted the place
as a faithful copy from the ancient German town. The big hall with its
smoky rafters, rows of imported steins, portrait of Goethe, and verses
painted on the walls — translated into German from the original of the
Cincinnati poets — seems atmospherically correct when viewed through
the bottom of a glass.

But not long ago the proprietors added the room above, called it the
Little Rheinschloss, and built in a stairway. Up there was an imitation
stone parapet, ivy-covered, and the walls were painted to represent depth
and distance, with the Rhine winding at the base of the vineyarded slopes,
and the castle of Ehrenbreitstein looming directly opposite the entrance.
Of course there were tables and chairs; and you could have beer and
food brought you, as you naturally would on top of a castle on the Rhine.

I went into Old Munich one afternoon when there were few customers,
and sat at my usual table near the stairway. I was shocked and almost
displeased to perceive that the glass cigar-case by the orchestra stand had
been smashed to smithereens. I did not like things to happen in Old
Munich. Nothing had ever happened there before.

Waiter No. 18 came and breathed on my neck. I was his by right of
discovery. Eighteen's brain was built like a corral. It was full of ideas
which, when he opened the gate, came huddling out like a flock of sheep
that might get together afterward or might not. I did not shine as a shep-
herd. As a type Eighteen fitted nowhere. I did not find out if he had a
nationality, family, creed, grievance, hobby, soul, preference, home or
vote. He only came always to my table and, as long as his leisure would

53<> BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

permit, let words flutter from him like swallows leaving a barn at daylight.

"How did the cigar-case come to be broken. Eighteen?" I asked, with
a certain feeling of personal grievance.

"I can tell you about that, sir," said he, resting his foot on the chair next
to mine. "Did you ever have anybody hand you a double handful of good
luck while both your hands was full of bad luck, and stop to notice how
your fingers behaved?"

"No riddles, Eighteen," said I. "Leave out palmistry and manicuring."

"You remember," said Eighteen, "the guy in the hammered brass Prince
Albert and the oroide gold pants and the amalgamated copper hat, that
carried the combination meat-axe, ice-pick, and liberty-pole, and used to
stand on the first landing as you go up to the Little Rindslosh?"

"Why, yes," said I. "The halberdier. I never noticed him particularly.
I remember I thought he was only a suit of armor. He had a perfect
poise."

"He had more than that," said Eighteen. "He was me friend. He was
an advertisement. The boss hired him to stand on the stairs for a kind
of scenery to show there was something doing in the has-been line up-
stairs. What did you call him — a what kind of beer?"

"A halberdier," said I. "That was an ancient man-at-arms of many
hundred years ago."

"Some mistake," said Eighteen. "This one wasn't that old. He wasn't
over twenty-three or four.

"It was the boss's idea, rigging a man up in an ante-bellum suit of tin-
ware and standing him on the landing of the slosh. He bought the goods
at a Fourth Avenue antique store, and hung a sign out: 'Able-bodied hal
— halberdier wanted. Costume furnished.'

"The same morning a young man with wrecked good clothes and a
hungry look comes in, bringing the sign with him. I was filling the mus-
tard-pots at my station.

" I'm it,' says he, 'whatever it is. But I never halberdiered in a res-
taurant. Put me on. Is it a mesquerade?'

" 1 hear talk in the kitchen of a fishball/ says I.

" 'Bully for you, Eighteen,' says he. 'You and I'll get on. Show me the
boss's desk.'

"Well, the boss tries the Harveyized pajamas on him, and they fitted
him like the scales on a baked redsnapper, and he gets the job. You've
seen what it is — he stood straight up in the corner of die first landing with
his halberd to his shoulder, looking right ahead and guarding the Portu-
gals of the castle. The boss is nutty about having the true Old-World
flavor to his joint. 'Halberdiers goes with Rindsloshes,' says he, 'just as
rats goes with ratskellers and white cotton stockings with Tyrolean vil-
lages.5 The boss is a kind of a antiologist, and is all posted upon data and
such information.

THE HALBERDIER OF THE LITTLE RHEINSCHLOSS 53!

"From 8 P.M. to two in the morning was the Halberdier's hours. He
got two meals with us help and a dollar a night. I eat with him at the
table. He liked me. He never told his name. He was traveling im-
promptu, like kings, I guess. The first time at supper I says to him, 'Have
some more of the spuds, Mr. Frelinghuysen.' 'Oh, don't be so formal,
and offish, Eighteen/ says he. 'Call me Hal — that's short for halberdier.'
'Oh, don't think I wanted to pry for names,* says I. 'I know all about the
dizzy fall from wealth and greatness. We've got a count washing dishes
in the kitchen; and the third bartender used to be a Pullman conductor.
And they wor\, Sir Percival/ says I, sarcastic.

"'Eighteen/ says he, 'as a friendly devil in a cabbage-scented hell,
would you mind cutting up this piece of steak for me ? I don't say that it's

got more muscle than I have, but ' And then he shows me the insides of

his hands. They were blistered and cut and corned and swelled up till
they looked like a couple of flank steaks criss-crossed with a knife — the
kind the butchers hide and take home, knowing what is the best.

" 'Shoveling coal/ says he, 'and piling bricks and loading drays. But
they gave out, and I had to resign. I was born for a halberdier, and I've
been educated for twenty-four years to fill the position. Now, quit knock-
ing my profession, and pass along a lot more of that ham. I'm holding
the closing exercises/ says he, 'of a forty-eight-hour fast.'

"The second night he was on the job he walks down from his corner
to the cigar-case and calls for cigarettes. The customers at the tables all
snicker out loud to show their acquaintance with history. The boss is on.

"'An'— let's see— oh, yes— 'An anarchism/ says the boss. 'Cigarettes
was not made at the time when halberdiers was invented.5

" 'The ones you sell was/ says Sir Percival. 'Caporal wins from chron-
ology by the length of a cork tip.' So he gets 'em and lights one, and puts
the box in his brass helmet and goes back to patrolling the Rindslosh.

"He made a big hit, 'specially with the ladies. Some of 'em would poke
him with their fingers to see if he was real or only a kind of a stuffed
figure they burn in elegy. And when he'd move they'd squeak, and make
eyes at him as they went up to the slosh. He looked fine in his halber-
dashery. He slept at $2 a week in a hall-room on Third Avenue. He
invited me up there one night. He had a little book on the washstand
that he read instead of shopping in the saloons after hours. Tm onto that/
says I, 'from reading about it in novels. All the heroes on the bum carry
the little book. It's either Tantalus or Liver or Horace, and it's printed in
Latin, and you're a college man. And I wouldn't be surprised/ says I, *if
you wasn't educated, too.' But it was only the batting averages of the
League for the last ten years.

"One night, about half-past eleven, there comes in a party of these high-
rollers that are always hunting up new places to eat in and poke fun at.
There was a swell girl in a 40 H.-P. auto tan coat and veil, and a fat old

532 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

men with white side-whiskers, and a young chap that couldn't keep his
feet off the tail of the girl's coat, and an oldish lady that looked upon
life as immoral and unnecessary. 'How perfectly delightful/ they says,
'to sup in a slosh/ Up the stairs they go; and in half a minute back down
comes the girl, her skirts swishing like the waves on the beach. She stops
on the landing and looks our halberdier in the eye.

"'You!' she says, with a smile that reminded me of lemon sherbet. I
was waiting upstairs in the slosh, then, and I was right down here by the
door, putting some vinegar and cayenne into an empty bottle of tabasco,
and I heard all they said.

" 'It/ says Sir Percival, without moving. Tm only local color. Are my
haurberk, helmet, and halberd on straight?*

"'Is there an explanation to this?1 says she. 'Is it a practical joke such
as men play in those Griddle-cake and Lamb Clubs? I'm afraid I don't
see the point. I heard, vaguely, that you were away. For three months
I — we have not seen you or heard from you.'

"Tm halberdiering for my living/ -says the statue. Tm working/ says
he. 'I don't suppose you know what work means.'

" 'Have you — have you lost your money?' she asks.

"Sir Percival studies a minute.

" 'I am poorer/ says he, 'than the poorest sandwich man on the streets
— if I don't earn my living/

"'You call this work?* says she. 'I thought a man worked with his
hands or his head instead of becoming a mountebank.'

" 'The calling of a halberdier/ says he, 'is an ancient and honorable one.
Sometimes/ says he, 'the man-at-arms at the door has saved the castle
while the plumed knights were cake-walking in the banquet-halls above.'

" 'I see you're not ashamed/ says she, 'of your peculiar tastes. I wonder,
though, that the manhood I used to think I saw in you didn't prompt
you to draw water or hew wood instead of publicly flaunting your ig-
nominy in this disgraceful masquerade/

"Sir Percival kind of rattles his armor and says: 'Helen, will you sus-
pend sentence in this matter for just a little while? You don't under-
stand/ says he. Tve got to hold this job down a bit longer/

" 'You like being a harlequin— or halberdier, as you call it?' says she

" 1 wouldn't get thrown out of the job just now/ says he, with a grin,
'to be appointed Minister to the Court of St. James's/

"And then the 40 H.-P. girl's eyes sparkled as hard as diamonds.

" 'Very well/ says she. 'You shall have full run of your serving-man's
tastes this night/ And she swims over to the boss's desk and gives him
a smile that knocks the specks off his nose.

" 'I think your Rindslosh/ says she, 'is as beautiful as a dream. It is' a
little slice of the Old World set down in New York. We shall have a nice

THE HALBERDIER OF THE LITTLE RHEINSCHLOSS 533

supper up there; but if you will grant us one favor the illusion will be
perfect — give us your halberdier to wait on our table.5

"That hit the boss's antiology hobby just right. 'Sure,' says he, 'dot vill
be fine. Und der orchestra shall blay "Die Wacht am Rhein" all der
time.' And he goes over and tells the halberdier to go upstairs and hustle
the grub at the swells' table.

"Tm on the job,' says Sir Percival, taking off his helmet and hanging
it on his halberd and leaning 'em in the corner. The girl goes up and
takes her seat and I see her jaw squared tight under her smile. 'We're
going to be waited on by a real halberdier,' says she, 'one who is proud of
his profession. Isn't it sweet?'

" 'Ripping/ says the swell young man. 'Much prefer a waiter,' says the
fat old gent. 'I hope he doesn't come from a cheap museum,' says the
old lady; 'he might have microbes in his costume.'

"Before he goes to the table, Sir Percival takes me by the arm. 'Eight-
een/ says he, 'I've got to pull off this job without a blunder. You coach
me straight or I'll take that halberd and make hash out of you/ And
then he goes up to the table with his coat of mail on and a napkin
over his arm and waits for the order.

'"Why, it's Deering!' says the young swell 'Hello, old man. What
the '

" 'Beg pardon, sir/ interrupts the halberdier, Tm waiting on the table.'

"The old man looks at him grim, like a Boston bull. 'So, Deering/ he
says, 'you're at work yet/

"'Yes, sir/ says Sir Percival, quiet and gentlemanly as I could have
been myself, 'for almost three months, now.' 'You haven't been dis-
charged during the time?' asks the old man. 'Not once, sir/ says he,
'though I've had to change my work several times/

" 'Waiter/ orders the girl, short and sharp, 'another napkin.' He brings
her one, respectful.

"I never saw more devil, if I may say it, stirred up in a lady. There was
two bright red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes looked exactly like a
wildcat's I'd seen in the zoo. Her foot kept slapping the floor all the
time.

" 'Waiter/ she orders, 'bring me filtered water without ice. Bring me
a foot-stool. Take away this empty salt-cellar/ She kept him on the jump.
She was sure giving the halberdier his.

"There wasn't but a few customers up in the slosh at that time, so I
hung out near the door so I could help Sir Percival serve.

"He got along fine with the olives and celery and the bluepoints. That
was easy. And then the consomme came up the dumb-waiter all in one
big silver tureen. Instead of serving it from the side-table he picks it up
between his hands and starts to the dining-table with it. When nearly

534 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

there he drops the tureen smash on the floor, and the soup soaks all the
lower part of that girl's swell silk dress.

" 'Stupid— incompetent/ says she, giving him a look. 'Standing in a
corner with a halberd seems to be your mission in life/

" 'Pardon me, lady/ says he. It was just a little bit hotter than blazes.
I couldn't help it/

"The old man pulls out a memorandum book and hunts in it. The 25th
of April, Deering/ says he. 'I know it/ says Sir Percival. 'And ten minutes
to twelve o'clock/ says the old man. 'By Jupiter! you haven't won yet.'
And he pounds the table with his fist and yells to me: 'Waiter, call the
manager at once—tell him to hurry here as fast as he can/ I go after the
boss, and old Brockmann hikes up to the slosh on the jump.

" 'I want this man discharged at once/ roars the old guy. 'Look what
he's done. Ruined my daughter's dress. It cost at least $600. Discharge
this awkward lout at once or I'll sure you for the price of it/

" £Dis is bad pizness/ says the boss. 'Six hundred dollars is much. I
reckon I vill half to '

" 'Wait a minute, Herr Brockmann/ says Sir Percival, easy and smil-
ing. But he was worked up under his tin suitings; I could see that. And
then he made the finest, neatest litde speech I ever listened to. I can't give
you the words, of course. He give the millionaires a lovely roast in a
sarcastic way, describing their automobiles and opera-boxes and dia-
monds; and then he got around to the working-classes and the kind of
grub they eat and the long hours they work — and all that sort of stuff —
bunkum, of course. 'The restless rich/ says he, 'never content with their
luxuries, always prowling among the haunts of the poor and humble,
amusing themselves with the imperfections and misfortunes of their fel-
low men and women. And even here, Herr Brockmann/ he says, 'in this
beautiful Rindslosh, a grand and enlightening reproduction of Old-World
history and architecture, they come to disturb its symmetry and pictur-
esqueness by demanding in their arrogance that the halberdier of the
casde wait upon their table! I have faithfully and conscientiously/ says
he, 'performed my duties as a halberdier. I know nothing of a waiter's
duties. It was the insolent whim of these transient, pampered aristocrats
that I should be detailed to serve them food. Must I be blamed—must I
be deprived of the means of a livelihood/ he goes on, 'on account of an
accident that was the result of their own presumption and haughtiness ?
But what hurt me more than all/ says Sir Percival, 'is the desecration
that has been done to this splendid Rindslosh — the confiscation of its
halberdier to serve menially at the banquet board/

"Even I could see that this stuff was piffle; but it caught the boss.

" 'Mein Gott/ says he, 'you vas right. Bin halberdier have not got der
right to dish up soup. Him I vill not discharge. Have anoder waiter if
you like, and let mein halberdier go back and stand mit his halberd.

THE HALBERDIER OF THE LITTLE RHEINSCHLOSS 535

But, gentlemen,' he says, pointing to the old man, 'you go ahead and sue
mit der dress. Sue me for $600 or $6,000. I stand der suit.' And the
boss puffs off downstairs. Old Brockmann was an all-right Dutchman.

"Just then the clock strikes twelve, and the old guy laughs loud. 'You
win, Deering,' says he. 'Let me explain to all,' he goes on. 'Some time
ago, Mr. Deering asked me for something that I did not want to give him.'
(I looks at the girl, and she turns as red as a pickled beet.) 'I told him,'
says the old guy, 'if he would earn his own living for three months with-
out once being discharged for incompetence, I would give him what he
wanted. It seems that the time was up at twelve o'clock to-night. I came
near fetching you, though, Deering, on that soup question/ says the old
boy, standing up and grabbing Sir Percival's hand.

"The halberdier lets out a yell and jumps three feet high.

" 'Look out for those hands,' says he, and he holds 'em up. You never
saw such hands except on a laborer in a limestone quarry.

"'Heavens, boy!' says old side-whiskers, 'what have you been doing
to 'em?'

" 'Oh,' says Sir Percival, 'little chores like hauling coal and excavating
rock till they went back on me. And when I couldn't hold a pick or a
whip I took up halberdiering to give 'em a rest. Tureens full of hot soup
don't seem to be a particular soothing treatment.'

"I would have bet on that girl. That high-tempered kind always go as
far the other way, according to my experience. She whizzes round the
table like a cyclone and catches both his hands in hers. 'Poor hands —
dear hands,' she sings out, and sheds tears on 'em and holds 'em close to
her bosom. Well, sir, with all that Rindslosh scenery it was just like a play.
And the halberdier sits down at the table at the girl's side, and I served
the rest of the supper. And that was about all, except that when they
left he shed his hardware store and went with 'em."

I dislike to be side-tracked from an original proposition.

"But you haven't told me, Eighteen," said I, "how the cigar-case came
to be broken."

"Oh, that was last night," said Eighteen. "Sir Percival and the girl
drove up in a cream-colored motor-car, and had dinner in the Rindslosh.
'The same table, Billy,' I heard her say as they went up. I waited on 'em.
We've got a new halberdier now, a bow-legged guy with a face like a
sheep. As they came downstairs Sir Percival passes him a ten-case note.
The new halberdier drops his halberd, and it falls on the cigar-case.
That's how that happened."

536 BOOKIV ROADS OF DESTINY

TWO RENEGADES

In the Gate City of the South the Confederate Veterans were reuniting;
and I stood to see them march, beneath the tangled flags of the great
conflict, to the hall of their oratory and commemoration.

While the irregular and halting line was passing I made onslaught
upon it and dragged forth from the ranks my friend Barnard O'Keefe,
who had no right to be there. For he was a Northerner born and bred;
and what should he be doing hallooing for the Stars and Bars among
those gray and moribund veterans? And why should he be trudging, with
his shining, martial, humorous, broad face, among those warriors of a
previous and alien generation?

I say I dragged him forth, and held him till the last hickory leg and
waving goatee had stumbled past. And then I hustled him out of the
crowd into a cool interior; for the Gate City was stirred that day, and the
hand-organs wisely eliminated "Marching Through Georgia" from their
repertories.

"Now, what deviltry are you up to?" I asked of O'Keefe when there
were a table and things in glasses between us.

O'Keefe wiped his heated face and instigated a commotion among the
floating ice in his glass before he chose to answer.

"I am assisting at the wake," said he, "of the only nation on earth that
ever did me a good turn. As one gentleman to another, I am ratifying and
celebrating the foreign policy of the late Jefferson Davis, as fine a states-
man as ever settled the financial question of a country. Equal ratio — that
was his platform — a barrel of money for a barrel of flour — a pair of $20
bills for a pair of boots — a hatful of currency for a new hat — say, ain't that
simple compared with W. J. B/s little old oxidized plank?"

"What talk is this?" I asked. "Your financial digression is merely a
subterfuge. Why were you marching in the ranks of the Confederate
Veterans?"

"Because, my lad," answered O'Keefe, "the Confederate Government
in its might and power interposed to protect and defend Barnard O'Keefe
ag-ainst immediate and dangerous assassination at the hands of a blood-
thirsty foreign country after the United States of America had overruled
his appeal for protection, and had instructed Private Secretary Cortelyou
to reduce his estimate of the Republican majority for 1905 by one vote."

"Come, Barney," said I, "the Confederate States of America has been
out of existence nearly forty years. You do not look older yourself. When
was it that the deceased government exerted its foreign policy in your
behalf?"

TWO RENEGADES 537

"Four months ago," said O'Keefe, promptly. "The infamous foreign
power I alluded to is still staggering from the official blow dealt it by
Mr. Davis's contraband aggregation of states. That's why you see me
cake-walking with the ex-rebs to the illegitimate tune about "simmon-
seels and cotton. I vote for the Great Father in Washington, but I am
not going back on Mars' Jeff. You say the Confederacy has been dead
forty years? Well, if it hadn't been for it, I'd have been breathing today
with soul so dead I couldn't have whispered a single cussword about my
native land. The O'Keefes are not overburdened with ingratitude/'

I must have looked bewildered. "The war was over," I said vacantly,
"in "

O'Keefe laughed loudly, scattering my thoughts.

"Ask old Doc Millikin if the war is over!" he shouted, hugely diverted.
"Oh, no! Doc hasn't surrendered yet.' And the Confederate States! Well,
I just told you they bucked officially and solidly and nationally against
a foreign government four months ago and kept me from being shot.
Old Jeff's country stepped in and brought me off under its wing while
Roosevelt was having a gunboat painted and waiting for the National
Campaign Committee to look up whether I had ever scratched the ticket."

"Isn't there a story in this, Barney?" I asked.

"No," said O'Keefe; "but I'll give you the facts. You know I went
down to Panama when this irritation about a canal began. I thought Yd
get in on the ground floor. I did, and had to sleep on it, and drink water
with little zoos in it; so, of course, I got the Chagres fever. That was In a
little town called San Juan on the coast.

"After I got the fever hard enough to kill a Port-au-Prince nigger, I
had a relapse in the shape of Doc Millikin.

"There was a doctor to attend a sick man! If Doc Millikin had your
case, he made the terrors of death seem like an invitation to a donkey-
party. He had the bedside manners of a Piute medicine-man and the
soothing presence of a dray loaded with iron bridge-girders. When he
laid his hand on your fevered brow you felt like Cap John Smith just
before Pocahontas went his bail.

"Well, this old medical outrage floated down to my shack when I sent
for him. He was built like a shad, and his eyebrows was black, and his
white whiskers trickled down from his chin like milk coming out of a
sprinkling-pot. He had a nigger boy along carrying an old tomato-can
full of calomel, and a saw.

"Doc felt my pulse, and then he began to mess up some calomel with
an agricultural implement that belonged to the trowel class.

" *I don't want any death-mask made yet, Doc/ I says, 'nor my liver put
in a plaster-of-paris cast. I'm sick; and it's medicine I need, not frescoing.'

"'You're a blame Yankee, ain't you?' asked Doc, going on mixing up
his Portland cement.

538 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

" Tm from the North/ says I, 'but I'm a plain man, and don't care for
mural decorations. When you get the Isthmus all asphalted over with
that boll-weevil prescription, would you mind giving me a dose of pain-
killer, or a little strychnine on toast to case up this feeling of unhealthi-
ness that I have got?'

" 'They was all sassy, just like you,' says old Doc, 'but we lowered their
temperature considerable. Yes, sir, I reckon we sent a good many of ye
over to old mortuis nisi bonum. Look at Antietam and Bull Run and
Seven Pines and around Nashville! There never was a battle where we
didn't lick ye unless you was ten to our one. I knew you were a blame
Yankee the minute I laid eyes on you.'

" 'Don't reopen the chasm, Doc,' I begs him. 'Any Yankeeness I may
have is geographical; and, as far as I am concerned a Southerner is as
good as a Filipino any day. I'm feeling too bad to argue. Let's have se-
cession without misrepresentation, if you say so; but what I need is more
laudanum and less Lundy's Lane. If you're mixing that compound geflox-
ide of gefloxicum for me, please fill my ears with it before you get around
to the battle of Gettysburg, for there is a subject full of talk.'

"By this time Doc Millikin had thrown up a line of fortifications on
square pieces of paper; and he says to me: 'Yank, take one of these pow-
ders every two hours. They won't kill you. Ill be around again about
sundown to see if you're alive.'

"Old Doc's powders knocked the chagres. I stayed in San Juan, and
got to knowing him better. He was from Mississippi, and the red-hottest
Southerner that ever smelled mint. He made Stonewall Jackson and R. E.
Lee look like Abolitionists. He had a family somewhere down near Yazoo
City; but he stayed away from the States on account of an uncontrollable
liking he had for the absence of a Yankee government. Him and me got
as thick personally as the Emperor of Russia and the dove of peace, but
sectionally we didn't amalgamate.

" 'Twas a beautiful system of medical practice introduced by old Doc
into that isthmus of land. He'd take that bracket-saw and the mild
chloride and his hypodermic, and treat anything from yellow fever to
a personal friend.

"Besides his other liabilities Doc could play a flute for a minute or two.
He was guilty of two tunes — 'Dixie' and another one that was mighty
close to the 'Suwanee River'— you might say one of its tributaries. He
used to come down and sit with me while I was getting well, and aggrieve
his flute and say unreconstructed things about the North. You'd have
thought the smoke from the first gun at Fort Sumter was still floating
around in the air.

"You know that was about the time they staged them property revolu-
tions down there, that wound up in the fifth act with the thrilling canal
scene where Uncle Sam has nine curtain-calls holding Miss Panama by

TWO RENEGADES 539

the hand, while the bloodhounds keep Senator Morgan treed up in a
cocoanut-palm.

"That's the way it wound up; but at first it seemed as i£ Colombia was
going to make Panama look like one of the $3.98 kind, with dents made
in it in the factory, like they wear at North Beach fish fries. For mine, I
played the straw-hat crowd to win; and they gave me a colonel's com-
mission over a brigade of twenty-seven men in the left wing and second
joint of the insurgent army.

"The Colombian troops were awfully rude to us. One day when I had
my brigade in a sandy spot, with its shoes oil doing a battalion drill by
squads, the Government army rushed from behind a bush at us, acting
as noisy and disagreeable as they could.

"My troops enfiladed, left-faced, and left the spot. After enticing the
enemy for three miles or so we struck a brier-patch and had to sit down.
When we were ordered to throw up our toes and surrender we obeyed.
Five of my best staff-officers fell, suffering extremely with stone-bruised
heels.

"Then and there those Colombians took your friend Barney, sir,
stripped him of the insignia of his rank, consisting of a pair of brass
knuckles and a canteen of rum, and dragged him before a military court.
The presiding general went through the usual legal formalities that some-
times cause a case to hang on the calendar of a South American military
court as long as ten minutes. He asked me my age, and then sentenced
me to be shot.

"They woke up the court interpreter, an American named Jenks, who
was in the rum business and vice versa, and told him to translate the
verdict.

"Jenks stretched himself and took a morphine tablet.

" 'You've got to back up against th' 'dobe, old man,' says he to me.
'Three weeks, I believe, you get. Haven't got a chew of fine-cut on you,
have you?'

" Translate that again, with footnotes and a glossary,' says I. 'I don't
know whether I'm discharged, condemned, or handed over to the Gerry
Society/

" 'Oh,' says Jenks, 'don't you understand ? You're to be stood up against
a 'dobe wall and shot in two or three weeks — three, I think, they said.'

"'Would you mind asking 'em which?' says I. 'A week don't amount
to much after you are dead, but it seems a real nice long spell while you
are alive.'

" 'It's two weeks,' says the interpreter, after inquiring in Spanish of the
court. 'Shall I ask Jem again?'

" 'Let be,' says I. 'Let's have a stationary verdict. If I keep on appealing
this way they'll have me shot about ten days before I was captured. No,
I haven't got any fine-cut.'

540 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

"They sends me over to the calaboza with a detachment o£ colored
postal-telegraph boys carrying Enfield rifles, and I am locked up in a kind
of brick bakery. The temperature in there was just about the kind men-
tioned in the cooking recipes that call for a quick oven.

"Then I gives a silver dollar to one of the guards to send for the United
States consul. He comes around in pajamas with a pair of glasses on his
nose and a dozen or two inside of him.

"Tm to be shot in two weeks,9 says L cAnd although I've made a
memorandum of it, I don't seem to get it off my mind. You want to call
up Uncle Sam on the cable as quick as you can and get him all worked up
about it. Have 'em send the Kentucky and the Kearsarge and the Oregon
down right away. That'll be about enough battleships; but it wouldn't
hurt to have a couple of cruisers and a torpedo-boat destroyer, too. And—
say, if Dewey isn't busy, better have him come along on the fastest one o£
the fleet.'

" 'Now, see here, O'Keefe/ says the consul, getting the best of a hiccup,
Vhat do you want to bother the State Department about this matter for?'

" Didn't you hear me?' says I; Tm to be shot in two weeks. Did you
think I said I was going to a lawn-party? And it wouldn't hurt if Roose-
velt could get the Japs to send down the Yellowyamstis \oofyim or the
Ogotosingsing or some other first-class cruiser to help. It would make me
feel safer.'

" 'Now, what you want,* says the consul, 'is not to get excited. I'll send
you over some chewing tobacco and some banana fritters when I go back.
The United States can't interfere in this. You know you were caught
insurging against the government, and you're subject to the laws of this
country. Tell you the truth, I've had an intimation from the State De-
partment—unofficially, of course— that whenever a soldier of fortune
demands a fleet of gunboats in a case of revolutionary fyatzen jammer,
I should cut the cable, give him all the tobacco he wants, and after he's
shot take his clothes, if they fit me, for part payment of my salary/

" 'Consul/ says I to him, 'this is a serious question. You are representing
Uncle Sam. This ain't any little international tomfoolery, like a universal
peace congress or the christening of the Shamroc^ IV. I'm an American
citizen and I demand protection. I demand the Mosquito fleet, and Schley,
and the Atlantic squadron, and Bob Evans, and General E. Byrd Grubb,
and two or three protocols. What are you going to do about it?'

" 'Nothing doing/ says the consul.

" 'Be off with you, then/ says I, out of patience with him, 'and send me
Doc Millikin. Ask Doc to come and see me/

'T)oc comes and looks through the bars at me, surrounded by dirty
soldiers, with even my shoes and canteen confiscated, and he looks
mightily pleased.

TWO RENEGADES 54!

" 'Hello, Yank/ says he, 'getting a little taste of Johnson's Island, now,
ain't ye?'

" 'Doc,' says I, Tve just had an interview with the U. S. consul. I gather
from his remarks that I might just as well have been caught selling
suspenders in Kishineff under the name of Rosenstein as to be in my
present condition. It seems that the only maritime aid I am to receive
from the United States is some navy-plug to chew. Doc,' says I, 'can't you
suspend hostilities on the slavery question long enough to do something
for me?5

" It ain't been my habit,' Doc Millikin answers, 'to do any painless den-
tistry when I find a Yank cutting an eyetooth. So the Stars and Stripes
ain't landing any marines to shell the huts of the Colombian cannibals,
hey? Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light the star-spangled
banner has fluked in the fight? What's the matter with the War Depart-
ment, hey? It's a great thing to be a citizen of a gold-standard nation,
ain't it?'

" 'Rub it in, Doc, all you want,' says I. *I guess we're weak on foreign
policy.'

" 'For a Yank,' says Doc, putting on his specs and talking more mild,
'you ain't so bad. If you had come from below the line I reckon I would
have liked you right smart. Now since your country has gone back on
you, you have to come to the old doctor whose cotton you burned and
whose mules you1 stole and whose niggers you freed to help you. Ain't
that so, Yank?'

" 'It is/ says I heartily, 'and let's have a diagnosis of the case right away,
for in two weeks' time all you can do is to hold an autopsy and I don't
want to be amputated if I can help it.'

" 'Now,' says Doc, business-like, 'it's easy enough for you to get out of
this scrape. Money'll do it. YouVe got to pay a long string of 'em from
General Pomposo down to this anthropoid ape guarding your door. About
$10,000 will do the trick. Have you got the money?'

" 'Me?' says I. Tve got one Chili dollar, two real pieces, and a medio.*

"'Then if you've any last words, utter 'cm,' says that old reb. 'The
roster of your financial budget sounds quite much to me like the noise of a
requiem.'

" 'Change the treatment/ says I. 'I admit that I'm short. Call a con-
sultation or use radium or smuggle me in some saws or something.*

" Tank,' says Doc Millikin, I've a good notion to help you. There's
only one government in the world that can get you out of this difficulty;
and that's the Confederate States of America, the grandest nation that
ever existed/

"Just as you said to me I says to Doc; 'Why, the Confederacy ain't a
nation. It's been absolved forty years ago/

" 'That's a campaign lie,* says Doc. 'She's running along as solid as the

542 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

Roman Empire. She's the only hope you've got. Now, you, being a Yank,
have got to go through with some preliminary obsequies before you can
get official aid. You've got to take the oath o£ allegiance to the Confed-
erate Government. Then I'll guarantee she does all she can for you. What
do you say, Yank? — it's your last chance/

" If you're fooling with me, Doc,' I answered, 'you're no better than
the United States. But as you say it's the last chance, hurry up and swear
me. I always did like corn whisky and 'possum anyhow. I believe I'm
half Southerner by nature. I'm willing to try the Ku Klux in place of the
khaki. Get brisk.'

"Doc Millikin thinks awhile, and then he offers me this oath of alle-
giance to take without any kind of a chaser:

" 'I, Barnard O'Keefe, Yank, being of sound body but a Republican
mind, hereby swear to transfer my fealty, respect, and allegiance to the
Confederate States of America, and the Government thereof, in considera-
tion of said government, through its official acts and powers, obtaining
my freedom and release from confinement and sentence of death brought
about by the exuberance of my Irish proclivities and my general pizen-
ness as a Yank.'

"I repeated these words after Doc, but they seemed to me a kind of
hocus-pocus; and I don't believe any life-insurance company in the
country would have issued me a policy on the strength of 'em.

"Doc went away saying he would communicate with his government
immediately.

"Say — you can imagine how I felt — me to be shot in two weeks and
my only hope for help being a government that's been dead so long that it
isn't even remembered except an Decoration Day and when Joe
Wheeler signs the voucher for his pay-check. But it was all there was in
sight; and somehow I thought Doc Milliken had something up his old
alpaca sleeve that wasn't all foolishness.

"Around to the jail comes old Doc again in about a week. I was flea-
bitten, a mite sarcastic, and fundamentally hungry.

"'Any Confederate ironclads in the offing?' I asks. 'Do you notice
any sounds resembling the approach of }eb Stewart's cavalry overland or
Stonewall Jackson sneaking up in the rear? If you do, I wish you'd say so.'

" 'It's too soon yet for help to come,' says Doc.

" The sooner the better,' says I. 'I don't care if it gets in fully fifteen
minutes before I am shot; and if you happen to lay eyes on Beauregard
or Albert Sidney Johnson or any of the relief corps, wig-wag 'em to hike
along.'

" There's been no answer received yet,' says Doc.

" 'Don't forget,' says I, 'that there's only four days more. I don't know
how you propose to work this thing, Doc,* I says to him; 'but it seems to
me Fd sleep better if you had got a government that was alive and on the

TWO RENEGADES 543

map— like Afghanistan or Great Britain, or old man Kruger's kingdom,
to take this matter up. I don't mean any disrespect to your Confederate
States, but I can't help feeling that my chances of being pulled out of
this scrape was decidedly weakened when General Lee surrendered.*

" 'It's your only chance/ said Doc; 'don't quarrel with it. What did your
own country do for you?'

"It was only two days before the morning I was to be shot when Doc
Millikin came around again.

" 'All right, Yank,* says he. 'Help's come. The Confederate States of
America is going to apply for your release. The representatives of the gov-
ernment arrived on a fruit-steamer last night.9

" 'Bully!* says I— 'bully for you, Doc! I suppose it's marines with a Gat-
ling. I'm going to love your country all I can for this.'

" 'Negotiations,' says old Doc, 'will be opened between the two govern-
ments at once. You will know later on to-day if they are successful.'

"About four in the afternoon a soldier in red trousers brings a paper
round to the jail, and they unlocks the door and I walks out. The guard
at the door bows and I bows, and I steps into the grass and wades
around to Doc Millikin's shack.

"Doc was sitting in his hammock playing 'Dixie,' soft and low and out
of tune, on his flute. I interrupted him at 'Look away! look away!*
and shook his hand for five minutes.

" 'I never thought,* says Doc, taking a chew fretfully, 'that I'd ever try
to save any blame Yank's life. But, Mr. O*Keefe, I don't see but what you
are entitled to be considered part human, anyhow. I never thought Yanks
had any of the rudiments of decorum and laudability about them. I
reckon I might have been too aggregative in my tabulation. But it ain't
me you want to thank— it's the Confederate States of America.'

" 'And I'm much obliged to 'em,' says I. 'It's a poor man that wouldn't
be patriotic with a country that's saved his life. I'U drink to the Stars and
Bars whenever there's a flag-staff and a glass convenient. But where,' says
I, 'are the rescuing troops? If there was a gun fired or a shell burst, I
didn't hear it.'

"Doc Millikin raises up and points out the window with his flute at
the banana-steamer loading with fruit

" 'Yank/ says he, 'there's a steamer that's going to sail in the morning.
If I was you, Fd sail on it. The Confederate Government's done all it
can for you. There wasn't a gun fired. The negotiations was carried on
secretly between the two nations by the purser of that steamer. I got him
to do it because I didn't want to appear in it. Twelve thousand dollars
was paid to the officials in bribes to let you go.'

" 'Man!' says I, sitting down hard— 'twelve thousand— how will I ever—
who could have — where did the money come from?'

" Tazoo City,' says Doc Millikin; Tve got a little bit saved up there.

544 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

Two barrels full. It looks good to these Colombians. Twas Confederate
money, every dollar of it. Now do you see why you'd better leave before
they try to pass some of it on an expert?'

'"I do/ says I.

" 'Now, let's hear you give the password/ says Doc Millikin.

" 'Hurrah for Jeff Davis!' says I.

" 'Correct,' says Doc. 'And let me tell you something. The next tune I
learn on my flute is going to be "Yankee Doodle." I reckon there's some
Yanks that are not so pizen. Or, if you was me, would you try "The Red,
White, and Blue"?'"

THE LONESOME ROAD

Brown as a coffee-berry, rugged, pistoled, spurred, wary, indefeasible, I
saw my old friend, Deputy-Marshal Buck Caperton, stumble, with
jingling rowels, into a chair in the marshal's outer office.

And because the courthouse was almost deserted at that hour, and
because Buck would sometimes relate to me things that were out of print,
I followed him in and tricked him into talk through knowledge of a
weakness he had. For, cigarettes rolled with sweet corn husk were as
honey to Buck's palate; and though he could finger the trigger of a forty-
five with skill and suddenness, he never could learn to roll a cigarette.

It was through no fault of mine (for I rolled the cigarettes tight and
smooth), but the upshot of some whim of his own, that instead of to an
Odyssey of the chaparral, I listened to — a dissertation upon matrimony!
This from Buck Caperton! But I maintain that the cigarettes were im-
peccable, and crave absolution for myself.

"We just brought in Jim and Bud Cranberry/' said Buck. "Train rob-
bing, you know. Held up the Aransas Pass last month. We caught 'em in
the Twenty-Mile pear flat, south of the Nueces."

"Have much trouble coralling them?" I asked, for here was the meat
that my hunger for epics craved.

"Some," said Buck; and then, during a little pause, his thoughts stam-
peded off the trail. "It's kind of queer about women," he went on, "and
the place they're supposed to occupy in botany. If I was asked to classify
them I'd say they was a human loco weed. Ever see a bronc that had
been chewing loco? Ride him up to a puddle of water two feet wide,
and he'll give a snort and fall back on you. It looks as big as the Mississippi
River to him. Next trip he'd walk into a canon a thousand feet deep
thinking it was a prairie-dog hole. Same way with a married man.

"I was thinking of Perry Rountree, that used to be my sidekicker
before he committed matrimony. In them days me and Perry hated indis-

THE LONESOME ROAD 545

turbances of any kind. We roamed around considerable, stirring up the
echoes and making 'em attend to business. Why, when me and Perry
wanted to have some fun in a town it was a picnic for the census takers.
They just counted the marshal's posse that it took to subdue us, and there
was your population. But then there came along this Mariana Good-night
girl and looked at Perry sideways, and he was all bridle-wise and saddle-
broke before you could skin a yearling,

"I wasn't even asked to the wedding. I reckon the bride had my pedi-
gree and the front elevation of my habits all mapped out, and she decided
that Perry would trot better in double harness without any unconverted
mustang like Buck Caperton whickering around on the matrimonial
range. So it was six months before I saw Perry again.

"One day I was passing on the edge of town, and I see something like
a man in a little yard by a little house with a sprinkling-pot squirting
water on a rosebush. Seemed to me, I'd seen something like it before, and
I stopped at the gate, trying to figure out its brands. Twas not Perry
Rountree, but 'twas the kind of a curdled jellyfish matrimony had made
out of him.

"Homicide was what that Mariana had perpetrated. He was looking
well enough, but he had on a white collar and shoes, and you could tell in
a minute that he'd speak polite and pay taxes and stick his little finger
out while drinking, just like a sheep man or a citizen. Great skyrockets!
but I hated to see Perry all corrupted and Willie-ized like that

"He came out to the gate and shook hands; and I says, with scorn, and
speaking like a paroquet with the pip: 'Beg pardon— Mr. Rountree, I
believe. Seems to me I sagatiated in your associations once^ if I am not
mistaken.*

" 'Oh, go to the devil, Buck,* says Perry, polite, as I was afraid he'd be.

" 'Well, then,* says I, 'you poor, contaminated adjunct of a sprinkling-
pot and degraded household pet, what did you go and do it for? Look
at you, all decent and unriotous, and only fit to sit on juries and mend
the wood-house door. You was a man once. I have hostility for all such
acts. Why don't you go in the house and count the tidies or set the clock,
and not stand out here in the atmosphere? A jackrabbit might come
along and bite you.'

" *Now, Buck,' says Perry, speaking mild, and some sorrowful, 'you
don't understand. A married man has got to be different. He feels differ-
ent from a tough old cloudburst like you. It's sinful to waste time pulling
up towns just to look at their roots, and playing faro and looking upon
red liquor, and such restless policies as them.'

" 'There was & time,' I says, and I expect I sighed when I mentioned it,
'when a certain domesticated little Mary's lamb I could name was some
instructed himself in the line of pernicious sprightliness. I never expected,
Perry, to see you reduced down from a full-grown pestilence to such a

546 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

frivolous fraction of a man. Why,' says I, 'you've got a necktie on; and
you speak a senseless kind of indoor drivel, that reminds me of a store-
keeper or a lady. You look to me like you might tote an umbrella and
wear suspenders, and go home of nights/

"The little woman,' says Perry, 'has made some improvements, I
believe. You can't understand, Buck. I haven't been away from the house
at night since we was married/

"We talked on a while, me and Perry, and, as sure as I live, that man
interrupted me in the middle of my talk to tell me about six tomato plants
he had growing in his garden. Shoved his agricultural degradation right
up under my nose while I was telling him about the fun we had tarring
and feathering that faro dealer at California Pete's layout! But by and by
Perry shows a flicker of sense.

" 'Buck,' says he, Til have to admit that it is a little dull at times. Not
that I'm not perfectly happy with the little woman, but a man seems to
require some excitement now and then. Now, Til tell you: Mariana's gone
visiting this afternoon, and she won't be home till seven o'clock. That's
the limit for both of us — seven o'clock. Neither of us ever stays out a
minute after that time unless we are together. Now, I'm glad you came
along, Buck,' says Perry, 'for I'm feeling just like having one more rip-
roaring razoo with you for the sake of old times. What you say to us put-
ting in the afternoon having fun? — I'd like it fine,' says Perry.

"I slapped that old captive range-rider half across his little garden. ,

" 'Get your hat, you old dried-up alligator,' I shouts, 'you ain't dead yet.
You're part human, anyhow, if you did get all bogged up in matrimony.
We'll take this town to pieces and see what makes it tick. We'll make all
kinds of profligate demands upon the science of cork pulling. You'll grow
horns yet, old muley cow/ says I, punching Perry in the ribs, 'if you trot
around on the trail of vice with your Uncle Buck.5

" Til have to be home by seven, you know,' says Perry again.

"'Oh, yes,' says I, winking to myself, for I knew the kind of seven
o'clocks Perry Rountree got back by after he once got to passing repartee
with the bartenders.

"We goes down to the Gray Mule saloon — that old 'dobe building by
the depot.

" 'Give it a name,' says I, as soon as we got one hoof on the footrest.

" 'Sarsaparilla,' says Perry.

"You could have knocked me down with a lemon peeling.

" 'Insult me as much as you want to/ I says to Perry, 'but don't startle
the bartender. He may have heart-disease. Come on, now; your tongue
got twisted. The tall glasses/ I orders, 'and the bottle in the left hand
corner of the ice-chest.'

'"Sarsaparilla/ repeats Perry, and then his eyes get animated, and I
sees he's got some great scheme in his mind he wants to emit

THE LONESOME ROAD 547

" 'Buck/ he says, all interested, Til tell you what! I want to make this a
red-letter day. I've been keeping close at home, and I want to turn myself
a-loose. We'll have the highest old time you ever saw. We'll go in the
back room here and play checkers till half-past six/

"I leaned against the bar, and I says to Gotch-eared Mike, who was
on watch:

" Tor God's sake don't mention this. You know what Perry used to
be. He's had the fever, and the doctor says we must humor him.'

" 'Give us the checker-board and the men, Mike,' says Perry. 'Come on,
Buck, I'm just wild to have some excitement/

"I went in the back room with Perry. Before we closed the door, I
says to Mike:

"'Don't ever let it straggle out from under your hat that you seen
Buck Caperton fraternal with sarsaparilla or persona grata with a checker*
board, or I'll make a swallow-fork in your other ear.'

"I locked the door and me and Perry played checkers. To see that poor
old humiliated piece of household bric-a-bric sitting there and sniggering
out loud whenever he jumped a man, and all obnoxious with animation
when he got into my king row, would have made a sheep-dog sick with
mortification. Him that was once satisfied only when he was pegging six
boards at keno or giving the faro dealers nervous prostration— to see him
pushing them checkers about like Sally Louisa at a school-children's party
— why, I was all smothered up with mortification.

"And I sits there playing the black men, all sweating for fear some-
body I knew would find it out. And I thinks to myself some about this
marrying business, and how it seems to be the same kind of a game as
that Mrs. Delilah played. She give her old man a hair cut, and eyerbody
knows what a man's head looks like after a woman cuts his hair. And
then when the Pharisees came around to guy him he was so 'shamed he
went to work and kicked the whole house down on top of the whole
outfit. 'Them married men,' thinks I, 'lose all their spirit and instinct for
riot and foolishness. They won't drink, they won't buck the tiger, they
won't even fight. What do they want to go and stay married for?' I asks
myself.

"But Perry seems to be having hilarity in considerable quantities.

" 'Buck old hoss,' says he, 'isn't this just the hell-roaringest time we ever
had in our lives? I don't know when Fve been stirred up so. You see, I've
been sticking pretty close to home since I married, and I haven't been on a
spree in a long time.'

"'Spree!' Yes, that's what he called it. Playing checkers in the back
room of the Gray Mule! I suppose it did seem to him a little immoral
and nearer to a prolonged debauch than standing over six tomato plants
with a sprinkling pot.

"Every little bit Perry looks at his watch and says:

548 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

" 'I got to be home, you know, Buck, at seven.'

"'All right,' Td say. 'Romp along and move. This here excitement's
killing me. If I don't reform some, and loosen up the strain of this
checkered dissipation I won't have a nerve left.'

"It might have been half-past six when commotions began to go on
outside in the street. We heard a yelling and a six-shootering, and a lot
of galloping and maneuvers.

"'What's that?' I wonders.

" 'Oh, some nonsense outside/ says Perry. It's your move. We just got
time to play this game.'

" Til just take a peep through the window,' says I, 'and see. You can't
expect a mere mortal to stand the excitement of having a king jumped
and listen to an unidentified conflict going on at the same time.'

"The Gray Mule saloon was one of them old Spanish 'dobe buildings,
and the back room only had two little windows a foot wide, with iron
bars in 'em. I looked out one, and I see the cause of the rucus.

"There was the Trimble gang— ten of 'em — the worst outfit of des-
peradoes and horse-thieves in Texas, coming up the street shooting right
and left. They was coming right straight for the Gray Mule. Then they
got past the range of my sight, but we heard 'em ride up to the front
door, and then they socked the place full of lead. We heard the big look-
ing-glass behind the bar knocked all to pieces and the bottles crashing. We
could see Gotch-eared Mike in his apron running across the plaza like a
coyote, with the bullets puffing up the dust all around him. Then the
gang went to work in the saloon, drinking what they wanted and smash-
ing what they didn't.

"Me and Perry both knew that gang, and they knew us. The year before
Perry married, him and me was in the same ranger company — and we
fought that outfit down on the San Miguel, and brought back Ben Trimble
and two others for murder.

" 'We can't get out/ says L 'We'll have to stay in here till they leave.'

"Perry looked at his watch.

" 'Twenty-five to seven/ says he. 'We can finish that game. I got two
men on you. It's your move. Buck. I got to be home at seven, you know.'

"We sat down and went on playing. The Trimble gang had a rough-
house for sure. They were getting good and drunk. They'd drink a while
and holler a while, and then they'd shoot up a few bottles and glasses. Two
or three times they came and tried to open our door. Then there was some
more shooting outside, and I looked out the wndow again. Ham Gossett,
the town marshal, had a posse in the houses and stores across the street,
and was trying to bag a Trimble or two through the windows.

"I lost that game of checkers. I'm free in saying that I lost three kings
that I might have saved if I had been corralled in a more peaceful pasture.

THE LONESOME ROAD 549

But that drivelling married man sat there and cackled when he won a
man like an unintelligent hen picking up a grain of corn.

"When the game was over Perry gets up and look$ at his watch.

"Tve had a glorious time, Buck,' says he, 'but I'll have to be going
now. It's a quarter to seven, and I got to be home by seven, you know.'

"I thought he was joking.

" 'They'll clear out or be dead drunk in half an hour or an hour/ says I.
'You ain't that tired of being married that you want to commit any more
sudden suicide, are you?' says I, giving him the laugh.

" 'One time/ says Perry, 'I was half an hour late getting home. I met
Mariana on the street looking for me. If you could have seen her, Buck-
but you don't understand. She knows what a wild kind of a snoozer Fve
been, and she's afraid something will happen. Til never be late getting
home again. Ill say good-bye to you now, Buck.*

"I got between him and the door.

" 'Married man/ says I, 'I know you was christened a fool the minute
the preacher tangled you up, but don't you never sometimes think one
little think on a human basis? There's ten of that gang in there, and
they're pizen with whisky and desire for murder. They'll drink you up
like a bottle of booze before you get halfway to the door. Be intelligent,
now, and use at least wild-hog sense. Sit down and wait till we have some
chance to get out without being carried in baskets/

"'I got to be home by seven, Buck/ repeats this hen-pecked thing of
little wisdom, like an unthinking poll parrot. 'Mariana/ says he, ' 11 be
looking out for me.' And he reaches down and pulls a leg out of the
checker table. Til go through this Trimble outfit/ says he, 'like a cotton-
tail through a brush corral. I'm not pestered any more with a desire to
engage in rucuses, but I got to be home by seven. You lock the door after
me, Buck. And don't you forget— I won three out them five games. I'd
play longer, but Mariana *

" 'Hush up, you old locoed road rummer/ I interrupts. "Did you ever
notice your Uncle Buck locking doors against trouble? I'm not married/
says I, 'but I'm as big a d— n fool as any Mormon. One from four leaves,
three/ says I, and I gathers out another leg of the table. 'We'll get home
by seven,' says I, 'whether it's the heavenly one or the other. May I see
you home?' says I, 'you sarsaparilla-drinking, checker-playing glutton for
death and destruction.'

"We opened the door easy, and then stampeded for the front. Part o£
the gang was lined up at the bar; part of 'em was passing over the drinks,
and two or three was peeping out the door and window taking shots at
the marshal's crowd. The room was so full of smoke we got halfway
to the front door before they noticed us. Then I heard Berry Trimble's
voice somewhere yell out:

" 'How'd that Buck Caperton get in here?' and he skinned the side of

550 BOOK IV ROADS OF DESTINY

my neck with a bullet* I reckon he felt bad over that miss, for Berry's the
best shot south of the Southern Pacific Railroad. But the smoke in the
saloon was some too thick for good shooting.

"Me and Perry smashed over two of the gang with our table legs, which
didn't miss like the guns did, and as we run out the door I grabbed a
Winchester from a fellow who was watching the outside, and I turned and
regulated the account of Mr. Berry.

"Me and Perry got out and around the corner all right. I never much
expected to get out, but I wasn't going to be intimidated by that married
man. According to Perry's idea, checkers was the event of the day, but if
I am any judge of gentle recreations that little table-leg parade through
the Gray Mule saloon deserved the head-lines in the bill of particulars.

"'Walk fast,' says Perry, 'it's two minutes to seven, and I got to be
home by '

" 40h, shut up,' says L 1 had an appointment as chief performer at an
inquest at seven, and I'm not kicking about not keeping it.5

"I had to pass by Perry's little house. His Mariana was standing at the
gate. We got there at five minutes past seven. She had on a blue wrapper,
and her hair was pulled back smooth like little girls do when they want to
look grown-folksy. She didn't see us till we got close, for she was gazing
up the other way. Then she backed around, and saw Perry, and a kind
of look scooted around over her face— danged if I can describe it. I heard
her breathe long, just like a cow when you turn her calf in the lot, and she
says : You're late, Perry.'

" Tive minutes,' says Perry, cheerful. 'Me and old Buck was having a
game of checkers.'

"Perry introduces me to Mariana, and they ask me to come in. No,
sir-ee. I'd had enough truck with married folks for that day. I says I'll be
going along, and that I've spent a very pleasant afternoon with my old
partner — 'especially,' says I, just to jostle Perry, 'during that game when
the table legs came all loose.3 But I'd promised him not to let her know
anything.

"I've been worrying over that business ever since it happened," con-
tinued Buck. "There's one thing about it that's got me all twisted up, and
I can't figure it out."

"What was that?" I asked, as I rolled and handed Buck the last cigarette.

"Why, I'll tell you: When I saw the look that little woman give Perry
when she turned round and saw him coming back to the ranch safe— why
was it I got the idea all in a minute that that look of hers was worth more
than the whole caboodle of us — sarsaparilla, checkers, and all, and that
the d— n fool in the game wasn't named Perry Rountree at all ? "

BOOK.

CABBAGES APTCD.

THE PROEM by the Carpenter

They will tell you in Anchuria that President Miraflores, of that volatile
republic, died by his own hand in the coast town of Coralio, that he had
reached thus far in flight from the inconveniences of an imminent revolu-
tion, and that one hundred thousand dollars, government funds, which
he carried with hitn in an American leather valise as a souvenir of his
tempestuous administration, was never afterward recovered.

For a real, a boy will show you his grave* It is back of the town near a
litde bridge that spans a mangrove swamp. A plain slab of wood stands
at its head. Some one has burned upon the headstone with a hot iron this
inscription:

RAMON ANGEL DE LAS CRUZES

Y MIRAFLORES
PRESIDENTS DE LA REPUBLICA

DE ANCHURIA
QUE SEA SU JUEZ DIOS

552 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

It is characteristic o£ this buoyant people that they pursue no man
beyond the grave. "Let God be his judge!"— Even with the hundred
thousand unfound, though they greatly coveted, the hue and cry went no
further than that.

To the stranger or the guest the people of Coralio will relate the story
of the tragic end of their former president; how he strove to escape from
the country with the public funds and also with Dona Isabel Guilbert,
the young American opera singer; and how, being apprehended by mem-
bers of the opposing political party in Coralio, he shot himself through
the head rather than give up die funds, and, in consequence, the
Senorita Guilbert, They will relate further that Dona Isabel, her advertur-
ous bark of fortune shoaled by the simultaneous loss of her distinguished
admirer and the souvenir hundred thousand, dropped anchor on this
stagnant coast, awaiting a rising tide.

They say, in Coralio, that she found a prompt and prosperous tide^in
the form of Frank Goodwin, an American resident of the town, an in-
vestor who had grown wealthy by dealing in the products of the country
—a banana king, a rubber prince, a sarsaparilla, indigo, and mahogany
baron. The Senorita Guilbert, you will be told, married Senor Goodwin
one month after the president's death, thus, in the very moment when
Fortune had ceased to smile, wresting from her a gift greater than the
prize withdrawn.

Of the American, Don Frank Goodwin, and of his wife the natives
have nothing but good to say. Don Frank has lived among them for years,
and has compelled their respect. His lady is easily queen of what social
life the sober coast affords. The wife of the governor of the district, her-
self, who was of the proud Castilian family of Monteleon y Dolorosa de
los Santos y Mendez, feels honored to unfold her napkin with olive-hued,
ringed hands at the table of Sefiora Goodwin. Were you to refer (with
your northern prejudices) to the vivacious past of Mrs. Goodwin when
her audacious and gleeful abandon in light opera captured the mature
president's fancy, or to her share in that statesman's downfall and malfea-
sance, the Latin shrug of the shoulder would be your only answer and
rebuttal What prejudices there were in Coralio concerning Senora Good-
win seemed now to be in her favor, whatever they had been in the past.

It would seem that the story is ended, instead of begun; that the close
of tragedy and the climax of a romance have covered the ground of inter-
est; but, to the more curious reader it shall be some slight instruction to
trace the close threads that underlie the ingenuous web of circumstances.

The headpiece bearing the name of President Miraflores is daily
scrubbed with soap-bark and sand. An old half-breed Indian tends the
grave with fidelity and the dawdling minuteness of inherited sloth. He
chops down the weeds and ever-springing grass with his machete, he
plucks ants and scorpions and beetles from it with his horny fingers, and

THE PROEM 553

sprinkles its turf with water from the plaza fountain. There is no grave
anywhere so well kept and ordered.

Only by following out the underlying threads will it be made clear
why the old Indian, Galvez, is secretly paid to keep green the grave of
President Miraflores by one who never saw that unfortunate statesman in
life or in death, and why that one was wont to walk in the twilight, cast-
ing from a distance looks of gentle sadness upon that unhonored rnound.

Elsewhere than at Coralio one learns of the impetuous career of Isa-
bel Guilbert. New Orleans gave her birth and the mingled French and
Spanish Creole nature that tinctured her life with such turbulence and
warmth. She had little education, but a knowledge of men and motives
that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the common woman
was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for the pursuit of ad-
venture to the brink of danger, and with desire for the pleasures of life.
Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb; she was Eve after the fall,
but before the bitterness of it was felt. She wore life as a rose in her bosom.

Of the legion of men who had been at her feet it was said that but one
was so fortunate as to engage her fancy. To President Miraflores, the bril-
liant but unstable ruler of Anchuria, she yielded the key to her resolute
heart. How, then, do we find her (as the Coralians would have told you)
the wife of Frank Goodwin, and happily living a life of dull and dreamy
inaction ?

The underlying threads reach far? stretching across the sea. Following
them out it will be made plain why "Shorty" O'Day, of the Columbia
Detective Agency, resigned his position. And, for a lighter pastime, it
shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus beneath the
tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now to cause laugh-
ter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowning crags where formerly
rang the cries of pirates' victims; to lay aside pike and cutlass and attack
with quip and jollity; to draw one saving titter of mirth from the rusty
casque of Romance — this were pleasant to do in the shade of the lemon-
trees on that coast that is curved like lips set for smiling.

For there are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That segment of continent
washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the sea a for-
midable border of tropical jungle topped by tie overweening Cordilleras,
is still begirt by mystery and romance. In past times buccaneers and rev-
olutionists roused the echoes of its cliffs, and the condor wheeled perpet-
ually above where, in the green, groves, they made food for him with
their matchlocks and toledos. Taken and retaken by sea rovers, by adverse
powers and by sudden uprising of rebellious factions* the historic 300
miles of adventurous coast has scarcely known for hundreds of years
whom rightly to call its master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and
Bolivar did what they could to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John

554 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

Morgan, Lafitte, and other eminent swashbucklers bombarded and
pounded it in the name of Abaddon.

The game still goes on. The guns o£ the rovers are silenced; but the
tintype man, the enlarged photograph brigand, the kodaking tourist and
the scouts of the gentle brigade of fakirs have found it out, and carry on
the work. The hucksters of Germany, France, and Sicily now bag its small
change across their counters. Gendeman adventurers throng the waiting-
rooms of its rulers with proposals for railways and concessions. The little
opera-bouffe nations play at government and intrigue until some day a
big, silent gunboat glides into the offing and warns them not to break
their toys. And with these changes comes also the small adventurer, with
empty pockets to fill, light of heart, busy-brained— the modern fairy
prince, bearing an alarm clock with which, more surely than by the sen-
timental kiss, to awaken the beautiful tropics from their centuries' sleep.
Generally he wears a shamrock, which he matches pridefully against the
extravagant palms; and it is he who has driven Melpomene to the wings,
and set Comedy to dancing before the footlights of the Southern Cross.

So, there is a little tale to tell of many things. Perhaps to the promis-
cuous ear of the Walrus it shall come with most avail; for in it there are
indeed shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbage-palms and presi-
dents instead of kings.

Add to these a little love and counterplotting, and scatter everywhere
throughout the maze a trail of tropical dollars — dollars warmed no more
by the torrid sun than by the hot palms of the scouts of Fortune — and,
after all, here seems to be Life, itself, with talk enough to weary the
most garrulous of Walruses.

Coralio reclined, in the mid-day heat, like some vacuous beauty lounging
in a guarded harem. The town lay at the sea's edge on a strip of alluvial
coast. It was set like a little pearl in an emerald band. Behind it, and
seeming almost to topple, imminent, above it, rose the sea-following
range of the Cordilleras, In front the sea was spread, a smiling jailer, but
even more incorruptible than the frowning mountains. The waves
swished along the smooth beach; the parrots screamed in the orange and
ceiba-trees; the palms waved their limber fronds foolishly like an awk-
ward chorus at tile prima donna's cue to enter.

Suddenly the town was full of excitement. A native boy dashed down
a grass-grown street, shrieking: "Busca el Senor Goodwin. Ha venido un
telegrama for $1"

The word passed quickly. Telegrams do not often come to anyone in

FOX-IN-THE-MORNING 555

Coralio. The cry of Sefior Goodwin was taken up by a dozen officious
voices. The main street running parallel to the beach became populated
with those who desired to expedite the delivery of the despatch. Knots of
women with complexions varying from palest olive to deepest brown
gathered at street corners and plaintively carolled: "Un telegrama for
Sefior Goodwin!" The comandante, Don Sefior el Coronel Encarnacion
Rios, who was loyal to the Ins and suspected Goodwin's devotion to the
Outs, hissed: "Aha!" and wrote in his secret memorandum book the ac-
cusive fact the Sefior Goodwin had on that momentous date received a
telegram.

In the midst of the hullabaloo a man stepped to the door of a small
wooden building and looked out. Above the door was a sign that read
"Keogh and Clancy" — a nomenclature that seemed not to be indigenous
to that tropical soil. The man in the door was Billy Keogh, scout of for-
tune and progress and latter-day rover of the Spanish Main. Tintypes
and photographs were the weapons with which Keogh and Clancy were
at that time assailing the hopeless shores. Outside the shop were set two
large frames filled with specimens of their art and skill.

Keogh leaned in the doorway, his bold and humorous countenance
wearing a look of interest at the unusual influx of life and sounded into
the street. When the meaning of the disturbance became clear to him he
placed a hand beside his mouth and shouted: "Hey! Frank!" in such a
robustious voice that the feeble clamor of the natives was drowned and
silenced.

Fifty yards away, on the seaward side of the street, stood the abode of
the consul for the United States. Out from the door of this building tum-
bled Goodwin at the call. He had been smoking with Willard Geddie,
the consul, on the back porch of the consulate, which was conceded to be
the coolest spot in Coralio.

"Hurry up," shouted Keogh. "There's a riot in town on account of a
telegram that's come for you. You want to be careful about these things,
my boy. It won't do to trifle with the feelings of the public this way.
You'll be getting a pink note some day with violet scent on it; and then
the country'll be steeped in the throes of a revolution."

Goodwin had strolled up the street and met the boy with the message.
The ox-eyed women gazed at him with shy admiration, for his type
drew them. He was big, blond, and jauntily dressed in white linen, with
buckskin zapatos. His manner was courtly, with a sort of kindly trucu-
lence in it tempered by a merciful eye. When the telegram had been de-
livered, and the bearer of it dismissed with a gratuity, the relieved popu-
lace returned to the contiguities of shade from which curiosity had drawn
it— the women to their baking in the mud ovens under the orange-trees,
or to the interminable combing of their long, straight hair; the men to
their cigarettes and gossip in the cantinas.

Goodwin sat on Keogh's doorstep and read his telegram. It was from

556 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

Bob Englehart, an American, who lived in San Mateo, the capital city of
Anchuria, eighty miles in the interior. Englehart was a gold miner, an
ardent revolutionist and "good people." That he was a man of resource
and imagination was proven by the telegram he had sent. It had been his
task to send a confidential message to his friend in Coralio. This could
not have been accomplished in either Spanish or English, for the eye
politic in Anchuria was an active one. The Ins and the Outs were per-
petually on their guard. But Eng;lehart was a diplomatist. There existed
but one code upon which he might make requisition with promise of
safety— the great and potent code of Slang. So, here is the message that
slipped, unconstrued, through the fingers of curious officials, and came
to the eye of Goodwin:

His Nibs skedaddled yesterday per jack-rabbit line with all the coin in
the kitty and the bundle of muslin he's spoony about. The boodle is
six figures short. Our crowd in good shape, but we need the spondu-
licks. You collar it. The main guy and the dry goods are headed for the
briny. You know what to do.

Bob

This screed, remarkable as it was, had no mystery for Goodwin. He
was the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative Amer-
icans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that enviable
pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight and deduc-
tion. He had taken up political intrigue as a matter of business. He was
acute enough to wield a certain influence among the leading schemers,
and he was prosperous enough to be able to purchase the respect of the
petty office-holders. There was always a revolutionary party; and to it he
had always allied himself; for the adherents of a new administration re-
ceived the rewards of their labors. There was now a Liberal party seek-
ing to overturn President Miraflores. If the wheel successfully revolved,
Goodwin stood to win a concession to 30,000 manzanas of the finest cof-
fee lands in the interior. Certain incidents in the recent career of Presi-
dent Miraflores had excited a shrewd suspicion in Goodwin's mind that
the government was near a dissolution from another cause than that of a
revolution, and now Englehart's telegram had come as a corroboration of
his wisdom.

The telegram, which had remained unintelligible to the Anchurian
linguists who had applied to it in vain their knowledge of Spanish and
elemental English, conveyed a stimulating piece of news to Goodwin's
understanding. It informed him that the president of the republic had de-
camped from the capital city with the contents of the treasury. Further-
more, that he was accompanied in his flight by that winning adventuress
Isabel Guilbert, the opera singer, whose troupe of performers had been
entertained by the president at San Mateo during die past month on a
scale less modest than that with which royal visitors are often content*

FOX-IN-THE-MORNING 557

The reference to the "jack-rabbit line" could mean nothing else than the
mule-back system of transport that prevailed between Coralio and the
capital. The hint that the "boodle" was "six figures short" made the con-
dition of the national treasury lamentably clear. Also it was convincingly
true that the ingoing party — its way now made a pacific one — would need
the "spondulicks." Unless its pledges should be fulfilled, and the spoils
held for the delectation of the victors, precarious indeed would be the
position of the new government. Therefore it was exceeding necessary
to "collar the main guy," and recapture the sinews of war and government.

Goodwin handed the message to Keogh.

"Read that, Billy," he said. "It's from Bob Englehart. Can you manage
the cipher?"

Keogh sat in the other half of the doorway, and carefully perused the
telegram.

" 'Tis not a cipher," he said, finally. " 'Tis what they call literature,
and that's a system of language put in the mouths of people that they've
never been introduced to by writers of imagination. The magazines in-
vented it, but I never knew before that President Norvin Green had
stamped it with the seal of his approval. 'Tis now no longer literature,
but language. The dictionaries tried, but they couldn't make it go for any-
thing but dialect. Sure, now that the Western Union indorses it, it won't
be long till a race of people will spring up that speaks it."

"You're running too much to philology, Billy," said Goodwin. "Do
you make out the meaning of it?"

"Sure/' replied the philosopher of Fortune. "All languages come easy
to the man who must know 'em. I've even failed to misunderstand an or-
der to evacuate in classical Chinese when it was backed up by the muzzle
of a breech-loader. This little literary essay I hold in my hands means a
game of Fox-in-the-Morning. Ever play that, Frank, when you was a
kid?"

"I think so," said Goodwin, laughing. "You join hands all 'round,
and "

"You do not," interrupted Keogh. "You've got a fine sporting game
mixed up in your head with 'All Around the Rosebush.' The spirit o£
'Fox-in-the-Morning5 is opposed to the holding of hands. I'll tell you how
it's played. This president man and his companion in play, they stand up
over in San Mateo, ready for the run, and shout: Tox-in-the-MorningP
Me and you, standing here, we say: 'Goose and the Gander !' They say:
'How many miles is it to London town?' We say: 'Only a few, if your
legs are long enough. How many comes out?' They say: 'More than
you're able to catch.' And then the game commences."

"I catch the idea," said Goodwin. "It won't do to let the goose and gan-
der slip through our fingers, Billy; their feathers are too valuable. Our
crowd is prepared and able to step into the shoes of the government at

55^ BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

once; but with the treasury empty we'd stay in power about as long as a
tenderfoot would stick on an untamed bronco. We must play the fox on
every foot of the coast to prevent their getting out of the country."

"By the mule-back schedule/' said Keogh, "it's five days down from
San Mateo. We've got plenty of time to set our outposts. There's only
three places on the coast where they can hope to sail from— here and Sol-
itas and Alazan. They're the only points we'll have to guard. It's as easy
as a chess problem— fox to play, and mate in three moves. Oh, goosey,
goosey, gander, whither do you wander? By the blessing of the literary
telegraph the boodle of this benighted fatherland shall be preserved to
the honest political party that is seeking to overthrow it."

The situation had been justly outlined by Keogh. The down trail from
the capital was at all times a weary road to travel. A jiggety-joggety jour-
ney it was; ice-cold and hot, wet and dry. The trail climbed appalling
mountains, wound like a rotten string about the brows of breathless prec-
ipices, plunged through chilling snow-fed streams, and wriggled like a
snake through sunless forests teeming with menacing insect arid ani-
mal life. After descending to the foothills it turned to a trident, the cen-
tral prong ending at Alazan. Another branched off to Coralio; the third
penetrated to Solitas. Between the sea and the foothills stretched the five
miles breadth of alluvial coast. Here was the flora of the tropics in its
rankest and most prodigal growth. Spaces here and there had been
wrested from the jungle and planted with bananas and cane and orange
groves. The rest was a riot of wild vegetation, the home of monkeys,
tapirs, jaguars, alligators and prodigious reptiles and insects. Where no
road was cut a serpent could scarcely make its way through the tangle o£
vines and creepers. Across the treacherous mangrove swamps few things
without ^vings could safely pass. Therefore the fugitives could hope to
reach the coast only by one of the routes named.

"Keep the matter quiet, Billy," advised Goodwin. "We don't want -the
Ins to know that the president is in flight. I suppose Bob's information is
something of a scoop in the capital as yet. Otherwise he would not have
tried to make his message a confidential one; and besides, everybody
would have heard the news. I'm going around now to see Dr. Zavalla,
and start a man up the trail to cut the telegraph wire."

As Goo*dwin rose, Keogh threw his hat upon the grass .by the door and
expelled a tremendous sigh.

"What's the trouble, Billy?" asked Goodwin, pausing. "That's die first
time I ever heard you sigh,"

" 'Tis the last," said Keogh. "With that sorrowful puff of wind I re-
sign myself to a life of praiseworthy but harassing honesty. What are 'tin-
types, if you please, to die opportunities of the great and hilarious class o£
ganders and geese? Not tiat I would be a president, Frank— and the
boodle he's got is too big for me to handle— but in some ways I feel my

FOX-IN-THE-MORNING 559

conscience hurting me for addicting myself to photographing a nation in-
stead of running away with it. Frank, did you ever see the 'bundle of
muslin' that His Excellency has wrapped up and carried off?"

"Isabel Guilbert?" said Goodwin, laughing. "No, I never did. From
what I've heard of her, though, I imagine that she wouldn't stick at any-
thing to carry her point. Don't get romantic, Billy. Sometimes I begin to
fear that there's Irish blood in your ancestry."

"I never saw her either," went on Keogh; "but they say she's got all
the ladies of mythology, sculpture, and fiction reduced to chromos. They
say she can look at a man once, and he'll turn monkey and climb trees to
pick cocoanuts for her. Think of that president man with Lord knows
how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in one hand, and this muslin
siren in the other, galloping down hill on a sympathetic mule amid song-
birds and flowers! And here is Billy Keogh, because he is virtuous, con-
demned to the unprofitable swindle of slandering the faces of missing
links on tin for an honest living! 'Tis an injustice of nature."

"Cheer up," said Goodwin. "You are a pretty poor fox to be envying
a gander. Maybe the enchanting Guilbert will take a fancy to you and
your tintypes after we impoverish her royal escort,"

"She could do worse," reflected Keogh; "but she won't. 'Tis not a tin-
type gallery, but the gallery of the gods that she's fitted to adorn. She's a
very wicked lady, and the president man is in luck. But I hear Clancy
swearing in the back room for having to do all the work." And Keogh
plunged for the rear of the "gallery," whistling gaily in a spontaneous
way that belied his recent sigh over the questionable good luck of the fly-
ing president.

Goodwin turned from the main street into a much narrower one that
intersected it at a right angle.

These side streets were covered by a growth of thick, rank grass,
which was kept to a navigable shortness by the machetes of the police.
Stone sidewalks, little more than a ledge in width, ran along the base of
the mean and monotonous adobe houses. At the outskirts of the village
these streets dwindled to nothing; and here were set the palm-thatched
huts of the Caribs and the poorer natives, and the shabby cabins of negroes
from Jamaica and the West India islands. A few structures raised their
heads above the red-tiled roofs of the one-story houses — the bell tower of
the Calaboza, the Hotel de los Estranjeros, the residence of the Vesuvius
Fruit Company's agent, the store and residence of Bernard Brannigan, a
ruined cathedral in which Columbus had once set foot, and, most impos-
ing of all, the Casa Morena— the summer "White House" of the Presi-
dent of Anchuria, On the principal street running along the beach — the
Broadway of Coralio — were the larger stores, the government bodega
and post-office, the cuartel, the rum-shops and the market place.

On his way Goodwin passed the house of Bernard Brannigan. It was a

560 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

modern wooden building, two stories in height. The ground floor was
occupied by Brannigan's store, the upper one contained the living apart-
ments. A wide cool porch ran around the house half way up its outer
walls. A handsome, vivacious girl neatly dressed in flowing white leaned
over the railing and smiled down upon Goodwin. She was no darker than
many an Andalusian of high descent, and she sparkled and glowed like a
tropical moonlight.

"Good evening, Miss Paula," said Goodwin, taking off his hat, with
his ready smile. There was little difference in his manner whether he ad-
dressed women or men. Everybody in Coralio like to receive the saluta-
tion of the big American.

"Is there any news, Mr. Goodwin? Please don't say no. Isn't it warm?
I feel just like Mariana in her moated grange— or was it a range?— it's
hot enough."

"No, there's no news to tell, I believe," said Goodwin, with a mischie-
vous look in his eye, "except that old Geddie is getting grumpier and
crosser every day. If something doesn't happen to relieve his mind I'll
have to quit smoking on his back porch— and there's no other place avail-
able that is cool enough."

"He isn't grumpy," said Paula Brannigan, impulsively, "when he—"

But she ceased suddenly, and drew back with a deepening color; for
her mother had been a mestizo lady, and the Spanish blood had brought
to Paula a certain shyness that was an adornment to the other half of her
demonstrative nature.

THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE

Willard Geddie, consul for the United States in Coralio, was working
leisurely on his yearly report Goodwin, who had strolled in as he did
daily for a smoke on die much coveted porch, had found him so absorbed
in his work that he departed after roundly abusing the consul for his lack
of hospitality.

"I shall complain to the civil service department," said Goodwin; — "or
is it a department? — perhaps it's only a theory. One gets neither civility
nor service from you. You won't talk; and you won't set out anything to
drink. What kind of a way is that of representing your government?**

Goodwin strolled out and across to the hotel to see if he could bully the
quarantine doctor into a game on Coralio's solitary billiard table. His
plans were completed for the interception of the fugitives from the capi-
tal; and now it was but a waiting game that he had to play.

The consul was interested in his report. He was only twenty-four; and
he had not been in Coralio long enough for his enthusiasm to cool in the

THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE 561

heat of the tropics — a paradox that may be allowed between Cancer and
Capricorn.

So many thousand bunches o£ bananas, so many thousand oranges and
cocoanuts, so many ounces of gold dust, pounds of rubber, coffee, indigo
and sarsaparilla— actually, exports were twenty per cent, greater than for
the previous year!

A little thrill of satisfaction ran through the consul. Perhaps, he thought,
the State Department, upon reading his introduction, would notice — and
then he leaned back in his chair and laughed. He was getting as
bad as the others. For the moment he had forgotten that Coralio was
an insignificant town in an insignificant republic lying along the by-ways
of a second-rate sea. He thought of Gregg, the quarantine doctor, who
subscribed for the London Lancet, expecting to find it quoting his re-
ports to the home Board of Health concerning the yellow fever germ.
The consul knew that not one in fifty of his acquaintances in the States
had ever heard of Coralio. He knew that two men, at any rate, would
have to read his report — some underling in the State Department and a
compositor in the Public Printing Office. Perhaps the typesticker would
note the increase of commerce in Coralio, and speak of it, over the cheese
and beer, to a friend.

He had just written: "Most unaccountable is the supineness of the large
exporters in the United States ia permitting the French and German
houses to practically control the trade interests of this rich and productive
country" — when he heard the hoarse notes of a steamer's siren.

Geddie laid down his pen and gathered his Panama hat and umbrella.
By the sound he knew it to be the Valhalla, one of the line of fruit vessels
plying for the Vesuvius Company. Down to nines of five years, everyone
in Coralio could name you each incoming steamer by the note of her siren.

The consul sauntered by a roundabout, shaded way to the beach. By
reason of long practice he gauged his stroll so accurately that by the time
he arrived on the sandy shore the boat of the customs officials was row-
ing back from the steamer, which had been boarded and inspected ac-
cording to the laws of Anchuria.

There is no harbor at Coralio. Vessels of the draught of the Valhalla
must ride at anchor a mile from shore. When they take on fruit it is con-
veyed on lighters and freighter sloops. At Solitas, where there was a fine
harbor, ships of many kinds were to be seen, but in the roadstead oft Cor-
alio scarcely any save the fruiters paused. Now and then a tramp coaster,
or a mysterious brig from Spain, or a saucy French barque would hang
innocently for a few days in the offing. Then the custom-house crew
would become doubly vigilant and wary. At night a sloop or two would be
making strange trips in and out along the shore; and in the morning the
stock of Three-Star Hennessey, wines and drygoods in Coralio would be
found vastly increased. It has also been said that the customs officials

562 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

jingled more silver in the pockets of their red-striped trousers, and that
the record books showed no increase in import duties received.

The customs boat and the Valhalla gig reached the shore at the same
time. When they grounded in the shallow water there was still five yards
of rolling surf between them and dry sand. Then half-clothed Caribs
dashed into the water, and brought in on their backs the Valhalla's purser
and the little native officials in their cotton undershirts, blue trousers with
red stripes, and flapping straw hats.

At college Geddie had been a treasure as a first-baseman. He now
closed his umbrella, stuck it upright in the sand, and stooped, with his
hands resting upon his knees. The purser, burlesquing the pitcher's
contortions, hurled at the consul the heavy roll of newspapers, tied with a
string, that the steamer always brought for him. Geddie leaped high and
caught the roll with a sounding "thwack." The loungers on the beach-
about a third of the population of the town— laughed and applauded de-
lightedly. Every week they expected to see that roll of papers delivered
and received in the same manner, and they were never disappointed. In-
novations did not flourish in Coralio.

The consul re-hoisted his umbrella and walked back to the consulate.

This home of a great nation's representative was a wooden structure
of two rooms, with a native-built gallery of poles, bamboo and nipa palm
running on three sides of it. One room was the official apartment, fur-
nished chastely with a flat-top desk, a hammock, and three uncomfortable
cane-seated chairs. Engravings of the first and latest president of the coun-
try represented hung against the wall. The other room was the consul's
living apartment.

It was eleven o'clock when he returned from the beach, and therefore
breakfast time. Chanca, the Carib woman who cooked for him, was just
serving the meal on the side of the gallery facing the sea — a spot famous
as the coolest in Coralio. The breakfast consisted of shark's fin soup, stew
of land crabs, breadfruit, a boiled iguana steak, aguacates, a freshly cut
pineapple^ claret and coffee,

Geddie took his seat and unrolled with luxurious laziness his bundle
of newspapers. Here in Coralio for two days or longer he would read of
goings-on in the world very much as we of the world read those whim-
sical contributions to inexact science that assume to portray the doings of
the Martians. After he had finished with the papers they would be sent
on the rounds of the other English-speaking residents of the town.

The paper that came first to his hand was one of those bulky mattresses
of printed stuff upon which the readers of certain New York jour-
nals are supposed to take their Sabbath literary nap. Opening this the
consul rested it upon the table, supporting its weight with the aid of the
back of a chair. Then he partook of his mfcal deliberately, turning the
leaves from time to time and glancing half idly at the contents.

THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE 563

Presently he was struck by something familiar to him in a picture — a
half-page, badly printed reproduction of a photograph of a vessel. Lan-
guidly interested, he leaned for a nearer scrutiny and a view of the florid
headlines of the column next to the picture.

Yes; he was not mistaken. The engraving was of the eight-hundred-ton
yacht Idalia, belonging to "that prince of good fellows, Midas of the money
market, and society's pink of perfection, J. Ward Tolliver."

Slowly sipping his black coffee, Geddie read the column of print. Fol-
lowing a listed statement of Mr. Tolliver's real estate and bonds, came a
description of the yacht's furnishings, and then the grain of news no big-
ger than a mustard seed. Mr. Tolliver, with a party of favored guests,
would sail the next day on a six weeks' cruise along the Central Ameri-
can and South American coasts and among the Bahama Islands. Among
the guests were Mrs. Cumberland Payne and Miss Ida Payne, of Norfolk.

The writer, with the fatuous presumption that was demanded of him
by his readers, had concocted a romance suited to their palates. He brack-
eted the names of Miss Payne and Mr. Tolliver until he had well-nigh
read the marriage ceremony over them. He played coyly and insinuatingly
upon the strings of "on dit" and "Madame Rumor" and "a little bird"
and "no one would be surprised," and ended with congratulations.

Geddie, having finished his breakfast, took his papers to the edge of
the gallery, and sat there in his favorite steamer chair with his feet on the
bamboo railing. He lighted a cigar, and looked out upon the sea. He felt
a glow of satisfaction at finding he was so little disturbed by what he had
read. He told himself that he had conquered the distress that had sent
him, a voluntary exile, to this far land of the lotus. He could never forget
Ida, of course; but there was no longer any pain in thinking about her.
When they had had that misunderstanding and quarrel he had impul-
sively sought his consulship with the desire to retaliate upon her by de-
taching himself from her world and presence. He had succeeded thor-
oughly in that. During the twelve months of his life in Coralio no word
had passed between them, though he had sometimes heard of her through
the dilatory correspondence with the few friends to whom he still wrote.
Still he could not repress a little thrill of satisfaction at knowing that she
had not yet married Tolliver or any one else. But evidently Tolliver had
not yet abandoned hope.

Well, it made no difference to him now. He had eaten of the lotus. He
was happy and content in this land of perpetual afternoon. Those old days
of life in the States seemed like an irritating dream. He hoped Ida would
be as happy as he was. The climate as balmy as that of distant Avalon;
the fetterless idyllic round of enchanted days; the life among this indo-
lent, romantic people— a life full of music, flowers, and low laughter; the
influence of the imminent sea and mountains, and the many shapes of

564 BOOK. V CABBAGES AND KINGS

love and magic and beauty that bloomed in the white tropic nights— with
all he was more than content. Also, there was Paula Brannigan.

Geddie intended to marry Paula—if, of course, she would consent; but
he felt rather sure that she would do that. Somehow, he kept postponing
his proposal. Several times he had been quite near to it; but a mysterious
something always held him back. Perhaps it was only the unconscious, in-
stinctive conviction that the act would sever the last tie that bound him to
his old world.

He could be very happy with Paula. Few of the native girls could be
compared with her. She had attended a convent school in New Orleans
for two years; and when she chose to display her accomplishments no
one could detect any difference between her and the girls of Norfolk and
Manhattan. But it was delicious to see her at home dressed, as she some-
times was, in the native costume, with bare shoulders and flowing sleeves,

Bernard Brannigan was the great merchant of Coralio. Besides his store,
he maintained a train of pack mules, and carried on a lively trade with the
interior towns and villages. He had married a native lady of high Castil-
ian descent but with a tinge of Indian brown showing through her olive
cheek. The union of the Irish and the Spanish had produced, as it so often
has, an offshoot of rare beauty and variety. They were very excellent peo-
ple indeed, and the upper story of their house was ready to be placed at
the service of Geddie and Paula as soon as he should make up his mind
to speak about it.

By the time two hours were whiled away the consul tired of reading.
The papers lay scattered about him on the gallery. Reclining there, he
gazed dreamily out upon an Eden. A clump of banana plants interposed
their broad shields between him and the sun. The gentle slope from the
consulate to the sea was covered with the dark-green foliage of lemon-
trees and orange-trees just bursting into bloom. A lagoon pierced the land
like a dark jagged crystal, and above it a pale ceiba-tree rose almost to the
clouds. The waving cocoanut palms on die beach flared their decorative
green leaves against the slate of an almost quiescent sea. His senses were
cognizant of brilliant scarlet and ochres amid the vert of the coppice, of
odors of fruit and bloom and the smoke from Chanca's clay oven under
the calabash-tree; of the treble laughter of the native women in their
huts, the song of the robin, the salt taste of the breeze, the diminuendo of
the faint surf running along the shore— and, gradually, of a white speck,
growing to a blur, that introduced itself upon the drab prospect of the sea.

Lazily interested, he watched this blue increase until it became the
Idalia steaming at full speed, coming down the coast. Without changing
his position he kept his eyes upon the beautiful white yacht as she drew
swiftly near and came opposite to Coralio. Then, sitting upright, he saw
her float steadily past and on. Scarcely a mile of sea had separated .her
from the shore. He had seen the frequent flash of her polished brass work

THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE 565

and the stripes of her deck-awnings — so much, and no more. Like a ship
on a magic lantern slide the Idalia had crossed the illuminated circle of
the consul's little world, and was gone. Save for the tiny cloud of smoke
that was left hanging over the brim of the sea, she might have been an
immaterial thing, a chimera of his idle brain.

Geddie went into his office and sat down to dawdle over his report. If
the reading of the article in the paper had left him unshaken, this silent
passing of the Idalia had done for him still more. It had brought the calm
and peace of a situation from which all uncertainty had been erased. He
knew that men sometimes hope without being aware of it. Now, since she
had come two thousand miles and had passed without a sign, not even
his unconscious self need cling to the past any longer.

After dinner, when the sun was low behind the mountains, Geddie
walked on the little strip of beach under the cocoanuts. The wind was
blowing mildly landward, and the surface of the sea was rippled by tiny
wavelets.

A miniature breaker, spreading with a soft "swish" upon the sand,
brought with it something round and shiny that rolled back again as the
wave receded. The next influx beached it clear, and Geddie picked it up.
The thing was a long-necked wine botde of colorless glass. The cork had
been driven in tightly to the level of the mouth, and the end covered with
dark-red sealing-wax. The bottle contained only what seemed to be a sheet
of paper, much curled from the manipulation it had undergone while be-
ing inserted. In the sealing-wax was the impression of a seal — probably of
a signet-ring, bearing the initials of a monogram; but the impression had
been hastily made, and the letters were past anything more certain than
a shrewd conjecture. Ida Payne had always worn a signet-ring in prefer-
ence to any other finger decoration. Geddie thought he could make out
the familiar "I P"; and a queer sensation of disquietude went over him.
More personal and intimate was this reminder of her than had been the
sight of the vessel she was doubtless on. He walked back to his house, and
set the bottle on hjs desk.

Throwing off his hat and coat, and lighting a lamp — for the night had
crowded precipitately upon the brief twilight— he began to examine his
piece of sea salvage.

By holding the bottle near the light and turning it judiciously, he made
out that it contained a double sheet of note-paper filled with close writ-
ing; further, that the paper was of the same size and shade as that always
used by Ida; and that, to the best of his belief, the handwriting was hers.
The imperfect glass of the bottle so distorted the rays of light that he could
read no word of the writing; but certain capital letters, of which he
caught comprehensive glimpses^ were Ida's, he felt sure.

There was a little smile both of perplexity and amusement in Geddie's
eyes as he set the bottle down, and laid three cigars side by side on his

566 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

desk. He fetched his steamer chair from the gallery, and stretched himself
comfortably. He would smoke those three cigars while considering the
problem.

For it amounted to a problem. He almost wished that he had not found
the bottle; but the bottle was there. Why should it have drifted in from
the sea, whence come so many disquieting things, to disturb his peace?

In this dreamy land, where time seemed so redundant, he had fallen
into the habit of bestowing much thought upon even trifling matters.

He began to speculate upon many fanciful theories concerning the story
of the bottle, rejecting each in turn.

Ships in danger of wreck or disablement sometimes cast forth such pre-
carious messengers calling for aid. But he had seen the Idalia not three
hours before, safe and speeding. Suppose the crew had mutinied and im-
prisoned the passengers below, and the message was one begging for
succor! But, premising such an improbable outrage, would the agitated
captives have taken the pains to fill four pages of note-paper with care-
fully penned arguments to their rescue?

Thus by elimination he soon rid the matter of the more unlikely the-
ories, and was reduced — though aversely — to the less assailable one that
the bottle contained a message to himself. Ida knew he was in Coralio;
she must have launched the bottle while the yacht was passing and the
wind blowing fairly toward the shore.

As soon as Geddie reached this conclusion a wrinkle came between his
brows and a stubborn look settled around his mouth. H£ sat looking out
through the doorway at the gigantic fire-flies traversing the quiet streets.

If this was a message to him from Ida, what could it mean save an over-
ture toward a reconciliation? And if that, why had she not used the safe
methods of the post instead of this uncertain and even flippant means of
communication? A note in an empty bottle, cast into the sea! There was
something light and frivolous about it, if not actually contemptuous.

The thought stirred his pride and subdued whatever emotions had
been resurrected by the finding of the bottle.

Geddie put on his coat and hat and walked out. He followed a street
that kd him along the border of the little plaza where a band was play-
ing and people were rambling, care-free and indolent. Some timorous
senoritas scurrying past with fire-flies tangled in the jetty braids of their
hair glanced at him with shy, flattering eyes. The air was languorous with
the scent of jasmin and orange-blossoms.

The consul stayed his steps at the house of Bernard Brannigan. Paula
was swinging in a hammock on the gallery. She rose from it like a bird
from its nest. The color came to her cheek at the sound of Geddie's voice.

He was charmed at the sight of her costume— a flounced muslin dress,
with a little jacket of white flannel, all made with neatness and style.
He suggested a stroll, and they walked out to the old Indian well on the

THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE 567

hill road. They sat on the curb, and there Geddie made the expected but
long-deferred speech. Certain though he had been that she would not say
him nay, he was thrilled with joy at the completeness and sweetness of
her surrender. Here was surely a heart made for love and steadfastness.
Here was no caprice or questionings or captious standards of convention.

When Geddie kissed Paula at her door that night he was happier than
he had ever been before. "Here in this hollow lotus land, ever to live and
lie reclined" seemed to him, as it has seemed to many mariners, the best
as well as the easiest. His future would be an ideal one. He had attained
a Paradise without a serpent. His Eve would be indeed a part of him, un-
beguiled, and therefore more beguiling. He had made his decision to-
night, and his heart was full of serene, assured content.

Geddie went back to his house whistling that finest and saddest love
song, "La Golondrina." At the door his tame monkey leaped down from
his shelf, chattering briskly. The consul turned to his desk to get him some
nuts he usually kept there. Reaching in the half-darkness, his hand struck
against the bottle. He started as if he had touched the cold rotundity of a
serpent.

He had forgotten that the bottle was there.

He lighted the lamp and fed the monkey. Then, very deliberately, he
lighted a cigar and took the bottle in his hand and walked down the
path to the beach.

There was a moon and the sea was glorious. The breeze had shifted,
as it did each evening, and was now rushing steadily seaward.

Stepping to the water's edge, Geddie hurled the unopened bottle far
out into the sea. It disappeared for a moment, and then shot upward twice
its length. Geddie stood still, watching it. The moonlight was so bright
that he could see it bobbing up and down with the little waves. Slowly it
receded from the shore, flashing and turning as it went The wind was
carrying it out to sea. Soon it became a mere speck, doubtfully discerned
at irregular intervals; and then the mystery of it was swallowed up by
the greater mystery of the ocean. Geddie stood still upon the beach, smok-
ing and looking out upon the water.

"Simon!— Oh, Simon!— -wake up there, Simon!" bawled a sonorous
voice at the edge of the water.

Old Simon Cruz was a half-breed fisherman and smuggler who lived
in a hut on the beach. Out of his earliest nap Simon was thus awakened.

He slipped on his shoes and went outside. Just landing from one of
the Valhalla's boats was the third mate of that vessel, who was an acquaint-
ance of Simon's, and three sailors from the fruiter.

"Go up, Simon," called the mate, "and find Dr. Gregg or Mr. Goodwin
or anybody that's a friend to Mr. Geddie, and bring 'em here at once."

"Saints of the skies!" said Simon, sleepily, "nothing has happened to
Mr. Geddie?"

568 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"He's under that tarpauling," said the mate, pointing to the boat, "and
he's rather more than half drowned. We seen him from the steamer nearly
a mile out from shore, swimmin' like mad after a bottle that was floatin'
in the water outward bound. We lowered the gig and started for him.
He nearly had his hand on the bottle, when he gave out and went under.
We pulled him out in time to save him, maybe; but the doctor is the one
to decide that."

"A bottle?" said the old man, rubbing his eyes. He was not yet fully
awake. "Where is the bottle?"

"Driftin' along out there some'eres," said the mate, jerking his thumb
toward the sea. "Get on with you, Simon/'

SMITH

Goodwin and the ardent patriot, Zavalla, took all the precautions that
their foresight could contrive to prevent the escape of President Miraflores
and his companion. They sent trusted messengers up the coast to Solitas
and Alazan to warn the local leaders of the flight, and to instruct them
to patrol the water line and arrest the fugitives at all hazards should they
reveal themselves in that territory. After this was done there remained
only to cover the district about Coralio and await the coming of the
quarry. The nets were well spread. The roads were so few, the opportuni-
ties for embarkation so limited, and the two or three probable points of
exit so well guarded that it would be strange indeed if there should slip
through the meshes so much of the country's dignity, romance, and col-
lateral. The president would, without doubt, move as secretly as possible
and endeavor to board a vessel by stealth from some secluded point along
the shore.

On the fourth day after the receipt of Englehart's telegram the Karlse-
fin, a Norwegian steamer chartered by the New Orleans fruit trade, an-
chored off Coralio with three hoarse toots of her siren. The Karlsefin
was not one of the line operated by the Vesuvius Fruit Company. She was
something of a dilettante, doing odd jobs for a company that was scarcely
important enough to figure as a rival to the Vesuvius. The movements of
the Karlsefin were dependent upon the state of the market. Sometimes
she would ply steadily between the Spanish Main and New Orleans in
the regular transport of fruit; next she would be making erratic trips to
Mobile or Charleston, or even as far north as New York, according to
the distribution of the fruit supply.

Goodwin lounged upon the beach with the usual crowd of idlers that
had gathered to view the steamer. Now that President Miraflores might
be expected to reach the borders of his adjured country at any time, the

SMITH 569

orders were to keep a strict and unrelenting watch. Every vessel that
approached the shores might now be considered a possible means of es-
cape for the fugitives; and an eye was kept even on the sloops and dories
that belonged to the sea-going contingent of Coralio. Goodwin and Za-
valla moved everywhere, but without ostentation, watching the loopholes
of escape.

The customs officials crowded importantly into their boat and rowed
out to the Karlsefin. A boat from the steamer landed her purser with his
papers, and took out the quarantine doctor with his green umbrella and
clinical thermometer. Next a swarm of Caribs began to load upon lighters
the thousands of bunches of bananas heaped upon the shore and row them
out to the steamer. The Karlsefin had no passenger list, and was soon done
with the attention of the authorities. The purser declared that the steamer
would remain at anchor until morning, taking on her fruit during the
night. The Karlsefin had come, he said, from New York, to which port
her latest load of oranges and cocoanuts had been conveyed. Two or three
of the freighter sloops were engaged to assist in the work, for the captain
was anxious to make a quick return in order to reap the advantage offered
by a certain dearth of fruit in the States.

About four o'clock in the afternoon another of those marine monsters,
not very familiar in those waters, hove in sight, following the fateful
Idalia — a graceful steam yacht, painted a light buff, clean-cut as a stee]
engraving. The beautiful vessel hovered off shore, seesawing the
waves as lightly as a duck in a rain barrel. A swift boat manned by a crew
in uniform came ashore, and a stocky-built man leaped to the sands.

The new-comer seemed to turn a disapproving eye upon the rather
motley congregation of native Anchurians, and made his way at once
toward Goodwin, who was the most conspicuously Anglo-Saxon figure
present. Goodwin greeted him with courtesy.

Conversation developed that the newly landed one was named Smith,
and that he had come in a yacht. A meagre biography, truly; for the yacht
was most apparent; and the "Smith" not beyond a reasonable guess
before the revelation. Yet to the eye of Goodwin* who had seen several
things, there was a discrepancy between Smith and his yacht. A bullet-
headed man Smith was, with an oblique, dead eye and the moustache of a
cocktail-mixer. And unless he had shifted costumes before putting off for
shore he had affronted the deck of his correct vessel clad in a pearl-gray
derby, a gay plaid suit and vaudeville neckwear. Men owning pleasure
yachts generally harmonize better with them.

Smith looked business, but he was no advertiser. He commented upon
the scenery, remarking upon its fidelity to the pictures in the geography;
and then inquired for the United States consul. Goodwin pointed out the
starred-and-striped bunting hanging above the little consulate, which was
concealed behind the orange-trees.

570 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

"Mr. Geddie, the consul, will be sure to be there," said Goodwin. "He
was very nearly drowned a few days ago while taking a swim in the sea,
and the doctor has ordered him to remain indoors for some time."

Smith plowed his way through the sand to the consulate, his haber-
dashery creating violent discord against the smooth tropical blues and
greens.

Geddie was lounging in his hammock, somewhat pale of face and
languid in pose. On that night when the Valhalla's boat had brought him
ashore apparently drenched to death by the sea, Dr. Gregg and his other
friends had toiled for hours to preserve the little spark of life that remained
to him. The bottle, with its impotent message, was gone out to sea, and
the problem that it had provoked was reduced to a simple sum in addition
—one and one make two, by the rule of arithmetic; one by the rule of
romance.

There is a quaint old theory that man may have two souls — a peripheral
one which serves ordinarily, and a central one which is stirred only at
certain times, but then with activity and vigor. While under the domina-
tion of the former a man will shave, vote, pay taxes, give money to his
family, buy subscription books and comport himself on the average plan.
But let the central soul suddenly become dominant, and he may, in the
twinkling of an eye, turn upon the partner of his joys with furious execra-
tion; he may change his politics while you could snap your fingers; he
may deal out deadly insult to his dearest friend; he may get him, instanter»
to a monastery or a dance hall; he may elope, or hang himself — or he may
write a song or poem, or kiss his wife unasked, or give his funds to the
search of a microbe. Then the peripheral soul will return; and we have
our safe, sane citizen again. It is but the revolt of the Ego against Order;
and its effect is to shake up the atoms only that they may settle where
they belong.

Geddie's revulsion had .been a mild one — no more than a swim in a
summer sea after so inglorious an object as a drifting bottle. And now
he was himself again. Upon his desk, ready for the post, was a letter to
his government tendering his resignation as consul, to be effective as soon
as another could be appointed in his place. For Bernard Brannigan, who
never did things in a half-way manner, was to take Geddie at once for a
partner in his very profitable and various enterprises; and Paula was
happily engaged in plans for refurnishing and decorating the upper story
of the Brannigan house.

The consul rose from his hammock when he saw the conspicuous
stranger in his door.

"Keep your seat, old man/5 said the visitor, with an airy wave of his
large hand. "My name's Smith; and I've come in a yacht You are the
consul— is that right? A big, cool guy on the beach directed me here.
Thought I'd pay my respects to the flag."

SMITH 571

"Sit down," said Geddie. "I've been admiring your craft ever since it
came in sight. Looks like a fast sailer. What's her tonnage?"

"Search me!" said Smith. "I don't know what she weighs in at. But
she's got a tidy gait. The Rambler—that's her name— don't take the dust
of anything afloat. This is my first trip on her. I'm taking a squint along
this coast just to get an idea of the countries where the rubber and red
pepper and revolutions come from. I had no idea there was so much
scenery down here. Why, Central Park ain't in it with, this neck of the
woods. I'm from New York. They get monkeys, and cocoanuts, and par-
rots down here — is that right?''

"We have them all," said Geddie. "I'm quite sure that our fauna and
flora would take a prize over Central Park."

"Maybe they would," admitted Smith, cheerfully. "I haven't seen
them yet. But I guess you've got us skinned on the animal and vegetation
question. You don't have much travel here, do you?"

"Travel?" queried the consul. "I suppose you mean passengers on the
steamers. No; very few people land in Coralio. An investor now and then
— tourists and sight-seers generally go further down the coast to one of
the larger towns where there is a harbor."

"I see a ship out there loading up with bananas," said Smith. "Any
passengers come on her?"

"That's the Karlsefin" said the consul. "She's a tramp fruiter— made
her last trip to New York, I believe. No; she brought no passengers. I
saw her boat come ashore, and there was no one. About the only exciting
recreation we have here is watching steamers when they arrive; and a
passenger on one of them generally causes the whole town to turn out.
If you are going to remain in Coralio a while, Mr. Smith, I'll be glad to
take you around to meet some people. There are four or five American
chaps that are good to know, besides the native high-fliers."

"Thanks," said the yachtsman, "but I wouldn't put you to the trouble.
Fd like to meet the guys you speak of, but I won't be here long enough
to do much kriocking around. That cool gent on the beach spoke of a
doctor; can you tell me where I could find him? The Rambler ain't quite
as steady on her feet as a Broadway hotel; and a fellow gets a touch of
seasickness now and then. Thought I'd strike the croaker for a handful
of the little sugar pills, in case I need 'em."

"You will be apt to find Dr. Gregg at the hotel," said the consul. "You
can see it from the door — it's that two-story building with the balcony,
where the orange-trees are."

The Hotel de los Estranjeros was a dreary hostelry, in great disuse both
by strangers and friends. It stood at a corner of the Street of the Holy
Sepulchre. A grove of small orange-trees crowded against one side qf it,
enclosed by a low, rock wall over which a tall man might easily step. The
house was of plastered adobe, stained a hundred shades of color by the

572 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

salt breeze and the sun, Upon its upper balcony opened a central door and
two windows containing broad jalousies instead of sashes.

The lower floor communicated by two doorways with the narrow, rock-
paved sidewalk. The pulperia—or drinking shop—of the proprietress,
Madarna Tirnotea Ortiz, occupied the ground floor. On the bottles of
brandy, anisada, Scotch "smoke" and inexpensive wines behind the little
counter the dust lay thick save where the fingers of infrequent customers
had left irregular prints. The upper story contained four or five guest-
rooms which were rarely put to their destined use. Sometimes a fruit-
grower, riding in from his plantation to confer with his agent, would pass
a melancholy night in the dismal upper story; sometimes a minor native
official on some trifling government quest would have his pomp and
majesty awed by Madama's sepulchral hospitality. But Madama sat
behind her bar content, nor desiring to quarrel with Fate. If any one
required meat, drink, or lodging at the Hotel de los Estranjeros they had
but to come, and be served. Estd bueno. If they came not, why, then, they
came not. Estd bueno.

As the exceptional yachtsman was making his way down the precarious
sidewalk of the Street of the Holy Sepulchre, the solitary permanent guest
of that decaying hotel sat at its door, enjoying the breeze from the sea.

Dr. Gregg, the quarantine physician, was a man of fifty or sixty, with
a florid face and the longest beard between Topeka and Terra del Fuego.
He held his position by virtue of an appointment by the Board of Health
of a seaport city in one of the Southern states. That city feared the ancient
enemy of every Southern seaport — the yellow fever — and it was the duty
of Dr. Gregg to examine crew and passengers of every vessel leaving
Coralio for preliminary symptoms. The duties were light, and the salary,
for one who lived in Coralio, ample. Surplus time there was in plenty; and
the good doctor added to his gains by a large private practice among the
residents of the coast. The fact that he did not know ten words of Spanish
was no obstacle; a pulse could be felt and a fee collected without one
being a linguist. Add to the description the facts that the doctor had a
story to tell concerning the operation of trepanning which no listener had
ever allowed him to conclude, and that he believed in brandy as a prophy-
lactic; and the special points of interest possessed by Dr. Gregg will have
become exhausted.

The doctor had dragged a chair to the sidewalk. He was coatless, and
he leaned back against the wall and smoked, while he stroked his beard.
Surprise came into his pale blue eyes when he caught sight of Smith in
his unusual and prismatic clothes.

"YouVe Dr. Gregg — is that right?'* said Smith, feeling the dog's head
pin in his tie. "The constable — I mean the consul, told me you hung out
at this caravansary. My name's Smith; and I came in a yacht. Taking a
cruise around, looking at the monkeys and pineapple-trees. Come inside

SMITH 573

and have a drink, Doc. This cafe looks on the blink, but I guess it can set
out something wet."

"I will join you, sir, in just a taste of brandy," said Dr. Gregg, rising
quickly. "I find that as a prophylactic a little brandy is almost a necessity
in this climate.'*

As they turned to enter the pulperia a native man, barefoot, glided
noiselessly up and addressed the doctor in Spanish. He was yellowish-
brown, like an over-ripe lemon; he wore a cotton shirt and ragged linen
trousers girded by a leather belt. His face was like an animal's, live and
wary, but without promise of much intelligence. This man jabbered with
animation and so much seriousness that it seemed a pity that his words
were to be wasted.

Dr. Gregg felt his pulse.

"You sick?" he inquired.

"Mi mujer esta enjerma en la casa" said the man, thus endeavoring
to convey the news, in the only language open to him, that his wife lay
ill in her palm-thatched hut.

The doctor drew a handful of capsules filled with a white powder from
his trousers pocket. He counted out ten of them into the native's hand,
and held up his forefinger impressively.

"Take one," said the doctor, "every two hours." He then held up two
fingers, shaking them emphatically before the native's face. Next he
pulled out his watch and ran his finger round its dial twice. Again the
two fingers confronted the patient's nose. "Two — two — two hours," re-
peated the doctor.

"Si Senor" said the native, sadly.

He pulled a cheap silver watch from his own pocket and laid it in the
doctor's hand. "Me bring," said he, struggling painfully with his scant
English, "other watchy to-morrow." Then he departed downheartedly
with his capsules.

"A very ignorant race of people, sir," said the doctor, as he slipped the
watch into his pocket. "He seems to have mistaken my directions for
taking the physic for the fee. However, it is all right. He owes me an
account, anyway. The chances are that he won't bring the other watch.
You can't depend on anything they promise you. About that drink, now?
How did you come to Coralio, Mr. Smith? I was not aware that any boats
except the Karhefin had arrived for some days."

The two leaned against the deserted bar; and Madama set out a bottle
without waiting for the doctor's order. There was no dust on it.

After they had drank twice Smith said:

"You say there were no passengers on the Karhefin , Doc? Are you
sure about that? It seems to me I heard somebody down on the beach
say that there was one or two aboard."

"They were mistaken, sir. I myself went out and put all hands through

574 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

a medical examination, as usual. The Karhefin sails as soon as she gets
her bananas loaded, which will be about daylight in the morning, and
she got everything ready this afternoon. No, sir, there was no passenger
list. Like that Three-Star? A French schooner landed two slooploads of it
a month ago. If any customs duties on it went to the distinguished re-
public of Anchuria you may have my hat. If you won't have another,
come out and let's sit in the cool a while. It isn't often we exiles get a
chance to talk with somebody from the outside world.

The doctor brought out another chair to the sidewalk for his new ac-
quaintance. The two seated themselves.

"You are a man of the world," said Dr. Gregg; "a man of travel and
experience. Your decision in a manner of ethics and, no doubt, on the
points of equity, ability, and professional probity should be of value, I
would be glad if you will listen to the history of a case that I think stands
unique in medical annals.

"About nine years ago, while I was engaged in the practice of medicine
in my native city, I was called to treat a case of contusion of the skull. I
made the diagnosis that a splinter of bone was pressing upon the brain,
and that the surgical operation known as trepanning was required. How-
ever, as the patient was a gentleman of wealth and position, I called
in for consultation Dr. "

Smith rose from his chair, and laid a hand, soft with apology, upon the
doctor's shirt sleeve.

"Say, Doc," he said, solemnly, "I want to hear that story. You've got me
interested; and I don't want to miss the rest of it. I know it's a loola by
the way it begins; and I want to tell it at the next meeting of the Barney
OTlynn Association, if you don't mind. But Pve got one or two matters
to attend to first. If I get 'em attended to in time I'll come right back and
hear you spiel the rest before bedtime — is that right?"

"By all means," said the doctor, "get your business attended to, and
then return. I shall wait up for you. You see, one of the most prominent
physicians at the consultation diagnosed the trouble as a blood clot; an-
other said it was an abscess, but I "

"Don't tell me now, Doc. Don't spoil the story. Wait till I come back.
I want to hear it as it runs off the reel — is that right?"

The mountains reached up their bulky shoulders to receive the level
gallop of Apollo's homing steeds, the day died in the lagoons and in the
shadowed banana groves and in the mangrove swamps, where the great
blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly ramble. And
it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief twilight, ephemeral
as the flight of a moth, came and went; the Southern Cross peeped with
its topmost eye above a row of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their
torches the approach of soft-footed night.

In the offing the Karlsefin swayed at anchor, her lights seeming to pene-

SMITH 575

trate the water to countless fathoms with their shimmering, lanceolate
reflections. The Caribs were busy loading her by means of the great
lighters heaped full from the piles of fruit ranged upon the shore.

On the sandy beach, with his back against a cocoanut-tree and the
stubs of many cigars lying around him, Smith sat waiting, never relaxing
his sharp gaze in the direction of the steamer.

The incongruous yachtsman had concentrated his interest upon the
innocent fruiter. Twice had he been assured that no passengers had come
to Coralio on board of her. And yet, with a persistence not to be attributed
to an idling voyager, he had appealed the case to the higher court of his
own eye-sight. Surprisingly like some gay-coated lizard, he crouched at
the foot of the cocoanut palm, and with the beady, shifting eyes of the
selfsame reptile, sustained his espionage on the Karlsefin.

On the white sands a whiter gig belonging to the yacht was drawn
up, guarded by one of the white-ducked crew. Not far away in a pulperia
on the shore-following Calle Grande three other sailors swaggered with
their cues around Coralio's solitary billiard-table. The boat lay there as if
uncler orders to be ready for use at any moment. There was in the atmos-
phere a hint of expectation, of waiting for something to occur, which was
foreign to the air of Coralio.

Like some passing bird of brilliant plumage, Smith alights on this
palmy shore but to preen his wings for an instant and then to fly away
upon silent pinions. When morning dawned there was no Smith, no
waiting gig, no yacht in the offing. Smith left no intimation of his mission
there, no footprints to show where he had followed the trail of his
mystery on the sands of Coralio that night. He came; he spake his strange
jargon of the asphalt and the cafes; he sat under the cocoanut-tree, and
vanished. The next morning Coralio, Stnithless, ate its fried plantain and
said: "The man of pictured clothing went himself away/' With the siesta
the incident passed, yawning, into history.

So, for a time, must Smith pass behind the scenes of the play. He comes
no more to Coralio nor to Dr. Gregg, who sits in vain, wagging his re-
dundant beard, waiting to enrich his derelict audience with his moving
tale of trepanning and jealousy.

But prosperously to the lucidity of these loose pages, Smith shall flutter
among them again. In the nick of time he shall come to tell us why he
strewed so many anxious cigar stumps around the cocoanut palm that
night. This he must do; for, when he sailed away before the dawn in his
yacht Rambler, he carried with him the answer to a riddle so big and pre-
posterous that few in Anchuria had ventured even to propound it.

BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

CAUGHT

The plans for the detention of the flying President Miraflores and his
companion at the coast line seemed hardly likely to fail. Dr. Zavalla him-
self had gone to the port of Alazan to establish a guard at that point. At
Coralio the Liberal patriot Varras could be depended upon to keep close
watch. Goodwin held himself responsible for the district about Coralio.

The news of the president's flight had been disclosed to no one in the
coast towns save trusted members of the ambitious political party that
was desirous of succeeding to power. The telegraph wire running from
San Mateo to the coast had been cut far up on the mountain trail by an
emissary of Zavalla's. Long before this could be repaired and word received
along it from the capital the fugitives would have reached the coast and
the question of escape or capture been solved.

Goodwin had stationed armed sentinels at frequent intervals along the
shore for a mile in each direction from Coralio. They were instructed to
keep a vigilant lookout during the night to prevent Miraflores from
attempting to embark stealthily by means of some boat or sloop found by
chance at the water's edge. A dozen patrols walked the streets of Coralio
unsuspected, ready to intercept the truant official should he show himself
there.

Goodwin was very well convinced that no precautions had been over-
looked. He strolled about the streets that bore such high-sounding names
and were but narrow, grass-covered lanes, lending his own aid to the
vigil that had been intrusted to him by Bob Englehart.

The town had begun the tepid round of its nightly diversions. A few
leisurely dandies, clad in white duck, with flowing neckties, and winging
slim bamboo canes, threaded the grassy by-ways toward the houses of their
favored sefioritas. Those who wooed the art of music dragged tirelessly
at whining concertinas, or fingered lugubrious guitars at doors and win-
dows. An occasional soldier from the cuartel, with flapping straw hat,
without coat or shoes, hurried by, balancing his long gun like a lance in
one hand. From every density of the foliage the giant tree frogs sounded
their loud and irritating clatter. Further out, where the by-ways perished
at the brink of the jungle, the guttural cries of marauding baboons and
the coughing of the alligators in the black estuaries fractured the vain
silence of the wood.

By ten o'clock the streets were deserted. The oil lamps that had burned,
a sickly yellow, at random corners, had been extinguished by some eco-
nomical civic agent. Coralio lay sleeping calmly between toppling moun-
tains and encroaching sea like a stolen babe in the arms of its abductors.

CAUGHT 577

Somewhere over in that tropical darkness — perhaps already threading
the profundities of the alluvial lowlands — the high adventurer and his
mate were moving toward land's end. The game of Fox-in-the-Morning
should be coming soon to its close.

Goodwin, at his deliberate gait, passed the long, low cuartel where
Coralio's contingent of Anchuria's military force slumbered, with its
bare toes pointed heavenward. There was a law that no civilian might
come so near the headquarters of that citadel of war after nine o'clock, but
Goodwin was always forgetting the minor statutes.

"Quien vive?" shrieked the sentinel, wrestling prodigiously with his
lengthy musket.

"Americano" growled Goodwin, without turning his head, and passed
on, unhalted.

To the right he turned, and to the left up the street that ultimately
reached the Plaza Nacional. When within the toss of a cigar stump from
the intersecting Street of the Holy Sepulchre, he stopped suddenly in the
pathway.

He saw the form of a tall man, clothed in black and carrying a large
valise, hurry down the cross-street in the direction of the beach. And Good-
win's second glance made him aware of a woman at the man's elbow on
the farther side, who seemed to urge forward, if not even to assist, her
companion in their swift but silent progress. They were no Coralians,
those two,

Goodwin followed at increased speed, but without any of the artful
tactics that are so dear to the heart of the sleuth. The American was too
broad to feel the instinct of the detective. He stood as an agent for the
people of Anchuria, and but for political reasons he would have demanded
then and there the money. It was the design of his party to secure the im-
perilled fund, to restore it to the treasury of the country, and to declare
itself in power without bloodshed or resistance.

The couple halted at the door of the Hotel de los Estranjeros, and the
man struck upon the wood with the impatience of one unused to his
entry being stayed. Madama was long in response; but after a time her
light showed, the door was opened, and the guests housed.

Goodwin stood in the quiet street, lighting another cigar. In two min-
utes a faint gleam began to show between the slats of the jalousies in the
upper story of the hotel. "They have engaged rooms," said Goodwin to
himself. "So, then, their arrangements for sailing have yet to be made."

At that moment there came along one Esteban Delgado, a barber, an
enemy to existing government, a jovial plotter against stagnation in any
form. This barber was one of Coralio's saddest dogs, often remaining
out of doors as late as eleven, post meridian. He was a partisan Liberal;
and he greeted Goodwin with flatulent importance as a brother in the
cause. But he had something important to tell.

57$ BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

"What think you, Don Frank!" he cried, in the universal tone of the
conspirator. "I have to-night shaved la barba—what you call the 'weeskers'
of the Presidente himself, of this countree! Consider! He sent for me to
come. In the poor casita o£ an old woman he awaited me — in a verree
leetle house in a dark place. Carrambal—d. Senor Presidente to make
himself thus secret and obscured! I think he desired not to be known—
but, carajol can you shave a man and not see his face? This gold piece he
gave me, and said it was to be all quite still I think, Don Frank, there is
what you call a chip over the bug."

"Have you ever seen President Miraflores before?" asked Goodwin.

"But once," answered Esteban. "He is tall; and he had weeskers
verree black and sufficient."

"Was any one else present when you shaved him?"

"An old Indian woman, Senor, that belonged with the casa, and one
senorita—a ladee of so much beautee! — ah, Diosl"

"All right, Esteban," said Goodwin. "It's very lucky that you happened
along with your tonsorial information. The new administration will be
likely to remember you for this."

Then in a few words he made the barber acquainted with the crisis
into which the affairs of the nation had culminated, and instructed him
to remain outside, keeping watch upon the two sides of the hotel that
looked upon the street, and observing whether any one should attempt
to leave the house by any door or window. Goodwin himself went to the
door through which the guests had entered, opened it and stepped inside.

Madama had returned downstairs from her journey above to see after
the comfort of her lodgers. Her candle stood upon the bar. She was about
to take a thimbleful of rum as a solace for having her rest disturbed. She
looked up without surprise or alarm as her third caller entered.

"Ah! it is the Senor Goodwin. Not often does he honor my poor
house by his presence."

"I must come oftener," said Goodwin, with the Goodwin smile. "I
hear that your cognac is the best between Belize to the north and Rio to the
south. Set out the bottle, Madama, and let us have the proof in un vasito
for each of us."

"My aguardiente'/ said Madama, with pride, "is the best. It grows, in
beautiful bottles, in the dark places among the banana-trees. Si, Senor.
Only at midnight can they be picked by sailor-men who bring them,
before daylight comes, to your back door. Good aguardiente is a verree
difficult fruit to handle, Senor Goodwin."

Smuggling, in Coralio, was much nearer than competition to being the
life of trade. One spoke of it slyly, yet with a certain conceit, when it had
been well accomplished.

"You have guests in the house to-night," said Goodwin, laying a silver
dollar upon the counter.

CAUGHT 579

"Why not?" said Madama, counting the change. "Two; but the small-
est while finished to arrive. One senor, not quite old, and one senorita of
sufficient handsomeness. To their rooms they have ascended, not desiring
the to-eat nor the to-drink. Two rooms — Numero 9 and Numero 10."

"I was expecting that gentleman ancj that lady," said Goodwin. "I have
important negocios that must be transacted. Will you allow me to see
them?"

"Why not?" sighed Madama, placidly. "Why should not Senor Good-
win ascend and speak to his friends ? Estd bueno. Room Ndmero 9 and
room Numero 10."

Goodwin loosened in his coat pocket the American revolver that he
carried, and ascended the steep, dark stairway.

In the hallway above, the saffron light from a hanging lamp allowed
him to select the gaudy numbers on the doors. He turned the knob of
Number 9, entered and closed the door behind him.

If that was Isabel Guilbert seated by the table in that poorly furnished
room, report had failed to do her charms justice. She rested her head upon
one hand. Extreme fatigue was signified in every line of her figure; and
upon her countenance a deep perplexity was written. Her eyes were gray-
irised, and of that mould that seems to have belonged to the orbs of all the
famous queens of hearts. Their whites were singularly clear and brilliant,
concealed above the irises by heavy horizontal lids, and showing a snowy
line below them. Such eyes denote great nobility, vigor, and, if you can
conceive of it, a most venerous selfishness. She looked up when the Ameri-
can entered with an expression of suprised inquiry, but without alarm.

Goodwin took off his hat and seated himself, with his characteristic de-
liberate ease, upon a corner of the table. He held a lighted cigar be-
tween his fingers. He took this familiar course because he was sure that
preliminaries would be wasted upon Miss Guilbert. He knew her his-
tory, and the small part that the conventions had played in it.

"Good evening," he said. "Now, madame, let us come to business at
once. You will observe that I mention no names, but I know who is in
the next room, and what he carries in that valise. That is the point which
brings me here. I have come to dictate terms of surrender."

The lady neither moved nor replied, but steadily regarded the cigar in
Goodwin's hand.

"We," continued the dictator, thoughtfully regarding the neat buck-
skin shoe on his gently swinging foot — "I speak for a considerable ma-
jority of the people — demand the return of the stolen funds belonging to
them. Our terms go very little further than that. They are very simple.
As an accredited spokesman, I promise that our interference will cease if
they are accepted. Give up the money, and you and your companion will
be permitted to proceed wherever you will. In fact, assistance will be
given you in the matter of securing a passage by any outgoing vessel you

580 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

may choose. It is on my personal responsibility that I add congratulations
to the gentleman in Number 10 upon his taste in feminine charms."

Returning his cigar to his mouth, Goodwin observed her, and saw that
her eyes followed it and rested upon it with icy and significant concentra-
tion. Apparently she had not heard a word he had said. He understood,
tossed the cigar out the window, and, with an amused laugh, slid from
the table to his feet.

"That is better/' said the lady. "It makes it possible for me to listen
to you. For a second lesson in good manners, you might now tell me by
whom I am being insulted."

"I am sorry," said Goodwin, leaning one hand on the table, "that my
time is too brief for devoting much of it to a course of etiquette. Come,
now; I appeal to your good sense. You have shown yourself, in more
than one instance, to be well aware of what is to your advantage. This is
an occasion that demands the exercise of your undoubted intelligence.
There is no mystery here. I am Frank Goodwin; and I have come for the
money. I entered this room at a venture. Had I entered the other I would
have had it before now. Do you want it in words? The gentleman in
Number 10 has betrayed a great trust. He has robbed his people of a
large sum, and it is I who will prevent their losing it. I do not say who
that gentleman is; but if I should be forced to see him and he should
prove to be a certain high official of the republic, it will be my duty to ar-
rest him. The house is guarded. I am offering you liberal terms. It is not
absolutely necessary that I confer personally with the gentleman in the
next room. Bring me the valise containing the money, and we will call the
affair ended."

The lady arose from her chair, and stood for a moment, thinking deeply.

"Do you live here, Mr. Goodwin?'* she asked, presently.

"Yes."

"What is your authority for this intrusion?"

"I am an instrument of the republic. I was advised by wire of the
movements of the — gentleman in Number 10."

"May I ask you two or three questions? I believe you to be a man
more apt to be truthful than— timid. What sort of a town is this — Coralio,
I think they call it?"

"Not much of a town," said Goodwin, smiling. "A banana town, as
they run. Grass huts, 'dobes, five or six two-story houses, accommoda-
tions limited, population half-breed Spanish and Indian, Caribs and
blackamoors. No sidewalks to speak of, no amusements. Rather un-
moral. That's an offhand sketch, of course."

"Are there any inducements, say in a social or in a business way, for
people to reside here?"

"Oh, yes," answered Goodwin, smiling broadly. "There are no after-
noon teas, no hand-organs, no department stores — and there is no ex-
tradition treaty."

CAUGHT 581

"He told me," went on the lady, speaking as if to herself, and with a
light frown, "that there were towns on this coast of beauty and im-
portance; that there was a pleasing social order — especially an Ameri-
can colony of cultured residents."

"There is an American colony," said Goodwin, gazing at her in some
wonder. "Some of the members are all right. Some are fugitives from
justice from the States. I recall two exiled bank presidents, one army pay-
master under a cloud, a couple of manslayers, and a widow — arsenic, I
believe, was the suspicion in her case. I myself complete the colony, but,
as yet, I have not distinguished myself by any particular crime."

"Do not lose hope," said the lady, dryly; "I see nothing in your actions
to-night to guarantee your further obscurity. Some mistake has been
made; I do not know just where. But him you shall not disturb to-night.
The journey has fatigued him so that he has fallen asleep, I think, in his
clothes. You talk of stolen money! I do not understand you. Some mis-
take has been made. I will convince you. Remain where you are and I will
bring you the valise that you seem to covet so, and and show it to you,"

She moved toward the closed door that connected the two rooms, but
stopped, and half turned and bestowed upon Goodwin a grave searching
look that ended in a quizzical smile.

"You force my door," she said, "and you follow your ruffianly be-
havior with the basest accusations; and yet" — she hesitated, as if to recon-
sider what she was about to say — "and yet — it is a puzzling thing — I am
sure there has been some mistake."

She took a step toward the door, but Goodwin stayed her by a light
touch upon her arm. I have said before that women turned to look at him
in the streets. He was the viking sort of man, big, good-looking, and with
an air of kindly truculence. She was dark and proud, glowing or pale as
her mood moved her. I do not know if Eve were light or dark, but if such
a woman had stood in the garden I know that the apple would have been
eaten. This woman was to be Goodwin's fate, and he did not know it;
but he must have felt the first throes of destiny, for, as he faced her, the
knowledge of what report named her turned bitter in his throat.

"If there has been any mistake," he said, hotly, "it was yours. I do not
blame the man who has lost his country, his honor, and is about to lose
the poor consolation of his stolen riches as much as I blame you, for, by
Heaven! I can very well see how he was brought to it. I can understand,
and pity him. It is such women as you that strew this degraded coast with
wretched exiles, that make men forget their trusts, that drag "

The lady interrupted him with a weary gesture.

"There is no need to continue your insults," she said, coldly, "I do not
understand what you are saying, nor do I know what mad blunder you
are making; but if the inspection of the contents of a gentleman's port-
manteau will rid me of you, let us delay it no longer."

582 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

She passed quickly and noiselessly into the other room, and returned
with the heavy leather valise, which she handed to the American with an
air of patient contempt.

Goodwin set the valise quickly upon the table and began to unfasten
the straps. The lady stood by, with an expression of infinite scorn and
weariness upon her face.

The valise opened wide to a powerful, sidelong wrench. Goodwin
dragged out two or three articles of clothing, exposing the bulk of its
contents— package after package of tightly packed United States bank
and treasury notes of large denomination. Reckoning from the high fig-
ures written upon the paper bands that bound them, the total must have
come closely upon the hundred thousand mark.

Goodwin glanced swiftly at the woman, and saw,, with surprise and a
thrill of pleasure that he wondered at, that she had experienced an un-
mistakable shock. Her eyes grew wide, she gasped, and leaned heavily
against the table. She had been ignorant, then, he inferred, that her com-
panion had looted the government treasury. But why, he angrily asked
himself, should he be so well pleased to think this wandering and un-
scrupulous singer not so black as report had painted her?

A noise in the other room startled them both. The door swung open,
and a tall, elderly, dark complexioned man, recently shaven, hurried into
the room.

All the pictures of President Miraflores represent him as the possessor
of a luxuriant supply of dark and carefully tended whiskers; but the story
of the barber, Esteban, had prepared Goodwin for the change.

The man stumbled in from the dark room, his eyes blinking at the
lamplight, and heavy from sleep.

"What does this mean?" he demanded in excellent English, with a
keen and perturbed look at the American— "robbery ?"

"Very near it," answered Goodwin. "But I rather think I'm in time to
prevent it. I represent the people to whom this money belongs and I have
come to convey it back to them." He thrust his hand into a pocket of his
loose linen coat.

The other man's hand went quickly behind him.

"Don't draw," called Goodwin, sharply; "I've got you covered from
my pocket."

The lady stepped forward, and laid one hand upon the shoulder of her
hesitating companion. She pointed to the table. "Tell me the truth— the
truth/' she said, in a low voice. "Whose money is that?"

The man did not answer. He gave a deep, long-drawn sigh, leaned
and kissed her on the forehead, stepped back into the other room and
closed the door,

Goodwin foresaw his purpose, and jumped for the door, but the report
of the pistol echoed as his hand touched the knob. A heavy fall followed,

CAUGHT 583

and some one swept him aside and struggled into the room of the fallen
man.

A desolation, thought Goodwin, greater than that derived from the
loss of cavalier and gold must have been in the heart of the enchantress
to have wrung from her, in that moment, the cry of one turning to the
all-forgiving, all-comforting earthly consoler — to have made her call out
from that bloody and dishonored room — "Oh, mother, mother, mother!"

But there was an alarm outside. The barber, Esteban, at the sound
of the shot, had raised his voice; and the shot itself had aroused half the
town. A pattering of feet came up the street, and official orders rang out
on the still air. Goodwin had a duty to perform. Circumstances had made
him the custodian of his adopted country's treasure. Swiftly cramming
the money into the valise, he closed it, leaned far out of the window and
dropped it into a thick orange-tree in the little inclosure below.

They will tell you in Coralio, as they delight in telling the stranger,
of the conclusion of that tragic flight. They will tell you how the upholders
of the law came apace when the alarm was sounded — the Comandante
in red slippers and a jacket like a head waiter's and girded sword, the
soldiers with their interminable guns, followed by outnumbering officers
struggling into their gold lace and epaulettes; the bare-footed policemen
(the only capables in the lot), and ruffled citizens of every hue and
description.

They say that the countenance of the dead man was marred sadly by
the effects of the shot; but he was identified as the fallen president by
both Goodwin and the barber Esteban. On the next morning messages
began to come over the mended telegraph wire; and the story of the
flight from the capital was given out to the public. In San Mateo the revo-
lutionary party had seized the sceptre of government, without opposition,
and the vivas of the mercurial populace quickly effaced the interest be-
longing to the unfortunate Miraflores.

They will relate to you how the new government sifted the towns and
raked the roads to find the valise containing Anchuria's surplus capital,
which the president was known to have carried with him, but all in vain.
In Coralio Serior Goodwin himself led the searching party which combed
that town as carefully as a woman combs her hair; but the money was
not found.

So they buried the dead man, without honors, back of the town near
the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a real a boy
will show you his grave. They say that the old woman in whose hut the
barber shaved the president placed the wooden slab at his head, and
burned the inscription upon it with a hot iron.

You will hear also that Senor Goodwin, like a tower of strength,
shielded Dona Isabel Guilbert through those subsequent distressful
days; and that his scruples as to her past career (if he had any) van-

584 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

ished; and her adventuresome waywardness (if she had any) left her,
and they were wedded and were happy.

The American built a home on a little foot hill near the town. It is a
conglomerate structure of native woods that, exported, would be worth a
fortune, and of brick, palm, glass, bamboo and adobe. There is a para-
dise of nature about it; and something of the same sort within. The na-
tives speak of its interior with hands uplifted in admiration. There are
floors polished like mirrors and covered with hand-woven Indian rugs of
silk fibre, tall ornaments and pictures, musical instruments and papered
walls — "figure-it-to-yourself !" they exclaim.

But they cannot tell you in Coralio (as you shall learn) what became
of the money that Frank Goodwin dropped into the orange-tree. But that
shall come later; for the palms are fluttering in the breeze, bidding us
to sport and gaiety.

CUPID S EXILE NUMBER TWO

The United States of America, after looking over its stock of consular
timber, selected Mr, John De Graffanreid Atwood, of Dalesburg, Ala-
bama, for a successor to Willard Geddie, resigned.

Without prejudice to Mr. Atwood, it will have to be acknowledged
that, in this instance, it was the man who sought the office. As with the
self-banished Geddie, it was nothing less than the artful smiles of lovely
women that had driven Johnny Atwood to the desperate expedient of
accepting office under a despised Federal Government so that he might
go far, far away and never see again the false, fair face that had wrecked
his young life. The consulship at Coralio seemed to offer a retreat suf-
ficiently removed and romantic enough to inject the necessary drama into
the pastoral scenes of Dalesburg life.

It was while playing the part of Cupid's exile that Johnny added his
handiwork to the long list of casualties along the Spanish Main by his
famous manipulation of the shoe market, and his unparalleled feat of
elevating the most despised and useless weed in his own country from
obscurity to be a valuable product in international commerce.

The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending with
a romance. In Dalesburg there was a man named Elijah Hemstetter,
who kept a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called
Rosine, a name that atoned much for "Hemstetter.** This young woman
was possessed of plentiful attractions, so that the young men of the com-
munity were agitated in their bosoms. Among the more agitated was
Johnny, the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the big colonial mansion
on the edge of Dalesburg.

CUPID'S EXILE NUMBER TWO 585

It would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to
return the affection of an Atwood, a name honored all over the state long
before and since the war. It does seem that she should have gladly con-
sented to have been led into that stately but rather empty colonial mansion.
But not so. There was a cloud on the horizon, a threatening, cumulus
cloud, in the shape of a lively and shrewd young farmer in the neighbor-
hood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to the high-born Atwood.

One night Johnny propounded to Rosine a question that is considered
of much importance by the young of the human species. The accessories
were all there — moonlight, oleanders, magnolias, the mockbird's song.
Whether or not the shadow of Pinkney Dawson, the prosperous young
farmer, came between them on that occasion is not known; but Rosine's
answer was unfavorable. Mr. John De Graffenreid Atwood bowed till
his hat touched the lawn grass, and went away wtih his head high, but
with a sore wound in his pedigree and heart. A Hemstetter refuse an
Atwood! Zounds!

Among other accidents of that year was a Democratic president. Judge
Atwood was a warhorse of Democracy. Johnny persuaded him to set the
wheels moving for some foreign appointment. He would go away —
away. Perhaps in years to come Rosine would think how true, how faith-
ful his love had been, and would drop a tear— maybe in the cream she
would be skimming for Pink Dawson's breakfast.

The wheels of politics revolved; and Johnny was appointed consul to
Coralio. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetter's to say good-
bye. There was a queer, pinkish look about Rosine's eyes; and had the
two been alone, the United States might have had to cast about for an-
other consul. But Pink Dawson was there, of course, talking about his
400-acre orchard, and the three-mile alfalfa tract, and the 200-acre pas-
ture. So Johnny shook hands with Rosine as coolly as if he were only
going to run up to Montgomery for a couple of days. They had the royal
manner when they chose, those Atwoods.

"If you happen to strike anything in the way of a good investment
down there, Johnny/* said Pink Dawson, "just let me know, will you? I
reckon I could lay my hands on a few extra thousands 'most any time for
a profitable deal/'

"Certainly, Pink,'* said Johnny, pleasantly. "If I strike anything of the
sort I'll let you in with pleasure."

So Johnny went down to Mobile and took a fruit steamer for the coast
of Anchuria.

When the new consul arrived in Coralio the strangeness of the scenes
diverted him much. He was only twenty-two; and the grief of youth is
not worn like a garment as it is by older men. It has its seasons when it
reigns; and then it is unseated for a time by the assertion of the keen
senses.

586 BOOK. V CABBAGES AND KINGS

Billy Keogh and Johnny seemed to conceive a mutual friendship at
once. Keogh took the new consul about town and presented him to the
handful of Americans and the smaller number of French and Germans
who made up the "foreign" contingent. And then, of course, he had to be
more formally introduced to the native officials, and have his credentials
transmitted through an interpreter.

There was something about the young Southerner that the sophis-
ticated Keogh liked. His manner was simple almost to boyishness; but
he possessed the cool carelessness of a man of far greater age and ex-
perience. Neither uniforms nor titles, red tape nor foreign languages,
mountains nor sea weighed upon his spirits. He was heir to all the ages,
an Atwood, of Dalesburg; and you might know every thought conceived
in his bosom.

Geddie came down to the consulate to explain the duties and workings
of the office. He and Keogh tried to interest the new consul in their
description of the work that his government expected him to perform.

"It's all right," said Johnny from the hammock that he had set up as
the official reclining place. "If anything turns up that has to be done 111
let you fellows do it. You can't expect a Democrat to work during his
first term of holding office."

"You might look over these headings" suggested Geddie, "of the
different lines of exports you will have to keep account of. The fruit is
classified; and there are the valuable woods, coffee, rubber "

"That last account sounds all right," interrupted Mr, Atwood. "Sounds
as if it could be stretched. I want to buy a new flag, a monkey, a guitar
and a barrel of pineapples. Will that rubber account stretch over 'em?"

"That's merely statistics," said Geddie, smiling. "The expense account
is what you want. It is supposed to have a slight elasticity. The 'stationery'
items are sometimes carelessly audited by the State Department."

"We're wasting our time," said Keogh. "This man was born to hold
office. He penetrates to the root of the art at one step of his eagle eye.
The true genius of government shows its hand in every word of his
speech."

"I didn't take this job with any intention of working," explained Johnny,
lazily. "I wanted to go somewhere in the world where they didn't talk
about farms. There are none here, are there?"

"Not the kind you are acquainted with," answered the ex-consul.
"There is no such art here as agriculture. There never was a plow or a
reaper within the boundaries of Anchuria."

"This is the country for me," murmured the consul and immediately
he fell asleep.

The cheerful tintypist pursued his intimacy with Johnny in spite of
open charges that he did so to obtain a preemption on a seat in the cov-
eted spot, the rear gallery of the consulate. But whether his designs were

CUPID'S EXILE NUMBER TWO 587

selfish or purely friendly, Keogh achieved that desirable privilege. Few
were the nights on which the two could not be found reposing there in
the sea breeze, with their heels on the railing, and the cigars and brandy
conveniently near.

One evening they had sat thus, mainly silent, for their talk had
dwindled before the stilling influence of an unusual night.

There was a great, full moon; and the sea was mother-of-pearl. Al-
most every sound was hushed, for the air was but faindy stirring; and
the town lay panting, waiting for the night to cool. Off-shore lay the fruit
steamer Andador, of the Vesuvius line* full-laden and scheduled to sail
at six in the morning. There were no loiterers on the beach. So bright
was the moonlight that the two men could see the small pebbles shining
on the beach where the gentle surf wetted them.

Then down the coast, tacking close to shore, slowly swam a litde sloop,
white-winged like some snowy sea fowl. Its course lay within twenty
points of the wind's eye; so it veered in and out again in long slow
strokes like the movements of a graceful skater.

Again the tactics of its crew brought it close in shore, this time nearly
opposite the consulate; and then there blew from the sloop clear and
surprising notes as if from a horn of elfland. A fairy bugle it might have
been, sweet and silvery and unexpected, playing with spirit the familiar
air of "Home, Sweet Home."

It was a scene set for the land of the lotus. The authority of the sea
and the tropics, the mystery that attends unknown sails, and the prestige
of drifting music on moonlit waters gave it an anodynous charm. Johnny
Atwood felt it, and thought of Dalesburg; but as soon as Keogh's mind
had arrived at a theory concerning the peripatetic solo he sprang to the
railing, and his ear-rending yawp fractured the silence of Coralio like a
cannon shot.

"Mel-lin-ger a-hoy!"

The sloop was now on its outward track; but from it came a clear, an-
swering hail:

"Good-bye, Billy . . . go-ing home— bye!"

The Andador was the sloop's destination. No doubt some passenger
with a sailing permit from some up-the-coast point had come down in
this sloop to catch the regular fruit steamer on its return trip. Like a
coquettish pigeon the little boat tacked on its eccentric way until at last
its white sail was lost to sight against the larger bulk of the fruiter's side.

"That's old H. P. Mellinger," explained Keogh, dropping back into
his chair. "He's going back to New York. He was private secretary of the
late hot-foot president of this grocery and fruit stand that they call a
country. His job's over now; and I guess old Mellinger is glad/'

"Why does he disappear to music, like Zo-zo, the magic queen?" asked
Johnny. "Just to show 'em that he doesn't care?"

588 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"That noise you heard is a phonograph," said Keogh. "I sold him that.
Mellinger had a graft in this country that was the only thing of its kind
in the world. The tooting machine saved it for him once, and he always
carried it around with him afterward."

"Tell me about it," demanded Johnny, betraying interest

"I'm no disseminator of narratives," said Keogh. "I can use language
for purposes of speech; but when I attempt a discourse the words come
out as they will, and they may make sense when they strike the atmos-
phere, or they may not."

"I want to hear about that graft," persisted Johnny. "You've got no
right to refuse. Fve told you all about every man, woman and hitching
post in Dalesburg."

"You shall hear it," said Keogh. "I said my instincts of narrative were
perplexed, Don't you believe it. It's an art Fve acquired along with many
other of the graces and sciences."

THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT

"What was this graft?" asked Johnny, with the impatience of the great
public to whom tales are told,

" 'Tis contrary to art and philosophy to give you the information," said
Keogh, calmly. "The art of narrative consists in concealing from your
audience everything it wants to know until after you expose your favorite
opinions on topics foreign to the subject. A good story is like a bitter pill
with the sugar coating inside of it. I will begin, if you please, with a
horoscope located in the Cherokee Nation; and end with a moral tune
on the phonograph.

"Me and Henry Horsecollar brought the first phonograph to this
country. Henry was a quarter-breed, quarter-back Cherokee, educated
East in the idioms of football, and West in contraband whisky, and a
gentleman, the same as you and me. He was easy and romping in his
ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of rubber-tire movement. Yes,
he was a little man about five foot five, or five foot eleven. He was what
you would call a medium tall man of average smallness. Henry had quit
college once, and the Muscogee jail three times — the last-named institu-
tion on account of introducing and selling whisky in the territories.
Henry Horsecollar never let any cigar stores come up and stand behind
him. He didn't belong to that tribe of Indians.

"Henry and me met at Texarkana, and figured out this phonograph
scheme. He had $360 which came to him out of a land allotment in die
reservation. I had run down from Little Rock on account of a distressful
scene I had witnessed on the street there. A man stood on a box and

THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT 589

passed around some gold watches, screw case, stem-winders, Elgin move-
ment, very elegant. Twenty bucks they cost you over the counter. At
three dollars the crowd fought for the tickets. The man happened to find
a valise full of them handy, and he passed them out like putting hot bis-
cuits on a plate. The backs were hard to unscrew, but the crowd put its
ear to the case, and they ticked mollifying and agreeable. Three of these
watches were genuine tickers; the rest were only kickers. He? Why,
empty cases with one of them horny black bugs that fly around electric
lights in 'em. Them bugs kick off minutes and seconds industrious and
beautiful. So, this man I was speaking of cleaned up $288; and then he
went away, because he knew that when it came time to wind watches in
Little Rock an entomologist would be needed, and he wasn't one.

"So, as I say, Henry had $360, and I had $288. The idea of introducing
the phonograph to South America was Henry 's; but I took to it freely,
being fond of machinery of all kinds.

"'The Latin races/ says Henry, explaining easily in the idioms he
learned at college, 'are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the phonograph.
They have the artistic temperament. They yearn for music and color and
gaiety. They give wampum to the hand-organ man and the four-legged
chicken in the tent when they're months behind with the grocery and
the bread-fruit tree.'

"'Then,' says I, 'we'll export canned music to the Latins; but I'm
mindful of Mr. Julius Cesar's account of 'em where he says: "Omnia
Gallia in tres partes divisa esf; which is the same as to say, "We will
need all of our gall in devising means to tree them parties." *

"I hated to make a show of education; but I was disinclined to be over-
done in syntax by a mere Indiajj., a member of a race to which we owe
nothing except the land on which the United States is situated,

"We bought a fine phonograph in Texarkana — one of the best make —
and half a trunkful of records. We packed up, and took the T. and P.
for New Orleans. From that celebrated centre of molasses and dis-
franchised coon songs we took a steamer for South America.

"We landed at Solitas, forty miles up the coast from here. Twas a
palatable enough place to look at. The houses were clean and white; and
to look at *em stuck around among the scenery they reminded you of
hard-boiled eggs served with lettuce. There was a block of skyscraper
mountains in the suburbs; and they kept pretty quiet, like they had crept
up there and were watching the town. And the sea was remarking
'Sh-sh-sh' on the beach; and now and then a ripe cocoanut would drop
kerblip in the sand; and that was all there was doing. Yes, I judge that
town was considerably on the quiet. I judge that after Gabriel quits
blowing his horn, and the car starts, with Philadelphia swinging to the
last strap, and Pine Gully, Arkansas, hanging onto the rear step, this
town of Solitas will wake up and ask if anybody spoke.

590 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"The captain went ashore with us, and agreed to conduct what he
seemed to like to call the obsequies. He introduced Henry and me to
the United States Consul, and a roan man, the head of the Department
of Mercenary and Licentious Dispositions, the way it read upon his sign.

" 'I touch here a week again from to-day/ says the captain.

"'By that time,' we told him, 'we'll be amassing wealth in the inte-
rior towns with our galvanized prima donna and correct imitations of
Sousa's band excavating a march from a tin mine.'

"Tell not,' says the captain. 'Yell be hypnotized. Any gentleman in
the audience who kindly steps upon the stage and looks this country in
the eye will be converted to the hypothesis that he's but a fly in the
Elgin creamery. Ye'll be standing knee deep in the surf waiting for me,
and your machine for making Hamburger steak out of the hitherto
respected art of music will be playing "There's no place like home." '

"Henry skinned a twenty off his roll, and received from the Bureau of
Mercenary Dispositions a paper bearing a red seal and a dialect story,
and no change.

"Then we got the consul full of red wine, and struck him for a horo-
scope. He was a thin, youngish kind of a man, I should say past fifty,
sort of French-Irish in his affections, and puffed up with disconsolation.
Yes, he was a flattened kind of a man, in whom drink lay stagnant, in-
clined to corpulence and misery. Yes, I think he was a kind of a Dutch-
man, being very sad and genial in his ways.

"The marvellous invention/ he says, 'entitled the phonograph, has
never invaded these shores. The people have never heard it. They would
not believe it if they should. Simple-hearted children of nature, progress
has never condemned them to accept the work of a can-opener as an
overture, and rag-time might incite them to a bloody revolution. But you
can try the experiment. The best chance you have is that the populace
may not wake up when you play. There's two ways,' says the consul, 'they
may take it. They may become inebriated with attention, like an Atlanta
colonel listening to "Marching Through Georgia," or they will get ex-
cited and transpose the key of the music with an axe and yourselves into
a dungeon. In the latter case,' says the consul, Til do my duty by ca-
bling to the State Department, and I'll wrap the Stars and Stripes around
you when you come to be shot, and threaten them with the vengeance of
the greatest gold export and financial reserve nation on earth. The flag is
full of bullet holes now,' says the consul, 'made in that way. Twice before,'
says the consul, 'I have cabled our government for a couple of gunboats to
protect American citizens. The first time the Department sent me a pair
of gum boots. The other time was when a man named Pease was going
to be executed here. They referred that appeal to the Secretary of Agricul-
ture. Let us now disturb the senor behind the bar for a subsequence of
the red wine.'

THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT 59!

"Thus soliloquized the consul o£ Solitas to me and Henry Horsecollar.

"But, notwithstanding, we hired a room that afternoon in the Calle
de los Angeles, the main street that runs along the shore, and put our
trunks there. Twas a good-sized room, dark and cheerful, but small.
'Twas on a various street, diversified by houses and conservatory plants.
The peasantry of the city passed to and fro on the fine pasturage between
the sidewalks. 'Twas, for the world, like an opera chorus when the
Royal Kafoozlum is about to enter.

"We were rubbing the dust off the machine and getting fixed to start
business the next day, when a big, fine-looking white man in white clothes
stopped at the door and looked in. We extended the invitations, and he
walked inside and sized us up. He was chewing a long cigar, and wrin-
kling his eyes, meditative, like a girl trying to decide which dress to wear
to the party.

" 'New York?' he says to me finally.

" 'Originally, and from time to time,' I says. 'Hasn't it rubbed off yet?'

" It's simple/ says he, 'when you know how. It's the fit of the vest.
They don't cut vests right anywhere else. Coats, maybe, but not vests.5

"The white man looks at Henry Horsecollar and hesitates.

"'Injun,' says Henry; 'tame Injun.'

"'Mellinger,' says the man— 'Homer P.. Mellinger. Boys, you're con-
fiscated. You're babies in the wood without a chaperon or referee, and it's
my duty to start you going. I'll knock out the props and launch you
proper in the pellucid waters of this tropical mud puddle. You'll have to
be christened, and if you'll come with me I'll break a bottle of wine across
your bows, according to Hoyle.'

"Well, for two days Homer P. Mellinger did the honors. That man
cut ice in Anchuria. He was It. He was the Royal Kafoozlum. If me and
Henry was babes in the wood, he was a Robin Redbreast from the top-
most bough. Him and me and Henry Horsecollar locked arms, and toted
that phonograph around, and had wassail and diversions. Everywhere
we found doors open we went inside and set the machine going, and Mel-
linger called upon the people to observe the artful music and his two
lifelong friends, the Senores Americanos. The opera chorus was agitated
with esteem, and followed us from house to house. There was a different
kind of drink to be had with every tune. The natives had acquirements
of a pleasant thing in the way of a drink that gums itself to the recollec-
tion. They chop off the end of a green cocoanut, and pour in on the juice
of it French brandy and other adjuvants. We had them and other things.

"Mine and Henry's money was counterfeit. Everything was on Homer
P. Mellinger. That man could find rolls of bills concealed in places on
his person where Hermann the Wizard couldn't have conjured out a
rabbit or an omelette. He could have founded universities, and made
orchid collections, and then had enough left to purchase the colored vote

592 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

of his country. Henry and me wondered what his graft was. One eve-
ning he told us.

" 'Boys,' said he, Tve deceived you. You think I'm a painted butterfly;
but in fact I'm the hardest worked man in this country. Ten years ago I
landed on its shores; and two years ago on the point of its jaw. Yes, I
guess I can get the decision over this ginger cake commonwealth at the
end of any round I choose. I'll confide in you because you are my country-
men and guests, even if you have assaulted my adopted shores with the
worst system of noises ever set to music.

"*My job is private secretary to the president of this republic; and my
duties are running it. I'm not headlined in the bills, but I'm the mustard
in the salad dressing just the same. There isn't a law goes before Con-
gress, there isn't a concession granted, there isn't an import duty levied
but what H. P. Mellinger he cooks and seasons it. In the front office I fill
the president's inkstand and search visiting statesmen for dirks and dyna-
mite; but in the back room I dictate the policy of the government. You'd
never guess in the world how I got my pull. It's the only graft of its kind
on earth. I'll put you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy
book — "Honesty is the Best Policy"? That's it. I'm working honesty for
a graft. I'm the only honest man in the republic. The government knows
it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know
it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he
gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a
monopoly of square dealing here. There's no competition. If Colonel
Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he'd have my address
inside of two minutes. There isn't big money in it, but it's a sure thing,
and lets a man sleep of nights.'

"Thus Homer P» Mellinger made oration to me and Henry Horsecol-
lar. And, later, he divested himself of this remark:

" 'Boys, I'm to hold a soiree this evening with a gang of leading citi-
zens, and I want your assistance. You bring the musical corn sheller and
give the affair the outside appearance of a function. There's important
business on hand, but it mustn't show. I can talk to you people. Fve been
pained for years on account of not having anybody to blow off and brag
to. I get homesick sometimes, and I'd swap the entire prequisites of office
for just one hour to have a stein and a caviare sandwich somewhere on
Thirty-fourth Street, and stand and watch the street cars go by, and smell
the peanut roaster at old Giuseppe's fruit stand.'

"Tes,5 said I, 'there's fine caviare at Billy Renfrew's cafe, corner of
Thirty-fourth and *

"*God knows it, interrupts Mellinger, 'and if you'd told me you knew
Billy Renfrow I'd have invented tons of ways of making you happy. Billy
was my side-kicker in New York. There is a man who never knew what
crooked was. Here I am working Honesty for a graft, but that man loses

THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT 593

money on it Carrambos! I get sick at times of this country. Everything's
rotten. From the executive down to the coffee pickers, they're plotting to
down each other and skin their friends. If a mule driver takes off his hat
to an official, that man figures it out that he's a popular idol, and sets
his pegs to stir up a revolution and upset the administration. It's one of
my little chores as private secretary to smell out these revolutions and
affix the kibosh before they break out and scratch the paint off the
government property. That's why I'm down here now in this mildewed
coast town. The governor of the district and his crew are plotting to up-
rise. I've got every one of their names, and they're invited to listen to the
phonograph to-night, compliments of H. P. M. That's the way I'll get
them in a bunch, and things are on the programme to happen to them.'

"We three, were sitting at table in die cantina of the Purified Saints.
Mellinger poured out wine, and was looking some worried; I was think-
ing.

" 'They're a sharp crowd,5 he says, kind of fretful. 'They're capitalized
by a foreign syndicate after rubber, and they're loaded to the muzzle for
bribing. I'm sick,' goes on Mellinger, 'of comic opera. I want to smell
East River and wear suspenders again. At times I feel like throwing up
my job, but I'm d — n fool enough to be sort of proud of it. "There's
Mellinger," they say here. "For Dios! you can't touch him with a million."
Td like to take that record back and show it to Billy Renfrow some day;
and that tightens my grip whenever I see a fat thing that I could corral
just by winding one eye — and losing my graft By — , they can't monkey
with me. They know it What money I get I make honest and spend it
Some day I'll make a pile and go back and eat caviare with Billy. To-night
I'll show you how to handle a bunch of corruptionists. I'll show them
what Mellinger, private secretary, means when you spell it with the cot-
ton and tissue paper off.'

"Mellinger appears shaky, and breaks his glass against the neck of the
bottle.

"I says to myself, 'White man, if I'm not mistaken there's been a bait
laid out where the tail of your eye could see it*

"That night, according to arrangements, me and Henry took the
phonograph to a room in a 'dobe house in a dirty side street, where the
grass was knee high. 'Twas a long room, lit with smoky oil lamps. There
was plenty of chairs, and a table at the back end. We set the phonograph
on the table. Mellinger was there, walking up and down, disturbed in his
predicaments. He chewed cigars and spat 'em out, and he bit the thumb
nail of his left hand.

"By and by the invitations to the musicale came sliding in by pairs and
threes and spade flushes. Their color was of a diversity, running from a
three-days' smoked meerschaum to a patent-leather polish. They were as
polite as wax, being devastated with enjoyments to give Senor Mellinger

594 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

the good evenings. I understood their Spanish talk— I ran a pumping
engine two years in a Mexican silver mine, and had it pat — but I never
let on.

"Maybe fifty of 'em had come, and was seated, when in slid the king
bee, the governor of the district. Mellinger met him at the door, and
escorted him to the grand stand. When I saw that Latin man I knew that
Mellinger, private secretary, had all the dances on his card taken. That
was a big, squashy man, the color of a rubber overshoe, and he had an
eye like a head waiter's.

"Mellinger explained, fluent, in the Castilian idioms, that his soul was
disconcerted with joy at introducing to his respected friends America's
greatest invention, the wonder of the age. Henry got the cue and run on
an elegant brass-band record and the festivities became initiated. The
governor man had a bit of English under his hat, and when the music
was choked off he says:

"'Ver-r-ree fine. Gr-r-r-r-racia$, the American gentleemen, the so
esplendeed moosic as to playee.'

"The table was a long one, and Henry and me sat at the end of it next
the wall. The governor sat at the other end. Homer P. Mellinger stood
at the side of it. I was just wondering how Mellinger was going to handle
his crowd, when the home talent suddenly opened the services.

"That governor man was suitable for uprisings and policies. I judge
he was a ready kind of man, who took his own time. Yes, he was full
of attention and immediateness. He leaned his hands on the table and
imposed his face toward the secretary man.

"'Do the American senores understand Spanish?' he asks in his native
accents.

" They do not,' says Mellinger.

"Then listen,1 goes on the Latin man, prompt. 'The musics are of
sufficient prettiness, but not of necessity. Let us speak of business. I well
know why we are here, since I observe my compatriots. You had a whis-
per yesterday, Senor Mellinger, of our proposals. To-night we will speak
out. We know that you stand in the president's favor, and we know your
influence. The government will be changed. We know the worth of your
services. We esteem your friendship and aid so much that' — Mellinger
raises his hand, but the governor man bottles him up. 'Do not speak
until I have done/

"The governor man then draws a package wrapped in paper from
his pocket, and lays it on the table by Mellinger's hand.

" *In that you will find fifty thousand dollars in money of your country.
You can do nothing against us, but you can be worth that for us. Go back
to the capital and obey our instructions. Take that money now. We trust
you. You will find with it a paper giving in detail the work you will be
expected to do for us. Do not have the unwiseness of refuse.1

THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT 595

"The governor man paused, with his eyes fixed on Mellinger, full of
expressions and observances. I looked at Mellinger, and was glad Billy
Renfrew couldn't see him then. The sweat was popping out on his fore-
head, and he stood dumb, tapping the little package with the ends of his
fingers. The colorado-maduro gang was after his graft. He had only to
change his politics, and stuff five fingers in his inside pocket.

"Henry whispers to me and wants the pause in the programme in-
terpreted. I whisper back: 'H. P. is up against a bribe, senator's size,
and the coons have got him going.' I saw Mellinger's hand moving closer
to the package. 'He's weakening/ I whispered to Henry. We'll remind
him,' says Henry, 'of the peanut-roaster on Thirty-fourth Street, New York,'

"Henry stooped down and got a record from the basketful we'd brought,
slid it in the phonograph, and started her off. If was a cornet solo, very
neat and beautiful, and the name of it was 'Home, Sweet Home.' Not
one of them fifty-odd men in the room moved while it was playing, and
the governor man kept his eyes steady on Mellinger. I saw Mellinger's
head go up little by little, and his hand came creeping away from the
package. Not until the last note sounded did anybody stir. And then
Homer P. Mellinger takes up the bundle of boodle and slams it in the
governor man's face,

"'That's my answer/ says Mellinger, private secretary, 'and there'll be
another in the morning. I have proofs of conspiracy against every man o£
you. The show is over, gentlemen.'

" 'There's one more act,' puts in the governor man. Tou are a servant,
I believe, employed by the president to copy letters and answer raps at
the door. I am governor here. Senores, I call upon you in the name of the
cause to seize this man.'

"That brindled gang of conspirators shoved back their chairs and ad-
vanced in force. I could see where Mellinger had made a mistake in mass-
ing his enemy so as to make a grand-stand play. I think he made another
one, too; but we can pass that, Mellinger's idea of a graft and mine being
different, according to estimations and points of view.

"There was only one window and door in that room, and they were
in the front end. Here was fifty-odd Latin men coming in a bunch to
obstruct the legislation of Mellinger. You may say there were three of
us, for me and Henry, simultaneous, declared New York City and the
Cherokee Nation in sympathy with the weaker party.

"Then it was that Henry Horsecollar rose to a point of disorder and
intervened, showing, admirable, the advantages of education as applied
to the American Indian's natural intellect and native refinement. He stood
up and smoothed back his hair on each side with his "hands as you have
seen little girls do when they play.

" 'Get behind me, both of you,' says Henry.

" 'What's it to be, chief?' I asked

596 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

"Tm going to buck centre,' says Henry, in his football idioms. There
isn't a tackle in the lot of them. Follow me close, and rush the game.'

"Then that cultured Red Man exhaled an arrangement of sounds with
his mouth that made the Latin aggregation pause, with thoughtfulness
and hesitations. The matter of his proclamation seemed to be a co-opera-
tion of the Carlisle war-whoop with the Cherokee college yell He went
at the chocolate team like a bean out of a little boy's nigger shooter. His
right elbow laid out the governor man on the gridiron, and he made a
lane the length of the crowd so wide that a woman could have carried
a step-ladder through it without striking against anything. All Mellinger
and me had to do was to follow.

"It took us just three minutes to get out of that street around to military
headquarters, where Mellinger had things his own way. A colonel and a
battalion of bare-toed infantry turned out and went back to the scene of
the musicale with us, but the conspirator gang was gone. But we re-
captured the phonograph with honors of war, and marched back to the
cuartel with it playing 'All Coons Look Alike to Me/

"The next day Mellinger takes me and Henry to one side, and begins
to shed tens and twenties.

"1 want to buy that phonograph/ says he. *I liked that last tune it
played at the soiree!

" This is more money than the machine is worth,5 says I.

" * Tis government expense money,' says Mellinger. 'The government
pays for it, and it's getting the tune-grinder cheap.'

"Me and Henry knew that pretty well. We knew that it had saved
Homer P. Mellinger's graft when he was on the point of losing it; but
we never let him know we knew it.

" 'Now you boys better slide off further down the coast for a while,'
says Mellinger, 'till I get the screws put on these fellows here. If you don't
they'll give you trouble. And if you ever happen to see Billy Renfrow
again before I do, tell him I'm coming back to New York as soon as I can
make a stake — honest.'

"Me and Henry laid low until the day the steamer came back. When
we saw the captain's boat on the beach we went down and stood in the
edge of the water. The captain grinned when he saw us.

** T told you you'd be waiting,' he says. 'Where's the Hamburger ma-
chine?'

" "It stays behind,' I says, 'to play "Home, Sweet Home/* *

" *I told you so,' says the captain again. 'Climb in the boat.'

"And that," said Keogh, "is the way me and Henry Horsecollar in-
troduced the phonograph into this country. Henry went back to the States,
but Fve been rummaging around in the tropics ever since. They say
Mellinger never travelled a mile after that without his phonograph. I guess

MONEY MAZE 597

it kept him reminded about his graft whenever he saw the siren voice
of the boodler tip him the wink with a bribe in its hand."

"I suppose he's taking it home with him as a souvenir/* remarked the
consul.

"Not as a souvenir," said Keogh. "Hell need two of 'em in New York,
running day and night/*

MONEY MAZE

The new administration of Anchuria entered upon its duties and privi-
leges with enthusiasm. Its first act was to send an agent to Coralio with
imperative orders to recover, if possible, the sum of money ravished from
the treasury by the ill-fated Miraflores.

Colonel Emilio Falcon, the private secretary of Losada, the new presi-
dent, was despatched from the capital upon this important mission.

The position of private secretary to a tropical president is a responsible
one. He must be a diplomat, a spy, a ruler of men, a body-guard to his
chief, and a smeller-out of plots and nascent revolutions. Often he is the
power behind the throne, the dictator of policy; and a president chooses
him with a dozen times the care with which he selects a matrimonial
mate.

Colonel Falcon, a handsome and urbane gentleman of Castilian courtesy
and debonnaire manners, came to Coralio with the task before him^of
striking upon the cold trail of the lost money. There he conferred with
the military authorities, who had received instructions to cooperate with
him in the search.

Colonel Falcon established his headquarters in one of the rooms of
the Casa Morena. Here for a week he held informal sittings— much as
if he were a kind of unified grand jury — and summoned before him all
those whose testimony might illumine the financial tragedy that had
accompanied the less momentous one of the late president's death.

Two or three who were thus examined, among whom was the barber
Esteban, declared that they had identified the body of the president before
its burial.

"Of a truth," testified Esteban before the mighty secretary, "it was
he, the president. Consider!-— how could I shave a man and not see his
face? He sent for me to shave him in a small house. He had a beard
very black and thick. Had I ever seen the president before? Why not? I
saw him once ride forth in a carriage from the vapor in Solitas* When I
shaved him he gave me a gold piece, and said there was to be no talk.
But I am a Liberal— -I am devoted to my country—and I spake of these
things to Sefior Goodwin."

598 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

"It is known," said Colonel Falcon, smoothly, "that the late President
took with him an American leather valise, containing a large amount o£
money. Did you see that?"

"De veras—no" Esteban answered. "The light in the little house was
but a small lamp by which I could scarcely see to shave the President. Such
a thing there may have been, but I did not see it. No. Also in the room
was a young lady — a sefiorita of much beauty — that I could see even in
so small a light. But the money, sefior, or the thing in which it was
carried — that I did not see."

The comandante and other officers gave testimony that they had been
awakened and alarmed by the noise of a pistol-shot in the Hotel de los
Estranjeros, Hurrying thither to protect the peace and dignity of the re-
public, they found a man lying dead, with a pistol clutched in his hand.
Beside him was a young woman, weeping sorely. Senor Goodwin was
also in the room when they entered it. But of the valise of money they
saw nothing.

Madame Timotea Ortiz, the proprietress of the hotel in which the
game of Fox-in-the-Morning had been played out, told of the coming of
the two guests to her house.

"To my house they came," said she — "one senor, not quite old, and
one senorita of sufficient handsomeness. They desired not to eat or to
drink — not even of my aguardiente, which is the best. To their rooms
they ascended— Numero Nueve and Nutnero Dies. Later came Sefior
Goodwin, who ascended to speak with them. Then I heard a great noise
like that of a canon, and they said that the pobre Presidente had shot
himself. Esta bueno. I saw nothing of money or of the thing you call
veliz that you say he carried it in/*

Colonel Falcon soon came to the reasonable conclusion that if any one
in Coralio could furnish a clue to the vanished money, Frank Goodwin
must be the man. But the wise secretary pursued a different course in
seeking information from the American. Goodwin was a powerful friend
to the new administration, and one who was not to be carelessly dealt
with in respect to either his honesty or his courage. Even the private secre-
tary of His Excellency hesitated to have this rubber prince and mahogany
baron haled before him as a common citizen of Anchuria. So he sent
Goodwin a flowery epistle, each word-petal dripping with honey, request-
ing the favor of an interview, Goodwin replied with an invitation to
dinner at his own house.

Before the hour named the American walked over to the Casa Mo
rena, and greeted his guest frankly and friendly. Then the two strolled,
in the cool of the afternoon, to Goodwin's home in the environs.

The American left Colonel Falcon in a big, cool, shadowed room with
a floor of inlaid and polished woods that any millionaire in the States
would have envied, excusing himself for a few minutes. He crossed a

MONEY MAZE 599

patio, shaded with deftly arranged awnings and plants, and entered a
long room looking upon the sea in the opposite wing of the house. The
broad jalousies were opened wide, and the ocean breeze flowed in through
the room, an invisible current of coolness and health. Goodwin's wife
sat near one of the windows, making a water-color sketch of the after-
noon seascape.

Here was a woman who looked to be happy. And more— she looked
to be content. Had a poet been inspired to pen just similes concerning
her favor, he would have likened her full, clear eyes, with their white-
encircled, gray irises, to moonflowers. With none of the goddesses whose
traditional charms have become coldly classic would the discerning rhyme-
ster have compared her. She was purely Paradisaic, not Olympian. If
you can imagine Eve, after the eviction, beguiling the flaming warriors
and serenely re-entering the Garden, you will have her. Just so human,
and still so harmonious with Eden seemed Mrs. Goodwin.

When her husband entered she looked up, and her lips curved and
parted 5 her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice — a movement remindful
(Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog and a little ripple
went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping willow by a
puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were it twenty
times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine in Coralio,
reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career of Isabel Guilbert,
could have seen the wife of Frank Goodwin that afternoon in the esti-
mable aura of her happy wifehood, they might have disbelieved, or have
agreed to forget, those graphic annals of the life of the one for whom
their president gave up his country and his honor.

"I have brought a guest to dinner," said Goodwin. "One Colonel Falcon,
from San Mateo. He is come on government business. I do not think you
will care to see him, so I prescribe for you one of those convenient and
indisputable feminine headaches."

"He has come to inquire about the lost money, has he not?" asked Mrs.
Goodwin, going on with her sketch.

"A good guess!" acknowledged Goodwin. "He has been holding an
inquisition among the natives for three days. I am next on his list of
witnesses, but as he feels shy about dragging one of Uncle Sam's subjects
before him, he consents to give it the outward appearance of a social
function. He will apply the torture over my own wine and provender."

"Has he found any one who saw the valise of money?"

"Not a soul. Even Madame Ortiz, whose eyes are so sharp for the sight
of a revenue official, does not remember that there was any baggage."

Mrs. Goodwin laid down her brush and sighed.

"I am so sorry, Frank," she said, "that they are giving you so much
trouble about the money. But we can't let them know about it, can we?"

"Not without doing our intelligence a great injustice," said Goodwin,

600 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

with a smile and a shrug that he had picked up from the natives. ''Ameri-
cano, through I arn, they would have me in the calaboza in half an hour
if they knew we had appropriated that valise. No; we must appear as
ignorant about the money as the other ignoramuses in Coralio."

"Do you think that this man they have sent suspects you?" she asked,
with a little pucker of her brows.

"He'd better not," said the American, carelessly. "It's lucky that no
one caught a sight of the valise except myself. As I was in the rooms when
the shot was fired, it is not surprising that they should want to investigate
my part in the affair rather closely. But there's no cause for alarm. This
colonel is down on the list of events for a good dinner, with a dessert of
American 'bluff' that will end the matter, I think."

Mrs. Goodwin rose and walked to the window. Goodwin followed and
stood by her side. She leaned to him, and rested in the protection of his
strength, as she had always rested since that dark night on which he had
first made himself her tower of refuge. Thus they stood for a little while.

Straight through the lavish growth of tropical branch and leaf and vine
that confronted them had been cunningly trimmed a vista, that ended at
the cleared environs of Coralio, on the banks of the mangrove swamp. At
the other end of the aerial tunnel they could see the grave and wooden
headpiece that bore the name of the unhappy President Miraflores. From
this window when the rains forbade the open, and from the green and
shady slopes of Goodwin's fruitful lands when the skies were smiling, his
wife was wont to look upon that grave with a gentle sadness that was
now scarcely a mar to her happiness.

"I loved him so, Frank!" she said, "even after that terrible flight and
its awful ending. And you have been so good to me, and have made me
so happy. It has all grown into such a strange puzzle. If they were to
find out that we got the money do you think they would force you to
make the amount good to the government?"

"They would undoubtedly try," answered Goodwin. "You are right
about its being a puzzle. And it must remain a puzzle to Falcon and all
his countrymen until it solves itself. You and I, who know more than any
one else, only know half of the solution. We must not let even a hint
about this money get abroad. Let them come to the theory that the presi-
dent concealed it in the mountains during his journey, or that he found
means to ship it out of the country before he reached Coralio. I don't
think that Falcon suspects me. He is making a close investigation, ac-
cording to his orders, but he will find out nothing."

Thus they spake together. Had any one overheard or overseen them
as they discussed the lost funds of Anchuria there would have been a
second puzzle presented. For upon the faces and in the bearing of each of
them was visible (if countenances are to be believed) Saxon honesty and
pride and honorable thoughts. In Goodwin's steady eyes and firm linea-

MONEY MAZE 601

ments, moulded into material shape by the inward spirit of kindness and
generosity and courage, there was nothing reconcilable with his words.

As for his wife, physiognomy championed her even in the face of their
accusive talk. Nobility was in her guise; purity was in her glance. The
devotion that she manifested had not even the appearance of that feeling
that now and then inspires a woman to share the guilt of her partner out
of the pathetic greatness of her love. No, there was a discrepancy here
between what the eye would have seen and the ear have heard.

Dinner was served to Goodwin and his guest in the patio, under cool
foliage and flowers. The American begged the illustrious secretary to
excuse the absence of Mrs. Goodwin, who was suffering, he said, from a
headache brought on by a slight calentura.

After the meal they lingered, according to the custom, over their coffee
and cigars. Colonel Falcon, with true Castilian delicacy, waited for his
host to open the question that they had met to discuss. He had not long to
wait. As soon as the cigars were lighted, the American cleared the way by
inquiring whether the secretary's investigations in the town had furnished
him with any clue to the lost funds.

"I have found no one yet," admitted Colonel Falcon, "who even had
sight of the valise or the money. Yet I have persisted. It has been proven
in the capital that President Miraflores set out from San Mateo with one
hundred thousand dollars belonging to the government, accompanied by
Senorita Isabel Guilbert, the opera singer. The Government, officially
and personally, is loath to believe," concluded Colonel Falcon, with a
smile, "that our last president's tastes would have permitted him to aban-
don on the route, as excess baggage, either of the desirable articles with
which his flight was burdened."

"I suppose you would like to hear what I have to say about the
affairs," said Goodwin, coming directly to the point. "It will not require
many words.

"On that night, with others of our friends here, I was keeping a look-
out for the President, having been notified of his flight by a telegram in
our national cipher from Englehart, one of our leaders in the capital. About
ten o'clock that night I saw a man and a woman hurrying along the
streets. They went to the Hotel de los Estranjeros, and engaged rooms.
I followed them upstairs, leaving Esteban, who had come up, to watch
outside. The barber had told me that he had shaved the beard from the
President's face that night therefore I was prepared, when I entered the
rooms, to find him with a smooth face. When I apprehended him in the
name of the people he drew a pistol and shot himself instantly. In a few
minutes many officers and citizens were on the spot. I suppose you have
been informed of the subsequent facts."

Goodwin paused. Losada's agent maintained an attitude of waiting, as
if he expected a continuance.

602 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"And now/' went on the American, looking steadily into the eyes of
the other man* and giving each word a deliberate emphasis, "you will
oblige me by attending carefully to what I have to add. I saw no valise
or receptacle of any kind, or any money belonging to the Republic of
Anchuria. If President Miraflores decamped with any funds belonging to
the treasury of this country, or to himself, or to any one else, I saw no
trace of it in the house or elsewhere, at that time or at any other. Does
that statement cover the ground of the inquiry you wished to make of
me?"

Colonel Falcon bowed, and described a fluent curve with his cigar. His
duty was performed. Goodwin was not to be disputed. He was a loyal
supporter of the government, and enjoyed the full confidence of the new
president. His rectitude had been the capital that had brought him for-
tune in Anchuria, just as it had formed the lucrative "graft" of Mellinger,
the secretary of Miraflores.

"I thank you, Senor Goodwin," said Falcon, "for speaking plainly.
Your word will be sufficient for the President. But Senor Goodwin, I am
instructed to pursue every clue that presents itself in this matter/ There
is one that I have not yet touched upon. Our friends in France, senor,
have a saying, 'Cherchez la jemme', when there is a mystery without a
clue. But here we do not have to search. The woman who accompanied the
late president in his flight must surely "

"I must interrupt you there," interposed Goodwin. "It is true that when
I entered the hotel for the purpose of intercepting President Miraflores
I found a lady there. I must beg of you to remember that that lady is now
my wife. I speak for her as I do for myself. She knows nothing of the
fate of the valise or of the money that you are seeking. You will say to his
excellency that I guarantee her innocence. I do not need to add to you,
Colonel Falcon, that I do not care to have her questioned or disturbed."

Colonel Falcon bowed again.

"For supuesto, no!" he cried. And to indicate that the inquiry was
ended he added: "And now, senor, let me beg of you to show me that
sea view from your galena of which you spoke. I am a lover of the sea."

In the early evening Goodwin walked back to the town with his
guest, leaving him at the corner of the Calle Grande. As he was returning
homeward one "Beelzebub" Blythe, with the air of a courtier and the
outward aspect of a scarecrow, pounced upon him hopefully from the door
of a pulperia.

Blythe had been re-christened "Beelzebub" as an acknowledgment of
the greatness of his fall. Once in some distant Paradise Lost, he had fore-
gathered with the angels of the earth. But Fate had hurled him headlong
down to the tropics, where flamed in his bosom a fire that was seldom
quenched. In Coralio they called him a beachcomber; but he was, in
reality, a categorical idealist who strove to anamorphosize the dull verities

MONEY MAZE 603

of life by the means of brandy and rum. As Beelzebub, himself, might
have held in his clutch with unwitting tenacity his harp or crown during
his tremendous fall, so his namesake had clung to his gold-rimmed eye-
glasses as the only souvenir of his lost estate. These he wore with im-
pressiveness and distinction while he combed beaches and extracted toll
from his friends. By some mysterious means he kept his drink-reddened
face always smoothly shaven. For the rest he sponged gracefully upon
whomsoever he could for enough to keep him pretty drunk, and sheltered
from the rains and night dews.

"Hallo, Goodwin!" called the derelict, airily. "I was hoping I'd strike
you. I wanted to see you particularly. Suppose we go where we can talk.
Of course you know there's a chap down here looking up the money old
Miraflores lost."

"Yes," said Goodwin, "I've been talking with him. Let's go into Es-
pada's place. I can spare you ten minutes."

They went into the pulperia and sat at a little table upon stools with
rawhide tops.

"Have a drink?" said Goodwin.

"They can't bring it too quickly," said Blythe. "I've been in a drought
ever since morning. Hi — muchacho! — el aguardiente for acd"

"Now, what do you want to see me about?" asked Goodwin, when
the drinks were before them.

"Confound it, old man," drawled Blythe, "why do you spoil a golden
moment like this with business? I wanted to see you — well, this has the
preference." He gulped down his brandy, and gazed longingly into the
empty glass.

"Have another?" suggested Goodwin.

"Between gentlemen," said the fallen angel, "I don't quite like your
use of that word 'another/ It isn't quite delicate. But the concrete idea
that the word represents is not displeasing."

The glasses were refilled. Blythe sipped blissfully from his, as he began
to enter the state of a true idealist.

"I must trot along in a minute or two," hinted Goodwin. "Was there
anything in particular?"

Blythe did not reply at once.

"Old Losada would make it a hot country," he remarked at length, "for
the man who swiped that gripsack of treasury boodle, don't you think?"

"Undoubtedly, he would," agreed Goodwin calmly, as he rose leisurely
to his feet. "I'll be running over to the house now, old man. Mrs. Good-
win is alone. There was nothing important you had to say, was there?"

"That's all," said Blythe. "Unless you wouldn't mind sending in an-
other drink from the bar as you go out. Old Espada has closed my account
to profit and loss. And pay for the lot, will you, like a good fellow?"

"All right," said Goodwin. "Buenas noches!'

604 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

"Beelzebub" Blythe lingered over his cups, polishing his eyeglasses
with a disreputable handkerchief.

"I thought I could do it, but I couldn't," he muttered to himself after
a time. "A gentleman can't blackmail the man that he drinks with."

THE ADMIRAL

Spilled milk draws few tears from an Anchurian administration. Many
are its lacteal sources; and the clocks' hands point forever to milking time.
Even the rich cream skimmed from the treasury by the bewitched Mira-
flores did not cause the newly installed patriots to waste time in unprof-
itable regrets. The government philosophically set about supplying the
deficiency by increasing the import duties and by "suggesting" to wealthy
private citizens that contributions according to their means would be con-
sidered patriotic and in order. Prosperity was expected to attend the
reign of Losada, the new president. The ousted office-holders and military
favorites organized a new "Liberal" party, and began to lay their plans
for a resuccession. Thus the game on Anchurian politics began, like a
Chinese comedy, to unwind slowly its serial length. Here and there
Mirth peeps for an instant from the wings and illumines the florid
lines.

A dozen quarts of champagne in conjunction with an informal sitting
of the president and his cabinet led to the establishment of the navy
and the appointment of Felipe Carrera as its admiral.

Next to the champagne the credit of the appointment belongs to Don
Sabas Placido, the newly confirmed Minister of War.

The President had requested a convention of his cabinet for the dis-
cussion of questions politic and for the transaction of certain routine
matters of state. The session had been signally tedious; the business and
the wine prodigiously dry. A sudden, prankish humor of Don Sabas, im-
pelling him to the deed, spiced the grave affairs of state with a whiff of
agreeable playfulness.

In the dilatory order of business had come a bulletin from the coast
department of Orilla del Mar reporting the seizure by the custom-house
officers at the towa of Coralio of the sloop Estrella del Noche and her
cargo of drygoods, patent medicines, granulated sugar and three-star
brandy. Also six Martini rifles and a barrel of American whisky. Caught
in the act of smuggling, the sloop with its cargo was now, according to
law, the property of the republic.

The Collector of Customs, in making his report, departed from the
conventional forms so far as to suggest that the confiscated vessel be con-
verted to the use of the government. The prize was the first capture to

THE ADMIRAL 605

the credit o£ the department in ten years. The collector took opportunity
to pat his department on the back.

It often happened that government officers required transportation from
point to point along the coast, and means were usually lacking. Further-
more, the sloop could be manned by a royal crew and employed as a coast
guard to discourage the pernicious art of smuggling. The collector also
ventured to nominate one to whom the charge of the boat could be safely
intrusted— a young man of Coralio, Felipe Carrera— not, be it understood,
one of extreme wisdom, but loyal and the best sailor along the coast.

It was upon this hint that tie Minister of War acted, executing a rare
piece of drollery that so enlivened the tedium of executive session.

In the constitution of this small, maritime banana republic was a forgot-
ten section that provided for the maintenance of a navy. This provision —
with many other wiser ones— had lain inert since the establishment of
the republic. Anchuria had no navy and had no use for one. It was
characteristic of Don Sabas — a man at once merry, learned, whimsical
and audacious — that he should have disturbed the dust of this musty and
sleeping statute to increase the humor of the world by so much as a smile
from his indulgent colleagues.

With delightful mock seriousness the Minister of War proposed the
creation of a navy. He argued its need and the glories it might achieve
with such gay and witty zeal that the travesty overcame with its humor
even the swart dignity of President Losada himself.

The champagne was bubbling trickily in the veins of the mercurial
statesmen. It was not the custom of the grave governors of Anchuria to
enliven their sessions with a beverage so apt to cast a veil of disparagement
over sober affairs. The wine had been a thoughtful compliment tendered
by the agent of the Vesuvius Furit Company as a token of amicable rela-
tions— and certain consummated deals — between that company and the
republic of Anchuria.

The jest was carried to its end. A formidable, official document was
prepared, encrusted with chromatic seals and jaunty with fluttering rib-
bons, bearing the florid signatures of state. This commission conferred
upon el Senor Don Felipe Carrera the title of Flag Admiral of the
Republic of Anchuria. Thus within the space of a few minutes and the
dominion of a dozen "extra dry," the country took its place among the
naval powers of the world, and Felipe Carrera became entitled to a salute
of nineteen guns whenever he might enter port.

The southern races are lacking in that particular kind of humor that
finds entertainment in the defects and misfortunes bestowed by Nature.
Owing to this defect in their constitution they are not moved to laughter
(as are their northern brothers) by the spectacle of the deformed, the
feeble-minded or the insane.

Felipe Carrera was sent upon earth with but half his wits. Therefore,

606 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

the people of Coralio called him "El pobrecito loco"— "the poor little
crazed one"— saying that God had sent but half of him to earth, retaining
the other half.

A sombre youth, glowering, and speaking only at the rarest times,
Felipe was but negatively "loco." On shore he generally refused all con-
versation. He seemed to know that he was badly handicapped on land,
where so many kinds of understanding are needed; but on the water his
only talent set him equal with most men. Few sailors whom God had
carefully and completely made could handle a sailboat as well. Five points
nearer the wind than even the best of them he could sail his sloop. When
the elements raged and set other men to cowering, the deficiencies of
Felipe seemed of little importance. He was a perfect sailor, if an im-
perfect man. He owned no boat, but worked among the crews of the
schooners and sloops that skimmed the coast, trading and freighting
fruit out to the steamers where there was no harbor. It was through
his famous skill and boldness on the sea, as well as for the pity felt for his
mental imperfections, that he was recommended by the collector as a
suitable custodian of the captured sloop.

When the outcome of Don Sabas' little pleasantry arrived in the form of
the imposing and preposterous commission, the collector smiled. He had
not expected such prompt and overwhelming response to his recommen-
dation. He despatched a muchacho at once to fetch the future admiral.

The collector waited in his official quarters. His office was in the Calle
Grande, and the sea breezes hummed through its windows all day. The
collector, in white linen and canvas shoes, philandered with papers on an
antique desk. A parrot, perched on a pen rack, seasoned the official tedium
with a fire of choice Castilian imprecations. Two rooms opened into the
collector's. In one the clerical force of young men of variegated com-
plexions transacted with glitter and parade their several duties. Through
the open door of the other room could be seen a bronze babe, guiltless of
clothing, that rollicked upon the floor. In a grass hammock a thin woman,
tinted a pale lemon, played a guitar and swung contentedly in the breeze.
Thus surrounded by the routine of his high duties and the visible tokens
of agreeable domesticity, the collector's heart was further made happy
by the power placed in his hands to brighten the fortunes of the "inno-
cent" Felipe.

Felipe came and stood before the collector. He was a lad of twenty,
not ill-favored in looks, but with an expression of distant and pondering
vacuity. He wore white cotton trousers, down the seams of which he
had sewed red stripes with some vague aim at military decoration. A
flimsy blue shirt fell open at his throat; his feet were bare; he held in
his hand the cheapest of straw hats from the States.

"Senor Carrera," said the collector, gravely, producing the showy com-
mission, "I have sent for you at the President's bidding. This document

THE ADMIRAL 607

that I present to you confers upon you the title of Admiral of this great
republic, and gives you absolute command of the naval forces and fleet of
our country. You may think, friend Felipe, that we have no navy — but
yes! The sloop the Estrdla del Noche, that my brave men captured from
the coast smugglers, is to be placed under your command. The boat is to
be devoted to the services of your country. You will be ready at all times
to convey officials of the government to points along the coast where they
may be obliged to visit. You will also act as a coast-guard to prevent, as
far as you may be able, the crime of smuggling. You will uphold the
honor and prestige of your country at sea, and endeavor to place Anchuria
among the proudest naval powers of the world. These are your instruc-
tions as the Minister of War desires me to convey them to you. For Dios!
I do not know how all this is to be accomplished, for not one word did his
letter contain in respect to a crew or to the expenses of this navy. Perhaps
you are to provide a crew yourself, Senor Admiral — I do not know — but
it is a very high honor that has descended upon you. I now hand you your
commission. When you are ready for the boat I will give orders that she
shall be made over into your charge. That is as far as my instructions go."

Felipe took the commission that the collector handed to him. He
gazed through the open window at the sea for a moment, with his
customary expression of deep but vain pondering. Then he turned with-
out having spoken a word, and walked swiftly away through the hot
sand of the street.

"Pobrecito loco!" sighed the collector; and the parrot on the pen racks
screeched "Loco! — loco! — loco!"

The next morning a strange procession filed through the streets to the
collector's office. At its head was the admiral of the navy. Somewhere
Felipe had raked together a pitiful semblance of a military uniform— a
pair of red trousers, a dingy blue short jacket heavily ornamented with
gold braid, and an old fatigue cap that must have been cast away by one
of the British soldiers in Belize and brought away by Felipe on one of
his coasting voyages. Buckled around his waist was an ancient ship's cutlass
contributed to his equipment by Pedro Lafitte, the baker, who proudly
asserted its inheritance from his ancestor, the illustrious buccaneer. At the
admiral's heels tagged his newly shipped crew— three grinning, glossy,
black Caribs, bare to the waist, the sand spurting in showers from
the spring of their naked feet.

Briefly and with dignity Felipe demanded his vessel of the collector.
And now a fresh honor awaited him. The collector's wife, who played
the guitar and read novels in the hammock all day, had more than a little
romance in her placid yellow bosom. She had found in an old book an
engraving of a flag that purported to be the naval flag of Anchuria. Per-
haps it had so been designed by the founders of the nation; but, as no
navy had ever been established, oblivion had claimed the flag. Laboriously

608 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

with her own hands she had made a flag after the pattern— a red cross
upon a blue-and-white ground. She presented it to Felipe with these
words: "Brave sailor, this flag is of your country. Be true, and defend it
with your life. Go you with God/*

For the first time since his appointment the admiral showed a flicker of
emotion. He took the silken emblem, and passed his hand reverently over
its surface. "I am the admiral," he said to the collector's lady. Being on
land he could bring himself to no more exuberant expression of sentiment.
At sea with the flag at the masthead of his navy, some more eloquent
exposition of feelings might be forthcoming.

Abruptly the admiral departed with his crew. For the next three days
they were busy giving the Estretta del Noche a new coat of white paint
trimmed with blue. And then Felipe further adorned himself by fastening
a handful of brilliant parrot's plumes in his cap. Again he tramped with
his faithful crew to the collector's office and formally notified him that
the sloop's name had been changed to El NacionaL

During the next few months the navy had its troubles. Even an ad-
miral is perplexed to know what to do without any orders. But none
came. Neither did any salaries. El National swung idly at anchor.

When Felipe's little store of money was exhausted he went to the
collector and raised the question of finances.

"Salaries!" exclaimed the collector, with hands raised; "Valgame Diosl
not one centavo of my own pay have I received for the last seven months.
The pay of an admiral, do you ask? Quien sabe? Should it be less than
three thousand pesos? Miral you will see a revolution in this country very
soon. A good sign of it is when the government calls all the time for
pesos, pesos, pesos, and pays none out."

Felipe left the collector's office with a look almost of content on his
sombre face. A revolution would mean fighting, and then the govern-
ment would need his services. It was rather humiliating to be an admiral
without anything to do, and have a hungry crew at your heels begging
for reales to buy plantains and tobacco with.

When he returned to where his happy-go-lucky Caribs were waiting
they sprang up and saluted, as he had drilled them to do.

"Come, muchachos" said the admiral; "it seems that the government
is poor. It had no money to give us. We will earn what we need to live
upon. Thus will we serve our country. Soon"— his heavy eyes almost
lighted up— "it may gladly call upon us for help."

Thereafter El National turned out with the other coast craft and be-
came a wage-earner. She worked with the lighters freighting bananas and
oranges out to the fruit steamers that could not approach nearer than a
mile from the shore. Surely a self-supporting navy deserves red letters
in the budget of any nation.

After earning enough at freighting to keep himself and his crew in

THE FLAG PARAMOUNT 609

provisions for a week Felipe would anchor the navy and hang about
the little telegraph office, looking like one of the chorus of an insolvent
comic opera troupe besieging the manager's den. A hope for orders from
the capital was always in his heart. That his services as admiral had never
been called into requirement hurt his pride and patriotism. At every call
he would inquire, gravely and expectantly, for despatches. The operator
would pretend to make a search, and then reply:

"Not yet, it seems, Senor el Almirante — p oco tiempo!"

Outside in the shade of the lime-trees the crew chewed sugar cane or
slumbered, well content to serve a country that was contented with so
little service.

One day in the early summer the revolution predicted by the collector
flamed out suddenly. It had long been smoldering. At the first note of
alarm the admiral of the navy force and fleet made all sail for a larger port
on the coast of a neighboring republic, where he traded a hastily collected
cargo of fruit for its value in cartridges for the five Martini rifles, the only
guns that the navy could boast. Then to the telegraph office sped the
admiral. Sprawling in his favorite corner, in his fast-decaying uniform,
with his prodigious sabre distributed between his red legs, he waited for
the long-delayed, but now soon expected, orders.

"Not yet, Senor el Almirante" the telegraph clerk would call to him—
"poco tiempo!"

At the answer the admiral would plump himself down with a great
rattling of scabbard to await the infrequent dck of the little instrument
on the table.

"They will come," would be his unshaken reply; "I am the admiral."

THE FLAG PARAMOUNT

At the head of the insurgent party appeared that Hector and learned
Theban of the southern republic, Don Sabas Placido. A traveller, a soldier,
a poet, a scientist, a statesman, and a connoisseur — the wonder was that
he could content himself with the petty, remote life of his native country.

"It is a whim of Placido's," said a friend who knew him well, "to take
up political intrigue. It is not otherwise than as if he had come upon a
new tempo in music, a new bacillus in the air, a new scent, or rhyme, or
explosive. He will squeeze this revolution dry of sensations, and a week
afterward will forget it, skimming the seas of the world in his brigantine
to add to his already world-famous collections. Collections of what? For
Diosl of everything from postage stamps to prehistoric stone idols."

But, for a mere dilettante, the aesthetic Placido seemed to be creating
a lively row. The people admired him; they were fascinated by his bril-

6lO BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

liancy and flattered by his taking an interest in so small a thing as his
native country. They rallied to the call of his lieutenants in the capital,
where (somewhat contrary to arrangements) the army remained faithful
to the government. There was also lively skirmishing in the coast towns.
It was rumored that the revolution was aided by the Vesuvius Fruit Com-
pany, the power that forever stood with chiding smile and uplifted finger
to keep Anchuria in the class of good children. Two of its steamers, the
Traveler and the Salvador, were known to have conveyed insurgent
troops from point to point along the coast.

As yet there had been no actual uprising in Coralio. Military law pre-
vailed, and the ferment was bottled for the time. And then came the
word that everywhere the revolutionists were encountering defeat. In the
capital the president's forces triumphed; and there was a rumor that the
leaders of the revolt had been forced to fly, body pursued.

In the little telegraph office at Coralio there was always a gathering of
officials and loyal citizens, awaiting news from the seat of government.
One morning the telegraph key began clicking, and presently the operator
called, loudly: "One telegram for el Almirante, Don Serior Felipe
Carrera!"

There was a shuffling sound, a great rattling of tin scabbard, and the
admiral, prompt at his spot of waiting, leaped across the room to receive
it.

The message was handed to him. Slowly spelling it out, he found it to
be his first official order— thus running:

Proceed immediately with your vessel to mouth of Rio Ruiz; transport
beef and provisions to barracks at Alf oran.

Martinez, General

Small glory, to be sure, in this, his country's first call. But it had called,
and joy surged in the admiral's breast. He drew his cutlass belt to another
buckle hole, roused his dozing crew, and in a quarter of an hour El
National was tacking swiftly down coast in a stiff landward breeze.

The Rio Ruiz is a small river, emptying into the sea ten miles below
Coralio. That portion of the coast is wild and solitary. Through a gorge
in the ^ Cordilleras rushes the Rio Ruiz, cold and bubbling^ to glide, at
last, with breadth and leisure, through an alluvial morass into the sea.

In two hours El National entered the river's mouth. The banks were
crowded with a disposition of formidable trees. The sumptuous under-
growth of the tropics overflowed the land, and drowned itself in the
fallow waters. Silently the sloop entered there, and met a deeper silence.
Brilliant with greens and ochres and floral scarlets, the umbrageous mouth
of the Rio Ruiz furnished no sound or movement save of the sea-going
water as it purled against the prow of the vessel. Small chance there
seemed of wresting beef or provisions from that empty solitude.

THE FLAG PARAMOUNT 6ll

The admiral decided to cast anchor, and, at the chain's rattle, the forest
was stimulated to instant and resounding uproar. The mouth o£ the Rio
Ruiz had only been taking a morning nap. Parrots and baboons screeched
and barked in the trees; a whirring and a hissing and a booming marked
the awakening of animal life; a dark blue bulk was visible for an in-
stant, as a startled tapir fought his way through the vines.

The navy, under orders, hung in the mouth of the little river for hours.
The crew served the dinner of shark's fin soup, plantains, crab gumbo
and sour wine. The admiral, with a three-foot telescope, closely scanned
the impervious foliage fifty yards away.

It was nearly sunset when a reverberating "hallo-o-o!" came from the
forest to their left. It was answered; and three men, mounted upon mules,
crashed through the tropic tangle to within a dozen yards of the river's
bank. There they dismounted; and one, unbuckling his belt, struck each
mule a violent blow with his sword scabbard, so that they, with a fling of
heels, dashed back again into the forest.

Those were strange-looking men to be conveying beef and provisions.
One was a large and exceedingly active man, of striking presence. He
was of the purest Spanish type, with curling, gray-besprinkled, dark hair,
blue, sparkling eyes, and the pronounced air of a cabalkro grande. The
other two were small, brown-faced men, wearing white military uniforms,
high riding boots and swords. The clothes of all were drenched, bespat-
tered and rent by the thicket. Some stress of circumstance must have
driven them, diable & quatre, through flood, mire and jungle.

"0-he! Senor Almirante," called the large man. "Send to us your boat."

The dory was lowered, and Felipe, with one of the Caribs, rowed
toward the left bank.

The large man stood near the water's brink, waist deep in the curling
vines. As he gazed upon the scarecrow figure in the stern of the dory a
sprightly interest beamed upon his mobile face.

Months of wageless and thankless service had dimmed the admiral's
splendor. His red trousers were patched and ragged. Most of ^the bright
buttons and yellow braid were gone from his jacket. The visor of his
cap was torn, and depended almost to his eyes. The admiral's feet were
bare.

"Dear admiral/' cried the large man, and his voice was like a blast from
a horn, "I kiss your hands. I knew we could build upon your fidelity.
You had our despatch— from General Martinez. A little nearer with your
boat, dear Admiral. Upon these devils of shifting vines we stand with the
smallest security."

Felipe regarded him with a stolid face.

"Provisions and beef for the barracks at Alforan," he quoted.

"No fault of the butchers, Almirante into, that the beef awaits you not.
But you are come in time to save the cattle. Get us aboard your vessel,

6l2 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

senor, at once. You first, cabatteros—& priesal Come back for me. The
boat is too small,"

The dory conveyed the two officers to the sloop, and returned tor the

large man.

"Have you so gross a thing as food, good admiral?" he cried, when
aboard. "And, perhaps, coffee? Beef and provisions! Nombre de Diosl a
little longer and we could have eaten one of those mules that you, Colonel
Rafael, saluted so feelingly with your sword scabbard at parting^ Let us
have food; and then we will sail— for the barracks at Alforan— no?"

The Caribs prepared a meal, to which the three passengers of El
National set themselves with famished delight. About sunset, as was its
custom, the breeze veered and swept back from the mountains, cool and
steady, bringing a taste of the stagnant lagoons and mangrove swamps
that guttered the lowlands. The mainsail of the sloop was hoisted and
swelled to it, and at that moment they heard shouts and a waxing clamor
from the bosky profundities of the shore.

"The butchers, my dear admiral,'* said the large man, smiling, "too
late for the slaughter."

Further than his orders to his crew, the admiral was saying nothing.
The topsail and jib were spread, and tie sloop glided out of the estuary.
The large man and his companions had bestowed themselves with what
comfort they could about the bare deck. Belike, the thing big in their
minds had been their departure from that critical shore; and now that the
hazard was so far reduced their thoughts were loosed to the considera-
tion of further deliverance. But when they saw the sloop turn and fly
up coast again they relaxed, satisfied with the course the admiral had
taken.

The large man sat at ease, his spirited blue eye engaged in the con-
templation of the navy's commander. He was trying to estimate this
sombre and fantastic lad, whose impenetrable stolidity puzzled him. Him-
self a fugitive, his life sought, and chafing under the smart of defeat and
failure, it was characteristic of him to transfer instantly his interest to the
study of a thing new to him. It was like him, too, to have conceived and
risked all upon this last desperate and madcap scheme— this message to
a poor crazed fandtico cruising about with his grotesque uniform and
his farcical title. But his companions had been at their wit's end; escape
had seemed incredible; and now he was pleased with the success of the
plan they had called crack-brained and precarious.

The brief tropic twilight seemed to slide swiftly into the pearly
splendor of a moonlight night. And now the lights of Coralio appeared,
distributed against the darkening shore to their right. The admiral stood,
silent, at the tiller; the Caribs, like black panthers, held the sheets, leaping
noiselessly at his short commands. The three passengers were watching
intently the sea before them, and when at length they came in sight of

THE FLAG PARAMOUNT 613

the bulk of a steamer lying a mile out from the town, with her lights
radiating deep into the water, they held a sudden voluble and close-
headed converse. The sloop was speeding as i£ to strike midway between
ship and shore.

The large man suddenly separated from his companions and ap-
proached the scarecrow at the helm,

"My dear admiral," he said, "the government has been exceedingly
remiss. I feel all the shame for it that only its ignorance of your devoted
service has prevented it from sustaining. An inexcusable oversight has
been made. A vessel, a uniform and a crew worthy of your fidelity shall
be furnished you. But just now, dear admiral, there is business of
moment afoot. The steamer lying there is the Salvador. I and my friends
desire to be conveyed to her, where we are sent on the government's
business. Do us the favor to shape your course accordingly."

Without replying, the admiral gave a sharp command, and put the
tiller hard to port. El National swerved, and headed straight as an arrow's
course for the shore.

"Do me the favor," said the large man, a trifle restively, "to acknowl-
edge, at least, that you catch the sound of my words." It was possible
that the fellow might be lacking in senses as well as intellect.

The admiral emitted a croaking, harsh laugh, and spake.

"They will stand you," he said, "with your face to a wall and shoot
you dead. That is the way they kill traitors. I knew you when you
stepped into my boat. I have seen your picture in a book. You are Sabas
Placido, traitor to your country. With your face to a wall. So, you will die.
I am the admiral, and I will take you to them. With your face to a wall.
Yes."

Don Sabas hah0 turned and waved his hand, with a ringing laugh,
toward his fellow fugitives. "To you, caballeros, I have related the history
of that session when we issued that O! so ridiculous commission. Of a
truth our jest has been turned against us. Behold the Frankenstein's
monster we have created!"

Don Sabas glanced toward the shore. The lights of Coralio were draw-
ing near. He could see the beach, the warehouse of the Bodega Nacional,
the long, low cuartel occupied by the soldiers, and, behind that, gleaming
hi the moonlight, a stretch of high adobe wall. He had seen men stood
with their faces to that wall and shot dead.

Again he addressed the extravagant figure at the helm.

"It is true," he said, "that I am fleeing the country. But, receive the
assurance that I care very little for that. Courts and camps everywhere
are open to Sabas Placido. Vayal what is this molehill of a republic — this
pig's head of a country — to a man like me? I am a faisano of every-
where. In Rome, in London, in Paris, in Vienna, you will hear them say:
'Welcome back, Don Sabas.' Come!— tonto— baboon of a boy—admiral,
whatever you call yourself, turn your boat. Put us on board the Salvador,

614 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

and here is your pay— five hundred pesos in money of the Estados Unidos
—more than your lying government will pay you in twenty years."

Don Sabas pressed a plump purse against the youth's hand. The
admiral gave no heed to the words or the movement. Braced against the
helm, he was holding the sloop dead on her shoreward course. His dull
face was lit almost to intelligence by some inward conceit that seemed
to afford him joy, and found utterance in another parrot-like cackle.

"That is why they do it," he said— "so that you will not see the guns.
They fire— boom !— and you fall dead. With your face to the wall.
Yes."

The admiral called a sudden order to his crew. The lithe, silent Caribs
made fast the sheets they held, and slipped down the hatchway into the
hold of the sloop. When the last one had disappeared, Don Sabas, like a
big, brown leopard, leaped forward, closed and fastened the hatch and
stood, smiling.

"No rifles, if you please, dear admiral/' he said. "It was a whimsey
of mine once to compile a dictionary of the Carib lengua. So, I under-
stood your order. Perhaps now you will "

He cut short his words, for he heard the dull "swish" of iron scraping
along tin. The admiral had drawn the cutlass of Pedro Lafitte, and was
darting upon him. The blade descended, and it was only by a display of
surprising agility that the large man escaped, with only a bruised shoulder,
the glancing weapon. He was drawing his pistol as he sprang, and the
next instant he shot the admiral down.

Don Sabas stooped over him, and rose again.

"In the heart/* he said briefly. "Senores, the navy is abolished."

Colonel Rafael sprang to the helm, and the other officer hastened to
loose the mainsail sheets. The boom swung round; El Nacional veered
and began to tack industriously for the Salvador.

"Strike that flag, senor" called Colonel Rafael. "Our friends on the
steamer will wonder why we are sailing under it."

"Well said/* cried Don Sabas. Advancing to the mast he lowered the
flag to the deck, where lay its too loyal supporter. Thus ended the
Minister of War's little piece of after-dinner drollery, and by the same
hand that began it

Suddenly Don Sabas gave a great cry of joy, and ran down the slanting
deck to the side of Colonel Rafael. Across his arm he carried the flag of
the extinguished navy.

"Mire! mire! senor. Ah, Diosl Already can I hear that great bear of an
Oestreicher shout, 'Du hast mein herz gebrochen!' Mire! Of my friend,
Herr Grunitz, o£ Vienna, you have heard me relate. That man has
travelled to Ceylon for an orchid — to Patagonia for a headdress — to
Benares for a slipper — to Mozambique for a spearhead to add to his
famous collections. Thou knowest, also, amigo Rafael, that I have been

THE FLAG PARAMOUNT 615

a gatherer of curios. My collection o£ battle flags of the world's navies was
the most complete in existence until last year. Then Herr Grunitz secured
two, O! such rare specimens. One of a Barbary state, and one of the
Makarooroos, a tribe on the west coast of Africa. I have not those, but
they can be procured. But this flag, senor — do you know know what it is?
Name of God! Do you know? See that red cross upon the blue-and-white
ground! You never saw it before? Seguarmente no. It is the naval flag of
your country. Mire! This rotten tub we stand upon is its navy— that dead
.cockatoo lying there was its commander — that stroke of cutlass and single
pistol shot a sea battle. All a piece of absurd foolery, I grant you — but
authentic. There has never been another flag like this, and there never
will be another. No. It is unique in the whole world. Yes. Think of what
that means to a collector of flags! Do you know, Coronet mio, how many
golden crowns Herr Grunitz would give for this flag? Ten thousand,
likely. Well, a hundred thousand would not buy it. Beautiful flag! Only
flag! Little devil of a most heaven-born flag! 0-he! old grumbler beyond
the ocean. Wait till Don Sabas comes again to the Konigin Strasse. He
will let you kneel and touch the folds of it with one finger. 0-hel old
spectacled ransacker of the world!"

Forgotten was the impotent revolution, the danger, the loss, the gall
of defeat. Possessed solely by the inordinate and unparalleled passion of
the collector, he strode up and down the little deck, clasping to his breast
with one hand the paragon of a flag. He snapped his fingers triumphantly
toward the east. He shouted. the paean to his prize in trumpet tones, as
though he would make old Grunitz hear in his musty den beyond the
sea.

They were waiting, on the Salvador, to welcome them. The sloop came
close alongside the steamer where her sides were sliced almost to the
lower deck for the loading of fruit. The sailors of the Salvador grappled
and held her there.

Captain McLeod leaned over the side,

"Well, senor, the jig is up, I'm told."

"The jig is up?" Don Sabas looked perplexed for a moment "That
revolution — ah, yes!" With a shrug of his shoulders he dismissed the
matter.

The captain learned of the escape and the imprisoned crew,

"Caribs?" he said; "no harm in them." He slipped down into the
sloop and kicked loose the hasp of the hatch. The black fellows came
tumbling up, sweating but grinning.

"Hey! black boys!" said die captain, in a dialect of his own; "you sabe^
catchy boat and vamos back same place quick."

They saw him point to themselves, the sloop and Coralio. <cYas, yas!"
they cried, with broader grins and many nods.

The four— Don Sabas, the two officers and the captain— moved to quit

6l6 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

the sloop. Don Sabas lagged a little behind, looking at the still form of
the late admiral, sprawled in his paltry trappings.

"Pobrecito loco," he said softly.

He was a brilliant cosmopolite and a cognoscente of high rank; but,
after all, he was of the same race and blood and instinct as this people.
Even as the simple paisanos of Coralio had said it, so said Don Sabas.
Without a smile, he looked, and said, "The poor little crazed one!"

Stooping he raised the limp shoulders, drew the priceless and in-
duplicable flag under them and over the breast, pinning it there with the
diamond star of the Order of San Carlos that he took from the collar of
his own coat.

He followed after the others, and stood with them upon the deck of the
Salvador. The sailors that steadied El National shoved her off. The jab-
bering Caribs hauled away at the rigging; the sloop headed for the shore.

And Herr Grunitz's collection of naval flags was still the finest in the
world.

THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM

One night when there was no breeze, and Coralio seemed closer than
ever to the gratings of Avernus, five men were grouped about the door
of the photograph establishment of Keogh and Clancy. Thus, in all the
scorched and exotic places of the earth, Caucasians meet when the day's
work is done to preserve the fulness of the heritage by the aspersion
of alien things.

Johnny Atwood lay stretched upon the grass in the undress uniform
of a Carib, and prated feebly of the cool water to be had in the cucumber-
wood pumps of Dalesburg. Dr. Gregg, through the presage of his whisk-
ers and as a bribe against the relation of his imminent professional tales,
was conceded the hammock that was swung between the door jamb and
a calabash-tree. Keogh had moved out upon the grass a little table that
held the instrument for burnishing completed photographs. He was the
only busy one of the group. Industriously from between the cylinders of
the burnisher rolled the finished depictments of Coralio's citizens. Blan-
chard, the French mining engineer, in his cool linen viewed the smoke of
his cigarette through his calm glasses, impervious to the heat. Clancy sat
on the steps, smoking his short pipe. His mood was the gossip's; the
others were reduced, by the humidity, to the state of disability desirable
in an audience*

Clancy was an American with an Irish diathesis and cosmopolitan pro-
clivities. Many businesses had claimed him, but not for long. The road-
ster's blood was in his veins. The voice of the tintype was but one of the

THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM 617

many callings that had wooed him upon so many roads. Sometimes he
could be persuaded to oral construction of his voyages into the informal
and egregious. To-night there were symptoms of divulgement in him.

" Tis elegant weather for filibusterin'/' he volunteered. "It reminds me
of the time I struggled to liberate a nation from the poisonous breath of
a tyrant's clutch. Twas hard work. 'Tis strainin' to the back and makes
corns on the hands."

"I didn't know you had ever lent your sword to an oppressed people/*
murmured Atwood, from the grass.

"I did," said Clancy; "and they turned it into a plowshare."

"What country was so fortunate as to secure your aid?" airily in-
quired Blanchard.

"Where's Kamchatka?" asked Clancy, with seeming irrelevance.

"Why, off Siberia somewhere in the Arctic regions," somebody an-
swered, doubtfully.

"I thought that was the cold one/* said Clancy, with a satisfied nod.
"I'm always gettin* the two names mixed. 'Twas Guatemala, then— the
hot one— Fve been filibusterin* with. Yell find that country on the map.
Tis in the district known as the tropics. By the foresight of Providence,
it lies on the coast so the geography man could run the names of the
towns off into the water. They're an inch long, small type, composed of
Spanish dialects, and, 'tis my opinion, of the same system of syntax that
blew up the Maine, Yes, 'twas that country I sailed against, single-handed,
and endeavored to liberate it from a tyrannical government with a single-
barreled pickaxe, unloaded at that. Ye don't understand, of course. 'Tis a
a statement demandin* elucidation and apologies.

" Twas in New Orleans one morning about the first of June; I was
standin' down on the wharf, lookin* about at the ships in the river. There
was a little steamer moored right opposite me that seemed about ready
to sail. The funnels of it were throwin* out smoke, and a gang of roust-
abouts were carryin* aboard a pile of boxes that was stacked up on the
wharf. The boxes were about two feet square, and somethin' like four
feet long, and they seemed to be pretty heavy.

"I walked over, careless, to the stack of boxes. I saw one of them had
been broken in handlin*. Twas curiosity made me pull up the loose top
and look inside. The box was packed full of Winchester rifles. 'So, so/
says I to myself; 'somebody's gettin' a twist on the neutrality laws. Some-
body's aidin* with munitions of war. I wonder where the popguns are
goin'?'

"I heard somebody cough, and I turned around. There stood a little,
round, fat man with a brown face and white clothes, a first-class-looking
little man, with a four-karat diamond on his finger and his eye full of
interrogations and respects. I judged he was a kind of foreigner— may be
from Russia or Japan or the archipelagoes.

6l8 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"'Hist!' says the round man, full of concealments and confidences.
'Will the senor respect the discoveryments he has made, that the mans
on the ship shall not be acquaint? The sefior will be a gentleman that
shall not expose one thing that by accident occur.'

"'Monseer/ says I— for I judged him to be a kind of Frenchman—
'receive my most exasperated assurances that your secret is safe with
James Clancy. Furthermore, I will go so far as to remark, Veev la Liberty
— veev it good and strong. Whenever you hear of a Clancy obstructin'
the abolishment of existin' governments you may notify me by return
mail.'

"The senor is good/ says the dark, fat man, smilin' under his black
mustache. 'Wish you to come aboard my ship and drink of wine a glass.'

"Bein' a Clancy, in two minutes me and the foreigner man were
seated at a table in the cabin of the steamer, with a bottle between us. I
could hear the heavy boxes beiny dumped into the hold. I judged that
cargo must consist of at least 2,000 Winchesters. Me and the brown man
drank the bottle of stuff, and he called the steward to bring another.
When you amalgamate a Clancy with the contents of a bottle you
practically instigate secession. I had heard a good deal about these revolu-
tions in them tropical localities, and I began to want a hand in it.

"'You goin* to stir things up in your country ain't you, monseer?' says
I, with a wink to let him know I was on.

"'Yes, yes,' said the little man, pounding his fist on the table. 'A
change of the greatest will occur. Too long have the people been op-
pressed with the promises and the never-to-happen things to become.
The great work it shall be carry on. Yes. Our forces shall in the capital
city strike of the soonest. Carrambos!'

"'Carrambos is the word/ says I, beginning to invest myself with
enthusiasm and more wine, likewise veeva, as I said before. May the
shamrock of old — I mean the banana-vine or the pie-plant, or whatever
the imperial emblem may be of your down-trodden country, wave
forever.'

"*A thousand thank-yous,' says the round man, 'for your emission of
amicable utterances. What our cause needs of the very most is mans who
will work do, to lift it along. Oh, for one thousands strong, good mans to
aid the General De Vega that he shall to his country bring those success
and glory! It is hard — oh, so hard to find good mans to help in the work.'

" 'Monseer/ says I, leanin* over the table and graspin' his hand, *I don't
know where your country is, but me heart bleeds for it. The heart of a
Clancy was never deaf to the sight of an oppressed people. The family is
filibusterers by birth, and foreigners by trade. If you can use James
Clancy's arms and his blood in denudin' your shores of the tyrant's yoke
they're yours to command/

"General De Vega was overcome with joy to confiscate my condolence

THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM 619

of his conspiracies and predicaments. He tried to embrace me across the
table, but his fatness, and the wine that had been in the bottles, pre-
vented. Thus was I welcomed into the ranks of filibustery. Then the
general man told me his country had the name of Guatemala, and was
the greatest nation laved by any ocean whatever anywhere. He looked at
me with tears in his eyes, and from time to time he would emit the re-
mark, 'Ah! big, strong, brave mans! That is what my country need.'

"General De Vega, as was the name by which he denounced himself,
brought out a document for me to sign, which I did, makin' a fine flourish
and curlycue with the tail of the fy.*

"Tour passage-money/ says the general, business-like, 'shall from
your pay be deduct/

" Twill not,' says I, haughty. Til pay my own passage.' A hundred
and eighty dollars I had in my inside pocket, and 'twas no common
filibuster I was goin' to be, filibusterin' for me board and clothes,

"The steamer was to sail in two hours, and I went ashore to get some
things together Fd need. When I came aboard I showed the general with
pride the outfit. 'Twas a fine Chinchilla overcoat, Arctic over-shoes, fur
cap and earmuffs, with elegant fleece-lined gloves and woolen muffler.

"'Carrambosl' says the little general. "What clothes are these that shall
go to the tropic?' And then the little spalpeen laughs, and he calls the
captain, and the captain calls the purser, and they pipe up the chief engi-
neer, and the whole gang leans against the cabin and laughs at Clancy's
wardrobe for Guatemala.

"I reflects a bit, serious, and asks the general again to denominate the
terms by which his country is called. He tells me, and I see then that 'twas
the t'other one, Kamchatka, I had in mind. Since then I've had difficulty
in separatin' the two nations in name, climate, and geographic disposition.

"I paid my passager— twenty-four dollars, first cabin— and ate at table
with the officer crowd. Down on the lower deck was a gang of second-
class passengers, about forty of them, seemin' to be Dagoes and the like.
I wondered what so many of them were goin* along for.

"Well, then, in three days we sailed alongside that Guatemala. Twas
a blue country, and not yellow as 'tis miscolored on the map. We landed
at a town on the coast, where a train of cars was waitin' for us on a dinky
little railroad. The boxes on the steamer were brought ashore and loaded
on the cars. The gang of Dagoes got aboard, too, the general and me in
the front car. Yes, me and General De Vega headed the revolution, as it
pulled out of the seaport town. That train travelled about as fast as a
policeman goin' to a riot. It penetrated the most conspicuous lot of fuzzy
scenery ever seen outside a geography. We run some forty miles in seven
hours, and the train stopped. There was no more railroad. Twas a sort of
camp in a damp gorge full of wildness and melancholies. They was
gradin' and choppin' out the forests ahead to continue the road. 'Here,'

620 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

says I to myself, £is the romantic haunt of the revolutionists. Here will
Clancy, by the virtue that is in a superior race and the inculcation of
Fenian tactics, strike a tremendous blow for liberty.'

"They unloaded the boxes from the train and begun to knock the tops
off. From the first one that was open I saw General De Vega take the
Winchester rifles and pass them around to a squad of morbid soldiery.
The other boxes was opened next, and, believe me or not, divil another
gun was to be seen. Every other box in the load was full of pickaxes and
spades.

"And then — sorrow be upon them tropics — the proud Clancy and the
dishonored Dagoes, each one of them, had to shoulder a pick or a spade,
and march away to work on that dirty little railroad. Yes; 'twas that the
Dagoes shipped for, and 'twas that the filibusterin' Clancy signed for,
though unbeknownst to himself at the time. In after days I found out
about it. It seems 'twas hard to get hands to work on that road. The
intelligent natives of the country was too lazy to work. Indeed the saints
know, 'twas unnecessary. By stretchin* out one hand, they could seize the
most delicate and costly fruits of the earth, and, by stretchin' out the
other, they could sleep for days at a time without hearin' a seven-o'clock
whistle or the footsteps of the rent man upon the stairs. So, regular, the
steamers travelled to the United States to seduce labor. Usually the im-
ported spade-slingers died in two or three months from eatin* the over-
ripe water and breathin' the violent tropical scenery. Wherefore they
made them sign contracts for a year, when they hired them, and put an
armed guard over the poor divils to keep them from runnin' away.

"Twas thus I was double-crossed by the tropics through a family
failin' of goin* out of the way to hunt disturbances.

"They gave me a pick, and I took it, meditatin' an insurrection on the
spot; but there was the guards handlin' the Winchesters careless, and I
come to the conclusion that discretion was the ..best part of filibusterin'.
There was about a hundred of us in the gang startin' out to work, and
the word was given to move. I steps out of the ranks and goes up to that
General De Vega man, who was smokin' a cigar and gazin' upon the
scene with satisfactions and glory. He smiles at me polite and devilish.
'Plenty work,1 says he, 'for big, strong mans in Guatemala. Yes. T'irty
dollars in the month. Good pay. Ah, yes. You strong, brave man. Bimeby
we push those railroad in the capital very quick. They want you go work
now. Adios, strong mans.'

" 'Monseer,' says I, lingering 'will you tell a poor little Irishman this :
When I set foot on your cockroachy steamer, and breathed liberal and
revolutionary sentiments into your sour wine, did you think I was con-
spirin' to sling a pick on your contemptuous little railroad? And when
you answered me with patriotic recitations, humping up the star-spangled
cause of liberty, did you have meditations of reducin' me to the ranks of

THE SHAMROCK. AND THE PALM 6:21

the stump-grubbin' Dagoes in the chain-gangs of your vile and grovelin'
country?'

"The general man expanded his rotundity and laughed considerable.
Yes, he laughed very long and loud, and I, Clancy, stood and waited.

" 'Comical mans!' he shouts, at last. 'So you will kill me from the laugh-
ing. Yes; it is hard to find the brave, strong mans to aid my country.
Revolutions? Did I speak of r-r-revolutions ? Not one word. I say, big,
strong mans is need in Guatemala. So. The mistake is of you. You
have looked in those one box containing those gun for the guard. You
think all boxes is contain gun? No.

"There is not war in Guatemala. But work? Yes. Good. T'irty dollar
in the month. You shall shoulder one pickaxe, sefior, and dig for the
liberty and prosperity of Guatemala. Off to your work. The guard waits
for you.'

"'Little, fat poodle dog of a brown man,' says I, quiet, but full of
indignations and discomforts, 'things shall happen to you. Maybe not
right away, but as soon as J. Clancy can formulate somethin' in the way
of repartee/

"The boss of the gang orders us to work. I tramps off with the Dagoes,
and I hears the distinguished patriot and kidnapper laughin5 hearty as
we go.

" 'Tis a sorrowful fact, for eight weeks I built railroads for that mis-
behavin* country. I filibustered twelve hours a day with a heavy pick and
a spade, choppin' away the luxurious landscape that grew upon the right
of way. We worked in swamps that smelled like there was a leak in the
gas mains, trampin* down a fine assortment of the most expensive hot-
house plants and vegetables. The scene was tropical beyond the wildest
imagination of the geography man. The trees was all sky-scrapers; the
under-brush was full of needles and pins; there was monkeys jumpin*
around and crocodiles and pink-tailed mockin -birds, and ye stood knee-
deep in the rotten water and grabbed roots for the liberation of Guate-
mala. Of nights we would build smudges in camp to discourage the
mosquitoes, and sit in the smoke, with the guards patin' all around us.
There was two hundred men workin' on the road— mostly Dagoes,
nigger-men, Spanish-men and Swedes. Three or four were Irish.

"One old man named Halloran— a man of Hibernian entitlements and
discretions, explained it to me. He had been workin' on the road a year.
Most of them died in less than six months. He was dried up to gristle
and bone and shook with chills every third night.

" 'When you first come,' says he, 'ye think ye'U leave right away. But
they hold out your first month's pay for your passage over, and by that
time the tropics has its grip on ye. Ye're surrounded by a ragin' forest
full of disreputable beasts— lions and baboons and anacondas— waitin' to
devour ye. The sun strikes ye hard, and melts the marrow in your bones.

622 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

Ye get similar to the lettuce-eaters the poetry-book speaks about. Ye
forget the elevated sintiments of life, such as patriotism, revenge, dis-
turbances of the peace and the dacint love of a clane shirt. Ye do your
work, and ye swallow the kerosene ile and rubber pipestems dished up
to ye by the Dago cook for food. Ye light your pipeful, and say to your-
silf, "Nixt week I'll break away," and ye go to sleep and call yersilf a liar,
for ye know yell never do it.5

"'Who is this general man/ asks I, cthat calls himself De Vega?'

" e Tis the man,* says Halloran, 'who is tryin' to complete the finishin'
of the railroad. Twas the project of a private corporation, but it was
busted, and then the government took it up. De Vegy is a big politician,
and wants to be president. The people want the railroad completed, as
they're taxed mighty on account of it. The De Vegy man is pushin' it
along as a campaign move.'

""Tis not my way/ says I, 'to make threats against any man, but
there's an account to be settled between the railroad man and James
O'Dowd Clancy.'

'Twas that way I thought, mesilf, at first,' Halloran says, with a big
sigh, 'until I got to be a lettuce-eater. The fault's wid these tropics. They
rejuices a man's system. Tis a land, as the poet says, "Where it always
seems to be after dinner." I does me work and smokes me pipe and
sleeps. There's little else in life, anyway. Ye'll get that way yersilf,
mighty soon. Don't be harborin' any sintiments at all, Clancy.'

"1 can't help it/ says I; Tm full of 'em. I enlisted in the revolutionary
army of this dark country in good faith to fight for its liberty, honors and
silver candlesticks; instead of which I am set to amputatin' its scenery
and grubbin' its roots. 'Tis the general man will have to pay for it.5

"Two months I worked on that railroad before I found a chance to get
away. One day a gang of us was sent back to the end of the completed
line to fetch some picks that had been. sent down to Port Barrios to be
sharpened. They were brought on a hand-car, and I noticed, when I
started away, that the car was left there on the track.

"That eight, about twelve, I woke up Halloran and told him my
scheme.

" 'Run away?* says Halloran. 'Good Lord, Clancy, do ye mean it? Why,
I ain't got the nerve. It's too chilly, and I ain't slept enough. Run away?
I told you, Clancy, I've eat the lettuce. I've lost my grip. 'Tis the tropics
that's done it. Tis like the poet says: "Forgotten are our friends that we
have left behind; in the hollow lettuce-land we will live and lay re-
clined." You better go on, Clancy, I'll stay, I guess. It's too early and cold,
and I'm sleepy.'

"So I had to leave Halloran. I dressed quiet, -and slipped out of the
tent we were in. When the guard came along I knocked him over, like
a ninepin, with a green cocoanut I had, and made for the railroad. I got

THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM 623

on that hand-car and made it fly. Twas yet a while before daybreak
when I saw the lights of Port Barrios about a mile away. I stopped the
hand-car there and walked to the town. I stepped inside the corporations
of that town with care and hesitations. I was not afraid of the army of
Guatemala, but me soul quaked at the prospect of a hand-to-hand struggle
with its employment bureau. 'Tis a country that hires its help easy and
keeps 'em long. Sure I can fancy Missis America and Missis Guatemala
passin' a bit of gossip some fine, still night across the mountains. 'Oh,
dear,' says Missis America, 'and it's a lot of trouble I'm havin' ag'in with
the help, seSora, ma'am.' 'Laws, now!' says Missis Guatemala, *y°u d°n>t
say so, ma'am! Now, mine never think of leavin' me — te-he! ma'am/
snickers Missis Guatemala.

"I was wonderin' how I was goin* to move away from them tropics
without bein' hired again. Dark as it was, I could see a steamer ridin' in
the harbor, with smoke emergin* from her stacks. I turned down a little
grass street that run down to the water. On the beach I found a little
brown nigger-man just about to shove off in a skiff,

" 'Hold on, Sambo,' says I, 'sawe English?5

" 'Heap plenty yes,' says he, with a pleasant grin.

" 'What steamer is that?' I asks him, 'and where is it going? And what's
the news, and the good word and the time of day?*

" 'That steamer the ConcUta' said the brown man, affable and easy,
rollin' a cigarette. 'Him come from New Orleans for load banana. Him
got load last night. I think him sail in one, two hour. Verree nice day
we shall be goin' to have. You hear some talkee 'bout big battle, maybe
so? You think catchee General De Vega, senor? Yes? No?*

'"How's that, Sambo?* says I. 'Big battle? What battle? Who wants
catchee General De Vega? I've been up at my old gold mines in the
interior for a couple of months, and haven't heard any news.'

" 'Oh,* says the nigger-man, proud to speak the English, 'verree great
revolution in Guatemala one week ago. General De Vega, him try be
president. Him raise armee — one^— five — ten thousand mans for fight at
the government Those one government send five^-forty— hundred thou-
sand soldiers to suppress revolution. They fight big battle yesterday at
Lomagrande— that about nineteen or fifty mile in the mountain. That
government soldier wheep General De Vega—oh, most bad. Five hun-
dred—nine hundred— two thousand of his mans is kill. That revolution is
smash suppress— bust— very quick. General De Vega, him r-r-run away
fast on one big mule. Yes, carrambos! The general, him r-r-run away,
and his armee is kill. That government soldier, they try to find General
De Vega verree much. They want catchee him for shoot. You think they
catchee that general, senor?*

" 'Saints grant it!* says I. ' Twould be the judgment of Providence for
settin* the warlike talent of a Clancy to gradin* the tropics with a pick

624 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

and shovel. But 'tis not so much a question of insurrections now, me little
man, as 'tis of the hired-man problem. Tis anxious I am to resign a
situation of responsibility and trust with the white wings department of
your great and degraded country. Row me in your little boat out to that
steamer, and I'll give ye five dollars — sinker pacers — sinker pacers/ says
I, reducin' the offer to the language and denomination of the tropic
dialects.

" 'Cinco pesos' repeats the little man. 'Five dollee, you give?'

" 'Twas not such a bad little man. He had hesitations at first, sayin'
that passengers leaving the country had to have papers and passports,
but at last he took me out alongside the steamer.

"Day was just breakin' as we struck her, and there wasn't a soul to be
seen on board. The water was very still, and the nigger-man gave me a
lift from the boat, and I climbed onto the steamer where her side was
sliced to the deck for loadin' fruit. The hatches was open, and I looked
down and saw the cargo of bananas that filled the hold to within six feet
of the top. I thinks to myself, 'Clancy, you better go as a stowaway. It's
safer. The steamer men might hand you back to the employment bureau.
The tropic'll get you, Clancy, if you don't watch out.'

"So I jumps down easy among the bananas and digs out a hole to hide
in among the bunches* In an hour or so I could hear the engines goin*,
and feel the steamer rockin', and I knew we were off to sea. They left
the hatches open for ventilation, and pretty soon it was light enough in
the hold to see fairly well. I got to feelin' a bit hungry, and thought I'd
have a light fruit lunch, by way of refreshment. I creeped out of the hole
I'd made and stood up straight. Just then I saw another man crawl up
about ten feet away and reach out and skin a banana and stuff it into his
mouth. 'Twas a dirty man, black-faced and ragged and disgraceful of
aspect. Yes, the man was a ringer for the pictures of the fat Weary Willie
in the funny papers. I looked again, and saw it was my general man —
De Vega, the great revolutionist, mule-rider and pick-axe importer. When
he saw me the general hesitated with his mouth filled with banana and
his eyes the size of cocoanuts.

"'HistP I says. 'Not a word, or they'll put us off and make us walk.
"Veev la Liberty!"' I adds, copperin' the sentiment by shovin' a banana
into the source of it. I was certain the general wouldn't recognize me.
The nefarious work of the tropics had left me lookin' different. There
was half an inch of roan whiskers coveria' me face, and me costume was
a pair of blue overalls and a red shirt,

"'How you come in the ship, senor?' asked the general as soon as he
could speak.

"'By the back door— whist!' says I. * Twas a glorious blow for liberty
we struck,' I continues; 'but we was overpowered by numbers. Let us
accept our defeat like brave men and eat another banana.'

THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM 625

"'Were you in the cause of liberty fightin', sefior?' says the general,
sheddin' tears on the cargo.

" To the last,' says I. ' 'Twas I led the last desperate charge againt the
minions of the tyrant. But it made them mad, and we was forced to
retreat 'Twas I, general, procured the mule upon which you escaped.
Could you give that ripe bunch a little boost this way, general? It's a bit
out of my reach. Thanks.'

" 'Say you so, brave patriot?' said the general, again weepin'. *Ah, Dies!
And I have not the means to reward your devotion. Barely did I my life
bring away. Carrambos! what a devil's animal was that mule, senor! Like
ships in one storm was I dashed about. The skin on myself was ripped
away with the thorns and vines. Upon the bark of a hundred trees did
that beast of the infernal bump, and cause outrage to the legs of mine.
In the night to Port Barrios I came. I dispossess myself of that mountain
of mule and hasten along the water shore. I find a little boat to be tied.
I launch myself and row to the steamer. I cannot see any mans on board,
so I climbed one rope which hang at the side. I then myself hide in the
bananas. Surely, I say, if the ship captains view me, they shall throw me
again to those Guatemala. Those things are not good. Guatemala will
shoot General De Vega. Therefore, I am hide and remain silent. Life
itself is glorious. Liberty, it is pretty good; but so good as life I do not
think.'

"Three days, as I said, was the trip to New Orleans. The general man
and me got to be cronies of the deepest dye. Bananas we ate until they
were distasteful to the sight and an eyesore to the palate, but to bananas
alone was the bill of fare reduced. At night I crawls out, careful, on the
lower deck, and gets a bucket of fresh water.

"That General De Vega was a man inhabited by an engorgement of
words and sentences. He added to the monotony of the voyage by
divestin' himself of conversation. He believed I was a revolutionist of
his own party, there bein', as he told me, a good many Americans and
other foreigners in its ranks. 'Twas a braggart and a conceited little
gabbler it was, though he considered himself a hero. Twas on himself
he wasted all his regrets at the failin* of his plot. Not a word did the
little balloon have to say about the other misbehavin' idiots that had been
shot, or run themselves to death in his revolution.

"The second day out he was feelin' pretty braggy and uppish for a
stowed-away conspirator that owed his existence to a mule and stolen
bananas. He was tellin* me about the great railroad he had been buildin',
and he relates what he calls a comic incident about a fool Irishman he
inveigled from New Orleans to sling a pick on his little morgue of a
narrow-gauge line. 'Twas sorrowful to hear the little, dirty general tell
the opprobrious story of how he put salt upon the tail of that reckless
and silly bird, Clancy. Laugh, he did, hearty and long. He shook with

626 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

laughing the black-faced rebel and outcast, standin' neck-deep in bananas,
without friends or country.

"'Ah, senor,' he snickers, 'to the death you would have laughed at that
drollest Irish. I say to him: "Strong, big mans is need very much in
Guatemala." "I will blows strike for your down-pressed country,5* he say.
"That shall you do," I tell him. Ah! it was an Irish so comic. He sees one
box break upon the wharf that contain for the guard a few gun.^He think
there is gun in all the box. But that is all pick-axe. Yes. Ah! senor, could
you the face of that Irish have seen when they set him to the work!"

" Twas thus the ex-boss of the employment bureau contributed to the
tedium of the trip with merry jests and anecdote. But now and then he
would weep upon the bananas and make oration about the lost cause of
liberty and the mule.

" "Twas a pleasant sound when the steamer bumped against the pier
in New Orleans. Pretty soon we heard the pat-a-pat of hundreds of bare
feet, and the Dago gang that unloads the fruit jumped on the deck and
down into the hold. Me and the general worked a while at passin' up the
bunches, and they thought we were part of the gang. After about an hour
we managed to slip off the steamer onto the wharf.

" Twas a great honor on the hands of an obscure Clancy, havin* the
entertainment of the representative of a great foreign filibusterin' power.
I first bought for the general and myself many long drinks and things to
eat that were not bananas. The general man trotted along at my side,
leavin* all the arrangements to me. I led him up to Lafayette Square and
set him on a bench in the little park. Cigarettes I had bought for him, and
he humped himself down on the seat like a little fat, contented hobo. I
look him over as he sets there, and what I see pleases me. Brown by
nature and instinct, he is now brindled with dirt and dust Praise to the
mule, his clothes is mostly strings and flaps. Yes, the looks of the general
man is agreeable to Clancy.

"I ask him, delicate, if, by any chance, he brought away anybody's
money with him from Guatemala. He sighs and bumps his shoulders
against the bench. Not a cent All right. Maybe, he tells me, some of his
friends in the tropic outfit will send him funds later. The general was as
clear a case of no visible means as I ever saw.

*I told him not to move from the bench, and then I went up to the
corner of Poydras and Carondelet. Along there is O'Hara's beat In five
minutes along comes QUara, a big, fine man, red-faced, with shinin'
buttons, swingin' his club. Twould be a fine thing for Guatemala to move
into O*Hara*s precinct. Twould be a fine bit of recreation for Danny
to suppress revolutions and uprisin's once or twice a week with his club.

" 'Is 5046 workin' yet, Danny?' says I, walkin' up to him.

" 'Overtime,* says O'Hara, lookin* over me suspicious. 'Want some of
it?'

THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM 627

"Fifty-forty-six is the celebrated city ordinance authorizin' arrest, con-
viction, and imprisonment of persons that succeed in concealin' their
crimes from the police.

"'Don't ye know Jimmy Clancy?' says I. 'Ye pink-gilled monster/ So,
when O'Hara recognized me beneath the scandalous exterior bestowed
upon me by the tropics, I backed him into a doorway and told him what
I wanted, and why I wanted it. 'All right, Jimmy,' says O'Hara, 'Go back
and hold the bench. I'll be along in ten minutes/

"In that time O'Hara strolled through Lafayette Square and spied two
Weary Willies disgracin' one of the benches. In ten minutes more
J. Clancy and General De Vega, late candidate for the presidency of
Guatemala, was in the station house. The general is badly frightened,
and calls upon me to proclaim his distinguishments and rank.

" The man/ says I to the police, 'used to be a railroad man. He's on
the bum now. Tis a little bughouse he is, on account of losin' his job/

" 'Carrarnbosl' says the general, fizzin' like a little soda-water fountain,
'you fought, senor, with my forces in my native country. Why do you
say the lies? You shall say I am the General De Vega, one soldier, one
caballero '

" 'Railroader,' says I again. 'On die hog. No good. Been livin' for three
days on stolen bananas. Look at him. Ain't that enough?'

"Twenty-five dollars or sixty days, was what the recorder gave the
general. He didn't have a cent, so he took the time. They let me go, as
I knew they would, for I had money to show, and O'Hara spoke for me.
Yes; sixty days he got. 'Twas just so long that I slung a pick for the great
country of Kam — Guatemala/'

Clancy paused. The bright starlight showed a reminiscent look of
happy content on his seasoned features. Keogh leaned in his chair and
gave his partner a slap on his thinly-clad back that sounded like the
crack of the surf on the sands.

"Tell 'em, you divil," he chuckled, "how you got even with the tropical
general in the way of agricultural maneuvrings."

"Havin' no money," concluded Clancy, with unction, "they set him
to work his fine out with a gang from the parish prison clearing Ursulines
Street. Around the corner was a saloon decorated genially with electric
fans and cool merchandise. I made that me headquarters, and every
fifteen minutes I'd walk around and take a look at the little man fili-
busterin' with a rake and shovel. Twas just such a hot broth of a day as
this has been. And I'd call at him 'Hey, monseer!' and he'd look at me
black, with the damp showin' through his shirt in places.

" Tat, strong mans,' says I to General De Vega, 'is needed in New
Orleans. Yes. To carry on the good work. Carrambos! Erin go bragh!' "

628 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE

Breakfast in Coralio was at eleven. Therefore the people did not go to
market early. The little wooden marketJiouse stood on a patch of short-
trimmed grass, under the vivid green foliage of a bread-fruit tree.

Thither one morning the venders leisurely convened, bringing their
wares with them. A porch or platform six feet wide encircled the build-
ing, shaded from the mid-morning sun by the projecting, grass-thatched
roof. Upon this platform the venders were wont to display their goods—
newly-killed beef, fish, crabs, fruit of the country, cassava, eggs, dukes
and high, tottering stacks of native tortillas as large around as the som-
brero of a Spanish grandee.

But on this morning they whose stations lay on the seaward side
of the market-house, instead of spreading their merchandise formed them-
selves into a softly jabbering and gesticulating group. For there upon
their space of the platform was sprawled, asleep, the unbeautiful figure
of "Beelzebub" Blythe. He lay upon a ragged strip of cocoa matting, more
than ever a fallen angel in appearance. His suit of course flax, soiled,
bursting at the seams, crumpled into a thousand diversified wrinkles and
creases, inclosed him absurdly, like the garb of some effigy that had been
stuffed in sport and thrown there after indignity had been wrought upon
it. But firmly upon the high bridge of his nose reposed his gold-rimmed
glasses, the surviving badge of his ancient glory.

The sun's rays, reflecting quiveringly from the rippling sea upon his
face, and the voices of the marketmen woke "Beelzebub" Blythe. He sat
up, blinking, and leaned his back against the wall of the market. Drawing
a blighted silk handerchief from his pocket, he assiduously rubbed and
burnished his glasses. And while doing this he became aware that his
bedroom had been invaded, and that polite brown and yellow men were
beseeching him to vacate in favor of their market stuff.

If the senor would have the goodness — a thousand pardons for bring-
ing to him molestation— -but soon would come the compradores for the
day's provisions— surely they had ten thousand regrets at disturbing him!

In this manner they expanded to him the intimation that he must clear
out and cease to clog the wheels of trade.

Blythe stepped from the platform with the air of a prince leaving his
canopied couch. He never quite lost that air, even at the lowest point of
his fall. It is clear that the college of good breeding does not necessarily
maintain a chair of morals within its walls.

Blythe shook out his wry clothing, and moved slowly up the Calle
Grande through the hot sand. He moved without a destination in his

THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE 629

mind. The little town was languidly stirring to its daily life. Golden-
skinned babies tumbled over one another in the grass. The sea breeze
brought him appetite, but nothing to satisfy it. Throughout Coralio were
its morning odors — those from the heavily fragrant tropical flowers and
from the bread baking in the outdoor ovens of clay and the pervading
smoke of their fires. Where the smoke cleared, the crystal air, with some
of the efficacy of faith, seemed to remove the mountains almost to the
sea, bringing them so near that one might count the scarred glades on
their wooded sides. The light-footed Caribs were swiftly gliding to their
tasks at the waterside. Already along the bosky trails from the banana
groves files of horses were slowly moving, concealed, except for their
nodding heads and plodding legs, by the bunches of green-golden fruit
heaped upon their backs. On doorsills sat women combing their long,
black hair and calling, one to another, across the narrow thoroughfares.
Peace reigned in Coralio— arid and bald peace; but still peace.

On that bright morning when Nature seemed to be offering the lotus
on the Dawn's golden platter "Beelzebub" Blythe had reached rock bot-
tom. Further descent seemed impossible. That last night's slumber in a
public place had done for him. As long as he had had a roof to cover
him there had remained, unbridged, the space that separates a gentleman
from the beasts of the jungle and the fowls of the air. But now he was
little more than a whimpering oyster led to be devoured on the sands of a
Southern sea by the artful walrus, Circumstance, and the implacable
carpenter, Fate.

To Blythe money was now but a memory. He had drained his friends
of all that their good-fellowship had to offer; then he had squeezed them
to the last drop of their generosity; and at the last, Aaron-like, he had
smitten the rock of their hardening bosoms for the scattering, ignoble
drops of Charity itself.

He had exhausted his credit to the last real With the minute keen-
ness of the shameless sponger he was aware of every source in Coralio
from which a glass of rum, a meal, or a piece of silver could be wheedled.
Marshalling each such source in his mind, he considered it with all the
thoroughness and penetration that hunger and thirst lent him for the
task. All his optimism failed to thresh a grain of hope from the chaff of
his postulations. He had played out the game. That one night in the open
had shaken his nerves. Until then there had been left to him at least a
few grounds upon which he could base his unblushing demands upon his
neighbors' stores. Now he must beg instead of borrowing. The most
brazen sophistry could not dignify by the name of "loan" the coin con-
temptuously flung to a beach-comber who slept on the bare boards of the
public market.

But on this morning no beggar would have more thankfully received
a charitable coin, for the demon thirst had him by the throat— the

630 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

drunkard's matutinal thirst that requires to be slaked at each morning
station on the road to Tophet

Blythe walked slowly up the street, keeping a watchful eye for any
miracle that might drop manna upon him in his wilderness. As he passed
the popular eating house of Madama Vasquez, Madama's boarders^ were
just sitting down to freshly-baked bread, aguacates, pines and delicious
coffee that sent forth odorous guarantee of its quality upon the breeze.
Madama was serving; she turned her shy, stolid, melancholy gaze for a
moment out the window; she saw Blythe, and her expression turned
more shy and embarrassed. "Beelzebub" owed her twenty pesos. He
bowed as he had once bowed to less embarrassed dames to whom he
owed nothing, and passed on.

Merchants and their clerks were throwing open the solid wooden doors
of their shops. Polite but cool were the glances they cast upon Blythe as
he lounged tentatively by with the remains of his old jaunty air; for they
were his creditors almost without exception.

At the little fountain in the plaza he made an apology for a toilet with
his wetted handkerchief. Across the open square filed die dolorous line of
friends of the prisoners in the calaboza, bearing the morning meal of the
immured. The food in their hands aroused small longing in Blythe. It
was drink that his soul craved, or money to buy it.

In the streets he met many with whom he had been friends and equals,
and whose patience and liberality he had gradually exhausted. Willard
Geddie and Paula cantered past him with die coolest of nods, returning
from their daily horseback ride along the old Indian road. Keogh passed
him at another corner, whistling cheerfully and bearing a prize of newly-
laid eggs for the breakfast of himself and Clancy. The jovial scout of
Fortune was one of Blythe's victims who had plunged his hand oftenest
into his pocket to aid him. But now it seemed that Keogh, too, had forti-
fied himself against further invasions. His curt greeting and the ominous
light in his full gray eye quickened the steps of "Beelzebub," whom
desperation had almost incited to attempt an additional "loan."

Three drinking shops the forlorn one next visited in succession. In all
of these his money, his credit, and his welcome had long since been spent;
but Blythe felt that he would have fawned in the dust at the feet of an
enemy that morning for one draught of aguardiente. In two of the
pulperias his courageous petition for drink was met with a refusal so
polite that it stung worse than abuse. The third establishment had ac-
quired something of American methods; and here he was seized bodily
and cast out upon his hands and knees.

This physical indignity caused a singular change in the man. As he
picked himself up and walked away, an expression of absolute relief
came upon his features. The specious and conciliatory smile that had
been graven there was succeeded by a look of calm and sinister resolve.

THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE 63!

"Beelzebub" had been floundering in the sea of improbity, holding by a
slender life-line to the respectable world that had cast him overboard. He
must have felt that with this ultimate shock the line had snapped, and
have experienced the welcome ease of the drowning swimmer who has
ceased to struggle.

Blythe walked to the next corner and stood there while he brushed the
sand from his garments and repolished his glasses.

"I've got to do it— oh, I've got to do it," he told himself, aloud. "If I
had a quart of rum I believe I could stave it off yet— for a little while.
But there's no more rum for— 'Beelzebub/ as they call me. By the flames
of Tartarus! If Fm to sit at the right hand of Satan somebody has got to
pay the court expenses. You'll have to pony up, Mr. Frank Goodwin.
You're a good fellow; but a gentleman must draw the line at being
kicked into the gutter. Blackmail isn't a pretty word, but it's the next
station on the road I'm travelling.'*

With purpose in his steps Blythe now moved rapidly through the town
by way of its landward environs. He passed through the squalid quarters
of the improvident negroes and on beyond the picturesque shacks of the
poorer mestizos. From many points along his course he could see, through
the umbrageous glades, the house of Frank Goodwin on its wooded hill.
And as he crossed the little bridge over the lagoon he saw the old Indian,
Galvez, scrubbing at the wooden slab that bore the name of Miraflores.
Beyond the lagoon the lands of Goodwin began to slope gently upward.
A grassy road, shaded by a munificent and diverse array of tropical flora,
wound from the edge of an outlying banana grove to the dwelling,
Blythe took this road with long and purposeful strides.

Goodwin was seated on his coolest gallery, dictating letters to his
secretary, a sallow and capable native youth. The household adhered to
the American plan of breakfast; and that meal had been a thing of the
past for the better part of an hour.

The castaway walked to the steps, and flourished a hand.

"Good morning, Blythe," said Goodwin, looking up. "Come in and
have a chair. Anything I can do for you?"

"I want to speak to you in private."

Goodwin nodded at his secretary, who strolled out under a mango tree
and lit a cigarette. Blythe took the chair that he had left vacant.

"I want some money," he began, doggedly.

"I'm sorry," said Goodwin, with equal directness, "but you can't have
any. You're drinking yourself to death, Blythe. Your friends have done all
they could to help you to brace up. You won't help yourself. There's no
use furnishing you with money to ruin yourself with any longer."

"Dear man," said Blythe, tilting back his chair, "it isn't a question of
social economy now. It's past that. I like you, Goodwin; and I've come to
stick a knife between your ribs. I was kicked out of Espada's saloon this

632 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

morning; and Society owes me reparation for my wounded feelings.9*

"I didn't kick you out."

"No; but in a general way you represent Society; and in a particular
way you represent my last chance. I've had to come down to it, old man—
I tried to do it a month ago when Losada's man was here turning things
over; but I couldn't do it then. Now it's different. I want a thousand
dollars, Goodwin; and you have to give it to me."

"Only last week," said Goodwin, with a smile, "a silver dollar was all
you were asking for.*'

"An evidence," said Blythe, flippantly, "that I was still virtuous— though
under heavy pressure. The wages of sin should be something higher than
a peso worth forty-eight cents. Let's talk business. I am the villain in the
third act; and I must have my merited, if only temporary, triumph. I
saw you collar the late president's valiseful of boodle. Oh, I know it's
blackmail; but I'm liberal about the price. I know Tm a cheap villain-
one of the regular sawmill-drama kind— but you're one of my particular
friends, and I don't want to stick you hard."

"Suppose you go into the details," suggested Goodwin, calmly arrang-
ing his letters on the table.

"All right," said "Beelzebub." "I like the way you take it. I despise
histrionics; so you will please prepare yourself for the facts without any
red fire, calcium or grace notes on the saxophone.

"On the night that His Fly-by-night Excellency arrived in town I was
very drunk. You will excuse the pride with which I state that fact; but
it was quite a feat for me to attain that desirable state. Somebody had
left a cot out under the orange trees in the yard of Madama Ortiz's hotel.
I stepped over the wall, laid down upon it, and fell asleep. I was awak-
ened by an orange that dropped from the tree upon my nose; and I laid
there for awhile cursing Sir Isaac Newton, or whoever it was that in-
vented gravitation, for not confining his theory to apples.

"And then along came Mr. Miraflores and his true-love with the treas-
ury in a valise, and went into the hotel. Next you hove in sight, and held
a pow-wow with the tonsorial artist who insisted upon talking shop after
hours. I tried to slumber again; but once more my rest was disturbed —
this time by the noise of die popgun that went off upstairs. Then that
valise came crashing down into an orange tree just above my head; and
I arose from my couch, not knowing when it might begin to rain Sara-
toga trunks. When the army and the constabulary began to arrive, with
their medals and decorations hastily pinned to their pajamas, and their
snickersnees drawn, I crawled into the welcome shadow of a banana
plant. I remained there for an hour, by which time the excitement and
the people had cleared away. And then, my dear Goodwin — excuse me —
I saw you sneak back and pluck that ripe and juicy valise from the orange
tree. I followed you, and saw you take it to your own house. A hundred-

THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE 633

thousand-dollar crop from one orange tree in a season about breaks the
record of the fruit-growing industry.

"Being a gentleman at that time, of course, I never mentioned the
incident to any one. But this morning I was kicked out of a saloon, my
code of honor is all out at the elbows, and I'd sell my mother's prayer-
book for three fingers of aguardiente. Tm not putting on the screws hard.
It ought to be worth a thousand to you for me to have slept on that cot
through the whole business without waking up and seeing anything."

Goodwin opened two more letters, and made memoranda in pencil on
them. Then he called "Manuel!'* to his secretary, who came, spryly.

"The Ariel — when does she sail?" asked Goodwin,

"Senor," answered the youth, "at three this afternoon. She drops down-
coast to Punta Soledad to complete her cargo of fruit. From there she
sails for New Orleans without delay."

"Bueno!" said Goodwin. "These letters may wait yet awhile."

The secretary returned to his cigarette under the mango tree.

"In round numbers," said Goodwin, facing Blythe squarely, "how
much money do you owe in this town, not including the sums you have
'borrowed* from me?"

"Five hundred— at a rough guess," answered Blythe, lightly.

"Go somewhere in the town and draw up a schedule of your debts,"
said Goodwin. "Come back here in two hours, and I will send Manuel
with the money to pay them. I will also have a decent outfit of clothing
ready for you. You will sail on the Ariel at three. Manuel will accompany
you as far as the deck of the steamer. There he will hand you one thou-
sand dollars in cash. I suppose that we needn't discuss what you will be
expected to do in return/'

"Oh, I understand," piped Blythe, cheerily. "I was asleep all the time
on the cot under Madama Ortiz's orange trees; and I shake off the dust
of Coralio forever. I'll play fair. No more of the lotus for me. Your
proposition is O. K. You're a good fellow, Goodwin; and I let you off
light. I'll agree to everything. But in the meantime— I've a devil of a
thirst on, old man "

"Not a centavo" said Goodwin, firmly, "until you are on board the
Ariel. You would be drunk in thirty minutes if you had money now."

But he noticed the blood-streaked eyeballs, the relaxed form, and the
shaking hands of "Beelzebub"; and he stepped into the dining room
through the low window, and brought out a glass and a decanter of
brandy.

"Take a bracer, anyway, before you go," he proposed, even as a man
to the friend whom he entertains.

"Beelzebub" Blythe's eyes glistened at the sight of the solace for which
his soul burned. To-day for the first time his poisoned nerves had been
denied their steadying dose; and their retort was a mounting torment. He

634 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

grasped the decanter and rattled its crystal mouth against the glass in his
trembling hand. He flushed the glass, and then stood erect, holding it
aloft for an instant. For one fleeting moment he held his head above the
drowning waves of his abyss. He nodded easily at Goodwin, raised his
brimming glass and murmured a "health" that men had used in his
ancient Paradise Lost. And then so suddenly that he spilled the brandy
over his hand, he set down his glass, untasted.

"In two hours," his dry lips muttered to Goodwin, as he marched
down the steps and turned his face toward the town.

In the edge of the cool banana grove "Beelzebub" halted, and snapped
the tongue of his belt buckle into another hole.

"I couldn't do it," he explained, feverishly, to the waving banana fronds.
"I wanted to, but I couldn't. A gentleman can't drink with the man that
he blackmails."

SHOES

John de Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower. The
tropics gobbled him up. He plunged enthusiastically into his work, which
was to try to forget Rosine.

Now, they who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain. There is a
sauce au diable that goes with it; and the distillers are the chefs who
prepare it. And on Johnny's menu card it read "brandy." With a bottle
between them, he and Billy Keogh would sit on the porch of the little
consulate at night and roar out great, indecorous songs, until the natives,
slipping hastily past, would shrug a shoulder and mutter things to them-
selves about the "Americanos diablos"

One day Johnny's mozo brought the mail and dumped it on the table.
Johnny leaned from his hammock, and fingered the four or five letters
dejectedly. Keogh was sitting on the edge of the table chopping lazily
with a paper knife at the legs of a centipede that was crawling among
the stationery, Johnny was in that phase of lotus-eating when all the
world tastes bitter in one's mouth.

"Same old thing!** he complained. "Fool people writing for informa-
tion about the country. They want to know all about raising fruit, and
how to make a fortune without work. Half of *em don't even send stamps
for a reply. They think a consul hasn't anything to do but write letters.
Slit those envelopes for me, old man, and see what they want. I'm feeling
too rocky to move/*

Keogh, acclimated beyond all possibility of ill-humor, drew his chair
to the table with smiling compliance on his rose-pink countenance, and
began to slit open the letters. Four of them were from citizens in various

SHOES 635

parts of the United States who seemed to regard the consul at Coralio
as a cyclopaedia of information. They asked long lists of questions, numer-
ically arranged, about the climate, products, possibilities, laws, business
chances, and statistics of the country in which the consul had the honor
of representing his own government.

"Write 'em, please, Billy/* said that inert official "just a line, referring
them to the latest consular report. Tell 'em the State Department will be
delighted to furnish the literary gems. Sign my name. Don't let your pen
scratch, Billy; it'll keep me awake."

"Don't snore," said Keogh, amiably, "and I'll do your work for you.
You need a corps of assistants, anyhow. Don't see how you ever get out
a report. Wake up a minute!— here's one more letter—it's from your
own town, too — Dalesburg."

"That so?" murmured Johnny, showing a mild obligatory interest.
"What's it about?"

"Postmaster writes," explained Keogh. "Says a citizen of the town wants
some facts and advice from you. Says the citizen has an idea in his head
of coming down where you are and opening a shoe store. Wants to know
if you think the business would pay. Says he's heard of the boom along
this coast, and wants to get in on the ground floor."

In spite of the heat and his bad temper, Johnny's hammock swayed
with his laughter. Keogh laughed too; and the pet monkey on the top
shelf of the bookcase chattered in shrill sympathy with the ironical recep-
tion of the letter from Dalesburg.

"Great bunions!" exclaimed the consul. "Shoe store! What'll they ask
about next, I wonder? Overcoat factory, I reckon. Say, Billy—of our 3,000
citizens, how many do you suppose ever had a pair of shoes?"

Keogh reflected judicially.

"Let's see — there's you and me and "

"Not me," said Johnny, promptly and incorrectly, holding up a foot
encased in a disreputable , deerskin zapato. "I haven't been a victim to
shoes in months." .

"But you've got 'em, though," went on Keogh. "And there's Goodwin
and Blanchard and Geddie and old Lutz and Doc Gregg and that Italian
that's agent for the banana company, and there's old Delgado— no; he
wears sandals. And, oh, yes; there's Madama Ortiz, 'what kapes the hotel'
—she had a pair of red slippers at the baile the other night. And Miss
Pasa, her daughter, that went to school in the States— she brought back
some civilized notions in the way of footgear. And there's the co-
mandante's sister that dresses up her feet on feast-days— and Mrs. Geddie,
who wears a two with a Castilian instep— and that's about all the ladies.
Let's see— don't some of the soldiers at the cuartel—no that's so; they're
allowed shoes only when on the march. In barracks they turn their little
toeses out to grass."

636 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

" 'Bout right," agreed the consul. "Not over twenty out of the three
thousand ever felt leather on their walking arrangements. Oh, yes;
Coralio is just the town for an enterprising shoe store— that doesn't want
to part with its goods. Wonder if old Patterson is trying to jolly me! He
always was full of things he called jokes. Write him a letter, Billy. I'll dic-
tate it. We'll jolly him back a few."

Keogh dipped his pen, and wrote at Johnny's dictation. With many
pauses, filled in with smoke and sundry travellings of the bottle and
glasses, the following reply to the Dalesburg communication was per-
petrated:

Mr. Obadiah Patterson,

Dalesburg, Ala.

Dear Sir: In reply to your favor of July 2d, I have the honor to in-
form you that, according to my opinion, there is no place on the habit-
able globe that presents to the eye stronger evidence of the need of a
first-class shoe store than does the town of Coralio. There are 3,000 in-
habitants in the place, and not a single shoe store! The situation speaks
for itself. This coast is rapidly becoming the goal of enterprising busi-
ness men, but the shoe business is one that has been sadly overlooked or
neglected. In fact, there are a considerable number of our citizens actu-
ally without shoes at present.

Besides the want above mentioned, there is also a crying need for a
brewery, a college of higher mathematics, a coal yard, and a clean and
intellectual Punch and Judy show. I have the honor to be, sir,

Your Obt. Servant,
John de Graffenreid Atwood,

U. S. Consul at Coralio.

P£.— Hello! Uncle Obadiah. How's the old burg racking along?
What would the government do without you and me? Look out for a
green-headed parrot and a bunch of bananas soon, from your old friend

Johnny

"I throw in that postscript," explained the consul, "so Uncle Obadiah
won't take offence at the official tone of the letter! Now, Billy, you get
that correspondence fixed up, and send Pancho to the post-office with it.
The Ariadne takes the mail out to-morrow if they make up that load of
fruit to-day."

The night programme in Coralio never varied. The recreations of the
people were soporific and flat. They wandered about, barefoot and aim-
less, speaking lowly and smoking cigar or cigarette. Looking down on
the dimly lighted ways one seemed to see a threading maze of brunette
ghosts tangled with a procession of insane fire-flies. In some houses the
thrumming of lugubrious guitars added to the depression of the triste

SHOES 637

night. Giant tree-frogs rattled in the foliage as loudly as the end man's
"bones" in a minstrel troupe. By nine o'clock the streets were almost
deserted.

Not at the consulate was there often a change of bill. Keogh would
come there nightly, for Coralio's one cool place with the little seaward
porch of that official residence.

The brandy would be kept moving; and before midnight sentiment
would begin to stir in the heart of the self -exiled consul. Then he would
relate to Keogh the story of his ended romance. Each night Keogh would
listen patiently to the tale, and be ready with untiring sympathy.

"But don't you think for a minute*' — thus Johnny would always con-
clude his woeful narrative — "that I'm grieving about that girl, Billy. I've
forgotten her. She never enters my mind. If she were to enter that door
right now, my pulse wouldn't gain a beat. That's all over long ago."

"Don't I know it?" Keogh would answer. "Of course you've forgotten
her. Proper thing to do. Wasn't quite O. K. of her to listen to the knocks
that — er — Dink Pawson kept giving you."

"Pink Dawson!"— a world of contempt would be in Johnny's tones—
"Poor white trash! That's what he was. Had five hundred acres of farming
land, though; and that counted. Maybe I'll have a chance to get back at
him some day. The Dawsons weren't anybody. Everybody in Alabama
knows the Atwoods. Say, Billy — did you know my mother was a De
Graff enreid?"

"Why, no/' Keogh would say; "is that so?" He had heard it some three
hundred times.

"Fact. The De Graffenreids of Hancock County. But I never think of
that girl any more, do I, Billy?"

"Not for a minute, my boy," would be the last sounds heard by the
conqueror of Cupid.

At this point Johnny would fall into a gentle slumber, and Keogh would
saunter out to his own shack under the calabash tree at the edge of the
plaza.

In a, day or two the letter from the Dalesburg postmaster and its an-
swer had been forgotten by the Coralio exiles. But on the 26th day of
July the fruit of the reply appeared upon the tree of events.

The Andador, a fruit steamer that visited Coralio regularly, drew into
the offing and anchored. The beach was lined with spectators while the
quarantine doctor and the custom-house crew rowed out to attend to
their duties.

An hour later Bill Keogh lounged into the consulate, clean and cool
in his linen clothes, and grinning like a pleased shark.

"Guess what?" he said to Johnny, lounging in his hammock.

"Too hot to guess," said Johnny, lazily.

'Tour shoe-store man's come," said Keogh, rolling the sweet morsel on
his tongue, "with a stock of goods big enough to supply the continent as

638 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

far down as Terra del Fuego. They're carting his cases over to the cus-
tom-house now. Six barges full they brought ashore and have paddled
back for the rest. Oh, ye saints in glory! won't there be regalements in
the air when he gets onto the joke and has an interview with Mr. Consul?
It'll be worth nine years in the tropics just to witness that one joyful
moment."

Keogh loved to take his mirth easily. He selected a clean place on the
matting and lay upon the floor. The walls shook with his enjoyment
Johnny turned half over and blinked.

"Don't tell me," he said, "that anybody was fool enough to take that
letter seriously,"

"Four-thousand-dollar stock of goods!" gasped Keogh, in ecstasy. "Talk
about coals to Newcastle! Why didn't he take a ship-load of palm-leaf
fans to Spitzbergen while he was about it? Saw the old codger on the
beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his specs and
squinted at the five hundred or so barefooted citizens standing around."

"Are you telling the truth, Billy?" asked the consul, weakly.

"Am I? You ought to see the buncoed gentleman's daughter he brought
along. Looks! She makes the brick-dust senoritas here look like tar-
babies."

"Go on," said Johnny, "if you can stop that asinine giggling. I hate to
see a grown man make a laughing hyena of himself."

"Name is Hemstetter," went on Keogh* "He's a Hello! what's the

matter now?"

Johnny's moccasined feet struck the floor with a thud as he wriggled
out of his hammock.

"Get up, you idiot/* he said, sternly, "or I'll brain you with this inkstand.
That's Rosine and her father. Gad! what a drivelling idiot old Patterson
is! Get up, here, Billy Keogh, and help me. What the devil are we going
to do? Has all the world gone crazy?"

Keogh rose and dusted himself. He managed to regain a decorous de-
meanor.

"Situation has got to be met, Johnny,** he said, with some success at
seriousness. "I didn't think about its being your girl until you spoke. First
thing to do is to get them comfortable quarters. You go down and face
the music, and 111 trot out to Goodwin's and see if Mrs. Goodwin won't
take them in. They've got the decentest house in town."

"Bless you, Billy!" said the consul. "I knew you wouldn't desert me.
The world's bound to come to an end, but maybe we can stave it of? for
a day or two."

Keogh hoisted his umbrella and set out for Goodwin's house. Johnny
put on his coat and hat. He picked up the brandy botde, but set it down
again without drinking, and marched bravely down to the beach.

In the shade of the custom-house walls lie found Mr. Hemstetter and

SHOES 639

Rosine surrounded by a mass of gaping citizens. The customs officers
were ducking and scraping, while the captain of the Andador interpreted
the business of the new arrivals. Rosine looked healthy and very much
alive. She was gazing at the strange scenes around her with amused in-
terest. There was a faint blush upon her round cheek as she greeted her
old admirer. Mr. Hemstetter shook hands with Johnny in a very friendly
way. He was an oldish, impractical man — one of that numerous class of
erratic business men who are forever dissatisfied, and seeking a change.

"I am very glad to see you, John — may I call you John?" he said. "Let
me thank you for your prompt answer to our postmaster's letter of in-
quiry. He volunteered to write to you on my behalf. I was looking about
for something different in the way of a business in which the profits
would be greater. I had noticed in the papers that this coast was receiving
much attention from investors. I am extremely grateful for your advice
to come. I sold out everything that I possess, and invested the proceeds
in as fine a stock of shoes as could be bought in the North. You have
a picturesque town here, John. I hope business will be as good as your
letter justifies me in expecting."

Johnny's agony was abbreviated by the arrival of Keogh, who hurried
up with the news that Mrs. Goodwin would be much pleased to place
rooms at the disposal of Mr. Hemstetter and his daughter. So there Mr.
Hemstetter and Rosine were at once conducted and left to recuperate
from the fatigue of the voyage, while Johnny went down to see that the
cases of shoes were safely stored in the customs warehouse pending their
examination by the officials. Keogh, grinning like a shark, skirmished
about to find Goodwin, to instruct him not to expose to Mr. Hemstetter
the true state of Coralio as a shoe market until Johnny had been given
a chance to redeem the situation, if such a thing were possible.

That night the consul and Keogh held a desperate consultation on the
breezy porch of the consulate.

"Send 'em back home," began Keogh, reading Johnny's thoughts.

"I would," said Johnny, after a little silence; "but I've been lying to
you, Billy."

"All right about that," said Keogh, affably.

"I've told you hundreds of times," said Johnny, slowly, "that I had for-
gotten that girl, haven't I?"

"About three hundred and seventy-five," admitted the monument of
patience.

"I lied," repeated the consul, "every time. I never forget her for one
minute. I was an obstinate ass for running away just because she said 'No*
once. And I was too proud a fool to go back. I talked with Rosine a few
minutes this evening up at Goodwin's. I found out one thing. You re-
member that farmer fellow who was always after her?"

"Dink Pawson?" said Keogh.

640 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"Pink Dawson. Well, he wasn't a hill of beans to her. She says she
didn't believe a word of the things he told her about me. But I'm sewed up
now, Billy. That tomfool letter we sent ruined whatever chance I had left.
She'll despise me when she finds out that her old father has been made
the victim of a joke that a decent school boy wouldn't have been guilty of.
Shoes! Why he couldn't sell twenty pairs of shoes in Coralio if he kept
store here for twenty years. You put a pair of shoes on one of these Caribs
or Spanish brown boys and what'd he do? Stand on his head and squeal
until he'd kicked 'em off. None of 'em ever wore shoes and they never
will. If I send 'em back home I'll have to tell the whole story, and what '11
she think of me? I want that girl worse than ever, Billy, and now when
she's in reach Fve lost her forever because I tried to be funny when the
thermometer was at 102."

"Keep cheerful," said the optimistic Keogh. "And let 'em open the
store. I've been busy myself this afternoon. We can stir up a temporary
boom in foot-gear anyhow. I'll buy six pairs when the doors open. I've
been around and seen all the fellows and explained the catastrophe.
They'll all buy shoes like they was centipedes. Frank Goodwin will take
cases of 'em. The Geddies want about eleven pairs between 'em. Clancy
is going to invest the savings of weeks, and even old Doc Gregg wants
three pairs of alligator-hide slippers if they've got any tens. Blanchard
got a look at Miss Hemstetter; and as he's a Frenchman, no less than a
dozen pairs will do for him."

"A dozen customers," said Johnny, "for a $4,000 stock of shoes! It won't
work. There's a big problem here to figure out. You go home, Billy, and
leave me alone. I've got to work at it all by myself. Take that bottle of
Three-star along with you—no, sir; not another ounce of booze for the
United States consul. I'll sit here to-night and pull out the think stop. If
there's a soft place on this proposition anywhere I'll land on it. If there
isn't there'll be another wreck to the credit of the gorgeous tropics."

Keogh left, feeling that he could be of no use. Johnny laid a handful
of cigars on a table and stretched himself in a steamer chair. When the
sudden daylight broke, silvering the harbor ripples, he was still sitting
there. Then he got up, whistling a little tune, and took his bath.

At nine o'clock he walked down to the dingy little cable office and hung
for half an hour over a blank. The result of his application was the fol-
lowing message, which he signed and had transmitted at a cost of $33:

To Pinkney Dawson,

Dalesburg, Ala.

Draft for f 100 comes to you next mail. Ship me immediately 500
pounds stiff, dry cockleburrs. New use here in arts. Market price twenty
cents pound. Further orders likely. Rush.

SHIPS 641

SHIPS

Within a week a suitable building had been secured in the Calle Grande,
and Mr. Hemstetter *s stock of shoes arranged upon their shelves. The
rent of the store was moderate; and the stock made a fine showing of
neat white boxes, attractively displayed.

Johnny's friends stood by him loyally. On the first day Keogh strolled
into the store in a casual kind of way about once every hour, and bought
shoes. After he had purchased a pair each of extension soles, congress
gaiters, button kids, low-quartered calfs, dancing pumps, rubber boots,
tans of various hues, tennis shoes and flowered slippers, he sought out
Johnny to be prompted as to names of other kinds that he might inquire
for. The other English-speaking residents also played their parts nobly
by buying often and liberally. Keogh was grand marshal, and made them
distribute their patronage, thus keeping up a fair run of custom for several
days.

Mr. Hemstetter was gratified by the amount of business done thus far;
but expressed surprise that the natives were so backward with their cus-
tom,

"Oh, they're awfully shy," explained Johnny, as he wiped his forehead
nervously. "They'll get the habit pretty soon. They'll come with a rush
when they do come."

One afternoon Keogh dropped into the consul's office, chewing an
unlighted cigar thoughtfully.

"Got anything up your sleeve?" he inquired of Johnny. "If you have
it's about time to show it. If you can borrow some gent's hat in the
audience, and make a lot of customers for an idle stock of shoes come out
on it, you'd better spiel. The boys have all laid in enough foot-wear to last
'em ten years; and there's nothing doing in the shoe store but dolcy far
nienty. I just came by there. Your venerable victim was standing in the
door, gazing through his specs at the bare toes passing by his emporium.
The natives here have got the true artistic temperament. Me and Clancy
took eighteen tin-types this morning in two hours. There's been but one
pair of shoes sold all day. Blanchard went in and bought a pair of fur-
lined house-slippers because he thought he saw Miss Hemstetter go into
the store. I saw him throw the slippers into the lagoon afterwards."

"There's a Mobile fruit steamer coming in to-morrow or next day,"
said Johnny. "We can't do anything until then."

"What are you going to do—try to create a demand?"

"Political economy isn't your strong point," said the consul, impudently.

642 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

"You can't create a demand. But you can create a necessity for a demand.
That's what I am going to do."

Two weeks after the consul sent his cable, a fruit steamer brought him
a huge, mysterious brown bale of some unknown commodity. Johnny's
influence with the custom-house people was sufficiently strong for him
to get the goods turned over to him without the usual inspection. He
had the bale taken to the consulate and snugly stowed in the back room.

That night he ripped open a corner of it and took out a handful of the
cockleburrs. He examined them with the care with which a warrior ex-
amines his arms before he goes forth to battle for his lady-love and life.
The burrs were the ripe August product, as hard as filberts, and bristling
with spines as tough and sharp as needles. Johnny whistled softly a little
tune, and went out to find Billy Keogh.

Later in the night, when Coralio was steeped in slumber, he and Billy
went forth into the deserted streets with their coats bulging like balloons.
All up and down the Calle Grande they went, sowing the sharp burrs
carefully in the sand, along the narrow sidewalks, in every foot of grass
between the silent houses. And then they took the side streets and byways,
missing none. No place where the foot of man, woman or child might
fall was slighted. Many trips they made to and from the prickly hoard.
And then, nearly at the dawn, they laid themselves down to rest calmly,
as great generals do after planning a victory according to the revised
tactics, and slept, knowing that they had sowed with the accuracy of
Satan sowing tares and the perseverance of Paul planting.

With the rising sun came the purveyors of fruits and meats, and ar-
ranged their wares in and around the little market-house. At one end of
the town near the seashore the market-house stood; and the sowing of
the burrs had not been carried that far. The dealers waited long past the
hour when their sales usually began. None came to buy. "Que hay?" they
began to exclaim, one to another.

At their accustomed time, from every 'dobe and palm hut and grass-
thatched shack and dim patio glided women — black women, brown
women, lemon-colored women, women dun and yellow and tawny. They
were the marketers starting to purchase the family supply of cassava,
plantains, meat, fowls, and tortillas. Decollete they were and bare-armed
and bare-footed, with a single skirt reaching below the knee. Stolid and
ox-eyed, they stepped from their doorways into the narrow paths or upon
the soft grass of the streets.

The first to emerge uttered ambiguous squeals, and raised one foot
quickly. Another step and they sat down, with shrill cries of alarm, to
pick at the new and painful insects that had stung them upon the feet.
"Que picadores diablosl" they screeched to one another across the narrow
ways. Some tried the grass instead of the paths, but there they were also
stung and bitten by the strange little prickly balls. They plumped down

SHIPS 643

in the grass, and added their lamentations to those of their sisters in the
sandy paths. All through the town was heard the plaint of the feminine
jabber. The venders in the market still wondered why no customers came.

Then men, lords of the earth, came forth. They, too, began to hop, to
dance, to limp, and to curse. They stood stranded and foolish, or stooped
to pluck at the scourge that attacked their feet and ankles. Some loudly
proclaimed the pest to be poisonous spiders of an unknown species.

And then the children ran out for their morning romp. And now to
the uproar was added the howls of limping infants and cockleburred
childhood. Every minute the advancing day brought forth fresh victims.

Dona Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from her
honored doorway, as was her daily custom, to procure fresh bread from
the panaderia across the street. She was clad in a skirt of flowered yellow
satin, a chemise of ruffled linen, and wore a purple mantilla from the
looms of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, alas! were bare. Her progress was
majestic, for were not her ancestors hidalgos of Aragon? Three steps she
made across the velvety grass, and set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch
of Johnny's burrs. Dona Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas
emitted a yowl even as a wildcat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and
knees, and crawled— ay, like a beast of the field she crawled back to her
honorable door-sill.

Don Senor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, Juez de la Paz, weighing
twenty stone, attempted to convey his bulk to the pulperia at the corner
of the plaza in order to assuage his matutinal thirst. The first plunge of
his unshod foot into the cool grass struck a concealed mine. Don Ildefonso
fell like a crumpled cathedral, crying out that he had been fatally bitten
by a deadly scorpion. Everywhere were the shoeless citizens hopping,
stumbling, limping, and picking from their feet the venomous insects
that had come in a single night to harass them.

The first to perceive the remedy was Esteban Delgado, the barber, a
man of travel and education. Sitting upon a stone, he plucked burrs from
his toes, and made oration:

"Behold, my friend, these bugs of the devil! I know them well. They
soar through the skies in swarms like pigeons. These are the dead ones
that fell during the night. In Yucatan I have seen them as large as oranges.
Yes! There they hiss like serpents, and have wings like bats. It is the
shoes — the shoes that one needs! Zapatos—zapatos para mi!"

Esteb£n hobbled to Mr. Hemstetter's store, and bought shoes. Coming
out, he swaggered down the street with impunity, reviling loudly the
bugs of the devil. The suffering ones sat up or stood upon one foot and
beheld the immune barber. Men, women, and children took up the cry:
"Zapatos! zapatos!"

The necessity for the demand had been created. The demand followed.
That day Mr. Hemstetter sold three hundred pairs of shoes.

644 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"It is really surprising," he said to Johnny, who came up in the evening
to help him straighten out the stock, "how trade is picking up. Yesterday
I made but three sales."

"I told you they'd whoop things up when they got started," said the
consul.

"I think I shall order a dozen more cases of goods, to keep the stock
up," said Mr. Hemstetter, beaming through his spectacles.

"I wouldn't send in any orders yet," advised Johnny. "Wait till you see
how the trade holds up."

Each night Johnny and Keogh sowed the crop that grew dollars by
day. And the end of ten days two-thirds of the stock of shoes had been sold
and the stock of cockleburrs was exhausted. Johnny cabled to Pink Daw-
son for another 500 pounds, paying twenty cents per pound as before.
Mr. Hemstetter carefully made up an order for $1,500 worth of shoes
from Northern firms. Johnny hung about the store until this order was
ready for the mail, and succeeded in destroying it before it reached the
postoffice.

That night he took Rosine under the mango tree by Goodwin's porch,
and confessed everything. She looked him in the eye, and said: "You are
a very wicked man. Father and I will go back home. You say it was a
joke? I think it is a very serious matter."

But at the end of half an hour's argument the conversation had been
turned upon a different subject. The two were considering the respective
merits of pale blue and pink wall paper with which the old colonial man-
sion of the Atwoods in Dalesburg was to be decorated after the wedding.

On the next morning Johnny confessed to Mr. Hemstetter. The shoe
merchant put on his spectacles, and said through them: "You strike me as
being a most extraordinary young scamp. If I had not managed this enter-
prise with good business judgment my entire stock of goods might have
been a complete loss. Now how do you propose to dispose of the rest
of it?"

When the second invoice of cockleburrs arrived Johnny loaded them
and the remainder of the shoes into a schooner, and sailed down the
coast to Alazan.

There, in the same dark and diabolical manner, he repeated his success;
and came back with a bag of money and not so much as a shoestring.

And then he besought his great Uncle of the waving goatee and starred
vest to accept his resignation, for the lotus no longer lured him. He hank-
ered for the spinach and cress of Dalesburg.

The services of Mr. William Terence Keogh as acting consul, pro tern,,
were suggested and accepted, and Johnny sailed with the Hemstetters
back to his native shores.

Keogh slipped into the sinecure of the American consulship with the
ease that never left him even in such high places. The tintype establish-

SHIPS 645

ment was soon to become a thing of the past, although its deadly work
along the peaceful and helpless Spanish Main was never effaced. The
restless partners were about to be off again, scouting ahead of the slow
ranks of Fortune. But now they would take different ways. There were
rumors of a promising uprising in Peru; and thither the martial Clancy
would turn his adventurous steps. As for Keogh, he was figuring in his
mind and on quires of Government letter-heads a scheme that dwarfed
the art of misrepresenting the human countenance upon tin.

"What suits me," Keogh used to say, "in the way of a business prop-
osition is something diversified that looks like a longer shot than it is —
something in the way of a genteel graft that isn't worked enough for the
correspondence schools to be teaching it by mail. I take the long end; but
I like to have at least as good a chance to win as a man learning to play
poker on an ocean steamer, or running for governor of Texas on the
Republican ticket. And when I cash in my winnings, I don't want to find
any widows* and orphans' chips in my stack."

The grass-grown globe was the green table on which Keogh gambled.
The games he played were of his own invention. He was no grubber af-
ter the diffident dollar. Nor did he care to follow it with horn and hounds.
Rather he loved to coax it with egregious and brilliant flies from its habi-
tat in the waters of strange streams. Yet Keogh was a business man; and
his schemes, in spite of their singularity, were as solidly set as the plans
of a building contractor. In Arthur's time Sir William Keogh would have
been a Knight of the Round Table. In these modern days he rides abroad,
seeking the Graft instead of the Grail.

Three days after Johnny's departure, two small schooners appeared
off Coralio. After some delay a boat put off from one of them, and
brought a sunburned young man ashore. This young man had a shrewd
and calculating eye; and he gazed with amazement at the strange things
that he saw. He found on the beach some one who directed him to the
consul's office; and thither he made his way at a nervous gait

Keogh was sprawled in the official chair, drawing caricatures of his
uncle's head on an official pad of paper. He looked up at his visitor.

"Where's Johnny Atwood?" inquired the sunburned young man, in
a business tone.

"Gone," said Keogh, working carefully at Uncle Sam's necktie.

"That's just like him," remarked the nut-brown one, leaning against
the table. "He always was a fellow to gallivant around instead of 'tending
to business. Will he be in soon?"

"Don't think so," said Keogh, after a fair amount of deliberation.

"I s'pose he's out at some of his tomfoolery," conjectured the visitor, in
a tone of virtuous conviction. "Johnny never would stick to anything long
enough to succeed. I wonder how he manages to run his business here,
and never be 'round to look after it.**

646 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"I'm looking after the business just now/' admitted the fro tern, con-
sul.

"Are you— then, say!— where's the factory?"

"What factory?" asked Keogh, with a mildly polite interest.

"Why, the factory where they use them cockleburrs. Lord knows what
they use 'em for, anyway! I've got the basements of both them ships out
there loaded with 'em, I'll give you a bargain in this lot, I've had every
man, woman, and child around Dalesburg that wasn't busy pickm 'em
for a month. I hired these ships to bring 'em over. Everybody thought I
was crazy. Now, you can have this lot for fifteen cents a pound, delivered
on land. And if you want more I guess old Alabam' can come up to the
demand. Johnny told me when he left home that if he struck anything
down here that there was any money in he'd let me in on it. Shall I
drive the ships in and hitch?"

A look of supreme, almost incredulous, delight dawned in Keogh's
ruddy countenance. He dropped his pencil. His eyes turned upon the
sunburned young man with joy in them mingled with fear lest his ecstasy
should prove a dream.

"For God's sake, tell me," said Keogh, earnestly, "are you Dink Paw-
son?"

"My name is Pinkney Dawson," said the cornerer of the cockleburr

market

Billy Keogh slid rapturously and gently from his chair to his favorite
strip of matting on the floor.

There were not many sounds in Coralio on that sultry afternoon.
Among those that were may be mentioned a noise of enraptured and
unrighteous laughter from a prostrate Irish-American, while a sunburned
young man, with a shrewd eye, looked on him with wonder and amaze-
ment. Also the "tramp, tramp, tramp" of many well-shod feet in the
streets outside. Also the lonesome wash of the waves that beat along the
historic shores of the Spanish Main.

MASTERS OF ARTS

A two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh per-
formed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered paper
with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States of Amer-
ica to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned.

The new scheme that his mind had conceived, his stout heart indorsed,
and his blue pencil corroborated, was laid around the characteristics and
human frailties of the new president of Anchuria. These characteristics,

MASTERS OF ARTS 647

and the situation out of which Keogh hoped to wrest a golden tribute,
deserve chronicling contributive to the clear order of events.

President Losada— many called him Dictator— was a man whose
genius would have made him conspicuous even among Anglo-Saxons, had
not that genius been intermixed with other traits that were petty and sub-
versive. He had some of the lofty patriotism of Washington (the man
he most admired), the force of Napoleon, and much of the wisdom of the
sages. These characteristics might have justified him in the assumption^ of
the title of "The Illustrious Liberator," had they not been accompanied
by a stupendous and amazing vanity that kept him in the less worthy
ranks of the dictators.

Yet he did his country great service. With a mighty grasp he shook it
nearly free from the shackles of ignorance and sloth and the vermin that
fed upon it, and all but made it a power in the council of nations. He
established schools and hospitals, built roads, bridges, railroads and pal-
aces, and bestowed generous subsidies upon tie arts and sciences. He was
the absolute despot and the idol of his people. The wealth of the country
poured into his hands. Other presidents had been rapacious without
reason. Losada amassed enormous wealth, but his people had their share
of the benefits.

The joint in his armor was his insatiate passion for monuments and
tokens commemorating his glory. In every town he caused to be erected
statues of himself bearing legends in praise of his greatness. In the walls
of every public edifice, tablets were fixed reciting his splendor and the
gratitude of his subjects. His statuettes and portraits were scattered
throughout the land in every house and hut. One of the sycophants in
his court painted him as St. John, with a halo and a train of attendants
in full uniform. Losada saw nothing incongruous in this picture, and had
it hung in a church in the capital. He ordered from a French sculptor a
marble group including himself with Napoleon, Alexander the Great,
and one or two others whom he deemed worthy of the honor.

He ransacked Europe for decorations, employing policy, money and
intrigue to cajole the orders he coveted from kings and rulers. On state
occasions his breast was covered from shoulder to shoulder with crosses,
stars, golden roses, medals and ribbons. It was said that the man who
could contrive for him a new decoration, or invent some new method of
extolling his greatness, might plunge a hand deep into tie treasury.

This was die man upon whom Billy Keogh had his eye. The gentle
buccaneer had observed the rain of favors that fell upon those ^who min-
istered to the president's vanities, and he did not deem it his duty to
hoist his umbrella against the scattering drops of liquid fortune.

In a few weeks the new consul arrived, releasing Keogh from his tem-
porary duties. He was a young man fresh from college, who lived for
botany alone. The consulate at Coralio gave him the opportunity to study

648 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

tropical flora. He wore smoked glasses, and carried a green umbrella. He
filled the cool, back porch of the consulate with plants and specimens
so that space for a bottle and chair was not to be found. Keogh gazed
on him sadly, but without rancour, and began to pack his gripsack. For
his new plot against stagnation along the Spanish Main required of him
a voyage overseas.

Soon came the Karlsefin again — she of the trampish habits — gleaning
a cargo of cocoanuts for a speculative descent upon the New York mar-
ket. Keogh was booked for a passage on the return trip.

"Yes, I'm going to New York," he explained to the group of his
countrymen that had gathered on the beach to see him off. "But 111 be
back before you miss me. I've undertaken the art education of this pie-
bald country, and I'm not the man to desert it while it's in the early throes
of tintypes."

With this mysterious declaration of his intentions Keogh boarded the
Karlsefin.

Ten days later, shivering, with the collar of his thin coat turned high,
he burst into the studio of Carolus White at the top of a tall building in
Tenth Street, New York City.

Carolus White was smoking a cigarette and frying sausages over an
oil stove. He was only twenty-three, and had noble theories about art.

"Billy Keogh!" exclaimed White, extending the hand that was not
busy with the frying pan. "From what part of the uncivilized world, I
wonder!"

"Hello, Carry,1* said Keogh, dragging forward a stool, and holding his
fingers close to the stove. "I'm glad I found you so soon. I've been looking
for you all day in the directories and art galleries. The free-lunch man
on the corner told me where you were, quick. I was sure you'd be paint-
ing pictures yet."

Keogh glanced about the studio with the shrewd eye of a connoisseur
in business.

"Yes, you can do it," he declared, with many gentle nods of his head.
"That big one in the corner with the angels and green clouds and band-
wagon is just the sort of thing we want. What would you call that, Carry
—scene from Coney Island, ain't it?"

"That," said White, "I had intended to call 'The Translation of Elijah/
but you may be nearer right than I am."

"Name doesn't matter," said Keogh, largely; "it's the frame and the
varieties of paint that does the trick. Now, I can tell you in a minute what
I want. Fve come on a little voyage of two thousand miles to take you
in with me on a scheme. I thought of you as soon as the scheme showed
itself to me. How would you like to go back with me and paint a picture?
Ninety days for the trip, and five thousand dollars for the job."

"Cereal food or hair-tonic posters?" asked White.

MASTERS OF ARTS 649

"It isn't an ad."

"What kind of a picture is it to be?"

"It's a long story," said Keogh.

"Go ahead with it. If you don't mind, while you talk I'll just keep my
eye on these sausages. Let 'em get one shade deeper than a Vandyke
brown and you spoil 'em."

Keogh explained his project. They were to return to Coralio, where
White was to pose as a distinguished American portrait painter who was
touring in the tropics as a relaxation from his arduous and remunerative
professional labors. It was not an unreasonable hope, even to those who
had trod in the beaten paths of business, that an artist with so much
prestige might secure a commission to perpetuate upon canvas the
lineaments of the president, and secure a share of the pesos that were
raining upon the caterers to his weaknesses.

Keogh had set his price at ten thousand dollars. Artists had been paid
more for portraits. He and White were to share the expenses of the trip,
and divide the possible profits. Thus he laid the scheme before White,
whom he had known in the West before one declared for Art and the
other became a Bedouin.

Before long the two machinators abandoned the rigor of the bare studio
for a snug corner of a cafe. There they sat far into the night, with old
envelopes and Keogh's stub of blue pencil between them.

At twelve o'clock White doubled up in his chair, with his chin on his
fist, and shut his eyes at the unbeautiful wall-paper.

"I'll go you, Billy," he said, in the quiet tones of decision. "I've got two
or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I'll take the chance
with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in Paris and one in
Italy. I'll begin to pack to-morrow."

"You'll begin in ten minutes," said Keogh. "It's to-morrow now. The
Karlsefin starts back at four P.M. Come on to your painting shop, and I'll
help you."

For five months in the year Coralio is the Newport of Anchuria. Then
only does the town possess life. From November to March it is practically
the seat of the government. The president with his official family so-
journs there; and society follows him. The pleasure-loving people make
the season one long holiday of amusement and rejoicing. Fiestas, balls,
games, sea bathing, processions and small theatres contribute to their
enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the capital plays in the little
plaza every evening, while the fourteen carriages and vehicles in the town
circle in funereal but complacent procession. Indians from the interior
mountains, looking like prehistoric stone idols, come down to peddle their
handiwork in the streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chatter-
ing, happy, careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children
rigged out with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, under-

650 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

foot, among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the
presidential party, at the opening o£ the season, attended with pomp, show
and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm and delight.

When Keogh and White reached their destination, on the return trip
of the Karlsefin, the gay winter season was well begun. As they stepped
upon the beach they could hear the band playing in die plaza. The village
maidens, with fire-flies already fixed in their dark locks, were gliding,
barefoot and coy-eyed, along the paths. Dandies in white linen, swinging
their canes, were beginning their seductive strolls. The air was full of
human essence, of artificial enticement, of coquetry, indolence, pleasure—
the man-made sense of existence.

The first two or three days after their arrival were spent in preliminar-
ies. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing him to the little
circle of English-speaking residents and pulling whatever wires he could
to effect the spreading of White's fame as a painter. And then Keogh
planned a more spectacular demonstration of the idea he wished to keep
before the public.

He and White engaged rooms in the Hotel de los Estranjeros. The two
were clad in new suits of immaculate duck, with American straw hats,
and carried canes of remarkable uniqueness and inutility. Few caballeros
in Coralio — even the gorgeously uniformed officers of the Anchurian
army — were as conspicuous for ease and elegance of demeanor as Keogh
and his friend, the great American painter, Senor White.

White set up his easel on the beach and made striking sketches of the
mountain and sea views. The native population formed at his rear in a
vast, chattering semicircle to watch his work. Keogh, with his care for
details, had arranged for himself a pose which he carried out with fidelity.
His role was that of friend to the great artist, a man. of affairs and leisure.
The visible emblem of his position was a pocket camera.

"For branding the man who owns it," said he, "a genteel dilettante
with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain't in it with
a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making
snapshots, and you know right away he reads up well in 'Bradstreet.' You
notice these old millionaire boys — soon as they get through taking every-
thing else in sight they go to taking photographs. People are more im-
pressed by a kodak than they are by a tide or a four-carat scarf-pin."
So Keogh strolled blandly about Coralio, snapping the scenery and the
shrinking sefioritas, while White posed conspicuously in the higher
regions of art.

Two weeks after their arrival, the scheme began to bear fruit. An aide-
de-camp of the president drove to the hotel in a dashing victoria. The
president desired that Senor White come to die Casa Morena for an
informal interview.

Keogh gripped his pipe tighdy between his teeth. "Not a cent less

MASTERS OF ARTS 65!

than ten thousand," he said to the artist — "remember the price. And in
gold or its equivalent — don't let him stick you with this bargain-counter
stuff they call money here."

"Perhaps it isn't that he wants," said White.

"Get out!" said Keogh, with splendid confidence. "I know what he
wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American
painter and filibuster now sojourning in this down-trodden country. Off
you go."

The victoria sped away with the artist. Keogh walked up and down,
puffing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and waited. In an hour the
victoria swept again to the door o£ the hotel, deposited White, and van-
ished. The artist dashed up the stairs, three at a step. Keogh stopped
smoking, and became a silent interrogation point.

"Landed," exclaimed White, with his boyish face flushed with elation.
"Billy, you are a wonder. He wants a picture. I'll tell you all about it.
By Heavens! that dictator chap is a corker! He's a dictator clear down to
his finger-ends. He's a kind of combination of Julius Caesar, Lucifer and
Chauncey Depew done in sepia. Polite and grim — that's his way. The
room I saw him in was about ten acres big, and looked like a Mississippi
steamboat with its gilding and mirrors and white paint* He talks English
better than I can ever hope to. The matter of the price came up. I men-
tioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the guard and have me taken
out and shot. He didn't move an eyelash. He just waved one of his
chestnut hands in a careless way, and said, 'Whatever you say.' I am to
go back to-morrow and discuss with him the details of the picture."

Keogh hung his head. Self-abasement was easy to read in his down-
cast countenance.

"I'm failing, Carry," he said, sorrowfully. "I'm not fit to handle these
man's-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart is about
the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I swear I thought
I had sized up that brown man's limit to within two cents. He'd have
melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy. Say — Carry — you'll see the
old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot asylum, won't you, if he
makes a break like that again?"

The Casa Morena, although only one story in height, was a building of
brown stone, luxurious as a palace in its interior. It stood on a low hill
in a walled garden of splendid tropical flora at the upper edge of Coralio.
The next day the president's carriage came again for the artist. Keogh
went out for a walk along the beach, where he and his "picture box" were
now familiar sights. When he returned to the hotel White was sitting
in a steamer-chair on the balcony.

"Well," said Keogh, "did you and His Nibs decide on the kind of
chromo he wants?"

White got up and walked back and forth on the balcony a few times.

652 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

Then he stopped and laughed strangely. His face was flushed, and his
eyes were bright with a kind o£ angry amusement.

"Look here, Billy,* he said, somewhat roughly, "when you first came
to me in my studio and mentioned a picture, I thought you wanted a
Smashed Oats or a Hair Tonic poster painted on a range of mountains or
the side of a continent. Well, either of those jobs would have been Art
in its highest form compared to the one you've steered me against. I can't
paint that picture, Billy. You've got to let me out. Let me try to tell you
what that barbarian wants. He had it all planned out and even a sketch
made of his idea. The old boy doesn't draw badly at all. ^ But, ye god-
dresses of Art! listen to the monstrosity he expects me to paint. He wants
himself in the centre of the canvas, of course. He is to be painted as
Jupiter sitting on Olympus, with the clouds at his feet. At one side of him
stands George Washington, in full regimentals, with his hand on the
president's shoulder. An angel with outstretched wings hovers overhead,
and is placing a laurel wreath on the president's head, crowning him—
Queen of the May, I suppose. In the background is to be cannon, more
angels and soldiers. The man who would paint that picture would have
to have the soul of a dog, and would deserve to go down into oblivion
without even a tin can tied to his tail to sound his memory/'

Little beads of moisture crept out all over Billy Keogh's brow. The
stub of his blue pencil had not figured out a contingency like this. The
machinery of his plan had run with flattering smoothness until now. He
dragged another chair upon the balcony, and got White back to his heat.
He lit his pipe with apparent calm.

"Now, sonny," he said, with gentle grimness, "you and me will have an
Art to Art talk. You've got your art and I've got mine. Yours is the real
Pierian stuff that turns up its nose at bock-beer signs and oleographs of
the Old Mill. Mine's the art of Business. This was my scheme, and it
worked out like two-and-two. Paint that president man as Old King Cole,
or Venus, or a landscape, or a fresco, or a bunch of lilies, or anything he
thinks he looks like. But get the paint on the canvas and collect the spoils.
You wouldn't throw me down, Carry, at this stage of the game. Think of
that ten thousand."

"I can't help thinking of it," said White, "and that's what hurts. I'm
tempted to throw every ideal I ever had down in the mire, and steep
my soul in infamy by painting that picture. That five thousand meant
three years of foreign study to me, and I'd almost sell my soul for that."

"Now it ain't as bad as that," said Keogh, soothingly. "It's a business
proposition. It's so much paint and time against money. I don't fall in
with your idea that that picture would so everlastingly jolt the art side
of the question. George Washington was all right, you know, and nobody
could say a word against the angel. I don't think so bad of that group. If
you was to give Jupiter a pair of epaulets and a sword, and kind of work

MASTERS OF ARTS 653

the clouds around to look like a blackberry patch, it wouldn't make such
a bad battle scene. Why, if we hadn't already settled on the price, he
ought to pay an extra thousand for Washington, and the angel ought to
raise it five hundred."

"You don't understand, Billy," said White, with an uneasy laugh.
"Some of us fellows who try to paint have big notions about Art. I
wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and
forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar
of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet. And I wanted 'em to go
away and ask, 'What else has he done?' And I didn't want 'em to find a
thing; not a portrait nor a magazine cover nor an illustration nor a
drawing of a girl— nothing but the picture. That's why I've lived on fried
sausages, and tried to keep true to myself. I persuaded myself to do this
portrait for the chance it might give to me to study abroad. But this howl-
ing, screaming caricature 1 Good Lord ! can't you see how it is ? "

"Sure," said Keogh, as tenderly as he would have spoken to a child, and
he laid a long fore-finger on White's knee. "I see. It's bad to have your
art all slugged up like that. I know. You wanted to paint a big thing like
the panorama of the battle of Gettysburg. But let me kalsomine you a
little mental sketch to consider. Up to date we're out $385.50 on this
scheme. Our capital took every cent both of us could raise. We've got
about enough left to get back to New York on. I need my share of that
ten thousand. I want to work a copper deal in Idaho, and make a
hundred thousand. That's the business end of the thing. Come down off
your art perch, Carry, and let's land that hatful of dollars."

"Billy," said White, with an effort, "111 try. I won't say 111 do it, but
I'll try. I'll go at it, and put it through if I can."

"That's business," said Keogh heartily. "Good boy! Now, here's an-
other thing—rush that picture— crowd it through as quick as you can.
Get a couple of boys to help you mix the paint if necessary. I've picked
up some pointers around town. The people here are beginning to get
sick of Mr. President. They say he's been too free with concessions; and
they accuse him of trying to make a dicker with England to sell out the
country. We want that picture done and paid for before there's any row."

In the great patio of Casa Morena, the president caused to be stretched
a huge canvas. Under this White set up his temporary studio. For two
hours each day the great man sat to him.

White worked faithfully. But, as the work progressed, he had seasons
of bitter scorn, of infinite self-contempt, of sullen gloom and sardonic
gaiety. Keogh, with the patience of a great general, soothed, coaxed,
argued — kept him at the picture.

At the end of a month White announced that the picture was com-
pleted—Jupiter, Washington, angels, clouds, cannon and all. His face was
pale and his mouth drawn straight when he told Keogh, He said the

654 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

president was much pleased with it. It was to be hung in the National
Gallery of Statesmen and Heroes. The artist had been requested to re-
turn to Casa Morena on the following day to receive payment. At the
appointed time he left the hotel, silent under his friend's joyful talk of
their success.

An hour later he walked into the room where Keogh was waiting,
threw his hat on the floor, and sat upon the table.

"Billy," he said, in strained and laboring tones, "I've a little money out
West in a small business that my brother is running. It's what I've been
living on while I've been studying art. I'll draw out my share and pay
you back what you've lost on this scheme."

"Lost!*' exclaimed Keogh, jumping up. "Didn't you get paid for the
picture?"

"Yes, I got paid," said White. "But just now there isn't any picture,
and there isn't any pay. If you care to hear about it, here are the edifying
details. The president and I were looking at the painting. His secretary
brought a bank draft on New York for ten thousand dollars and handed
it to me. The moment I touched it I went wild. I tore it into little pieces
and threw them on the floor. A workman was repainting the pillars inside
the patio. A bucket of his paint happened to be convenient. I picked up
his brush and slapped a quart of blue paint all over that ten-thousand-
dollar nightmare. I bowed, and walked out The president didn't move
or speak. That was one time he was taken by surprise. It's tough on you,
Billy, but I couldn't help it"

There seemed to be excitement in Coralio. Outside there was a con-
fused, rising murmur pierced by high-pitched cries. "Abajo el traidor—
Muerte al traidorl" were the words they seemed to form.

"Listen to that!" exclaimed White, bitterly: "I know that much Span-
ish. They're shouting, 'Down with the traitor!' I heard them before. I
felt that they meant me. I was a traitor to Art. The picture had to go."

" *Down with the blank fool* would have suited your case better," said
Keogh with fiery emphasis. "You tear up ten thousand dollars like an
old rag because the way you've spread on five dollars' worth of paint hurts
your conscience. Next time I pick a side-partner in a scheme the man has
got to go before a notary and swear he never even heard the word 'ideal'
mentioned."

Keogh strode from the room, white-hot White paid little attention to
his resentment. The scorn of Billy Keogh seemed a trifling thing beside
the greater self-scorn he had escaped.

In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The
cause of this demonstration of displeasure was the presence in the town
of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his

fovernment come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed
is people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only

MASTERS OF ARTS 655

had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to
be transferred into the hands of the English, and the custom-houses
turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring people had
determined to make their protest felt.

On that night, in Coralio and in other towns, their ire found vent.
Yelling mobs, mercurial but dangerous, roamed the streets. They over-
threw the great bronze statue of the president that stood in the centre of
the plaza, and hacked it to shapeless pieces. They tore from public build-
ings the tablets set there proclaiming the glory of the "Illustrious Liber-
ator.'* His pictures in the government office were demolished. The mobs
even attacked the Casa Morena, but were driven away by the military,
which remained faithful to the executive. All the night terror reigned.

The greatness of Losada was shown by the fact that by noon the next
day order was restored, and he was still absolute. He issued proclama-
tions denying positively that any negotiations of any kind had been en-
tered into with England. Sir Stafford Vaughn, the pink-cheeked English-
man, also declared in placards and in public print that his presence there
had no international significance. He was a traveller without guile. In
fact (so he stated), he had not even spoken with the president or been
in his presence since his arrival.

During this disturbance, White was preparing for his homeward voy-
age in the steamship that was to sail within two or three days. About
noon, Keogh, the restless, took his camera out with the hope of speeding
the lagging hours. The town was now as quiet as if peace had never de-
parted from her perch on the red-tiled roofs.

About the middle of the afternoon, Keogh hurried back to the hotel
with something decidedly special in his air. He retired to the little room
where he developed his pictures.

Later on he came out to White on the balcony, with a luminous, grim,
predatory smile on his face.

"Do you know what that is?" he asked, holding up a 4 x 5 photograph
mounted on cardboard.

"Snap-shot of a senorita sitting in the sand — alliteration unintentional,"
guessed White, lazily.

"Wrong," said Keogh with shining eyes. "It's a slung-shot. It's a can of
dynamite. It's a gold mine. It's a sight-draft on your president man for
twenty thousand dollars — yes, sir — twenty thousand this time, and no
spoiling the picture. No ethics of art in the way. Art! You with your
smelly little tubes! I've got you skinned to death with a kodak. Take a
look at that."

White took the picture in his hand, and gave a long whistle.

"Jove," he exclaimed, "but wouldn't that stir up a row in town if you
let it be seen. How in the world did you get it, Billy?"

"You know that high wall around the president man's back garden?

656 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

I was up there trying to get a bird's-eye of the town. I happened to notice
a chink in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster had slid out. Thinks
I, 111 take a peep through to see how Mr. President's cabbages are grow-
ing. The first thing I saw was him and this Sir Englishman sitting at a
little table about twenty feet away. They had the table all spread over
with documents, and they were hobnobbing over them as thick as two
pirates. Twas a nice corner of the garden, all private and shady with
palms and orange trees, and they had a pail of champagne set by handy
in the grass. I knew then was the time for me to make my big hit in Art.
So I raised the machine up to the crack, and pressed the button. Just as I
do so them old boys shook hands on the deal— you see they took that
way in the picture,"

Keogh put on his coat and hat.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked White.

"Me," said Keogh in a hurt tone, "why, I'm going to tie a pink ribbon
to it and hang it on the what-not, of course. I'm surprised at you. But
while I'm out you just try to figure out what gingercake potentate would
be most likely to want to buy this work of art for his private collection-
just to keep it out of circulation."

The sunset was reddening the tops of the cocoanut palms when Billy
Keogh came back from Casa Morena. He nodded to the artist's question-
ing gaze; and lay down on a cot with his hands under the back of his
head.

"I saw him. He paid the money like a little man. They didn't want to
let me in at first. I told 'em it was important. Yes, that president man
is on the plenty-able list. He's got a beautiful business system about the
way he uses his brains. All I had to do was to hold up the photograph so
he could see it, and name the price. He just smiled, and walked over to
a safe and got the cash. Twenty one-thousand-dollar brand-new United
States Treasury notes he laid on the table, like I'd pay out a dollar and
a quarter. Fine notes, too — they crackled with a sound like burning the
brush off a ten-acre lot."

"Let's try the feel of one," said White, curiously. "I never saw a thou-
sand-dollar bill." Keogh did not immediately respond.

"Carry," he said, in an absent-minded way, "you think a heap of your
art, don't you?"

"More," said White, frankly, "than has been for the financial good of
myself and my friends."

"I thought you were a fool the other day," went on Keogh, quietly,
"and I'm not sure now that you wasn't But if you was, so am I. I've been
in some funny deals, Carry, but I've always managed to scramble fair,
and match my brains and capital against the other fellow's. But when it
comes to—well, when you've got the other fellow cinched, and the screws
on him, and he's got to put up— why, it don't strike me as being a man's

DICKY 657

game. They've got a name for it, you know; it's — confound you, don't
you understand? A fellow feels— it's something like that blamed art of
yours — he — well, I tore that photograph up and laid the pieces on that
stack of money and shoved the whole business back across the table.
'Excuse me, Mr. Losada,' I said, 'but I guess I've made a mistake in the
price. You get the photo for nothing.' Now, Carry, you get out the pencil,
and well do some more figuring. I'd like to save enough out of our
capital for you to have some fried sausages in your joint when you get
back to New York."

DICKY

There is little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen
there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the
branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and a cigarette.

After the ineffectual revolt against the administration of President
Losada, the country settled again into quiet toleration of the abuses with
which he had been charged. In Coralio old political enemies went arm-
in-arm, lightly eschewing for the time all differences of opinion.

The failure of the art expedition did not stretch the cat-footed Keogh
upon his back. The ups and downs of Fortune made smooth travelling
for his nimble steps. His blue pencil stub was at work again before the
smoke of the steamer on which White sailed had cleared away from the
horizon. He had but to speak a word to Geddie to find his credit nego-
tiable for whatever goods he wanted from the store of Brannigan & Com-
pany. On the same day on which White arrived in New York, Keogh,
at the rear of a train of five pack mules loaded with hardware and cut-
lery, set his face toward the grim, interior mountains. There the Indian
tribes wash gold dust from the auriferous streams; and when a market is
brought to them trading is brisk and muy bueno in the Cordilleras.

In Coralio Time folded his wings and paced wearily along his drowsy
path. They who had most cheered the torpid hours were gone. Clancy
had sailed on a Spanish barque for Colon, contemplating a cut across
the isthmus and then a further voyage to end at Calao, where the fighting
was said to be on. Geddie, whose quiet and genial nature had once
served to mitigate the frequent dull reaction of lotus eating, was now a
homeman, happy with his bright orchid, Paula, and never even dreaming
of or regretting the unsolved, sealed and monogrammed Bottle whose
contents, now inconsiderable, were held safely in the keeping of the sea.

Well may the Walrus, most discerning and eclectic of beasts, place
sealing-wax midway on his programme of topics that fall pertinent and
diverting upon the ear.

658 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

Atwood was gone— he of the hospitable back porch and ingenuous
cunning. Dr. Gregg, with his trepanning story smouldering within him,
was a whiskered volcano, always showing signs of imminent eruption,
and was not to be considered in the ranks of those who might contribute
to the amelioration of ennui. The new consul's note chimed with the sad
sea waves and the violent tropical greens — he had not a bar of Schehera-
zade or of the Round Table in his lute. Goodwin was employed with
large projects: what time he was loosed from them found him at his
home, where he loved to be. Therefore it will be seen that there was
a dearth of fellowship and entertainment among the foreign contingent
of Coralio.

And then Dicky Maloney dropped down from the clouds upon the
town, and amused it.

Nobody knew where Dicky Maloney hailed from or how he reached
Coralio. He appeared there one day; and that was all. He afterward said
that he came on the fruit steamer Thor; but an inspection of the Thors
passenger list of that date was found to be Maloneyless. Curiosity, how-
ever, soon perished; and Dicky took his place among the odd fish cast
up by the Caribbean.

He was an active, devil-may-care, rollicking fellow with an engaging
gray eye, the most irresistible grin, a rather dark or much sunburned
complexion, and a head of the fieriest red hair ever seen in that country.
Speaking the Spanish language as well as he spoke English, and seeming
always to have plenty of silver in his pockets, it was not long before he
was a welcome companion whithersoever he went. He had an extreme
fondness for vino bianco, and gained the reputation of being able to drink
more of it than any three men in town. Everybody called him "Dicky";
everybody cheered up at the sight of him— especially the natives, to whom
his marvellous red hair and his free-and-easy style were a constant delight
and envy. Wherever you went in the town you would soon see Dicky or
hear his genial laugh, and find around him a group of admirers who
appreciated him both for his good nature and the white wine he was
always so ready to buy.

A considerable amount of speculation was had concerning the object
of his sojourn there, until one day he silenced this by opening a small
shop for the sale of tobacco, dukes and the handiwork of the interior
Indians— fibre-and-silk-woven goods, deerskin zapatos and basketwork of
tuk reeds. Even then he did not change his habits; for he was drinking
and playing cards half the day and night with the comandante, the col-
lector of customs, the Jefe Politico and other gay dogs among the native
officials.

One day Dicky saw Pasa, the daughter of Madama Ortiz, sitting in
the side-door of the Hotel de los Estranjeros. He stopped in his tracks.

DICKY 659

still, for the first time in Coralio; and then he sped, swift as a deer, to
find Vasquez, a gilded native youth, to present him.

The young men had named Pasa "La Santita Naranjadita" Naran-
jadita is a Spanish word for a certain color that you must go to more
trouble to describe in English. By saying "The little saint, tinted the most
beautiful delicate-slightly-orange-golden," you will approximate the de-
scription of Madama Ortiz's daughter.

La Madama Ortiz sold rum in addition to other liquors. Now, you must
know that the rum expiates whatever opprobrium attends upon the other
commodities. For rum-making, mind you, is a government monopoly;
and to keep a government dispensary assures respectability if not pre-
eminence. Moreover, the saddest of precisions could find no fault with the
conduct of the shop. Customers drank there in the lowest of spirits and
fearsomely, as in the shadow of the dead; for Madama's ancient and
vaunted lineage counteracted even the rum's behest to be merry. For,
was she not of the Iglesias, who landed with Pizarro? And had not her
deceased husband been comisionado de caminos y puentes for the district?

In the evenings Pasa sat by the window in the room next to the one
where they drank, and strummed dreamily upon her guitar. And then,
by twos and threes, would come visiting young caballeros and occupy the
prim line of chairs set against the wall of this room. They were there to
besiege the heart of "La Santita" Their method (which is not proof
against intelligent competition) consisted of expanding the chest, looking
valorous, and consuming a gross or two of cigarettes. Even saints delicately
oranged prefer to be wooed differently.

Dona Pasa would tide over the vast chasms of nicotinized silence with
music from her guitar, while she wondered if the romances she had read
about gallant and more — more contiguous cavaliers were all lies. At
somewhat regular intervals Madama would glide in from the dispensary
with a sort of drought-suggesting gleam in her eye, and there would be a
rustling of stiffly-starched white trousers as one of the caballeros would
propose an adjournment to the bar.

That Dicky Maloney would, sooner or later, explore this field was a
thing to be foreseen. There were few doors in Coralio into which his red
head had not been poked.

In an incredibly short space of time after his first sight of her he was
there, seated close beside her rocking chair. There were no back-against-
the-wall poses in Dicky's theory of wooing. His plan of subjection was an
attack at close range. To carry the fortress with one concentrated, ardent,
eloquent, irresistible escalade— fa& was Dicky's way.

Pasa was descended from the proudest Spanish families in the country.
Moreover, she had had unusual advantages. Two years in a New Orleans
school had elevated her ambitions and fitted her for a fate above the

660 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

ordinary maidens of her native land. And yet here she succumbed to the
first red-haired scamp with a glib tongue and a charming smile that
came along and courted her properly.

Very soon Dicky took her to the little church in the corner of the plaza,
and "Mrs. Maloney" was added to her string of distinguished names.

And it was her fate to sit, with her patient, saintly eyes and figure like
a bisque Psyche, behind the sequestered counter of the little shop, while
Dicky drank and philandered with his frivolous acquaintances.

The women, with their naturally fine instinct, saw a chance for vivi-
section, and delicately taunted her with his habits. She turned upon them
in a beautiful, steady gaze of sorrowful contempt.

"You meat-cows,'* she said, in her level, crystal-clear tones; "you know
nothing of a man. Your men are maromeros. They are fit only to roll
cigarettes in the shade until the sun strikes and shrivels them up. They
drone in your hammocks and you comb their hair and feed them with
fresh fruit. My man is no such blood. Let him drink of the wine. When
he has taken sufficient of it to drown one of your flaccitos he will come
home to me more of a man than one thousand of your pobrecitos. My
hair he smooths and braids; to me he sings; he himself removes rny
zapatos, and there, there, upon each instep leaves a kiss. He holds — Oh,
you will never understand! Blind ones who have never known a man"

Sometimes mysterious things happened at night about Dicky's shop.
While the front of it was dark, in tie little room back of it Dicky and a
few of his friends would sit about a table carrying on some kind of very
quiet negocios until quite late. Finally he would let them out the front
door very carefully, and go upstairs to his little saint. These visitors were
generally conspirator-like men with dark clothes and hats. Of course,
these dark doings were noticed after a while, and talked about.

Dicky seemed to care nothing at all for the society of the alien residents
of the town. He avoided Goodwin, and his skilful escape from the
trepanning story of Dr. Gregg is still referred to, in Coralio, as a master-
piece of lightning diplomacy.

Many letters arrived, addressed to "Mr. Dicky Maloney," or "Senor
Dickee Maloney," to the considerable pride of Pasa. That so many people
should desire to write to him only confirmed her own suspicion that the
light from his red head shone around the world. As to their contents she
never felt curiosity. There was a wife for you!

The one mistake Dicky made in Coralio was to run out of money at
the wrong time. Where his money came from was a puzzle, for the sales
of his shop were next to nothing, but that source failed, and at a peculiarly
unfortunate time. It was when the comandante, Don Senor el Coronel
Encarnation Rios, looked upon the little saint seated in the shop and
felt his heart go pitapat

The comandante, who was versed in all the intricate arts of gallantry,

DICKY 66l

first delicately hinted at his sentiments by donning his dress uniform and
strutting up and down fiercely before her window. Pasa, glancing de-
murely with her saintly eyes, instantly perceived his resemblance to her
parrot. Chichi, and was diverted to the extent of a smile. The comandante
saw the smile, which was not intended for him. Convinced of an impres-
sion made, he entered the shop, confidently, and advanced to open com-
pliment. Pasa froze; he pranced; she flamed royally; he was charmed to
injudicious persistence; she commanded him to leave the shop; he tried
to capture her hand,— and Dicky entered, smiling broadly, full of white
wine and the devil.

He spent five minutes in punishing the comandante scientifically and
carefully, so that the pain might be prolonged as far as possible. At the
end of that time he pitched the rash wooer out the door upon the stones
of the street, senseless.

A barefooted policeman who had been watching the affair from across
the street blew a whistle. A squad of four soldiers came running from
the cuartd around the comer. When they saw that the offender was
Dicky, they stopped, and blew more whistles, which brought out reen-
forcements of eight. Deeming the odds against them sufficiently reduced,
the military advanced upon the disturber.

Dicky, being thoroughly imbued with the martial spirit, stooped and
drew the comandante 's sword, which was girded about him, and charged
his foe. He chased the standing army four squares, playfully prodding its
squealing rear and hacking at its ginger-colored heels.

But he was not so successful with the civic authorities. Six muscular,
nimble policemen overpowered him and conveyed him, triumphantly but
warily, to jail. "El Diablo Colorado" they dubbed him, and derided the
military for its defeat.

Dicky, with the rest of the prisoners, could look out through the barred
door at the grass of the little plaza, at a row of orange trees and the red
tile roofs and 'dobe walls of a line of insignificant stores.

At sunset along a path across this plaza came a melancholy procession
of sad-faced women bearing plantains, casaba, bread and fruit— each
coming with food to some wretch behind those bars to whom she still
clung and furnished the means of life. Twice a day — morning and eve-
ning— they were permitted to come. Water was furnished to her com-
pulsory guests by the republic, but no food.

That evening Dicky's name was called by the sentry, and he stepped
before the bars of the door. There stood his little saint, a black mantilla
draped about her head and shoulders, her face like glorified melancholy,
her clear eyes gazing longingly at him as if they might draw him between
the bars to her. She brought a chicken, some oranges, dutces and a loaf of
white bread. A soldier inspected the food, and passed it in to Dicky.
Pasa spoke calmly as she always did, briefly, in her thrilling, flute-like

662 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

tones. "Angel of my life," she said, "let it not be long that thou art away
from me. Thou knowest that life is not a thing to be endured with thou
not at my side. Tell me if I can do aught to this matter. If not, I will wait
—a little while. I come again in the morning."

Dicky, with his shoes removed so as not to disturb his fellow prisoners,
tramped the floor of the jail half the night condemning his lack of money
and the cause of it— whatever that might have been. He knew very well
that money would have brought his release at once.

For two days succeeding Pasa came at the appointed times and
brought him food. He eagerly inquired each time if a letter or package
had come for him, and she mournfully shook her head.

On the morning of the third day she brought only a small loaf of bread.
There were dark circles under her eyes. She seemed as calm as ever.

"By jingo," said Dicky, who seemed to speak English or Spanish as
the whim seized him, "this is dry provender, muchachita. Is this the best
you can dig up for a fellow?"

Pasa looked at him as a mother looks at a beloved but capricious babe.

"Think better of it," she said, in a low voice; "since for the next meal
there will be nothing. The last centavo is spent." She pressed close against
the grating.

"Sell the goods in the shop— take anything for them."

"Have I not tried? Did I not offer them for one-tenth their cost? Not
even one peso would any one give. There is not one real in this town to
assist Dickee Malonee."

Dicky clenched his teeth grimly. "That's the comandante? he growled.
"He's responsible for that sentiment. Wait, oh, wait till the cards are
all out"

Pasa lowered her voice to almost a whisper. "And, listen, heart of my
heart," she said, "I have endeavored to be brave, but I cannot live without
thee. Three days now "

Dicky caught a faint gleam of steel from the folds of her mantilla. For
once she looked in his face and saw it without a smile, stern, menacing
and purposeful. Then he suddenly raised his hand and his smile came
back like a gleam of sunshine. The hoarse signal of an incoming steamer's
siren sounded in the harbor. Dicky called to the sentry who was pacing
before the door: "What steamer comes?'*

"The Catarina,"

"Of the Vesuvius line?"

"Without doubt, of that line."

"Go you, picarilla" said Dicky joyously to Pasa, "to the American
consul. Tell him I wish to speak with him. See that he comes at once.
And look you! let me see a different look in those eyes, for I promise
your head shall rest upon this arm to-night"

DICKY 663

It was an hour before the consul came. He held his green umbrella
under his arm, and mopped his forehead impatiently.

"Now, see here, Maloney," he began, captiously, "you fellows seem to
think you can cut up any kind of row, and expect me to pull you out of
it. I'm neither the War Department nor a gold mine. This country has its
laws, you know, and there's one against pounding the senses out of the
regular army. You Irish are forever getting into trouble. I don't see what
I can do. Any thing like tobacco, now, to make you comfortable — or
newspapers n

"Son of Eli," interrupted Dicky, gravely, "you haven't changed an iota.
That is almost a duplicate of the speech you made when old Koen's don-
keys and geese got into the chapel loft, and the culprits wanted to hide
in your room."

"Oh, heavens!" exclaimed the consul, hurriedly adjusting his spectacles.
"Are you a Yale man, too? Were you in that crowd? I don't seem to
remember any one with red — any one named Maloney. Such a lot of
collegemen seem to have misused their advantages. One of the best
mathematicians of the class of '91 is selling lottery tickets in Belize. A
Cornell man dropped off here last mondi. He was second steward on a
guano boat. Ill write to the department if you like, Maloney. Or if there's
any tobacco, or newspa "

"There's nothing," interrupted Dicky, shortly, "but this. You go tell the
captain of the Catarina that Dicky Maloney wants to see him as soon
as he can conveniently come. Tell him where I am. Hurry. That's all"

The consul, glad to be let off so easily, hurried away. The captain of
the Catarina, a stout man, Sicilian born, soon appeared, shoving, with little
ceremony, through the guards to the jail door. The Vesuvius Fruit Com-
pany had a habit of doing things that way in Anchuria.

"I am exceedingly sorry — exceedingly sorry," said the captain, "to see
this occur. I place myself at your service, Mr. Maloney. What you need
shall be furnished. Whatever you say shall be done."

Dicky looked at him unsmilingly. His red hair could not detract from
his attitude of severe dignity as he stood, tall and calm, with his now
grim mouth forming a horizontal line.

"Captain De Lucco, I believe I still have funds in the hands of your
company — ample and personal funds. I ordered a remittance last week.
The money has not arrived. You know what is needed in this game.
Money and money and more money. Why has it not been sent?"

"By the Cristdbal? replied De Lucco, gesticulating, "it was despatched.
Where is the Cristobal? Off Cape Antonio I spoke her with a broken
shaft. A tramp coaster was towing her back to New Orleans. I brought
money ashore thinking your need for it might not withstand delay. In
this envelope is one thousand dollars. There is more if you need it, Mr.
Maloney.*'

664 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"For the present it will suffice," said Dicky, softening as he crinkled the
envelope and looked down at the half-inch thickness of smooth dingy

bills. . ,.

"The long green!'* he said, gently, with a new reverence in his gaze.
"Is there anything it will not buy, Captain?"

"I had three friends," replied De Lucco, who was a bit of a philosopher,
"who had money. One of them speculated in stocks and made ten million;
another is in heaven, and the third married a poor girl whom he loved."

"The answer, then," said Dicky, "is held by the Almighty, Wall Street
and Cupid. So, the question remains."

"This," queried the captain, including Dicky's surroundings in a sig-
nificant gesture of his hand, "is it— it is not— it is not connected with the
business of your little shop ? There is no failure in your plans ?"

"No, no," said Dicky. "This is merely the result of a little private affair
of mine, a digression from the regular line of business. They say for a
complete life a man must know poverty, love, and war. But they don't go
well together, capit&n mio. No; there is no failure in my business. The
little shop is doing very well."

When the captain had departed Dicky called the sergeant of the jail
and asked:

"Am I preso by the military or the civil authority?"

"Surely there is no martial law in effect now, sefior."

"Bueno. Now go or send to the alcalde, the ]uez de la Paz and the Jefe
dc los Polidos. Tell them I am prepared at once to satisfy the demands
of justice." A folded bill of the "long green" slid into the sergeant's hands.

Then Dicky's smile came back again, for he knew that the hours of
his captivity were numbered; and he hummed, in time with the sentry's
tread:

"They're hanging men and women now,
For lacking of the green."

So, that night Dicky sat by the window of the room over his shop and
his little saint sat close by, working at something silken and dainty.
Dicky was thoughtful and grave. His red hair was in an unusual state of
disorder. Pasa's fingers often ached to smooth and arrange it, but Dicky
would never allow it. He was poring, to-night, over a great litter of maps
and books and papers on his table until that perpendicular line came
between his brows that always distressed Pasa. Presently she went and
brought his hat, and stood with it until he looked up, inquiringly.

"It is sad for you here," she explained. "Go out and drink vino bianco.
Come back when you get that smile you used to wear. That is what I
wish to see."

Dicky laughed and threw down his paper. "The vino bianco stage is
past. It has served its turn. Perhaps, after all, there was less entered my

ROUGE ET NOIR 665

mouth and more my ears than people thought. But, there will be no more
maps or frowns to-night. I promise you that. Come."

They sat upon a reed dlleta at the window and watched the quivering
gleams from the lights of the Catarina reflected in the harbor*

Presently Pasa rippled out one of her infrequent chirrups of audible
laughter.

"I was thinking," she began, anticipating Dicky's question, "of the
foolish things girls have in their minds. Because I went to school in the
States I used to have ambitions. Nothing less than to be the president's
wife would satisfy me. And, look, thou red picaroon, to what obscure
fate thou hast stolen me!"

"Don't give up hope/5 said Dicky, smiling. "More than one Irishman
has been the ruler of a South American country. There was a dictator of
Chili named O'Higgins. Why not a President Maloney, of Anchuria?
Say the word, santita mia, and we'll make the race."

"No, no, no, thou red-haired, reckless one!" sighed Pasa; "I am content"
— she laid her head against his arm — "here,"

ROUGE ET NOIR

It has been indicated that disaffection followed the elevation of Losada
to the presidency. This feeling continued to grow. Throughout the entire
republic there seemed to be a spirit of silent, sullen discontent. Even
the old Liberal party to which Goodwin, Zavalla and other patriots had
lent their aid was disappointed. Losada had failed to become a popular
idol. Fresh taxes, fresh import duties and, more than all, his tolerance of
the outrageous oppression o£ citizens by the military had rendered him
the most obnoxious president since the despicable Alforan. The ma-
jority of his own cabinet were out of sympathy with him. The army,
which he had courted by giving it license to tyrannize, had been his main,
and thus far adequate support.

But the most impolitic of the administration's moves had been when it
antagonized the Vesuvius Fruit Company, an organization plying twelve
steamers and with cash and capital somewhat larger than Anchuria's
surplus and debt combined.

Reasonably an established concern like the Vesuvius would become
irritated at having a small, retail republic with no rating at all attempt to
squeeze it. So when the government proxies applied for a subsidy they
encountered a polite refusal. The president at once retaliated by clapping
an export duty of one real per bunch on bananas — a thing unprecedented
in fruit-growing countries. The Vesuvius Company had invested large
sums in wharves and plantations along the Anchuria coast, their agents

666 BOOK. V CABBAGES AND KINGS

had erected fine homes in the towns where they had their headquarters,
and heretofore had worked with the republic in good-will and with ad-
vantage to both. It would lose an immense sum if compelled to move out.
The selling price of bananas from Vera Cruz to Trinidad was three reals
per bunch. This new duty of one real would have ruined the fruit growers
in Anchuria and have seriously discommoded the Vesuvius Company
had it declined to pay it. But for some reason, the Vesuvius continued
to buy Anchuria fruit, paying four reals for it; and not suffering the
growers to bear the loss.

This apparent victory deceived His Excellency; and he began to hunger
for more of it. He sent an emissary to request a conference with a repre-
sentative of the fruit company. The Vesuvius sent Mr. Franzoni, a little,
stout, cheerful man, always cool, and whistling airs from Verdi's operas.
Senor Espirition, of the office of the Minister of Finance, attempted the
sandbagging in behalf of Anchuria. The meeting took place in the cabin
of the Salvador, of the Vesuvius line.

Senor Espirition opened negotiations by announcing that the govern-
ment contemplated the building of a railroad to skirt the alluvial coast
lands. After touching upon the benefits such a road would confer upon
the interests of the Vesuvius, he reached the definite suggestion that a
contribution to the road's expenses of, say, fifty thousand pesos would
not be more than an equivalent to benefits received.

Mr. Franzoni denied that his company would receive any benefits from
a contemplated road. As its representative he must decline to contribute
fifty thousand pesos. But he would assume the responsibility of offering
twenty-five.

Did Senor Espirition understand Senor Franzoni to mean twenty-
five thousand pesos?

By no means. Twenty-five pesos. And in silver; not in gold.

"Your offer insults my government," cried Senor Espirition, rising with
indignation.

"Then," said Mr. Franzoni, in warning tone, "we will change it"

The offer was never changed. Could Mr. Franzoni have meant the
government ?

This was the state of affairs in Anchuria when the winter season
opened at Coralio at the end of the second year of Losada's administration.
So, when the government and society made its annual exodus to the sea-
shore it was evident that the presidential advent would not be celebrated
by unlimited rejoicing. The tenth of November was the day set for the
entrance into Coralio of the gay company from the capital. A narrow-
gauge railroad runs twenty miles into the interior from Solitas. The gov-
ernment party travels by carriage from San Mateo to this road's terminal
point, and proceeds by train to Solitas. From here they march in grand
procession to Coralio where, on the day of their coming, festivities and

ROUGE ET NOIR 667

ceremonies abound. But this season saw an ominous dawning of the
tenth of November.

Although the rainy season was over, the day seemed to hark back to
reeking June. A fine drizzle of rain fell all during the forenoon. The
procession entered Coralio amid a strange silence.

President Losada was an elderly man, grizzly bearded, with a con-
siderable ratio of Indian blood revealed in his cinnamon complexion.
His carriage headed the procession, surrounded and guarded by Captain
Cruz and his famous troop of one hundred light horse "El Ciento
Huilando." Colonel Rocas followed, with a regiment of the regular
army.

The president's sharp, beady eyes glanced about him for the expected
demonstration of welcome; but he faced a stolid, indifferent array of
citizens. Sightseers the Anchurians are by birth and habit, and they
turned out to their last able-bodied unit to witness the scene; but they
maintained an accusive silence. They crowded the streets to the very
wheel ruts; they covered the red tile roofs to the eaves, but there was
never a "wW from them. No wreaths of palm and lemon branches or
gorgeous strings of paper roses hung from the windows and balconies as
was the custom. There was an apathy, a dull, dissenting disapprobation,
that was the more ominous because it puzzled. No one feared an^ out-
burst, a revolt of the discontents, for they had no leader. The president
and those loyal to him had never even heard whispered a name among
them capable of crystallizing the dissatisfaction into opposition. No, there
could be no danger. The people always procured a new idol before they
destroyed an old one.

At length, after a prodigious galloping and curvetting of red-sashed
majors, gold-laced colonels and epauletted generals, the procession formed
for its annual progress down the Calle Grande to the Casa Morena, where
the ceremony of welcome to the visiting president always took place.

The Swiss band led the line of march. After it pranced the local
comandante, mounted, and a detachment of his troops. Next came a
carriage with four members of the cabinet, conspicuous among them the
Minister of War, old General Pilar, with his white moustache and his
soldierly bearing. Then the president's vehicle, containing also the Min-
isters of Finance and State; and surrounded by Captain Cruz's light horse
formed in a close double file of fours. Following them, the rest of the
officials of state, the judges and distinguished military and social orna-
ments of public and private life.

As the band struck up, and the movement began, like a bird of ill-
omen the Valhalla, the swiftest steamship of the Vesuvius line, glided
into the harbor in plain view of the president and his train. Of course,
there was nothing menacing about its arrival— a business firm does not go
to war with a nation— but it reminded Senor Espirition and others in those

668 BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

carriages that the Vesuvius Fruit Company was undoubtedly carrying
something up its sleeve for them.

By the time the van of the procession had reached the government
building, Captain Cronin, of the Valhalla, and Mr. Vincenti, member of
the Vesuvius Company, had landed and were pushing their way, bluff,
hearty, and nonchalant, through the crowd on the narrow sidewalk. Clad
in white linen, big, debonair, with an air of good-humored authority,
they made conspicuous figures among the dark mass of unimposing
Anchurians, as they penetrated to within a few yards of the steps of the
Casa Morena. Looking easily above the heads of the crowd, they perceived
another that towered above the undersized natives. It was the fiery poll
of Dicky Maloney against the wall close by the lower step and his broad,
seductive grin showed that he recognized their presence,

Dicky had attired himself becomingly for the festive occasion in a well-
fitting black suit. Pasa was close by his side, her head covered with the
ubiquitous black mantilla.

Mr. Vincenti looked at her attentively.

"Botticelli's Madonna," he remarked, gravely. "I wonder when she got
into the game. I don't like his getting tangled with the women. I hoped
he would keep away from them."

Captain Cronin's laugh almost drew attention from the parade.

"With that head of hair! Keep away from the women! And a
Maloney! Hasn't he got a license? But, nonsense aside, what do you think
of die prospects? It's a species of filibustering out of my line."

Vincenti glanced again at Dicky's head and smiled.

"Rouge et noir" he said. "There you have it. Make your play, gentle-
men. Our money is on the red."

"The lad's game," said Cronin, with a commending look at the tall,
easy figure by the steps. "But 'tis all like fly-by-night theatricals to me.
The talk's bigger than the stage; there's a smell of gasoline in the air,
and they're their own audience and scene-shifters."

They ceased talking, for General Pilar had descended from the first
carriage and had taken his stand upon the top step of Casa Morena, As
the oldest member of the cabinet, custom had decreed that he should
make the address of welcome, presenting the keys of the official residence
to the president at its close.

General Pilar was one of the most distinguished citizens of the republic.
Hero of three wars and innumerable revolutions, he was an honored guest
at European courts and camps. An eloquent speaker and a friend to the
people, he represented the highest type of the Anchurians.

Holding in his hand the gilt keys of Casa Morena, he began his
address in a historical form, touching upon each administration and the
advance of civilization and prosperity from the first striving after liberty
down to present times. Arriving at the regime of President Losada, at

ROUGE ET NOIR 669

which point, according to precedent, he should have delivered a eulogy
upoa its wise conduct and the happiness of the people, General Pilar
paused. Then he silently held up the bunch of keys high above his head,
with his eyes closely regarding it. The ribbon with which they were bound
fluttered in the breeze.

"It still blows/* cried the speaker, exultantly. "Citizens of Anchuria,
give thanks to the saints this night that our air is still free.'*

Thus disposing of Losada's administration, he abruptly reverted to that
of Olivarra, Anchuria's most popular ruler. Olivarra had been assassinated
nine years before while in the prime of life and usefulness. A faction of
the Liberal party led by Losada himself had been accused of the deed.
Whether guilty or not, it was eight years before the ambitious and schem-
ing Losada had gained his goal.

Upon this theme General Pilar's eloquence was loosed. He drew the
picture of the beneficent Olivarra with a loving hand. He reminded the
people of the peace, the security, and the happiness they had enjoyed
during that period. He recalled in vivid detail and with significant con-
trast die last winter sojourn of President Olivarra in Coralio, when his
appearance at their fiestas was the signal for thundering vivas of love and
approbation.

The first public expression of sentiment from the people that day
followed. A low, sustained murmur went among them like the surf
rolling along the shore.

"Ten dollars to a dinner at the Saint Charles," remarked Mr. Vincenti,
"that rouge wins."

"I never bet against my own interests," said Captain Cronin, lighting a
cigar. "Long-winded old boy, for his age. What's he talking about?" ^

"My Spanish," replied Vincenti, "runs about ten words to the minute;
he is something around two hundred. Whatever he's saying, he's getting
them warmed up."

"Friends and brothers," General Pilar was saying, "could I reach out
my hand this day across the lamentable silence of the grave to Olivarra
'the Good,' to the ruler who was one of you, whose tears fell when you
sorrowed, and whose smile followed your joy— I would bring him back to
you, but— Olivarra is dead— dead at the hands of a craven assassin!" ^

The speaker turned and gazed boldly into the carriage of jthe president.
His arm remained extended aloft as if to sustain his peroration. The pres-
ident was listening, aghast, at this remarkable address of welcome. He
was sunk back upon his seat, trembling with rage and dumb surprise, his
dark hands tightly gripping the carriage cushions.

Half rising, he extended one arm toward the speaker, and shouted a
harsh command at Captain Cruz. The leader of the "Flying Hundred"
sat his horse, immovable, with folded arms, giving no sign of having
heard. Losada sank back again, his dark features distinctly paling.

6jO BOOKV CABBAGES AND KINGS

"Who says that Olivarra is dead" suddenly cried the speaker, his
voice, old as he was, sounding like a battle trumpet. "His body lies in the
grave, but to the people he loved he has bequeathed his spirit — yes, more —
his learning, his courage, his kindness — yes, more — his youth, his image
— people of Anchuria, have you forgotten Ramon, the son of Olivarra ?"

Cronin and Vincenti, watching closely, saw Dicky Maloney suddenly
raise his hat, tear off his shock of red hair, leap up the steps and stand at
the side of General Pilar. The Minister of War laid his arm across the
young man's shoulders. All who had known President Olivarra saw again
his same lion-like pose, the same frank, undaunted expression, the same
high forehead with the peculiar line of the clustering, crisp black hair.

General Pilar was an experienced orator. He seized the moment of
breathless silence that preceded the storm.

"Citizens of Anchuria/* he trumpeted, holding aloft the keys to Casa
Morena, "I am here to deliver these keys — the keys to your homes and
liberty — to your chosen president. Shall I deliver them to Enrico Olivarra's
assassin, or to his son?"

"Olivarra! Olivarra!" the crowd shrieked and howled. All vociferated
the magic name — men, women, children and the parrots.

And the enthusiasm was not confined to the blood of the plebs. Colonel
Rocas ascended the steps and laid his sword theatrically at young Ramon
Olivarra's feet. Four members of the cabinet embraced him. Captain Cruz
gave a command, and twenty of El Ciento Huilando dismounted and
arranged themselves in a cordon about the steps of Casa Morena.

But Ramon Olivarra seized that moment to prove himself a born
genius and politician. He waved those soldiers aside, and descended the
steps to the street There, without losing his dignity or the distinguished
elegance that the loss of his red hair brought him, he took the proletariat
to his bosom — the barefooted, the dirty, Indians, Caribs, babies, beggars
old, young, saints, soldiers and sinners — he missed none of them.

While this act of the drama was being presented, the scene shifters had
been busy at the duties that had been assigned to them. Two of Cruz's
dragoons had seized the bridle reins of Losada's horses; others formed a
close guard around the carriage; and they galloped off with the tyrant
and his two unpopular Ministers. No doubt a place had been prepared
for them. There are a number of well-barred stone apartments in Coralio.

"Rouge wins," said Mr. Vincenti, calmly lighting another cigar.

Captain Cronin had been intently watching the vicinity of the stone
steps for some time.

"Good boy!" he exclaimed suddenly, as if relieved. "I wondered if he
was going to forget his Kathleen Mavourneen."

Young Olivarra had reascended the steps and spoken a few words to
General Pilar. Then that distinguished veteran descended to the ground
and approached Pasa, who still stood, wonder-eyed, where Dicky had left

TWO RECALLS 67!

her. With his plumed hat in his hand, and his medals and decorations shin-
ing on his breast, the general spoke to her and gave her his arms, and they
went up the stone steps of the Casa Morena together. And then Ramon
Olivarra stepped forward and took both her hands before all the people.

And while the cheering was breaking out afresh everywhere. Captain
Cronin and Mr. Vincenti turned and walked back toward the shore where
the gig was waiting for them.

"Therell be another 'president? proclamada' in the morning," said Mr.
Vincenti, musingly. "As a rule they are not as reliable as the elected ones,
but this youngster seems to have some good stuff in him. He planned and
manoeuvred the entire campaign. OHvarra's widow, you know, was
wealthy. After her husband was assassinated she went to the States, and
educated her son at Yale. The Vesuvius Company hunted him up, and
backed him in the little game."

"It's a glorious thing,'* said Cronin, half jestingly, "to be able to dis-
charge a government, and insert one of your own choosing, in these days."

"Oh, it is only a matter o£ business,'* said Vincenti, stopping and offer-
ing the stump of his cigar to a monkey that swung down from a lime
tree; "and that is what moves the world of to-day. That extra real oa the
price of bananas had to go. We took the shortest way of removing it."

TWO RECALLS

There remain three duties to be performed before the curtain falls upon
the patched comedy. Two have been promised: the third is no less oblig-
atory.

It was set forth in the programme of this tropic vaudeville that it would
be made known why Shorty O'Day, of the Columbia Detective Agency,
lost his position. Also that Smith should come again to tell us what mys-
tery he followed that night on the shores of Anchuria when he strewed
so many cigar stumps around the cocoanut palm during his lonely night
vigil on the beach. These things were promised; but a bigger thing yet
remains to be accomplished— the clearing up of a seeming wrong that
has been done according to the array of chronicled facts (truthfully set
forth) that have been presented. And one voice, speaking, shall do these
three things.

Two men sat on a stringer of a North River pier in the City of New
York. A steamer from the tropics had begun to unload bananas and or-
anges on the pier. Now and then a banana or two would fall from an
overripe bunch, and one of the two men would shamble forward, seize
the fruit and return to share it with his companion.

One of the men was in the ultimate stage of deterioration. As far as

672 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

rain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had been
done. In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible. And yet,
upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily perched a pair of shin-
ing and flawless gold-rimmed glasses.

The other man was not so far gone upon the descending Highway of
the Incompetents. Truly, the flower of his manhood had gone to seed —
seed that, perhaps, no soil might sprout. But there were still cross-cuts
along where he travelled through which he might yet regain the path-
way of usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles, This man
was short and compactly built. He had an oblique, dead eye, like that of a
sting-ray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer. We know the eye and
the moustache; we know that Smith of the luxurious yacht, the gorgeous
raiment, the mysterious mission, the magic disappearance, has come again,
though shorn of the accessories of his former state.

At his third banana, the man with the nose glasses spat it from him
with a shudder.

"Deuce take all fruit!" he remarked, in a patrician tone of disgust. "I
lived for two years where these things grow. The memory of their taste
lingers with you. The oranges are not so bad. Just see if you can gather
a couple of them, O'Day, when the next broken crate comes up."

"Did you live down with the monkeys?" asked the other, made tepidly
garrulous by the sunshine and the alleviating meal of juicy fruit. "I was
down there, once myself. But only for a few hours. That was when I was
with the Columbia Detective Agency. The monkey people did me up.
Fd have my job yet if it hadn't been for them. I'll tell you about it.

"One day the chief sent a note around to the office that read: 'Send
O'Day here at once for a big piece of business.' I was the crack detective
of the agency at that time. They always handed me the big jobs. The ad-
dress the chief wrote from was down in the Wall Street district.

"When I got there I found him in a private office with a lot of directors
who were looking pretty fuzzy. They stated the case. The president of
the Republic Insurance Company had skipped with about a tenth of a
million dollars in cash. The directors wanted him back pretty bad, but
they wanted the money worse. They said they needed it. They had traced
the old gent's movements to where he boarded a tramp fruit steamer
bound for South America that same morning with his daughter and a
big gripsack — all the family he had.

"One of the directors had his steam yacht coaled and with steam up,
ready for the trip; and he turned her over to me, cart blongsh. In four
hours I was on board of her, and hot on the trail of the fruit tub. I had a
pretty good idea where old Wahrfield— that was his name, J. Churchill
Wahrfield— would head for. At that time we had a treaty with about
every foreign country except Belgium and that banana republic Anchuria.
There wasn't a photo of old Wahrfield to be had in New York—he had

TWO RECALLS 673

been foxy there— but I had his description. And besides, the lady with
him would be a dead-give-away anywhere. She was one of the high-flyers
in Society — not the kind that have their pictures in the Sunday papers —
but the real sort that open chrysanthemum shows and christen battleships.

"Well, sir, we never got a sight of that fruit tub on the road. The ocean
is a pretty big place; and I guess we took different paths across it. But we
kept going toward this Anchuria, where the fruiter was bound for.

"We struck the monkey coast one afternoon about four. There was a
ratty-looking steamer off shore taking on bananas. The monkeys were
loading her up with big barges. It might be the one the old man had
taken, and it might not. I went ashore to look around. The scenery was
pretty good. I never saw any finer on the New York stage. I struck an
American on shore, a big, cool chap, standing around with the monkeys.
He showed me the consul's office. The consul was a nice young fellow.
He said the fruiter was the Karlsefin, running generally to New Orleans,
but took her last cargo to New York. Then I was sure my people were
on board, although everybody told me that no passengers had landed. I
didn't think they would land until after dark, for they might have been
shy about it on account of seeing that yacht of mine hanging around. So,
all I had to do was to wait and nab 'em when they came ashore. I couldn't
arrest old Wahrfield without extradition papers, but my play was to get
the cash. They generally give up if you strike 'em when they're tired and
rattled and short on nerve,

"After dark I sat under a cocoanut tree on the beach for a while, and
then I walked around and investigated that town some, and it was enough
to give you the lions. If a man could stay in New York and be honest,
he'd better do it than to hit that monkey town with a million.

"Dinky little mud houses; grass over your shoe tops in the streets;
ladies in low-neck-and-short-sleeves walking around smoking cigars; tree
frogs rattling like a hose cart going to a ten blow; big mountains dropping
gravel in the back yards; and the sea licking the paint off in front — no,
sir — a man had better be in God's country living on free lunch than there.

"The main street ran along the beach, and I walked down it, and then
turned up a kind of lane where the houses were made of poles and straw.
I wanted to see what the monkeys did when they weren't climbing cocoa-
nut trees. The very first shack I looked in I saw my people. They must
have come ashore while I was promenading. A man about fifty, smooth
face, heavy eyebrows, dressed in black broadcloth, looking like he was just
about to say, 'Can any little boy in the Sunday School answer that?' He
was freezing on to a grip that weighed like a dozen gold bricks, and a
swell girl — a regular peach, with a Fifth Avenue cut — was sitting on a
wooden chair. An old black woman was fixing some coffee and beans on
a table. The light they had came from a lantern hung on a nail. I went
and stood in the door, and they looked at me, and I said:

674 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

" 'Mr. Wahrfield, you are my prisoner. I hope, for the lady's sake, you
will take the matter sensibly. You know why I want you.*

" Who are you?' says the old gent.

" 'O'Day/ says I, 'of the Columbia Detective Agency. And now, sir, let
me give you a piece of good advice. You go back and take your medicine
like a man. Hand *em back the boodle; and maybe they'll let you off light.
Go back easy, and I'll put in a word for you. Til give you five minutes to
decide.* I pulled out my watch and waited.

"Then the young lady chipped in. She was one of the genuine high-
steppers. You could tell by the way her clothes fit and the style she had
that Fifth Avenue was made for her.

"'Come inside,5 she says. 'Don't stand in the door and disturb the
whole street with that suit of clothes. Now, what is it you want?'

" 'Three minutes gone/ I said. I'll tell you again while the other two
tick off.

" You'll admit being the president of the Republic, won't you?'

" 'I am,' says he.

" 'Well, then,' says I, cit ought to be plain to you. Wanted, in New
York, J. Churchill Wahrfield, president of the Republic Insurance Com-
pany.

" 'Also the funds belonging to said company, now in that grip, in the
unlawful possession of said J. Churchill Wahrfield.'

"'Oh-h-h-h!' says the young lady, as if she was thinking, 'you want
to take us back to New York?'

" 'To take Mr. Wahrfield. There's no charge against you, miss. There'll
be no objection, of course, to your returning with your father.*

"Of a sudden the girl gave a tiny scream and grabbed the old boy
around the neck. 'Oh, father, father!' she says, kind of contralto, 'can
this be true? Have you taken, money that is not yours? Speak, father!'
It made you shiver to hear the tremolo stop she put on her voice.

"The old boy looked pretty bughouse when she first grappled him,
but she went on, whispering in his ear and patting his off shoulder till
he stood still, but sweating a little.

"She got him to one side and they talked together a minute, and then
he put on some gold eyeglasses and walked up and handed me the grip.

" 'Mr. Detective,' he says, talking a little broken. 'I conclude to return
with you. I have finished to discover that life on this desolate and dis-
pleased coast would be worse than to die, itself. I will go back and hurl
myself upon the mercy of the Republic Company. Have you brought a
sheep?'

" 'Sheep!' says I; 'I haven't a single *

'Ship/ cut in the young lady. 'Don't get funny. Father is of German
birth, and doesn't speak perfect English. How did you come?'

"The girl was all broke up. She had a handkerchief to her face, and

TWO RECALLS 675

kept saying every little bit, 'Oh, father, father!' She walked up to me and
laid her lily-white hand on the clothes that had pained her at first. I told
her I came in a private yacht.

"'Mr. O'Day,' she says. 'Oh, take us away from this horrid country
at once. Can you! Will you! Say you will/

" Til try,' I said, concealing the fact that I was dying to get them on
salt water before they could change their mind.

"One thing they both kicked against was going through the town to
the boat landing. Said they dreaded publicity, and now that they were go-
ing to return, they had a hope that the thing might yet be kept out of the
papers. They swore they wouldn't go unless I got them out to the yacht
without any one knowing it, so I agreed to humor them.

"The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a barroom
near the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them take the
boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there. How to get
them word was the question, for I couldn't leave the grip with the pris-
oner, and I couldn't take it with me, not knowing but what the monkeys
might stick me up.

"The young lady says the old colored woman would take them a note.
I sat down and wrote it, and gave it to the dame with plain directions
what to do, and she grins like a baboon and shakes her head.

"Then Mr. Wahrfield handed her a string of foreign dialect, and she
nods her head and says, 'See, senor,' maybe fifty times, and lights out
with the note. 'Old Augusta only understands German,' said Miss Wahr-
field, smiling at me. 'We stopped in her house to ask where we could find
lodging, and she insisted upon our having coffee. She tells us she was
raised in a German family in San Domingo/

" 'Very likely/ I said. 'But you can search me for German words, ex-
cept nix verstay and noch einst. I would have called that "See, senor"
French, though, on a gamble/

"Well, we three make a sneak around the edge of town so as not to be
seen. We got tangled in vines and ferns and the banana bushes and trop-
ical scenery a good deal The monkey suburbs was as wild as places in
Central Park. We came out on the beach a good half mile below. A brown
chap was lying asleep under a cocoanut tree, with a ten-foot musket
beside him. Mr. Wahrfield takes up the gun and pitches it into the sea.
'The coast is guarded,' he says. "Rebellion and plots ripen like fruit/ He
pointed to the sleeping man, who never stirred. Thus,* he says, 'they per-
form trusts. Children!'

"I saw our boat coming, and I struck a match and lit a piece of newspa-
per to show them where we were. In thirty minutes we were on board
the yacht.

"The first thing, Mr. Wahrfield and his daughter and I took the grip
into the owner's cabin, opened it up and took an inventory. There was

676 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

one hundred and five thousand dollars, United States treasury notes, in
it, beside a lot of diamond jewelry and a couple of hundred Havana ci-
gars. I gave the old man the cigars and a receipt for the rest o£ the lot,
as agent for the company, and locked the stuff up in my private quarters.

"I never had a pleasanter trip than that one. After we got to sea the
young lady turned out to be the jollicst ever. The very first time we sat
down to dinner, and the steward filled her glass with champagne— that
director's yacht was a regular floating Waldorf-Astoria—she winks at me
and says, What's the use to borrow trouble, Mr. Fly Cop ?^ Here's
hoping you may live to eat the hen that scratches on your grave.' There
was a piano on board, and she sat down to it and sung better than you
give up two cases to hear plenty times. She knew about nine operas clear
through. She was sure enough bon ton and swell. She wasn't one of the
'among others present' kind; she belonged on the special mention list!

"The old man, too, perked up amazingly on the way. He passed the
cigars, and says to me once, quite chipper, out of a cloud of smoke, 'Mr.
O'Day, somehow I think the Republic Company will not give me the
much trouble. Guard well the gripvalise of the money, Mr. O'Day, for
that it must be returned to them that it belongs when we finish to arrive.'

"When we landed in New York I 'phoned to the chief to meet us m
that director's office. We got hi a cab and went there. I carried the grip,
and we walked in, and I was pleased to see that the chief had got together
that same old crowd of moneybugs with pink faces and white vests to see
us march in. I set the grip on the table. 'There's the money/ 1 said.

" 'And your prisoner?' said the chief.

"I pointed to Mr. Wahrfield, and he stepped forward and says:

" 'The honor of a word with you, sir, to explain.'

"He and the chief went into another room and stayed ten minutes.
When they came back the chief looked as black as a ton of coal.

" 'Did this gentleman/ he says to me, 'have this valise in his possession
when you first saw him?*

"'He did/ said I.

"The chief took up the grip and handed it to the prisoner with a bow,
and says to the director crowd: 'Do any of you recognize this gentle-
man?'

"They all shook their pink faces.

" 'Allow me to present,* he goes on, 'Senor Miraflores, president of the
Republic of Anchuria, The senor has generously consented to overlook
this outrageous blunder, on condition that we undertake to secure him
against tie annoyance of public comment. It is a concession on his part
to overlook an insult for which he might claim international redress. I
think we can gratefully promise him secrecy in the matter.'

"They gave him a pink nod all round.

" 'O'Day/ he says to me. 'As a private detective you're wasted. In a war

THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE 677

where kidnapping governments is in the rules you'd be invaluable. Come
down to the office at eleven/

"I knew what that meant.

" *So that's the president of the monkeys,' says L 'Well, why couldn't
he have said so?5

"Wouldn't it jar you?"

THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE

Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do
not demand denouements. Sufficient unto each "turn" is the evil thereof.
No one cares how many romances the singing comedienne may have had
if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or two. The au-
diences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound the moment
they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not desire bulletins
about the possible injuries received by the comic bicyclist who retires
head-first from the stage in a crash of (property) china-ware. Neither
do they consider that their seat coupons entitle them to be instructed
whether or not there is a sentiment between the lady solo banjoist and
the Irish monologist.

Therefore let us have no lifting of the curtain upon a tableau of the
united lovers, backgrounded by defeated villainy and derogated by the
comic, osculating maid and butler, thrown in as a sop to the Cerberi of
the fifty-cent seats.

But our programme ends with a brief "turn** or two; and then to the
exits. Whoever sits the show out may find, it he will, the slender thread
that binds together, though ever so slightly, the story that, perhaps, only
the Walrus will understand.

Extracts from a letter from the first vice-president of the Republic In-
surance Company, of New Yor^ City, to Fran\ Goodwin, of Coralio,
Republic of Anchuria.

My Dear Mr. Goodwin: — Your communication per Messrs, Howland
and Fourchet, of New Orleans, has reached us. Also their draft on
N. Y. for $100,000, the amount abstracted from the funds of this
company by the late }. Churchill Wahrfield, its former president. . . .
The officers and directors unite in requesting me to express to you their
sincere esteem and thanks for your prompt and much appreciated
return of the entire missing sum within two weeks from the time of
its disappearance. . . . Can assure you that the matter will not be
allowed to receive the least publicity. . . . Regret exceedingly the
distressing death of Mr. Wahrfield by his own hand, but. . . .
Congratulations on your marriage to Miss Wahrfield . , . many

678 BOOK V CABBAGES AND KINGS

charms, winning manners, noble and womanly nature and envied
position in the best metropolitan society. . . .

Cordially yours,
Lucius E. Applegate
First Vice-President the Republic Insurance Company

The Vitagraphoscope (Moving Pictures)
The Last Sausage

SCENE— ^ Artist's Studio. The artist, a young man of prepossessing ap-
pearance, sits in a dejected attitude, amid a litter of sketches, with his
head resting upon his hand. An oil stove stands on a pine box in the cen-
tre of the studio. The artist rises, tightens his waist belt to another hole,
and lights the stove. He goes to a tin bread box, half-hidden by a
screen, takes out a solitary link of sausage, turns the box up-side-down to
show that there is no more, and chucks the sausage into a frying-pan,
which he sets upon the stove. The flame of the stove goes out, showing
that there is no more oil The artist, in evident despair, seizes the sausage,
in a sudden access of rage, and hurls it violently from him. At the same
time a door opens, and a man who enters receives the sausage forcibly
against his nose. He seems to cry out; and is observed to make a dance
step or two, vigorously. The newcomer is a ruddy-faced, active, keen-
looking man, apparently of Irish ancestry. Next he is observed to laugh
immoderately; he kicks over the stove; he claps the artist (who is vainly
striving to grasp his hand) vehemently upon the back. Then he goes
through a pantomime which to the sufficiently intelligent spectator reveals
that he has acquired large sums of money by trading pot-metal hatches
and razors to the Indians of the Cordillera Mountains for gold dust. He
draws a roll of money as large as a small loaf of bread from his pocket,
and waves it above his head, while at the same time he makes pantomime
of drinking from a glass. The artist hurriedly secures his hat, and the two
leave the studio together.

The Writing on the Sands

SCENE — The Beach at Nice. A woman, beautiful, still young, exquisitely
clothed, complacent, poised^ reclines near the water, idly scrawling let-
ters in the sand with the staff of her silken parasol. The beauty of her
face is audacious; her languid pose is one that you feel to be impermanent
— you wait, expectant, for her to spring or glide or crawl, like a panther
that has unaccountably become stock-still. She idly scrawls in the sand;
and the word that she always writes is "Isabel" A man sits a few yards
away. You can see that they are companions, even if no longer comrades.
His face is dark and smooth, and almost inscrutable—but not quite.

THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE 679

The two speak little together. The man also scratches on the sand with his
cane. And the word that he writes is "Anchuria." And then he looks out
where the Mediterranean and the sky intermingle with death in his gaze.

The Wilderness and Thou

SCENE — The Borders of a Gentleman's Estate in a Tropical Land. An old
Indian, with a mahogany-colored face, is trimming the grass on a grave
by a mangrove swamp. Presently he rises to his feet and walks slowly
toward a grove that is shaded by the gathering, brief twilight. In the edge
of the grove stands a man who is stalwart, with a kind and courteous air,
and a woman of a serene and clear-cut loveliness. When the old Indian
comes up to them the man drops money in his hand. The grave-tender,
with the stolid pride of his race, takes it as his due, and goes his way.
The two in the edge of the grove turn back along the dim pathway, and
walk close, close — -for, after all, what is the world at its best but a little
round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

CURTAIN-

BOOK

OPTIONS

THE ROSE OF DIXIE

When The Rose of Dixie magazine was started by a stock company in
Toombs City, Georgia, there was never but one candidate for its chief
editorial position in the minds of its owners. Col. Aquila Telfair was the
man for the place. By all the rights of learning, family, reputation, and
Southern traditions, he was its foreordained, fit, and logical editor. So, a
committee of the patriotic Georgia citizens who had subscribed the found-
ing fund of $100,000 called upon Colonel Telfair at his residence, Cedar

Heights, fearful lest the enterprise and the South should suffer by his

possible refusal.

The colonel received them in his great library, where he spent most of

his days. The library had descended to him from his father. It contained

ten thousand volumes, some of which had been published as late as the

THE ROSE OF DIXIE

68l

year 1861. When the deputation arrived, Colonel Telfair was seated at his
massive white-pine centre-table, reading Burton's "Anatomy of Melan-
choly." He arose and shook hands punctiliously with each member of the
committee. If you were familiar with The Rose of Dixie you will remem-
ber the colonel's portrait, which appeared in it from time to time. You
could not forget the long, carefully brushed white hair, the hooked, high-
bridged nose, slightly twisted to the left; the keen eyes under the still
black eyebrows; the classic mouth beneath the drooping white mustache,
slightly frazzled at the ends.

The committee solicitously offered him the position of managing editor,
humbly presenting an outline of the field that the publication was de-
signed to cover and mentioning a comfortable salary. The colonel's lands
were growing poorer each year and were much cut up by red gullies.
Besides, the honor was not one to be refused.

In a forty-minute speech of acceptance, Colonel Telfair gave an outline
of English literature from Chaucer to Macaulay, re-fought the battle of
Chancellorsville, and said that, God helping him, he would so conduct
The Rose of Dixie that its fragrance and beauty would permeate the en-
tire world, hurling back into the teeth of the Northern minions their
belief that no genius or good could exist in the brains and hearts of the
people whose property they had destroyed and whose rights they had
curtailed.

Offices for the magazine were partitioned off and furnished in the
second floor of the First National Bank building; and it was for the colonel
to cause The Rose of Dixie to blossom and flourish or to wilt in the balmy
air of the land of flowers.

The staff of assistants and contributors that Editor-Colonel Telfair
drew about him was a peach. It was a whole crate of Georgia peaches.
The first assistant editor, Tolliver Lee Fairfax, had had a father killed
during Pickett's charge. The second assistant, Keats Unthank, was the
nephew of one of Morgan's Raiders. The book reviewer, Jackson Rocking-
ham, had been the youngest soldier in the Confederate army, having
appeared on the field of battle with a sword in one hand and a milk-
bottle in the other. The art editor, Roncesvalles Sykes, was a third cousin
to a nephew of Jefferson Davis. Miss Lavinia Terhune, the colonel's
stenographer and typewriter, had an aunt who had once been kissed by
Stonewall Jackson. Tommy Webster, the head office boy, got his job
by having recited Father Ryan's poems, complete, at the commencement
exercises of the Toombs City High School. The girls who wrapped and
addressed the magazines were members of old Southern families in
Reduced Circumstances. The cashier was a scrub named Hawkins, from
Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had recommendations and a bond from a
guarantee company filed with the owners. Even Georgia stock companies
sometimes realize that it takes live ones to bury the dead.

682 BOOK VI OPTIONS

Well, sir, if you believe me, The Rose of Dixie blossomed five times
before anybody heard of it except the people who buy their hooks and
eyes in Toombs City. Then Hawkins climbed ofi his stool and told on
5em to the stock company. Even in Ann Arbor he had been used to having
Hs business propositions heard of at least as far away as Detroit. So an
advertising manager was engaged— Beauregard Fitzhugh Banks— a young
man in a lavender necktie, whose grandfather had been the Exalted
High Pillow-slip of the Kuklux Klan.

In spite of which The Rose of Dixie kept coming out every month. Al-
though in every issue it ran photos of either the Taj Mahal or the Luxem-
bourg Gardens, or Carmencita or La Follette, a certain number of people
bought it and subscribed for it. As a boom for it, Editor-Colonel Telfair
ran three different views of Andrew Jackson's old home, "The Hermit-
age," a full-page engraving of the second battle of Manasses, entitled "Lee
to the Rear!" and a five-thousand-word biography of Belle Boyd in the
same number. The subscription list that month advanced 118. Also there
were poems in the same issue by Leonina Vashti Haricot (pen-name),
related to the Haricots of Charleston, South Carolina, and Bill Thompson,
nephew of one of the stockholders. And an article from a special society
correspondent describing a tea-party given by the swell Boston and Eng-
lish set, where a lot of tea was spilled overboard by some of the guests
masquerading as Indians.

One day a person whose breath would easily cloud a mirror, he was so
much alive, entered the office of The Rose of Dixie. He was a man about
the size of a real-estate agent, with a self-tied tie and a manner that he
must have borrowed conjointly from W. J. Bryan, Hackenschmidt, and
Hetty Green. He was shown into the editor-colonel's pons asinorum.
Colonel Telfair rose and began a Prince Albert bow.

"I'm Thacker," said the intruder, taking the editor's chair— "T. T.
Thacker, of New York."

He dribbled hastily upon the colonel's desk some cards, a bulk manila
envelope, and a letter from the owners of The Rose of Dixie. This letter
introduced Mr. Thacker, and politely requested Colonel Telfair to give
him a conference and whatever information about the magazine he might
desire.

"Fve been corresponding with the secretary of the magazine owners
for some time," said Thacker, briskly. "I'm a practical magazine man
myself, and a circulation booster as good as any, if I do say it. I'll guaran-
tee an increase of anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred thousand a
year for any publication that isn't printed in a dead language. I've had
my eye on The Rose of Dixie ever since it started. I know every end of
the business from editing to setting up the classified ads. Now, Fve come
down here to put a good bunch of money in the magazine, if I can see
my way clear. It ought to be made to pay, The secretary tells me it's

losing money. I don't see why a magazine in the South, if it's properly
handled, shouldn't get a good circulation in the North, too."

Colonel Telfair leaned back in his chair and polished his gold-rimmed
glasses.

"Mr. Thacker," said he, courteously but firmly, "TAe Rose of Dixie
is a publication devoted to the fostering and the voicing of Southern
genius. Its watchword, which you may have seen on the cover, is 'Of,
For, and By the South."5

"But you wouldn't object to a Northern circulation, would you?'* asked
Thacker,

"I suppose/* said the editor-colonel, "that it is customary to open the
circulation lists to all. I do not know. I have nothing to do with the busi-
ness affairs of the magazine. I was called upon to assume editorial control
of it, and I have devoted to its conduct such poor literary talents as I may
possess and whatever store of erudition I may have acquired."

"Sure," said Thacker, "But a dollar is a dollar anywhere. North, South,
or West — whether you're buying codfish, goober peas, or Rocky Ford
cantaloupes. Now, I've been looking over your November number. I see
one here on. your desk. You don't mind running over it with me?

"Well, your leading article is all right. A good write-up of the cotton-
belt with plenty of photographs is a winner any time. New York is always
interested in the cotton crop. And this sensational account of the Hat-
field-McCoy feud, by a schoolmate of a niece of the Governor of Ken-
tucky, isn't such a bad idea. It happened so long ago that most people have
forgotten it. Now, here's a poem three pages long called 'The Tyrant's
Foot/ by Lorella Lascelles. I've pawed around a good deal over manu-
scripts, but I never saw her name on a rejection slip."

"Miss Lascelles," said the editor, "is one of our most widely recognized
Southern poetesses. She is closely related to the Alabama Lascelles family,
and made with her own hands the silken Confederate banner that was
presented to the governor of that state at his inauguration/*

"But why," persisted Thacker, "is the poem illustrated with a view of
the M. & O. Railroad depot at Tuscaloosa?"

"The illustration," said the colonel, with dignity, "shows a corner of
the fence surrounding the old homestead where Miss Lascelles was
born."

"All right," said Thacker. "I read the poem, but I couldn't tell whether
it was about the depot or the battle of Bull Run. Now, here's a short
story called 'Rosie's Temptation,* by Fosdyke Piggott. It's rotten. What
is a Piggott, anyway?"

"Mr. Piggott," said the editor, "is a brother of the principal stockhol^^,
of the magazine." ,

"All's right with the world— Piggott passes,*1 said Thacker. "Well, tr^fe
article on Arctic exploration and the one on tarpon fishing might go.

684 BOOK VI OPTIONS

But how about this write-up o£ the Atlanta, New Orleans, Nashville,
and Savannah breweries? It seems to consist mainly of statistics about
their output and the quality o£ their beer. What's the chip over the
bug?"

"If I understand your figurative language," answered Colonel Telfair,
"it is this : the article you refer to was handed to me by the owners of the
magazine with instructions to publish it. The literary quality of it did not
appeal to me. But, in a measure, I feel impelled to conform, in certain
matters, to the wishes of the gentlemen who are interested in the financial
side of The Rose!'

"I see," said Thacker. "Next we have two pages of selections from
'Lalla Rookh,' by Thomas Moore* Now, what Federal prison did Moore
escape from, or what's the name of the R F. V. family that he carries as
a handicap?"

"Moore was an Irish poet who died in 1852," said Colonel Telfair,
pityingly. "He is a classic. I have been thinking of reprinting his transla-
tion of Anacreon serially in the magazine."

"Look out for the copyright laws," said Thacker, flippantly. "Who's
Bessie Belleclair, who contributes the essay on the newly completed
waterworks plant in Milledgeville?"

"The name, sir," said Colonel Telfair, "is the nom de guerre of Miss
Elvira Simpkins. I have not the honor of knowing the lady; but her con-
tribution was sent us by Congressman Brower, of her native state. Con-
gressman Brower's mother was related to the Polks of Tennessee."

"Now, see here, Colonel," said Thacker, throwing down the magazine,
"this won't do. You can't successfully run a magazine for one particular
section of the country. You've got to make a universal appeal. Look how
the Northern publications have catered to the South and encouraged the
Southern writers. And you've got to go far and wide for your contribu-
tors. You've got to buy stuff according to its quality, without any regard
to the pedigree of the author. Now, I'll bet a quart of ink that this South-
ern parlor organ you've been running has never played a note that
originated above Mason & Hamlin's line. Am I right?"

"I have carefully and conscientiously rejected all contributions from
that section of the country— if I understand your figurative language
aright," replied the colonel.

"All right. Now, I'll show you something,"

Thacker reached for his thick manila envelope and dumped a mass of
typewritten manuscript on the editor's desk.

"Here's some truck," said he, "that I paid cash for, and brought along
with me.**

One by one he folded back the manuscripts and showed their first
pages to the colonel.

"Here are four short stories by four of the highest priced authors in the

"THE ROSE OF DIXIE" 685

United States — three of 'em living in New York, and one commuting.
There's a special article on Vienna-bred society by Tom Vampson, Here's
an Italian serial by Captain Jack— no—it's the other Crawford. Here are
three separate exposes of city governments by Sniffings, and here's a
dandy entitled 'What Women Carry in Dress-Suit Cases —a Chicago
newspaper woman hired herself out for five years as a lady's maid to get
that information. And here's a Synopsis of Preceding Chapters of Hall
Caine's new serial to appear next June. And here's a couple of pounds of
vers de soci£t£ that I got at a rate from the clever magazines. That's the
stuff that people everywhere want. And now here's a write-up with pho-
tographs at the ages of four, twelve, twenty-two, and thirty of George B.
McClellan. It's a prognostication. He's bound to be elected Mayor of New
York. It'll make a big hit all over the country. He "

"I beg your pardon," said Colonel Telf air, stiffening in his chair. "What
was the name?"

"Oh, I see," said Thacker, with half a grin. "Yes, he's a son of the
General. We'll pass that manuscript up. But, if youll excuse me, Colonel,
it's a magazine we're trying to make go off— not the first gun at Fort
Sumter. Now, here's a thing that's bound to get next to you. It's an
original poem by James Whitcomb Riley. J. W. himself. You know what
that means to a magazine. I won't tell you what I had to pay for that
poem; but I'll tell you this — Riley can make more money writing with a
fountain-pen than you or I can with one that lets the ink run. I'll read you
the last two stanzas:

"Pa lays around 'n' loafs all day, " 'N* after all the lights are out

'N5 reads and makes us leave him I'm sorry 'bout it; so I creep

be. Out of my trundle bed to ma's

He lets me do just like I please, *N* say I love her a whole heap,

'1ST when I'm bad he laughs at me, *N* kiss her, 'n' I hug her tight.

TSP when I holler loud 'n' say 'N' it's too dark to see her eyes,

Bad words 'n' then begin to tease But every time I do I know

The cat, 'n' pa just smiles, ma's mad She cries *n' cries V cries 'n' cries.

'N* gives me Jesse crost her knees. I always wondered why that

I always wondered why that wuz —

wuz — I guess it's cause

I guess it's cause Pa never does.
Pa never does.

"That's the stuff," continued Thacker. "What do you think of that?"
"I am not unfamiliar with the works of Mr. Riley," said the colonel
deliberately. "I believe he lives in Indiana. For the last ten years I have
been somewhat of a literary recluse, and am familiar with nearly all the
books in the Cedar Heights library, I am also of the opinion that a maga-
zine should contain a certain amount of poetry. Many of the sweetest

686 BOOK VI OPTIONS

singers of the South have already contributed to the pages of The Rose of
Dixie. I, myself, have thought of translating from the original for publi-
cation in its pages the works of the great Italian poet Tasso. Have you
ever drunk from the fountain of this immortal poet's lines, Mr. Thacker?"

"Not even a demi-Tasso," said Thacker. "Now, let's come to the point,
Colonel Telfair. I've already invested some money in this as a flyer. That
bunch of manuscripts cost me $4,000. My object was to try a number of
them in the next issue— I believe you make up less than a month ahead
—and see what effect it has on the circulation. I believe that by printing
the best stuff we can get in the North, South, East, or West we can make
the magazine go. You have there the letter from the owning company
asking you to cooperate with me in the plan. Let's chuck out some of this
slush that you've been publishing just because the writers are related to
the Skoopdoodles of Skoopdoodle County. Are you with me?"

"As long as I continue to be the editor of The Rose'' said Colonel Tel-
fair, with dignity, "I shall be its editor. But I desire also to conform to the
wishes of its owners if I can do so conscientiously."

"That's the talk," said Thacker, briskly. "Now, how much of this stuff
I've brought can we get into the January number? We want to begin right
away."

"There is yet space in the January number," said the editor, "for about
eight thousand words, roughly estimated."

"Great!" said Thacker. "It isn't much, but it'll give the readers some
change from goobers, governors, and Gettysburg. I'll leave the selection
of the stuff I brought to fill the space to you, as it's all good. I've got to
run back to New York, and I'll be down again in a couple of weeks."

Colonel Telfair slowly swung his eye-glasses by their broad, black
ribbon.

"The space in the January number that I referred to," said he, meas-
uredly, "has been held open purposely, pending a decision that I have not
yet made. A short time ago a contribution was submitted to The Rose of
Dixie that is one of the most remarkable literary efforts that has ever
come under my observation. None but a master mind and talent could
have produced it. It would about fill the space that I have reserved for its
possible use."

Thacker looked anxious.

"What kind of stuff is it?" he asked. "Eight thousand words sounds
suspicious. The oldest families must have been collaborating. Is there
going to be another secession?"

"The author of the article," continued the colonel, ignoring Thacker's
allusions, "is a writer of some reputation. He has also distinguished him-
self in other ways. I do not feel at liberty to reveal to you his name — at
least not until I have decided whether or not to accept his contribution."

"Well," said Thacker, nervously, "is it a continued story, or an account

"THE ROSE OP DIXIE" 687

of the unveiling of the new town pump in Whitmire, South Carolina, or a
revised list of General Lee's body-servants, or what?"

"You are disposed to be facetious," said Colonel Telfair, calmly. "The
article is from the pen of a thinker, a philosopher, a lover of mankind, a
student, and a rhetorician of high degree."

"It must have been written by a syndicate,** said Thacker. "But, hon-
estly, Colonel, you want to go slow. I don't know of any eight-thousand-
word single doses of written matter that are read by anybody these days,
except Supreme Court briefs and reports of murder trials. You haven't by
any accident gotten hold of a copy of one of Daniel Webster's speeches,
have you?"

Colonel Telfair swung a little in his chair and looked steadily from
under his bushy eyebrows at the magazine promoter,

"Mr. Thacker," he said, gravely, "I am willing to segregate the some-
what crude expression of your sense of humor from the solicitude that
your business investments undoubtedly have conferred upon you. But
I must ask you to cease your jibes and derogatory comments upon the
South and the Southern people. They, sir, will not be tolerated in the
office of The Rose of Dixie for one moment. And before you proceed
with more of your covert insinuations that I, the editor of this magazine,
am not a competent judge of the merits of the matter submitted to its
consideration, I beg that you will first present some evidence or proof that
you are my superior in any way, shape, or form relative to the question
in hand."

"Oh, come, Colonel," said Thacker, good-naturedly. "I didn't do any-
thing like that to you. It sounds like an indictment by the fourth assistant
attorney-general. Let's get back to business. What's this 8,000 to i shot
about?"

"The article," said Colonel Telfair, acknowledging the apology by a
slight bow, "covers a wide area of knowledge. It takes up theories and
questions that have puzzled the world for centuries, and disposes of them
logically and concisely. One by one it holds up to view the evils of the
world, points out the way o£ eradicating them, and then conscientiously
and in detail commends die good. There is hardly a phase of human life
that it does not discuss wisely, calmly, and equitably. The great policies
of governments, the duties of private .citizens, the obligations of home life,
ethics, morality — all these important subjects are handled with a calm
wisdom and confidence that I must confess has captured my admiration."

"It must be a crackerjack," said Thacker, impressed.

"It is a great contribution to the world's wisdom," said the colonel "The
only doubt remaining in my mind as to the tremendous advantage it
would be to us to give it publication in The Rose of Dixie is that I have
not yet sufficient information about the author to give his work publicity
in our magazine."

688 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"I thought you said he is a distinguished man," said Thacker.

"He is," replied the colonel, "both in literary and in other more diversi-
fied and extraneous fields. But I am extremely careful about the matter
that I accept for publication. My contributors are people of unquestionable
repute and connections, which fact can be verified at any time. As I said,
I am holding this article until I can acquire more information about its
author. I do not know whether I will publish it or not. If I decide against
it, I shall be much pleased, Mr. Thacker, to substitute the matter that you
are leaving with me in its place."

Thacker was somewhat at sea.

"I don't seem to gather," said he, "much about the gist of this inspired
piece of literature. It sounds more like a dark horse than Pegasus to
me."

"It is a human document," said the colonel-editor, confidently, "from a
man of great accomplishments who, in my opinion, has obtained a stronger
grasp on the world and its outcomes than that of any man living to-day;"

Thacker rose to his feet excitedly.

"Say!" he said. "It isn't possible that you've cornered John D. Rocke-
feller's memoirs, is it? Don't tell me that all at once."

"No, sir," said Colonel Telfair. "I am speaking of mentality and litera-
ture, not of the less worthy intricacies of trade."

"Well, what's the trouble about running the article," asked Thacker, a
little impatiently, "if the man's well known and has got the stuff?"

Colonel Telfair sighed.

"Mr. Thacker," said he, "for once I have been tempted. Nothing has
yet appeared in The Rose of Dixie that has not been from the pen of one
of its sons or daughters. I know little about the author of this article ex-
cept that he has acquired prominence in a section of the country that has
always been inimical to my heart and mind. But I recognize his genius;
and, as I have told you, I have instituted an investigation of his personality.
Perhaps it will be futile. But I shall pursue the inquiry. Until that is fin-
ished, I must leave open the question of filling the vacant space in our
January number."

Thacker arose to leave.

"All right, Colonel," he said, as cordially as he could. "You use your
own judgment. If you've really got a scoop or something that will make
*em sit up, run it instead of my stuff. I'll drop in again in about two
weeks. Good luck!"

Colonel Telfair and the magazine promoter shook hands.

Returning a fortnight later, Thacker dropped off a very rocky Pullman
at Toombs City. He found the January number of the magazine made up
and the forms closed.

The vacant space that had been yawning for type was filled by an
article that was headed thus:

THE THIRD INGREDIENT 689

SECOND MESSAGE TO CONGRESS

Written for
THE ROSE OF DIXIE

A Member of the Well-Known

BULLOCH FAMILY, OF GEORGIA

T. ROOSEVELT

THE THIRD INGREDIENT

The (so-called) Vallambrosa Apartment House is not an apartment
house. It is composed of two old-fashioned, brownstone-front residences
welded into one. The parlor floor of one side is gay with the wraps and
headgear of a modiste; the other is lugubrious with the sophistical
promises and grisly display of a painless dentist. You may have a room
there for two dollars a week or you may have one for twenty dollars.
Among the Vallambrosa's roomers are stenographers, musicians, brokers,
shopgirls space-rate writers, art students, wire-tappers, and other people
who lean far over the banister-rail when die door-bell rings.

This treatise shall have to do with but two of the Vallambrosians —
though meaning no disrespect to the others.

At six o'clock one afternoon Hetty Pepper came back to her third-
floor rear $3.50 room in the Vallambrosa with her nose and chin more
sharply pointed than usual. To be discharged from the department store
where you have been working four years, and with only fifteen cents in
your purse, does have a tendency to make your features appear more
finely chiselled.

And now for Hetty's thumb-nail biography while she climbs the two
flights of stairs.

She walked into the Biggest Store one morning four years before, with
seventy-five other girls, applying for a job behind the waist department
counter. The phalanx of wage-earners formed a bewildering scene of
beauty, carrying a total mass of blond hair sufficient to have justified the
horseback gallops of a hundred Lady Godivas.

The capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man, whose
task it was to engage six of the contestants, was aware of a feeling of
suffocation as if he were drowning in a sea of frangipani, while white
clouds, hand-embroidered, floated about him. And then a sail hove in
sight, Hetty Pepper, homely of countenance, with small, contemptuous
green eyes and chocolate-colored hair, dressed in a suit of plain burlap
and a common-sense hat, stood before him with every one of her twenty-
nine years of life unmistakably in sight.

690 BOOKVI OPTIONS

"You're on!" shouted the bald-headed young man, and was saved. And
that is how Hetty came to be employed in the Biggest Store, The story
of her rise to an eight-dollar-a-week salary is the combined stories of
Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. You shall
not learn from me the salary that was paid her as a beginner. There is a
sentiment growing about such things, and I want no millionaire store-
proprietors climbing the fire-escape of my tenement-house to throw dyna-
mite bombs into my skylight boudoir.

The story of Hetty's discharge from the Biggest Store is so nearly a
repetition of her engagement as to be monotonous.

In each department of the store there is an omniscient, omnipresent,
and omnivorous person carrying always a mileage book and a red necktie,
and referred to as a "buyer." The destinies of the girls in his department
who live on (see Bureau of Victual Statistics) — so much per week are in
his hands.

This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young,
bald-headed man. As he walked along the aisles of his department he
seemed to be sailing on a sea of frangipani, while white clouds, machine-
embroidered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring surfeit. He
looked upon Hetty Pepper's homely countenance, emerald eyes, and
chocolate-colored hair as a welcome oasis of green in a desert of cloying
beauty. In a quiet angle of a counter he pinched her arm kindly, three
inches above the elbow. She slapped him three feet away with one good
blow of her muscular and not especially lily-white right. So, now you
know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the Biggest Store at thirty min-
utes' notice, with one dime and a nickel in her purse.

This morning's quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per
(butcher's) pound. But oa the day that Hetty was "released" by the B. S.
the price was seven and one half cents. That fact is what makes this story
possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have

But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned with
shorts who were unable to cover; so, you can find no fault with this one,

Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor-back. One
hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night's good sleep, and she would be
fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan of Arc,
Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood.

In her room she got the graniteware stew-pan out of the 2 x 4 foot
china — er — I mean earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a rat's-
nest of paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came out with her
nose and chin just a little sharper pointed.

There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what kind of a beef-
stew can you make out of simply beef? You can make oyster-soup without
oysters, turtle-soup without turtles, coffee-cake without coffee, but you
can't make beef-stew without potatoes and onions.

THE THIRD INGREDIENT

But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door
look like a wrought-iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt
and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a little cold
water) 'twill serve— 'tis not so deep as a lobster a la Newburgh, nor
so wide as a church festival doughnut; but 'twill serve*

Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor hall According
to the advertisements of the Vallambrosa there was running water to be
found there. Between you and me and the water-meter, it only ambled or
walked through the faucets; but technicalities have no place here. There
was also a sink where housekeeping roomers often met to dump their
coffee grounds and glare at one another's kimonos.

At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, artistic hair
and plaintive eyes washing two large "Irish" potatoes. Hetty knew the
Vallambrosa as well as any one not owning "double hextra-magnifying
eyes" could compass its mysteries. The kimonos were her encyclopedia,
her "Who's What?* her clearing-house of news, of goers and comers.
From a rose-pink kimono edged with Nile green she had learned that
the girl with the potatoes was a miniature-painter living in a kind of attic
—or "studio/* as they prefer to call it— on the top floor. Hetty was not
certain in her mind what a miniature was; but it certainly wasn't a house;
because house-painters, although . they wear splashy overalls and poke
ladders in your face on the street, are known to indulge in a riotous pro-
fusion of food at home.

The potato girl was quite slim and small, and handled her potatoes as
an old bachelor uncle handles a baby who is cutting teeth. She had a dull
shoemaker's knife in her right hand, and she had begun to peel one of
the potatoes with it.

Hetty addressed her in the punctiliously formal tone of one who in-
tends to be cheerfully familiar with you in the second round.

"Beg pardon/' she said, "for butting into what's not my business, but
if you peel them potatoes you lose out. They're new Bermudas, You
want to scrape 'em. Lemme show you."

She took a potato and the knife, and began to demonstrate.

"Oh, thank you," breathed the artist. "I didn't know. And I did hate
to see the thick peeling go; it seemed such a waste. But I thought they
always had to be peeled. When you've got only potatoes to eat, the peelings
count, you know."

"Say, kid," said Hetty, staying her knife, "you ain't up against it, too,
are you?"

The miniature artist smiled starvedly.

"I suppose I am. Art—or, at least, the way I interpret it— doesn't seem
to be much in demand. I have only these potatoes for my dinner. But
they aren't so bad boiled and hot, with a little butter and salt"

"Child," said Hetty, letting a brief smile soften her rigid features, "Fate

692 BOOK VI OPTIONS

has sent me and you together. I've had it handed to me in the neck, too;
but I've got a chunk of meat in my room as big as a lap-dog. And I've done
everything to get potatoes except pray for sem. Lets me and you bunch
our commissary departments and make a stew of 'em. We'll cook it in
my room. If we only had an onion to go in it! Say, kid, you haven't got a
couple of pennies that've slipped down into the lining of your last win-
ter's sealskin, have you? I could step down to the corner and get one at
old Giuseppe's stand. A stew without an onion is worse'n a matinee with-
out candy."

"You may call me Cecilia," said the artist. "No; I spent my last
penny three days ago."

"Then we'll have to cut the onion out instead of slicing it in," said
Hetty. "I'd ask the janitress for one, but I don't want 'em hep just yet
to the fact that Fm pounding the asphalt for another job. But I wish we
did have an onion."

In the shop-girl's room the two began to prepare their supper. Cecilia's
part was to sit on the couch helplessly and beg to be allowed to do some-
thing, in the voice of a cooing ring-dove. Hetty prepared the rib beef,
putting it in cold salted water in the stew-pan and setting it on the one-
burner gas-stove.

"I wish we had an onion," said Hetty, as she scraped the two potatoes.

On the wall opposite the couch was pinned a flaming, gorgeous adver-
tising picture of one of the new ferryboats of the P. U. F. F. Railroad that
had been built to cut down the time between Los Angeles and New York
City one eighth of a minute.

Hetty, turning her head during her continuous monologue, saw tears
running from her guest's eyes as she gazed on the idealized presentment
of the speeding, foam-girdled transport.

"Why, say, Cecilia, kid," said Hetty poising her knife, "is it as bad
art as that? I ain't a critic, but I thought it kind of brightened up the room.
Of course, a manicure-painter could tell it was a bum picture in a minute.
I'll take it down if you say so. I wish to the holy Saint Potluck we had an
onion."

But the miniature miniature-painter had tumbled down, sobbing, with
her nose indenting the hard-woven drapery of the couch. Something was
here deeper than the artistic temperament offended at crude lithography.

Hetty knew. She had accepted her role long ago. How scant the
words with which we try to describe a single quality of a human being!
When we reach the abstract we are lost. The nearer to Nature that the
babbling of our lips comes, the better do we understand. Figuratively (let
us say), some people are Bosoms, some are Hands, some are Heads, some
are Muscles, some are Feet, some are Backs for burdens.

Hetty was a Shoulder. Hers was a sharp, sinewy shoulder; but all her
life people had laid their heads upon it, metaphorically or actually, and

THE THIRD INGREDIENT 693

had left there all or half their troubles. Looking at Life anatomically,
which is as good a way as any, she was preordained to be a Shoulder.
There were few truer collar-bones anywhere than hers.

Hetty was only thirty-three, and she had not yet outlived the little pang
that visited her whenever the head of youth and beauty leaned upon her
for consolation. But one glance in her mirror always served as an instan-
taneous painkiller. So she gave one pale look into the crinkly old looking-
glass on the wall above the gas-stove, turned down the flame a little
lower from the bubbling beef and potatoes, went over to the couch, and
lifted Cecilia's head to its confessional

"Go on and tell me, honey," she said. "I know now that it ain't art
that's worrying you. You met him on a ferry-boat, didn't you? Go on,
Cecilia, kid, and tell your— your Aunt Hetty about it."

But youth and melancholy must first spend the surplus of sighs and
tears that waft and float the barque of romance to its harbor in the de-
lectable isles. Presently, through the stringy tendons that formed the
bars of the confessional, the penitent — or was it the glorified communicant
of the sacred flame? — told her story without art or illumination.

"It was only three days ago. I was coming back on the ferry from
Jersey City. Old Mr. Schrum, an art dealer, told me of a rich man in
Newark who wanted a miniature of his daughter painted. I went to see
him and showed him some of my work. When I told him the price
would be fifty dollars he laughed at me like a hyena. He said an enlarged
crayon twenty times the size would cost him only eight dollars.

"I had just enough money to buy my ferry ticket back to New York.
I felt as if I didn't want to live another day. I must have looked as I felt,
for I saw him on the row of seats opposite me, looking at me as if he
understood. He was nice-looking, but, oh, above everything else, he
looked kind. When one is tired or unhappy or hopeless, kindness counts
more than anything else.

"When I got so miserable that I couldn't fight against it any longer,
I got up and walked slowly out the rear door of the ferry-boat cabin. No
one was there, and I slipped quickly over the rail, and dropped into the
water. Oh, friend Hetty, it was cold, cold!

"For just one moment I wished I was back in the old Vallambrosa,
starving and hoping. And then I got numb, and didn't care. And then I
felt that somebody else was in the water close by me, holding me up. He
had followed me, and jumped in to save me.

"Somebody threw a thing like a big, white doughnut at us, and he
made me put my arms through the hole. Then the ferry-boat backed,
and they pulled us on board. Oh, Hetty, I was so ashamed of my wicked-
ness in trying to drown myself; and, besides, my hair had all tumbled
down and was sopping wet, and I was such a sight.

"And then some men in blue clothes came around; and he gave them

694 BOOK VI OPTIONS

his card, and I heard him tell them he had seen me drop my purse on
the edge of the boat outside the rail, and in leaning over to get it I had
fallen overboard. And then I remembered having read in the papers that
people who try to kill themselves are locked up in cells with people who
try to kill other people, and I was afraid.

"But some ladies on the boat took me downstairs to the furnace-room
and got me nearly dry and did up my hair. When the boat landed, he
came and put me in a cab. He was all dripping himself, but laughed as
if he thought it was all a joke. He begged me, but I wouldn't tell him my
name nor where I lived, I was so ashamed."

"You were a fool, child," said Hetty, kindly. "Wait till I turn the light
up a bit. I wish to Heaven we had an onion."

"Then he raised his hat," went on Cecilia, "and said: Very well. But
I'll find you, anyhow. I'm going to claim my rights of salvage.' Then he
gave money to the cab-driver and told him to take me where I wanted to
go, and walked away. What is 'salvage,' Hetty?"

"The edge of a piece of goods that ain't hemmed," said the shopgirl.
"You must have looked pretty well frazzled out to the little hero boy."

"It's been three days," moaned the miniature-painter, "and he hasn't
found me yet."

"Extend the time," said Hetty. "This is a big town. Think of how
many girls he might have to see soaked in water with their hair down be-
fore he would recognize you. The stew's getting on fine — but, oh, for
an onion! Fd even use a piece of garlic if I had it."

The beef and potatoes bubbled merrily, exhaling a mouth-watering
savor that yet lacked something, leaving a hunger on the palate, a
haunting, wistful desire for some lost and needful ingredient.

**I came near drowning in that awful river," said Cecilia, shuddering.

"It ought to have more water in it," said Hetty; "the stew, I mean. I'll
go get some at the sink."

"It smells good," said the artist.

"That nasty old North River?" objected Hetty. "It smells to me like
soap factories and wet setter-dogs — oh, you mean the stew. Well, I wish
we had an onion for it. Did he look like he had money?"

"First he looked kind," said Cecilia. "I'm sure he was rich; but that
matters so little. When he drew out his bill-folder to pay the cabman you
couldn't help seeing hundreds and thousands of dollars in it. And I
looked over the cab doors and saw him leave the ferry station in a motor-
car; and the chauffeur gave him his bearskin to put on, for he was sopping
wet. And it was only three days ago."

"What a fool!" said Hetty, shortly.

"Oh, the chauffeur wasn't wet," breathed Cecilia, "And he drove the
car away very nicely."

"I mean you" said Hetty, "For not giving him your address."

THE THIRD INGREDIENT 695

"I never give my address to chauffeurs," said Cecilia, haughtily.

"I wish we had one," said Hetty, disconsolately.

"What for?"

"For the stew, of course Oh, I mean an onion."

Hetty took a pitcher and started to the sink at the end of the hall.

A young man came down the stairs from above just as she was opposite
the lower step. He was decently dressed, but pale and haggard. His eyes
were dull with the stress of some burden of physical or mental woe. In
his hand he bore an onion— a pink, smooth, solid, shining onion, as large
around as a ninety-eight-cent alarm clock.

Hetty stopped. So did the young man. There was something Joan of
Arc-ish, Herculean and Una-ish in the look and pose of the shoplady —
she had cast off the roles of Job and Litde-Red-Riding-Hood. The young
man stopped at the foot of the stairs and coughed distractedly. He felt
marooned, held up, attacked, assailed, levied upon, sacked, assessed,
pan-handled, brow-beaten, though he knew not why. It was the look in
Hetty's eyes that did it. In them he saw the Jolly Roger fly to the masthead
and an able seaman with a dirk between his teeth scurry up the ratlines
and nail it there. But as yet he did not know that the cargo he carried
was the thing that had caused him to be so nearly blown out of the water
without even a parley.

"Beg your pardon/5 said Hetty, as sweetly as her dilute acetic acid
tones permitted, "but did you find that onion on the stairs? There was a
hole in the paper bag; and I've just come out to look for it"

The young man coughed for half a minute. The interval may have
given him the courage to defend his own property. Also, he clutched
his pungent prize greedily, and, with a show of spirit, faced his grim
way-layer.

"No," he said, huskily, "I didn't find it on the stairs. It was given to me
by Jack Bevens, on the top floor. If you don't believe it, ask him. Ill wait
until you do."

"I know about Bevens," said Hetty, sourly. "He writes books and
things up there for the paper-and-rags man. We can hear the postman
guy him all over the house when he brings them thick envelopes back.
Say — do you live in the Vallambrosa?"

"I do not," said the young man. "I come to see Bevens sometimes. He's
my friend. I live two blocks west."

"What are you going to do with the onion?— begging your pardon,"
said Hetty.

"I'm going to eat it."

"Raw?"

"Yes : as soon as I get home."

"Haven't you got anything else to eat with it?"

The young man considered briefly.

696 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"No," he confessed; "there's not another scrap o£ anything in my dig-
gins to eat. I think old Jack is pretty hard up for grub in his shack,
too. He hated to give up the onion, but I worried him into parting
with it."

"Man," said Hetty, fixing him with her world-sapient eyes, and laying
a bony but impressive finger on his sleeve, "youVe known trouble, too,
haven't you?"

"Lots," said the onion owner, promptly. "But this onion is my own
property, honestly come by. If you will excuse me, I must be going."

"Listen," said Hetty, paling a little with anxiety. "Raw onion is a mighty
poor diet. And so is a beef-stew without one. Now, if you're Jack Bevens'
friend, I guess you're nearly right. There's a little lady— a friend of mine
—in my room there at the end of the hall. Both of us are out of luck;
and we had just potatoes and meat between us. They're stewing now. But
it ain't got any soul. There's something lacking to it. There's certain things
in life that are naturally intended to fit and belong together. One is pink
cheese-cloth and green roses, and one is ham and eggs, and one is Irish
and trouble. And the other one is beef and potatoes with onions. And
still another one is people who are up against it and other people in the
same fix."

The young man went into a protracted paroxysm of coughing. With
one hand he hugged his onion to his bosom.

"No doubt; no doubt," said he, at length. "But as I said, I must be
going because "

Hetty clutched his sleeve firmly.

"Don't be a Dago, Little Brother. Don't eat raw onions. Chip in to-
ward the dinner and line yourself inside with the best stew you ever
licked a spoon over. Must two ladies knock a young gentleman down and
drag him inside for the honor of dining with Jem? No harm shall befall
you, Little Brother. Loosen up and fall into line."

The young man's pale face relaxed into a grin.

"Believe I'll go you," he said, brightening. "If my onion is as good as a
credential, I'll accept the invitation gladly."

"It's as good as that, but better as seasoning," said Hetty. "You come
and stand outside the door till I ask my lady friend if she has any objec-
tions. And don't run away with that letter of recommendation before I
come out."

Hetty went into her room and closed the door. The young man
waited outside.

"Cecilia, kid," said the shop-girl, oiling the sharp saw of her voice as
well as she could, "there's an onion outside. With a young man attached.
I've asked him in to dinner. You ain't going to kick, are you?"

"Oh, dear!" said Cecilia, sitting up and patting her artistic hair. She
cast a mournful glance at the ferry-boat poster on the wall.

THE THIRD INGREDIENT 697

"Nit," said Hetty. "It ain't him. You're up against real life now. I be-
lieve you said your hero friend had money and automobiles. This is a poor
skeezicks that's got nothing to eat but an onion. But he's easy-spoken and
not a freshy. I imagine he's been a gentleman, he's so low down now.
And we need the onion. Shall I bring him in? I'll guarantee his behavior."

"Hetty, dear/' sighed Cecilia, "I'm so hungry. What difference does
it make whether he's a prince or a burglar? I don't care. Bring him in
if he's got anything to eat with him."

Hetty went back into the hall. The onion man was gone. Her heart
missed a beat, and a gray look settled over her face except on her nose
and cheek-bones. And then the tides of life flowed in again, for she saw
him leaning out of the front window at the other end of the hall. She hur-
ried there. He was shouting to someone below. The noise of the street
overpowered the sound of her footsteps. She looked down over his shoul-
der, saw whom he was speaking to, and heard his words. He pulled him-
self in from the window-sill and saw her standing over him.

Hetty's eyes bored into him like two steel gimlets.

"Don't lie to me," she said, calmly. "What were you going to do with
that onion?"

The young man suppressed a cough and faced her resolutely. His
manner was that of one who had been bearded sufficiently.

"I was going to eat it," said he, with emphatic slowness; "just as I told
you before."

"And you have nothing else to eat at home?"

"Not a thing."

"What kind of work do you do?"

"I am not working at anything just now."

"Then why," said Hetty, with her voice set on its sharpest edge, "do
you lean out of a window and give orders to chauffeurs in green auto-
mobiles in the street below?"

The young man flushed, and his dull eyes began to sparkle.

"Because, madam," said he, in accelerando tones, "I pay the chauffeur's
wages and I own the automobile — and also this onion — this onion,
madam."

He flourished the onion within an inch of Hetty's nose. The shoplady
did not retreat a hair's-breadth.

"Then why do you eat onions," she said, with biting contempt, "and
nothing else?"

"I never said I did," retorted the young man, heatedly. "I said I had
nothing to eat where I live. I am not a delicatessen storekeeper."

"Then why," pursued Hetty, inflexibly, "were you going to eat a raw
onion?"

"My mother," said the young man, "always made me eat one for a
cold. Pardon my referring to a physical infirmity; but you may have

698 BOOK VI OPTIONS

noticed that I have a very, very severe cold. I was going to eat the onion
and go to bed. I wonder why I am standing here and apologizing to
you for it."

"How did you catch this cold?" went on Hetty, suspiciously.

The young man seemed to have arrived at some extreme height of
feeling. There were two modes of descent open to him— a burst of rage
or a surrender to the ridiculous. He chose wisely; and the empty hall
echoed his hoarse laughter.

"You're a dandy," said he. "And I don't blame you for being careful.
I don't mind telling you. I got wet. I was on a North River ferry a few
days ago when a girl jumped overboard. Of course, I "

Hetty extended her hand, interrupting his story.

"Give me the onion/' she said.

The young man set his jaw a trifle harder.

"Give me the onion," she repeated.

He grinned, and laid it in her hand.

Then Hetty's infrequent, grim, melancholy smile showed itself. She
took the young man's arm and pointed with her other hand to the door
o£ her room.

"Little Brother," she said, "go in there. The little fool you fished out
of the river is there waiting for you. Go on in. Ill give you three minutes
before I come. Potatoes is in there, waiting. Go on in, Onions."

After he had tapped at the door and entered, Hetty began to peel and
wash the onion at the sink. She gave a gray look at the gray roofs outside
and the smile on her face vanished by little jerks and twitches.

"But it's us," she said, grimly, to herself, "it's us that furnished the
beef/'

THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery
eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos
swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy,
and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men
to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat— seamy on both sides.

"Ain't seen you in about four years, Ham," said the seedy man. "Which
way you been travelling ?n

"Texas," said the red-faced man. "It was too cold in Alaska for me.
And I found it warm in Texas. Ill tell you about one hot spell I went
through there.

"One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets
it go on without me. Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spitehouses than

THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL 699

New York City. Only out there they build 'em twenty miles away so you
can't smell what theyVe got for dinner, instead o£ running 'em up two
inches from their neighbors* windows.

"There wasn't any roads in sight, so I footed it 'cross country. The
grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a
peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman's private estate that every
minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you.
But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a ranch-
house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated railroad station.

"There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and pink
handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front of
the door.

" 'Greetings,' says I. 'Any refreshments, welcome, emoluments, or even
work for a comparative stranger?'

"'Oh, come in,5 says he, in a refined tone, 'Sit down on that stool,
please. I didn't hear your horse coming.'

" 'He isn't near enough yet,' says I. *I walked, I don't want to be a
burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water handy.'

" 'You do look pretty dusty,' says he; 'but our bathing arrangements *

" It's a drink I want,' says I. 'Never mind the dust that's on the out-
side.'

"He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then
goes on:

" 'Do you want work?*

"Tor a time,' says I. 'This is a rather quiet section of the country,
isn't it?'

" It is,' says he. 'Sometimes — so I have been told — one sees no human
being pass for weeks at a time. Fve been here only a month. I bought the
ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.'

" 'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man some-
times. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock,
do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.*

" 'Can you herd sheep?' asks the little ranchman.

" 'Do you mean have I heard sheep?' says I,

" 'Can you herd *em — take charge of a flock of 'em ?* says he.

"'Oh,' says I, 'now I understand. You mean chase 'em around and
bark at 'em like collie dogs. Well, I might,* says I. Tve never exactly
done any sheep-herding, but I've often seen 'em from car windows masti-
cating daisies, and they don't look dangerous.'

" 'I'm short a herder,* says the ranchman. 'You never can depend on
the, Mexicans. I've only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of
muttons — there are only eight hundred of 'em — in the morning, if you
like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished. You

700 BOOK VI OPTIONS

camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own cooking,
but wood and water are brought to your camp. It's an easy job.'

" Tm on,' says I. Til take tie job even if I have to garland my brow and
hold on to a crook and wear a loose effect and play on a pipe like the
shepherds do in pictures/

"So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive die flock of
muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let *em graze on a
little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about not
letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving rem down to
a water-hole to drink at noon.

" Til bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the buck-
board before night,' says he.

" Tine," says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit.
And be sure to bring the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer, ain't it?'

*c 'My name/ said he, 'is Henry Ogden.'

" 'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Glair/

"I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the
wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to
me, I was lonesomer than Crusoe's goat. IVe seen a lot of persons more
entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I'd drive 'em to the
corral and pen 'em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and
mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a tablecloth, and
listen to the coyotes and whip-poor-wills singing around the camp.

"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial
muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house aad stepped in the door.

" 'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 6you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are
all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings
for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank along with
five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of cards, or a parcheesi outfit,
or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on a mental basis. I've
got to do something in an intellectual line, if it's only to knock somebody's
brains out.'

"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-
rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm,
and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee,
an oudaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for him.
But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken to be his
brother, I didn't care much for him either way; what I wanted was
some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost sinners — any-
thing sheepless would do.

" Well, Saint Clair,* says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I
guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don't deny that
it's monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so they
won't stray out?*

THEHIDINGOFBLACKBILL JOl

" They're shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer/ says I.
'And I'll be back with them long before they'll need their trained nurse.5

"So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. After five
days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When
I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in Trinity.
And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about the lady
in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.

"That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so
much that he'd be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire for
Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and
you'll see him splitting his ribs laughing at 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-
night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

"By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and there is a total
eclipse of sheep.

" 'Do you remember reading in the papers about a month ago/ says
he, 'about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was
shot through the shoulder and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it's
said that only one man did the job.'

" 'Seems to me I do,* says I. 'But such things happen so often they don't
linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake, overhaul, seize,
or lay hands upon the despoiler?'

" 'He escaped,' says Ogden. 'And I was just reading in a paper to-day
that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country. It
seems the bills the robbers got were all the first issue of currency to the
Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they've followed the
trail where they've been spent, and it leads this way.*

"Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.

"'Imagine,' says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal
booze, 'that it wouldn't be at all a disingenuous idea for a train-robber
to run down into this part of the country to hide for a spell. A sheep-ranch,
now,' says I, 'would be the finest kind of a place. Who'd ever expect
to find such a desperate character among these song-birds and muttons
and wild flowers? And, by the way/ says I, kind of looking H. Ogden
over, 'was there any description mentioned to this single-handed terror?
Was his lineaments or height and thickness or teeth fillings or style of
habiliments set forth in print?'

" 'Why, no/ says Ogden; ^because they say nobody got a good sight
of him because he wore a mask. But they know it was a train-robber
called Black Bill, because he always works alone and because he dropped
a handkerchief in the express-car that had his name on it.5

"'All right/ says I. 1 approve of Black Bill's retreat to the sheep-
ranges. I guess they won't find him.'

" 'There's one thousand dollars reward for his capture/ says Ogden.

"'I don't need that kind of money/ says I, looking Mr. Sheepman

702 BOOK. VI OPTIONS

straight in the eye. The twelve dollars a month you pay me is enough.
I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my fare to Tex-
arkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,' I goes on, look-
ing significantly at Ogden, 'was to have come down this way— say, a
month ago — and bought a little sheep-ranch and *

"'Stop,' says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty
vicious. 'Do you mean to insinuate '

"'Nothing,' says I; 'no insinuations. I'm stating a hypodermical case.
I say, if Black Bill had come down here and bought a sheep-ranch and
hired me to Little-Boy-Blue 'em and treated me square and friendly, as
you've done, he'd never have anything to fear from me. A man is a man,
regardless of any complications he may have with sheep or railroad trains.
Now you know where I stand.'

"Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he
laughs, amused.

"'You'll do, Saint Clair,' says he. 'If I was Black Bill I wouldn't be
afraid to trust you. Let's have a game or two of seven-up to-night. That is
if you don't mind playing with a train-robber.'

" Tve told you,' says I, 'my oral sentiments, and there's no strings to
'em.5

"While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asked Ogden, as if the
idea was a kind of a casualty, where he was from.

" 'Oh,' says he, 'from the Mississippi Valley.'

" 'That's a nice little place,' says I. I've often stopped over there. But
didn't you find the sheets a little damp and the food poor? Now, I hail,'
says I, 'from the Pacific Slope. Ever put up there?'

** 'Too draughty,' says Ogden. 'But if you're ever in the Middle West
just mention my name, and you'll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.'

"'Well/ says I, 'I wasn't exactly fishing for your private telephone
number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off that Cumber-
land Presbyterian minister. It don't matter. I just want you to know you
are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don't play hearts on spades,
and don't get nervous/

" 'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that
if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester
bullet into you and stop my nervousness if I had any?'

"TSfot any,' says I. 'A man who's got, the nerve to hold up a train
single-handed wouldn't do a trick like that I've knocked about enough
to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not
that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,9 says I, 'being only
your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious circumstances we might
have been/

" 'Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,' says Ogden, 'and cut for deal/
"About four days afterwards, while my muttons was nooning on the

THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL 703

water-hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot o£ coffee, up
rides softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being he
wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City
detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His
chin and eye wasn't moulded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a
scout.

" 'Herdin' sheep?' he asks me.

" 'Well/ says I, 'to a man of your evident gumptional endowments, I
wouldn't have the nerve to state that I am engaged in decorating old
bronzes or oiling bicycle sprockets/

" 'You don't talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,' says he.

" 'But you talk like what you look like to me,' says I.

"And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho
Chiquito, two miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells me
he's a deputy sheriff.

'"There's a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere
in these parts," says the scout. 'He's been traced as far as San Antonio,
and may be farther. Have you seen or heard of any strangers around here
during the past month?*

"'I have not,' says I, 'except a report of one over at the Mexican
quarters of Loomis' ranch, on the Frio/

" 'What do you know about him?* asks the deputy.

" 'He's three days old,' says I.

"'What kind of a looking man is the man you work for?* he asks.
*Does old George Ramey own this place yet? He's run sheep here for
the last ten years, but never had no success/

"The old man had sold out and gone West,' I tells him. 'Another
sheep-fancier bought him out about a month ago/

" 'What kind of a looking man is he?' asks the deputy again,

" 'Oh,' says I, 'a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and
blue specs. I don't think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I
guess old George soaked him pretty well on the deal,* says L

"After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative informa-
tion and two thirds of my dinner, the deputy rides away.

"That night I mentions the matter to Ogden.

" 'They're drawing the tendrils of the octopus around Black Bill,' says
I. And then I told him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd described
him to the deputy, and what the deputy said about the matter.

"'Oh, well,' says Ogden, let's don't borrow any of Black Bill's
troubles. We've a few of our own. Get the Bourbon out of the cup-
board and we'll drink to his health— unless,' says he, with his little cack-
ling laugh, 'you're prejudiced against train-robbers/

"Til drink/* says I, 'to any man who's a friend to a friend. And I
believe that Black Bill,* I goes on, 'would be that. So here's to Black Bill,
and may he have good luck/

704 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"And both of us drank.

"About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be
driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip
the fur off them with back-action scissors* So the afternoon before the
barbers were to come I husded my underdone muttons over the hill,
across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the ranch-house,
where I penned 'em in a corral and bade 'em my nighdy adieus.

"I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire,
lying asleep on his litde cot bed, I guess he had been overcome by anti-
insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep
business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a second-
hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to just a few musings.
Imperial Caesar/ says I, 'asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth
and keep the wind away.'

"A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is
all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections?
He's at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he's
about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera
House at 12:30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep
you regard as different No matter how she looks, you know it's better
for all hands for her to be that way.

"Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in
to be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on
his table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical
culture — and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.

"After Fd smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of
H. O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens,
where there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across
a kind of a creek farther away.

"I saw five men riding up to the house. All of *em carried guns across
their saddles, and among 'em was the deputy that had talked to me at my
camp.

"They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I
set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muckraker of
this law-and-order cavalry.

" 'Good-evening, gents,' says I. 'Won't you 'light and tie your horses?'

"The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in it
seems to cover my whole front elevation.

" 'Don't you move your hands none,' says he, 'till you and me indulge
in a adequate amount of necessary conversation.'

" 'I will not,' says I. el am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not have to
disobey your injunctions in replying.'

" We are on the lookout,' says he, 'for Black Bill, the man that held
up the Katy for $15,000 in May, We are searching the ranches and every-

THE HIDING OF BLACK BILL 705

body on 'em. What is your name, and what do you do on this ranch?*

" 'Captain/ says I, Tercival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my name
is sheep-herder. I've got my flock of veals — no, muttons — penned here
to-night. The searchers are coming to-morrow to give them a haircut —
with baa-a-rum, I suppose.5

" 'Where's the boss of this ranch?1 the captain of the gang asks me.

"'Wait just a minute, cap'n/ says L 'Wasn't there a kind of a re-
ward offered for the capture of this desperate character you have re-
ferred to in your preamble?1

" 'There's a thousand dollars reward offered,' says the captain, 'but it's
for his capture and conviction. There don't seem to be no provision made
for an informer.5

" 'It looks like it might rain in a day or so,' says I, in a tired way,
looking up at the cerulean blue sky.

" 'If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness
of this here Black Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect, eyou are amiable to the
law in not reporting it.'

"'I heard a fence-rider say,' says I, in a desultory kind of voice, 'that
a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin's store on the
Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a
sheepman's cousin two weeks ago/

"'Tell you what I'll do, Tight Mouth/ says the captain, after look-
ing me over for bargains. 'If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill,
I'll pay you a hundred dollars out of my own — out of our own — pockets.
That's liberal/ says he. 'You ain't entitled to anything. Now, what do you
say?'

"'Cash down now?' I ask.

"The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all
produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the general
results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco.

" 'Come nearer, captain meeo/ says I, 'and listen.* He so did.

" 'I am mighty poor and low down in the world/ says L *I am working
for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose
only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although/ says I, *I regard
myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it's a come-down
to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form of chops.
I'm pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and
rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R. R. all the way
from Scranton to Cincinnati — dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of
a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you're ever up that way, don't
fail to let one try you. And, again/ says 1, 1 have never yet went back on
a friend. I've stayed by 'em when they had plenty, and when adversity's
overtaken me I've never forsook 'em.

" 'But/ 1 goes on, 'this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve dollars

706 BOOK VI OPTIONS

a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not consider brown
beans and cornbread the food o£ friendship. I am a poor man,' says I, 'and
I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You will find Black Bill,5 says
I, lying asleep in this house on a cot in the room to your right. He's
the man you want, as I know from his words and conversation. He was
in a way a friend,* I explains, 'and if I was the man I once was the entire
product of the mines of Gondola would not have tempted me to betray
him. But,' says I, 'every week half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh
enough wood in camp.5

"'Better go in careful, gentlemen,' says I. 'He seems impatient at
times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would
look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.'

"So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers
their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I
follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Steins on to Samson.

"The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then
he jumps up and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was
mighty tough with all his slimness, and gives 'em as neat a single-footed
tussle against odds as I ever see.

" 'What does this mean?' he says, after they had him down.

" 'You're scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,5 says the captain. 'That's all.'

" 'It's an outrage,* says H. Ogden, madder yet.

" 'It was,' says the peace-and-good-will man. 'The Katy wasn't bother-
ing you, and there's a law against monkeying with express packages.'

"And he sits on H. Ogden's stomach and goes through his pockets
symptomatically and careful.

" Til make you perspire for this,* says Ogden, perspiring some him-
self. *I can prove who I am.*

"'So can I,' says the captain, as he draws from H. Ogden*s inside
coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the Second National Bank of
Espinosa City. 'Your regular engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting-
card wouldn't have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than
this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to go with us and
expatriate your sins.'

"H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they
have taken the money off of him.

" 'A well-greased idea,* says the sheriff captain, admiring, 'to slip off
down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is seldom
heard. It was the slickest hide-out I ever see,' says the captain.

"So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other
herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden's horse,
and the sheriffs all ride up dose around him with their guns in hand,
ready to take their prisoner to town.

"Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies' hands and

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS 707

gives him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just as
if he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours afterward
one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho Chiquito, might
have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars — wages and blood money
— in his pocket, riding south on another horse belonging to said ranch."

The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming
freight train sounded far away among the low hills.

The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head
slowly and disparagingly.

"What is it, Snipy?" asked the other. "Got the blues again ?"

"No, I ain't," said the seedy one, sniffing again. "But I don't like your
talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen year; and I
never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the law — not no
one. And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at whose table
you had played games of cards — if casino can be so called. And yet you
inform him to the law and take money for it. It never was like you, I say."

"This H. Ogden," resumed the red-faced man, "through a lawyer,
proved himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard
afterward. He never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated
to hand him over."

"How about the bills they found in his pocket?" asked the seedy man.

"I put 'em there," said the red-faced man, "while he was asleep, when
I saw the posse riding up. I was Black Bill Look out, Snipy, here she
comes! We'll board her on the bumpers when she takes water."

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS

Old Jerome Warren lived in a hundred-thousand-dollar house at 35 East
Fifty-Soforth Street. He was a downtown broker, so rich that he could
afford to walk — for his health — a few blocks in the direction of his office
every morning and then call a cab.

He had an adopted son, the son of an old friend named Gilbert— Cyril
Scott could play him nicely — who was becoming a successful painter as
fast as he could squeeze the paint out of his tubes. Another member of
the household was Barbara Ross, a step-niece. Man is born to trouble; so,
as old Jerome had no family of his own, he took up the burdens of others.

Gilbert and Barbara got along swimmingly. There was a tacit and
tactical understanding all round that the two would stand up under a floral
bell some high noon, and promise the minister to keep old Jerome's money
in a state of high commotion. But at this point complications must be
introduced., ,

Thirty years before, when old Jerome was young Jerome, there was

708 BOOK VI OPTIONS

a brother of his named Dick. Dick went West to seek his or somebody
else's fortune. Nothing was heard of him until one day old Jerome had
a letter from his brother. It was badly written on ruled paper that
smelled of salt bacon and coffee-grounds. The writing was asthmatic
and the spelling St. Vitusy.

It appeared that instead of Dick having forced Fortune to stand and
deliver, he had been held up himself, and made to give hostages to the
enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging out
with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to check.
All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one daughter,
nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East, charges
prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and cherish for the
rest of her natural life or until matrimony should them part.

Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is sup-
ported by the shoulders of Adas; and that Atlas stands on a rail-
fence; and that the rail-fence is built on a turtle's back. Now, the turtle
has to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like
old Jerome.

I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so, I
would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them?

They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a little girl, deeply
sunburned and wholesomely good-looking, with a manner that was
frankly unsophisticated, yet one that not even a cigar-drummer \yould
intrude upon without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you
would expect to see her in a short skirt and leather leggings, shooting
glass balls or taming mustangs. But in her plain white waist and black
skirt she sent you guessing again. With an easy exhibition of strength
she swung along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried in vain
to wrest from her.

"I am sure we shall be the best of friends," said Barbara, pecking at
the firm, sunburned cheek.
"I hope so," said Nevada.

"Dear little niece," said old Jerome, "you are as welcome to my house
as if it were your father's own."
"Thanks," said Nevada.

"And I am going to call you 'cousin,' '* said Gilbert, with his charming
smile.

"Thanks," said Nevada.

"Take the valise, please,** said Nevada. "It weighs a million pounds.
It*s got samples from six of dad's old mines in it," she explained to Barbara.
"I calculate they'd assay about nine cents to the thousand tons, but I
promised him to bring diem along/'

II It is a common custom to refer to the usual complications between
one man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS 709

and a nobleman, or—well, any of these problems— as the triangle. But
they are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles — never
equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert and
Barbara Ross lined up into such a figurative triangle; and of that triangle
Barbara formed the hypotenuse.

One morning old Jerome was lingering long after breakfast over the
dullest morning paper in the city before setting forth to his downtown
fly-trap. He had become quite fond of Nevada, finding in her much of
his dead brother's quiet independence and unsuspicious frankness.

A maid brought in a note for Miss Nevada Warren.

"A messenger-boy delivered it at the door, please/' she said. "He's
waiting for an answer."

Nevada, who was whistling a Spanish waltz between her teeth, and
watching the carriages and autos roll by in the street, took the envelope.
She knew it was from Gilbert, before she opened it, by the little gold
palette in the upper left-hand corner.

After tearing it open she pored over the contents for a while, absorbedly.
Then, with a serious f ace^ she went and stood at her uncle's elbow.

"Uncle Jerome, Gilbert is a nice boy, isn't he?"

"Why, bless the child!" said old Jerome, crackling his paper loudly;
"of course he is. I raised him myself."

"He wouldn't write anything to anybody that wasn't exactly— I mean
that everybody couldn't know and read, would he?"

"I'd just like to see him try it," said uncle, tearing a handful from his
newspaper. "Why, what "

"Read this note he just sent me, uncle, and see if you think it's all right
and proper. You see, I don't know much about city people and their ways."

Old Jerome threw his paper down and set both his feet upon it. He
took Gilbert's note and fiercely perused it twice, and then a third time.

"Why, child," said he, "you had me almost excited, although I was
sure of that boy. He's a duplicate of his father, and he was a gilt-edged
diamond. He only asks if you and Barbara will be ready at four o'clock
this afternoon for an autombile drive over to Long Island, I don't see
anything to criticize in it except the stationery. I always did hate
that shade of blue."

"Would it be all right to go ?" asked Nevada, eagerly.

"Yes, yes, yes, child, of course. Why not? Still, it pleases me to see you
so careful and candid. Go, by all means."

"I didn't know," said Nevada, demurely. "I thought I'd ask you.
Couldn't you go with us, uncle?**

"I? No, no, no, nol I've ridden once in a car that boy was driving.
Never again! But it's entirely proper for you and Barbara to go. Yes, yes.
But I will not No, no, no, no!"

Nevada flew to the door, and said to the maid:

710 BO OK VI OPTIONS

"You bet well go. I'll answer for Miss Barbara. Tell the boy to say
to Mr. Warren, 'You bet we'll go.5 "

"Nevada," called old Jerome, "pardon me, my dear, but wouldn't it
be as well to send him a note in reply? Just a line would do,"

"No, I won't bother about that," said Nevada, gayly. "Gilbert will
understand — he always does* I never rode in an automobile in my life;
but I've paddled a canoe down Little Devil River through the Lost Horse
Canon, and if it's any livelier than that I'd like to know!"

Ill Two months are supposed to have elapsed.

Barbara sat in the study of the hundred-thousand-dollar house. It
was a good place for her. Many places are provided in the world where
men and women may repair for the purpose of extricating themselves
from divers difficulties. There are cloisters, wailing-places, watering-
places, confessionals; hermitages, lawyers* offices, beauty-parlors, air-
ships, and studies; and the greatest of these are studies.

It usually takes a hypotenuse a long time to discover that it is the longest
side of a triangle. But it's a long line that has no turning.

Barbara was alone. Uncle Jerome and Nevada had gone to the theatre.
Barbara had not cared to go. She wanted to stay at home and study in
the study. If you, miss, were a stunning New York girl, and saw every
day that a brown, ingenuous Western witch was getting hobbles and a
lasso on the young man you wanted for yourself, you, too, would lose taste
for the oxidized silver setting of a musical comedy.

Barbara sat by the quartered-oak library table. Her right arm rested
upon the table, and her dextral fingers nervously manipulated a sealed
letter. The letter was addressed to Nevada Warren; and in the upper left-
hand corner of the envelope was Gilbert's little gold palette. It had been
delivered at nine o'clock, after Nevada had left.

Barbara would have given her pearl necklace to know what that letter
contained; but she could not open and read it by the aid of steam, or a
pen-handle, or a hair-pin, or any of the generally approved methods,
because her position in society forbade such an act. She had tried to
read some of the lines of the letter by holding the envelope up to a strong
light and pressing it hard against the paper, but Gilbert had too good a
taste in stationery to make that possible.

^ At eleven-thirty the theatre-goers returned. It was a delicious winter
night Even so far as from the cab to the door they were powdered
thickly with the big flakes downpouring diagonally from the east. Old
Jerome growled good-naturedly about villainous cab service and blockaded
streets. Nevada, colored like a rose, ^yith sapphire eyes, babbled of, the
stormy nights in the mountains around dad's cabiu. During all these wintry
apostrophes, Barbara, cold at heart, sawed wood—the only appropriate
thing she could think of to do.

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS

Old Jerome went immediately upstairs to hot-water-bottles and quinine.
Nevada fluttered into the study, the only cheerfully lighted room, subsided
into an armchair, and, while at the interminable task of unbouttoning her
elbow gloves, gave oral testimony as to the demerits of the "show."

"Yes, I think Mr. Fields is really amusing — sometimes," said Barbara.
"Here is a letter for you, dear, that came by special delivery just after
you had gone."

"Who is it from?" asked Nevada, tugging at a button.

"Well, really," said Barbara, with a smile, "I can only guess. The
envelope has that queer little thing in one corner that Gilbert calls a
palette, but which looks to me rather like a gilt heart on a school-girl's
valentine."

"I wonder what he's writing to me- about," remarked Nevada, listlessly.

"We're all alike," said Barbara; "all women. We try to find out what
is in a letter by studying the postmark. As a last resort we use scissors,
and read it from the bottom upward. Here it is."

She made a motion as if to toss the letter across the table to Nevada.

"Great catamounts!" exclaimed Nevada. "These centre-fire buttons are
a nuisance. I'd rather wear buckskins. Oh, Barbara, please shuck the hide
off that letter and read it. It'll be midnight before I get these gloves off!"

"Why, dear, you don't want me to open Gilbert's letter to you? It's
for you, and you wouldn't wish any one else to read it, of course!"

Nevada raised her steady, calm, sapphire eyes from her gloves.

"Nobody writes me anything that everybody mightn't read," she said.
"Go on, Barbara. Maybe Gilbert wants us to go out in his car again to-
morrow."

Curiosity can do more things than kill a cat; and if emotions, well
recognized as feminine, are inimical to feline life, then jealousy would
soon leave the whole world cadess. Barbara opened the letter, with an
indulgent, slightly bored air.

"Well, dear," she said, "I'll read it if you want me to."

She slit the envelope, and read the missive with swift-travelling eyes;
read it again, and cast a quick, shrewd glance at Nevada, who, for the
time, seemed to consider gloves as the world of her interest, and letters
from rising artists as no more than messages from Mars.

For a quarter of a minute Barbara looked at Nevada with a strange
steadfastness; and then a smile so small that it widened her mouth
only the sixteenth part of an inch, and narrowed her eyes no more than
a twentieth flashed like an inspired thought across her face.

Since the beginning no woman has lien a mystery to another woman.
Swift as light travels, each penetrates the heart and mind of another, sifts
her sister's words o£ their cunningest disguises, reads her most hidden
desires, and plucks the sophistry from her wiliest talk like hairs from a
comb> twiddling them sardonically between her thumb and fingers before

712 BOOK VI OPTIONS

letting them float away on the breezes of fundamental doubt. Long ago
Eve's son rang the door-bell of the family residence in Paradise Park,
bearing a strange lady on his arm, whom he introduced. Eve took her
daughter-in-law aside and lifted a classic eyebrow.

"The Land of Nod," said the bride, languidly flirting the leaf of a palm.
"I suppose you've been there, of course?*'

"Not lately/' said Eve, absolutely unstaggered. "Don't you think the
applesauce they serve over there is execrable? I rather like that mulberry-
leaf tunic effect, dear; but, of course, the real fig goods are not to be had
over there. Come over behind this lilac-bush while the gentlemen split
a celery tonic. I think the caterpillar-holes have made your dress open
a little in the back."

So, then and there — according to the records — was the alliance formed
by the only two who's-who ladies in the world. Then it was agreed that
women should forever remain as clear as a pane of glass— though glass
was yet to be discovered — to other women, and that she should palm
herself off on a man as a mystery.

Barbara seemed to hesitate.

"Really, Nevada," she said, with a little show of embarrassment, "you
shouldn't have insisted on my opening this. I—I'm sure it wasn't meant
for any one else to know."

Nevada forgot her gloves for a moment.

"Then read it aloud," she said. "Since you've already read it, what's the
difference? If Mr. Warren has written to me something that any one
else oughtn't to know, that is all the more reason why everybody should
know it."

"Well," said Barbara, "this is what it says: 'Dearest Nevada — Come to
my studio at twelve o'clock to-night. Do not fail.'" Barbara rose and
dropped the note in Nevada's lap. "I'm awfully sorry," she said, "that I
knew. It isn't like Gilbert. There must be some mistake. Just consider
that I am ignorant of it, will you, dear? I must go upstairs now, I have
such a headache. Ym sure I don't understand the note. Perhaps Gilbert
has been dining too well, and will explain. Good night!"

IV Nevada tiptoed to the hall, and heard Barbara's door close upstairs.
The bronze clock in the study told the hour of twelve was fifteen min-
utes away. She ran swiftly to the front door, and let herself out into the
snowstorm. Gilbert Warren's studio was six squares away.

By aerial ferry the white, silent forces of the storm attacked the city
from beyond the sullen East River. Already the snow lay a foot deep on
the pavements, the drifts heaping themselves like scaling-ladders against
the walls of the besieged town* The Avenue was as quiet as a street in
Pompeii. Cabs now and then skimmed past like white-winged gulls over
a moonlit ocean; and less frequent motor-cars — sustaining the comparison

SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLS 713

—hissed through the foaming waves like submarine boats on their jocund,
perilous journeys.

Nevada plunged like a wind-driven storm-petrel on her way. She
looked up at the ragged sierras o£ cloud-capped buildings that rose above
the streets, shaded by the night lights and the congealed vapors to gray,
drab, ashen, lavender, dun, and cerulean tints. They were so like the
wintry mountains of her Western home that she felt a satisfaction such
as the hundred-thousand-dollar house had seldom brought her.

A policeman caused her to waver on a corner, just by his eye and weight

"Hello, Mabel! " said he. "Kind of late for you to be out, ain't it ? "

"I— I am just going to the drug store," said Nevada, hurrying past him.

The excuse serves as a passport for the most sophisticated. Does it
prove that woman never progresses, or that she sprang from Adam's rib,
full-fledged in intellect and wiles?

Turning eastward, the direct blast cut down Nevada's speed one half.
She made zigzag tracks in the snow; but she was as tough as a pinon
sapling, and bowed to it as gracefully. Suddenly the studio-building
loomed before her, a familiar landmark, like a cliff above some well-
remembered canon. The haunt of business and its hostile neighbor, art,
was darkened and silent The elevator stopped at ten.

Up eight flights of Stygian stairs Nevada climbed, and rapped firmly
at the door numbered "89." She had been there may times before, with
Barbara and Uncle Jerome.

Gilbert opened the door. He had a crayon pencil in one hand, a green
shade over his eyes, and a pipe in his mouth. The pipe dropped to the
floor.

"Am I late?" asked Nevada. "I came as quick as I could. Uncle and
me were at the theatre this evening. Here I am, Gilbert!"

Gilbert did a Pygmalion-and-Galatea act. He changed from a statue
of stupefaction to a young man with a problem to tackle. He admitted
Nevada, got a whiskbroom, and began to brush the snow from her clothes.
A great lamp, with a green shade, hung over an easel, where the artist
had been sketching in crayon.

"You wanted me," said Nevada, simply, "and I came. You said so in
your letter. What did you send for me for?"

"You read my letter?" inquired Gilbert, sparring for wind.

"Barbara read it to me. I saw it afterward. It said: 'Come to my studio
at twelve to-night, and do not fail.' I thought you were sick, of course, but
you don't seem to be."

"Aha!" said Gilbert, irrelevantly. "Ill tell you why Basked you to
come, Nevada. I want you to marry me immediately— to-night. What's a
little snowstorm? Will you do it?"

"You might have noticed that I would, long ago," said Nevada. "And
I'm rather stuck on the snowstorm idea, myself. I surely would hate one o£

714 BOOKVI OPTIONS

those flowery church noon-weddings. Gilbert, I didn't know you had
grit enough to propose in this way. Let's shock 'em — it's our funeral,
ain't it?"

"You bet!" said Gilbert "Where did I hear that expression?" he added
to himself. "Wait a minute, Nevada; I want to do a little 'phoning."

He shut himself up in a little dressing-room, and called upon the
lightnings of the heavens — condensed into unromantic numbers and dis-
tricts.

"That you, Jack? You confounded sleepy-head! Yes, wake up; this
is me — or I — oh, bother the difference in grammar! I'm going to be mar-
ried right away. Yes! Wake up your sister — don't answer me back; bring
her along, too— you must. Remind Agnes of the time I saved her from
drowning in Lake Ronkonkoma — I know it's caddish to refer to it, but she
must come with you. Yes! Nevada is here, waiting. We've been engaged
quite a while. Some opposition among the relatives, you know, and we
have to pull it off this way. We're waiting here for you. Don't let Agnes
out-talk you— bring her! You will? Good old boy! I'll order a carriage to
call for you, double-quick time. Confound you, Jack, you're all right!"

Gilbert returned to the room where Nevada waited.

"My old friend. Jack Peyton, and his sister were to have been here
at a quarter to twelve," he explained; "but Jack is so confoundedly slow.
IVe just 'phoned them to hurry. They'll be here in a few minutes. Fm
the happiest man in the world, Nevada! What did you do with the letter
I sent you to-day?"

"I've got it cinched here," said Nevada, pulling it out from beneath her
opera-cloak.

Gilbert drew the letter from the envelope and looked it over carefully.
Then he looked at Nevada thoughtfully.

"Didn't you think it rather queer that I should ask you to come to my
studio at midnight?" he asked.

"Why, no," said Nevada, rounding her eyes. "Not if you needed me.
Out West, when a pal sends you a hurry call — ain't that what you say
here? — we get there first and talk about it after the row is over. And
it's usually snowing there, too, when things happen. So I didn't mind."

Gilbert rushed into another room, and came back burdened with over-
coats warranted to turn wind, rain, or snow.

"Put this raincoat on," he said, holding it for her. "We have a quarter
of a mile to go. Old Jack and his sister will be here in a few minutes."
He began to struggle into a heavy coat. "Oh, Nevada," he said, "just look
at the headlines on the front page of that evening paper on the table, will
you? It's about your section of the West, and I know it will interest you."

He waited a full minute, pretending to find trouble in the getting on of
his overcoat, and then turned. Nevada had not moved. She was looking
at him with strange and pensive directness. Her cheeks had a flush on

THIMBLE, THIMBLE 715

them beyond the color that had been contributed by the wind and snow;
but her eyes were steady.

"I was going to tell you,** she said, "anyhow, before you — before we
— before — well, before anything. Dad never gave me a day of schooling.
I never learned to read or write a darned word. Now if "

Pounding their uncertain way upstairs, the feet of Jack, the somnolent,
and Agnes, the grateful, were heard.

V When Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Warren were spinning softly homeward
in a closed carriage, after the ceremony, Gilbert said:

"Nevada, would you really like to know what I wrote you in the letter
that you received to-night ?"

"Fire away!" said his bride.

"Word for word," said Gilbert, "it was this: 'My dear Miss Warren—
You were right about the flower. It was a hydrangea, and not a lilac.' "

"All right," said Nevada. "But let's forget it The joke's on Barbara,
anyway!"

THIMBLE, THIMBLE

These are the directions for finding the office of Carteret & Carteret,
Mill Supplies and Leather Belting:

You follow the Broadway trail down until you pass the Crosstown Line,
the Bread Line, and the Dead Line, and come to the Big Canons of the
Moneygrubber Tribe. Then you turn to the left, to the right, dodge a
push-cart and the tongue of a two-ton four-horse dray, and hop, skip, and
jump to a granite ledge on the side of a twenty-one-story synthetic moun-
tain of stone and iron. In the twelfth story is tie office of Carteret & Car-
teret. The factory where they make the mill supplies and leather belting
is in Brooklyn* Those commodities— to say nothing of Brooklyn— not
being of interest to you, let us hold the incidents within the confines of a
one-act, one-scene play, thereby, lessening the toil of the reader and the
expenditure of the publisher. So, if you have the courage to face four
pages of type and Carteret & Carteret's office boy, Percival, you shall sit
on a varnished chair in the inner office and peep at the little comedy of the
Old Nigger Man, the Hunting-Case Watch, and the Open-Faced Ques-
tion—mostly borrowed from the late Mr. Frank Stockton, as you will con-
clude.

First, biography (but pared to the quick) must intervene. I am for the
inverted sugar-coated quinine pill— the bitter on the outside.

The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule),
an old Virginia family. Long time ago the gentlemen of the family had

716 BOOKVI OPTIONS

worn lace ruffles and carried tinless foils and owned plantations and had
slaves to burn. But the war had greatly reduced their holdings. (Of course
you can perceive at once that this flavor has been shoplifted from Mr. F.
Hopkinson Smith, in spite of the "et" after "Carter.") Well, anyhow:

In digging up the Carteret history I shall not take you farther back
than the year 1620. The two original American Carterets came over in that
year, but by different means of transportation. One brother, named
John, came in the Mayflower and became a Pilgrim Father. You've seen
his pictures on the covers of the Thanksgiving magazines, hunting turkeys
in the deep snow with a blunderbuss. Blandford Carteret, the other
brother, crossed the pond in his own brigantine, landed on the Virginia
coast, and became an F. F. V. John became distinguished for piety and
shrewdness in business; Blandford for his pride, juleps, marksmanship,
and vast slave-cultivated plantations.

Then came the Civil War. (I must condense this historical interpola-
tion.) Stonewall Jackson was shot; Lee surrendered; Grant toured the
world; cotton went to nine cents; Old Crow whiskey and Jim Crow cars
were invented; the Seventy-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers returned to
the Ninety-seventh Alabama Zouaves the battle flag of Lundy's Lane
which they bought at a second-hand store in Chelsea, kept by a man
named Skzchnzski; Georgia sent the President a sixty-pound watermelon
—•and that brings us up to the time when the story begins. My! but that
was sparring for an opening! I really must must brush up on my Aristotle.

The Yankee Carterets went into business in New York long before the
war. Their house, as far as Leather Belting and Mill Supplies was con-
cerned, was as musty and arrogant and solid as one of those old East In-
dia tea-importing concerns that you read about in Dickens. There were
some rumors of a war behind its counters, but not enough to affect the
business.

During and after the war, Blandford Carteret, F. F. V., lost his planta-
tions, juleps, marksmanship, and life. He bequeathed little more than
his pride to his surviving family. So it came to pass that Blandford Car-
teret, the Fifth, aged fifteen, was invited by the leather-and-mill-supplies
branch of that name to come North and learn business instead of hunting
foxes and boasting of the glory of his fathers on the reduced acres of his
impoverished family. The boy jumped at the chance; and at the age of
twenty-five, sat in the office of the firm equal partner with John, the Fifth,
of the blunderbuss-and-turkey branch. Here the story begins again.

The young men were about the same age, smooth of face, alert, easy
of manner, and with an air that promised mental and physical quickness.
They were razored, blue-serged, straw-hatted, and pearl stick-pinned like
other young New Yorkers who might be millionaires or bill clerks.

One afternoon at four o'clock, in the private office of the firm, Bland-
ford Carteret opened a letter that a clerk had just brought to his desk.

THIMBLE, THIMBLE 717

After reading it, he chuckled audibly for nearly a minute. John looked
around from his desk inquiringly.

"It's from mother," said Blandford. "I'll read you the funny part of it.
She tells me all the neighborhood news first, of course, and then cautions
me against getting my feet wet and musical comedies. After that come
vital statistics about calves and pigs and an estimate o£ the wheat crop.
And now I'll quote some:

"'And what do you think! Old Uncle Jake, who was seventy-six last
Wednesday, must go travelling. Nothing would do but he must go to
New York and see his "young Marster Blandford." Old as he is, he has
a deal of common sense, so Fve let him go. I couldn't refuse him— he
seemed to have concentrated all his hopes and desires into this one adven-
ture into the wide world. You know he was born on the plantation, and
has never been ten miles away from it in his life. And he was your fa-
ther's body servant during the war, and has been always a faithful vassal
and servant of the family. He has often seen the gold watch — the watch
that was your father's and your father's father's. I told him it was to be
yours, and he begged me to allow him to take it to you and put it into
your hands himself.

" 'So he has it, carefully enclosed in a buckskin case, and is bringing
it to you with all the pride and importance of a king's messenger. I gave
him money for the round trip and for a two weeks' stay in the city. I
wish you would see to it that he gets comfortable quarters — Jake won't
need much looking after— he's able to take care of himself. But I have
read in the papers that African bishops and colored potentates generally
have much trouble in obtaining food and lodging in the Yankee metrop-
olis. That may be all right; but I don't see why the best hotel there
shouldn't take Jake in. Still, I suppose it's a rule.

"1 gave him full direction about finding you, and packed his valise
myself. You won't have to bother with him; but I do hope you'll see that
he is made comfortable. Take the watch that he brings you — it's almost a
decoration. It has been worn by true Carterets, and there isn't a stain
upon it nor a false movement of the wheels. Bringing it to you is the
crowning joy of old Jake's life. I wanted him to have that little outing and
that happiness before it is too late. You have often heard us talk about
how Jake, pretty badly wounded himself, crawled through the reddened
grass at Chancellorsville to where your father lay with the bullet in his
dear heart, and took the watch from his pocket to keep it from the
"Yanks."

"'So, my son, when the old man comes consider him as a frail but
worthy messenger from the old-time life and home.

" 'You have been so long away from home and so long among the peo-
ple that we have always regarded as aliens that I'm not sure that Jake
will know you when he sees you. But Jake has a keen perception, and I

718 BOOK VI OPTIONS

rather believe that he will know a Virginia Carteret at sight. I can't
conceive that even ten years in Yankeeland could change a boy of mine.
Anyhow, I'm sure you will know Jake. I put eighteen collars in his
valise. If he should have to buy others, he wears a number 15%. Please see
that he gets the right ones. He will be no trouble to you at all.

" 'If you are not too busy, I'd like for you to find him a place to board
where they have white-meal corn-bread, and try to keep him from taking
his shoes off in your office or on the street. His right foot swells a little,
and he likes to be comfortable.

" *If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs when they come
back from the wash. I bought him a dozen new ones before he left
He should be there about the time this letter reaches you. I told him to go
straight to your office when he arrives.' "

As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, something hap-
pened (as there should happen in stories and must happen on the stage).

Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world's output of
mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a colored gen-
tleman was outside to see Mr. Blandford Carteret.

"Bring him in," said Blandford, rising.

John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to Percival : "Ask him
to wait a few minutes outside. We'll let you know when to bring him in."

Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, slow smiles that
was an inheritance of all the Carterets, and said:

"Bland, Fve always had a consuming curiosity to understand the dif-
ferences that you haughty Southerners believe to exist between 'you all'
and the people of the North. Of course, I know that you consider your-
selves made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a collateral
branch of your ancestry; but I don't know why. I never could understand
the differences between us."

"Well, John," said Blandford, laughing, "what you don't understand
about it is just the difference, of course. I suppose it was the feudal way
in which we live that gave us our lordly baronial airs and feeling of su-
periority."

"But you are not feudal now," went on John. "Since we licked you
and stole your cotton and mules you've had to go to work just as we 'damn
yankees,' as you call us, have always been doing. And you're just as
proud and exclusive and upper-classy as you were before the war. So it
wasn't your money that caused it."

"Maybe it was the climate," said Blandford lightly, "or maybe our ne-
groes spoiled us. Ill call old Jake in, now. I'll be glad to see the old villain
again/*

"Wait just a moment," said John. "I've got a little theory I want to test.
You and I are pretty much alike in our general appearance. Old Jake
hasn't seen you since you were fifteen. Let's have him in and play fair

THIMBLE, THIMBLE 719

and see which of us gets the watch. The old darky surely ought to be able
to pick out his 'young marster' without any trouble. The alleged aristo-
cratic superiority of a creb' ought to be visible to him at once. He couldn't
make the mistake of handing over the timepiece to a Yankee, of course.
The loser buys the dinner this evening and two dozen 15% collars for
Jake. Is it a go?"

Blandford agreed heartily. Percival was summoned, and told to usher
the "colored gentleman" in.

Uncle Jake stepped inside the private office cautiously. He was a little
old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and bald except for a fringe of white
wool, cut decorously short, that ran over his ears and around his head.
There was nothing of the stage "uncle" about him; his black suit nearly
fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat was banded with a gaudy
ribbon. In his right hand he carried something carefully concealed by his
closed fingers.

Uncle Jake stopped a few steps from the door. Two young men sat in
their revolving desk-chairs ten feet apart and looked at him in friendly
silence. His gaze slowly shifted many times from one to the other. He
felt sure that he was in the presence of one, at least, of the revered fam-
ily among whose fortunes his life had begun and was to end,

One had the pleasing but haughty Carteret air; the other had the un-
mistakable straight, long family nose. Both had the keen black eyes, hor-
izontal brows, and thin, smiling lips that has distinguished both the
Carteret of the Mayflower and him of the brigantine. Old Jake had
thought that he could have picked out his young master instantly from a
thousand Northerners; but he found himself in difficulties. The best he
could do was to use strategy.

"Howdy, Marse Blandford— howdy, suh?" he said, looking midway
between the young men.

"Howdy, Uncle Jake?" they both answered pleasantly and in unison.
"Sit down. Have you brought the watch?"

Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful distance, sat on
the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully on the floor. The watch in its
buckskin case he gripped tightly. He had not risked his life on the battle-
field to rescue that watch from his "old marsterY' foes to hand it over
again to the enemy without a struggle.

"Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I'm gwine give it to you right
away in jus' a minute. Old Missus told me to put it in young Marse
Blandford's hand and tell Hm to wear it for the family pride and honor.
It was a mighty lonesome trip for an old nigger man to make— ten thou-
sand miles, it must be, back to old Virginia, suh. You've growed mightily,
young marster. I wouldn't have reconnized you but for yo' powerful
resemblance to die old marster."

With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes roaming in the

720 BOOK VI OPTIONS

space between the two men. His words might have been addressed to
either. Though neither wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a sign.

Blandford and John exchanged winks.

"I reckon you done got you ma's letter," went on Uncle Jake. "She
said she was gwine to write to you about my comin' along up this er-way."

"Yes, yes, Uncle Jake," said John, briskly. "My cousin and I have
just been notified to expect you. We are both Carterets you know."

"Although one of us," said Blandford, "was born and raised in the
North."

"So If you will hand over the watch " said John.

"My cousin and I " said Blandford.

"We'll then see to it " said John.

"That comfortable quarters are found for you," said Blandford.

With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, high-pitched,
protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked up his hat and bent the brim
in an apparent paroxysm of humorous appreciation. The seizure afforded
him a mask behind which he could roll his eye impartially between, above,
and beyond his two tormentors.

"I sees what!" he chuckled, after a while. "You gen'lemen is tryin' to
have fun with the po5 old nigger. But you can't fool old Jake. I knowed you,
Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a po' skimpy lit-
tle boy no mo' than about fo'teen when you lef home to come No'th; but
I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image of
old marster. The other gen'lemen resembles you mightily, suh; but you
can't fool old Jake on a member of the old Virginia family. No, suh."

At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and extended a hand
for the watch.

Uncle Jake's wrinkled black face lost the expression of amusement
into which he had vainly twisted it. He knew that he was being teased,
and that it made little real difference, as far as its safety went, into which
of those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. But it seemed
to him that not only his own pride and loyalty but much of the Virginia
Carterets* was at stake. He had heard down South during the war about
that other branch of the family that lived in the North and fought on
"the yuther side," and it had always grieved him. He had followed his
"old marster's" fortunes from stately luxury through war to almost pov-
erty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by "old
missus," and entrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten thousand
miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands of the one who was to
wear it and wind it and cherish it and listen to it tick off the unsullied
hours that marked the lives of the Carterets— of Virginia.

His experience and conception of the Yankees had been an impression
of tyrants — "low-down, common trash" — in blue, laying waste with fire
and sword. He had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost

THIMBLE, THIMBLE 721

as grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern skies. And
now he was face to face with one of them — and he could not distinguish
him from his "young marster" whom he had come to find and bestow
upon him the emblem of his kingship — even as the arm "clothed in
white samite, mystic, wonderful" laid Excalibur in the right hand of Ar-
thur. He saw before him two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming,
either of whom might have been the one he sought. Troubled, bewil-
dered, sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, old Jake abandoned
his loyal subterfuges. His right hand sweated against the buckskin cover
of the watch. He was deeply humiliated and chastened. Seriously, now,
his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the two young men.
At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of but one difference be-
tween them. One wore a narrow black tie with a white pearl stickpin.
The other's "four-in-hand" was a narrow blue one pinned with a black
pearl.

And then, to old Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction. Drama
knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy to the
wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set face over the footlights.

Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a card, which he handed,
with the manner of one bearing a cartel, to Blue-Tie.

"Olivia De Ormond," read Blue-Tie from the card. He looked inquir-
ingly at his cousin.

"Why not have her in," said Black-Tie, "and bring matters to a
conclusion?"

"Uncle Jake," said one of the young men, "would you mind taking
that chair over there in the corner for a while? A lady is coming in — on
some business. We'll take up your case afterward."

The lady whom Percival ushered in was young and petulantly, decid-
edly, freshly, consciously, and intentionally pretty. She was dressed with
such expensive plainness that she made you consider lace and ruffles as
mere tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she wore would
have marked her anywhere in the army of beauty as the wearer of the
merry helmet of Navarre.

Miss De Ormond accepted the swivel chair at Blue-Tie's desk. Then
the gentlemen drew leather-upholstered seats conveniently near, and
spoke of the weather.

"Yes," said she, "I noticed it was warmer. But I mustn't take up too
much of your time during business hours. That is," she continued, "un-
less we talk business."

She addressed her words to Blue-Tie with a charming smile.

"Very well," said he. "You don't mind my cousin being present, do
you? We are generally rather confidential with each other— especially in
business matters."

"Oh, no," carolled Miss De Ormond. "I'd rather he did hear. He knows

722 BOOK VI OPTIONS

all about it, anyhow. In fact, he's quite a material witness because he was
present when you— when it happened, I thought you might want to talk
things over before — well, before any action is taken, as I believe the law-
yers say."

"Have you anything in the way o£ a proposition to make?" asked
Black-Tie.

Miss De Orrnond looked reflectively at the neat toe of one of her dull
kid pumps.

"I had a proposal made to me," she said. "If the proposal sticks it cuts
out the proposition. Let's have that settled first."

"Well, as far as " began Blue-Tie.

"Excuse me, cousin," interrupted Black-Tie, "if you don't mind my
cutting in." And then he turned, with a good-natured air toward the lady.

"Now, let's recapitulate a bit," he said, cheerfully. "All three of us, be-
sides other mutual acquaintances, have been out on a good many larks
together."

"I'm afraid I'll have to call the birds by another name," said Miss De
Ormond.

"All right," responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired cheerfulness; "sup-
pose we say 'squabs' when we talk about the 'proposal5 and larks' when
we discuss the 'proposition.' You have a quick mind, Miss De Ormond.
Two months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor-car for a day's
run into the country. We stopped at a road-house for dinner. My cousin
proposed marriage to you then and there. He was influenced to do so,
of course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny that you pos-
sess."

"I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret," said the beauty,
with a dazzling smile.

"You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond," went on Black-Tie. "You
have had, doubtless, many admirers, and perhaps other proposals. You
must remember, too, that we were a party of merrymakers on that occa-
sion. There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal of mar-
riage was made to you by my cousin we cannot deny. But hasn't it been
your experience that, by common consent, such things lose their serious-
ness when viewed in the next day's sunlight? Isn't there something of a
'code' among good 'sports'— I use the word in its best sense— that wipes
out each day the follies of the evening previous?"

"Oh, yes," said Miss De Ormond. "I know that very well. And I've al-
ways played up to it. But as you seem to be conducting the case— with
the silent consent of the defendant— Fll tell you something more. I've got
letters from him repeating the proposal. And they're signed too."

"I understand," said Black-Tie, gravely. "What's your price for the
letters?" ' *

"I'm not a cheap one," said Miss De Ormond. "But I had decided to

THIMBLE, THIMBLE 723

make you a rate. You both belong to a swell family. Well, if I am on the
stage nobody can say a word against me truthfully. And the money is
only a secondary consideration. It isn't the money I was after. I — I be-
lieved him — and — and I liked him/'

She cast a soft, entrancing glance at Blue-Tie from under her long eye-
lashes.

"And the price?" went on Black-Tie, inexorably.

"Ten thousand dollars," said the lady, sweetly.

"Or "

"Or the fulfilment of the engagement to marry."

"I think it is time," interrupted Blue-Tie, "for me to be allowed to say
a word or two. You and I, cousin, belong to a family that has held its
head pretty high. You have been brought up in a section of the country
very different from the one where our branch o£ the family lived. Yet
both of us are Carterets, even if some of our ways and theories differ. You
remember, it is a tradition of the family, that no Carteret ever failed in
chivalry to a lady or failed to keep his word when it was given."

Then Blue-Tie, with frank decision showing on his countenance,
turned to Miss De Ormond.

"Olivia," said he, "on what date will you marry me?"

Before she could answer, Black-Tie again interposed.

"It is a long journey," said he, "from Plymouth Rock to Norfolk Bay.
Between the two points we find the changes that nearly three centuries
have brought. In that time the old order has changed. We no longer burn
witches or torture slaves. And to-day we neither spread our cloaks on the
mud for ladies to walk over nor treat them to the ducking-stool. It is the
age of common sense, adjustment, and proportion. All of us — ladies, gen-
tlemen, women, men, Northerners, Southerners, lords, caitiffs, actors,
hardware-drummers, senators, hod-carriers and politicians — are coming to
a better understanding. Chivalry is one of our words that changes its
meaning every day. Family pride is a thing of many constructions —
it may show itself by maintaining a moth-eaten arrogance in a cob-webbed
Colonial mansion or by the prompt paying of one's debts.

"Now I suppose you've had enough of my monologue. Pve learned
something of business and a little of life; and I somehow believe, cousin,
that our great-great-grandfathers, the original Carterets, would endorse
my view of this matter."

Black-Tie wheeled around to his desk, wrote in a checkbook and tore
out the check, the sharp rasp of the perforated leaf making the only
sound in the room. He laid the check within easy reach of Miss De
Ormond's hand.

"Business is business," said he. "We live in a business age. There is
my personal check for $10,000. What do you say, Miss De Ormond — will
it be orange blossoms or cash?"

724 BOOK VI OPTIONS

Miss De Ormond picked up the check carelessly, folded it indifferently,
and stuffed it into her glove.

"Oh, thisTl do," she said, calmly. "I just thought I'd call and put it up
to you, I guess you people are all right. But a girl has feelings, you know.
Fve heard one of you was a Southerner — I wonder which one of you it is?"

She arose, smiled sweetly, and walked to the door. There, with a flash
of white teeth and a dip of the heavy plume, she disappeared.

Both of the cousins had forgotten Uncle Jake for the time. But now
they heard the shuffling of his shoes as he came across the rug toward
them from his seat in the corner.

"Young marster," he said, "take yo' watch."

And without hesitation he laid the ancient timepiece in the hand of its
rightful owner.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Finch keeps a hats-cleaned-by-electricity-while-you-wait establishment,
nine feet by twelve, in Third Avenue. Once a customer, you are always
his. I do not know his secret process, but every four days your hat needs
to be cleaned again.

Finch is a leathern, sallow, slow-footed man, between twenty and
forty. You would say he had been brought up a bushelman in Essex
Street. When business is slack he likes to talk, so I had my hat cleaned
even oftener than it deserved, hoping Finch might let me into some of
the secrets of the sweatshops.

One afternoon I dropped in and found Finch alone. He began to anoint
my headpiece de Panama with his mysterious fluid that attracted dust
and dirt like a magnet

"They say the Indians weave *em under water/5 said I, for a leader.

"Don't you believe it," said Finch. "No Indian or white man could
stay under water that long. Say, do you pay much attention to politics? I
see in the paper something about a law they've passed called cdae law of
supply and demand.'"

I explained to him as well as I could that the reference was to a politico-
economical law, and not to a legal statute.

"I didn't know," said Finch. "I heard a good deal about it a year or
so ago, but in a one-sided way."

"Yes," said I, "political orators use it a great deal In fact, they never
give it a rest. I suppose you heard some of those cart-tail fellows spout-
ing on the subject over here on the east side."

"I heard it from a king," said Finch— "the white king of a tribe of In-
dians in South America."

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

I was interested but not surprised. The big city is like a mother's knee
to many who have strayed far and found the roads rough beneath their
uncertain feet. At dusk they come home and sit upon the door-step. I
know a piano player in a cheap cafe who has shot lions in Africa, a bell-
boy who fought in the British army against the Zulus, an express-driver
whose left arm has been cracked like a lobster's claw for a stew-pot of
Patagonian cannibals when the boat of his rescuers hove in sight. So a
hat-cleaner who has been a friend of a king did not oppress me.

"A new band?" asked Finch, with his dry, barren smile.

"Yes," said I, "and half an inch wider." I had had a new band five days
before.

"I meets a man one night," said Finch, beginning his story— "a man
brown as snuff, with money in every pocket, eating schweiner-knuckel in
Schlagel's. That was two years ago, when I was a hose-cart driver for No.
98. His discourse runs to the subject of gold. He says that certain moun-
tains in a country down South that he calls Guadymala is full of it. He
says the Indians wash it out of the streams in plural quantities.

"'Oh, Geronimo!' says L Indians! There's no Indians in the South,'
I tell him, 'except Elks, Maccabees, and the buyers for the fall dry-goods
trade. The Indians are all on the reservations,' say I.

" Tm telling you this with reservations,' says he. 'They ain't Buffalo
Bill Indians; they're squattier and more pedigreed. They call *em Inkers
and Aspics, and they was old inhabitants when Mazuma was king of
Mexico. They wash the gold out of the mountain streams/ says the brown
man, 'and fills quills with it; and then they empty 'em into red jars till
they are full; and then they pack it in buckskin sacks of one arroba each
— an arroba is twenty-five pounds — and store it in a stone house, with an
engraving of a idol with marcelled hair, playing a flute, over the door/

" 'How do they work off this unearth increment?' I asks.

"'They don't,' says the man. 'It's a case of "111 fares the land with the
great deal of velocity where wealth accumulates and there ain't any reci-
procity."'

"After this man and me got through our conversation, which left him
dry of information, I shook hands with him and told him I was sorry I
couldn't believe him. And a month afterward I landed on the coast of
this Guadymala with $1,300 that I had been saving up for five years. I
thought I knew what Indians liked, and I fixed myself accordingly. I
loaded down four pack-mules with red woolen blackets, wrought-iron
pails, jewelled side-combs for the ladies, glass necklaces, and safety-razors.
I hired a black mozo, who was supposed to be a mule-driver and an in-
terpreter too. It turned out that he could interpret mules all right, but he
drove the English language much too hard. His name sounded like a
Yale-key when you push it in wrong side up, but I called him McClin-
tock, which was close to the noise.

7^ BOOK VI OPTIONS

"Well, this gold village was forty miles up in the mountains, and it
took us nine days to find it. But one afternoon McClintock led the other
mules and myself over a rawhide bridge stretched across a precipice five
thousand feet deep, it seemed to me. The hoofs of the beasts drummed on
it just like before George M. Cohan makes his first entrance on the stage.

"This village was built of mud and stone, and had no streets. Some
few yellow-and-brown persons popped their heads out-of-doors, looking
about like Welsh rabbits with Worcester sauce on 'em. Out of the biggest
house, that had a kind of a porch around it, steps a big white man, red as
a beet in color, dressed in fine tanned deerskin clothes, with a gold chain
around his neck, smoking a cigar. I've seen United States Senators of his
style of features and build, also head-waiters and cops.

"He walks up and takes a look at us, while McClintock disembarks
and begins to interpret to the lead mule while he smokes a cigarette.

" 'Hello, Buttinsky,' says the fine man to me. 'How did you get in the
game? I didn't see you buy any chips. Who gave you the keys of the city?*

" Tm a poor traveller,' says I. 'Especially muleback. You'll excuse me.
Do you run a hack line or only a bluff?*

" 'Segregate yourself from your pseudo-equine quadruped,* says he, 'and
come inside.*

"He raises a finger, and a villager runs up.

" 'This man will take care of your outfit,* says he, cand 111 take care of
you.*

"He leads me into the biggest house, and sets out the chairs and a kind
of a drink the color of milk. It was the finest room I ever saw. The stone
walls was hung all over with silk shawls, and there was red and yellow
rugs on the floor, and jars of red pottery and Angora goat skins, and
enough bamboo furniture to misfurnish half a dozen seaside cottages.

" In the first place,' says the man, 'you want to know who I am. I'm
sole lessee and proprietor of this tribe of Indians. They call me the Grand
Yacuma, which is to say King or Main Finger of the bunch. I've got more
power here than a charge d'affaires, a charge of dynamite, and a charge
account at Tiffany's combined. In fact, I'm the Big Stick, with as many
extra knots on it as there is on the record run of the Lusitania. Oh, I read
the papers now and then,' says he. 'Now, let's hear you entitlements,'
he goes on, 'and the meeting will be open.*

" 'Well,' says I, *I am known as one W. D. Finch. Occupation, capitalist.
Address, 541 East Thirty-second '

*"New York,* chips in the Noble Grand. 'I know,* says he, grinning.
'It ain't the first time you've seen it go down on the blotter. I can tell by
the way you hand it out. Well, explain "capitalist" '

"I tells this boss plain what I come for and how I come to came.

" 'Gold-dust?* says he^ looking as puzzled as a baby that got a feather
stuck on its molasses finger. 'That's funny* This ain't a gold-mining coun-

SUPPLY AND DEMAND 727

try. And you invested all your capital on a stranger's story? Well, well!
These Indians of mine — they are the last o£ the tribe of Peches — are sim-
ple as children. They know nothing of the purchasing power of gold. I'm
afraid youVe been imposed on,' says he.

" 'Maybe so/ says I, 'but it sounded pretty straight to me.'
" 'W. D./ says the King, all of a sudden, I'll give you a square deal.
It ain't often I get to talk to a white man, and I'll give you a show for
your money. It may be these constituents of mine have a few grains of
gold-dust hid away in their clothes. To-morrow you may get out these
goods you've brought up and see if you make any sales. Now, I'm going to
introduce myself unofficially. My name is Shane — Patrick Shane. I own
this tribe of Peche Indians by right of conquest — single handed and un-
afraid. I drifted up here four years ago, and won 'em by my size and com-
plexion and nerve. I learned their language in six weeks — it's easy: you
simply emit a string of consonants as long as your breath holds out and
then point at what you're asking for.

" 'I conquered 'em, spectacularly,' goes on King Shane, 'and I went at
'em with economical politics, law, sleight-of-hand, and a kind of New
England ethics and parsimony. Every Sunday, or as near as I can guess
at it, I preach to *em in the council-house (I'm the council) on the law of
supply and demand. I praise supply and knock demand. I use the same
text every time. You wouldn't think, W. D./ says Shane, 'that I had poetry
in me, would you?'

" 'Well/ says I, 'I wouldn't know whether to call it poetry or not/
" 'Tennyson/ says Shane, 'furnishes the poetic gospel I preach. I always
considered him the boss poet. Here's the way the text goes:

"For, not to admire, if a man could learn it, were more
Than to walk all day like a Sultan of old in a garden of spice.

"'You see, I teach 'em to cut out demand — that supply is the main
thing. I teach 'em not to desire anything beyond their simplest needs. A
little mutton, a little cocoa, and a little fruit brought up from the coast
— that's all they want to make 'em happy. I've got 'em well trained. They
make their own clothes and hats out of a vegetable fibre and straw, and
they're a contented lot. It's a great thing/ winds up Shane, 'to have made
a people happy by the incultivation of such simple institutions/

"Well, the next day, with the King's permission, I has the McClintock
open up a couple of sacks of my goods in the little plaza of the village.
The Indians swarmed around by the hundreds and looked the bargain-
counter over. I shook red blankets at *ern, flashed finger-rings and ear-
bobs, tried pearl necklaces and side-combs on the women, and a line of
red hosiery on the men. Twas no use. They looked on like hungry graven
images, but I never made a sale. I asked McClintock what was the trou-
ble. Mac yawned three or four times, rolled a cigarette, made one or two

728 BOOK VI OPTIONS

confidential side remarks to a mule, and then condescended to inform
me that the people had no money.

"Just then up strolls King Patrick, big and red and royal as usual, with
the gold chain over his chest and his cigar in front of him.

" 'How's business, W. D.?> he asks.

" Tine,' says I. It's a bargain-day rush. Fve got one more line of goods
to offer before I shut up shop. I'll try 5em with safety-razors. I've got two
gross that I bought at a fire sale.5

"Shane laughs till some kind of mameluke or private secretary he car-
ries with him has to hold him up.

"'O my sainted Aunt Jerusha!' says he, 'ain't you one of the Babes in
the Goods, W. D.? Don't you know that no Indians ever shave? They
pull out their whiskers instead.'

" 'Well,' says I, 'that's just what these razors would do for 'em—they
wouldn't have any kick coming if they used 'em once/

"Shane went away, and I could hear him laughing a block, if there had
been any block.

" Tell 'em,' says I to McClintock, 'it ain't money I want— tell *em I'll
take gold-dust Tell *em I'll allow 'em sixteen dollars an ounce for it in
trade. That's what I'm out for — the dust.'

"Mac interprets, and you'd have thought a squadron of cops had charged
the crowd to disperse it. Every uncle's nephew and aunt's niece of 'em
faded away inside of two minutes.

"At the royal palace that night me and the King talked it over.

" 'They've got the dust hid out somewhere,' says ly 'or they wouldn't
have been so sensitive about it.'

"They haven't,' says Shane. 'What's this gag you've got about gold?
You been reading Edward Allan Poe? They ain't got any gold/

"'They put it in quills/ says I, 'and then they empty it in jars, and
then into sacks of twenty-five pounds each. I got it straight.'

" *W. D./ says Shane, laughing and chewing his cigar, 'I don't often
see a white man, and I feel like putting you on. I don't think you'll get
away from here alive, anyhow, so I'm going to tell you. Come over
here/

"He draws aside a silk fibre curtain in a corner of the room and shows
me a pile of buckskin sacks.

tt 'Forty of 'em/ says Shane. 'One arroba in each one. In round num-
bers, $220,000 worth of gold-dust you see there. It's all mine. It belongs
to the Grand Yacuma. They bring it all to me. Two hundred and twenty
thousand dollars—think of that, you glass-bead peddler/ says Shane—
'and all mine/

" 'Little good it does you/ says I, contemptuously and hatefully. 'And
so you are the government depository of this gang of moneyless money-
makers? Don't you pay enough interest on it to enable one of your de-

SUPPLY AND DEMAND 729

positors to buy an Augusta (Maine) Pullman carbon diamond worth
$200 for $4.85?'

" 'Listen/ says Patrick Shane, with the sweat coming out on his brow.
Tin confident with you, as you have, somehow, enlisted my regards. Did
you ever/ he says, 'feel the avoirdupois power of gold— not the troy weight
of it, but the sixteen-ounces-to-the-pound force of it?'

" 'Never,* says I. 'I never take in any bad money/

"Shane drops down on the floor and throws his arms over the sacks of
gold-dust.

" 'I love it/ says he. 'I want to feel the touch of it day and night. It's
my pleasure in life. I come in this room, and Fm a king and a rich man.
I'll be a millionaire in another year. The pile's getting bigger every month.
I've got the whole tribe washing out the sands in the creeks. I'm the hap-
piest man in the world, W. D. I just want to be near this gold, and know
it's mine and it's increasing every day. Now, you know/ says he, Vhy my
Indians wouldn't buy your goods. They can't They bring all the dust to
me. I'm their king. I've taught 'em not to desire or admire. You might as
well shut up shop.'

" Til tell you what you are/ says I. Tou're a plain, contemptible miser.
You preach supply and you forget demand. Now, supply/ I goes on, 'is
never anything but supply. On the contrary/ says I, 'demand is a much
broader syllogism and assertion. Demand includes the rights of our
women and children, and charity and friendship, and even a little begging
on the street corners. They've both got to harmonize equally. And I've got
a few things up my commercial sleeve yet,' says I, 'that may jostle your
preconceived ideas of politics and economy/

"The next morning I had McClintock bring up another mule-load
of goods to the plaza and open it up. The people gathered around the same
as before.

"I got out the finest line of necklaces, bracelets, hair-combs, and ear-
rings that I carried, and had the women put 'em on. And then I played
trumps.

"Out of my last pack I opened up a half gross of hand-mirrors, with
solid tin-foil backs, and passed 'em around among the ladies. That was
the first introduction of looking-glasses among the Peche Indians.

"Shane walks by with his big laugh.

" 'Business looking up any?' he asks,

" 'It's looking at itself right now/ says I.

"By-and-by a kind of murmur goes through the crowd. The women
had looked into the magic crystal and seen that they were beautiful, and
were confiding the secret to the men. The men seemed to be urging the
lack of money and hard times just before the election, but their excuses
didn't go.

"Then was my time.

730 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"I called McClintock away from an animated conversation with his
mules and told him to do some interpreting.

" Tell 'em/ says I, 'that gold-dust will buy for them these befitting
ornaments for kings and queens of the earth. Tell 'em the yellow sand
they wash out of the waters for the High Sanctified Yacomay and Chop
Suey of the tribe will buy the precious jewels and charms that will make
them beautiful and preserve and pickle them from evil spirits. Tell 'em the
Pittsburgh banks are paying four per cent, interest on deposits by mail,
while this get-rich-frequendy custodian of the public funds ain't even
paying attention. Keep telling 'em, Mac/ says I, 'to let the gold-dust family
do their work. Talk to 'em like a born anti-Bryanite/ says I. 'Remind "em
that Tom Watson's gone back to Georgia/ says I.

"McClintock waves his hand affectionately at one of his mules, and
then hurls a few stickfuls of minion type at the mob of shoppers.

"A gutta-percha Indian man, with a lady hanging on his arm, with
three strings of my fish-scale jewelry and imitation marble beads around
her neck, stands up on a block of stone and makes a talk that sounds like
a man shaking dice in a box to fill aces and sixes.

" *He says/ says McClintock, 'that the people not know that gold-dust
will buy their things. The women very mad. The Grand Yacuma tell
them it no good but for keep to make bad spirits keep away.'

" Tou can't keep bad spirits away from money/ says I.

" 'They say/ goes on McClintock, 'the Yacuma fool them. They raise
plenty row.'

" 'Going! Going!' says I. 'Gold-dust or cash takes the entire stock. The
dust weighed before you, and taken at sixteen dollars the ounce — the
highest price on the Guadymala coast"

"Then the crowd disperses all of a sudden, and I don't know what's
up. Mac and me packs away the hand-mirrors and jewelry they had
handed back to us, and we had the mules back to the corral they had set
apart for our garage.

"While we was there we heard great noises of shouting, and down
across the plaza runs Patrick Shane, hotfoot, with his clothes ripped half
off, and scratches on his face like a cat had fought him hard for every
one of its lives.

'"They're looting the treasury, W. D./ he sings out. 'They're going to
kill me and you, too. Unlimber a couple of mules at once. We'll have to
make a get-away in a couple of minutes.'

" They've found out,' says I, 'the truth about the law of supply and
demand.'

" 'It's the women, mostly/ says the King. 'And they used to admire me
so!'

" 'They hadn't seen looking-glasses then,' says L

" 'They've got knives and hatchets,' says Shane; 'hurry!*

BURIED TREASURE 73!

"'Take that roan mule/ says I. 'You and your law of supply! I'll ride
the dun, for he's two knots per hour the faster. The roan has a stiff knee,
but he may make it/ says I. 'If you'd included reciprocity in your political
platform I might have given you the dun/ says I.

"Shane and McClintock and me mounted our mules and rode across
the rawhide bridge just as the Peches reached the other side and began
firing stones and long knives at us. We cut the thongs that held up our
end of the bridge and headed for the coast."

A tall, bulky policeman came into Finch's shop at that moment and
leaned an elbow on the showcase. Finch nodded at him friendly.

"I heard down at Casey's," said the cop, in rumbling, husky tones,
"that there was going to be a picnic of the Hat-Cleaners Union over at
Bergen Beach, Sunday. Is that right?"

"Sure," said Finch. "There'll be a dandy time."

"Gimme five tickets/' said the cop, throwing a five-dollar bill on the
showcase.

"Why," said Finch, "ain't you going it a little too "

"Go to h — !" said the cop. "You got 'em to sell, ain't you? Somebody's
got to buy 'em. Wish I could go along."

I was glad to see Finch so well thought of in his neighborhood.

And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue
eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.

"Mamma says," she recited, shrilly, "that you must give me eighty cents
for the grocer and nineteen for the milkman and five cents for me to
buy hokey-pokey with — but she didn't say that," the elf concluded, with
a hopeful but honest grin.

Finch shelled out the money, counting it twice, but I noticed that the
total sum that the small girl received was one dollar and four cents.

"That's the right kind of a law," remarked Finch as he carefully broke
some of the stitches of my hatband so that it would assuredly come off
within a few days — "the law of supply and demand. But they've both got
to work together. I'll bet," he went on, with his dry smile, "she'll get jelly
beans with that nickel — she likes 'em. What's supply if there's no demand
for it?"

"What ever became of the King?" I asked, curiously.

"Oh, I might have told you," said Finch. "That was Shane came in
and bought the tickets. He came back with me, and he's on the force now,"

BURIED TREASURE

There 'arc many kinds of fools* Now, will everybody please sit still until
they are called upon specifically to rise?

BOOK VI OPTIONS

I had been every kind of fool except one. I had expended my patrimony,
pretended my matrimony, played poker, lawn-tennis, and bucket-shops —
parted soon with my money in many ways. But there remained one role
of the wearer of cap and bells that I had not played. That was the Seeker
after Buried Treasure. To few does the delectable furor come. But of all
the would-be followers in the hoof-prints of King Midas none has found
a pursuit so rich in pleasurable promise.

But, going back from my theme a while— as lame pens must do —
I was a fool of the sentimental sort. I saw May Martha Mangum, and was
hers. She was eighteen, the color of the white ivory keys of a new piano,
beautiful, and possessed by the exquisite solemnity and pathetic witchery
of an unsophisticated angel doomed to live in a small, dull, Texas prairie
town. She had a spirit and charm that could have enabled her to pluck
rubies like raspberries from the crown of Belgium or any other sporty
kingdom, but she did not know it, and I did not paint the picture for her.

You see, I wanted May Martha Mangum for to have and to hold, I
wanted her to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every
day in places where they cannot be found of evenings.

May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles.
He lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz
or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words
to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying fish of the June-
bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling 'em names.

He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized her highly as
a fine specimen of the radbus humanus because she saw that he had food
at times, and put his clothes on right side before, and kept his alcohol-
bottles filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be absent-minded.

There was another besides myself who thought May Martha Mangum
one to be desired. That was Goodloe Banks, a young man just home from
college. He had all the attainments to be found in books — Latin, Greek,
philosophy, and especially the higher branches of mathematics and logic.

If it hadn't been for his habit of pouring out this information and
learning on every one that he addressed, Fd have liked him pretty well.
But, even as it was, he and I were, you would have thought, great pals.

We got together every time we could because each of us wanted to
pump the other for whatever straws we could find which way the wind
blew from the heart of May Martha Mangum— rather a mixed metaphor;
Goodloe Banks would never have been guilty of that. That is the way of
rivals.

You might say that Goodloe ran to books, manners, culture, rowing
intellect, and clothes. I would have put you in mind more of a baseball
and Friday-night debating societies—by way of culture— and maybe of a
good horseback rider.

But in our talks together, and in our visits and conversation with May

BURIED TREASURE 733

Martha, neither Goodloe Banks nor I could find out which one of us she
preferred. May Martha was a natural-born non-committal, and knew in
her cradle how to keep people guessing.

As I said, old man Mangum was absent-minded. After a long time he
found out one day— a little butterfly must have told him— that two young
men were trying to throw a net over the head of the young person, a
daughter, or some such technical appendage, who looked after his com-
forts.

I never knew scientists could rise to such occasions. Old Mangum
orally labelled and classified Goodloe and myself easily among the lowest
orders of the vertebrates; and in English, too, without going any further
into Latin than simple references to Orgetorix, Rex Helvetit— which is as
far as I ever went, myself. And he told us that if he ever caught us
around his house again he would add us to his collection.

Goodloe Banks and I remained away five days, expecting the storm
to subside. When we dared to call at the house again May Martha Man-
gum and her father were gone. Gone! The house they had rented was
closed. Their little store of goods and chattels was gone also.

And not a word of farewell to either of us from May Martha — not a
white, fluttering note pinned to the hawthorn-bush; not a chalk-mark on
the gate-post nor a postcard in the post-office to give us a clue.

For two months Goodloe Banks and I — separately — tried every scheme
we could think of to track the runaways. We used our friendship and
influence with the ticket-agent, with livery-stable men, railroad con-
ductors, and our one lone, lorn constable, but without results.

Then we became better friends and worse enemies than ever. We for-
gathered in the back room of Synder's saloon every afternoon after work,
and played dominoes, and laid conversational traps to find out from each
other if anything had been discovered. That is the way of rivals.

Now, Goodloe Banks had a sarcastic way of displaying his own learn-
ing and putting me in the class that was reading "Poor Jane Ray, her bird
is dead, she cannot play." Well, I rather liked Goodloe, and I had a con-
tempt for his college learning, and I was always regarded as good-natured,
so I kept my temper. And I was trying to find out if he knew anything
about May Martha, so I endured his society.

In talking things over one afternoon he said to me:

"Suppose you do find her, Ed, whereby would you profit? Miss Man-
gum has a mind. Perhaps it is yet uncultured, but she is destined for higher
things than you could give her. I have talked with no one who seemed to
appreciate more the enchantment of the ancient poets and writers and the
modern cults that have assimilated and expended their philosophy of life.
Dont' you think you are wasting your time looking for her?"

"My idea," said I, "of a happy home is an eight-room house in a grove
of live-oaks by the side of a charco on a Texas prairie. A piano," I went

734 BOOK vi OPTIONS

on, "with an automatic player in the sitting-room, three thousand head of
cattle under fence for a starter, a buckboard and ponies always hitched
at a post for 'the missus'— and May Martha Mangum to spend the profits
of the ranch as she pleases, and to abide with me, and put my slippers
and pipe away every day in places where they cannot be found of evenings.
That," said I, "is what is to be; and a fig— a dried, Smyrna, Dago-stand
fig — for your curriculums, cults, and philosophy."

"She is meant for higher things," repeated Goodloe Banks.

"Whatever she is meant for," I answered, "just now she is out of
pocket. And I shall find her as soon as I can without aid of the colleges."

"The game is blocked," said Goodloe, putting down a domino; and we
had the beer.

Shortly after that a young farmer whom I knew came into town and
brought me a folded blue paper. He said his grandfather had just
died. I concealed a tear, and he went on to say that the old man had
jealously guarded this paper for twenty years. He left it to his family as
part of his estate, the rest of which consisted of two mules and a hypote-
nuse of non-arable land.

The sheet of paper was of the old, blue kind used during the rebellion
of the abolitionists against the secessionists. It was dated June 14, 1863, and
it described the hiding-place of ten burro-loads of gold and silver coin
valued at three hundred thousand dollars. Old Rundle— grandfather of his
grandson, Sam — was given the information by a Spanish priest who was
in on the treasure-burying, and who died many years before — no, after-
ward— in old Rundle 's house. Old Rundle wrote it down from dictation.

"Why didn't your father look this up?" I asked young Rundle.

"He went blind before he could do so," he replied.

"Why didn't you hunt for it yourself?" I asked.

"Well," said he, "I've only known about the paper for ten years. First
there was the spring plowin' to do, and then choppin' the weeds out of
the corn; and then come takin' fodder; and mighty soon winter was on
us. It seemed to run along that way year after year."

That sounded perfectly reasonable to me, so I took it up with young
Lee Rundle at once.

The directions on the paper were simple. The whole burro cavalcade
laden with the treasure started from an old Spanish mission in Dolores
County. They travelled due south by the compass until they reached the
Alamito River. They forded this, and buried die treasure on the top of a
little mountain shaped like a pack-saddle standing in a row between two
higher ones. A heap of stones marked the place of the buried treasure. All
the party except the Spanish priest were killed by Indians a few days
later. The secret was a monopoly. It looked good to me.

Lee Rundle suggested that we rig out a camping outfit, hire a surveyor
to run out the line from the Spanish mission, and then spend the three

BURIED TREASURE 735

hundred thousand dollars seeing the sights in Fort Worth. But, without
being highly educated, I knew a way to save time and expense.

We went to the State land-office and had a practical, what they call a
"working," sketch made o£ all the surveys of land from the old mission
to the Alamito River. On this map I drew a line due southward to the
river. The length of lines of each survey and section of land was accu-
rately given on the sketch. By these we found the point on the river and
had a "connection" made with it and an important, well-identified corner
of the Los Animos five-league survey— a grant made by King Philip of
Spain.

By doing this we did not need to have the line run out by a surveyor.
It was a great saving of expense and time.

So, Lee Rundle and I fitted out a two-horse wagon team with all the
accessories, and drove a hundred and forty-nine miles to Chico, the
nearest town to the point we wished to reach. There we picked up a dep-
uty county surveyor. He found the corner of the Los Animos survey for
us, ran out the five thousand seven hundred and twenty varas west that
our sketch called for, laid a stone on the spot, had coffee and bacon, and
caught the mail-stage back to Chico.

I was pretty sure we would get that three hundred thousand dollars.
Lee Rundle's was to be only one third, because I was paying all the ex-
penses. With that two hundred thousand dollars I knew I could find May
Martha Mangum if she was on earth. And with it I could flutter the butter-
flies in old man Mangum's dovecote, too. If I could find that treasure!

But Lee and I established camp. Across the river were a dozen little
mountains densely covered by cedar-brakes, but not one shaped like a
pack-saddle. That did not deter us. Appearances are deceptive. A pack-
saddle, like beauty, may exist only in the eye of the beholder.

I and the grandson of the treasure examined those cedar-covered hills
with the care of a lady hunting for the wicked flea. We explored every
side, top, circumference, mean elevation, angle, slope and concavity of
every one for two miles up and down the river. We spent four days doing
so. Then we hitched up the roan and the dun, and hauled the remains
of the coffee and bacon the one hundred and forty-nine miles back to
Concho City.

Lee Rundle chewed much tobacco on the return trip. I was busy driving,
because I was in a hurry.

As shortly as could be after our empty return, Goodloe Banks and I
forgathered in the back room of Synder's saloon to play dominoes and
fish for information. I told Goodloe about my expedition after the buried
treasure.

"If I could have found that three hundred thousand dollars," I said to
him, "I could have scoured and sifted the surface of the earth to find May
Martha Mangum."

736 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"She is meant for higher things," said Goodloe. "I shall find her myself.
But, tell me how you went about discovering the spot where this un-
earthed increment was imprudently buried." ^

I told him in the smallest detail I showed him the draughtsman s
sketch with the distances marked plainly upon it. 1-1.

After glancing over it in a masterly way, he leaned back m his chair
and bestowed upon me an explosion of sardonic, superior, collegiate

laughter.

"Well, you are a fool, Jim," he said, when he could speak.

"It's your play," said I, patiently, fingering my double six.

"Twenty," said Goodloe, making two crosses on the table with his chalk.

"Why am I a fool?" I asked. "Buried treasure has been found before
in many places."

"Because," said he, "in calculating the point on the river where your
line would strike you neglected to allow for the variation.^ The variation
there would be nine degrees west Let me have your pencil."

Goodloe Banks figured on the back of an envelope.

"The distance, from north to south, of the line run from the Spanish
mission," said he, "is exactly twenty-two miles. It was run by a pocket-
compass, according to your story. Allowing for the variation, the point on
the Alamito River where you should have searched for your treasure is
exactly six miles and nine hundred and forty-five varas farther west than
the place you hit upon. Oh, what a fool you are, Jim!"

"What is this variation that you speak of?" I asked. "I thought figures
never lied."

"The variation of the magnetic compass," said Goodloe, "from the
true meridian."

He smiled in his superior way; and then I saw come out in his face the
singular, eager, consuming cupidity of the seeker after buried treasure.

"Sometimes," he said with the air of the oracle, "these old traditions of
hidden money are not without foundation. Suppose you let me look over
that paper describing the location. Perhaps together we might "

The result was that Goodloe Banks and I, rivals in love, became
companions in adventure. We went to Chico by stage from Huntersburg,
the nearest railroad town. In Chico we hired a team drawing a covered
spring-wagon and camping paraphernalia. We had the same surveyor run
out our distance, as revised by Goodloe and his variations, and then dis-
missed him and sent him on his homeward road.

It was night when we arrived. I fed the horses and made a fire near
the bank of the river and cooked supper. Goodloe would have helped,
but his education had not fitted him for practical things.

But while I worked he cheered me with the expression of great
thoughts handed down from the dead ones of old. He quoted some
translations from the Greek at much length.

BURIED TREASURE 737

"Anacreon," he explained. "That was a favorite passage with Miss
Mangum — as I recited it."

"She is meant for higher things/' said I, repeating his phrase.

"Can there by anything higher," asked Goodloe, "than to dwell in the
society of the classics, to live in the atmosphere of learning and culture ?
You have often decried education. What of your wasted efforts through
your ignorance of simple mathematics? How soon would you have
found your treasure if my knowledge had not shown you your error?"

"We'll take a look at those hills across the river first," said I, "and see
what we find. I am still doubtful about variations. I have been brought
up to believe that the needle is true to the pole."

The next morning was a bright June one. We were up early and had
breakfast. Goodloe was charmed. He recited — Keats, I think it was, and
Kelly or Shelley — while I broiled the bacon. We were getting ready to
cross the river, which was little more than a shallow creek there, and
explore the many sharp-peaked, cedar-covered hills on the other side.

"My good Ulysses," said Goodloe, slapping me on the shoulder while
I was washing the tin breakfast plates, "let me see the enchanted docu-
ment once more. I believe it gives directions for climbing the hill shaped
like a pack-saddle. I never saw a pack-saddle. What is it like Jim?'*

"Score one against culture," said L "I'll know it when I see it."

Goodloe was looking at old Rundle's document when he ripped out a
most uncollegiate swear-word.

"Come here," he said, holding the paper up against the sunlight. "Look
at that," he said, laying his finger against it.

On the blue paper — a thing I had never noticed before — I saw stand
out in white letters the word and figures: "Malvern, 1898."

"What about it?" I asked.

"It's the water-mark," said Goodloe. "The paper was manufactured in
1898. The writing on the paper is dated 1863. This is a palpable fraud."

"Oh, I don't know," said I. "The Rundles are pretty reliable, plain,
uneducated country people. Maybe the paper manufacturers tried to
perpetrate a swindle."

And then Goodloe Banks went as wild as his education permitted. He
dropped the glasses off his nose and glared at me.

"I've often told you you were a fool," he said. "You have let yourself
be imposed upon by a clodhopper. And you have imposed upon me."

"How," I asked, "have I imposed upon you?"

"By your ignorance," said he. "Twice I have discovered serious flaws in
your plans that a common-school education should have enabled you to
avoid. And," he continued, "I have been put to expense that I could ill
afford in pursuing this swindling quest. I am done with it."

I rose and pointed a large pewter spoon at him, fresh from the dish-
water.

738 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"Goodloe Banks," I said, "I care not one parboiled navy bean for your
education. I always barely tolerated it in any one, and I despised it in you.
What has your learning done for you? It is a curse to yourself and a bore
to your friends. Away," I said— "away with your water-marks and varia-
tions. They are nothing to me. They shall not deflect me from the
quest."

I pointed with my spoon across the river to a small mountain shaped
like a pack-saddle.

"I am going to search that mountain," I went on, "for the treasure.
Decide now whether you are in it or not. If you wish to let a water-mark
or a variation shake your soul, you are no true adventurer. Decide."

A white cloud of dust began to rise far down the river road. It was
the mail-wagon from Hesperus to Chico. Goodloe flagged it.

"I am done with the swindle," said he, sourly. "No one but a fool would
pay any attention to that paper now. Well, you always were a fool, Jim.
I leave you to your fate."

He gathered his personal traps, climbed into the mail-wagon, adjusted
his glasses nervously y and flew away in a cloud of dust.

After I had washed the dishes and staked the horses on new .grass, I
crossed the shallow river and made my way slowly through the cedar-
brakes up to the top of the hill shaped like a pack-saddle.

It was a wonderful June day. Never in my life had I seen so many
birds, so many butterflies, dragon-flies, grasshoppers, and such winged
and stinged beasts of the air and fields.

I investigated the hill shaped like a pack-saddle from the base to
summit. I found an absolute absence of signs relating to buried treasure.
There was no pile of stones, no ancient blazes on the trees, none of the
evidences of the three hundred thousand dollars, as set forth in the docu-
ment of old man Rundle.

I came down the hill in the cool of the afternoon. Suddenly, out of the
cedar-brake I stepped into a beautiful green valley where a tributary
small stream ran into the Alamito River.

And there I was startled to see what I took to be a wild man, with
unkempt beard and ragged hair, pursuing a giant butterfly with brilliant
wings.

"Perhaps he is an escaped madman," I thought; and wondered how
he had strayed so far from seats of education and learning.

And then I took a few more steps and saw a vine-covered cottage near
the small stream. And in a little grassy glade I saw May Martha Man-
gum plucking wild flowers.

She straightened up and looked at me. For the first time since I knew
her I saw her face — which was the color of the white keys of a new
piano — turn pink. I walked toward her without a word. She let the
gathered flowers trickle slowly from her hand to the grass.

TO HIM WHO WAITS 739

"I knew you would come, Jim," she said, clearly. "Fatter wouldn't let
me write, but I knew you would come."

What followed, you may guess — there was my wagon and team just
across the river.

I've often wondered what good too much education is to a man if he
can't use it for himself. If all the benefits of it are to go to others, where
does it come in?

For May Martha Mangum abides with me. There is an eight-room
house in a live-oak grove, and a piano with an automatic player, and a
good start toward the three thousand head of cattle is under fence.

And when I ride home at night my pipe and slippers are put away in
places where they cannot be found.

But who cares for that? Who cares — who cares?

TO HIM WHO WAITS

The Hermit of the Hudson was hustling about his cave with unusual
animation.

The cave was on or in the top of a little spur of the Catskills that had
strayed down to the river's edge, and, not having a ferry ticket, had to
stop there. The bijou mountains were densely wooded and were infested
by ferocious squirrels and woodpeckers that forever menaced the summer
transients. Like a badly sewn strip of white braid, a macadamized road
ran between the green skirt of the hills and the foamy lace of the river's
edge. A dim path wound from the comfortable road up a rocky height
to the hermit's cave. One mile up-stream was the Viewpoint Inn, to
which summer folk from the city came; leaving cool, electric-fanned
apartments that they might be driven about in burning sunshine, shriek-
ing, in gasoline launches, by spindle-legged Modreds bearing the blankest
of shields.

Train your lorgnette upon the hermit and let your eye receive the
personal touch that shall endear you to the hero.

A man of forty, judging him fairly, with long hair curling at the ends,
dramatic eyes, and a forked brown beard like those that were imposed
upon the West some years ago by self-appointed "divine healers" who
succeeded the grasshopper crop. His outward vesture appeared to be a
kind of gunny-sacking, cut and made into a garment that would have
made the fortune of a London tailor. His long, well-shaped fingers,
delicate nose, and poise of manner raised him high above the class of
hermits who fear water and bury money in oyster-cans in their caves
in spots indicated by rude crosses chipped in the stone wall above.

740 BOOK VI OPTIONS

The hermit's home was not altogether a cave. The cave was an addition
to the hermitage, which was a rude hut made of poles daubed with clay
and covered with the best quality of rust-proof zinc roofing.

In the house proper there were stone slabs for seats, a rustic bookcase
made of unplaned poplar planks, and a table formed of a wooden slab
laid across two upright pieces of granite — something between the furni-
ture of a Druid temple and that of a Broadway beefsteak dungeon. Hung
against the walls were skins of wild animals purchased in the vicinity of
Eighth Street and University Place, New York.

The rear of the cabin merged into the cave. There the hermit cooked
his meals on a rude stone hearth. With infinite patience and an old axe
he had chopped natural shelves in the rocky walls. On them stood his
stores of flour, bacon, lard, talcum-powder, kerosene, baking-powder,
soda-mint tablets, pepper, salt, and Olivo-Cremo Emulsion for chaps and
roughness of the hands and face.

The hermit had hermited there for ten years. He was an asset of the
Viewpoint Inn. To its guests he was second in interest only to the
Mysterious Echo in the Haunted Glen. And the Lover's Leap beat him
only a few inches, fiat-footed. He was known far (but not very wide, on
account of the topography) as a scholar of brilliant intellect who had
forsworn the world because he had been jilted in a love affair. Every
Saturday night the Viewpoint Inn sent to him surreptitiously a basket of
provisions. He never left the immediate outskirts of his hermitage.
Guests of the inn who visited him said his store of knowledge, wit, and
scintillating philosophy was simply wonderful, you know. That summer
the Viewpoint Inn was crowded with guests. So, on Saturday nights, there
were extra cans of tomatoes, and sirloin steak, instead of "rounds," in the
hermit's basket.

Now you have the material allegations in the case. So, make way for
Romance.

Evidently the hermit expected a visitor. He carefully combed his long
hair and parted his apostolic beard. When the ninety-eight-cent alarm-
clock on a stone shelf announced the hour of five he picked up his gunny-
sacking skirts, brushed them carefully, gathered an oaken staff, and
strolled slowly into the thick woods that surrounded the hermitage.

He had not long to wait. Up the faint pathway, slippery with its carpet
of pine-needles, toiled Beatrix, youngest and fairest of the famous Tren-
holme sisters. She was all in blue from hat to canvas pumps, varying in
tint from the shade of the tinkle of a bluebell at daybreak on a spring
Saturday to a deep hue of a Monday morning at nine when the washer-
woman had failed to show up.

Beatrix dug her cerulean parasol deep into the pine-needles and sighed.
The hermit, on the q. t.t removed a grass burr from the ankle of one

TO HIM WHO WAITS 74!

sandalled foot with the big toe of his other one. She blued — and almost
starched and ironed him — with her cobalt eyes.

"It must be so nice," she said in little, tremulous gasps, "to be a hermit,
and have ladies climb mountains to talk to you."

The hermit folded his arms and leaned against a tree. Beatrix, with
a sigh, settled down upon the mat of pine-needles like a bluebird upon
her nest. The hermit followed suit, drawing his feet rather awkwardly
under his gunny-sacking.

"It must be nice to be a mountain," said he, with ponderous lightness,
"and have angels in blue climb up you instead of flying over you."

"Mamma had neuralgia," said Beatrix, "and went to bed, or I couldn't
have come. It's dreadfully hot at that horrid old inn. But we hadn't the
money to go anywhere else this summer."

"Last night," said the hermit, "I climbed to the top of that big rock
above us. I could see the lights of the inn and hear a strain or two of the
music when the wind was right. I imagined you moving gracefully in the
arms of others to the dreamy music of the waltz amid the fragrance of
flowers. Think how lonely I must have been!"

The youngest, handsomest, and poorest of the famous Trenholme sisters
sighed.

"You haven't quite hit it," she said, plaintively. "I was moving grace-
fully at the arms of another. Mamma had one of her periodical attacks
of rheumatism in both elbows and shoulders, and I had to rub them
for an hour with that horrid old liniment. I hope you didn't think that
smelled like flowers. You know, there were some West Point boys and a
yacht load of young men from the city at last evening's weekly dance.
I've known mamma to sit by an open window for three hours with one
half of her registering 85 degrees and the other half frost-bitten, and
never sneeze once. But just let a bunch of ineligibles come around where I
am, and she'll begin to swell at the knuckles and shriek with pain. And I
have to take her to her room and rub her arms. To see mamma dressed
you'd be surprised to know the number of square inches of surface there
are to her arms. I think it must be delightful to be a hermit. That—
cassock — or gabardine, isn't it? — that you wear is so becoming. Do you
make it — or them — of course you must have changes — yourself? And
what a blessed relief it must be to wear sandals instead of shoes! Think
how we must suffer — no matter how small I buy my shoes they always
pinch my toes. Oh, why can't there be lady hermits, too!"

The beautifulest and most adolescent Trenholme sister extended two
slender blue ankles that ended in two* enormous blue silk bows that
almost concealed two fairy Oxfords, also of one of the forty-seven shades
of blue. The hermit, as if impelled by a kind of reflex-telepathic action,
drew his bare toes farther beneath his gunny-sacking.

"I have heard about the romance of your life," said Miss Trenholme,

742 BOOK VI OPTIONS

softly. "They have it printed on the back of the menu card at the inn.
Was she very beautiful and charming?"

"On the bills of fare!" muttered the hermit; "but what do I care for the
world's babble? Yes, she was of the highest and grandest type. Then," he
continued, "then I thought the world could never contain another equal
to her. So I forsook it and repaired to this mountain fastness to spend the
remainder of my life alone— to devote and dedicate my remaining years to
her memory."

"It's grand," said Miss Trenholme, "absolutely grand! I think a hermit's
life is the ideal one. No bill-collectors calling, no dressing for dinner-
how I'd like to be one! But there's no such luck for me. If I don't marry
this season I honestly believe mamma will force me into settlement work
or trimming hats. It isn't because I'm getting old or ugly; but we haven't
enough money left to butt in at any of the swell places any more. And I
don't want to marry — unless it's somebody I like. That's why I'd like to
be a hermit. Hermits don't ever marry, do they?"

"Hundreds of 'em," said the hermit, "when they've found the right one."

"But they're hermits," said the youngest and beautifulest, "because
they've lost the right one, aren't they?"

"Because they think they have," answered the recluse, fatuously. "Wis-
dom comes to one in a mountain cave as well as to one in the world of
'swells/ as I believe they are called in the argot."

"When one of the Wells* brings it to them," said Miss Trenholme.
"And my folks are swells. That's the trouble. But there are so many
swells at the seashore in the summer-time that we hardly amount to
more than ripples. So we've had to pull all our money into river and har-
bor appropriations. We were all girls, you know. There were four of us.
I'm the only surviving one. The others have been married off. All to money.
Mamma is so proud of my sisters. They send her the loveliest pen-wipers
and art calendars every Christmas. I'm the only one on the market now.
I'm forbidden to look at any one who hasn't money."

"But " began the hermit.

"But, oh," said the beautifulest, "of course hermits have great pots of
gold and doubloons buried somewhere near three great oak-trees. They
all have,"

"I have not," said the hermit, regretfully.

*Tm so sorry," said Miss Trenholme. "I always thought they had. I
think I must go now."

Oh, beyond question, she was the beautifulest.

"Fair lady " began the hermit.

"I am Beatrix Trenholme— some call me Trix," she said. "You must
come to the inn to see me."

"I haven't been a stone s-throw from my cave in ten years/' said the
hermit.

TO HIM WHO WAITS 743

"You must come to see me there," she repeated. "Any evening except
Thursday."

The hermit smiled weakly.

"Good-bye," she said, gathering the folds of her pale-blue skirt. "I shall
expect you. But not on Thursday evening, remember."

What an interest it would give to the future menu cards of the View-
point Inn to have these printed lines added to them: "Only once during
the more than ten years of his lonely existence did the mountain hermit
leave his famous cave. That was when he was irresistibly drawn to the inn
by the fascinations of Miss Beatrix Trenholme, youngest and most beau-
tiful of the celebrated Trenholme sisters, whose brilliant marriage to "

Aye, to whom?

The hermit walked back to the hermitage. At the door stood Bob
Binkley, his old friend and companion of the days before he had re-
nounced the world — Bob, himself, arrayed like the orchids of the green-
house in the summer man's polychromatic grab—Bob, the millionaire,
with his fat, firm, smooth, shrewd face, his diamond rings, sparkling fob-
chain, and pleated bosom. He was two years older than the hermit, and
looked five years younger.

"You're Hamp Ellison, in spite of those whiskers and that going-away
bathrobe," he shouted. "1 read about you on the bill of fare at the inn.
They've run your biography in between the cheese and *Not Responsible
for Coats and Umbrellas.' What'd you do it for, Hamp? And ten
years, too — gee whilikins!"

"You're just the same," said the hermit. "Come in and sit down. Sit
on that limestone rock over there; it's softer than the granite."

"I can't understand it, old man," said Binkley. "I can see how you
could give up a woman for ten years, but not ten years for a woman. Of
course I know why you did it. Everybody does. Edith Carr. She jilted four
or five besides you. But you were the only one who took to a hole in the
ground. The others had recourse to whiskey, the Klondike, politics, and
that simila similibus cure. But, say — Hamp, Edith Carr was just about the
finest woman in the world— high-toned and proud and noble, and playing
her ideals to win at all kinds of odds. She certainly was a crackerjack."

"After I renounced the world," said the hermit, "I never heard of her
again."

"She married me," said Binkley.

The hermit leaned against the wooden walls of his ante-cave and
wriggled his toes.

"I know how you feel about it," said Binkley. "What else could she do?
There were her four sisters and her mother and old man Carr — you
remember how he put all the money he had into dirigible balloons ? Well,
everything was coming down and nothing going up with 'em, as you
might say. Well, I know Edith as well as you do — although I married her.

744 BOOK vi OPTIONS

I was worth a million then, but I've run it up since to between five and
six. It wasn't me she wanted as much as— well, it was about like this: She
had that bunch on her hands, and they had to be taken care of. Edith
married me two months after you did the ground-squirrel act. I thought
she liked me, too, at the time."

"And now?" inquired the recluse.

"We're better friends than ever now. She got a divorce from me two
years ago. Just incompatability. I didn't put in any defence. Well, well,
well, Hamp, this is certainly a funny dugout you've built here. But you
always were a hero of fiction. Seems like you'd have been the very one
to strike Edith's fancy. Maybe you did— but it's the bank-roll that catches
'em, my boy— your caves and whiskers won't do it. Honestly, Hamp,
don't you think you've been a darned fool?"

The hermit smiled behind his tangled beard. He was and always had
been so superior to the crude and mercenary Binkley that even his vul-
garities could not anger him. Moreover, his studies and meditations in his
retreat had raised him far above the little vanities of the world. His little
mountainside had been almost an Olympus, over the edge of which he
saw, smiling, the bolts hurled in the valleys of man below. Had his ten
years of renunciation, of thought, of devotion to an ideal, of living scorn
of a sordid world, been in vain? Up from the world had come to him the
youngest and beautifulest— fairer than Edith— one and three seventh
times lovelier than the seven-years-served Rachel. So the hermit smiled
in his beard.

When Binkley had relieved the hermitage from the blot of his presence
and the first faint star showed above the pines, the hermit got the can of
baking-powder from his cupboard. He still smiled behind his beard.

There was a slight rustle in the doorway. There stood Edith Carr, with
all the added beauty and stateliness and noble bearing that ten years had
brought her.

She was never one to chatter. She looked at the hermit with her large
thinking, dark eyes. The hermit stood still, surprised into a pose as mo-
tionless as her own. Only his subconscious sense of the fitness of things
caused him to turn the baking-powder can slowly in his hands until its
red label was hidden against his bosom.

"I am stopping at the inn,*' said Edith, in low but clear tones. "I heard
of you there. I told myself that I must see you. I want to ask your forgive-
ness. I sold my happiness for money. There were others to be provided
for — but that does not excuse me. I just wanted to see you and ask your
forgiveness. You have lived here ten years,, they tell me, cherishing my
memory! I was blind, Hampton. I could not see then that all the money

in the world cannot weigh in the scales against a faithful heart. If

But it is too late now, of course."

Her assertion was a question clothed as best it could be in a loving

TO HIM WHO WAITS 745

woman's pride. But through the thin disguise the hermit saw easily that
his lady had come back to him—if he chose. He had won a golden crown
— if it pleased him to take it. The reward of his decade of faithfulness
was ready for his hand — if he desired to stretch it forth.

For the space of one minute the old enchantment shone upon him with
a reflected radiance. And then by turns he felt the manly sensations of
indignation at having been discarded, and of repugnance at having been —
as it were — sought again. And last of all — how strange that it should have
come at last! — the pale-blue vision of the beautifulest of the Trenholme
sisters illuminated his mind's eye and left him without a waver.

"It is too late," he said, in deep tones, pressing the baking-powder can
against his heart.

Once she turned after she had gone slowly twenty yards down the path.
The hermit had begun to twist the lid off his can, but he hid it again
under his sacking robe. He could see her great eyes shining sadly through
the twilight; but he stood inflexible in the doorway of his shack and made
no sign.

Just as the moon rose on Thursday evening the mermit was seized by
the world-madness.

Up from the inn, fainter than the horns of elfland, came now and then
a few bars of music played by the casino band. The Hudson was broad-
ened by the night into an illimitable sea — those lights, dimly seen on its
opposite shore, were not beacons for prosaic trolley-lines, but low-set stars
millions of miles away. The waters in front of the inn were gay with
fireflies — or were they motor-boats, smelling of gasoline and oil? Once the
hermit had known these things and had sported with Amaryllis in the
shade of the red-and-white-striped awnings. But for ten years he had
turned a heedless ear to these far-off echoes of a frivolous world. But
to-night there was something wrong.

The casino band was playing a waltz — a waltz. What a fool he had
been to tear deliberately ten years of his life from the calendar of exist-
ence for one who had given him up for the false joys that wealth— "turn,
ti turn ti turn ti"— how did that waltz go? But those years had not been
sacrificed — had they not brought him the star and pearl of all the world,
the youngest and beautifulest of

"But do not come on Thursday evening," she had insisted. Perhaps by
now she would be moving slowly and gracefully to the strains of that
waltz, held closely by West Pointers or city commuters, while he, who
had read in her eyes things that had recompensed him for ten lost years
of life, moped like some wild animal in its mountain den. Why should

"Damn it," said the hermit, suddenly, "I'll do it!"

,He threw down his Marcus Aureius and threw off his gunny-sack

746 BOOK VI OPTIONS

toga. He dragged a dust-covered trunk from a corner of the cave, and
with difficulty wrenched open its lid.

Candles he had in plenty, and the cave was soon aglow. Clothes— ten
years old in cut— scissors, razors, hats, shoes, all his discarded attire and
belongings, were dragged ruthlessly from their renunciatory rest and
strewn about in painful disorder.

A pair of scissors soon reduced his beard sufficiently for the dulled
razors to perform approximately their office. Cutting his own hair was
beyond the hermit's skill. So he only combed and brushed it backward
as smoothly as he could. Charity forbids us to consider the heart-burnings
and exertions of one so long removed from haberdashery and society.

At the last the hermit went to an inner corner of his cave and began
to dig in the soft earth with a long iron spoon. Out of the cavity he thus
made he drew a tin can, and out of the can three thousand dollars in bills,
tightly rolled and wrapped in oiled silk. He was a real hermit, as this
may assure you.

You may take a brief look at him as he hastens down the little moun-
tainside. A long, wrinkled black frock-coat reached to his calves. White
duck trousers, unacquainted with the tailor's goose, a pink shirt, white
standing collar with brilliant blue butterfly tie, and buttoned congress
gaiters. But think, sir and madam — ten years! From beneath a narrow-
brimmed straw hat with striped band flowed his hair. Seeing him, with
all your shrewdness you could not have guessed him. You would have
said that he played Hamlet — or the tuba — or pinochle — you would never
have laid your hand on your heart and said: "He is a hermit who lived
ten years in a cave for love of one lady — to win another."

The dancing pavilion extended above the waters of the river. Gay
lanterns and frosted electric globes shed a soft glamour within it. A hun-
dred ladies and gentlemen from the inn and summer cottages flitted in
and about it. To the left of the dusty roadway down which the hermit
had tramped were the inn and grill-room. Something seemed to be on
there, too. The windows were brilliantly lighted, and music was playing —
music different from the two-steps and waltzes of the casino band.

A negro man wearing a white jacket came through the iron gate, with
its immense granite posts and wrought-iron lamp-holders.

"What is going on here to-night?" asked the hermit.

"Well, sah," said the servitor, "day is having de reg-lar Thursday-
evenin* dance in de casino. And in de grill-room dere's a beefsteak
dinner, sah.M

The hermit glanced up at the inn on the hill-side whence burst sud-
denly a triumphant strain of splendid harmony.

"And up there, n said he, "they are playing Mendelssohn — what is go-
ing on up there?"

"Up in de inn,'* said the dusky one, "dey is a weddin* goin' on. Mr.

HE ALSO SERVES 747

Binkley, a mighty rich man, am marryin' Miss Trenholme, sah — de young
lady who am quite de belle of de place, sah."

HE ALSO SERVES

If I could have a thousand years— just one little thousand years— more of
life, I might, in that time, draw near enough to true Romance to touch
the hem of her robe.

Up from ships men come, and from waste places and forest and road
and garret and cellar to maunder to me in strangely distributed words of
the things they have seen and considered. The recording of their tales is
no more than a matter of ears and fingers. There are only two fates I
dread— deafness and writer's cramp. The hand is yet steady; let the ear
bear the blame if these printed words be not in the order they were
delivered to me by Hunky Magee, true camp-follower of fortune.

Biography shall claim you but an instant— I first knew Hunky when
he was head-waiter at Chubb's little beefsteak restaurant and cafe on
Third Avenue. There was only one waiter besides.

Then, successively, I caromed against him in the little streets of the Big
City after his trip to Alaska, his voyage as cook with a treasure-seeking
expedition to the Caribbean, and his failure as a pearl-fisher in the Arkan-
sas River. Between these dashes into the land of adventure he usually
came back to Chubb's for a while. Chubb's was a port for him when
gales blew too high; but when you dined there and Hunky went for your
steak you never knew whether he would come to anchor in the kitchen
or in the Malayan Archipelago. You wouldn't care for his description-
he was soft of voice and hard of face, and rarely had to use more than
one eye to quell any approach to a disturbance among Chubb's customers.

One night I found Hunky standing at a corner of Twenty-third Street
and Third Avenue after an absence of several months. In ten minutes we
had a little round table between us in a quiet corner, and my ears began
to get busy. I leave out my sly ruses and feints to draw Hunky's word-of-
mouth blows — it all came to something like this:

"Speaking of the next election," said Hunky, "did you ever know
much about Indians? No; I don't mean the Cooper, Beadle, cigarstore,
or Laughing Water kind— I mean the modern Indian— the kind that
takes Greek prizes in colleges and scalps the half-back on the other side
in football games. The kind that eats macaroons and tea in the after-
noons with the daughter of the professor of biology, and fills up on grass-
hoppers and fried rattlesnake when they get back to the ancestral
wickiup.

"Well, they ain't so bad. I like 'em better than most foreigners that have

748 BOOK VI OPTIONS

come over in the last few hundred years. One thing about the Indian is
this: when he mixes with the white race he swaps all his own vices for
them of the pale-faces— and he retains all his own virtues. Well, his virtues
are enough to call out the reserves whenever he let's 'em loose. But the
imported foreigners adopt our virtues and keep their own vices— and it's
going to take our whole standing army some day to police that gang.

"But let me tell you about the trip I took to Mexico with High Jack
Snakefeeder, a Cherokee twice removed, a graduate of a Pennsylvania
college and the latest thing in pointed-toed, rubber-heeled, patent kid
moccasins and Madras hunting-shirt with turned-back cuffs. He was a
friend of mine. I met him in Tahlequah when I was out there during the
land boom, and we got thick. He had got all there was out of colleges and
had come back to lead his people out of Egypt. He was a man of first-
class style and wrote essays, and had been invited to visit rich guys' houses
in Boston and such places.

"There was a Cherokee girl in Muscogee that High Jack was foolish
about. He took me to see her a few times. Her name was Florence Blue
Feather— but you want to clear your mind of all ideas of squaws with
nose-rings and army blankets. This young lady was whiter than you are,
and better educated than I ever was. You couldn't have told her from any
of the girls shopping in the swell Third Avenue stores. I liked her so
well that I got to calling on her now and then when High Jack wasn't
along, which is the way of friends in such matters. She was educated at
the Muscogee College, and was making a specialty of— let's see— eth—
yes, ethnology. That's the art that goes back and traces the descent of dif-
ferent races of people, leading up from jelly-fish through monkeys and to
the O'Briens. High Jack had took up that line too, and had read papers
about it before all kinds of riotous assemblies — Chautauquas and Choc-
taws and chowder-parties and such. Having a mutual taste' for musty in-
formation like that was what made 'em like each other, I suppose. But I
don't know! What they call congeniality of tastes ain't always it. Now,
when Miss Blue Feather and me was talking together, I listened to her
affidavits about the first families of the Land of Nod being cousins german
(well, if the Germans don't nod, who does?) to the mound-builders of
Ohio with incomprehension and respect. And when I'd tell her about the
Bowery and Coney Island, and sing her a few songs that I'd heard the
Jamaica niggers sing at their church lawn-parties, she didn't look much
less interested than she did when High Jack would tell her that he had a
pipe that the first inhabitants of America originally arrived here on stilts
after a freshet at Tenafly, New Jersey.

"But I was going to tell you more about High Jack.

"About six months ago I get a letter from him, saying he'd been com-
missioned by the Minority Report Bureau of Ethnology at Washington to
go down to Mexico and translate some excavations or dig up the meaning

HE ALSO SERVES 749

of some shorthand notes on some ruins— or something of that sort. And
if I'd go along he could squeeze the price into the expense account.

"Well, rd been holding a napkin over my arm at Chubb's about long
enough then, so I wired High Jack 'Yes'; and he sent me a ticket, and 1
met him in Washington, and he had a lot of news to tell me. First of all
was that Florence Blue Feather had suddenly disappeared from her home
and environments.

"'Run away?' I asked.

"'Vanished,' says High Jack. 'Disappeared like your shadow when
the sun goes under a cloud. She was seen on the street, and then she
turned a corner and nobody ever seen her afterward. The whole commun-
ity turned out to look for her, but we never found a clue,'

" 'That's bad— that's bad,' says I. 'She was a mighty nice girl, and as
smart as you find 'em.'

"High Jack seemed to take it hard. I guess he must have esteemed
Miss Blue Feather quite highly. I could see that he'd referred the matter
to the whiskey-jug. That was his weak point— and many another man's.
I've noticed that when a man loses a girl he generally takes to drink
either just before or just after it happens.

"From Washington we railroaded it to New Orleans, and there took
a tramp steamer bound for Belize. And a gale pounded us all down^the
Caribbean, and nearly wrecked us on the Yucatan coast opposite a little
town without a harbor called Boca de Coacoyula. Suppose the ship had
run against that name in the dark!

" 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cyclone in the bay,' says High Jack
Snakefeeder. So we get the captain to send us ashore in a dory when the
squall seemed to cease from squalling.

"'We will find ruins here or make 'em,' says High. 'The Govern-
ment doesn't care which we do. An appropriation is an appropriation.'

"Boca de Coacoyula was a dead town. Them biblical towns we read
about__Tired and Siphon— after they was destroyed, they must have
looked like Forty-second Street and Broadway compared to this Boca
place. It still claimed 1300 inhabitants as estimated and engraved on the
stone courthouse by the census-taker in 1597. The citizens were a mixture
of Indians and other Indians; but some of 'em was light-colored, which
I was surprised to see. The town was huddled up on the shore, with
woods so thick around it that a subpoena-server couldn't have reached a
monkey ten years away with the papers. We wondered what kept it from
being annexed to Kansas; but we soon found out that it was Major Bing.

"Major Bing was the ointment around the fly. He had the cochineal,
sarsaparilla, logwood, annatto hemp, and all other dye-woods and pure
food adulteration concessions cornered. He had five sixths of the Boca de
Thingamajiggers working for him on shares. It was a beautiful graft. We
used to brag about Morgan and E. H. and others of our wisest when I was

750 BOOK VI OPTIONS

in the provinces— but now no more. That peninsula has got^ our little
country turned into a submarine without even the observation tower
showing.

"Major Bang's idea was this: He had the population go^ forth into die
forest and gather these products. When they brought 'em in he gave 'em
one fifth for their trouble. Sometimes they'd strike and demand a sixth.
The Major always gave in to 'em,

"The Major had a bungalow so close on the sea that the nine-inch tide
seeped through the cracks in the kitchen floor. Me and him and High Jack
Snakefeeder sat on the porch and drank rum from noon till midnight. He
said he had piled up $300,000 in New Orleans banks, and High and me
could stay with him forever if we would. But High Jack happened to
think of the United States, and began to talk ethnology,

"•Ruins 1* says Major Bing. 'The woods are full of 'em. I don't know
how far they date back, but they was here before I came/

"High Jack asks what form of worship the citizens of that locality are
addicted to.

"'Why,' says the Major, rubbing his nose, T can't hardly say. I imagine
it's infidel or Aztec or Nonconformist or something like that. There's a
church here— a Methodist or some other kind— with a parson named
Skidder. He claims to have converted the people to Christianity. He and
me don't assimilate except on state occasions. I imagine they worship
some kind of gods or idols yet. But Skidder says he has 'em in the fold.'

"A few days later High Jack and me, prowling around, strikes a plain
path into the forest, and follows it a good four miles. Then a branch
turns to the left. We go a mile, maybe, down that, and run up against the
finest ruin you ever saw — solid stone with trees and vines and underbrush
all growing up against it and in it and through it. All over it was chiselled
carvings of funny beasts and people, that would have been arrested if
they'd ever come out in vaudeville that way. We approached it from
the rear.

"High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in
Boca. You know how an Indian is — the palefaces fixed his clock when
they introduced him to firewater. He'd brought a quart along with him.

" 'Hunky,' says he, 'we'll explore the ancient temple. It may be that the
storm that landed us here was propitious. The Minority Report Bureau of
Ethnology,* says he, 'may yet profit by the vagaries of wind and tide/

"We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We struck a kind o£
alcove without bath. There was a granite davenport, and a stone wash-
stand without any soap or exit for the water and some hardwood pegs
drove into holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that furnished
apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make you feel like getting
back home from an amateur violoncello solo at an East Side Settlement
house.

HE ALSO SERVES 75!

"While High was examining some hieroglyphics on the wall that the
stone-masons must have made when their tools slipped, I stepped into
the front room. That was at least thirty by fifty feet, stone floor, six little
windows like square-port-holes that didn't let much light in.

"I looked back over my shoulder, and sees High Jack's face three feet
away.

"'High,5 says I, 'of all the *

And then I noticed he looked funny, and I turned around.

"He'd taken off his clothes to the waist, and he didn't seem to hear me.
I touched him, and came near beating it. High Jack had turned to stone.
I had been drinking some rum myself.

"'Ossified!' I says to him, loudly. 'I knew what would happen if you
kept it up.'

"And then High Jack comes in from the alcove when he hears me
conversing with nobody, and we have a look at Mr. Snakefeeder No. 2.
It's a stone idol, or god, or revised statue or something, and it looks as
much like High Jack as one green pea looks like itself. It's got exactly
his face and size and color, but it's steadier on its pins. It stands on a kind
of rostrum or pedestal, and you can see it's been there ten million years.

" 'He's a cousin of mine,' sings High, and then he turns solemn.

" 'Hunky,' he says, putting one hand on my shoulder and one on the
statue's, I'm in the holy temple of my ancestors.*

" 'Well, if looks goes for anything,' says I, 'you've struck a twin. Stand
side by side with buddy, and let's see if there's any difference.'

"There wasn't. You know an Indian can keep his face as still as an
iron dog's when he wants to, so when High Jack froze his features you
couldn't have told him from the other one.

" 'There's some letters,' says I, 'on his nob's pedestal, but I can't make
'em out. The alphabet of this country seems to be composed of sometimes
af ef i, o, and u, generally, z's, I's, and t's.

"High Jack's ethnology gets the upper hand of his rum for a minute,
and he investigates the inscription.

" 'Hunky,' says he, 'this is a statue of Tlotopaxl, one of the most power-
ful gods of the ancient Aztecs.'

" 'Glad to know him,' says I, 'but in his present condition he reminds
me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Caesar. We might say about
your friend:

"Imperious What's his-name, dead and turned to stone —
No use to write or call him on the phone."

" 'Hunky,' says High Jack Snakefeeder, looking at me funny, 'do you
believe in reincarnation?'

" 'It sounds to me,' says I, 'like either a clean-up of the slaughter-houses
or a new kind of Boston pink. I don't know.'

752 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"'I believe,5 says he, 'that I am the reincarnation of Tlotopaxl. My
researches have convinced me that the Cherokees, of all the North Amer-
ican tribes, can boast of the straightest descent from the proud Aztec
race. That,' says he, 'was a favorite theory of mine and Florence Blue
Feather's. And she— what if she *

"High Jack grabs my arm and walls his eyes at me. Just then he looked
more like his eminent co-Indian murderer, Crazy Horse.

"'Well,' says I, 'what if she, what if she, what if she? You're drunk,'
says I. 'Impersonating idols and believing in — what was it? — recarnaliza-
tion? Let's have a drink/ says I. 'It's as spooky here as a Brooklyn arti-
ficial-limb factory at midnight with the gas turned down.'

"Just then I heard somebody coming, and I dragged High Jack into
the bedless bedchamber. There was peepholes bored through the wall, so
we could see the whole front part o£ the temple. Major Bing told me after-
ward that the ancient priests in charge used to rubber through them at
the congregation.

"In a few minutes an old Indian woman came in with a big oval
earthen dish full of grub. She set it on a square block of stone in front
of the graven image, and laid down and walloped her face on the floor
a few times, and then took a walk for herself.

"High Jack and me was hungry, so we came out and looked it over.
There was goat steaks and fried rice-cakes, and plaintains and casava, and
broiled land-crabs and mangoes — nothing like what you get at Chubb's.

"We ate hearty — and had another round of rum.

"'It must be old Tecumseh's — or whatever you call him — birthday,'
says I. 'Or do they feed him every day? I thought gods only drank vanilla
on Mount Catawampus.'

"Then some more native parties in short kimonos that showed their
aboriginees puncture the near-horizon, and me and High had to skip back
into Father Axletree's private boudoir. They came by ones, twos, and
threes, and left all sorts of offerings — there was enough grub for Bing-
ham's nine gods of war, with plenty left over for the Peace Conference at
The Hague. They brought jars of honey, and bunches of bananas, and
bottles of wine, and stacks of tortillas, and beautiful shawls worth one
hundred dollars apiece that the Indian women weave of a kind of vege-
table fiber like silk. All of 'em got down and wriggled on the floor in front
of that hard-finish god, and then sneaked off through the woods again.

" 1 wonder who gets this rake-off?' remarks High Jack.

" *Oh/ says I, 'there's priests or deputy idols or a committee of disar-
rangements somewhere in the woods on the job. Wherever you find a god
you'll find somebody waiting to take charge of the burnt offerings.'

"And then we took another swig of rum and walked out to the parlor
front door to cool off, for it was as hot inside as a summer camp on the
Palisades.

HE ALSO SERVES 753

"And while we stood there in the breeze we looks down the path and
sees a young lady approaching the blasted ruin. She was barefooted and
had on a white robe, and carried a wreath of white flowers in her hand.
When she got nearer we saw she had a long blue feather stuck through
her black hair. And when she got nearer still me and High Jack Snake-
feeder grabbed each other to keep from tumbling down on the floor;
for the girl's face was as much like Florence Blue Feather's as his was
like old King Toxicology s.

"And then was when High Jack's booze drowned his system of
ethnology. He dragged me inside back of the statue, and says:

" 'Lay hold of it, Hunky. We'll pack it into the other room. I felt it all
the time/ says he. I'm the reconsideration of the god Locomotorataxia,
and Florence Blue Feather was my bride a thousand years ago. She has
come to seek me in the temple where I used to reign.'

" 'All right,' says I. 'There's no use arguing against the rum question.
You take his feet.'

"We lifted the three-hundred-pound stone god, and carried him into
the back room of the cafe — the temple, I mean — and leaned him against
the wall. It was more work than bouncing three live ones from an all
night Broadway joint on New-Year's Eve.

"Then High Jack ran out and brought in a couple of them Indian silk
shawls and began to undress himself.

" 'Oh, figs!' says I. 'Is it thus? Strong drink is an adder and subtracter,
too. Is it the heat or the call of the wild that's got you?'

"But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice to reply. He
stops the disrobing business just short of the Manhattan Beach rules,
and then winds them red-and-white shawls around him, and goes out and
stands on the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw.
And I looks through a peekhole to see what he is up to.

*'In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower wreath. Danged
if I wasn't knocked a little silly when she got close, she looked so exactly
much like Florence Blue Feather. *I wonder,' says I to myself, 'if she has
been reincarcerated, too? If I could see,' says I to myself, 'whether she has

a mole on her left " But the next minute I thought she looked one

eighth of a shade darker than Florence; but she looked good at that. And
High Jack hadn't drunk all the rum that had been drank.

"The girl went up within ten feet of the bum idol, and got down and
massaged her nose with the floor, like the rest did. Then she went nearer
and laid the flower wreath on the block of stone at High Jack's feet.
Rummy as I was, I thought it was kind of nice of her to think of offering
flowers instead of household and kitchen provisions. Even a stone god
ought to appreciate a little sentiment like that on top of the fancy gro-
ceries they had piled up in front of him.

"And then High Jack steps down from his pedestal, quiet, and mentions

754 BOOK vi OPTIONS

a few words that sounded just like the hieroglyphics carved on the walls
of the ruin. The girl gives a little jump backward, and her eyes fly open
as big as doughnuts; but she don't beat it.

"Why didn't she? I'll tell you why I think why. It don't seem to a girl
so supernatural, unlikely, strange, and startling that a stone god should
come to life for her. If he was to do it for one of them snub-nosed brown
girls on the other side of the woods, now, it would be different— but her!
Ill bet she said to herself: 'Well, goodness me! you've been a long time
getting on your job. I've half a mind not to speak to you.5

"But she and High Jack holds hands and walks away out of the temple
together. By the time I'd had time to take another drink and enter upon
the scene they was twenty yards away, going up the path in the woods
that the girl had come down. With the natural scenery already in place, it
was just like a play to watch 'em— she looking up at him, and him giving
her back the best that an Indian can hand out in the way of a goo-goo
eye. But there wasn't anything in the recarnification and revulsion to
tintype for me.

" 'Hey! Injun!' I yells out to High Jack. We've got a board-bill due in
town, and you're leaving me without a cent. Brace up and cut out the
Neapolitan fisher-maiden, and let's go back home/

"But on the two goes without looking once back until, as you might
say, the forest swallowed 'em up. And I never saw or heard of High
Jack Snakefeeder from that day to this. I don't know if the Cherokees
came from the Aspics; but if they did, one of 'em went back.

"All I could do was to hustle back to that Boca place and panhandle
Major Bing. He detached himself from enough of his winnings to buy
me a ticket home. And I'm back again on the job at Chubb's, sir, and
I'm going to hold it steady. Come round, and you'll find the steaks as good
as ever."

I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own story; so I
asked him if he had any theories about reincarnation and transmogrifica-
tion and such mysteries as he had touched upon.

"Nothing like that," said Hunky, positively. "What ailed High Jack
was too much booze and education. They'll do an Indian up every time."

"But what about Miss Blue Feather?" I persisted.

"Say," said Hunky, with a grin, "that little lady that stole High Jack
certainly did give me a jar when I first took a look at her, but it was only
for a minute. You remember I told you High Jack said that Miss Flor-
ence Blue Feather disappeared from home about a year ago? Well, where
she landed four days later was in as neat a five-room flat on East Twenty-
third Street as you ever walked sideways through— and she's been Mrs.
Magee ever since."

THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 755

THE MOMENT OF VICTORY

Ben Granger is a war veteran aged twenty-nine — which should enable you
to guess the war. He is also principal merchant and postmaster of Cadiz,
a little town over which the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico perpetually
blow.

Ben helped to hurl the Don from his stronghold in the Greater An-
tilles; and then, hiking across half the world, he marched as a corporal-
usher up and down the blazing tropic aisles of the open-air college in
which the Filipino was schooled. Now, with his bayonet beaten into a
cheese slicer, he rallies his corporal's guard of cronies in the shade of his
well-whittled porch, instead of in the matted jungles of Mindanao. Al-
ways have his interest and choice been for deeds rather than for words;
but the consideration and digestion of motives is not beyond him, as this
story, which is his, will attest.

"What is it," he asked me one moonlit eve, as we sat among his boxes
and barrels, "that generally makes men go through dangers, and fire, and
trouble, and starvation, and battle, and such recourses? What does a man
do it for ? Why does he try to outdo his fellow-humans, and be braver and
stronger and more daring and showy than even his best friends are?
What's his game? What does he expect to get out of it? He don't do it
just for the fresh air and exercise. What would you say, now, Bill, that an
ordinary man expects, generally speaking, for his efforts along the line
of ambition and extraordinary hustling in the market-places, forums,
shooting-galleries, lyceums, battlefields, links, cinder-paths, and arenas of
the civilized and vice versa places of the world ?"

"Well, Ben," said I, with judicial seriousness, "I think we might safely
limit the number of motives of a man who seeks fame to three — to
ambition, which is a desire for popular applause; to avarice, which looks
to the material side of success; and to love of some woman whom he
either possesses or desires to possess."

Ben pondered over my words while a mocking-bird on the top of a
mesquite by the porch trilled a dozen bars.

"I reckon," said he, "that your diagnosis about covers the case accord-
ing to the rules laid down in the copybooks and historical readers. But
what I had in my mind was the case of Willie Robbins, a person I used
to know. I'll tell you about him before I close up the store, if you don't
mind listening.

"Willie was one of our social set up in San Augustine. I was clerking
there then for Brady & Murchison, wholesale dry-goods and ranch sup-
plies. Willie and I belonged to the same german club and athletic asso-

756 BOOK VI OPTIONS

ciation and military company. He played the triangle in our serenading
and quartet crowd that used to ring the welkin three nights a week
somewhere in town.

"Willie jibed with his name considerable. He weighed about as much
as a hundred pounds of veal in his summer suitings, and he had a
Where-is-Mary? expression on his features so plain that you could al-
most see the wool growing on him.

"And yet you couldn't fence him away from the girls with barbed wire.
You know that kind of young fellows— a kind of a mixture of fools and
angels— they rush in and fear to tread at the same time; but they never
fail to tread when they get the chance. He was always on hand when 'a joy-
ful occasion was had,' as the morning paper would say, looking as happy
as a king full, and at the same time as uncomfortable as a raw oyster served
with sweet pickles. He danced like he had hind hobbles on; and he had
a vocabulary of about three hundred and fifty words that he made
stretch over four germans a week, and plagiarized from to get him
through two ice-cream suppers and a Sunday-night call. He seemed to
me to be a sort of a mixture of Maltese kitten, sensitive plant, and a
member of a stranded 'Two Orphans' company.

"I'll give you an estimate of his physiological and pictorial make-up
and then Til stick spurs into the sides of my narrative.

"Willie inclined to the Caucasian in his coloring and manner of style.
His hair was opalescent and his conversation fragmentary. His eyes were
the same blue shade as the china dog's in the right-hand corner of your
Aunt Ellen's mantlepiece. He took things as they came, and I never felt
any hostility against him. I let him live, and so did others,

"But what does this Willie do but coax his heart out of his boots and
lose it to Myra Allison, the liveliest, brightest, keenest, smartest, and
prettiest girl in San Augustine. I tell you, she had the blackest eyes, the
shiniest curls, and the most tantalizing— Oh, no you're off — I Wasn't a
victim. I might have been, but I knew better. I kept out. Joe Granberry
was It from the start. He had everybody else beat a couple of leagues
and thence east to a stake and mound. But, anyhow, Myra was a nine-
pound, full-merino, fall-clip fleece, sacked and loaded on a four-horse
team to San Antone.

"One night there was an ice-cream sociable at Mrs. Colonel Spraggins',
in San Augustine, We fellows had a big room upstairs opened up for us to
put our hats and things in, and to comb our hair and put on the clean
collars we brought along inside the sweat-bands of our hats— in short,
a room to fix up in just like they have everywhere at high-toned doings.
A little farther down the hall was the girls' room, which they used to
powder up in, and so forth. Downstairs we— that is, the San Augustine
Social Cotillion and Merrymakers' Club — had a stretcher put down in the
parlor where our dance was going on.

THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 757

"Willie Robbins and me happened to be up in our — cloak-room, I
believe we called it— when Myra Allison skipped through the hall on her
way downstairs from the girl's room. Willie was standing before the
mirror, deeply interested in smoothing down the blond grassplot on
his head, which seemed to give him lots of trouble. Myra was always
full of life and devilment. She stopped and stuck her head in our door.
She certainly was good-looking. But I knew how Joe Cranberry stood
with her. So did Willie; but he kept on ba-a-a-ing after her and following
her around. He had a system of persistence that didn't coincide with pale
hair and light eyes.

"'Hello, Willie!' says Myra. What are you doing to yourself in the
glass?'

" Tm trying to look fly,' says Willie.

"'Well, you never could be fly,' says Myra with her special laugh,
which was the provokingest sound I ever heard except the rattle of an
empty canteen against my saddle-horn.

"I looked around at Willie after Myra had gone. He had a kind of a
lily-white look on him which seemed to show that her remark had, as you
might say, disrupted his soul. I never noticed anything in what she said
that sounded particularly destructive to a man's ideas of self-consciousness;
but he was set back to an extent you could scarcely imagine.

"After we went downstairs with our clean collars on, Willie never went
near Myra again that night. After all, he seemed to be a diluted kind of a
skim-milk sort of a chap, and I never wondered that Joe Granberry beat
him out.

"The next day the battleship Maine was blown up, and then pretty
soon somebody — I reckon it was Joe Bailey, or Ben Tillman, or maybe
the Government — declared war against Spain.

"Well, everybody south of Mason & Hamlin's line knew that the North
by itself couldn't whip a whole country the size of Spain. So the Yankees
commence to holler for help, and the Johnny Rebs answered the call.
'We're coming, Father William, a hundred thousand strong— and then
some,' was the way they sang it. And the old party lines drawn by Sher-
man's march and the Kuklux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim Crow
street-car ordinances faded away. We became one undivided country,
with no North, very little East, a good-sized chunk of West, and a South
that loomed up as big as the first foreign label in a new eight-dollar suit-
case.

"Of course the dogs of war weren't a complete pack without a yelp
from the San Augustine Rifles, Company D, of the Fourteenth Texas
Regiment. Our company was among the first to land in Cuba and strike
terror into the hearts of the foe. I'm not going to give you a history of the
war; I'm just dragging it in to fill out my story about Willie Robbins,
just as the Republican party dragged it in to help out the election in 1898.

758 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"If anybody ever had heroitis, it was that Willie Robbins. From the
minute he set foot on the soil of the tyrants of Castile he seemed to engulf
danger as a cat laps up cream. He certainly astonished every man in our
company, from the captain up. You'd have expected him to gravitate
naturally to the job of an orderly to the colonel, or typewriter in the com-
missary—but not any. He created the part of the flaxen-haired boy hero
who lives and gets back home with the goods, instead of dying with an
important despatch in his hands at his colonel's feet.

"Our company got into a section of Cuban scenery where one of the
messiest and most unsung portions of the campaign occurred. We were
out every day capering around in the bushes, and having little skirmishes
with the Spanish troops that looked more like kind of tired-out feuds
than anything else. The war was a joke to us, and of no interest to them.
We never could see it any other way than as a howling farce-comedy that
the San Augustine Rifles were actually fighting to uphold the Stars and
Stripes. And the blamed little senors didn't get enough pay to make them
care whether they were patriots or traitors. Now and then somebody
would get killed. It seemed like a waste of life to me. I was at Coney
Island when I went to New York once, and one of them down-hill skid-
ding apparatuses they call 'roller-coasters' flew the track and killed a man
in a brown sack-suit. Whenever the Spaniards shot one of our men, it
struck me as just about as unnecessary and regrettable as that was.

"But I'm dropping Willie Robbins out of the conversation.

"He was out for bloodshed, laurels, ambitions, medals, recommenda-
tions, and all other forms of military glory. And he didn't seem to be
afraid of any of the recognized forms of military danger, such as Span-
iards, cannon-balls, canned beef, gunpowder, or nepotism. He went forth
with his pallid hair and china-blue eyes and ate up Spaniards like you
would sardines £ la canopy. Wars and rumbles of wars never flustered
him. He w6uld stand guard-duty, mosquitoes, hard-tack, treat, and fire
with equally perfect unanimity. No blondes in history ever come in com-
parison distance of him except the Jack of Diamonds and Queen Cath-
erine of Russia.

"I remember, one time, a little caballard of Spanish men sauntered out
from behind a patch of sugar-cane and shot Bob Turner, the first sergeant
of our company, while we were eating dinner. As required by the army
regulations, we fellows went through the usual tactics of falling into line,
saluting the enemy, and loading and firing, kneeling.

"That wasn't the Texas way of scrapping; but, being a very important
addendum and annex to the regular army, the San Augustine Rifles had
to conform to the red-tape system of getting even.

"By the time we had got out our 'Upton's Tactics,' turned to page fifty-
seven, said 'one — two—three — one — two — three' a couple of times, and
got blank cartridges into our Springfields, the Spanish outfit had smiled

THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 759

repeatedly, rolled and lit cigarettes by squads, and walked away con-
temptuously.

"I went straight to Captain Floyd, and says to him: 'Sam, I don't think
this war is a straight game. You know as well as I do that Bob Turner
was one of the whitest fellows that ever threw a leg over a saddle, and
now these wire-pullers in Washington have fixed his clock. He's politi-
cally and ostensibly dead. It ain't fair. Why should they keep this thing
up? If they want Spain licked, why don't they turn the San Augustine
Rifles and Joe Seely's ranger company and a carload of West Texas
deputy-sheriffs on to these Spaniards, and let us exonerate them from the
face of the earth? I never did/ says I, 'care much about fighting by the
Lord Chesterfield ring rules. I'm going to hand in my resignation and gp
home if anybody else I am personally acquainted with gets hurt in this
war. If you can get somebody ia my place, Sam/ says I, Til quit the first
of next week. I don't want to work in any army that don't give its help a
chance. Never mind my wages/ says I; let the Secretary of the Treasury
keep 'em.*

" 'Well, Ben/ says the Captain to me, 'your allegations and estimations
of the tactics of war, government, patriotism, guard-mounting, and
democracy are all right. But I've looked into the system of international
arbitration and the ethics of justifiable slaughter a little closer, maybe,
than you have. Now, you can hand in your resignation the first of next
week if you are so minded. But if you do/ says Sam, Til order a
corporal's guard to take you over by that limestone bluff on the creek and
shoot enough lead into you to ballast a submarine airship. I'm captain of
this company, and I've swore allegiance to the Amalgamated States re-
gardless of sectional, secessional, and Congressional differences. Have you
got any smoking-tobacco?' winds up Sam. 'Mine got wet when I swum
die creek this morning.'

"The reason I drag all this non ex parte evidence in is because Willie
Robbins was standing there listening to us. I was a second sergeant and
he was a private then, but among us Texans and Westerners there never
was as much tactics and subordination as there was in the regular army.
We never called our captain anything but 'Sam' except when there was a
lot of major-generals and admirals around, so as to preserve the discipline.

"And says Willie Robbins to me, in a sharp construction of voice much
unbecoming to his light hair and previous record:

" Tou ought to be shot, Ben, for emitting any such sentiments. A man
that won't fight for his country is worse than a horse-thief. If I was the
cap, I'd put you in the guardhouse for thirty days on round steak and
tamales. War/ says Willie, 'is great and glorious. I didn't know you were
a coward/

"Tm not,5 says I. 'If I was, Pd knock some of the pallidness off your
marble brow. I'm lenient with you/ I says, 'just as I am with the Span-

760 BOOK VI OPTIONS

iards, because you have always reminded me of something with mush-
rooms on the side. Why, you little Lady of Shalott,' says I, 'you underdone
leader of cotillions, you glassy fashion and moulded form, you white-pine
soldier made in the Cisalpine Alps in Germany for the late New-Year
trade, do you know of whom you are talking to? We've been in the same
social circle/ says I, 'and I've put up with you because you seemed so
meek and self-unsatisfying. I don't understand why you have so sudden
taken a personal interest in chivalrousness and murder. Your nature's
undergone a complete revelation. Now, how is it?"

" 'Well, you wouldn't understand, Ben,' says Willie, giving one of his
refined smiles and turning away.

"'Come back here!" says I, catching him by the tail of his khaki coat.
'You've made me kind of mad, in spite of the aloofness in which I have
heretofore held you. You are out for making a success in this hero busi-
ness, and I believe I know what for. You are doing it either because you
are crazy or because you expect to catch some girl by it. Now, if it's a
girl, I've got something here to show you.'

"I wouldn't have done it, but I was plumb mad. I pulled a San Augus-
tine paper out of my hip-pocket, and showed him an item. It was a half
column about the marriage of Myra Allison and Joe Cranberry.

"Willie laughed, and I saw I hadn't touched him.

"*Oh,J says he, 'everybody knew that was going to happen. I heard
about that a week ago.' And then he gave me the laugh again.

" 'All right,' says I. 'Then why do you so recklessly chase the bright
rainbow of fame? Do you expect to be elected President, or do you belong
to a suicide club?'

"And then Captain Sam interferes.

"*You gentlemen quit jawing and go back to your quarters,' says he,
*or I'll have you escorted to the guardhouse. Now, scat, both of you! Be-
fore you go, which one of you has got any chewing-tobacco?*

" 'We're off, Sam,' says I. 'It's supper-time, anyhow. But what do you
think of what we was talking about? I've noticed you throwing out a

good many grappling-hooks for this here balloon called fame What's

ambition, anyhow? What does a man risk his life day after day for? Do
you know of anything he gets in the end that can pay him for the trouble?
I want to go back home,' says I. 'I don't care whether Cuba sinks or
swims, and I don't give a pipeful of rabbit tobacco whether Queen Sophia
Christina or Charlie Culberson rules these fairy isles; and I don't want
my name on any list except the list of survivors. But I've noticed you,
Sam,' says I, 'seeking the bubble of notoriety in the cannon's larynx a
number of times. Now, what do you do it for? Is it ambition, business, or
some freckle-faced Phoebe at home that you are heroing for?'

a 'Well, Ben/ says Sam, kind of hefting his sword out from between
his knees, *as your superior officer I could court-martial you for attempted

THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 761

cowardice and desertion. But I won't. And I'll tell you why I'm trying
for promotion and the usual honors of war and conquest. A major gets
more pay than a captain, and I need the money.'

" 'Correct for you!' says I. *I can understand that. Your system of fame-
seeking is rooted in the deepest soil of patriotism. But I can't compre-
hend,' says I, 'why Willie Robbins, whose folks at home are well of!, and
who used to be as meek and undesirous of notice as a cat with cream on
his whiskers, should all at once develop into a warrior bold with the
most fire-eating kind of proclivities. And the girl in his case seems to
have been eliminated by marriage to another fellow. I reckon/ says I?
'it's a plain case of just common ambition. He wants his name, maybe,
to go thundering down the corners of time. It must be that.'

"Well, without itemizing his deeds, Willie sure made good as a hero.
He simply spent most of his time on his knees begging our captain to
send him on forlorn hopes and dangerous scouting expeditions. In every
fight he was the first man to mix it at close quarters with the Don
Alfonsos. He got three or four bullets planted in various parts of his
autonomy. Once he went oflf with a detail of eight men and captured a
whole company of Spanish. He kept Captain Floyd busy writing out
recommendations of his bravery to send in to headquarters; and he began
to accumulate medals for all kinds of things — heroism and target-shooting
and valor and tactics and uninsubordination, and all the little accomplish-
ment that look good to the third assistant secretaries of the War Depart-
ment.

"Finally, Cap Floyd got promoted to be a major general, or a knight
commander of the main herd, or something like that. He pounded around
on a white horse, all desecrated up with gold-leaf and hen-feathers and a
Good Templar's hat, and wasn't allowed by the regulations to speak to
us. And Willie Robbins was made captain of our company.

"And maybe he didn't go after the wreath of fame then! As far as I
could see it was him that ended the war. He got eighteen of us boys —
friends of his, too— killed in battles that he stirred up himself and that
didn't seem to me necessary at all. One night he took twelve of us and
waded through a little rill about a hundred and ninety yards wide, and
climbed a couple of mountains, and sneaked through a mile of neglected
shrubbery and a couple of rock-quarries and into a rye-straw village, and
captured a Spanish general named, as they said, Benny Veedus. Benny
seemed to me hardly worth the trouble, being a blackish man without
shoes or cufTs, and anxious to surrender and throw himself on the com-
missary of his foe.

"But that job gave Willie the big boost he wanted. The San Augustine
News and the Galveston, St. Louis, New York, and Kansas City papers
printed his picture and columns of stuff about him. Old San Augustine
simply went crazy over its 'gallant son/ The News had an editoral tear-

762 BOOK VI OPTIONS

fully begging the government to call off the regular army and the national
guard, and let Willie carry on the rest of the war single-handed. It said
that a refusal to do so would be regarded as a proof that the Northern
jealousy of the South was still as rampant as ever.

"If the war hadn't ended pretty soon, I don't know to what heights of
gold braid and encomiums Willie would have climbed; but it did. There
was a secession of hostilities just three days after he was appointed
a colonel, and got in three more medals by registered mail and shot two
Spaniards while they were drinking lemonade in an ambuscade.

"Our company went back to San Augustine when the war was over.
There wasn't anywhere else for it to go. And what do you think? The
old town notified us in print, by wire cable, special delivery, and a nigger
named Saul sent on a gray mule to San Antone, that they was going to
give us the biggest blowout, complimentary, alimentary, and elementary,
that ever disturbed the kildees on the sand-flats outside of the immediate
contiguity of the city.

"I say 'we,' but it was all meant for ex-Private, Captain de facto, and
Colonel-elect Willie Robbins. The town was crazy about him. They noti-
fied us that the reception they were going to put up would make the
Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in Bury St. Ed-
monds with a curate's aunt.

"Well, the San Augustine Rifles got back home on schedule time.
Everybody was at the depot giving forth Roosevelt-Democrat — they used
to be called Rebel — yells. There was two brass-bands, and the mayor,
and schoolgirls in white frightening the street-car horses by throwing
Cherokee roses in the streets, and— well, maybe you've seen a celebration
by a town that was inland and out of water.

"They wanted Brevet Colonel Willie to get into a carriage and be
drawn by prominent citizens and some of the city aldermen to the
armory, but he stuck to his company and marched at the head of it up
Sam Houston Avenue. The buildings on both sides was covered with
flags and audiences, and everybody hollered 'Robbins!' or 'Hello, Willie!'
as we marched up in files of fours. I never saw a illustriouser-looking
human in my life than Willie was. He had at least seven or eight medals
and diplomas and decorations on the breast of his khaki coat; he was sun-
burnt the color of saddle, and he certainly done himself proud.

"They told us at the depot that the court-house was to be illuminated
at half-past seven, and there would be speeches and chili-concarne at the
Palace Hotel Miss Delphine Thompson was to read an original poem by
James Whitcomb Ryan, and Constable Hooker had promised us a salute
of nine guns from Chicago that he had arrested that day.

"After we had disbanded in the armory, Willie says to me:

"*Want to walk out a piece with me?*

w Why, yes,' says I, *if it ain't so far that we can't hear the tumult aad

THE MOMENT OF VICTORY 763

the shouting die away. Fm hungry myself,* says I, 'and I'm pining for
some home grub, but 111 go with you.'

"Willie steered me down some side streets till we came to a little
white cottage in a new lot with a twenty-by-thirty-foot lawn decorated with
brickbats and old barrel-staves.

" 'Halt and give the countersign,' says I to Willie. 'Don't you know this
dugout? It's the bird's-nest that Joe Cranberry built before he married
Myra Allison. What you going there for?'

"But Willie already had the gate open. He walked up the brick walk
to the steps, and I went with him. Myra was sitting in a rocking chair
on the porch, sewing. Her hair was smoothed back kind of hasty and
tied in a knot. I never noticed till then that she had freckles. Joe was at
one side of the porch, in his shirt-sleeves, with no collar on, and no signs
of a shave, trying to scrape out a hole among the brickbats and tin cans
to plant a little fruit-tree in. He looked up but never said a word, and
neither did Myra.

"Willie was sure dandy-looking in his uniform, with medals strung on
his breast and his new gold-handled sword. You'd never have taken him
for the little white-headed snipe that the girls used to order about and
make fun of. He just stood there for a minute, looking at Myra with a
peculiar little smile on his face; and then he says to her, slow, and kind
of holding on to his words with his teeth:

" 'Oh, I don't fyow! Maybe I could if I tried!'

"That was all that was said. Willie raised his hat, and we walked
away.

"And, somehow, when he said that, I remembered, all of a sudden, the
night of that dance and Willie brushing his hair before the looking-glass,
and Myra sticking her head in the door to guy him.

"When we got back to Sam Houston Avenue, Willie says:

" *Well, so long, Ben. I'm going down home and get off my shoes and
take a rest/

"'You?* says I. *What's the matter with you? Ain't the courthouse
jammed with everybody in town waiting to honor the hero? And two
brass-bands, and recitations and flags and jags, and grub to follow waiting
for you?'

"Willie sighs.

" 'All right, Ben,' says he. 'Darned if I didn't forget all about that.'

"And that's why I say," concluded Ben Granger, "that you can't tell
where ambition begins any more than you can where it is going to wind
up."

764 BOOK VI OPTIONS

THE HEAD-HUNTER

When the war between Spain and George Dewey was over, I went to the
Philippine Islands. There I remained as bush-whacker correspondent for
my paper until its managing editor notified me that an eight-hundred-
word cablegram describing the grief of a pet carabao over the death of an
infant Moro was not considered by the office to be war news. So I re-
signed, and came home.

On the board the trading-vessel that brought me back I pondered much
upon the strange things I had sensed in the weird archipelago of the
yellow-brown people. The manoeuvres and skirmishings of the petty war
interested me not: I was spellbound by the outlandish and unreadable
countenance of that race that had turned its expressionless gaze upon us
out of an unguessable past.

Particularly during my stay in Mindanao had I been fascinated and
attracted by that delightfully original tribe of heathen known as the
head-hunters. Those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but
chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed
presence, paralleling the trail of their prey through unmapped forests,
across perilous mountain-tops, down bottomless chasms, into uninhab-
itable jungles, always near with the invisible hand of death uplifted,
betraying their pursuit only by such signs as a beast or a bird or a gliding
serpent might make — a twig cracking in the awful, sweat-soaked night,
a drench of dew showering from the screening foliage of a giant tree, a
whisper at even from the rushes of a water-level — a hint of death for
every mile and every hour — they amused me greatly, those little fellows
of one idea.

When you think of it, their method is beautifully and almost hilar-
iously effective and simple.

You have your hut in which you live and carry out the destiny that was
decreed for you. Spiked to the jamb of your bamboo doorway is a basket
made of green withes, plaited. From time to time as vanity or ennui or
love or jealousy or ambition may move you, you creep forth with your
snickersnee and take up the silent trail. Back from it you come, tri-
umphant, bearing the severed, gory head of your victim, which you de-
posit with pardonable pride in the basket at the side of your door. It
may be the head of your enemy, your friend, or a stranger, according
as competition, jealousy, or simple sportiveness has been your incentive
to labor.

In any case, your reward is certain. The village men, in passing, stop
to congratulate you, as your neighbor on weaker planes of life stops to

THE HEAD-HUNTER 765

admire and praise the begonias in your front yard. Your particular brown
maid lingers with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger's eyes at the evi-
dence of your love for her. You chew betel-nut and listen, content, to
the intermittent soft drip from the ends of the severed neck arteries. And
you show your teeth and grunt like a water-buffalo — which is as near as
you can come to laughing— at the thought that the cold, acephalous body
of your door ornament is being spotted by wheeling vultures in the
Mindanaoan wilds.

Truly, the life of the merry head-hunter captivated me. He had re-
duced art and philosophy to a simple code. To take your adversary's
head, to basket it at the portal of your castle, to see it lying there, a dead

thing, with its cunning and stratagems and power gone Is there a

better way to foil his plots, to refute his arguments, to establish your
superiority over his skill and wisdom?

The ship that brought me home was captained by an erratic Swede^
who changed his course and deposited me, with genuine compassion,
in a small town on the Pacific coast of one of the Central American
republics a few hundred miles south of the port to which he had engaged
to convey me. But I was wearied of movement and exotic fancies; so I
leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of the village of Mojada, telling
myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far
better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative splash of the
waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa
of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine
and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of
gaping neighbors sad stories of the death of colonial governors.

When I saw Chloe Greene she was standing, all in white, in the
doorway of her father's tile-roofed 'dobe house. She was polishing a silver
cup with a cloth, and she looked like a pearl laid against black velvet.
She turned on me a flatteringly protracted but a willingly disapproving
gaze, and then went inside, humming a light song to indicate die value
she placed upon my existence.

Small wonder: for Dr. Stamford (the most disreputable professional
man between Juneau and Valparaiso) and I were zigzagging along the
turfy street, tunelessly singing the words of "Auld Lang Syne" to the air
of "Muzzer's Little Coal-Black Coon." We had come from the ice factory,
which was Mojada's palace of wickedness, where we had been playing
billiards and opening black bottles, white with frost, that we dragged
with strings out of old Sandoval's ice-cold vats.

I turned in sudden rage to Dr. Stamford, as sober as the verger of a
cathedral. In a moment I had become aware that we were swine cast be-
fore a pearl.

"You beast/' I said, "this is half your doing. And the other half is the

766 BOOK VI OPTIONS

fault of this cursed country. I'd better have gone back to Sleepytown
and died in a wild orgy of currant wine and buns than to have had this
happen."

Stamford filled the empty street with his roaring laughter.

"You, too!" he cried. "And all as quick as the popping of a cork. Well,
she does seem to strike agreeably upon the retina. But don't burn your
fingers. All Mojada will tell you that Louis Devoe is the man."

"We will see about that," said I. "And, perhaps whether he is a man
as well as the man."

I lost no time in meeting Louis Devoe. That was easily accomplished,
for the foreign colony in Mojada numbered scarce a dozen; and they
gathered daily at a half-decent hotel kept by a Turk, where they managed
to patch together the fluttering rags of country and civilization that were
left them. I sought Devoe before I did my pearl of the doorway, because
I had learned a little of the game of war, and knew better than to strike
for a prize before testing the strength of the enemy.

A sort of cold dismay — something akin to fear — filled me when I had
estimated him. I found a man so perfectly poised, so charming, so deeply
learned in the world's rituals, so full of tact, courtesy, and hospitality, so
endowed with grace and ease and a kind of careless, haughty power that
I almost over-stepped the bounds in probing him, in turning him on the
spit to find the weak point that I so craved for him to have. But I left him
whole — I had to make bitter acknowledgment to myself that Louis Devoe
was a gentleman worthy of my best blows; and I swore to give him them.
He was a great merchant of the country, a wealthy importer and exporter.
All day he sat in a fastidiously appointed office, surrounded by works of
art and evidences of his high culture, directing through glass doors and
windows the affairs of his house.

In person he was slender and hardly tall. His small, well-shaped head
was covered with thick brown hair, trimmed short, and he wore a thick
brown beard also cut close and to a fine point. His manners were a
pattern.

Before long I had become a regular and a welcome visitor at the Greene
home. I shook my wild habits from me a like a worn-out cloak. I
trained for the conflict with the care of a prize-fighter and the self-
denial of a Brahmin.

As for Chloe Greene, I shall weary you with no sonnets to her eye-
brow. She was a splendidly feminine girl, as wholesome as a November
pippin, and no more mysterious than a window-pane. She had whimsical
little theories that she had deduced from life, and that fitted the maxims .
of Epictetus like princess gowns. I wonder, after all, if that old duffer
wasn't rather wise!

Chloe had a father, the Reverend Homer Greene, and an intermittent .
mother, who sometimes palely presided over a twilight teapot. The

THE HEAD-HUNTER 767

Reverend Homer was a burr-like man with a life-work. He was writing
a concordance to the Scriptures, and had arrived as far as Kings. Being,
presumably, a suitor for his daughter's hand, I was timber for his literary
outpourings. I had the family tree of Israel drilled into my head until I
used to cry aloud in my sleep. "And Aminadab begat Jay Eye See," and
so forth, until he had tackled another book. I once made a calculation
that the Reverend Homer's concordance would be worked up as far as
the Seven Vials mentioned in Revelation about the third day after they
were opened.

Louis Devoe, as well as I, was a visitor and an intimate friend of the
Greenes. It was there I met him the oftenest, and a more agreeable man
or a more accomplished I have never hated in my Me.

Luckily or unfortunately, I came to be accepted as a Boy. My appear-
ance was youthful, and I suppose I had that pleading and homeless air
that always draws the motherliness that is in women and the cursed
theories and hobbies of paterfamilias.

Chloe called me "Tommy," and made sisterly fun of my attempts to
woo her. With Devoe she was vastly more reserved. He was the man of
romance, one to stir her imagination and deepest feelings had her fancy
leaned toward him. I was closer to her, but standing in no glamour; I
had the task before me of winning her in what seems to me the American
way of fighting — with cleanness and pluck and everyday devotion to break
away the barriers of friendship that divided us, and to take her, if I
could, between sunrise and dark, abetted by neither moonlight nor music
nor foreign wiles.

Chloe gave no sign of bestowing her blithe affections upon either of
us. But one day she let out to me an inkling of what she preferred in a
man. It was tremendously interesting to me, but not illuminating as to its
application. I had been tormenting her for the dozenth time with the
statement and catalogue of my sentiments toward her.

"Tommy," said she, *1 don't want a man to show his love for me by
leading an army against another country and blowing people off the
earth with cannons."

"If you mean that the opposite way," I answered, "as they say women
do, I'll see what I can do. The papers are full of this diplomatic row in
Russia. My people know some big people in Washington who are right
next to the army people, and I could get an artillery commission and "

"Fm not that way," interrupted Chloe. "I mean what I say. It isn't the
big things that are done in the world, Tommy, that count with a woman.
When the knights were riding abroad in their armor to slay dragons,
many a stay-at-home page won a lonesome lady's hand by being on the
spot to pick up her glove and be quick with her cloak when the wind
blew. The man I am to like best, whoever he shall be, must show his love
in little ways. He must never forget, after hearing it once, that I do not

768 BOOK VI OPTIONS

Eke to have any one walk at my left side; that I detest bright-colored
neckties; that I prefer to sit with my back to a light; that I like candied
violets; that I must not be talked to when I am looking at the moonlight
shining on water, and that I very, very often long for dates stuffed with
English walnuts."

"Frivolity/* I said, with a frown. "Any well-trained servant would be
equal to such details."

"And he must remember," went on Chloe, "to remind me of what I
want when I do not know, myself, what I want."

"You're rising in the scale," I said. "What you seem to need is a first-
class clairvoyant."

"And if I say that I am dying to hear a Beethoven sonata, and stamp
my foot when I say it, he must know by that that what my soul craves is
salted almonds; and he will have them ready in his pocket/'

"Now," said I? "I am at a loss. I do not know whether your soul's
affinity is to be an impresario or a fancy grocer."

Chloe turned her pearly smile upon me.

"Take less than half of what I said as a jest," she went on. "And don't
think too lightly of the little things. Boy. Be a paladin if you must, but
don't let it show on you. Most women are only very big children, and most
men are only very little ones. Please us; don't try to over-power us.
When we want a hero we can make one out of even a plain grocer the
third time he catches our handkerchief before it falls to the ground."

That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. That is a kind
of coast fever with improvements and high-geared attachments. Your
temperature goes up among the threes and fours and remains there,
laughing scornfully and feverishly at the conchona trees and the coal-
tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple mathematician
instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula: Vitality + the desire to
live — the duration of the fever = the result.

I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut where I had been
comfortably established, and sent for a gallon of rum. That was not for
myself. Drunk, Stamford was the best doctor between the Andes and the
Pacific. He came, sat at my bedside, and drank himself into condition.

"My boy,** said he, "my lily-white and reformed Romeo, medicine will
do you no good. But I will give you quinine, which, being bitter, will
arouse in you hatred and anger— two stimulants that will add ten per
cent, to your chances. You are as strong as a caribou calf, and you will get
well if the fever doesn't get in a knockout blow when you're off your
guard."

For two weeks I lay on my back feeling like a Hindoo widow on a
burning ghat. Old Atasea, an untrained Indian nurse, sat near the door
like a petrified statue of WhatVthe-Use, attending to her duties, which
were, mainly, to see that time went by without slipping a cog. Sometimes

THE HEAD-HUNTER 769

I would fancy myself back in the Philippines, or, at worse times, sliding
off the horse-hair sofa in Sleepytown.

One afternoon I ordered Atasca to vamose, and got up and dressed
carefully. I took my temperature, which I was pleased to find 104. I paid
almost dainty attention to my dress, choosing solicitously a necktie of a
dull and subdued hue. The mirror showed that I was looking little the
worse from my illness. The fever gave brightness to my eyes and color to
my face. And while I looked at my reflection my color went and came
again as I thought of Chloe Greene and the millions of eons that had
passed since I'd seen her, and of Louis Devoe and the time he had gained
on me.

I went straight to her house. I seemed to float rather than walk; I
hardly felt the ground under my feet; I thought pernicious fever must
be a great boon to make one feel so strong.

I found Chloe and Louis Devoe sitting under the awning in front of
the house. She jumped up and met me with a double handshake.

"I'm glad, glad, glad to see you out again!" she cried, every word a pearl
strung on the string of her sentence. "You are well, Tommy — or better,
of course. I wanted to come to see you, but they wouldn't let me."

"Oh, yes," said I, carelessly, "it was nothing. Merely a little fever. I am
out again, as you see."

We three sat there and talked for half an hour or so. Then Chloe
looked out yearningly and almost piteously across the ocean. I could see
in her sea-blue eyes some deep and intense desire. Devoe, curse him!
saw it too.

"What is it?" we asked, in unison.

"Cocoanut-pudding," said Chloe, pathetically. "I've wanted some — oh,
so badly, for two days. It's got beyond a wish; it's an obsession."

"The cocoanut season is over," said Devoe, in that voice of his that
gave thrilling interest to his most commonplace words. "I hardly think
one could be found in Mojada. The natives never use them except when
they are green and the milk is fresh. They sell all the ripe ones to the
fruiterers."

"Wouldn't a broiled lobster or a Welsh rabbit do as well?" I remarked,
with the engaging idiocy of a pernicious-fever convalescent.

Chloe came as near pouting as a sweet disposition and a perfect pro-
file would allow her to come.

The Reverend Homer poked his ermine-lined face through the door
way and added a concordance to the conversation.

"Sometimes," said he, "old Campos keeps the dried nuts in his little
store on the hill. But it would be far better, my daughter, to restrain
unusual desires, and partake thankfully of the daily dishes that the Lord
has set before us."

"Stuff!" said I.

770 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"How was that?" asked the Reverend Homer, sharply,

"I say it's tough," said I, "to drop into the vernacular, that Miss Greene
should be deprived o£ the food she desires—a simple thing like kalsomine-
pudding. Perhaps," I continued, solicitously, "some pickled walnuts or a
fricassee of Hungarian butternuts would do as well."

Every one looked at me with a slight exhibition of curiosity.

Louis Devoe arose and made his adieus, I watched him until he had
sauntered slowly and grandiosely to the corner, around which he turned
to reach his great warehouse and store. Chloe made her excuses, and went
inside for a few minutes to attend to some detail affecting the seven-
o'clock dinner. She was a passed mistress in housekeeping. I had tasted
her puddings and bread with beatitude.

When all had gone, I turned casually and saw a basket made of plaited
green withes hanging by a nail outside the door-jamb. With a rush that
made my hot temples throb there came vividly to my mind recollections
of the head-hunters — those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen
but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed
presence. . . . From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy
or ambition may move him, one creeps forth with his snickersnee and
ta\es up the silent trail. . . . Eac\ he comes triumphant, bearing the
severed, gory head of his victim. . . . His particular brown or white
maid lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tigers eyes at the evi-
dence of his love for her.

I stole softly from the house and returned to my hut. From its support-
ing nails in the wall I took a machete as heavy as a butcher's cleaver and
sharper than a safety-razor. And then I chuckled softly to myself, and
set out to the fastidiously appointed private office of Monsieur Louis
Devoe, usurper to the hand of the Pearl of the Pacific.

He was never slow at thinking; he gave one look at my face and
another at the weapon in my hand as I entered his door, and then he
seemed to fade from my sight. I ran to the back door, kicked it open,
and saw him running like a deer up the road toward the wood that
began two hundred yards away. I was after him, with a shout. I remem-
ber hearing children and women screaming, and seeing them flying from
the road.

He was fleet, but I was stronger. A mile, and I had almost come up
with him. He doubled cunningly and dashed into a brake that extended
into a small canon. I crashed through this after him, and in five minutes
had him cornered in an angle of insurmountable cliffs. There his instinct
of self-preservation steadied him, as it will steady even animals at bay.
He turned to me, quite calm, with a ghastly smile.

"Oh, Rayburn!" he said, with such an awful effort at ease that I was
impolite enough to laugh rudely in his face. "Oh, Rayburn!" said he,
"come, let's have done with this nonsense! Of course, I know it's the fever

THE HEAD-HUNTER 771

and you're not yourself; but collect yourself, man— give me that ridicu-
lous weapon, now, and let's go back and talk it over."

"I will go back," said I, "carrying your head with me. We will see how
charmingly it can discourse when it lies in the basket at her door."

"Come," said he, persuasively, "I think better of you than to suppose
that you try this sort of thing as a joke. But even the vagaries of a fever-
crazed lunatic come some time to a limit. What is this talk about heads
and baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that absurd cane-
chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?" he ended, with the
silky cajolery that one would use toward a fretful child.

"Listen," said I. "At last you have struck upon the right note. What
would she think of me? Listen," I repeated.

"There are women," I said, "who look upon horsehair sofas and cur-
rant wine as dross. To them even the calculated modulation of your well-
trimmed talk sounds like the dropping of rotten plums from a tree in the
night. They are the maidens who walk back and forth in the villages,
scorning the emptiness of the baskets at the doors of the young men who
would win them. One, such as they," I said, "is waiting. Only a fool
would try to win a woman by drooling like a braggart in her doorway or
by waiting upon her whims like a footman. They are all daughters of
Herodias, and to gain their hearts one must lay the heads of his enemies
before them with his own hands. Now, bend your neck, Louis Devoe.
Do not be a coward as well as a chatterer at a lady's tea-table."

"There, there!" said Devoe, falteringly. "You know me, don't you,
Rayburn?"

"Oh, yes," I said, "I know you. I know you. I know you. But the basket
is empty. The old men of the village and the young men and both the
dark maidens and the ones who are as fair as pearls, walk back and forth
and see its emptiness. Will you kneel now, or must we have a scuffle? It
it not like you to make things go roughly and with bad form. But the
basket is waiting for your head."

With that he went to pieces. I had to catch him as he tried to scamper
past me like a scared rabbit. I stretched him out and got a foot on his
chest, but he squirmed like a worm, although I appealed repeatedly to his
sense of propriety and the duty he owed to himself as a gentleman not
to make a row.

But at last he gave me the chance, and I swung the machete.

It was not hard work. He flopped like a chicken during the six or
seven blows that it took to sever his head; but finally he lay still, and
I tied his head in my handkerchief. The eyes opened and shut thrice
while I walked a hundred yards. I was red to my feet with the drip, but
what did that matter? With delight I felt under my hands the crisp touch
of his short, thick brown hair and close-trimmed beard.

I reached the house of the Greenes and dumped the head of Louis

JJ2 BOOK VI OPTIONS

Devoe Into the basket that still hung by the nail in the door-jamb. I sat
in a chair under the awning and waited. The sun was within two hours
of setting. Chloe came out and looked surprised.

"Where have you been, Tommy?" she asked. "You were gone when
I came out."

"Look in the basket/' I said, rising to my feet. She looked, and gave
a little scream—of delight, I was pleased to note.

"Oh, Tommy!" she said. "It was just what I wanted you to do. It's
leaking a little, but that doesn't matter. Wasn't I telling you? It's the
little things that count. And you remembered."

Little things! She held the ensanguined head of Louis Devoe in her
white apron. Tiny streams of red widened on her apron and dripped
upon the floor. Her face was bright and tender.

"Little things, indeed!" I thought again. "The head-hunters are right.
These are the things that women like you to do for them."

Chloe came close to me. There was no one in sight. She looked up at
me with sea-blue eyes that said things they had never said before.

"You think of me," she said. "You are the man I was describing. You
think of little things, and they are what make the world worth living in.
The man for me must consider my little wishes, and make me happy in
small ways. He must bring me little red peaches in December if I wish
for them, and then I will love him till June. I will have no knight in
armor slaying his rival or killing dragons for me. You please me very
well, Tommy/*

I stooped and kissed her. Then a moisture broke out on my forehead,
and I began to feel weak. I saw the red stains vanish from Chloe's apron,
and the head of Louis Devoe turn to a brown, dried cocoanut.

"There will be cocoaaut-pudding for dinner, Tommy, boy," said Chloe,
gayly, "and you must come. I must go in for a little while."

She vanished in a delightful flutter.

Dr. Stamford tramped up hurriedly. He seized my pulse as though it
were his own property that I had escaped with.

"You are the biggest fool outside of any asylum!" he said, angrily.
"Why did you leave your bed? And the idiotic things you've been do-
ing!—and no wonder, with your pulse going like a sledge-hammer."

"Name some of them," said I,

"Devoe sent for me," said Stamford. "He saw you from his window
go to old Campos* store, chase him up the hill with his own yard-
stick, and then come back and make off with his biggest cocoanut"

"It's the little things that count, after all,n said I.

"It's your little bed that counts with you just now," said the doctor.
"You come with me at once, or I'll throw up the case. You're as loony as
a loon."

So I got no cocoanut-pudding that evening, but I conceived a distrust

NO STORY 773

as to the value of the method of the head-hunters. Perhaps for many
centuries the maidens of the villages may have been looking wistfully at
the heads in the baskets at the doorways, longing for other and lesser
trophies.

NO STORY

To avoid having this book hurled into a corner of the room by the sus-
picious reader, I will assert in time that this is not a newspaper story.
You will encounter no shirt-sleeved, omniscient city editor, no prodigy
"cub" reporter just off the farm, no scoop, no story— no anything.

But if you will concede me the setting of the first scene in the re-
porters' room of the Morning Beacon, I will repay the favor by keeping
strictly my promises set forth above.

I was doing space-work on the Beacon, hoping to be put on a salary.
Some one had cleared with a rake or a shovel a small space for me at
the end of a long table piled high with exchanges, Congressional Records,
and old files. There I did my work. I wrote whatever the city whispered
or roared or chuckled to me on my diligent wanderings about its streets.
My income was not regular.

One day Tripp came in and leaned on my table. Tripp was something
in the mechanical department — I think he had something to do with the
pictures, for he smelled of photographers' supplies, and his hands were
always stained and cut up with acids. He was about twenty-five and
looked forty. Half of his face was covered with short, curly red whiskers
that looked like a door-mat with the "welcome" left off. He was pale and
unhealthy and miserable and fawning, and an assiduous borrower of sums
ranging from twenty-five cents to a dollar. One dollar was his limit. He
knew the extent of his credit as well as the Chemical National Bank
knows the amount of H2O that collateral will show on analysis. When
he sat on my table he held one hand with the other to keep both from
shaking. Whiskey. He had a spurious air of lightness and bravado about
him that deceived no one, but was useful in his borrowing because it was
so pitifully and perceptibly assumed.

This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as a
grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly
accepted. So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least an
armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to write a
description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight.

"Well, Tripp," said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how
goes it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and
haggard and down-trodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that

774 BOOK vi OPTIONS

stage o£ misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to
kick him.

"Have you got a dollar?" asked Tripp, with his most fawning look
and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his high-
growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.

"I have," said I; and again I said, "I have," more loudly and inhos-
pitably, "and four besides. And I had hard work corkscrewing them out
of old Atkinson, I can tell you. And I drew them," I continued, "to meet
a want — a hiatus — a demand — a need — an exigency — a requirement of
exactly five dollars."

I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of
the dollars on the spot.

"I don't want to borrow any," said Tripp, and I breathed again. "I
thought you'd like to get put onto a good story," he went on. "I've got a
rattling fine one for you. You ought to make it run a column at least.
It'll make a dandy if you work it up right. It'll probably cost you a dollar
or two to get the stuff. I don't want anything out of it myself."

I became placated. The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated
past favors, although he did not return them. If he had been wise enough
to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.

"What is the story?" I asked, poising my pencil with a finely calculated
editorial air.

"I'll tell you," said Tripp. "It's a girl. A beauty. One of the howlingest
Amsden's Junes you ever saw. Rosebuds covered with dew—violets in
their mossy bed— and truck like that. She's lived on Long Island twenty
years and never saw New York City before. I ran against her on Thirty-
fourth Street. She'd just got in on the East River ferry. I tell you, she's a
beauty that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the
world. She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find
George Brown. Asked me where she could find George Brown in New
Yor^ City! What do you think of that?

"I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young
farmer named Dodd — Hiram Dodd — next week. But it seems that George
Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy. George had
greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make
his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg,
and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch
Ada— her name's Ada Lowery— saddles a nag and rides eight miles to
the railroad station and catches the 6:45 A.M. train for the city. Looking
for George, you know— you understand about women— George wasn't
there, so she wanted him.

"Well, you know, I couldn't leave her loose in Wolftown-on-the-
Hudson. I suppose she thought the first person she inquired of would
say: 'George Brown?— -why, yes— lemme see— he's a short man with

NO STORY 775

light-blue eyes, ain't he? Oh, yes—you'll find George on One Hundred
and Twenty-fifth Street, right next to the grocery. He's bill-clerk in a
saddle-and-harness store/ That's about how innocent and beautiful she
is. You know those little Long Island water-front villages like Greenburg
—a couple of duck-farms for sport, and clams and about nine summer
visitors for industries. That's the kind of a place she comes from. But,
say — you ought to see her!

"What could I do ? I don't know what money looks like in the morn-
ing. And she'd paid her last cent of pocket-money for her railroad ticket
except a quarter, which she had squandered on gum-drops. She was eat-
ing them out of a paper-bag. I took her to a boarding-house on Thirty-
second Street where I used to live, and hocked her. She's in soak for a
dollar. That's old Mother McGinnis' price per day. I'll show you the
house."

"What words are these, Tripp?" said I. "I thought you said you had
a story. Every ferryboat that crosses the East River brings or takes away
girls from Long Island."

The premature lines on Tripp's face grew deeper. He frowned seri-
ously from his tangle of hair. He separated his hands and emphasized
his answer with one shaking forefinger.

"Can't you see," he said, "what a rattling fine story it would make?
You could do it fine. All about the romance, you know, and describe the
girl, and put a lot of stuff in it about true love, and sling in a few stick-
fuls of funny business — joshing the Long Islanders about being green,
and, well — you know how to do it. You ought to get fifteen dollars out of
it, anyhow. And it'll cost you only about four dollars. You'll make a clear
profit of eleven."

"How will it cost me four dollars?" I asked, suspiciously.

"One dollar to Mrs. McGinnis," Tripp answered, promptly, "and two
dollars to pay the girl's fare back home."

"And the fourth dimension?" I inquired, making a rapid mental cal-
culation.

"One dollar to me," said Tripp, "for whiskey. Are you on?"

I smiled enigmatically and spread my elbows as if to begin writing
again. But this grim, abject, specious, subservient, burr-like wreck of a
man would not be shaken off. His forehead suddenly became shiningly
moist.

"Don't you see," he said, with a sort of desperate calmness, "that this
girl has got to be sent home to-day — not to-night nor to-morrow, but
to-day? I can't do anything for her. You know, I'm the janitor and
corresponding secretary of the Down-and-Out Club. I thought you could
make a newspaper story out of it and win out a piece of money on gen-
eral results. But, anyhow, don't you see that she's got to get back home
before night?"

776 BOOK VI OPTIONS

And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depressing sensation
known as the sense of duty. Why should that sense fall upon one as a
weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the
bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery. But
I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be forthcoming.
He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no
wassail afterward, commemorating rny weakness and gullibility. In a
kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat.

Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted
me via tie street-cars to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I
paid the fares. It seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and
the smallest minted coin were strangers.

Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldy red-brick boarding-
house. At its faint tinkle he paled, and crouched as a rabbit makes ready
to spring away at the sound of a hunting-dog. I guessed what a life he
had led, terror-haunted by the coming footsteps of landladies.

"Give me one of the dollars— quick 1" he said.

The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood there with white
eyes — they were white, I say—- and a yellow face, holding together at her
throat with one hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp thrust
the dollar through the space without a word, and it bought us entry.

"She's in the parlor," said the McGinnis, turning the back of her sack
upon us.

In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table weeping
comfortably and eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty. Crying had
only made her brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched a gum-drop
you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the senseless con-
fection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have been a ringer for Miss
Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced, and a gum-drop
suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naive interest, such as a
puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow upon a crawling beetle or a
frog.

Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of one hand spread
upon it, as an attorney or a master of ceremonies might have stood. But
he looked the master of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned high, as if
it sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and linen. I thought of a
Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in the glade between his
tangled hair and beard. For one ignoble moment I felt ashamed of having
been introduced as his friend in the presence of so much beauty in dis-
tress. But evidently Tripp meant to conduct the ceremonies, whatever
they might be. I thought I detected in his actions and pose an intention
of foisting the situation upon me as material for a newspaper story, in a
lingering hope of extracting from me his whiskey dollar.

"My friend" (I shuddered), "Mr. Chalmers," said Tripp, "will tell you,

NO STORY 777

Miss Lowery, the same that I did. He's a reporter, and he can hand out
the talk better than I can. That's why I brought him with me." (O Tripp,
wasn't it the silver-tongued orator you wanted?) "He's wise to a lot of
things, and he'll tell you now what's best to do."

I stood on one foot, as it were, as I sat in my rickety chair.

"Why— er— Miss Lowery," I began, secretly enraged at Tripp's awk-
ward opening, "I am at your service, of course, but — er — as I haven't been
apprized of the circumstances of the case, I — er "

"Oh," said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, "it ain't as bad as that
—there ain't any circumstances. It's the first time I've ever been in New
York except once when I was five years old, and I had no idea it was such
a big town. And I met Mr.— Mr. Snip on the street and asked him about
a friend of mine, and he brought me here and asked me to wait."

"I advise you, Miss Lowery," said Tripp, "to tell Mr. Chalmers all.
He's a friend of mine" (I was getting used to it by this time), "and hell
give you the right tip."

"Why, certainly," said Miss Ada, chewing a gum-drop toward me*
"There ain't anything to tell except that— well, everything's fixed for me
to marry Hiram Dodd next Thursday evening. Hi has got two hundred
acres of land with a lot of shore-front, and one of the best truck-farms on
the Island. But this morning I had my horse saddled up — he's a white
horse named Dancer — and I rode over to the station. I told Jem at home
I was going to spend the day with Susie Adams. It was a story, I guess,
but I don't care. And I came to New York on the train, and I met Mr.—
Mr. Flip on the street and asked him if he knew where I could find

"Now, Miss Lowery," broke in Tripp, loudly, and with much bad taste,
I thought, as she hesitated with her word, "you like this young man,
Hiram Dodd, don't you? He's all right, and good to you, ain't he?"

"Of course I like him," said Miss Lowery, emphatically. "Hi's all right.
And of course he's good to me. So is everybody."

I could have sworn it myself. Throughout Miss Ada Lowery's life all
men would be good to her. They would strive, contrive, struggle, and
compete to hold umbrellas over her hat, check her trunk, pick up her
handkerchief, and buy for her soda at the fountain.

"But," went on Miss Lowery, "last night I got to thinking about G —
George and I "

Down went the bright gold head upan her dimpled, clasped hands on
the table. Such a beautiful April storm! Unrestrainedly she sobbed. I
wished I could have comforted her. But I was not George. And I was
glad I was not Hiram — and yet I was sorry, too.

By-and-by the shower passed. She straightened up, brave and half-way
smiling. She would have made a splendid wife, for crying only made her
eyes more bright and tender. She took a gum-drop and began her story.

778 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"I guess I'm a terrible hayseed," she said, between her little gulps and
sighs, "but I can't help it. G— George Brown and I were sweethearts since
he was eight and I was five. When he was nineteen— that was four years
ago— he left Greenburg and went to the city. He said he was going to
be a policeman or a railroad president or something. And then he was
coming back for me. But I never heard from him any more. And I— I—
liked him."

Another flow of tears seemed imminent, but Tripp hurled himself into
the crevasse and dammed it. Confound him, I could see his game. He was
trying to make a story of it for his sordid ends and profit.

"Go on, Mr. Chalmers," said he, "and tell the lady what's the proper
caper. That's what I told her— you'd hand it to her straight. Spiel up."

I coughed, and tried to feel less wrathful toward Tripp. I saw my duty.
Cunningly I had been inveigled, but I was securely trapped. Tripp's first
dictum to me had been just and correct. The young lady must be sent
back to Greenburg that day. She must be argued with, convinced, assured,
instructed, ticketed, and returned without delay. I hated Hiram and
despised George; but duty must be done. Noblesse oblige and only five
silver dollars are not strictly romantic compatibles, but sometimes they can
be made to jibe. It was mine to be Sir Oracle, and then pay the freight.
So I assumed an air that mingled Solomon's with that of the general
passenger agent of the Long Island Railroad.

"Miss Lowery," said I, as impressively as I could, "life is rather a queer
proposition, after all." There was a familiar sound to these words after
I had spoken them, and I hoped Miss Lowery had never heard Mr,
Cohan's song. "Those whom we first love we seldom wed. Our earlier
romances, tinged with the magic radiance of youth, often fail to ma-
terialize." The last three words sounded somewhat trite when they struck
the air. "But those fondly cherished dreams,** I went on, "may cast a
pleasant afterglow on our future lives, however impracticable and vague
they may have been. But life is full of realities as well as visions and
dreams. One cannot live on memories. May I ask, Miss Lowery, if you
think you could pass a happy— that is, a contented and harmonious life
with Mr. — er— Dodd— if in other ways than romantic recollections he
seems to— ^r— fill the bill, as I might say?"

"Oh, Hi's all right," answered Miss Lowery. "Yes, I could get along
with him fine. He's promised me an automobile and a motor-boat. But
somehow, when it got so close to the time I was to marry him, I couldn't
help wishing— well, just thinking about George. Something must have
happened to him or he'd have written. On the day he left, he and me got
a hammer and a chisel and cut a dime into two pieces. I took one piece
and he took the other, and we promised to be true to each other and
always keep the pieces till we saw each other again. I've got mine at home
now in a ring-box in the top drawer of my dresser. I guess I was silly to

NO STORY 779

come up here looking for him. I never realized what a big place it is."

And then Tripp joined in with a little grating laugh that he had, still
trying to drag in a little story or drama to earn the miserable dollar that
he craved.

"Oh, the boys from the country forget a lot when they come to the city
and learn something. I guess George, maybe, is on the bum, or got roped
in by some other girl, or maybe gone to the dogs on account of whiskey
or the races. You listen to Mr. Chalmers and go back home, and you'll
be all right."

But now the time was come for action, for the hands of the clock were
moving close to noon. Frowning upon Tripp, I argued gently and phil-
osophically with Miss Lowery, delicately convincing her of the importance
of returning home at once. And I impressed upon her the truth that it
would not be absolutely necessary to her future happiness that she men-
tion to Hi the wonders or the fact of her visit to the city that had swal-
lowed up the unlucky George.

She said she had left her horse (unfortunate Rosinante) tied to a tree
near the railroad station. Tripp and I gave her instructions to mount the
patient steed as soon as she arrived and ride home as fast as possible.
There she was to recount the exciting adventure of a day spent with Susie
Adams. She could "fix" Susie — I was sure of that — and all would be well.

And then, being susceptible to the barbed arrows of beauty, I warmed
to the adventure. The three of us hurried to the ferry, and there I found
the price of a ticket to Greenburg to be but a dollar and eighty cents. I
bought one, and a red, red rose with the twenty cents for Miss Lowery.
We saw her aboard her ferry-boat, and stood watching her wave her
handkerchief at us until it was the tiniest white patch imaginable. And
then Tripp and I faced each other, brought back to earth, left dry and
desolate in the shade of the sombre verities of life.

The spell wrought by beauty and romance was dwindling. I looked at
Tripp and almost sneered. He looked more careworn, contemptible, and
disreputable than ever. I fingered the two silver dollars remaining in
my pocket and looked at him with the half-closed eyelids of contempt. He
mustered up an imitation of resistance.

"Can't you get a story out of it?" he asked, huskily. "Some sort of a
story, even if you have to fake part of it?"

"Not a line," said I. "I can fancy the look on Grimes' face if I should
try to put over any slush like this. But we've helped the little lady out,
and that'll have to be our only reward."

"I'm sorry," said Tripp, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry you're out your
money. Now, it seemed to me like a find of a big story, you know — that
is, a sort of thing that would write up pretty well."

"Let's try to forget it," said I, with a praiseworthy attempt at gayety,
"and take the next car 'cross town."

780 BOOK VI OPTIONS

I steeled myself against his unexpressed but palpable desire. He should
not coax, cajole, or wring from me the dollar he craved. I had had
enough of that wild-goose chase.

Tripp feebly unbuttoned his coat of the faded pattern and glossy seams
to reach for something that had once been a handkerchief deep down in
some obscure and cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a
cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and something dangling
from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it curiously. It was
the half of a silver dime that had been cut in halves with a chisel

"What?" I said, looking at him keenly.

"Oh, yes," he responded, dully. "George Brown, alias Tripp. What's
the use?"

Barring the W. C. T. U., I'd like to know if anybody disapproves of
my having produced promptly from my pocket Tripp's whiskey dollar
and unhesitatingly laying it in his hand.

THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM

Where to go for wisdom has become a question of serious import. The
ancients are discredited; Plato is boiler-plate; Aristotle is tottering; Mar-
cus Aurelius is reeling; fiLsop has been copyrighted by Indiana; Solo-
mon is too solemn; you couldn't get anything out of Epictetus with a pick.

The ant, which for many years served as a model of intelligence and
industry in the school-readers, has been proven to be a doddering idiot
and a waster of time and effort. The owl to-day is hooted at. Chautauqua
conventions have abandoned culture and adopted diabolo. Graybeards
give glowing testimonials to the venders of patent hair-restorers ., There
are typographical errors in the almanacs published by the daily newspa-
pers. College professors have become

But there shall be no personalities.

To sit in classes, to delve into the encyclopedia or the past-perform-
ances page, will not make us wise. As the poet says, "Knowledge comes,
but wisdom lingers." Wisdom is dew, which, while we know it not, soaks
into us, refreshes us, and makes us grow. Knowledge is a strong stream
of water turned on us through a hose. It disturbs our roots.

Then, let us rather gather wisdom. But how to do so requires knowl-
edge. If we know a thing, we know it; but very often we are not wise to
it that we are wise, and— —

But let's go on with the story.

II Once upon a time I found a ten-cent magazine lying on a bench in
a little city park. Anyhow, that was the amount he asked me for when I

THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM 781

sat on the bench next to him. He was a musty, dingy, and tattered maga-
zine, with some queer stories bound in him, I was sure. He turned out
to be a scrap-book.

"I am a newspaper reporter," I said to him, to try him. "I have been
detailed to write up some of the experiences of the unfortunate ones who
spend their evenings in this park. May I ask you to what you attribute
your downfall in "

I was interrupted by a laugh from my purchase — a laugh so rusty and
unpractised that I was sure it had been his first for many a day.

"Oh, no, no," said he. "You ain't a reporter. Reporters don't talk that
way. They pretend to be one of us, and say they've just got on the blind
baggage from St. Louis. I can tell a reporter on sight. Us park bums get
to be fine judges of human nature. We sit here all day and watch the
people go by. I can size up anybody who walks past my bench in a way
that would surprise you."

"Well," I said, "go on and tell me. How do you size me up?"

"I should say," said the student of human nature with unpardonable
hesitation, "that you was, say, in the contracting business — or maybe
worked in a store — or was a sign-painter. You stopped in the park to
finish your cigar, and thought you'd get a little free monologue out of me.
Still, you might be a plasterer or a lawyer — it's getting kind of dark, you
see. And your wife won't let you smoke at home."

I frowned gloomily.

"But, judging again," went on the reader of men, "I'd say you ain't got
a wife."

"No," said I, rising restlessly. "No, no, no, I ain't. But I will have, by
the arrows of Cupid. That is if "

My voice must have trailed away and muffled itself in uncertainty and
despair.

"I see you have a story yourself," said the dusty vagrant— -imprudently,
it seemed to me. "Suppose you take your dime back and spin your yarn
for me. Pm interested myself in the ups and downs of unfortunate ones
who spend their evenings in the park."

Somehow, that amused me. I looked at the frowsy derelict with more
interest. I did have a story. Why not tell it to him? I had told none of my
friends. I had always been a reserved and bottled-up man. It was psychi-
cal timidity or sensitiveness — perhaps both. And I smiled to myself in
wonder when I felt an impulse to confide in this stranger and vagabond.

"Jack," said I.

"Mack," said he.

"Mack," said I, "111 tell you."

"Do you want the dime back in advance?" said he. I handed him a
dollar.

"The dime," said I, "was the price of listening to your story."

782 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"Right on the point of the jaw," said he. "Go on."

And then, incredible as it may seem to the lovers in the world who
confide their sorrows only to the night wind and the gibbous moon, I laid
bare my secret to that wreck of all things that you would have supposed
to be in sympathy with love.

I told him of the days and weeks and months that I had spent in
adoring Mildred Telfair. I spoke of my despair, my grievous days and
wakeful nights, my dwindling hopes and distress of mind. I even pic-
tured to this night-prowler her beauty and dignity, the great sway she
had in society, and the magnificence of her life as the elder daughter of
an ancient race whose pride overbalanced the dollars of the city's million-
aires.

"Why don't you cop the lady out?" asked Mack, bringing me down to
earth and dialect again.

I explained to him that my worth was so small, my income so minute,
and my fears so large that I hadn't the courage to speak to her of my
worship. I told him that in her presence I could only blush and stammer,
and that she looked upon me with a wonderful, maddening smile of
amusement.

"She kind of moves in the professional class, don't she?" asked Mack.

"The Telfair family " I began, haughtily.

"I mean professional beauty," said my hearer.

"She is greatly and widely admired/' I answered, cautiously.

"Any sisters?"

"One."

"You know any more girls?"

"Why, several," I answered. "And a few others."

"Say," said Mack, "tell me one thing — can you hand out the dope to
other girls? Can you chin 'em and make matinee eyes at 'em and squeeze
*em? You know what I mean. You're just shy when it comes to this par-
ticular dame — the professional beauty — ain't that right?"

"In a way you have outlined the situation with approximate truth/' I
admitted.

"I thought so," said Mack, grimly. "Now, that reminds me of my own
case. I'll tell you about it."

I was indignant, but concealed it. What was this loafer's case or any-
body's case compared with mine? Besides, I had given him a dollar and
ten cents.

"Feel my muscle," said my companion, suddenly flexing his biceps. I
did so mechanically. The fellows in gyms are always asking you to do
that. His arm was as hard as cast-iron.

^ "Four years ago," said Mack, "I could lick any man in New York out-
side of the professional ring. Your case and mine is just the same. I come
from the West Side — between Thirtieth and Fourteenth— and I won't

THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM 783

give the number on the door. I was a scrapper when I was ten, and when
I was twenty no amateur in the city could stand up four rounds with me.
'S a fact. You know Bill McCarty? No? He managed the smokers for
some of them swell clubs. Well, I knocked out everything Bill brought
up before me. I was a middle-weight, but could train down to a welter
when necessary. I boxed all over the West Side at bouts and benefits and
private entertainments, and was never put out once.

"But, say, the first time I put my foot in the ring with a professional I
was no more than a canned lobster. I dunno how it was — I seemed to
lose heart. I guess I got too much imagination. There was a formality
and publicness about it that kind of weakened my nerve. I never won a
fight in the ring. Light-weights and all kinds of scrubs used to sign up
with my manager and then walk up and tap me on the wrist and see me
fall The minute I seen the crowd and a lot of gents in evening clothes
down in front, and seen a professional come inside the ropes, I got as
weak as ginger-ale.

"Of course, it wasn't long till I couldn't get no backers, and I didn't
have any more chances to fight a professional—or many amateurs, either.
But lemme tell you — I was as good as most men inside the ring or out. It
was just that dumb, dead feeling I had when I was up against a regular
that always done me up.

"Well, sir, after I had got out of the business, I got a mighty grouch on.
I used to go round town licking private citizens and all kinds of unprofes-
sional just to please myself. I'd lick cops in dark streets and car-conduc-
tors and cab-drivers and draymen whenever I could start a row with
*em. It didn't make any difference how big they were, or how much
science they had, I got away with 'em. If I'd only just have had the confi-
dence in the ring that I had beating up the best men outside of it, I'd be
wearing black pearls and heliotrope silk socks to-day.

"One evening I was walking along near the Bowery, thinking about
things, when along comes a slumming-party. About six or seven they was,
all in swallowtails, and these silk hats that don't shine. One of the gang
kind of shoves me off the sidewalk. I hadn't had a scrap in three days,
and I just says, *De-light-ed' and hits him back of the ear.

"Well, we had it. That Johnnie put up as decent a little fight as you'd
want to see in the moving pictures. It was on a side street, and no cops
around. The other guy had a lot of science, but it only took me about six
minutes to lay him out.

"Some of the swallowtails dragged him up against some steps and be-
gan to fan him. Another one of 'em comes over to me and says:

" Toung man, do you know what you've done?*

" 'Oh, beat it,* says I. Tve done nothing but a little punching-bag work.
Take Freddy back to Yale and tell him to quit studying sociology on the
wrong side of the sidewalk/

784 BOOK VI OPTIONS

" 'My good fellow/ says he, 'I don't know who you are, but I'd like to.
You've knocked out Reddy Burns, the champion middle-weight of the
world! He came to New York yesterday, to try to get a match on with
Jim Jeffries. If you '

"But when I come out of my faint I was laying on the floor in a drug-
store saturated with aromatic spirits of ammonia. If I'd known that was
Reddy Burns, I'd have got down in the gutter and crawled past him in-
stead of handing him one like I did. Why, if I'd ever been in a ring and
seen him climbing over the ropes, I'd have been all to the sal-volatile.

"So that's what imagination does," concluded Mack. "And as I said,
your case and mine is simultaneous. You'll never win out. You can't go
up against the professionals. I tell you, it's a park bench for yours in this
romance business."

Mack, the pessimist, laughed harshly.

"Fm afraid I don't see the parallel," I said, coldly. "I have only a very
slight acquaintance with the prize ring."

The derelict touched my sleeve with his fore-finger, for emphasis, as
he explained his parable.

"Every man," said he, with some dignity, "has got his lamps on some-
thing that looks good to him. With you, it's this dame that you're afraid
to say your say to, With me, it was to win out in the ring. Well, you'll lose
just like I did/'

"Why do you think I shall lose?" I asked, warmly.

" 'Cause," said he, "you're afraid to go in the ring. You dassen't stand
up before a professional. Your case and mine is just the same. You're a
amateur; and that means that you'd better keep outside of the ropes."

"Well, I must be going," I said, rising and looking with elaborate care
at my watch.

When I was twenty feet away the park-bencher called to me.

"Much obliged for the dollar," he said. "And for the dime. But you'll
never get 'er. You're in the amateur class."

"Serves you right," I said to myself, "for hobnobbing with a tramp.
His impudence!"

But, as I walked, his words seemed to repeat themselves over and over
again in my brain. I think I even grew angry at the man.

"Ill show him!" I finally said, aloud. "I'll show him that I can fight
Reddy Burns, too — even knowing who he is."

I hurried to a telephone-booth and rang up the Telfair residence.

A soft, sweet voice answered. Didn't I know that voice? My hand
holding the receiver shook.

"Is that you?" said I, employing the foolish words that form the vo-
cabulary of every talker through the telephone.

"Yes, this is I," came back the answer in the low, clear-cut tones that
are an inheritance of Telfairs. "Who is it, please?"

THE HIGHER PRAGMATISM 785

"It's me," said I, less ungrammatically than egotistically. "It's me, and
I've got a few things that I want to say to you right now and immediately
and straight to the point."

"Dear me," said the voice. "Oh, it's you, Mr. Arden!"

I wondered if any accent on the first word was intended. Mildred was
fine at saying things that you had to study out afterward.

"Yes," said I, "I hope so. And now to come down to brass tacks." I
thought that rather a vernacularism, if there is such a word, as soon as I
had said it; but I didn't stop to apologize. "You know, of course, that I
love you, and that I have been in that idiotic state for a long time. I don't
want any more foolishness about it— that is, I mean I want an answer
from you right now. Will you marry me or not? Hold the wire, please.
Keep out, Central. Hello, hello! Will you, or will you not?"

That was just the uppercut for Reddy Burns' chin. The answer came
back:

"Why, Phil, dear, of course I will! I didn't know that you — that is, you
never said — oh, come up to the house, please — I can't say what I want to
over the 'phone. You are so importunate. But please come up to the
house, won't you?"

Would I?

I rang the bell of the Telfair house violently. Some sort of a human
came to the door and shooed me into the drawing-room.

"Oh, well," said I to myself, looking at the ceiling, "any one can learn
from any one. That was a pretty good philosophy of Mack's, anyhow.
He didn't take advantage of his experience, but I get the benefit of it. If
you want to get into the professional class, you've got to "

I stopped thinking then. Someone was coming down the stairs. My
knees began to shake. I knew then how Mack had felt when a profes-
sional began to climb over the ropes. I looked around foolishly for a door
or a window by which I might escape. If it had been any other girl ap-
proaching, I mightn't have

But just then the door opened, and Bess, Mildred's younger sister, came
in. I'd never seen her look so much like a glorified angel. She walked
straight up to me, and— and

I'd never noticed before what perfectly wonderful eyes and hair
Elizabeth Telfair had.

"Phil," she said, in the Telfair sweet, thrilling tones, "why didn't you
tell me about it before? I thought it was sister you wanted all the time,
until you telephoned to me a few minutes ago!"

I suppose Mack and I always will be hopeless amateurs. But, as the
thing has turned out in my case, I'm mighty glad of it.

786 BOOK VI OPTIONS

BEST-SELLER

One day last summer I went to Pittsburgh-well, I had to go there on

business. r i i • j

My chair-car was profitably well filled with people ot the kind one
usually sees on chair-cars. Most of them were ladies in brown-silk dresses
cut with square yokes, with lace insertion and dotted veils, who refused
to have the windows raised. Then there was the usual number of men
who looked as if they might be in almost any business and going almost
anywhere. Some students of human nature can look at a man m a Pull-
man and tell you where he is from, his occupation and his stations in lite,
both flag and social; but I never could. The only way I can correctly
judge a fellow-traveller is when the train is held up by robbers, or when
he reaches at the same time I do for the last towel in the dressing-room
of the sleeper.

The porter came and brushed the collection of soot on the window-
sill off to the left knee of my trousers. I removed it with an air of apology.
The temperature was eighty-eight. One of the dotted-veiled ladies de-
manded the closing of two more ventilators, and spoke loudly of Inter-
laken. I leaned back idly in chair No. 7, and looked with the tepidest
curiosity at the small, black, bald-spotted head just visible above the
back of No. 9.

Suddenly No. 9 hurled a book to the floor between his chair and the
window, and, looking, I saw that it was "The Rose Lady and Trevelyan,"
one of the best-selling novels of the present day. And then the critic or
Philistine, whichever he was, veered his chair toward the window, and I
knew him at once for John A. Pescud of Pittsburgh, travelling salesman
for a plate-glass company — an old acquaintance whom I had not seen in
two years.

In two minutes we were faced, had shaken hands, and had finished
with such topics as rain, prosperity, health, residence, and destination.
Politics might have followed next; but I was not so ill-fated.

I wish you might know John A. Pescud. He is of the stuff that heroes
are not often lucky enough to be made of. He is a small man with a
wide smile, and an eye that seems to be fixed upon that little red spot on
the end of your nose. I never saw him wear but oae kind of necktie, and
he believes in cuff-holders and button-shoes. He is as hard and true as
anything ever turned out by the Cambria Steel Works; and he believes
that as soon as Pittsburgh makes smoke-consumers compulsory, St. Peter
will come down and sit at the foot of Smithfield Street, and let somebody
else attend to the gate up in the branch heaven. He believes that "our"

BEST-SELLER 787

plate-glass is the most important commodity in the world, and that when
a man is in his home town he ought to be decent and law-abiding.

During my acquaintance with him in the City of Diurnal Night I
had never known his views on life, romance, literature, and ethics. We
had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics and then parted, after
Chateau Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage-pudding, and coffee
(hey, there!— with milk separate). Now I was to get more of his ideas.
By way of facts, he told me that business had picked up since the party
conventions, and that he was going to get off at Coketown.

II "Say," said Pescud, stirring his discarded book with the toe of his
right shoe; "did you ever read one of these best-sellers? I mean the kind
where the hero is an American swell— sometimes even from Chicago —
who falls in love with a royal princess from Europe who is travelling un-
der an alias, and follows her to her father's kingdom or principality? I
guess you have. They're all alike. Sometimes this going-away masher is
a Washington newspaper correspondent, and sometimes he is a Van
Something from New York, or a Chicago wheat-broker worth fifty mil-
lions. But he's always ready to break into the king row of any foreign
country that sends over their queens and princesses to try the new plush
seats on the Big Four or the B. and O. There doesn't seem to be any
other reason in the book for their being here.

"Well, this fellow chases the royal chair-warmer home as I said, and
finds out who she is. He meets her on the corso or the strasse one evening
and gives us ten pages of conversation. She reminds him of the difference
in their stations, and that gives him a chance to ring in three solid pages
about America's uncrowned sovereigns. If you'd take his remarks and
set 'em to music, and then take the music away from 'em, they'd sound
exactly like one of George Cohan's songs.

"Well, you know how it runs on, if youVe read any of 'em— he slaps
the king's Swiss bodyguards around like everything whenever they get
in his way. He's a great fencer, too. Now, I've known of some Chicago
men who were pretty notorious fences, but I never heard of any fencers
coming from there. He stands on the first landing of the royal staircase in
Castle Schutzenfestenstein with a gleaming rapier in his hand, and makes
a Baltimore broil of six platoons of traitors who come to massacre the
said king. And then he has to fight duels with a couple of chancellors, and
foil a plot by four Austrian arch-dukes to seize the kingdom for a gaso-
line-station.

"But the great scene is when his rival for the princess' hand, Count
Feodor, attacks him between the portcullis and the ruined chapel, armed
with a mitrailleuse, a yataghan, and a couple of Siberian bloodhounds.
This scene is what runs the best-seller into the twenty-ninth edition be-
fore the publisher has had time to draw a check for the advance royalties.

788 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"The American hero shucks his coat and throws it over the heads of
the bloodhounds, gives the mitrailleuse a slap with his mitt, says Tah!' to
the yataghan, and lands in Kid McCoy's best style on the count's left
eye. Of course, we have a neat little prize-fight right then and there. The
count— in or(}er to make the go possible— seems to be an expert at the art
of self-defence, himself; and here we have the Corbett-Sullivan fight
done over into literature. The book ends with the broker and the princess
doing a John Cecil Clay cover under the linden-trees on the Gorgonzola
Walk. That winds up the love-story plenty good enough. But I notice
that the book dodges the final issue. Even a best-seller has dense enough
to shy at either leaving a Chicago grain-broker on the throne of Lobster-
potsdam or bringing over a real princess to eat fish and potato salad in
an Italian chalet on Michigan Avenue. What do you think about 'em?"

"Why," said I, "I hardly know, John. There's a saying: 'Love levels all
ranks,* you know.*'

"Yes," said Pescud, "but these kind of love-stories are rank— on the
level. I know something about literature, even if I am in plate-glass. These
kind of books are wrong, and yet I never go into a train but what they
pile sem up on me. No good can come out of an international clinch be-
tween the Old World aristocracy and one of us fresh Americans. When
people in real life marry, they generally hunt up somebody in their own
station. A fellow usually picks out a girl that went to the same high-
school and belonged to the same singing-society that he did. When young
millionaires fall in love, they always select the chorus-girl that likes the
same kind of sauce on the lobster that he does. Washington newspaper
correspondents always marry widow ladies ten years older than them-
selves who keep boarding-houses. No, sir, you can't make a novel sound
right to me when it makes one of C. D. Gibson's bright young men go
abroad and turn kingdoms upside down just because he's a Taft Ameri-
can and took a course at a gymnasium. And listen how they talk, too!"

Pescud picked up the best-seller and hunted his page.

"Listen at this," said he. "Trevelyan is chinning with the Princess
Alwyna at the back end of the tulip-garden. This is how it goes :

"Say not so, dearest and sweetest of earth's fairest flowers. Would I
aspire? You are a star set high above me in a royal heaven; I am only
—myself. Yet I am a man, and I have a heart to do and dare. I have no
title save that of an uncrowned sovereign; but I have an arm and a sword
that yet might free Schutzenfestenstein from the plots of traitors.

"Think of a Chicago man packing a sword, and talking about freeing
anything that sounded as much like canned pork as that! He'd be much
more likely to fight to have an import duty put on it."

"I think I understand you, John," said I. <cYou want fiction-writers to
be consistent with their scenes and characters. They shouldn't mix Turk-

BEST-SELLER 789

ish pashas with Vermont farmers, or English dukes with Long Island
clam-diggers, or Italian countesses with Montana cowboys, or Cincinnati
brewery agents with the rajahs of India."

"Or plain business men with aristocracy high above 'em/' added Pes-
cud. "It don't jibe. People are divided into classes, whether we admit it
or not, and it's everybody's impulse to stick to their own class. They do
it, too. I don't see why people go to work and buy hundreds of thousands
of books like that. You don't see or hear of any such didoes and capers in
real life."

Ill "Well, John," said I, "I haven't read a best-seller in a long time.
Maybe I've had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me
more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?"

"Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "Fve had my salary raised
twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I've bought a neat
slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a house on it.
Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of stock. Oh, I'm in
on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who's elected!"

"Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked.

"Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud with a broader
grin.

"O-ho!" I said. "So you've taken time enough off from your plate-glass
to have a romance?"

"No, no," said John. "No romance— nothing like that! But 111 tell you
about it.

"I was on the south-bound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months
ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest looking girl I'd ever laid eyes
on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you want for keeps.
Well, I never was up to the flirtation business, either handkerchief, auto-
mobile, postage-stamp, or door-step, and she wasn't the kind to start any-
thing. She read a book and minded her business, which was to make the
world prettier and better just by residing in it. I kept on looking out of
the side doors of my eyes, and finally the proposition got out of the Pull-
man class into a case of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over
the porch. I never thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate-glass
business go to smash for a while.

"She changed cars at Cincinnati and took a sleeper to Louisville over
the L, and N. There she bought another ticket, and went on through
Shelbyville, Frankford, and Lexington. Along there I began to have a
hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they pleased,
and didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to keep on the
track and the right of way as much as possible. Then they began to stop
at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped altogether. I'll bet
Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people for my services any time

790 BOOK VI OPTIONS

if they knew how I managed to shadow that young lady, I contrived to
keep out of her sight as much as I could, but I never lost track of her.

"The last station she got off at was away down in Virginia, about six
in the afternoon. There were about fifty houses and four hundred niggers
in sight The rest was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds.

"A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, looking as proud
as Julius Csesar and Roscoe Conkling on the same post-card, was there
to meet her. His clothes were frazzled, but I didn't notice that till later.
He took her little satchel, and they started over the plank walks and went
up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece behind 'em, trying to look
like I was hunting a garnet ring in the sand that my sister had lost at a
picnic the previous Saturday.

"They went in a gate on top of the hill It nearly took my breath away
when I looked up. Up there in the biggest grove I ever saw was a
tremendous house with round white pillars about a thousand feet high,
and the yard was so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs that
you couldn't have seen the house if it hadn't been as big as the Capitol at
Washington.

" 'Here's where I have to trail,* says I to myself. I thought before that
she seemed to be in moderate circumstances, at least. This must be the
Governor's mansion, or the Agricultural Building of a new World's Fair,
anyhow. I'd better go back to the village and get posted by the postmaster,
or drug the druggist for some information.

"In the village I found a pine hotel called the Bay View House. The
only excuse for the name was a bay horse grazing in the front yard. I set
my sample-case down, and tried to be ostensible. I told the landlord I
was taking orders for plate-glass.

" 1 don't want no plates,' says he, 'but I do need another glass molasses-
pitcher.'

"By-and-by I got him down to local gossip and answering questions.

" 'Why/ says he, *I thought everybody knowed who lived in the big
white house on the hill. It's Colonel Allyn, the biggest man and finest
quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They're the oldest family in the
State. That was his daughter that got off the train. She's been up to
Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick/

"I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I caught the young lady
walking in the front yard, down next to the paling fence. I stopped and
raised my hat — there wasn't any other way.

" 'Excuse me/ says I, 'can you tell me where Mr. Hinkle lives ?'

"She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see about the
weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just a slight twinkle of fun
in her eyes,

" 'No one of that name lives in Birchton/ says she. That is/ she goes
on, 'as far as I know. Is the gentleman you are seeking white?'

BEST-SELLER 79!

"Well, that tickled me. 'No kidding/ says I. Tm not looking for smoke,
even if I do come from Pittsburgh.*

" Tou are quite a distance from home/ says she.

" Td have gone a thousand miles farther,' says L

" 'Not if you hadn't waked up when the train started in Shelbyville/
says she; and then she turned almost as red as one of the roses on the
bushes in the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep on a bench
in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see which train she took, and only
just managed to wake up in time.

"And then I told her why I had come, as respectful and earnest as
I could. And I told her everything about myself, and what I was making,
and how that all I asked was just to get acquainted with her and try to
get her to like me.

"She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes never get mixed
up. They look straight at whatever she's talking to.

" £I never had any one talk like this to me before, Mr. Pescud/ says
she. 'What did you say your name is — John?'

"'John A./ says L

" 'And you came mighty near missing the train at Powhatan Junction,
too/ says she, with a laugh that sounded as good as a mileage-book to
me.

" 'How did you know?* I asked.

" 'Men are very clumsy/ said she. 'I knew you were on every train. I
thought you were going to speak to me, and I'm glad you didn't/

"Then we had more talk; and at last a kind of proud, serious look
came on her face, and she turned and pointed a finger at the big house.

"'The Allyns/ says she, 'have lived in Elmcroft for a hundred years.
We are a proud family. Look at that mansion. It has fifty rooms. See the
pillars and porches and balconies. The ceilings in the reception-rooms
and the ball-room are twenty-eight feet high. My father is a lineal de-
scendant of belted earls.5

" 'I belted one of 'em once in the Duquesne Hotel, in Pittsburgh/ says
I, 'and he didn't offer to resent it. He was there dividing his attentions
between Monongahela whiskey and heiresses, and he got fresh.'

" 'Of course/ she goes on, 'my father wouldn't allow a drummer to set
his foot in Elmcroft. If he knew that I was talking to one over the fence
he would lock me in my room.'

"'Would you let me come there?' says I. Would you talk to me if I
was to call? For/ I goes on, 'if you said I might come and see you, the
earls might be belted or suspendered, or pinned up with safety-pins, as
far as I am concerned.'

" 1 must not talk to you/ she says, ^because we have not been intro-
duced. It is not exactly proper. So I will say good-bye, Mr. '

" 'Say the name,' says L Tou haven't forgotten it.'

79^ BOOK VI OPTIONS

" Tescud,' says she, a little mad.

" The rest of the name!' I demands, cool as could be,

" 'John,' says she.

" 'John— what?' I says.

" 'John A./ says she, with her head high. 'Are you through, now?'

" Tm coming to see the belted earl to-morrow,' I says.

" 'He'll feed you to his fox-hounds/ says she, laughing.

" 'If he does, it'll improve their running/ says I. Tm something of a
hunter myself.'

" 'I must be going in now/ says she. 'I oughtn't to have spoken to you
at all. I hope you'll have a pleasant trip back to Minneapolis—or Pitts-
burgh, was it? Good-bye!'

" 'Good-night,' says I, 'and it wasn't Minneapolis. What's your name,
first, please?'

"She hesitated. Then she pulled a leaf off a bush, and said:

" 'My name is Jessie,1 says she.

" 'Good-night, Miss Allyn,' says I.

"The next morning at eleven, sharp, I rang the doorbell of that
World's Fair main building. After about three quarters of an hour an old
nigger man about eighty showed up and asked what I wanted. I gave him
my business card, and said I wanted to see the colonel. He showed
me in.

"Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English walnut? That's what
that house was like. There wasn't enough furniture in it to fill an eight-
dollar flat. Some old horsehair lounges and three-legged chairs and some
framed ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. But when
Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to light up. You could almost
hear a band playing, and see a bunch of old-timers in wigs and white
stockings dancing a quadrille. It was the style of him, although he had
on the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the station.

"For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came mighty near
getting cold feet and trying to sell him some plate-glass. But I got my
nerve back pretty quick. He asked me to sit down, and I told him every-
thing. I told him how I followed his daughter from Cincinnati, and
what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, and explained to
him my little code of living— to be always decent and right in your home
town; and when youVe on the road never take more than four glasses of
beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit. At first I thought
he was going to throw me out of the window, but I kept on talking.
Pretty soon I got a chance to tell him that story about the Western Con-
gressman who had lost his pocketbook and the grass widow — you remem-
ber that story. Well, that got him to laughing, and I'll bet that was the first
laugh those ancestors and horsehair sofas had heard in many a day.

"We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew; and then he

BEST-SELLER 793

began to ask questions and I told him the rest. All I asked of him was
to give me a chance. If I couldn't make a hit with the little lady, I'd clear
out, and not bother any more. At last he says:

" 'There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of Charles I, if I re-
member rightly/

" 'If there was/ says I, 'he can't claim kin with our bunch. We've always
lived in and around Pittsburgh. I've got an uncle in the real-estate busi-
ness, and one in trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can inquire about
any of the rest of us from anybody in old Smoky Town, and get satis-
factory replies. Did you ever run across that story about the captain of the
whaler who tried to make a sailor say his prayers?' says I.

" 'It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate/ says the colonel.

"So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a
customer. What a bill of glass I'd sell him! And then he says:

"'The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always
seemed to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promot-
ing and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I
will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally con-
nected, and which may furnish you some amusement.'

"So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh? Well,
say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the superannuated
darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my valise. It was
Elmcroft for me while I was in the town.

"Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie
alone on the porch while the colonel was thinking up another story.

" 'It's going to be a fine evening/ says I.

" 'He's coming/ says she. 'He's going to tell you, this time, the story
about the old negro and the green watermelons. It always comes after
the one about the Yankees and the game rooster. There was another
time/ she goes on, 'that you nearly got left — it was at Pulaski City.1

"'Yes/ says I, 'I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the
step, and I nearly tumbled off.'

" 'I know/ says she. 'And — and I — I was afraid you had, John A* I was
afraid you had!

"And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows.**

IV "Coketown!" droned the porter, making his way through the slowing
car.

Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely promptness of
an old traveller.

"I married her a year ago," said John, "I told you I built a house in
the East End. The belted — I mean the colonel — is there, too. I find him
waiting at the gate whenever I get back from a trip to hear any new story
I might have picked up on the road."

794 BOOK vi OPTIONS

I glanced out of the window. Coketown was nothing more than a
ragged hillside dotted with a score of black dismal huts propped up
against dreary mounts of slag and clinkers. It rained in slanting tor-
rents, too, and the rills foamed and splashed down through the black mud
to the railroad-tracks.

"You won't sell much plate-glass here, John," said I. "Why do you get
of? at this end-o'-the-world?"

"Why," said Pescud, "the other day I took Jessie for a little trip to
Philadelphia, and coming back she thought she saw some petunias in a
pot in one of those windows over there just like some she used to raise
down in the old Virginia home. So I thought I'd drop off here for the
night, and see if I could dig up some of the cuttings or blossoms for her.
Here we are. Good-night, old man. I gave you the address. Come out and
see us when you have time."

The train moved forward. One of the dotted brown ladies insisted on
having windows raised, now that the rain beat against them. The porter
came along with his mysterious wand and began to light the car.

I glanced downward and saw the best-seller. I picked it up and set it
carefully farther along on the floor of the car, where the raindrops would
not fall upon it. And then, suddenly, I smiled, and seemed to see that life
has no geographical metes and bounds.

"Good-luck to you, Trevelyan," I said. "And may you get the petunias
for your princess!"

RUS IN URBE

Considering men in relation to money, there are three kinds whom I
dislike: men who have more money than they can spend; men who
have more money than they do spend; and men who spend more money
than they have. Of the three varieties, I believe I have the least liking for
the first. But, as a man, I liked Spencer Grenville North pretty well,
although he had something like two or ten or thirty millions — Pve forgot-
ten exactly how many.

I did not leave town that summer. I usually went down to a village
on the south shore of Long Island. The place was surrounded by duck-
farms, and the ducks and dogs and whip-poor-wills and rusty wind-mills
made so much noise that I could sleep as peacefully as if I were in my
own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New York. But that sum-
mer I did not go. Remember that One of my friends asked me why I did
not. I replied: "Because, old man, New York is the finest summer resort
in the world." You have heard that phrase before. But that is what I told
him.

RUS IN URBE 795

I was press-agent that year for Binkley & Bing, the theatrical managers
and producers. Of course you know what a press-agent is. Well, he is not.
That is the secret of being one.

Binkley was touring France in his new C. & N. Williamson car, and
Bing had gone to Scotland to learn curling, which he seemed to associate
in his mind with hot tongs rather than with ice. Before they left they
gave me June and July, on salary, for my vacation, which act was in ac-
cord with their large spirit of liberality. But I remained in New York,
which I had decided was the first summer resort in

But I said that before.

On July the loth, North came to town from his camp in the Adi-
rondacks. Try to imagine a camp with sixteen rooms, plumbing, edier-
down quilts, a butler, a garage, solid silver plate, and a long-distance tele-
phone. Of course it was in the woods — if Mr* Pinchot wants to preserve
the forests let him give every citizen two or ten or thirty million dollars,
and the trees will all gather around the summer camps, as the Birnam
woods came to Dunsinane, and be preserved.

North came to see me in my three rooms and bath, extra charge for
light when used extravagantly or all night. He slapped me on the back
(I would rather have my shins kicked any day), and greeted me with
outdoor obstreperousness and revolting good spirits. He was insolently
brown and healthy-looking, and offensively well dressed.

"Just ran down for a few days," said he, "to sign some papers and
stuff like that. My lawyer wired me to come. Well, you indolent cockney,
what are you doing in town? I took a chance and telephoned, and they
said you were here. What's the matter with that Utopia on Long Island
where you used to take your typewriter and your villainous temper every
summer? Anything wrong with the — er — swans, weren't they, that used
to sing on the farms at night?"

"Ducks," said I, "The songs of swans are for luckier ears, They swim
and curve their necks in artificial lakes on the estates of thue wealthy to
delight the eyes of the favorites of Fortune."

"Also in Central Park," said North, "to delight the eyes of immigrants
and bummers. I've seen 'em there lots of times. But why are you in the
city so late in the summer?"

"New York City," I began to recite, "is the finest sum n

"No, you don't," said North, emphatically. "You don't spring that old
one on me. I know you know better. Man, you ought to have gone up
with us this summer. The Prestons are there, and Tom Volney and the
Monroes and Lulu Stanford and the Miss Kennedy and her aunt that you
liked so well."

"I never liked Miss Kennedy's aunt," I said.

"I didn't say you did," said North. "We are having the greatest time
we've ever had. The pickerel and trout are so ravenous that I believe they

796 BOOK VI OPTIONS

would swallow your hook with a Montana copper-mine prospectus
fastened on it. And we've a couple o£ electric launches; and 111 tell you
what we do every night or two — we tow a rowboat behind each one with
a big phonograph and a boy to change the discs in 'em. On the water,
and twenty yards behind you, they are not so bad. And there are pass-
ably good roads through the woods where we go motoring. I shipped
two cars up there. And the PinecIifF Inn is only three miles away. You
know the Pinecliff. Some good people are there this season, and we run
over to the dances twice a week. Can't you go back with me for a week,
old man?"

I laughed. "Northy," said I — "if I may be so familiar with a millionaire,
because I hate both the names Spencer and Grenville— your invitation is
meant kindly, but— the city in the summer-time for me. Here, while the
bourgeoisie is away, I can live as Nero lived— barring, thank Heaven, the
fiddling — while the city burns at ninety in the shade. The tropics and the
zones wait upon me like handmaidens. I sit under Florida palms and eat
pomegranates while Boreas himself, electrically conjured up, blows upon
me his Arctic breath. As for trout, you know, yourself, that Jean, at
Maurice's, cooks them better than any one else in the world."

"Be advised," said North. "My chef has pinched the blue ribbon from
the lot. He lays some slices of bacon inside the trout, wraps it all in corn-
husks — the musks of green corn, you know — buries them in hot ashes and
covers them with live coals. We build fires on the bank of the lake and
have fish suppers."

"I know," said I. "And the servants bring down tables and chairs and
damask cloths, and you eat with silver forks. I know the kind of- camps
that you millionaires have. And there are champagne pails set about,
disgracing the wild flowers, and, no doubt, Madame Tetrazzini to sing in
the boat pavilion after the trout."

"Oh, no," said North concernedly, "we were never as bad as that. We
did have a variety troupe up from the city three or four nights, but they
weren't stars by as far as light can travel in the same length of time. I
always like a few home comforts even when Fm roughing it. But don't
tell me you prefer to stay in the city during summer. I don't believe it. If
you do, why did you spend your summers there for the last four years,
even sneaking away from town on a night train, and refusing to tell your
friends where this Arcadian village was?"

"Because," said I, "they might have followed me and discovered it. But
since then I have learned that Amaryllis has come to town. The coolest
things, the freshest, the brightest, the choicest, are to be found in the city.
If you've nothing on hand this evening I will show you."

"Fin free," said North, "and I have my light car outside. I suppose,
since you've been converted to the town, that your idea of rural sport

RUS IN URBE 797

is to have a little whirl between bicycle cops in Central Park and then
a mug of sticky ale in some stuffy rathskeller under a fan that can't stir
up as many revolutions in a week as Nicaragua can in a day."

"We'll begin with the spin through the Park, anyhow," I said. I was
choking with the hot, stale air of my little apartment, and I wanted that
breath of the cool to brace me for the task of proving to my friend that
New York was the greatest — and so forth.

"Where can you find air any fresher or purer than this?" I asked, as
we sped into Central's boskiest dell.

"Air!" said North, contemptuously. "Do you call this air? — this muggy
vapor, smelling of garbage and gasoline smoke. Man, I wish you could
get one sniff of the real Adirondack article in the pine woods at daylight."

"I have heard of it," said I. "But for fragrance and tang and a joy
in the nostrils I would not give one puff of sea breeze across the bay,
down on my little boat dock on Long Island, for ten of your turpentine-
scented tornadoes."

"Then why," asked North, a little curiously, "don't you go there in-
stead of staying cooped up in this Greater Bakery?'*

"Because," said I, doggedly, "I have discovered that New York is the
greatest summer "

"Don't say that again," interruped North, "unless you've actually got a
job as General Passenger Agent of the Subway. You can't really believe
it."

I went to some trouble to try to prove my theory to my friend. The
Weather Bureau and the season had conspired to make the argument
worthy of an able advocate.

The city seemed stretched on a broiler directly above the furnaces of
Avernus. There was a kind of tepid gayety afoot and awheel in the
boulevards, mainly evinced by languid men strolling about in straw hats
and evening clothes, and rows of idle taxicabs with their flags up, looking
like a blockaded Fourth of July procession. The hotels kept up a specious
brilliancy and hospitable outlook, but inside one saw vast empty cav-
erns, and the footrails at the bars gleamed brightly from long disacquaint-
ance with the sole-leather of customers. In the cross-town streets the steps
of the old brown-stone houses were swarming with "stoopers," that
motley race hailing from skylight room and basement, bringing out their
straw doorstep mats to sit and fill the air with strange noises and opinions.

North and I dined on the top of a hotel; and here, for a few minutes,
I thought I had made a score. An east wind, almost cool, blew across the
roofless roof. A capable orchestra concealed in a bower of wistaria played
with sufficient judgment to make the art of music probable and the art of
conversation possible.

Some ladies in reproachless summer gowns at other tables gave anima-

798 BOOK VI OPTIONS

don and color to the scene. And an excellent dinner, mainly from the
refrigerator, seemed to successfully back my judgment as to summer
resorts. But North grumbled all during the meal, and cursed his lawyers
and prated so of his confounded camp in the woods that I began to wish
he would go back there and leave me in my peaceful city retreat. ^

After dining we went to a roof -garden vaudeville that was being much
praised. There we found a good bill, an artificially cooled atmosphere,
cold drinks, prompt service, and a gay, well-dressed audience. North
was bored.

"If this isn't comfortable enough for you on the hottest August night
for five years," I said, a little sarcastically, "you might think about the kids
down in Delancey and Hester streets lying out on the fire-escapes with
their tongues hanging out, trying to get a breath of air that hasn't been
fried on both sides. The contrast might increase your enjoyment."

"Don't talk Socialism," said North. "I gave five hundred dollars to
the free ice fund on the first of May. I'm contrasting these stale, artificial,
hollow, wearisome 'amusements' with the enjoyment a man can get in
the woods. You should see the firs and pines do skirt-dances during a
storm; and lie down flat and drink out of a mountain branch at the end
of a day's tramp after the deer. That's the only way to spend a summer.
Get out and live with Nature."

"I agree with you absolutely," said I, with emphasis.

For one moment I had relaxed my vigilance, and had spoken my true
sentiments. North looked at me long and curiously.

"Then why, in the name of Pan and Apollo," he asked, "have you been
singing this deceitful paean to summer in town?"

I suppose I looked my guilt.

"Ha," said North, "I see. May I ask her name?"

"Annie Ashton," said I, simply. "She played Nannette in Binkley &
Bing's production of The Silver Cord.' She is to have a better part next
season."

"Take me to see her," said North.

Miss Ashton lived with her mother in a small hotel. They were out
of the West, and had a little money that bridged the seasons. As press-
agent of Binkley & Bing ,1 had tried to keep her before the public. As
Robert James Vandiver, I had hoped to withdraw her; for if ever one was
made to keep company with said Vandiver and smell the salt breeze on
the south shore of Long Island and listen to the ducks quack in the
watches of the night, it was the Ashton set forth above.

But she had a soul above ducks — above nightingales; aye, even above
the birds of paradise. She was very beautiful, with quiet ways, and seemed
genuine. She had both taste and talent for the stage, and she liked to
stay at home and read and make caps for her mother. She was unvary-
ingly kind and friendly with Binkley & Bing's press-agent. Since the

RUS IN URBE 799

theatre had closed she had allowed Mr. Vandiver to call in an unofficial
role. I had often spoken to her of my friend, Spencer Grenville North;
and so, as it was early, the first turn of the vaudeville being not yet over,
we left to find a telephone.

Miss Ashton would be very glad to see Mr. Vandiver and Mr.
North.

We found her fitting a new cap on her mother. I never saw her look
more charming.

North made himself disagreeably entertaining. He was a good talker,
and had a way with him. Besides, he had two, ten, or thirty millions, I've
forgotten which. I incautiously admired the mother's cap, whereupon
she brought out her store of a dozen or two, and I took a course in
edgings and frills. Even though Annie's fingers had pinked, or ruched,
or hemmed, or whatever you do to 'em, they palled upon me. And I could
hear North drivelling to Annie about his odious Adirondack camp.

Two days after that I saw North in his motor-car with Miss Ashton
and her mother. On the next afternoon he dropped in on me.

"Bobby," said he, "this old burg isn't such a bad proposition in the
summertime, after all. Since I've been knocking around it looks better
to me. There are some first-rate musical comedies and light operas on
the roofs and in the outdoor gardens. And if you hunt up the first places
and sick to soft drinks, you can keep about as cool here as you can in the
country. Hang it! when you come to think of it, there's nothing much to
the country, anyhow. You get tired and sunburned and lonesome, and
you have to eat any old thing that the cook dishes up to you."

"It makes a difference, doesn't it?" said L

"It certainly does. Now, I found some whitebait yesterday, at Maurice's,
with a new sauce that beats anything in the trout line I ever tested."

"It makes a difference, doesn't it?" I said.

"Immense. The sauce is the main thing with whitebait."

"It makes a difference, doesn't it?" I asked, looking him straight in the
eye. He understood.

"Look here, Bob," he said, "I was going to tell you. I couldn't help it.
I'll play fair with you, but I'm going in to win. She is the 'one particular'
for me."

"All right," said I. "It's a fair field. There are no rights for you to en-
croach upon."

On Thursday afternoon Miss Ashton invited North and myself to have
tea in her apartment. He was devoted, and she was more charming than
usual. By avoiding the subject of caps I managed to get a word or two
into and out of the talk. Miss Ashton asked me in a make-conversational
tone something about the next season's tour.

"Oh," said I, "I don't know about that. I'm not going to be with Binkley
& Bing next season."

800 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"Why, I thought," said she, "that they were going to put Number One
road company under your charge. I thought you told me so."

"They were," said I, "but they won't. Ill tell you what I'm going to
do. I'm going to the south shore of Long Island and buy a small cottage
I know there on the edge of the bay. And 111 buy a catboat and a row-
boat and a shotgun and a yellow dog. I've got money enough to do it.
And I'll smell the salt wind all day when it blows from the sea and the
pine odor when it blows from the land. And, of course, I'll write plays
until I have a trunk full of 'em on hand.

"And the next thing and the biggest thing I'll do will be to buy that
duck-farm next door. Few people understand ducks. I can watch 'em
for hours. They can march better than any company in the National
Guard, and they can play 'follow my leader* better than the entire Demo-
cratic party. Their voices don't amount to much, but I like to hear Jem.
They wake you up a dozen times a night, but there's a homely sound
about their quacking that is more musical to me than the cry of Tresh
strawber-rees!' under your window in the morning when you want to
sleep.

"And," I went on, enthusiastically, "do you know the value of ducks
besides their beauty and intelligence and order and sweetness of voice?
Picking their feathers gives an unfailing and never-ceasing income. On a
farm that I know the feathers were sold for $400 in one year. Think of
that! And the ones shipped to the market will bring in more money than
that. Yes, I am for the ducks and the salt breeze coming over the bay.
I think I shall get a Chinaman cook, and with him and the dog and the
sunsets for company I shall do well No more of this dull, baking, sense-
less, roaring city for me."

Miss Ashton looked surprised. North laughed.

"I am going to begin one of my plays tonight," I said, "so I must be
going," And with that I took my departure.

A few days later Miss Ashton telephoned to me, asking me to call
at four in the afternoon. I did.

"You have been very good to me," she said, hesitatingly, "and I thought
I would tell you. I am going to leave the stage."

"Yes/' said I, "I suppose you will, They usually do when there's so
much money."

"There is no money," she said, "or very little. Our money is almost
gone."

"But I am told," said I, "that he has something like two or ten or
thirty millions— I have forgotten which."

"I know what you mean," she said. "I will not pretend that I do not.
I am not going to marry Mr. North."

"Then why are you leaving the stage?" I asked, severely. "What else
can you do to earn a living?"

A POOR RULE 80I

She came closer to me, and I can see the look in her eyes yet as she
spoke.

"I can pick ducks," she said.

We sold the first year's feathers for $350.

A POOR RULE

I have always maintained, and asserted from time to time, that woman
is no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and
interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself upon
credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As
"Harper's Drawer" used to say in bygone years: "The following good
story is told of Miss — — , Mr. , Mr. , and Mr. ,"

We shall have to omit "Bishop X" and "the Rev. ," for they do not

belong.

In those days Paloma was a new town on the line of the Southern
Pacific. A reporter would have called it a "mushroom" town; but it was
not. Paloma was first, and last, of the toadstool variety.

The train stopped there at noon for the engine to drink and for the
passengers both to drink and to dine. There was a new yellow-pine hotel,
also a wool warehouse, and perhaps three dozen box residences. The rest
was composed of tents, cow ponies, "black-waxy" mud, and mesquite-
trees, all bound round by a horizon. Paloma was an about-to-be city. The
houses represented faith; the tents hope; the twice-a-day train, by which
you might leave, creditably sustained the role of charity.

The Parisian Restaurant occupied the muddiest spot in the town while
it rained, and the warmest when it shone. It was operated, owned,
and perpetrated by a citizen known as Old Man Hinkle, who had come
out of Indiana to make his fortune in this land of condensed milk and
sorghum.

There was a four-room, unpainted, weather-boarded box house in which
the family lived. From the kitchen extended a "shelter" made of poles
covered with chaparral brush. Under this was a table and two benches,
each twenty feet long, the product of Paloma home carpentry. Here was
set forth the roast mutton, the stewed apples, boiled beans, soda-biscuits,
puddinorpie, and hot coffee of the Parisian menu.

Ma Hinkle and a subordinate known to the ears as "Betty," but denied
to the eyesight, presided at the range. Pa Hinkle himself, with sala-
mandrous thumbs, served the scalding viands. During rush hours a
Mexican youth, who rolled and smoked cigarettes between courses, aided
him in waiting on the guests. As is customary at Parisian banquets I
placed the sweets at the end of my wordy menu.

802 BOOK VI OPTIONS

Ileen Hinkle!

The spelling is correct, for I have seen her write it. No doubt she had
been named by ear; but she so splendidly bore the orthography that
Tom Moore himself (had he seen her) would have endorsed the phonog-
raphy.

Ileen was the daughter of the house, and the first Lady Cashier to in-
vade the territory south of an east-and-west line drawn through Galveston
and Del Rio. She sat on a high stool in a rough pine grandstand— or was
it a temple?— under the shelter at the door of the kitchen. There was a
barbed-wire protection in front of her, with a little arch under which you
passed your money. Heaven knows why the barbed wire; for every man
who dined Parisianly there would have died in her service. Her duties
were light; each meal was a dollar; you put it under the arch, and she
took it.

I set out with the intent to describe Ileen Hinkle to you. Instead, I
must refer you to the volume of Edmund Burke entitled: A Philosophi-
cal Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.
It is an exhaustive treatise, dealing first with the primitive conceptions of
beauty — roundness and smoothness, I think they are, according to Burke.
It is well said. Rotundity is a patent charm; as for smoothness— the more
new wrinkles a woman acquires, the smoother she becomes.

Ileen was a strictly vegetable compound, guaranteed under the Pure
Ambrosia and Balm-of-Gilead Act of the year of the fall of Adam. She was
a fruit-stand blonde — strawberries, peaches, cherries, etc. Her eyes were
wide apart, and she possessed the calm that precedes a storm that never
comes. But it seems to me that words (at any rate per) are wasted in an
effort to describe the beautiful. Like fancy, "It is engendered in the
eyes." There are three kinds of beauties — I was foreordained to be
homiletic; I can never stick to a story.

The first is the freckle-faced, snub-nosed girl whom you like. The
second is Maude Adams. The third is, or are, the ladies in Bouguereau's
paintings. Ileen Hinkle was the fourth. She was the mayoress of Spotless
Town. There were a thousand golden apples coming to her as Helen of
the Troy laundries.

The Parisian Restaurant was within a radius. Even from beyond its cir-
cumference men rode in to Paloma to win her smiles. They got them. One
meal—one smile—one dollar. But, with all her impartiality, Ileen seemed
to favor three of her admirers above the rest. According to the rules of
politeness, I will mention myself last.

The first was an artificial product known as Bryan Jacks— a name that
had obviously met with reverses. Jacks was the outcome of paved cities.
He was a small man made of some material resembling flexible sandstone.
His hair was the color of a brick Quaker meeting-house; his eyes were

A POOR RULE 803

twin cranberries; his mouth was like the aperture under a drop-letters-
here sign.

He knew every city from Bangor to San Francisco, thence north to
Portland, thence S. 45 E. to a given point in Florida. He had mastered
every art, trade, game, business, profession, and sport in the world, had
been present at, or hurrying on his way to, every headline event that had
occurred between oceans since he was five years old. You might open the
atlas, place your finger at random upon the name of a town, and Jacks
would tell you the front names of three prominent citizens before you
could close it again. He spoke patronizingly and even disrespectfully of
Broadway, Beacon Hill, Michigan, Euclid, and Fifth avenues, and the St.
Louis Four Courts. Compared with him as a cosmopolite, the Wander-
ing Jew would have seemed a mere hermit. He had learned everything
the world could teach him, and he would tell you about it.

I hate to be reminded of Pollok s "Course of Time," and so do you;
but every time I saw Jacks I would think of the poet's description of an-
other poet by the name of G. G. Byron who "Drank early; deeply drank—
drank draughts that common millions might have quenched; then died
of thirst because there was no more to drink."

That fitted Jacks, except that, instead of dying, he came to Paloma,
which was about the same thing. He was a telegrapher and station-and-
express agent at seventy-five dollars a month. Why a young ^man who
knew everything and could do everything was content to serve in such an
obscure capacity I never could understand, although he let out a hint once
that it was as a personal favor to the president and stockholders of the
S. P. Ry. Co.

One more line of description, and I turn Jacks over to you. He wore
bright blue clothes, yellow shoes, and a bow tie made of the same cloth
as his shirt.

My rival No. 2 was Bud Cunningham, whose services had been en-
gaged by a ranch near Paloma to assist in compelling refractory cattle
to keep within the bounds of decorum and order. Bud was the only
cowboy off the stage that I ever saw who looked like one on it. He wore
the sombrero, the chaps, and the handkerchief tied at the back of his

neck.

Twice a week Bud rode in from the Val Verde Ranch to sup at the
Parisian Restaurant. He rode a many-high-handed Kentucky horse at
a tremendously fast lope, which animal he would rein up so suddenly
under the big mesquite at the corner of the brush shelter that his hoofs
would plough canals yards long in the loam.

Jacks and I were regular boarders at the restaurant, of course.

The front room of the Hinkle House was as neat a little parlor as there
was in the black-waxy country. It was all willow rocking-chairs, and home-

804 BOOK VI OPTIONS

knit tidies, and albums, and conch shells in a row. And a little upright
piano in one corner.

Here Jacks and Bud and I — or sometimes one or two of us, according
to our good-luck — used to sit of evenings when the tide of trade was over,
and "visit" Miss Hinkle.

Ileen was a girl of ideas. She was destined for higher things (if there
can be anything higher) than taking in dollars all day through a barbed-
wire wicket. She had read and listened and thought. Her looks would
have formed a career for a less ambitious girl; but, rising superior to mere
beauty, she must establish something in the nature of a salon— the only
one in Paloma.

"Don't you think that Shakespeare was a great writer?" she would ask,
with such a pretty little knit of her arched brows that the late Ignatius
Donnelly, himself, had he seen it, could scarcely have saved his Bacon.

Ileen was of the opinion, also, that Boston is more cultured than
Chicago; that Rosa Bonheur was one of the greatest of women painters;
that Westerners are more spontaneous and open-hearted than Easterners;
that London must be a very foggy city, and that California must be quite
lovely in the springtime. And of many other opinions indicating a keep-
ing up with the world's best thought.

These, however, were but gleaned from hearsay and evidence: Ileen
had theories of her own. One, in particular, she disseminated to us
untiringly. Flattery she detested. Frankness and honesty of speech and
action, she declared, were the chief mental ornaments of man and woman.
If ever she could like any one, it would be for those qualities.

"I'm awfully weary," she said, one evening, when we three musketeers
of the mesquite were in the little parlor, "of having compliments on my
looks paid to me. I know I'm not beautiful."

(Bud Cunningham told me afterward that it was all he could do to
keep from calling her a liar when she said that.)

"I'm only a little Middle-Western girl," went on Ileen, "who just wants
to be simple and neat, and tries to help her father make a humble
living.

(Old Man Hinkle was shipping a thousand silver dollars a month,
clear profit, to a bank in San Antonio.)

Bud twisted around in his chair and bent the rim of his hat, from which
he could never be persuaded to separate. He did not know whether she
wanted what she said she wanted or what she knew she deserved. Many a
wiser man has hesitated at deciding. Bud decided.

"Why— ah, Miss Ileen, beauty, as you might say, ain't everything. Not
sayin* that you haven't your share of good looks, I always admired more
than anything else about you the nice, kind way you treat your ma and
pa. Any one what's good to their parents and is a kind of homebody don't
specially need to be too pretty."

A POOR RULE 805

Ileen gave him one of her sweetest smiles. "Thank you, Mr. Cunning-
ham," she said. "I consider that one of the finest compliments I've had in
a long time. I'd so much rather hear you say that than to hear you talk
about my eyes and hair. I'm glad you believe me when I say I don't like
flattery."

Our cue was there for us. Bud had made a good guess. You couldn't
lose Jacks. He chimed in next

"Sure thing, Miss Ileen," he said; "the good-lookers don't always win
out. Now, you ain't bad looking, of course— but that's nix-cum-rous. I
knew a girl once in Dubuque with a face like a cocoanut, who could
skin the cat twice on a horizontal bar without changing hands. Now,
a girl might have the California peach crop mashed to a marmalade and
not be able to do that. I've seen — er — worse lookers than you, Miss Ileen;
but what I like about you is the business way you've got of doing things.
Cool and wise— that's the winning way for a girl. Mr. Hinkle told me the
other day you'd never taken in a lead silver dollar or a plugged one since
you've been on the job. Now, that's the stuff for a girl — that's what
catches me."

Jacks got his smile, too.

"Thank you, Mr. Jacks," said Ileen. "If you only knew how I appre-
ciate any one's being candid and not a flatterer! I get so tired of people
telling me I'm pretty. I think it is the loveliest thing to have friends who
tell you the truth."

Then I thought I saw an expectant look on Ileen's face as she glanced
toward me. I had a wild, sudden impulse to dare fate, and tell her of all
the beautiful handiwork of the Great Artificer she was the most exquisite
—that she was a flawless pearl gleaming pure and serene in a setting of
black mud and emerald prairies — that she was — a — a corker; and that as
for mine, I cared not if she were as cruel as a serpent's tooth to her fond
parents, or if she couldn't tell a plugged dollar from a bridle buckle, if I
might sing, chant, praise, glorify, and worship her peerless and wonderful
beauty.

But I refrained. I feared the fate of a flatterer. I had witnessed her de-
light at the crafty and discreet words of Bud and Jacks. No! Miss Hinkle
was not one to be beguiled by the plated-silver tongue of a flatterer. So
I joined the ranks of the candid and honest At once I became mendacious
and didactic.

"In all ages, Miss Hinkle," said I, "in spite of the poetry and romance
of each, intellect in woman has been admired more than beauty. Even
in Cleopatra, herself, men found more a charm in her queenly mind than
in her looks."

"Well, I should think so!" said Ileen. "I've seen pictures of her that
weren't so much. She had an awfully long nose."

"If I may say so," I went on, "you remind me of Cleopatra, Miss Ileen.'*

806 BOOK VI OPTIONS

"Why, my nose isn't so long!" said she, opening her eyes wide and
touching that comely feature with a dimpled forefinger.

"Why— er-~I mean," said I— "I mean as to mental endowments.'

"Oh!" said she; and then I got my smile just as Bud and Jacks got
theirs.

"Thank every one of you," she said, very, very sweetly, for being so
frank and honest with me. That's the way I want you to be always.
Just tell me plainly and truthfully what you think, and we'll all be the
best friends in the world. And now, because you've been so good to me,
and understand so well how I dislike people who do nothing but pay me
exaggerated compliments, 111 sing and play a little for you."

Of course, we expressed our thanks and joy; would have been better
pleased if Ileen had remained in her low rocking-chair face to face with
us and let us gaze upon her. For she was no Adelina Patti— not even on
the farewellest of the diva's farewell tours. She had a cooing little voice
like that of a turtle-dove that could almost fill the parlor when the win-
dows and doors were closed, and Betty was not rattling the lids of the
stove in the kitchen. She had a gamut that I estimate at about eight inches
on the piano; and her runs and trills sounded like the clothes bubbling
in your grandmother's iron wash-pot. Believe that she must have been
beautiful when I tell you that it sounded like music to us.

Ileen's musical taste was catholic. She would sing through a pile of
sheet music on the left-hand top of the piano, laying each slaughtered com-
position on the right-hand top. The next evening she would sing from
right to left. Her favorites were Mendelssohn, and Moody and Sankey.
By request she always wound up with "Sweet Violets" and "When the
Leaves Begin to Turn."

When we left at ten o'clock the three of us would go down to Jacks'
little wooden station and sit on the platform, swinging our feet and try-
ing to pump one another for clues as to which way Miss Ileen's inclina-
tions seemed to lean. That is the way of rivals — they do not avoid and
glower at one another; they convene and converse and construe — striving
by the art politic to estimate the strength of the enemy.

One day there came a dark horse to Paloma, a young lawyer who at
once flaunted his shingle and himself spectacularly upon the town. His
name was C. Vincent Vesey. You could see at a glance that he was a re-
cent graduate of a Southwestern law school. His Prince Albert coat,
light striped trousers, broad-brimmed soft black hat, and narrow white
muslin bow tie proclaimed that more loudly than any diploma could.
Vesey was a compound of Daniel Webster, Lord Chesterfield, Beau
Brummel, and Little Jack Horner. His coming boomed Paloma. The
next day after he arrived an addition to the town was surveyed and laid off
in lots.

Of course, Vesey, to further his professional fortunes, must mingle
with the citizenry and outliers of Paloma. And, as well as with the soldier

A POOR RULE 807

men, he was found to seek popularity with the gay dogs of the place. So
Jacks and Bud Cunningham and I came to be honored by his acquaint-
ance.

The doctrine of predestination would have been discredited had not
Vesey seen Ileen Hinkle and become fourth in the tourney. Magnificently,
he boarded at the yellow-pine hotel instead of at the Parisian Res-
taurant; but he came to be a formidable visitor in the Hinkle parlor. His
competition reduced Bud to an inspired increase of profanity, drove
Jacks to an outburst of slang so weird that it sounded more horrible than
the most trenchant of Bud's imprecations, and made me dumb with
gloom.

For Vesey had the rhetoric. Words flowed from him like oil from a
gusher. Hyperbole, compliment, praise, appreciation, honeyed gallantry,
golden opinions, eulogy, and unveiled panegyric vied with one another
for preeminence in his speech. We had small hopes that Ileen could resist
his oratory and Prince Albert.

But a day came that gave us courage.

About dusk one evening I was sitting on the little gallery in front of
the Hinkle parlor, waiting for Ileen to come, when I heard voices inside.
She had come into the room with her father, and Old Man Hinkle be-
gan to talk to her. I had observed before that he was a shrewd man, and
not unphilosophic.

"Ily," said he, "I notice there's three or four young fellers that have
been callin' to see you regular for quite a while. Is there any one of 'em
you like better than another ?"

"Why, pa," she answered, "I like all of 'em very well. I think Mr. Cun-
ningham and Mr. Jacks and Mr. Harris are very nice young men. They
are so frank and honest in everything they say to me. I haven't known
Mr. Vesey very long, but I think he's a very nice young man, he's so frank
and honest in everything he says to me."

"Now, that's what I'm gittin' at," says old Hinkle. "You've always
been sayin' you like people what tell the truth and don't go humbuggin*
you with compliments and bogus talk. Now, suppose you make a test o£
these fellers, and see which one of 'em will talk the straightest to you."

"Buthow'llldoit,pa?"

"I'll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, Ily; you took music
lessons nearly two years in Logansport It wasn't long, but it was all we
could afford then. And your teacher said you didn't have any voice, and
it was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you ask the fellers
what they think of your singin', and see what each one of 'em tells you.
The man that'll tell you the truth about it '11 have a mighty lot of nerve,
and '11 do to tie to. What do you think of the plan?"

"All right, pa," said Jleen. "I think it's a good idea. Ill try it."

Ileen and Mr. Hinkle went out o£ the room through the inside door.

808 BOOKVI OPTIONS

Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. Jacks was at his telegraph ta-
ble waiting for eight o'clock to come. It was Bud's night in town, and
when he rode in I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal to
my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be.

Simultaneously the three of us were smitten by an uplifting thought.
Surely this test would eliminate Vesey from the contest. He, with his
unctuous flattery, would be driven from the lists. Well we remembered
Ileen's love of frankness and honesty— how she treasured truth and can-
dor above vain compliment and blandishment.

Linking arms, we did a grotesque dance of joy up and down the plat-
form, singing "Muldoon Was a Solid Man" at the top of our voices.

That evening four of the willow rocking-chairs were filled besides the
lucky one that sustained the trim figure of Miss Hinkle. Three of us
waited with suppressed excitement the application of the test. It was
tried on Bud first.

"Mr. Cunningham," said Ileen, with her dazzling smile, after she
had sung: "When the Leaves Begin to Turn," "what do you really
think of my voice ? Frankly and honesdy, now, as you know I want you
to always be toward me."

Bud squirmed in his chair at his chance to show the sincerity that he
knew was required of him.

"Tell you the truth, Miss Ileen," he said, earnestly, "you ain't got much
more voice than a weasel — just a little squeak, you know. Of course, we
all like to hear you sing, for it's kind of sweet and soothin' after all, and
you look most mighty well sittin' on the piano-stool as you do faced
around. But as for real singin' — I reckon you couldn't call it that."

I looked closely at Ileen to see if Bud had overdone his frankness, but
her pleased smile and sweetly spoken thanks assured me that we were on
the right track.

"And what do you think, Mr. Jacks?" she asked next.

"Take it from me," said Jacks, "you ain't in the prima donna class. I've
heard *em warble in every city in the United States; and I tell you your
vocal output don't go. Otherwise, youVe got the grand opera bunch sent
to the soap factory — in looks, I mean; for the high screeches generally
look like Mary Ann on her Thursday out. But nix for the gargle work.
Your epiglottis ain't a real side-stepper — its footwork ain't good."

With a merry laugh at Jacks* criticism, Ileen looked inquiringly at
me.

I admit that I faltered a little. Was there not such a thing as being
too frank? Perhaps I even hedged a little in my verdict; but I stayed with
the critics.

"I am not skilled in scientific music, Miss Ileen," I said, "but frankly
I cannot praise very highly the singing voice that Nature has given you.
It has long been a favorite comparison that a great singer sings like a

A POOR RULE 009

bird. Well, there are birds and birds. I would say that your voice reminds
me of the thrush's — throaty and not strong, nor of much compass or va-
riety— but still — er — sweet — in — er — its — way, and — er "

"Thank you, Mr. Harris," interrupted Miss Hinkle. "I knew I could
depend upon your frankness and honesty."

And then C. Vincent Vesey drew back one sleeve from his snowy
cuff, and the water came down at Lodore.

My memory cannot do justice to his masterly tribute to that priceless.
God-given treasure — Miss Hinkle's voice. He raved over it in terms that,
if they had been addressed to the morning stars when they sang together,
would have made that stellar choir explode in a meteoric shower of flam-
ing self-satisfaction.

He marshalled on his white finger-tips the grand opera stars of all the
continents, from Jenny Lind to Emma Abbott, only to depreciate their
endowments. He spoke of larynxes, of chest notes, of phrasing, arpeggios,
and other strange paraphernalia of the throaty art. He admitted, as
though driven to a corner, that Jenny Lind had a note or two in the high
register that Miss Hinkle had not yet acquired — but — "III" — that was a
mere matter of practice and training.

And, as a peroration, he predicted — solemnly predicted — a career in
vocal art for the "coming star of the Southwest — and one of which grand
old Texas may well be proud," hitherto unsurpassed in the annals of
musical history.

When we left at ten, Ileen gave each of us her usual warm, cordial
handshake, entrancing smile, and invitation to call again. I could not see
that one was favored above or below another — but three of us knew —
we knew.

We knew that frankness and honesty had won, and that the rivals now
numbered three instead of four.

Down at the station Jacks brought out a pint bottle of the proper stuff,
and we celebrated the downfall of a blatant interloper.

Four days went by without anything happening worthy of recount.

On the fifth, Jacks and I, entering the brush arbor for our supper, saw
the Mexican youth, instead of a divinity in a spotless waist and a navy-
blue skirt, taking in the dollars through the barbed-wire wicket.

We rushed into the kitchen, meeting Pa Hinkle coming out with two
cups of hot coffee in his hands.

"Where's Ileen?" we asked, in recitative.

Pa Hinkle was a kindly man. "Well, gents," said he, "it was a sudden
notion she took; but I've got the money, and I let her have her way. She's
gone to a corn — conservatory in Boston for four years for to have her voice
cultivated. Now, excuse me to pass, gents, for this coffee's hot, and my
thumbs is tender."

That night there were four instead of three of us sitting on the station

8io

BOOK VI OPTIONS

platform and swinging our feet. C. Vincent Vesey was one of us. We
discussed things while dogs barked at the moon that rose, as big as a five-
cent piece or a flour-barrel, over the chaparral.

And what we discussed was whether it is better to lie to a woman or
to tell her the truth.

And as ail of us were young then, we did not come to a decision.

BOOK

SIXES AJVD SEVENS

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS

Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from
the Rancho Altito at the end of a three months* visit. It is not to be ex-
pected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits yellow-
streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon, the big Ne-
gro man cook, had never been able to make good biscuits. Once before,
when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been forced to
fly from his cuisine f after only a six weeks* sojourn.

On Sam's face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and
slightly tempered by the patient forgiveness of a connoisseur who cannot
be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his saddle-
cinches, looped his take-rope and hung it to his saddle-horn, tied his
slicker and coat on the cantle, and looped his quirt on his right wrist.

8l2 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

The Merry dews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men, women, chil-
dren, and servants, vassals, visitors, employes, dogs, and casual callers,
were grouped in the "gallery" of the ranch house, all with face set to the
tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the coming of Sam Galloway
to any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers Frio or Bravo del
Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused mourning and distress.

And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind
elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a wicked flea, Sam tenderly and
carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and coat
The guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the significance of
it, it explains Sam.

Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know
about the troubadours. The encyclopaedia says they flourished between
the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they flourished doesn't
seem clear — you may be pretty sure it wasn't a sword: maybe it was a
fiddle-bow, or a forkful of spaghetti, or a lady's scarf. Anyhow, Sam
Galloway was one of 'em.

Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the
expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his pony's.
You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is not un-
likely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had often guyed
Sam's pony for being ridden by a guitar player instead of by a rollicking,
cussing, all-wool cowboy. No man is a hero to his saddle-horse. And even
an escalator in a department store might be excused for tripping up a
troubadour.

Oh, I know I'm one; and so are you. You remember the stories you
memorize and the card tricks you study and that little piece on the piano
— how does it go — ti-tum-te-tum-ti-tum — those little Arabian Ten-Minute
Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your rich
Aunt Jane. You should know that omna personce in tres partes divisce
sunt. Namely: Barons, Troubadours, and Workers. Barons have no in-
clination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time: so I
know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will understand Sam
Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we are
only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it.

The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of
Sam's knees, bore that wandering minstrel sixteen miles southeastward.
Nature was in her most benignant mood. League after league of delicate,
sweet flowerets made fragrant the gently undulating prairie. The east
wind tempered the spring warmth; wool-white clouds flying in from the
Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April sun. Sam sang songs
as he rode. Under his pony's bridle he had tucked some sprigs of chapar-
ral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned, the long-faced quadruped

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS 813

looked more Dantesque than before, and, judging by his countenance,
seemed to think of Beatrice.

Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to the sheep ranch of old
man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch seemed to him desirable just then.
There had been too many people, too much noise, argument, competition,
confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon old man El-
lison the favour of sojourning at his ranch; but he knew he would be
welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The Workers
in the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron sets him at
his left hand at table in the banquet hall. There ladies smile upon him
and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers bring boars' heads
and flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his carved oaken chair,
he does not do it maliciously.

Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often
heard praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been
complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honor for his
own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison was the Last
of the Barons. Of course, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton lived too early to know him
or he wouldn't have conferred that sobriquet upon Warwick. In life it is
the duty and the function of the Baron to provide work for the Workers
and lodging and shelter for the Troubadours.

Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white
beard and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch
was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the lone-
somest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a Kiowa
Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed coyote
chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran on two sec-
tions of leased land and many thousands of acres neither leased nor
owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his language
would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with him. Those
were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what illuminated, em-
bossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have been written the day
on which a troubadour — a troubadour who, according to the encyclo-
paedia, should have flouished between the eleventh and the thirteenth
centuries — drew rein at the gates of his baronial castle!

Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he
saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to
greet him.

"Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam, cheerfully. 'Thought I'd drop over
and see you a while. Notice youVe had fine rains on your range. They
ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs."

"Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see you
Sam. I never thought you'd take the trouble to ride over to as out-of-the-
way an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome. 'Light. I've got a

814 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

sack of new oats in the kitchen— shall I bring out a feed for your boss?"

"Oats for him?" said Sam, derisively. "No, sir-ee. He's as fat as a pig
now on grass. He don't get rode enough to keep him in condition. I'll
just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you don't mind."

I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries
did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as
their parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. The
Kiowa's biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong. Ineradicable
hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison's weather-tanned
face. As for troubadour, he said to himself that he had stumbled upon
pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant meal, a host whom his
lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight far beyond the merits of
the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere that his sensitive soul at that
time craved united to confer upon him a satisfaction and luxurious ease
that he had seldom found on his tours of the ranches.

After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took
out his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you — neither Sam Gal-
loway nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the
late Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of
the esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for
his supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his sup-
per, and then sing for Art's sake.

Sam Galloway's repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and be-
tween thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could
talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And
he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could
sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a portrait
as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will allow.

I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and inactive
beyond the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an ultramarine-
blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray, exaggerated
sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes, inevitable high-
heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw sombrero.

That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under
the hackberry trees. They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour gaily
touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird, melan-
choly, minor-keyed candones that he had learned from the Mexican
sheep herders and vaqueros. One, in particular, charmed and soothed the
soul of the lonely baron. It was a favourite song of the sheep herders, be-
ginning: "Huile, huile, palomita" which being translated means, "Fly,
fly, little dove." Sam sang it for old man Ellison many times that evening.

The troubadour stayed on at the old man's ranch. There was peace
and quiet and appreciation there, such as he had not found in the noisy
camps of the cattle kings. No audience in the world could have crowned

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS 815

the work of poet, musician, or artist with more worshipful and unflagging
approval than that bestowed upon his efforts by old man Ellison. No
visit by a royal personage to a humble woodchopper or peasant could
have been received with more flattering thankfulness and joy.

On a cool, canvas-covered cot in the shade of the hackberry trees Sam
Galloway passed the greater part of his time. There he rolled his brown
paper cigarettes, read such tedious literature as the ranch afforded, and
added to his repertoire of improvisations that he played so expertly on his
guitar. To him, as a slave ministering to a great lord, the Kiowa brought
cool water from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter, and food
when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs fanned him mildly; mocking-
birds at morn and eve competed with but scarce equalled the sweet mel-
odies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness seemed to fill all his world. While
old man Ellison was pottering among his flocks of sheep on his mile-an-
hour pony, and while the Kiowa took his siesta in the burning sunshine
at the end of the kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot thinking what a happy
world he lived in, and how kind it is to the ones whose mission in life
it is to give entertainment and pleasure. Here he had food and lodging
as good as he had ever longed for; absolute immunity from care or exer-
tion or strife; an endless welcome, and a host whose delight at the six-
teenth repetition of a song or a story was as keen as at its initial giving.
Was there ever a troubadour of old who struck upon as royal a castle in
his wanderings? While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings, little
brown cottontails would shyly frolic through the yard; a covey of white-
topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty yards away;
a paisano bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop upon the fence and
salute him with sweeping flourishes of its long tail. In the eighty-acre
horse pasture the pony with the Dantesque face grew fat and almost
smiling. The troubadour was at the end of his wanderings.

Old man Ellison was his own vatiero. That means that he supplied
his sheep camps with wood, water, and rations by his own labors instead
of hiring a vaciero. On small ranches it is often done.

One morning he started for the camp of Encarnacion Felipe de la Cruz
y Monto Piedras (one of his sheep herders) with the week's usual rations
of brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two miles away on the
trail from old Fort Ewing he met, face to face, a terrible being called King
James, mounted on a fiery, prancing, Kentucky-bred horse.

King James's real name was James King; but people reversed it be-
cause it seemed to fit him better, and also because it seemed to please
his majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo
plaza in San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in Brownsville. Also he was
the loudest and most offensive bully and braggart and bad man in
southwest Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and
the more noise he made the more dangerous he was. In the story

8l6 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

papers it is always the quiet, mild-mannered man with light blue eyes and
a low voice who turns out to be really dangerous; but in real life and in
this story such is not the case. Give me my choice between assaulting a
large, loudmouthed rough-houser and an inoffensive stranger with blue
eyes sitting quietly in a corner, and you will see something doing in the
corner every time.

King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce, two-hundred-
pound, sunburned, blond man, as pink as an October strawberry, and
with two horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows for eyes. On that
day he wore a flannel shirt that was tan-colored, with the exception of
certain large areas which were darkened by transudations due to the
summer sun. There seemed to be other clothing and garnishings about
him, such as brown duck trousers stuffed into immense ^ boots, and red
handkerchiefs and revolvers; and a shotgun laid across his saddle and a
leather belt with millions of cartridges shining in it— but your mind skid-
ded off such accessories; what held your gaze was just the two little hori-
zontal slits that he used for eyes.

This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when
you count up in the baron's favor that he was sixty-five and weighed
ninety-eight pounds and had heard of King James's record and that he
(the baron) had a hankering for the vita simplex and had no gun with
him and wouldn't have used it if he had, you can't censure him 1H tell
you that the smiles with which the troubadour had filled his wrinkles
went out of them and left them plain wrinkles again. But he was not the
kind of baron that flies from danger. He reined in the mile-an-hour pony
(no difficult feat), and saluted the formidable monarch.

King James expressed himself with royal directness.

"You're that old snoozer that's running sheep on this range, ain't you?
What right have you got to do it? Do you own the land, or lease any?"

"I have two sections leased from the state," said old man Ellison, mildly.

"Not by no means, you haven't," said King James. "Your lease ex-
pired yesterday; and I had a man at the land office on the minute to take
it up. You don't control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have
got to git. Your time's up. It's a cattle country, and there ain't any room
in it for snoozers. This range youVe got your sheep on is mine. Fm put-
ting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there's a sheep inside of it
when it's done it'll be a dead one. I'll give you a week to move yours
away. If they ain't gone by then, I'll send six men over here with Win-
chesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if I find you here at
the same time this is what you'll get."

King James patted the breech of his shotgun warningly.

Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Encarnacion. He sighed many
times, and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. Rumors that the old
order was about to change had reached him before. The end of Free

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS 817

Grass was in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating upon his
shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of growing; the price of
wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the storekeeper at Frio
City, at whose store he bought his ranch supplies, was dunning him for
his last six months' bill and threatening to cut him off. And so this last
greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him by the terrible King James
was a crusher.

When the old man got back to the ranch at sunset he found Sam Gal-
loway lying on his cot, propped against a roll of blankets and wool sacks,
fingering his guitar.

"Hello, Uncle Ben," the troubadour called, cheerfully. "You rolled in
early this evening. I been trying a new twist on the Spanish Fandango
to-day. I just about got it. Here's how she goes— listen."

"That's fine, that's mighty fine/' said old man Ellison, sitting on the
kitchen step and rubbing his white, Scotch-terrier whiskers. "I reckon
you've got all the musicians beat east and west, Sam, as far as the roads
are cut out."

"Oh, I don't know," said Sam reflectively. "But I certainly do get there
on variations. I guess I can handle anything in five flats about as well as
any of 'em. But you look kind of fagged out, Uncle Ben — ain't you feel-
ing right well this evening?"

"Little tired; that's all, Sam. If you ain't played yourself out, let's have
that Mexican piece that starts off with : 'Huile, huile, palomita.' It seems
that that song always kind of soothes and comforts me after I've been
riding far or anything bothers me."

"Why, seguramente, scnor" said Sam. Til hit her up for you as often
as you like. And before I forget about it, Uncle Ben, you want to jerk
Bradshaw up about them last hams he sent us. They're just a little bit
strong."

A man sixty-five years old, living on a sheep ranch and beset by a com-
plication of disasters, cannot successfully and continuously dissemble.
Moreover, a troubadour has eyes quick to see unhappiness in others
around him — because it disturbs his own ease. So, on the next day, Sam
again questioned the old man about his air of sadnesss and abstraction.
Then old man Ellison told him the story of King James's threats and or-
ders and that pale melancholy and red ruin appeared to have marked him
for their own. The troubadour took the news thoughtfully. He had heard
much about King James.

On the third day of the seven days o£ grace allowed him by the auto-
crat of the range, old man Ellison drove his buckboard to Frio City to
fetch some necessary supplies for the ranch. Bradshaw was hard but not
implacable. He divided the old man's order by two, and let him have a
little more time. One article secured was a new, fine harn for the pleas-
ure of the troubadour.

8l8 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

Five miles out of Frio City on his way home the old man met King
James riding into town. His majesty could never look anything but fierce
and menacing, but to-day his slits of eyes appeared to be a little wider
than they usually were.

"Good day," said the king, gruffly. "I've been wanting to see you. I hear
it said by a cowman from Sandy yesterday that you was from Jackson
County, Mississippi, originally. I want to know if that's a fact."

"Born there," said old man Ellison, "and raised there till I was twenty-
one/'

"This man says," went on King James, "that he thinks you was re-
lated to the Jackson County Reeveses. Was he right?"

"Aunt Caroline Reeves," said the old man, "was my half-sister."

"She was my aunt," said King James. "I run away from home when
I was sixteen. Now, let's re-talk over some things that we discussed a few
days ago. They call me a bad man; and they're only half right. There's
plenty of room in my pasture for your bunch of sheep and their increase
for a long time to come. Aunt Caroline used to cut out sheep in cake
dough and bake 'em for me. You keep your sheep where they are, and
use all the range you want. How's your finances?"

The old man related his woes in detail, dignifiedly, with restraint and
candor.

"She used to smuggle extra grub into my school basket—I'm speaking
of Aunt Caroline," said King James. "I'm going over to Frio City to-
day, and I'll ride back by your ranch tomorrow. I'll draw $2,000 out of
the bank there and bring it over to you; and I'll tell Bradshaw to let you
have anything you want on credit. You are bound to have heard the old
saying at home, that the Jackson County Reeveses and Kings would stick
closer by each other than chestnut burs. Well, I'm a King yet whenever
I run across a Reeves. So you look out for me along about sundown to-
morrow, and don't you worry about nothing. Shouldn't wonder if the
dry spell don't kill out the young grass."

Old man Ellison drove happily ranchward. Once more the smiles filled
out his wrinkles. Very suddenly, by the magic of kinship and the good
that lies somewhere in all hearts, his troubles had been removed.

On reaching the ranch he found that Sam Galloway was not there. His
guitar hung by its buckskin string to a hackberry limb, moaning as the
gulf breeze blew across its masterless strings.

The Kiowa endeavored to explain,

"Sam, he catch pony," said he, "and say he ride to Frio City. What for
no can damn sabe. Say he come back to-night. Maybe so. That all."

As the first stars came out the troubadour rode back to his haven. He
pastured his pony and went into the house, his spurs jingling martially.

Old man Ellison sat at the kitchen table, having a tin cup of before-sup-
per coffee. He looked contented and pleased.

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS 819

"Hello, Sam," said he, "I'm darned glad to see ye back. I don't know
how I managed to get along on this ranch, anyhow, before ye dropped in
to cheer things up. I'll bet yeVe been skylarking around with some of
them Frio City gals, now, that's kept ye so late."

And then old man Ellison took another look at Sam's face and saw that
the minstrel had changed to the man of action.

And while Sam is unbuckling from his waist old man Ellison's six-
shooter, that the latter had left behind when he drove to town, we may
well pause to remark that anywhere and whenever a troubadour lays
down the guitar and takes up the sword trouble is sure to follow. It is not
the expert thrust of Athos nor the cold skill of Aramis nor the iron wrist
of Porthos that we have to fear — it is the Gascon's fury — the wild and
unacademic attack of the troubadour — the sword of D'Artagnan.

"I done it," said Sam. "I went over to Frio City to do it. I couldn't let
him put the skibunk on you, Uncle Ben. I met him in Summer's saloon.
I knowed what to do. I said a few things to him that nobody else heard.
He reached for his gun first — half a dozen fellows saw him do it — but I
got mine unlimbered first. Three doses I gave him — right around the
lungs, and a saucer could have covered up all of Jem. He won't bother
you no more."

"This — is — King — James — you speak — of?" asked old man Ellison,
while he sipped his coffee.

"You bet it was. And they took me before the county judge; and the
witnesses what saw him draw his gun first was all there. Well, of course,
they put me under $300 bond to appear before the court, but there was
four or five boys on the spot ready to sign the bail. He won't bother you
no more, Uncle Ben. You ought to have seen how close them bullet holes
was together. I reckon playing a guitar as much as I do must kind of
limber a fellow's trigger finger a little, don't you think, Uncle Ben?"

Then there was a little silence in the castle except for the spluttering
of a venison steak that the Kiowa was cooking.

"Sam," said old man Ellison, stroking his white whiskers with a trem-
ulous hand, "would you mind getting the guitar and playing that 'Huile,
huile, palomita' piece once or twice ? It always seems to be kind of sooth-
ing and comforting when a man's tired and fagged out."

There is no more to be said, except that the title of the story is wrong.
It should have been called "The Last of the Barons." There never will
be an end to the troubadours; and now and then it does seem that the
jingle of their guitars will drown the sound of the muffled blows of the
pickaxes and trip hammers of all the Workers in the world.

820 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

THE SLEUTHS

In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and complete-
ness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the agencies of in-
quisition—the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the city's labyrinths, the
closet detectives of theory and induction— will be invoked to the search.
Most often the man's face will be seen no more. Sometimes he will re-
appear in Sheboygan or in the wilds of Terre Haute, calling himself one
of the synonyms of "Smith/* and without memory of events up to a cer-
tain time, Including his grocer's bill. Sometimes it will be found, after
dragging the rivers, and polling the restaurants to see if he may be wait-
ing for a well-done sirloin, that he has moved next door.

This snuffing out of a human being like the erasure of a chalk man
from a blackboard is one of the most impressive themes in dramaturgy.

The case of Mary Snyder, in point, should not be without interest.

A man of middle age, of the name of Meeks, came from the West to
New York to find his sister, Mrs. Mary Snyder, a widow, aged fifty-two,
who had been living for a year in a tenement house in a crowded neigh-
borhood.

At her address he was told that Mary Snyder had moved away longer
than a month before. No one could tell him her new address.

On coming out Mr. Meeks addressed a policeman who was standing on
the corner, and explained his dilemma.

"My sister is very poor," he said, "and I am anxious to find her.
I have recently made quite a lot of money in a lead mine, and I want her
to share my prosperity. There is no use in advertising her, because she
cannot read."

The policeman pulled his mustache and looked so thoughtful and
mighty that Meeks could almost feel the joyful tears of his sister Mary
drooping upon his bright blue tie.

"You go down in the Canal Street neighborhood," said the policeman,
"and get a job drivin* the biggest dray you can find. There's old women
always gettin' knocked over by drays down there. You might see 'er
among 'em. If you don't want to do that you better go 'round to head-
quarters and get 'em to put a fly cop onto the dame."

At police headquarters, Meeks received ready assistance. A general
alarm was sent out and copies of a photograph of Mary Snyder that her
brother had were distributed among the stations. In Mulberry Street the
chief assigned Detective Mullins to the case.

The detective took Meeks aside and said:

"This is not a very difficult case to unravel. Shave off your whiskers,

THE SLEUTHS 821

fill your pockets with good cigars, and meet me in the cafe of the
Waldorf at three o'clock this afternoon."

Meeks obeyed. He found Mullins there. They had a bottle of wine,
while the detective asked questions concerning the missing woman.

"Now," said Mullins, "New York is a big city, but we've got the detec-
tive business systematized. There are two ways we can go about finding
your sister. We will try one of 'em first. You say she's fifty-two?"

"A little past," said Meeks.

The detective conducted the Westerner to a branch advertising office
of one of the largest dailies. There he wrote the following "ad" and sub-
mitted it to Meeks.

"Wanted, at once — one hundred attractive chorus girls for a new mu-
sical comedy. Apply all day at No. Broadway."

Meeks was indignant.

"My sister," said he, "is a poor, hard-working, elderly woman. I do not
see what aid an advertisement of this kind would be toward finding her."

"All right," said the detective. "I guess you don't know New York. But
if you've got a grouch against this scheme we'll try the other one. It's a
sure thing. But it'll cost you more."

"Never mind the expense," said Meeks; "we'll try it."

The sleuth led him back to the Waldorf. "Engage a couple of bed-
rooms and a parlor," he advised, "and let's go up."

This was done, and the two were shown to a superb suite on the fourth
floor. Meeks looked puzzled. The detective sank into a velvet armchair,
and pulled out his cigar case.

"I forgot to suggest, old man," he said, "that you should have taken
the rooms by the month. They wouldn't have stuck you so much for 'em."

"By the month!" exclaimed Meeks. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, it'll take time to work the game this way. I told you it would cost
you more. We'll have to wait till spring. There'll be a new city directory
out then. Very likely your sister's name and address will be in it."

Meeks rid himself of the city detective at once. On the next day some
one advised him to consult Shamrock Jolnes, New York's famous private
detective, who demanded fabulous fees, but performed miracles in the
way of solving mysteries and crimes.

After waiting for two hours in the anteroom of the great detective's
apartment, Meeks was shown into his presence. Jolnes sat in a purple
dressing-gown at an inlaid ivory chess table, with a magazine before him,
trying to solve the mystery of "They." The famous sleuth's thin, intel-
lectual face, piercing eyes, and rate per word are too well known to need
description.

Meeks set forth his errand. "My fee, if successful, will be $500," said
Shamrock Jolnes.

Meeks bowed his agreement to the price.

822 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

"I will undertake your case, Mr. Meeks," said Jones, finally. "The dis-
appearance o£ people in this city has always been an interesting problem
to me. I remember a case that I brought to a successful outcome a year
ago. A family bearing the name of Clark disappeared suddenly from a
small flat in which they were living. I watched the flat building for two
months for a clue. One day it struck me that a certain milkman and a
grocer's boy always walked backward when they carried their wares up-
stairs. Following out by induction the idea that this observation gave me,
I at once located the missing family. They had moved into the flat across
the hall and changed their name to Kralc."

Shamrock Jolnes and his client went to the tenement house where
Mary Snyder had lived, and the detective demanded to be shown the
room in which she had lived. It had been occupied by no tenant since her
disappearance.

The room was small, dingy, and poorly furnished. Meeks seated him-
self dejectedly on a broken chair, while the great detective searched the
walls and floors and the few sticks of old, rickety furniture for a clue.

At the end of half an hour Jolnes had collected a few seemingly
unintelligible articles— a cheap black hatpin, a piece torn off a theatre
programme, and the end of a small torn card on which was the word
"Left" and the characters "C 12."

Shamrock Jolnes leaned against the mantel for ten minutes, with his
head resting upon his hand, and an absorbed look upon his intellectual
face. At the end of that time he exclaimed, with animation:

"Come, Mr. Meeks; the problem is solved. I can take you directly to
the house where your sister is living. And you may have no fears concern-
ing her welfare, for she is amply provided with funds— for the present
at least."

Meefcs felt joy and wonder in equal proportions.

"How did you manage it?" he asked, with admiration in his tones.

Perhaps Joints only weakness was a professional pride in his wonder-
ful achievements in induction- He was ever ready to astound and charm
his listeners by describing his methods.

"By elimination," said Jolnes, spreading his clues upon a little table,
"I got rid of certain parts of the city to which Mrs. Snyder might have
removed. You see this hatpin? That eliminates Brooklyn. No woman
attempts to board a car at the Brooklyn Bridge without being sure that she
carries a hatpin with which to fight her way into a seat. And now I will
demonstrate to you that she could not have gone to Harlem. Behind this
door are two hooks in the wall. Upon one of these Mrs. Snyder has hung
her bonnet, and upon the other her shawl You will observe that the bot-
tom of the hanging shawl has gradually made a soiled streak against
the plastered wall. The mark is clean-out, proving that there is no fringe
on die shawl. Now, was there ever a case where a middle-aged woman,

THE SLEUTHS 823

wearing a shawl, boarded a Harlem train without there being a fringe on
the shawl to catch in the gate and delay the passengers behind her? So
we eliminate Harlem.

'Therefore I conclude that Mrs. Snyder has not moved very ^far
away. On this torn piece of card you see the word 'Left/ the letter *Q'
and the number *i2/ Now, I happen to know that No. 12 Avenue C is a
first-class boarding house, far beyond your sister's means— as we suppose.
But then I find this piece of a theatre programme, crumpled into an odd
shape. What meaning does it convey? None to you, very likely, Mr.
Meeks; but it is eloquent to one whose habits and training take cognizance
of the smallest things.

"You have told me that your sister was a scrub woman. She scrubbed
the floors of offices and hallways. Let us assume that she procured such
work to perform in a theatre. Where is valuable jewellery lost the often-
est, Mr. Meeks? In the theatres, of course. Look at that piece of pro-
gramme, Mr. Meeks. Observe the round impression in it. It has been
wrapped around a ring — perhaps a ring of great value. Mrs. Snyder
found the ring while at work in the theatre. She hastily tore off a piece
of a programme, wrapped the ring carefully, and thrust it into her bosom.
The next day she disposed of it, and with her increased means, looked
about her for a more comfortable place in which to live. When I reach
thus far in the chain I see nothing impossible about No. 12 Avenue C. It
is there we will find your sister, Mr. Meeks."

Shamrock Jolnes concluded his convincing speech with the smile of a
successful artist. Meeks's admiration was too great for words. Together
they went to No. 12 Avenue C. It was an old-fashioned brownstone
house in a prosperous and respectable neighborhood.

They rang the bell, and on inquiry were told that no Mrs. Snyder was
known there, and that not within six months had a new occupant come to
the house.

When they reached the sidewalk again, Meeks examined the clues
which he had brought away from his sister's old room-

"I am no detective," he remarked to Jolnes as he raised the piece of
theatre programme to his nose, "but it seems to me that instead of a ring
having been wrapped in this paper it was one of those round peppermint
drops. And this piece with the address on it looks to me like the end of a
seat coupon — No. 12, row Q left aisle."

Shamrock Jolnes had a far-away look in his eyes.

"I think you would do well to consult Juggins," said he.

"Who is Juggins ?" asked Meeks.

"He is the leader," said Jolnes, "of a new modern school of detectives.
Their methods are different from ours, but it is said that Juggins has
solved some extremely puzzling cases. I will take you to him."

They found the greater Juggins in his office. He was a small man with

824 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

light hair, deeply absorbed in reading one of the bourgeois works of
Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The two great detectives of different schools shook hands with cere-
mony, and Meeks was introduced.

"State the facts," said Juggins, going on with his reading.

When Meeks ceased, the greater one closed his book and said :

"Do I understand that your sister is fifty-two years of age, with a large
mole on the side of her nose, and that she is a very poor widow, making a
scanty living by scrubbing, and with a very homely face and figure?"

'That describes her exactly," admitted Meeks. Juggins rose and put on
his hat.

"In fifteen minutes," he said, "I will return, bringing you her present

address."

Shamrock Jolnes turned pale, but forced a smile.

Within the specified time Juggins returned and consulted a little slip of
paper held in his hand.

"Your sister, Mary Snyder," he announced calmly, "will be found at No.
162 Chilton Street. She is living in the back hall bedroom, five flights up.
The house is only four blocks from here," he continued, addressing Meeks.
"Suppose you go and verify the statement and then return here. Mr.
Jolnes will await you, I dare say."

Meeks hurried away. In twenty minutes he was back again, with a
beaming face.

"She is there and well!" he cried. "Name your fee!"

"Two dollars," said Juggins.

When Meeks had settled his bill and departed, Shamrock Jolnes stood
with his hat in his hand before Juggins.

"If it would not be asking too much," he stammered— "if you would
favor me so far — would you object to "

"Certainly not," said Juggins, pleasantly. "I will tell you how I did it.
You remember the description of Mrs. Snyder? Did you ever know a
woman like that who wasn't paying weekly instalments on an enlarged
crayon portrait of herself? The biggest factory of that kind in the country
is just around the corner, I went there and got her address off the books.
That's all."

WITCHES LOAVES

Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where
you go up three steps, and the bell tinkles when you open the door) .

Miss Martha was forty, her bank-book showed a credit of two thousand
dollars, and she possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart. Many

WITCHES' LOAVES 825

people have married whose chances to do so were much inferior to Miss
Martha's.

Two or three times a week a customer came in in whom she began to
take an interest. He was a middle-aged man, wearing spectacles and a
brown beard trimmed to a careful point.

He spoke English with a strong German accent. His clothes were worn
and darned in places, and wrinkled and baggy in others. But he looked
neat, and had very good manners.

He always bought two loaves of stale bread. Fresh bread was five cents
a loaf. Stale ones were two for five. Never did he call for anything but
stale bread.

Once Miss Martha saw a red and brown stain on his fingers. She was
sure then that he was an artist and very poor. No doubt he lived in a
garret, where he painted pictures and ate stale bread and thought of the
good things to eat in Miss Martha's bakery.

Often when Miss Martha sat down to her chops and light rolls and
jam and tea she would sigh, and wish that the gentle-mannered artist
might share her tasty meal instead of eating his dry crust in that draughty
attic. Miss Martha's heart, as you have been told, was a sympathetic one.

In order to test her theory as to his occupation, she brought from her
room one day a painting that she had bought at a sale, and set it against
the shelves behind the bread counter.

It was a Venetian scene. A splendid marble palazzo (so it said on the
picture) stood in the foreground — or rather forewater. For the rest there
were gondolas (with the lady trailing her hand in the water), clouds,
sky, and chiaroscuro in plenty. No artist could fail to notice it.

Two days afterward the customer came in.

"Two loafs of stale bread, if you blease."

"You haf here a fine bicture, madame," he said while she was wrap-
ping up the bread.

"Yes?" says Miss Martha, revelling in her own cunning. "I do so
admire art and" (no, it would not do to say "artists" thus early) "and
paintings," she substituted. "You think it is a good picture?5'

"Der balace," said the customer, "is not in good drawing. Der bair-
spective of it is not true. Goot morning, madame."

He took his bread, bowed, and hurried out.

Yes, he must be an artist. Miss Martha took the picture back to her
room.

How gentle and kindly his eyes shone behind his spectacles! What a
broad brow he had! To be able to judge perspective at a glance — and to
live on stale bread! But genius often has to struggle before it is recog-
nized.

What a thing it would be for art and perspective if genius were backed

826 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

by two thousand dollars in bank, a bakery, and a sympathetic heart to

But these were day-dreams, Miss Martha.

Often now when he came he would chat for a while across the show-
case. He seemed to crave Miss Martha's cheerful words.

He kept on buying stale bread. Never a cake, never a pie, never one of
her delicious Sally Lunns.

She thought he began to look thinner and discouraged. Her heart
ached to add something good to eat to his meagre purchase, but her
courage failed at the act. She did not dare affront him. She knew the
pride of artists.

Miss Martha took to wearing her blue-dotted silk waist behind the
counter. In the back room she cooked a mysterious compound of quince
seeds and borax. Ever so many people use it for the complexion.

One day the customer came in as usual, laid his nickel on the showcase,
and called for his stale loaves. While Miss Martha was reaching for
them there was a great tooting and clanging, and a fire-engine came
lumbering past.

The customer hurried to the door to look, as any one will. Suddenly
inspired, Miss Martha seized the opportunity.

On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pound of fresh butter
that the dairyman had left ten minutes before. With bread knife Miss
Martha made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves, inserted a generous
quantity of butter, and pressed the loaves tight again.

When the customer turned once more she was tying the paper around
them.

When he had gone, after an unusually pleasant little chat, Miss Martha
smiled to herself, but not without a slight fluttering of the heart.

Had she been too bold? Would he take offense? But surely not. There
was no language of edibles. Butter was no emblem of unmaidenly for-
wardness.

For a long time that day her mind dwelt on the subject. She imagined
the scene when he should discover her little deception.

He would lay down his brushes and palette. There would stand his
easel with the picture he was painting in which the perspective was be-
yond criticism.

He would prepare for his luncheon of dry bread and water. He would
slice into a loaf — ah!

Miss Martha blushed. Would he think of the hand that placed it
there as he ate? Would he

The front door bell jangled viciously. Somebody was coming in,
making a great deal of noise.

Miss Martha hurried to the front. Two men were there. One was a
young man smoking a pipe — a man she had never seen before. The other
was her artist

THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES 827

His face was very red, his hat was on the back of his head, his hair was
wildly rumpled. He clinched his two fists and shook them ferociously
at Miss Martha. At Miss Martha.

"Ditmmkopj!" he shouted with extreme loudness; and then "Tausen*
donfer!" or something like it in German.

The young man tried to draw him away.

"I vill not go," he said angrily, "else I shall told her."

He made a bass drum of Miss Martha's counter.

"You haf shpoilt me," he cried, his blue eyes blazing behind his spec-
tacles. "I vill tell you. You vas von mcddlingsome old call"

Miss Martha leaned weakly against the shelves and laid one hand on
her blue-dotted silk waist. The young man took the other by the collar.

"Come on," he said, "you've said enough." He dragged the angry one
out of the door to the sidewalk, and then came back.

"Guess you ought to be told, ma'am," he said, "what the row is about.
That's Blumberger. He's an architectural draftsman. I work in the same
office with him.

"He's been working hard for three months drawing a plan for a new
city hall. It was a prize competition. He finished inking the lines yester-
day. You know, a draftsman always makes his drawing in pencil first
When it's done he rubs out the pencil lines with handfuls of stale bread
crumbs. That's better than India rubber.

"Blumberger's been buying the bread here. Well, to-day—well, you
know, ma'am, that butter isn't— well, Blumberger's plan isn't good for
anything now except to cut up into railroad sandwiches."

Miss Martha went into the back room. She took off the blue-dotted silk
waist and put on the old brown serge she used to wear. Then she poured
the quince seed and borax mixture out of the window into the ash can.

THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES

Said Mr. Kipling, "The cities are full of pride, challenging each to each."
Even so.

New York was empty. Two hundred thousand of its people were away
for the summer. Three million eight hundred thousand remained as care-
takers and to pay the bills of the absentees. But the two hundred thousand
are an expensive lot.

The New Yorker sat at a roof-garden table, ingesting solace through a
straw. His panama lay upon a chair. The July audience was scattered
among vacant seats as widely as out-fielders when the champion batter
steps to the plate. Vaudeville happened at intervals. The breeze was cool
from the bay; around and above— everywhere except on the stage— were

828 BOOK vii SIXES AND SEVENS

stars. Glimpses were to be had of waiters, always disappearing, like
startled chamois. Prudent visitors who had ordered refreshments by
'phone in the morning were now being served. The New Yorker was
aware of certain drawbacks to his comfort, but content beamed softly
from his rimless eye-glasses. His family was out of town. The drinks
were warm; the ballet was suffering from lack of both tune and talcum
— but his family would not return until September.

Then up into the garden stumbled the man from Topaz City, Nevada.
The gloom of the solitary sight-seer enwrapped him. Bereft of joy through
loneliness, he stalked with a widower's face through the halls of pleasure.
Thirst for human companionship possessed him as he panted in the
metropolitan draught. Straight to the New Yorker's table he steered.

The New Yorker, disarmed and made reckless by the lawless atmos-
phere of a roof garden, decided upon utter abandonment of his life's
traditions. He resolved to shatter with one rash, dare-devil, impulsive,
harebrained act the conventions that had hitherto been woven into his
existence. Carrying out this radical and precipitous inspiration he nodded
slightly to the stranger as he drew nearer the table.

The next moment found the man from Topaz City in the list of the
New Yorker's closest friends. He took a chair at the table, he gathered
two others for his feet, he tossed his broad-brimmed hat upon a fourth,
and told his life's history to his new-found pard.

The New Yorker warmed a little, as an apartment-house furnace warms
when the strawberry season begins. A waiter who came within hail in an
unguarded moment was captured and paroled on an errand to the Doctor
Wily experimental station. The ballet was now in the midst of a musical
vagary, and danced upon the stage programmed as Bolivian peasants,
clothed in some portions of its anatomy as Norwegian fisher maidens, in
others as ladies-in-waiting of Marie Antoinette, historically denuded in
other portions so as to represent sea nymphs, and presenting the tout en-
semble of a social club of Central Park West housemaids at a fish fry.

"Been in the city long?" inquired the New Yorker, getting ready the
exact tip against the waiter's coming with large change from the bill.

"Me?M said the man from Topaz City. "Four days. Never in Topaz
City, was you?"

"I!n said the New Yorker, "I was never farther west than Eighth
Avenue. I had a brother who died on Ninth, but I met the cortege at
Eighth. There was a bunch of violets on the hearse, and the undertaker
mentioned the incident to avoid mistake. I cannot say that I am familiar
with the West"

"Topaz City,*1 said the man who occupied four chairs, "is one of the
finest towns in the world."

"I presume that you have seen the sights of the metropolis," said the
New Yorker. "Four days is not a sufficient length of time in which to view

THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES 829

even our most salient points o£ interest, but one can possibly form a
general impression. Our architectural supremacy is what generally strikes
visitors to our city most forcibly. Of course you have seen our Flatiron
Building. It is considered "

"Saw it," said the man from Topaz City. "But you ought to come out
our way. It's mountainous, you know, and the ladies all wear short skirts
for climbing and "

"Excuse me," said the New Yorker, "but that isn't exactly the point.
New York must be a wonderful revelation to a visitor from the West.
Now, as to our hotels "

"Say," said the man from Topaz City, "that reminds me— there were
sixteen stage robbers shot last year within twenty miles of "

"I was speaking of hotels," said the New Yorker. "We lead Europe in
that respect. And as far as our leisure class is concerned we are far "

"Oh, I don't know," interrupted the man from Topaz City. "There
were twelve tramps in our jail when I left home. I guess New York isn't

"Beg pardon, you seem to misapprehend the idea. Of course, you
visited the Stock Exchange and Wall Street, where the "

"Oh, yes," said the man from Topaz City, as he lighted a Pennsylvania
stogie, "and I want to tell you that we've got the finest town marshal west
of the Rockies. Bill Rainer he took in five pickpockets out of the crowd
when Red Nose Thompson laid the corner-stone of his new saloon. To-
paz City don't allow "

"Have another Rhine wine and seltzer," suggested the New Yorker.
Tve never been West, as I said; but there can't be any place out there to
compare with New York. As to the claims of Chicago I "

"One man," said the Topazite— "one man only has been murdered and
robbed in Topaz City in the last three "

"Oh, I know what Chicago is," interposed the New Yorker, "Have jou
been up Fifth Avenue to see the magnificent residences of our mil "

"Seen 'em all. You ought to know Reub Stegall, the assessor of Topaz.
When old man Tilbury, that owns the only two-story house in town, tried
to swear his taxes from $6,000 down to $450.75, Reub buckled on his
forty-five and went down to see "

"Yes, yes, but speaking of our great city— one of its greatest features
is our superb police department. There is no body t>f men in the
world that can equal it for "

'That waiter gets around like a Langley flying machine/* remarked
the man from Topaz City, thirstily. "We've got men in our town, too,
worth $400,000. There's old Bill Withers and Colonel Metcalf and "

"Have you seen Broadway at night?" asked the New Yorker, courte-
ously. "There are few streets in the world that can compare with it. When
the electrics are shining and the pavements are alive with two hurrying

830 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

streams of elegantly clothed men and beautiful women attired in the
costliest costumes that wind in and out in a close maze of expensively "

"Never knew but one case in Topaz City," said the man from the West.
"Jim Bailey, our mayor, had his watch and chain and $235 in cash taken
from his pocket while "

"That's another matter," said the New Yorker. "While you are in our
city you should avail yourself of every opportunity to see its wonders. Our
rapid transit system "

"If you was out in Topaz,'* broke in the man from there, "I could show
you a whole cemetery full of people that got killed accidentally. Talking
about mangling folks up! why* when Berry Rogers turned loose that old
double-barrelled shot-gun of his loaded with slugs at anybody "

"Here, waiter!" called the New Yorker. "Two more of the same. It is
acknowledged by every one that our city is the centre of art, and litera-
ture, and learning. Take, for instance, our after-dinner speakers. Where
else in the country would you find such wit and eloquence as emanate
from Depew and Ford, and "

"If you take the papers," interrupted the Westerner, "you must have
read of Pete Webster's daughter. The Websters live two blocks north
of the courthouse in Topaz City. Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days
and nights without waking up. The doctors said that "

"Pass the matches, please," said the New Yorker. "Have you observed
the expedition with which new buildings are being run up in New York?
Improved inventions in steel framework and "

**I noticed," said the Nevadian, "that the statistics of Topaz City showed
only one carpenter crushed by falling timbers last year and he was caught
in a cyclone."

"They abuse our sky line," continued the New Yorker, "and it is likely
that we are not yet artistic in the construction of our buildings. But I can
safely assert that we lead in pictorial and decorative art. In some of our
houses can be found masterpieces in the way of paintings and sculpture.
One who has the entree to our best galleries will find-- — "

"Back up,** exclaimed the man from Topaz City. "There was a game
last month in our town in which $90,000 changed hands on a pair of "

"Ta-romt-tara!" went the orchestra. The stage curtain, blushing pink at
the name "Asbestos" inscribed upon it, came down with a slow mid-
summer movement The audience trickled leisurely down the elevator
and stairs.

On the sidewalk below, the New Yorker and the man from Topaz City
shook hands with alcoholic gravity. The elevated crashed raucously, sur-
face cars hummed and clanged, cabmen swore, newsboys shrieked, wheels
clattered ear-piercingly. The New Yorker conceived a happy thought,
with which Ee aspired to clinch the pre-eminence of his city.

HOLDING UP A TRAIN 83!

"You must admit/5 said he, "that in the way of noise New York is far
ahead of any other "

"Back to the everglades!" said the man from Topaz City. "In 1900,
when Sousa's band and the repeating candidate were in our town you
couldn't "

The rattle of an express wagon drowned the rest of the words.

HOLDING UP A TRAIN

NOTE. The man who told me these things was for several years an out-
law in the Southwest and a follower of the pursuit he so frankly de-
scribes. His description of the modus operandi should prove interesting,
his counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future "hold-up,"
while his estimate of the pleasures of train robbing will hardly induce
any one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in almost exactly his
own words, o. H.

Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a
train would be a hard job. Well, it isn't; it's easy. I have contributed some
to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies, and
the most trouble I ever had about a hold-up was in being swindled by
unscrupulous people while spending the money I got. The danger wasn't
anything to speak of, and we didn't mind the trouble.

One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have
succeeded a few times; three can do it if they are hustlers, but five is
about the right number. The time to do it and the place depend upon
several things.

The first "stick-up" I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way
I got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business.
Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone
wrong. The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man
and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire
fences and "nesters" made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth.

Jim S- and I were working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The

nesters had the cowman on the go. They had taken up the land and
elected officers who were hard to get along with. Jim and I rode into La
Junta one day, going south from a round-up. We were having a little
fun without malice toward anybody when a farmer administration cut in
and tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputy marshal, and I kind of cor-
roborated his side of the argument. We skirmished up and down the
main street, the boomers having bad luck all the time. After a while we

832 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down on the Ceriso. We were
riding a couple of horses that couldn't fly, but they could catch birds.

A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the
ranch and wanted us to go back with them. Naturally, we declined. We
had the house on them, and before we were done refusing, that old 'dobe
was plumb full of lead. When dark came we fagged 'em a batch of
bullets and shoved out the back door for the rocks. They sure smoked
us as we went. We had to drift, which we did, and rounded up down in
Oklahoma.

Well, there wasn't anything we could get there, and, being mighty
hard up, we decided to transact a little business with the railroads. Jim
and I joined forces with Tom and Ike Moore — two brothers who had
plenty of sand they were willing to convert into dust. I can call their
names, for both of them are dead. Tom was shot while robbing a bank
in Arkansas; Ike was killed during the more dangerous pastime of at-
tending a dance in the Creek Nation.

We selected a place on the Santa Fe where there was a bridge across
a deep creek surrounded by heavy timber. All passenger trains took
water at the tank close to one end of the bridge. It was a quiet place, the
nearest house being five miles away. The day before it happened, we
rested our horses and "made medicine" as to how we should get about
it. Our plans were not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever engaged
in a hold-up before.

The Santa Fe flyer was due at the tank at n :i$ P.M. At eleven, Tom
and I lay down on one side of the track, and Jim and Ike took the other.
As the train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the track and the
steam hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over, I would have
worked a whole year on the ranch for nothing to have been out of that
affair right then. Some of the nerviest men in the business have told me
that they felt the same way the first time.

The engine had hardly stopped when I jumped on the running-board
on one side, while Jim mounted the other. As soon as the engineer and
fireman saw our guns they threw up their hands without being told, and
begged us iK>t to shoot, saying they would do anything we wanted them to,

"Hit the ground," I ordered, and they both jumped off. We drove them
before us down the sick of the train. While this was happening, Tom and
Ike had been blazing away, one on each side of the train, yelling like
Apaches, so as to keep the passengers herded in the cars. Some fellow
stuck a little twenty-two calibre out one of the coach windows and fired
it straight up in the air* I let drive and smashed the glass just over his
head. That settled everything like resistance from that direction.

By this time all my nervousness was gone. I felt a kind of pleasant
excitement as if I were at a dance or a frolic of some sort. The lights
were all out in the coaches, and, as Tom and Ike gradually quit firing

HOLDING UP A TRAIN 833

and yelling, it got to be almost as still as a graveyard. I remember hearing
a little bird chirping in a bush at the side of the track, as if it were com-
plaining at being waked up.

I made the fireman get a lantern, and then I went to the express car
and yelled to the messenger to open up or get perforated. He slid the door
open and stood in it with his hands up. "JumP overboard, son," I said,
and he hit the dirt like a lump of lead. There were two safes in the car — a
big one and a little one. By the way, I first located the messenger's arsenal
— a double-barrelled shot-gun with buckshot cartridges and a thirty-eight
in a drawer. I drew the cartridges from the shot-gun, pocketed the pistol,
and called the messenger inside. I shoved my gun against his nose and put
him to work. He couldn't open the big one, but he did the little one.
There was only nine hundred dollars in it. That was mighty small win-
nings for our trouble, so we decided to go through the passengers. We
took our prisoners to the smoking-car, and from there sent the engineer
through the train to light up the coaches. Beginning with the first one, we
placed a man at each door and ordered the passengers to stand between
the seats with their hands up.

If you want to find out what cowards the majority of men are, all you
have to do is rob a passenger train. I don't mean because they don't resist
— I'll tell you later on why they can't do that— but it makes a man feel
sorry for them the way they lose their heads. Big, burly drummers and
farmers and ex-soldiers and high-collared dudes and sports that, a few
moments before, were filling the car with noise and bragging, get so
scared that their ears flop.

There were very few people in the day coaches at that time of night, so
we made a slim haul until we got to the sleeper. The Pullman conductor
met me at one door while Jim was going round to the other one. He very
politely informed me that I could not go into that car, as it did not be-
long to the railroad company, and, besides, the passengers had already
been greatly disturbed by the shouting and firing. Never in all my life
have I met with a finer instance of official dignity and reliance upon the
power of Mr. Pullman's great name. I jabbed my six-shooter so hard
against Mr. Conductor's front that I afterward found one of his vest
buttons so firmly wedged in the end of the barrel that I had to shoot it out.
He just shut up like a weak-springed knife and rolled down the car steps.

I opened the door of the sleeper and stepped inside. A big, fat old man
came wabbling up to me, puffing and blowing. He had one coat-sleeve
on and was trying to put his vest on over that I don't know who he
thought I was.

"Young man, young man," says he, "you must keep cool and not get
excited. Above everything, keep cooL"

"I can't," says I. "Excitements just eating me up." And then I let out
a yell and turned loose my forty-five through the skylight.

834 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

That old man tried to dive into one of the lower berths, but a screech
carne out of it, and a bare foot that took him in the bread-basket and
landed him on the floor. I saw Jim coming in the other door, and I hol-
lered for everybody to climb out and line up.

They commenced to scramble down, and for a while we had a three-
ringed circus. The men looked as frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits
in a deep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit of
clothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of the aisle,
looking as if he were working a hard sum in arithmetic. He was trying,
very solemn, to pull a lady's number two shoe on a number nine foot.

The ladies didn't stop to dress. They were so curious to see a real, live
train robber, bless 'em, that they just wrapped blankets and sheets around
themselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking. They always
show more curiosity and sand than the men do.

We got them all lined up and pretty quiet, and I went through the
bunch, I found very little on them — I mean in the way of valuables. One
man in the line was a sight. He was one of those big, overgrown, solemn
snoozers that sit on the platform at lectures and look wise. Before crawl-
ing out he had managed to put on his long, frocktailed coat and his high
silk hat. The rest of him was nothing but pajamas and bunions. When I
dug into that Prince Albert, I expected to drag out at least a block of gold
mine stock or an armful of Government bonds, but all I found was a little
boy's French harp about four inches long. What it was there for, I don't
know. I felt a little mad because he had fooled me so. I stuck the harp up
against his mouth.

"If you can't pay — play," I says.

"I can't play," says he.

"Then learn right off quick," says I, letting him smell the end of my
gun-barrel

He caught hold of the harp, turned red as a beet, and commenced to
blow. He blew a dinky little tune I remembered hearing when I was a
kid:

Prettiest little gal in the country — oh!
Mammy and Daddy told me so.

I made him keep on playing it all the time we were in the car. Now
and then he'd get weak and off the key, and I'd turn my gun on him and
ask what was the matter with that little gal, and whether he had any
intention of going back on her, which would make him start up again
like sixty. I think that old boy standing there in his silk hat and bare feet,
playing his little French harp, was the funniest sight I ever saw. One little
red-headed woman in the line broke out laughing at him. You could have
heard her in the next car.

Then Jim held them steady while I searched the berths. I grappled

HOLDING UP A TRAIN 835

around in those beds and filled a pillow-case with the strangest assort-
ment of stuff you ever saw. Now and then I'd come across a little pop-gun
pistol, just about right for plugging teeth with, which I'd throw out the
window. When I finished with the collection, I dumped the pillow-case
load in the middle of the aisle. There were a good many watches, brace-
lets, rings and pocket-books, with a sprinkling of false teeth, whiskey
flasks, face-powder boxes, chocolate caramels, and heads of hair of various
colors and lengths. There were also about a dozen ladies* stockings into
which jewelry, watches, and rolls of bills had been stuffed and then
wadded up tight and stuck under the mattresses. I offered to return what
I called the "scalps," saying that we were not Indians on the warpath,
but none of the ladies seemed to know to whom the hair belonged.

One of the women — and a good-looker she was — wrapped in a striped
blanket saw me pick up one of the stockings that was pretty chunky and
heavy about the toe and she snapped out:

"That's mine, sir. You're not in the business of robbing women, are
you?"

Now, as this was our first hold-up, we hadn't agreed upon any code of
ethics, so I hardly knew what to answer. But, anyway, I replied: "Well,
not as a specialty. If this contains your personal property you can have
it back."

"It just does," she declared eagerly, and reached out her hand for it.

"You'll excuse my taking a look at the contents," I said, holding the
stocking up by the toe. Out dumped a big gent's gold watch, worth two
hundred, a gent's leather pocket-book, that we afterward found to contain
six hundred dollars, a 32-calibre revolver and the only thing of the lot
that could have been a lady's personal property was a silver bracelet
worth about fifty cents.

I said: "Madame, here's your property," and handed her the bracelet
"Now," I went on, "how can you expect us to act square with you when
you try to deceive us in this manner? Fm surprised at such conduct."

The young woman flushed up as if she had been caught doing some-
thing dishonest. Some other woman down the line called out: "The mean
thing!" I never knew whether she meant the other lady or me.

When we finished our job we ordered everybody back to bed, told 'em
good-night very politely at the door, and left. We rode forty miles before
daylight and then divided the stuff. Each one of us got $1,552.85 in money.
We lumped the jewelry around. Then we scattered, each man for himself.

That was my first train robbery, and it was about as easily done as any
of the ones that followed. But that was the last and only time I ever went
through the passengers, I don't like that part of the business. Afterward I
stuck strictly to the express car. During the next eight years I handled a
good deal of money.

The best haul I made was jusf seven years after the first one. We found

836 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

out about a train that was going to bring out a lot of money to pay off
the soldiers at a government post. We stuck that train up in broad day-
light. Five of us lay in the sandhills near a little station. Ten soldiers
were guarding the money on the train, but they might just as well have
been at home on a furlough. We didn't even allow them to stick their
heads out the windows to see the fun. We had no trouble at all in getting
the money, which was all in gold. Of course, a big howl was raised at the
time about the robbery. It was government stuff, and the Government
got sarcastic and wanted to know what the convoy of soldiers went along
for. The only excuse given was that nobody was expecting an attack
among those bare sandhills in daytime. I don't know what the Govern-
ment thought about the excuse, but I know that it was a good one. The
surprise — that is the keynote of the train-robbing business. The papers
published all kinds of stories about the loss, finally agreeing that it was
between nine thousand and ten thousand dollars. The Government
sawed wood. Here are the correct figures, printed for the first time — forty-
eight thousand dollars. If anybody will take the trouble to look over
Uncle Sam's private accounts for that little debit to profit and loss, he will
find that I am right to a cent.

But that time we were expert enough to know what to do. We rode
due west twenty miles, making a trail that a Broadway policeman could
have followed, and then we doubled back, hiding our tracks. On the
second night after the hold-up, while posses were scouring the country in
every direction, Jim and I were eating supper in the second story of a
friend's house in the town where the alarm started from. Our friend
pointed out to us, in an office across the street, a printing press at work
striking off handbills offering a reward for our capture.

I have been asked what we do with the money we get. Well, I never
could account for a tenth part of it after it was spent. It goes fast and
freely. An outlaw has to have a good many friends. A highly respected
citizen may, and often does, get along with very few, but a man on the
dodge has got to have "sidekickers." With angry posses and reward-
hungry officers cutting out a hot trail for him, he must have a few places
scattered about the country where he can stop and feed himself and his
horse and get a few hours' sleep without having to keep both eyes open.
When he makes a haul he feels like dropping some of the coin with these
friends, and he docs it liberally. Sometimes I have, at the end of a hasty
visit at one of these havens of refuge, flung a handful of gold and bills
into the laps of the kids playing on the floor, without knowing whether
my contribution was a hundred dollars or a thousand,

When old-timers make a big haul they generally go far away to one of
the big cities to spend their money. Green hands, however successful a
hold-up they make, nearly always give themselves away by showing too
much money near the place where they got it.

HOLDING UP A TRAIN 837

I was in a job in '94 where we got twenty thousand dollars. We fol-
lowed our favorite plan for a get-away—that is, doubled on our trail— and
laid low for a time near the scene of the train's bad luck. One morning I
picked up a newspaper and read an article with big headlines stating that
the marshal, with eight deputies and a posse of thirty armed citizens, had
the train robbers surrounded in a mesquite thicket on the Cimarron, and
that it was a question of only a few hours when they would be dead men
or prisoners. While I was reading that article I was sitting at breakfast in
one of the most elegant private residences in Washington City, with a
flunky in knee pants standing behind my chair. Jim was sitting across the
table talking to his half -uncle, a retired naval officer, whose name you
have often seen in the accounts of doings in the capital. We had gone
there and brought rattling outfits of good clothes, and were resting from
our labors among the nabobs. We must have been killed in that mesquite
thicket for I can make an affidavit that we didn't surrender.

Now I propose to tell why it is easy to hold up a train, and, then why
no one should ever do it.

In the first place, the attacking party has all the advantage. That is, of
course, supposing that they are old-timers with the necessary experience
and courage. They have the outside and are protected by the darkness,
while the others are in the light, hemmed into a small space, and exposed,
the moment they show a head at a window or door, to the aim of a man
who is a dead shot and who won't hesitate to shoot.

But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy
is the element of surprise in connection with the imagination of the pas-
sengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you will
understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed. That
horse gets the awfulest imagination on him in the world. You can't
coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks as big to
him as the Mississippi River. That's just the way with the passenger. He
thinks there are a hundred men yelling and shooting outside, when maybe
there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a forty-five looks like the
entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all right, although he may do mean
little tricks, like hiding a wad of money in his shoe and forgetting to
dig-up until you jostle his ribs some with the end of your six-shooter; but
there's no harm in him.

As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than
if they had been so many sleep. I don't mean that they are cowards; I
mean that they have got sense. They know they're not up against a bluff.
It's the same way with the officers. Fve seen secret service men, marshals,
and railroad detectives fork over their change as meek as Moses. I saw
one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and
dig up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He wasn't afraid; he
simply knew that we had the drop on the whole outfit Besides, many of

030 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

those officers have families and they feel that they oughtn't to take
chances; whereas death has no terrors for the man who holds up a train.
He expects to get killed some day, and he generally does. My advice to
you, if you should ever be in a hold-up, is to line up with the cowards and
save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.
Another reason why officers are backward about mixing things with a
train robber is a financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and some-
body gets killed, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away
they swear out a warrant against John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of
miles and sign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives^ and
the Government foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of
mileage rather than courage.

I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is
the best card in playing for a hold-up.

Along in '92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers
down in the Cherokee Nation. Those were their lucky days, and they got
so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce beforehand what job
they were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going
to hold up the M K. & T. flyer on a certain night at the station of Pryor
Creek, in Indian Territory.

That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Mus-
cogee and put them on the train. Besides them they had fifty armed men
hid in the depot at Pryor Creek.

When the Katy Flyer pulled in not a Dalton showed up. The next
station was Adair, six miles away. When the train reached there, and the
deputies were having a good time explaining what they would have done
to the Dalton gang if they had turned up, all at once it sounded like an
army firing outside. The conductor and brakeman came running into the
car yelling, "Train robbers!"

Some of those deputies lit out of the door, hit the ground, and kept
on running. Some of them hid their Winchesters under the seats. Two of
them made a fight and were both killed.

It took the Daltons just ten minutes to capture the train and whip the
escort. In twenty minutes more they robbed the express car of twenty-
seven thousand dollars and made a clean get-away.

My opinion is that those deputies would have put up a stiff fight at
Pryor Creek, where they were expecting trouble, but they were taken by
surprise and "locoed" at Adair, just as the Daltons, who knew their busi-
ness, expected they would.

I don't think I ought to close without giving some deductions from my
experience of eight years "on the dodge." It doesn't pav to r^b trains.
Leaving out the question of right and morals, which I don't think I
ought to tackle, there is very little envy in the life of an outlaw. After a
wlrik money ceases to have any value in his eyes. He gets to looking upon

ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN 839

the railroads and express companies as his bankers, and his six-shooters
as a cheque book good for any amount. He throws away money right and
left. Most of the time he is on the jump, riding day and night, and he
lives so hard between times that he doesn't enjoy the taste of high life
when he gets it. He knows that his time is bound to come to lose his life
or liberty, and that the accuracy of his aim, the speed of his horse, and the
fidelity of his "sider," are all that postpone the inevitable.

It isn't that he loses any sleep over danger from the officers of the law.
In all my experience I never knew officers to attack a band of outlaws
unless they out-numbered them at least three to one.

But the outlaw carries one thought constantly in his mind — and that is
what makes him so sore against life, more than anything else — he knows
where the marshals get their recruits of deputies. He knows that the
majority of these upholders of the law were once law-breakers, horse
thieves, rustlers, highwaymen, and outlaws like himself, and that they
gained their positions, and immunity by turning state's evidence, by turn-
ing traitor and delivering up their comrades to imprisonment and death.
He knows that some day— unless he is shot first—his Judas will set to
work, the trap will be laid, and he will be the surprised instead of a sur-
priser at a stick-up.

That is why the man who holds up trains picks his company with a
thousand times the care with which a careful girl chooses a sweetheart.
That is why he raises himself from his blankets of nights and listens to
the tread of every horse's hoofs on the distant road. That is why he
broods suspiciously for days upon a jesting remark or an unusual move-
ment of a tired comrade, or the broken mutterings of his closest friend,
sleeping by his side.

And it is one of the reasons why the train-robbing profession is not so
pleasant a one as either of its collateral branches— politics or corner-
ing the market.

ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN

Do you know the time of the dogmen?

When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn
lines of the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the
inost melancholy sights o£ urban life.

Out from the towering flat crags and apartment peaks of the cliff
dwellers of New York steals an army of beings that were once men. Even
yet they go upright upon two limbs and retain human form and speech;
but you will observe that they are behind animals in progress. Each of
these beings follows a dog, to which he is fastened by an artificial ligament.

840 BOOK VII SIXESANDSEVENS

These men are all victims to Circe. Not willingly do they become
flunkeys to Fido, bell boys to bull terriers, and toddlers after Towzer.
Modern Circe, instead of turning them into animals, has kindly left the
difference of a six-foot leash between them. Every one of those dogmen
has been either cajoled, bribed, or commanded by his own particular Circe
to take the dear Household pet out for an airing.

By their faces and manner you can tell that the dogmen are bound in
a hopeless enchantment. Never will there come even a dog-catcher
Ulysses to remove the spell.

The faces of some are stonily set. They are past the commiseration, the
curiosity, or the jeers of their fellow-beings. Years of matrimony, of con-
tinuous compulsory canine constitutionals, have made them callous. They
unwind their beasts from lamp posts, or the ensnared legs of profane
pedestrians, with the stolidity of mandarins manipulating the strings of
their kites.

Others, more recently reduced to the ranks of Rover's retinue, take
their medicine sulkily and fiercely. They play the dog on the end of their
line with the pleasure felt by the girl out fishing when she catches a sea-
robin on her hook. They glare at you threateningly if you look at them,
as if it would be their delight to let slip the dogs of war. These are half-
mutinous dogmen, not quite Circe-ized, and you will do well not to kick
their charges, should they sniff around your ankles.

Others of the tribe do not seem to feel so keenly. They are mostly un-
fresh youths, with gold caps and drooping cigarettes, who do not har-
monize with their dogs. The animals they attend wear satin bows in their
collars; and the young men steer them so assiduously that you are
tempted to the theory that some personal advantage, contingent upon
satisfactory service, waits upon the execution of their duties.

The dogs thus personally conducted are of many varieties; but they are
one in fatness, in pampered, diseased vileness of temper, in insolent,
snarling capriciousness of behavior. They tug at the leash fractiously, they
make leisurely nasal inventory of every door step, railing, and post. They
sit down to rest when they choose; they wheeze like the winner of a
Third Avenue beefsteak-eating contest; they blunder clumsily into open
cellars and coal holes; they lead the dogmen a merry dance.

These unfortunate dry nurses of dogdom, the cur cuddlers, mongrel
managers, Spitz stalkers, poodle pullers. Skye scrapers, dachshund dan-
diem, terrier trailers, and Pomeranian pushers of the cliff-dwelling Circes
follow their charges meekly. The doggies neither fear nor respect them.
Masters of the house these men whom they hold in leash may be, but they
are not masters of them. From cosy corner to fire escape, from divan to
dumbwaiter, doggy's snarl easily drives this two-legged being who is
commissioned to walk at the other end of his string during his outing,

One twilight the dogmen came forth as usual at their Circes* pleading,

ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN 84!

guerdon, or crack of the whip. One among them was a strong man, ap-
parently of too solid virtues for this airy vocation. His expression was
melancholic, his manner depressed. He was leashed to a vile white dog,
loathsomely fat, fiendishly ill-natured, gloatingly intractable toward his
despised conductor.

At a corner nearest to his apartment house the dogman turned down a
side street, hoping for fewer witnesses to his ignominy. The surfeited
beast waddled before him, panting with spleen and the labor of motion.

Suddenly the dog stopped. A tall, brown, long-coated, wide-brimmed
man stood like a Colossus blocking the sidewalk and declaring:

"Well, I'm a son of a gun!"

"Jim Berry!'* breathed the dogman, with exclamation points in his voice.

"Sam Telfair," cried Wide-Brim again, "you ding-blasted old willy
walloo, give us your hoof!"

Their hands clasped in the brief, tight greeting of the West that is
death to the handshake microbe.

"You old fat rascal!" continued Wide-Brim, with a wrinkled brown
smile; "it's been five years since I seen you. I been in this town a week,
but you can't find nobody in such a place. Well, you dinged old married
man, how are they coming?5*

Something mushy and heavily soft like raised dough leaned against
Jim's leg and chewed his trousers with a yeasty growl.

"Get to work,'* said Jim, "and explain this yard-wide hydrophobia
yearling you've throwed your lasso over. Are you the pound-master of
this burg? Do you call that a dog or what?"

"I need a drink," said the dogman, dejected at the reminder of his old
dog of the sea. "Come on."

Hard by was a cafe. Tis ever so in the big city.

They sat at a table, and the bloated monster yelped and scrambled at
the end of his leash to get at the cafe cat

"Whiskey," said Jim to the waiter.

"Make it two/' said the dogman,

"You're fatter," said Jim, "and you look subjugated. I don't know about
the East agreeing with you. All the boys asked me to hunt you up when
I started. Sandy King, he went to the Klondike. Watson Burrel, he mar-
ried the oldest Peters girl. I made some money buying beeves, and I
bought a lot of wild land up on the Little Powder. Going to fence next
fall. Bill RawKns, he's gone to farming. You remember Bill, of course-
he was courting Marcella — excuse me, Sam — I mean the lady you mar-
ried, while she was teaching school at Prairie View. But you was the
lucky man. How is Missis Telfair ?"

^S-h-h-h!** said the dogman, signalling the waiter; "give it a name,**

"Whiskey," said Jim.

wMake it two/5 said the dogman.

842 BOOK. VII SIXES ANI> SEVENS

"She's well," he continued, after his chaser. "She refused to live any-
where but in New York, where she came from. We live in a flat. Every
evening at six I take that dog out for a walk. It's Marcella's pet. There
never were two animals on earth, Jim, that hated one another like me and
that dog does. His name's Lovekins. Marcella dresses for dinner while
we're out We eat tabble dote. Ever try one of them, Jim?"

"No, I never," said Jim. "I seen the signs, but I thought they said 'table
de hole.' I thought it was French for pool tables. How does it taste?"

"If you're going to be in the city for awhile we will "

"No, sir-ee. I'm starting for home this evening on the 7:25. Like to stay
longer, but I can't."

"I'll walk down to the ferry with you," said the dogman.

The dog had bound a leg each of Jim and the chair together, and had
sunk into a comatose slumber. Jim stumbled, and the leash was slightly
wrenched. The shrieks of the awakened beast rang for a block around.

"If that's your dog," said Jim, when they were on the street again,
"what's to hinder you from running that habeas corpus youVe got around
his neck over a limb and walking off and forgetting him?'*

Td never dare to," said the dogman, awed at the bold proposition. "He
sleeps in the bed. I sleep on a lounge. He runs howling to Marcella if I
look at him. Some night, Jim, I'm going to get even with that dog. I've
made up my mind to do it. I'm going to creep over with a knife and cut
a hole in his mosquito bar so they can get in to him. See if I don't do it!"

"You ain't yourself, Sam Telfair. You ain't what you was once. I don't
know about these cities and flats over here. With my own eyes I seen you
stand off both the Tillotson boys in Prairie View with the brass faucet
out of a molasses barrel. And I seen you rope and tie the wildest steer on
Little Powder in 39 1-2."

"I did, didn't I?" said the other, with a temporary gleam in his eye.
"But that was before I was dogmatized."

"Does Missis Telfair " began Jim.

"Hush!" said the dogman. "Here's another cafe."

They lined up at the bar. The dog fell asleep at their feet.

"Whiskey," said Jim.

"Make it two," said the dogman.

"I thought about you," said Jim, "when I bought that wild land. I
wished you was out there to help me with the stock."

"Last Tuesday," said the dogman, "he bit me on the ankle because I
asked for cream in my coffee. He always gets the cream."

"You'd like Prairie View aow," said Jim. "The boys from the round-
ups for fifty miles around ride in there. One corner of my pasture is in
sixteen miles of the town. There's a straight forty miles of wire on one
side of it."

"You pass through the kitchen to get to the bedroom," said the dogman,

ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN 843

"and you pass through the parlor to get to the bathroom, and you back
out through the dining room to get into the bedroom so you can turn
around and leave by the kitchen. And he snores and barks in his sleep,
and I have to smoke in the park on account of his asthma."

"Don't Missis Telfair " began Jim.

"Oh, shut up!" said the dogman. "What is it this time?"

"Whiskey," said Jim.

"Make it two," said the dogman.

"Well, I'll be racking along down toward the ferry," said the other.

"Come on, there, you mangy, turtle-backed, snake-headed, bench-
legged, ton-and-a-half of soap-grease!" shouted the dogman, with a new
note in his voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after
them, with an angry whine at such unusual language from his guardian.

At the foot of Twenty-third Street the dogman led the way through
swinging doors.

"Last chance," said he. "Speak up."

"Whiskey," said Jim.

"Make it two," said the dogman.

"I don't know," said the ranchman, "where I'll find the man I want to
take charge of the Little Powder outfit. I want somebody I know some-
thing about. Finest stretch of prairie and timber you ever squinted your
eye over, Sam. Now if you was "

"Speaking of hydrophobia," said the dogman, "the other night he
chewed a piece out of my leg because I knocked a fly off of Marcella's
arm. *It ought to be cauterized,5 says Marcella, and I was thinking so my-
self. I telephones for the doctor, and when he comes Marcella says to me:
'Help me hold the poor dear while the doctor fixes his mouth. Oh, I hope
he got no virus on any of his toofies when he bit you.' Now what do you
think of that?"

"Does Missis Telfair " began Jim.

"Oh, drop it," said the dogman. "Come again!"

"Whiskey," said Jim.

"Make it two," said the dogman.

They walked on to the ferry. The ranchman stepped to the ticket win-
dow.

Suddenly the swift landing of three or four heavy kicks was heard, the
air was rent by piercing canine shrieks, and a pained, outraged, lubberly,
bow-legged pudding of a dog ran frenziedly up the street alone,

"Ticket to Denver," said Jim.

"Make it two," shouted the ex-dogman, reaching for his inside pocket*

BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER

If you should speak of the Kiowa Reservation to the average New
Yorker he probably wouldn't know whether you were referring to a new
political dodge at Albany or a leitmotif from "Parsifal/* But out in the
Kiowa Reservation advices have been received concerning the existence
of New York.

A party of us were on a hunting trip in the Reservation. Bud Kings-
bury, our guide, philosopher, and friend, was broiling antelope steaks in
camp one night. One of the party, a pinkish-haired young man in a cor-
rect hunting costume, sauntered over to the fire to light a cigarette, and re-
marked carelessly to Bud:

"Nice night!"

"Why, yes," said Bud, "as nice as any night could be that ain't received
the Broadway stamp of approval."

Now, the young man was from New York, but the rest of us wondered
how Bud guessed it. So, when the steaks were done, we besought him to
lay bare his system of ratiocination. And as Bud was something of a^Ter-
ritorial talking machine he made oration as follows:

"How did I know he was from New York ? Well, I figured it out as
soon as he sprung them two words on me. I was in New York myself a
couple of years ago, and I noticed some of the earmarks and hoof tracks
of the Rancho Manhattan."

"Found New York rather different from the Panhandle, didn't you,
Bud?" asked one of the hunters.

"Can't say that I did," answered Bud; "anyways, not more than some.
The main trail in that town which they call Broadway is plenty traveled,
but they're about the same brand of bipeds that tramp around in Chey-
enne and Amarillo. At first I was sort of rattled by the crowds, but I soon
says to myself, 'Here, now, Bud; they're just plain folks like you and
Geronimo and Grover Cleveland and the Watson boys, so don't get all
flustered up with consternation under your saddle blanket,' and then I
feels calm and peaceful, like I was back in the Nation again at a ghost
dance or a green corn pow-wow.

*Td been saving up for a year to give this New York a whirl. I knew
a man named Summers that lived there, but I couldn't find him; so I
played a lone hand at enjoying the intoxicating pleasures of the corn-fed
metropolis.

"For a while I was so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and the
noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads that I forgot one
of the crying needs of my Western system of natural requirements. I

THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER 845

never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of social vocal intercourse
with friends and strangers. Out in the Territories when I meet a man I
never saw before, inside of nine minutes I know his income, religion, size
of collar, and his wife's temper, and how much he pays for clothes, ali-
mony, and chewing tobacco. It's a gift with me not to be penurious with
my conversation.

"But this here New York was inaugurated on the idea of abstemious-
ness in regard to the parts of speech. At the end of three weeks nobody
in the city had fired even a blank syllable in my direction except the
waiter in the grub emporium where I fed. And as his outpourings of syn-
tax wasn't nothing but plagiarisms from the bill of fare, he never satisfied
my yearnings, which was to have somebody hit. If I stood next to a man
at a bar he'd edge off and give a Baldwin-Ziegler look as if he suspected
me of having the North Pole concealed on my person. I began to wish
that I'd gone to Abilene or Waco for my paseado; for the mayor of them
places will drink with you, and the first citizen you meet will tell you his
middle name and ask you to take a chance in a raffle for a music box.

"Well, one day when I was particular hankering for to be gregarious
with something more loquacious than a lamp post, a fellow in a caffy says
to me, says he:

"'Niceday!'

"He was a kind of a manager of the place, and I reckon he*d seen me
in there a good many times. He had a face like a fish and an eye like
Judas, but I got up and put one arm around his neck.

" Tardner,' I says, 'sure it's a nice day. You're the first gentleman in all
New York to observe that the intricacies of human speech might not be
altogether wasted on William Kingsbury. But don't you think,' says I,
'that 'twas a little cool early in the morning; and ain't there a feeling of
rain in the air tonight? But along about noon it sure was gallupsious
weather. How's all up to the house? You doing right well with the caffy,
now?'

"Well, sir, that galoot just turns his back and walks off stiff, without a
word, after all my trying to be agreeable! I didn't know what to make of
it. That night I finds a note from Summers, who'd been away from town,
giving the address of his camp. I goes up to his house and has a good,
old-time talk with his folks. And I tells Summers about the actions of this
coyote in the caffy, and desires interpretation.

" *Oh,* says Summers, 'he wasn't intending to strike up a conversation
with you. That's just the New York style. He'd seen you was a regular
customer and he spoke a word or two just to show you he appreciated
your custom. You oughtn't to have fallowed it up. That's about as far as
we care to go with a stranger. A word or so about the weather may be
ventured, but we don't generally make it the basis of an acquaintance.'

,* says I, *the weather aad its ramifications is a solemn subject

846 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

with me. Meteorology is one of my sore points. No man can open up the
question of temperature or humidity or the glad sunshine with me, and
then turn tail on it without its leading to a falling barometer. I'm going
down to see that man again and give him a lesson in the art of continuous
conversation. You say New York etiquette allows him two words and no
answer. Well, he's going to turn himself into a weather bureau and finish
what he begun with me, besides indulging in neighborly remarks on
other subjects.'

"Summers talked agin it, but I was irritated some and I went on the
street car backed to that caffy.

"The same fellow was there yet, walking round in a sort of black corral
where there was tables and chairs. A few people was sitting around hav-
ing drinks and sneering at one another,

"I called that man to one side and herded him into a corner. I unbut-
toned enough to show him a thirty-eight I carried stuck under my vest.

" Tardner,' I says, *a brief space ago I was in here and you seized the
opportunity to say it was a nice day. When I attempted to corroborate
your weather signal, you turned your back and walked off. Now,' says I,
'you frog-hearted, language-shy, stiff-necked cross between a Spitsbergen
sea cook and a muzzled oyster, you resume where you left off in your
discourse on the weather.'

"The fellow looks at me and tries to grin, but he sees I don't and he
comes around serious.

" * Well,' says he, eyeing the handle of my gun, "it was rather a nice
day; some warmish, though/

" 'Particulars, you mealy-mouthed snoozer,' I says — let's have the speci-
fications— expatiate — fill in the outlines. When you start anything with
me in shorthand it's bound to turn out a storm signal.'

" 'Looked like rain yesterday/ says the man, 'but it cleared off fine in
the forenoon. I hear the farmers are needing rain right badly up-State.'

" 'That's the kind of a canter,' says I. 'Shake the New York dust off
your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of a centaur. You broke the ice,
you know, and we're getting better acquainted every minute. Seems to
me I asked you about your family?'

** 'They're all well, thanks,' says he. 'We — we have a new piano.*

"'Now you're coming it,* I says. 'This cold reserve is breaking up at
last. That little touch about the piano almost makes us brothers. What's
the youngest kid's name?' I asks him.

** 'Thomas,' says he. 'He's just getting well from the measles.'

"'I feel like I'd known you always,' says L 'Now there was just one
more— are you doing right well with the caffy, now?'

" Tretty well,* he says* TIB putting away a little money,'

" 'Glad to hear it,' says L 'Now go back to your work and get civilized.
Keep your hands off the weather unless youVe ready to follow it up in a

MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN 847

personal manner. It's a subject that naturally belongs to sociability and
the forming of new ties, and I hate to see it handed out in small change in
a town like this/

"So the next day I rolls up my blankets and hits the trail away from
New York City."

For many minutes after Bud ceased talking we lingered around the fire,
and then all hands began to disperse for bed.

As I was unrolling my bedding I heard the pinkish-haired young man
saying to Bud, with something like anxiety in his voice:

""As I say, Mr. Kingsbury, there is something really beautiful about
this night. The delightful breeze and the bright stars and the clear air
unite in making it wonderfully attractive."

"Yes," said Bud, "it's a nice night."

MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN

The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his
time. A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking
anything else.

The house was a private residence. By its boarded front door and un-
trimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that the mistress of it was sitting
on some oceanside piazza telling a sympathetic man in a yachting cap that
no one had ever understood her sensitive, lonely heart. He knew by the
light in the third-story front windows, and by the lateness of the season,
that the master of the house had come home, and would soon extinguish
his light and retire. For it was September of the year and of the soul, in
which season the house's good man comes to consider roof gardens and
stenographers as vanities, and to desire the return of his mate and the
more durable blessings of decorum and the moral excellencies.

The burglar lighted a cigarette. The guarded glow of the match illu-
minated his salient points for a moment. He belonged to the third type of
burglars.

This third type has not yet been recognized and accepted. The police
have made us familiar with the first and second. Their classification is
simple. The collar is the distinguishing mark.

When a burglar is caught who does not wear a collar he is described
as a degenerate of the lowest type, singularly vicious and depraved, and
is suspected of being the desperate criminal who stole the handcuffs out
of Patrolman Hennessy's pocket in 1878 and walked away to escape arrest.

The other well-known type is the burglar who wears a collar. He is
always referred to as a Raffles in real life. He is invariably a gentleman by
daylight, breakfasting in a dress suit, and posing as a paperhanger, while

045 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

after dark he plies his nefarious occupation of burglary. His mother is an
extremely wealthy and respected resident of Ocean Grove, and when he
is conducted to his cell he asks at once for a nail file and the Police
Gazette. He always has a wife in every State in the Union and fiancees in
all the Territories, and the newspapers print his matrimonial gallery out
of their stock of cuts of the ladies who were cured by only one bottle after
having been given up by five doctors, experiencing great relief after the
first dose.

The burglar wore a blue sweater. He was neither a Raffles nor one of
the chefs from Hell's Kitchen. The police would have been baffled had
they attempted to classify him. They have not yet heard of the respecta-
ble, unassuming burglar who is neither above nor below his station.

This burglar of the third class began to prowl He wore no masks,
dark lanterns, or gum shoes. He carried a 38-calibre revolver in his
pockets, and he chewed peppermint gum thoughtfully.

The furniture of the house was swathed in its summer dust protectors.
The silver was far away in safe-deposit vaults. The burglar expected no
remarkable "haul." His objective point was that dimly lighted room
where the master of the house should be sleeping heavily after whatever
solace he had sought to lighten the burden of his loneliness. A "touch"
might be made there to the extent of legitimate, fair professional profits —
loose money, a watch, a jeweled stick-pin — nothing exorbitant or beyond
reason. He had seen the window left open and had taken the chance.

The burglar softly opened the door of the lighted room. The gas was
turned low. A man lay in the bed asleep. On the dresser lay many things
in confusion— a crumpled roll of bills, a watch, keys, three poker chips,
crushed cigars, a pink silk hair bow, and an unopened bottle of bromo-
seltzer for a bulwark in the morning.

The burglar took three steps toward the dresser. The man in the bed
suddenly uttered a squeaky groan and opened his eyes. His right hand
slid under his pillow, but remained there.

"Lay still,*1 said the burglar in conversational tone. Burglars of the
third type do not hiss. The citizen in the bed looked at the round end of
the burglar's pistol and lay still.

"Now hold up both your hands," commanded the burglar.

The citizen had a little^ pointed, brown-and-gray beard, like that of a
painless dentist. He looked solid, esteemed, irritable, and disgusted. He
sat up in bed and raised his right hand above his head.

"Up with the other one," ordered the burglar. "You might be am-
phibious and shoot with your left. You can count two, can't you? Hurry
up, now."

"Can't raise the other one," said the citizen with a contortion of his
lineaments.

"What's the matter with it?"

MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN 849

"Rheumatism in the shoulder."

"Inflammatory?"

"Was. The inflammation has gone down."

The burglar stood for a moment or two, holding his gun on the af-
flicted one. He glanced at the plunder on the dresser and then, with a
half-embarrassed air back at the man in the bed. Then he, too, made a
sudden grimace.

"Don't stand there making faces," snapped the citizen, bad-humored ly.
"If you've come to burgle why don't you do it? There's some stuff lying
around."

" 'Scuse me," said the burglar, with a grin; "but it just socked me one,
too. It's good for you that rheumatism and me happens to be old pals. I
got it in my left arm, too. Most anybody but me would have popped you
when you wouldn't hoist that left claw of yours."

"How long have you had it?" inquired the citizen.

"Four years. I guess that ain't all. Once you've got it, it's you for a
rheumatic life — that's my judgment."

"Ever try rattlesnake oil?" asked the citizen interestedly.

"Gallons," said the burglar. "If all the snakes I've used the oil of was
strung out in a row they'd reach eight times as far as Saturn, and the
rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back."

"Some use Chiselum's Pills," remarked the citizen.

"Fudge!" said the burglar. "Took *em five months. No good. I had
some relief the year I tried Finkelham's Extract, Balm of Gilead poultices,
and Pott's Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried in my
pocket what done the trick."

"Is yours worse in the morning or at night?" asked the citizen.

"Night," said the burglar; "just when Fm busiest. Say, take down that

arm of your— I guess you won't Say! did you ever try BlickerstafFs

Blood Builder?"

"I never did. Does yours come in paroxysms or is it a steady pain?"

The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his
crossed knee.

"It jumps,** said he. "It strikes me when I ain't looking for it, I had
to give up second-story work because I got stuck sometimes half-way up.
Tell you what-— I don't believe the bloomin' doctors know what is good
for it."

"Same here. I've spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief.
Yours swell any?"

"Of mornings. And when it's goin* to rain — great Christopher!"

"Me, too," said the citizen. UI can tell when a streak of humidity the
size of a tablecloth starts from Florida on its way to New York. And if
I pass a theatre where there's an 'East Lynne* matinee going on, the
moisture starts my left arm jumping like a toothache.**

850 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

"It's undiluted — hades!" said the burglar.

"You're dead right," said the citizen.

The burglar looked down at his pistol and thrust it into his pocket
with an awkward attempt at ease.

"Say, old man," he said, constrainedly, "ever try opodeldoc?"

"Slop!" said the citizen angrily. "Might as well rub on restaurant butter."

"Sure," concurred the burglar. "It's a salve suitable for little Minnie
when the kitty scratches her finger. I'll tell you what! We're up against
it. I only find one thing that eases her up. Hey? Little old sanitary,
ameliorating, lest-we-forget Booze. Say — this job's ofif — 'scuse me — get on
your clothes and let's go out and have some. 'Scuse the liberty, but — ouch!
There she goes again!"

"For a week," said the citizen, "I haven't been able to dress myself
without help, I'm afraid Thomas is in bed, and "

"Climb out," said the burglar, 'Til help you get into your duds."

The conventional returned as a tidal wave and flooded the citizen. He
stroked his brown-and-gray beard.

"It's very unusual " he began.

"Here's your shirt," said the burglar, "fall out. I know a man who said
Omberry's Ointment fixed him in two weeks so he could use both hands
in tying his four-in-hand."

As they were going out the door the citizen turned and started back.

"'Liked to forgot my money," he explained; "laid it on the dresser
last night."

The burglar caught him by the right sleeve.

"Come on," he said, bluffly. "I ask you. Leave it alone. I've got the
price. Ever try witch hazel and oil of wintergreen?"

AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS

I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that
blunder, for he had been through a whole term at a medical college —
before he inherited his aunt's fortune — and had been considered strong
in therapeutics.

We had been making a call together that evening, and afterward Tom
ran up to my rooms for a pipe and a chat before going on to his own
luxurious apartments. I had stepped into the other room for a moment
when I heard Tom sing out:

"Oh, Billy, I'm going to take about four grains of quinine, if you don't
mind — I'm feeling all blue and shivery. Guess I'm taking cold."

"All right," I called back. The bottle is on the second shelf. Take it
in a spoonful of that elixir of eucalyptus. It knocks the bitter out"

AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS 85!

After I came back we sat by the fire and got our briars going. In about
eight minutes Tom sank back into a gentle collapse.

I went straight to the medicine cabinet and looked.

"You unmitigated hayseed!" I growled, "See what money will do for a
man's brains!"

There stood the morphine bottle with the stopple out, just as Tom had
left it.

I routed out another young M.D., who roomed on the floor above, and
sent him for old Doctor Gales, two squares away. Tom Hopkins has
too much money to be attended by rising young practitioners alone.

When Gales came we put Tom through as expensive a course of treat-
ment as the resources of the profession permit. After the more drastic
remedies we gave him citrate of caffeine in frequent doses and strong
coffee, and walked him up and down the floor between two of us. Old
Gales pinched him and slapped his face and worked hard for the big
check he could see in the distance. The young MJD. from the next floor
gave Tom a most hearty, rousing kick, and then apologized to me.

"Couldn't help it," he said. "I never kicked a millionaire before in my
life. I may never have another opportunity/*

"Now," said Doctor Gales, after a couple of hours, "he'll do. But keep
him awake for another hour. You can do that by talking to him and
shaking him up occasionally. When his pulse and respiration are normal
then let him sleep. I'll leave him with you now."

I was left alone with Tom, whom we had laid on a couch. He lay very
still, and his eyes were half closed. I began my work of keeping him
awake.

"Well, old man," I said, "you've had a narrow squeak, but we've pulled
you through. When you were attending lectures, Tom, didn't any of the
professors ever casually remark that m-o-r-p-h-i-a never spells 'quinia,'
especially in four-grain doses? But I won't pile it up on you until you
get on your feet. But you ought to have been a druggist, Tom; you're
splendidly qualified to fill prescriptions."

Tom looked at me with a faint and foolish smile.

"B'ly," he murmured, "I feel jus' like a hum'n bird flyin' around a jolly
lot of most 'shpensive roses. Don* bozzer me. Goin' sleep now."

And he went to sleep in two seconds. I shook him by the shoulder.

"Now, Tom," I said, severely, "this won't do. The big doctor said you
must stay awake for at least an hour. Open your eyes. You're not entirely
safe yet, you know. Wake up."

Tom Hopkins weighs one hundred and ninety-eight He gave me an-
other somnolent grin, and fell into deeper slumber. I would have made
him move about, but I might as well have tried to make Cleopatra's needle
waltz around the room with me. Tom's breathing became stertorous, and
that, in connection with morphia poisoning, means danger.

852 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

Then I began, to think. I could not rouse his body; I must strive to ex-
cite his mind. "Make him angry," was an idea that suggested itself.
"Good!" I thought; but how? There was not a joint in Tom's armor.
Dear old fellow! He was good nature itself, and a gallant gentleman, fine
and true and clean as sunlight. He came from somewhere down South,
where they still have ideals and a code. New York had charmed but had
not spoiled him. He had that old-fashioned, chivalrous reverence for
women, that — Eureka! — there was my idea! I worked the thing up for a
minute or two in my imagination. I chuckled to myself at the thought
of springing a thing like that on old Tom Hopkins. Then I took him by
the shoulder and shook him till his ears flopped. He opened his eyes
lazily. I assumed an expression of scorn and contempt, and pointed my
finger within two inches of his nose.

"Listen to me, Hopkins," I said, in cutting and distinct tones, "you and
I have been good friends, but I want you to understand that in the future
my doors are closed against any man who acts as much like a scoundrel
as you have."

Tom looked the least bit interested.

"What's the matter, Billy ?" he muttered, composedly. "Don't your
clothes fit you?"

"If I were in your place," I went on, "which, thank God, I am not, I
think I would be afraid to close my eyes. How about that girl you left
waiting for you down among those lonesome Southern pines — the girl
that youVe forgotten since you came into your confounded money? Oh,
I know what I'm talking about. While you were a poor medical student
she was good enough for you. But now, since you are a millionaire, it's
different. I wonder what she thinks of the performances of that peculiar
class of people which she has been taught to worship — the Southern
gentlemen? I'm sorry, Hopkins, that I was forced to speak about these
matters, but you've covered it up so well and played your part so nicely
that I would have sworn you were above such unmanly tricks."

Poor Tom. I could scarcely keep from laughing outright to see him
struggling against the effects of the opiate. He was distinctly angry, and
I didn't blame him. Tom had a Southern temper. His eyes were open
now, and they showed a gleam or two of fire. But the drug still clouded
his mind and bound his tongue.

"C-c-confound you," he stammered, "I'll s-smash you."

He tried to rise from the couch. With all his size he was very weak now.
I thrust him back with one arm. He lay there glaring like a lion in a
trap.

"That will hold you for a while, you old loony," I said to myself. I got
up and lit my pipe, for I was needing a smoke. I walked around a bit,
congratulating myself on my brilliant idea.

I heard a snore. I looked around. Tom was asleep again. I walked over

AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS 853

and punched him on the jaw. He looked at me as pleasant and ungrudg-
ing as an idiot. I chewed my pipe and gave it to him hard.

"I want you to recover yourself and get out of my rooms as soon as you
can," I said, insultingly. "I've told you what I think of you. If you have
any honor or honesty left you will think twice before you attempt again
to associate with gentlemen. She's a poor girl, isn't she?" I sneered.
"Somewhat too plain and unfashionable for us since we got our money.
Be ashamed to walk on Fifth Avenue with her, wouldn't you? Hopkins,
you're forty-seven times worse than a cad. Who cares for your money?
I don't. Ill bet that girl don't. Perhaps if you didn't have it you'd be more
of a man. As it is you've made a cur of yourself, and"— I thought that
quite dramatic— "perhaps broken a faithful heart." (Old Tom Hopkins
breaking a faithful heart!) "Let me be rid of you as soon as possible."

I turned my back on Tom, and winked at myself in a mirror, I heard
him moving, and I turned again quickly. I didn't want a hundred and
ninety-eight pounds falling on me from the rear. But Tom had only
turned partly over, and laid one arm across his face. He spoke a few
words rather more distinctly than before.

"I couldn't have— talked this way — to you, Billy, even if I'd heard peo-
ple—lyin' Trout you* But jus* soon's I can s-stand up— I'll break your
neck— don't f 'get it**

I did feel a little ashamed then. But it was to save Tom. In the morning,
when I explained it, we would have a good laugh over it together.

In about twenty minutes Tom dropped into a sound, easy slumber.
I felt his pulse, listened to his respiration, and let him sleep. Everything
was normal, and Tom was safe. I went into the other room and tumbled
into bed.

I found Tom up and dressed when I awoke the next morning. He was
entirely himself again with the exception of shaky nerves and a tongue
like a white-oak chip.

"What an idiot I was," he said, thoughtfully. "I remember thinking
that quinine bottle looked queer while I was taking the dose. Have
much trouble in bringing me 'round?"

I told him no. His memory seemed bad about the entire affair. I con-
cluded that he had no recollection of my efforts to keep him awake, and
decided not to enlighten him. Some other time, I thought, when he was
feeling better, we would have some fun over it.

When Tom was ready to go he stopped, with the door open, and shook
my hand.

"Much obliged, old fellow," he said, quietly, "for taking so much
trouble with me— and for what you said. I'm going down to telegraph
to the little girl"

854 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

A GHOST OF A CHANCE

"Actually, a hod!" repeated Mrs. Kinsolving, pathetically.

Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore arched a sympathetic eyebrow. Thus she ex-
pressed condolence and a generous amount of apparent surprise.

"Fancy her telling everywhere," recapitulated Mrs. Kinsolving, "that
she saw a ghost in the apartment she occupied here— our choicest guest-
room—a ghost, carrying a hod on its shoulder — the ghost of an old man
in overalls, smoking a pipe and carrying a hod! The very absurdity of
the thing shows her malicious intent. There never was a Kinsolving that
carried a hod. Every one knows that Mr. Kinsolving's father accumulated
his money by large building contracts, but he never worked a day with
his own hands. He had this house built from his own plans; but— oh, a
hod! Why need she have been so cruel and malicious?'*

"It is really too bad/' murmured Mrs. Bellmore, with an approving
glance of her fine eyes about the vast chamber done in lilac and old gold.
"And it was in this room she saw it. Oh, no, Fm not afraid of ghosts.
Don't have the least fear on my account. I'm glad you put me in here. I
think family ghosts so interesting. But, really, the story does sound a little
inconsistent. I should have expected something better from Mrs. Fischer-
Suympkins. Don't they carry bricks in hods? Why should a ghost bring
bricks into a villa built of marble and stone? I'm so sorry, but it makes
me think that age is beginning to tell upon Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins."

"This house," continued Mrs. Kinsolving, "was built upon the site
of an old one used by the family during the Revolution. There wouldn't
be anything strange in its having a ghost. And there was a Captain
Kinsolving who fought in General Greene's army, though we've never
been able to secure any papers to vouch for it. If there is to be a family
ghost, why couldn't it have been his, instead of a bricklayer's?"

"The ghost of a Revolutionary ancestor wouldn't be a bad idea/* agreed
Mrs. Bellmore; "but you know how arbitrary and inconsiderate ghosts
can be. Maybe, like love, they are 'engendered in the eye.' One advantage
of those who see ghosts is that their stories can't be disproved. By a spite-
ful eye, a Revolutionary knapsack might easily be construed to be a hod.
Dear Mrs. Kinsolving, think no more of it. I am sure it was a knapsack."

"But she told everybody!" mourned Mrs, Kinsolving inconsolable.
"She insisted upon the details. There is the pipe. And how are you going
to get out of the overalls?"

"Sha'n't get into them/' said Mrs. Bellmore, with a prettily suppressed
yawn; "too stiff and wrinkly. Is that you, Felice? Prepare my bath, please.
Do you dine at seven at Clifftop, Mrs. Kinsolving? So kind of you to run

A GHOST OF A CHANCE 855

in for a chat before dinner! I love those little touches of informality with
a guest. They give such a home flavor to a visit. So sorry; I must be dress-
ing. I am so indolent I always postpone it until the last moment."

Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins had been the first large plum that the Kin-
solvings had drawn from the social pie. For a long time, the pie itself
had been out of reach on a top shelf. But the purse and the pursuit had at
last lowered it. Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins was the heliograph of the smart
society parading corps. The glitter of her wit and actions passed along
the line, transmitting whatever was latest and most daring in the game
of peep-show. Formerly, her fame and leadership had been secure enough
not to need the support of such artifices as handing around live frogs for
favors at a cotillion. But, now, these things were necessary to the holding
of her throne. Besides, middle age had come to preside, incongruous, at
her capers. The sensational papers had cut her space from a page to two
columns. Her wit developed a sting; her manners became more rough
and inconsiderate, as if she felt the royal necessity of establishing her
autocracy by scorning the conventionalities that bound lesser potentates.

To some pressure at the command of the Kinsolvings, she had yielded
so far as to honor their house by her presence, for an evening and night
She had her revenge upon her hostess by relating, with grim enjoyment
and sarcastic humor, her story of the vision carrying the hod. To that
lady, in raptures at having penetrated thus far toward the coveted inner
circle, the result came as a crushing disappointment. Everybody either
sympathized or laughed, and there was little to choose between the two
modes of expression.

But, later on, Mrs. Kinsolving's hopes and spirits were revived by the
capture of a second and greater prize.

Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore had accepted an invitation to visit at Clifftop,
and would remain for three days, Mrs. Bellmore was one of the younger
matrons, whose beauty, descent, and wealth gave her a reserved seat in
the holy of holies that required no strenuous bolstering. She was generous
enough thus to give Mrs. Kinsolving the accolade that was so poignantly
desired; and, at the same time, she thought how much it would please
Terence. Perhaps it would end by solving him.

Terence was Mrs. Kinsolving's son, aged twenty-nine, quite good-
looking enough, and with two or three attractive and mysterious traits.
For one, he was very devoted to his mother, and that was sufficiently odd
to deserve notice. For others, he talked so little that it was irritating, and
he seemed either very shy or very deep. Terence interested Mrs. Bellmore,
because she was not sure which it was. She intended to study him a little
longer unless she forgot the matter. If he was only shy, she would abandon
him, for shyness is a bore. If he was deep, she would also abandon him,
for depth is precarious.

856 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

On the afternoon of the third day of her visit, Terence hunted up
Mrs. Bellmore, and found her in a nook actually looking at an album.

"It's so good of you," said he, "to come down here and retrieve the
day for us. I suppose you have heard that Mrs. Fischer-Suympkins scuttled
the ship before she left. She knocked a whole plank out of the bottom
with a hod. My mother is grieving herself ill about it. Can't you manage
to see a ghost for us while you are here, Mrs. Bellmore— a bang-up,
swell ghost, with a coronet on his head and a cheque book under his
arm?"

"That was a naughty old lady, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, "to tell
such stories. Perhaps you gave her too much supper. Your mother doesn't
really take it seriously, does she?"

"I think she does," answered Terence. "One would think every^ brick
in the hod had dropped on her. It's a good mammy, and I don't like
to see her worried. It's to be hoped that the ghost belongs to the hod-
carriers' union, and will go out on a strike. If he doesn't there will be
no peace in this family."

Tm sleeping in the ghost-chamber," said Mrs. Bellmore, pensively.
"But it's so nice I wouldn't change it, even if I were afraid, which I'm
not. It wouldn't do for me to submit a counter story of a desirable, aristo-
cratic shade, would it? I would do so, with pleasure, but it seems to me
that it would be too obviously an antidote for the other narrative to be
effective."

"True," said Terence, running two fingers thoughtfully into his crisp
brown hair; "that would never do. How would it work to see the same
ghost again, minus the overalls, and have gold bricks in the hod? That
would elevate the spectre from degrading toil to a financial plane. Don't
you think that would be respectable enough?"

'There was an ancestor who fought against the Britishers, wasn't there?
Your mother said something to that effect."

**I believe so; one of those old chaps in raglan vests and golf trousers.
I don't care a continental for a Continental, myself. But the mother has
set her heart on pomp and heraldry and pyrotechnics, and I want her to
be happy."

"You are a good boy, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, sweeping her silks
close to one side of her; "not to beat your mother. Sit here by me, and
let's look at the album, just as people used to do twenty years ago. Now,
tell me about every one of them. Who is this tall, dignified gentleman
leaning against the horizon, with one arm on the Corinthian column?"

"That old chap with the big feet?" inquired Terence, craning his neck.
"That's great-uncle O'Brannigan. He used to keep a rathskeller on the
Bowery/'

**I asked you to sit down, Terence. If you are not going to amuse, or
obey me, I shall report in the morning that I saw a ghost wearing an

A GHOST OF A CHANCE 857

apron and carrying schooners of beer. Now, that is better. To be shy,
at your age, Terence, is a thing that you should blush to acknowledge."

At breakfast on the last morning of her visit, Mrs. Bellmore startled and
entranced every one present by announcing positively that she had
seen the ghost.

"Did it have a — a — a ?" Mrs. Kinsolving, in her suspense and

agitation, could not bring out the word.

"No, indeed— far from it."

There was a chorus of questions from others at the table. "Weren't you
frightened?" "What did it do?" "How did it look?" "How was it
dressed?" "Did it say anything?" "Didn't you scream?"

"Ill try to answer everything at once," said Mrs. Bellmore, heroically,
"although Fm frightfully hungry. Something awakened me — I'm not sure
whether it was a noise or a touch — and there stood the phantom. I never
burn a light at night, so the room was quite dark, but I saw it plainly.
I wasn't dreaming. It was a tall man all misty white from head to foot. It
wore the full dress of the old Colonial days — powdered hair, baggy coat
skirts, lace ruffles, and a sword. It looked intangible and luminous in the
dark, and moved without a sound. Yes, I was a little frightened at first
—or startled, I should say. It was the first ghost I had ever seen. No, it
didn't say anything. I didn't scream. I raised up on my elbow, and then it
glided silently away, and disappeared when it reached the door."

Mrs, Kinsolving was in the seventh heaven. "The description is that
of Captain Kinsolving, of General Greene's army, one of our ancestors,"
she said, in a voice that trembled with pride and relief. "I really think
I must apologize for our ghostly relative, Mrs. Bellmore. I am afraid he
must have badly disturbed your rest."

Terence sent a smile of pleased congratulation toward his mother.
Attainment was Mrs. Kinsolving's, at last, and he loved to see her happy.

"I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess," said Mrs. Bellmore, who
was now enjoying her breakfast, "that I wasn't very much disturbed. I
presume it would have been the customary thing to scream and faint, and
have all of you running about in picturesque costumes. But, after the first
alarm was over, I really couldn't work myself up to a panic. The ghost
retired from the stage quietly and peacefully, after doing its little turn,
and I went to sleep again."

Nearly all listened, politely accepted Mrs. Bellmore's story as a made-up
affair, charitably offered as an offset to the unkind vision seen by Mrs.
Fischer-Suympkins. But one or two present perceived that her assertions
bore the genuine stamp of her own convictions. Truth and candor seemed
to attend upon every word. Even a scoffer at ghosts — if he were very
observant— would have been forced to admit that she had, at least in a
very vivid dream, been honestly aware of the weird visitor.

858 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

Soon Mrs. Bellmore's maid was packing. In two hours the auto would
come to convey her to the station. As Terence was strolling upon the east
piazza, Mrs. Bellmore came up to him, with a confidential sparkle in her
eye.

"I didn't wish to tell the others all of it/' she said, "but I will tell you.
In a way, I think you should be held responsible. Can you guess in what
manner that ghost awakened me last night?'*

"Rattled chains," suggested Terence, after some thought, "or groaned?
They usually do one or the other."

"Do you happen to know,'1 continued Mrs. Bellmore, with sudden
irrelevancy, "if I resemble any one of the female relatives of your restless
ancestor, Captain Kinsolving?"

"Don't think so," said Terence, with an extremely puzzled air. "Never
heard of any of them being noted beauties."

'Then, why," said Mrs. Bellmore, looking the young man gravely in
the eye, "should that ghost have kissed me, as I'm sure it did?"

"Heavens!" exclaimed Terence, in wide-eyed amazement; "you don't
mean that, Mrs. Bellmore! Did he actually kiss you?"

"I said i//' corrected Mrs. Bellmore. "I hope the impersonal pronoun
is correctly used."

"But why did you say I was responsible?"

"Because you are the only living male relative of the ghost.**

"I see. *Unto the third and fourth generation.' But, seriously, did he-
did it — how do you ?"

"Know? How does any one know? I was asleep, and that is what
awakened me, I'm almost certain."

"Almost?"

"Well, I awoke just as — oh, can't you understand what I mean? When
anything arouses you suddenly you are not positive whether you dreamed,

or — and yet you know that Dear me. Terence, must I dissect the most

elementary sensations in order to accommodate your extremely practical
intelligence?"

"But, about kissing ghosts, you know," said Terence, humbly, "I re-
quire the most primary instruction. I never kissed a ghost. Is it — is it ?"

"The sensation," said Mrs. Bellmore, with deliberate, but slightly smil-
ing, emphasis, "since you are seeking instruction, is a mingling of the
material and the spiritual*'

"Of course," said Terence, suddenly growing serious, "it was a dream
or some kind of an hallucination. Nobody believes in spirits, these days.
If you told the tale out of kindness of heart, Mrs. Bellmore, I can't
express how grateful I am to you. It has made my mother supremely
happy. That Revolutionary ancestor was a stunning idea."

Mrs. Bellmore sighed. "The usual fate of ghost-seers is mine," she said,
resignedly. "My privileged encounter with a spirit is attributed to lobster

JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL 859

salad or mendacity. Well, I have, at least, one memory left from the
wreck—a kiss from the unseen world. Was Captain Kinsolving a very
brave man, do you know, Terence?"

"He was licked at Yorktown, I believe," said Terence, reflecting. "They
say he skedaddled with his company > after the first battle there."

"I thought he must have been timid," said Mrs. Bellmore, absently.
"He might have had another."

"Another battle?" asked Terence, dully.

"What else could I mean? I must go and get ready now; the auto will
be here in an hour. Fve enjoyed Clifftop immensely. Such a lovely
morning, isn't it, Terence?"

On her way to the station, Mrs. Bellmore took from her bag a silk
handkerchief, and looked at it with a little peculiar smile. Then she tied
it in several very hard knots, and threw it, at a convenient moment, over
the edge of the cliff along which the road ran.

In his room, Terence was giving some directions to his man, Brooks.
"Have this stuff done up in a parcel," he said, "and ship it to the address
on that card."

The card was that of a New York costumer. The "stuff" was a gen-
tleman's costume of the days of '76, made of white satin, with^ silver
buckles, white silk stockings, and white kid shoes. A powdered wig and
a sword completed the dress.

"And look about, Brooks," added Terence, a little anxiously, "for a
silk handkerchief with my initials in one corner, I must have dropped it
somewhere."

It was a month later when Mrs. Belhnore and one or two others of the
smart crowd were making up a list of names for a coaching trip through
the CatskUls. Mrs. Belhnore looked over the list for a final censoring.
The name of Terence Kinsolving was there. Mrs. Bellmore ran her
prohibitive pencil lightly through the name.

"Too shy! " she murmured, sweetly, in explanation.

JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL

Supper was over, and there had fallen upon the camp the silence that
accompanies the rolling of corn-husk cigarettes. The water hole shone
from the dark earth like a patch of fallen sky. Coyotes yelped. Dull
thumps indicated the rocking-horse movements of the hobbled ponies
as they moved to fresh grass. A half-troop of the Frontier Battalion of
Texas Rangers were distributed about the fire.

A well-known sound— the fluttering and scraping of chaparral against
wooden stirrups—came from the thick brush above die camp. The rangers

860 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

listened cautiously. They heard a loud and cheerful voice call out re-
assuringly :

"Brace up, Muriel, old girl, we're 'most there now! Been a long ride
for ye, ain't it, ye old antediluvian handful of animated carpet-tacks? Hey,
now, quit a tryin' to kiss me! Don't hold on to my neck so tight— this
here paint hoss ain't any too shore-footed, let me tell ye. He's liable to
dump us both off if we don't watch out."

Two minutes of waiting brought a tired "paint" pony single-footing
into camp, A gangling youth of twenty lolled in the saddle. Of the
"Muriel" whom he had been addressing, nothing was to be seen.

uHi, fellows!" shouted the rider, cheerfully. "This here's a letter fer
Lieutenant Manning."

He dismounted, unsaddled, dropped the coils of his stake-rope, and
got his hobbles from the saddle-horn. While Lieutenant Manning, in
command, was reading the letter, the newcomer rubbed solicitously at
some dried mud in the loops of the hobbles, showing a consideration for
the forelegs of his mount.

"Boys," said the lieutenant, waving his hand to the rangers, "this is
Mr. James Hayes. He's a new member of the company. Captain McLean
sends him down from El Paso. The boys will see that you have some
supper, Hayes, as soon as you get your pony hobbled."

The recruit was received cordially by the rangers. Still, they observed
him shrewdly and with suspended judgment. Picking a comrade on the
border is done with ten times the care and discretion with which a girl
chooses a sweetheart. On your "side-kicker's" nerve, loyalty, aim, and
coolness your own life may depend many times.

After a hearty supper Hayes joined the smokers about the fire. His
appearance did not settle all the questions in the minds of his brother
rangers. They saw simply a loose, lank youth with tow-colored sun-
burned hair and a berry-brown, ingenuous face that wore a quizzical,
good-natured smile.

"Fellows," said the new ranger, "I'm goin' to interduce to you a lady
friend of mine. Ain't ever heard anybody call her a beauty, but you'll all
admit she's got some fine points about her. Come along, Muriel!**

He held open the front of his blue flannel shirt. Out of it crawled a
horned frog. A bright red ribbon was tied jauntily around its spiky neck.
It crawled to its owner's knee and sat there motionless.

"This here Muriel," said Hayes, with an oratorical wave of his hand,
"has got qualities. She never talks back, she always stays at home, and
she's satisfied with one red dress for every day and Sunday, too."

"Look at that blame insect!" said one of the rangers with a grin. "I've
seen plenty of them horny frogs, but I never knew anybody to have one
for a side-partner. Does the blame thing know you from anybody else?"

"Take it over there and see," said Hayes.

JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL 86l

The stumpy little lizard known as the horned frog is harmless. He
has the hideousness of the prehistoric monsters whose reduced descendant
he is, but he is gentler than the dove.

The ranger took Muriel from Hayes's knee and went back to his seat
on a roll of blankets. The captive twisted and clawed and struggled
vigorously in his hand. After holding it for a moment or two, the ranger
set it upon the ground. Awkwardly, but swiftly, the frog worked its
four oddly moving legs until it stopped close by Hayes's foot.

"Well, dang my hide!" said the other ranger. "The little cuss knows
you. Never thought them insects had that much sense!"

II Jimmy Hayes became a favorite in the ranger camp. He had an end-
less store of good nature, and a mild, perennial quality of humor that
is well adapted to camp life. He was never without his horned frog. In
the bosom of his shirt during rides, on his knee or shoulder in camp,
under his blankets at night, the ugly little beast never left him.

Jimmy was a humorist of a type that prevails in the rural South and
West. Unskilled in originating methods of amusing or in witty con-
ceptions, he had hit upon a comical idea and clung to it reverently. It had
seemed to Jimmy a very funny thing to have about his person, with which
to amuse his friends, a tame horned frog with a red ribbon around its
neck. As it was a happy idea, why not perpetuate it?

The sentiments existing between Jimmy and the frog cannot be exactly
determined. The capability of the horned frog for lasting affection is a sub-
ject upon which we have no symposiums. It is easier to guess Jimmy's feel-
ings. Muriel was his chef d'ceuvre of wit, and as such he cherished her. He
caught flies for her, and shielded her from sudden northers. Yet his care
was half selfish, and when the time came she repaid him a thousand fold.
Other Muriels have thus overbalanced the light attentions of other Jimmies.

Not at once did Jimmy attain full brotherhood with his comrades.
They loved him for his simplicity and drollness, but there hung above
him a great sword of suspended judgment To make merry in camp is not
all of a ranger's life. There are horse-thieves to trail, desperate criminals
to run down, bravos to battle with, bandits to rout out of the chaparral,
peace and order to be compelled at the muzzle of a six-shooter. Jimmy
had been " 'most generally a cow-puncher," he said; he was inexperienced
in ranger methods of warfare. Therefore the rangers speculated apart and
solemnly as to how he would stand fire. For, let it be known, the honor
and pride of each ranger company is the individual bravery of its members.

For two months the border was quiet The rangers lolled, lisdess, in
camp. And then — bringing joy to the rusting guardians of the frontier
— Sebastiano Saldar, an eminent Mexican desperado and cattle-thief,
crossed the Rio Grande with his gang and began to lay waste the Texas
side. There were indications that Jimmy Hayes would soon have the

862 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

opportunity to show his mettle. The rangers patrolled with alacrity, bui
Saldafs men were mounted like Locbinvar, and were hard to catch.

One evening, about sundown, the rangers halted for supper after a
long ride. Their horses stood panting, with their saddles on. The men
were frying bacon and boiling coffee. Suddenly, out of the brush, Se-
bastiano Saldar and his gang dashed upon them with blazing six-shooters
and high-voiced yells. It was a neat surprise. The rangers swore in an-
noyed tones, and got their Winchesters busy; but the attack was only a
spectacular dash of the purest Mexican type. After the florid demonstra-
tion the raiders galloped away, yelling, down the river. The rangers
mounted and pursued; but in less than two miles the fagged ponies
labored so that Lieutenant Manning gave the word to abandon the chase
and return to the camp.

Then it was discovered that Jimmy Hayes was missing. Some one re-
membered having seen him run for his pony when the attack began,
but no one had set eyes on him since. Morning came, but no Jimmy.
They searched the country around, on the theory that he had been killed
or wounded, but without success. Then they followed after Saldar's gang,
but it seemed to have disappeared. Manning concluded that the wily
Mexican had recrossed the river after his theatric farewell. And, indeed,
no further depredations from him were reported.

This gave the rangers time to nurse a soreness they had. As has been
said, the pride and honor of the company is the individual bravery of its
members. And now they believed that Jimmy Hayes had turned coward
at the whiz of Mexican bullets. There was no other deduction. Buck Davis
pointed out that not a shot was fired by Saldar 's gang after Jimmy was
seen running for his horse. There was no way for him to have been shot.
No, he had fled from his first fight, and afterward he would not return,
aware that the scorn of his comrades would be a worse thing to face
than the muzzles of many rifles.

So Manning's detachment of McLean's company, Frontier Battalion,
was gloomy. It was the first blot on its escutcheon. Never before in the
history of the service had a ranger shown the white feather. All of them
had liked Jimmy Hayes, and that made it worse.

Days, weeks, and months went by, and still that little cloud of un-
forgotten cowardice hung above the camp.

Ill Nearly a year afterward — after many camping grounds and many
hundreds of miles guarded and defended — Lieutenant Manning, with
almost the same detachment of men, was sent to a point only a few miles
below their old camp on the river to look after some smuggling there.
One afternoon, while they were riding through a dense mesquite flat, they
came upon a patch of open hog-wallow prairie. There they rode upon
the scene of an unwritten tragedy.

THE DOOR OF UNREST 863

In a big hog-wallow lay the skeletons of three Mexicans. Their clothing
alone served to identify them. The largest of the figures had once been
Sebastiano Saldar. His great, costly sombrero, heavy with gold ornamen-
tation— a hat famous all along the Rio Grande— lay there pierced by three
bullets. Along the ridge of the hog-wallow rested the rusting Winchesters
of the Mexicans — all pointing in the same direction.

The rangers rode in that direction for fifty yards. There, in a little
depression of the ground, with his rifle still bearing upon the three, lay
another skeleton. It had been a battle of extermination. There was nothing
to identify the solitary defender. His clothing—such as the elements had
left distinguishable — seemed to be of the kind that any ranchman or
cowboy might have worn.

"Some cow-puncher," said Manning, "that they caught out alone.
Good boy! He put up a dandy scrap before they got him. So that's why
we didn't hear from Don Sebastiano any morel"

And then, from beneath the weather-beaten rags of the dead man, there
wriggled out a horned frog with a faded red ribbon around its neck, and
sat upon the shoulder of its long quiet master. Mutely it told the story
of the untried youth and the swift "paint" pony — how they had out-
stripped all their comrades that day in the pursuit of the Mexican raiders,
and how the boy had gone down upholding the honor of the company.

The ranger troop herded close, and a simultaneous wild yell arose from
their lips. The outburst was at once a dirge, an apology, an epitaph, and
a pasan of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body of a
fallen comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he would have
understood.

THE DOOR OF UNREST

I sat an hour by sun, in the editor's room of the Montopolis Weekly
Bugle. I was the editor.

The saffron rays of the declining sunlight filtered through the corn-
stalks in Micajah Widdup's garden-patch, and cast an amber glory upon
my paste-pot. I sat at the editorial desk in my non-rotary revolving chair,
and prepared my editorial against the oligarchies. The room, with its one
window, was already a prey to the twilight. One by one, with my
trenchant sentences, I lopped off the heads of the political hydra, while I
listened, full of kindly peace, to the home-coming cowbells and wondered
what Mrs. Flanagan was going to have for supper.

Then in from the dusky, qukt street there drifted and perched himself
upon a corner of my desk old Father Time's younger brother. His face
was beardless and as gnarled as an English walnut. I never saw clothes

864 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

such as he wore. They would have reduced Joseph's coat to a mono-
chrome. But the colors were not the dyer's. Stains and patches and the
work of sun and rust were responsible for the diversity. On his coarse
shoes was the dust, conceivably, of a thousand leagues. I can describe him
no further, except to say that he was little and weird and old — old I began
to estimate in centuries when I saw him. Yes, and I remember that there
was an odor, faint odor like aloes, or possibly like myrrh or leather; and
I thought of museums.

And then I reached for a pad and pencil, for business is business, and
visits of the oldest inhabitants are sacred and honorable, requiring to be
chronicled.

"I am glad to see you, sir," I said. "I would offer you a chair, but— you
see, sir," I went on, "I have lived in Montopolis only three weeks, and I
have not met many of our citizens." I turned a doubtful eye upon his dust-
stained shoes, and concluded with a newspaper phrase, "I suppose that you
reside in our midst?"

My visitor fumbled in his raiment, drew forth a soiled card, and
handed it to me. Upon it was written, in plain but unsteadily formed
characters, the name "Michob Ader."

UI am glad you called, Mr. Ader," I said. "As one of our older citizens,
you must view with pride the recent growth and enterprise of Montoplis.
Among other improvements, I think I can promise that the town will
now be provided with a live, enterprising newspa "

**Do ye know the name on that card?" asked my caller, interrupting
me.

"It was not a familiar one to me," I said.

Again he visited the depths of his ancient vestments. This time he
brought out a torn leaf of some book or journal, brown and flimsy with
age. The heading on the page was the Turkish Spy in old-style type;
the printing upon it was this:

"There is a man come to Paris in this year 1643 who pretends to have
lived these sixteen hundred years. He says of himself that he was a
shoemaker in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion; that his name is
Michob Adcr; and that when Jesus, the Christian Messias, was con-
demned by Pontius Pilate, the Roman president, he paused to rest while
bearing his cross to the place of crucifixion before the door of Michob
Ader. The shoemaker struck Jesus with his fist, saying: 'Go; why tarriest
thou?' The Messias answered him: 1 indeed am going; but thou shalt
tarry until I come'; thereby condemning him to live until the day of
judgment. He lives for ever, but at the end of every hundred years he
falls into a fit or trance, on recovering from which he finds himself in
the same state of youth in which he was when Jesus suffered, being then
about thirty years of age.

THE DOOR OF UNREST 865

"Such is the story of the Wandering Jew, as told by Michob Ader, who
relates " Here the printing ended.

I must have muttered aloud something to myself about the Wandering
Jew, for the old man spake up, bitterly and loudly.

" Tis a lie," said he, "like nine tenths of what ye call history. Tis a
Gentile I am, and no Jew. I am after footing it out of Jerusalem, my son;
but if that makes me a Jew, then everything that comes out of a bottle is
babies' milk. Ye have my name on the card ye hold; and ye have read
the bit of paper they call the Turkish Spy that printed the news when I
stepped into their office on the i2th day of June, in the year 1643, just as I
have called upon ye to-day."

I laid down my pencil and pad. Clearly it would not do. Here was an
item for the local column of the Bugle that — but it would not do. Still,
fragments of the impossible "personal" began to flit through my con-
ventionalized brain. "Uncle Michob is as spry on his legs as a young
chap of only a thousand or so." "Our venerable caller relates with pride
that George Wash— no, Ptolemy the Great—once dandled him on his
knee at his father's house." "Uncle Michob says that our wet spring was
nothing in comparison with the dampness that ruined the crops around
Mount Ararat when he was a boy " But no, no — it would not do.

I was trying to think of some conversational subject with which to
interest my visitor, and was hesitating between walking matches and
the Pliocene Age, when the old man suddenly began to weep poignantly
and distressfully.

"Cheer up, Mr. Ader," I said, a little awkwardly; "this matter may blow
over in a few hundred years more. There has already been a decided
reaction in favor of Judas Iscariot and Colonel Burr and the celebrated
violinist, Signor Nero. This is the age of whitewash. You must not allow
yourself to become down-hearted/*

Unknowingly, I had struck a chord. The old man blinked belliger-
ently through his senile tears.

" 'Tis time," he said, "that the liars be doin' justice to somebody. Yer
historians are no more than a pack of old women gabblin' at a wake. A
finer man than the Imperor Nero niver wore sandals. Man, I was at the
burnin' of Rome. I knowed the Imperor well, for in them days I was a
well-known char-actor. In thim days they had rayspect for a man that
lived for ever.

"But 'twas of the Imperor Nero I was goin' to tell ye. I struck into
Rome, up the Appian Way, on the night of July the i6th, the year 64. 1
had just stepped down by way of Siberia and Afghanistan; and one foot
of me had a frost-bite, and the other a blister burned by the sand of the
desert; and I was feelin' a bit blue from doin* patrol duty from the North
Pole down to the Last Chance earner in Patagonia, and bein* miscalled a

866 BOOK vir SIXES AND SEVENS

Jew in the bargain. Well, I'm teilin' ye I was passin' the Circus Maximus,
and it was dark as pitch over the way, and then I heard somebody sing
out, Is that you, Michob?'

"Over ag'inst the wall, hid out amongst a pile of barrels and old dry-
goods boxes, was the Imperor Nero wid his togy wrapped around his
toes, smokin' a long, black segar.

"*Have one, Michob?* says he.

" 'None of the weeds for me/ says I— £nayther pipe nor segar. What's
the use,' says I, 'of smokin' when ye've got not the ghost of a chance of
killin' yeself by doin' it?J

" True for ye, Michob Ader, my perpetual Jew,' says the Imperor; *ye're
not always wandering. Sure, 'tis danger gives the spice of our pleasures-
next to their bein' forbidden/

" 'And for what/ says I, 6do ye smoke be night in dark places widout
even a cinturion in plain clothes to attend ye?'

""Have ye ever heard, Michob/ says the Imperor, eof predestina-
rianism?'

" Tve had the cousin of it/ says I. Tve been on the trot with pedestrian-
ism for many a year, and more to come, as ye well know.'

" The longer word/ says me friend Nero, 'is the tachin' of this new
sect of people they call the Christians. Tis them that's raysponsible for
me smokin1 be night in holes and corners of the dark.'

"And then I sets down and takes off a shoe and rubs me foot that is
frosted, and the Imperor tells me about it. It seems that since I passed
that way before, the Imperor had mandamused the Impress wid a divorce
suit, and Misses Poppaea, a cilibrated lady, was ingaged, widout rifer-
ences, as housekeeper at the palace. *A11 in one day/ says the Imperor, 'she
puts up new lace windy-curtains in the palace and joins the anti-tobacco
society, and whin I feels the need of a smoke I must be after sneakin*
out to these piles of lumber in the dark.' So there in the dark me and the
Imperor sat, and I told him of me travels. And when they say the
Imperor was an incindiary, they lie. Twas that night the fire started that
burnt the city. Tis my opinion that it began from a stump of segar that
he threw down among the boxes. And 'tis a lie that he fiddled. He did all
he could for six days to stop it, sir/*

And now I detected a new flavor to Mr. Michob Aden It had not been
myrrh or balm of hyssop that I had smelled. The emanation was the odor
of bad whiskey— and, worse, still, of bw comedy— the sort that small
humorists manufacture by clothing the grave and reverend things of
kgend and history in the vulgar, topical frippery that passes for a certain
kind of wit. Michob Ader as an impostor, claiming nineteen hundred
years, and playing his part with the decency of respectable lunacy, I
could endure; but as a tedious wag, cheapening his egregious story with
song-book levity, his importance as an entertainer grew less.

THE DOOR OF UNREST 867

And then, as if he suspected my thoughts, he suddenly shifted his key.

"You'll excuse me, sir," he whined, "but sometimes I get a little mixed
in my head. I am a very old man; and it is hard to remember everything."

I knew that he was right, and that I should not try to reconcile him
with Roman history; so I asked for news concerning other ancients with
whom he had walked familiar.

Above my desk hung an engraving of Raphael's cherubs. You could
yet make out their forms, though the dust blurred their outlines strangely.

"Ye calls them 'cher-rubs,' " cackled the old man. "Babes, ye fancy they
are, with wings. And there's one wid legs and a bow and arrow that ye
call Cupid — I know where they was found. The great-great-great-grand-
father of thim all was a billy-goat Bein' an editor, sir, do ye happen to
know where Solomon's Temple stood?"

I fancied that it was in— in Persia? Well, I did not know.

" Tis not in history nor in the Bible where it was. But I saw it, meself.
The first pictures of cher-rubs and cupids was sculptured upon thim walls
and pillars. Two of the biggest, sir, stood in the adytum to form the bal-
dachin over the Ark. But the wings of thim sculptures was intindid for
horns. And the faces was the faces of goats. Ten thousand goats there was
in and about the temple. And your cher-rubs was billy-goats in the days
of King Solomon, but the painters misconstrued the horns into wings.

"And I knew Tamerlane, the lame Timour, sir, very well. I saw him at
Keghut and at Zaranj. He was a little man no larger than yerself, with
hair the color of an amber pipe stem. They buried him at Samarkand. I
was at the wake, sir. Oh, he was a fine-built man in his coffin, six feet
long, with black whiskers to his face. And I see 'em throw turnips at the
Imperor Vispacian in Africa. All over the world I have tramped, sir,
without the body of me findm* any rest. Twas so commanded. I saw
Jerusalem destroyed, and Pompeii go up in the fireworks; and I was at
the coronation of Charlemagne and the lynchin' of Joan of Arc. And
everywhere I go there comes storms and revolutions and plagues and
fires. Twas so commanded. Ye have heard of the Wandering Jew. Tis
all so, except that divil a bit am I Jew. But history lies, as I have told ye.
Are ye quite sure, sir, that ye haven't a drop of whiskey convenient?
Ye well know that I have many miles of walking before me.n

"I have none," said I, "and, if you please, I am about to leave for my
supper."

I pushed my chair back creakingly. This ancient ladnlubber was be-
coming as great an affliction as any cross-bowed mariner. He shook a
musty effluvium from his piebald clothes, overturned my inkstand, and
went on with his insufferable nonsense.

al wouldn't mind it so much," he complained, "if it wasn't for the work
I must do on Good Fridays. Ye know about Pontius Pilate, sir, of course.
His body, whin he killed himself, was pitched into a lake on the Alps

868 BOOK vri SIXES AND SEVENS

mountains. Now, listen to the job that 'tis mine to perform on the night
of every Good Friday. The ould divil goes down in the pool and drags up
Pontius, and the water is bilin' and spewin5 like a wash pot. And the ould
divil sets the body on top of a throne on the rocks, and thin comes me
share of the job. Oh, sir, ye would pity me thin— ye would pray for the
poor Wandering Jew that niver was a Jew if ye could see the horror of
the thing that I must do. Tis I that must fetch a bowl of water and kneel
down before it till it washes its hands. I declare to ye that Pontius Pilate,
a man dead two hundred years, dragged up with the lake slime coverin5
him and fishes wrigglin' inside of hid widout eyes, and in the discompo-
sition of the boy, sits there, sir, and washes his hands in the bowl I hold
for him on Good Fridays. Twas so commanded."

Clearly, the matter had progressed far beyond the scope of the Bugle's
local column. There might have been employment here for the alienist
or for those who circulate the pledge; but I had had enough of it. I got
up and repeated that I must go.

At this he seized my coat, grovelled upon my desk, and burst again
into distressful weeping. Whatever it was about, I said to myself that his
grief was genuine.

"Come now, Mr. Ader," I said, soothingly; "what is the matter?'*

The answer came brokenly through his racking sobs: "Because I
would not ... let the poor Christ . . . rest . . . upon the step."

His hallucination seemed beyond all reasonable answer; yet the effect
of it upon him scarcely merited disrespect. But I knew nothing that might
assuage it; and I told him once more that both of us should be leaving
the office at once.

Obedient at last, he raised himself from my dishevelled desk, and per-
mitted me to half lift him to the floor. The gale of his grief had blown
away his words; his freshet of tears had soaked away the crust of his grief.
Reminiscence died in him — at least, the coherent part of it.

* Twas me that did it," he muttered, as I led him toward the door—
"me, the shoemaker of Jerusalem,"

I got him to the sidewalk, and in the augmented light I saw that his
face was seared and lined and warped by a sadness almost incredibly the
product of a single lifetime.

And then high up in the firmamental darkness we heard the clamant
cries of some great passing birds. My Wandering Jew lifted his hand,
with side-tilted head.

"The Seven Whistlers!" he said, as one introduces well-known friends.

"Wild geese,*' said I; "but I confess that their number is beyond me."

"They follow me everywhere,** he said. ** Twas so commanded. What
ye hear is the souls of the seven Jews that helped with the Crucifixion.
Sometimes they're plovers and sometimes geese, but ye'll find them
always flyin* where I go."

THE DOOR OF UNREST 869

I stood, uncertain how to take my leave. I looked down the street,
shuffled my feet, looked back again— and felt my hair rise. The old man
had disappeared.

And then my capillaries relaxed, for I dimly saw him footing it away
through the darkness. But he walked so swiftly and silently and contrary
to the gait promised by his age that my composure was not all restored,
though I knew not why.

That night I was foolish enough to take down some dust-covered vol-
umes from my modest shelves. I searched "Hermippus Redivvus" and
"Salathiel" and the "Pepys Collection" in vain. And then in a book called
"The Citizen of the World,** and in one two centuries old, I came upon
what I desired. Michob Ader had indeed come to Paris in the year 1643,
and related to the Turkish Spy an extraordinary story. He claimed to be
the Wandering Jew, and that

But here I fell asleep, for my editorial duties had not been light that day.

Judge Hoover was the Bugle's candidate for congress. Having to con-
fer with him, I sought his home early the next morning; and we walked
together down town through a little street with which I was unfamiliar.

"Did you ever hear of Michob Ader?" I asked him, smiling.

"Why, yes," said the judge. "And that reminds me of my shoes he has
for mending. Here is his shop now."

Judge Hoover stepped into a dingy, small shop. I looked up at the
sign, and saw "Mike O'Bader, Boot and Shoe Maker," on it. Some wild
geese passed above, honking clearly. I scratched my ear and frowned,
and then trailed into the shop.

There sat my Wandering Jew on his shoemaker's bench, trimming a
half sole. He was drabbled with dew, grass-stained, unkempt, and miser-
able; and on his face was still the unexplained wretchedness; the prob-
lematic sorrow, the esoteric woe, that had been written there by nothing
less, it seemed, than the stylus of the centuries.

Judge Hoover inquired kindly concerning his shoes. The old^ shoe-
maker looked up, and spoke sanely enough. He had been ill, he said, for
a few days, The next day the shoes would be ready. He looked at me,
and I could see that I had no place in his memory. So out we went, and
on our way.

"Old Mike," remarked the candidate, "has been on one of his sprees.
He gets crazy drunk regularly once a month. But he's a good shoemaker."

"What is his history?" I inquired.

"Whiskey," epitomized Judge Hoover. "That explains him."

I was silent, but I did not accept the explanation. And so, when I had
the chance, I asked old man Sellers, who browsed daily on my exchanges.

"Mike O'Bader," said he, "was majdn' shoes in Montopolis when I
corne here goin* on fifteen year ago. I guess whiskey's his trouble. Once a
month he gets off the track, and stays so a week. He's got a rigmarole

870 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

somethin' about his bein' a Jew peddler that he tells everybody. Nobody
won't listen to him any more. When he's sober he ain't sich a fool— he's
got a sight of books in the back room of his shop that he reads. I guess
you can lay all his trouble to whiskey."

But again I would not. Not yet was my Wandering Jew rightly con-
strued for me. I trust that women may not be allowed a tide to all the
curiosity in the world. So when Montopolis's oldest inhabitant (some
ninety score years younger than Michob Ader) dropped into acquire
promulgation in print, I siphoned his perpetual trickle of reminiscence in
the direction of the uninterpreted maker of shoes.

Uncle Abner was the Complete History of Montopolis, bound in
butternut.

"O'Bader," he quavered, "come here in '69. He was the first shoe-
maker in the place. Folks generally considers him crazy at times now.
But he don't harm nobody. I s'pose drinkin' upset his mind — yes, drinkin'
very likely done it It's a powerful bad thing, drinkin'. I'm an old, old
man, sir, and I never see no good in drinkin',"

I felt disappointment. I was willing to admit drink in the case of my
shoemaker, but I preferred it as a recourse instead of a cause. Why had
he pitched upon his perpetual, strange note of the Wandering Jew? Why
his unutterable grief during his aberration? I could not yet accept whiskey
as an explanation.

"Did Mike O'Bader ever have a great loss or trouble of any kind?**
I asked.

"Lemme sec! About thirty years ago there was somethin' of the kind,
I recollect Montopolis, sir, in them days used to be a mighty strict place.

"Well, Mike O'Bader had a daughter then— a right pretty girl She was
too gay a sort for Montopolis, so one day she slips off to another town and
runs away with a circus. It was two years before she comes back, all fixed
up in fine clothes and rings and jewelry, to see Mike. He wouldn't have
nothin' to do with her, so she stays around town awhile, anyway. I reckon
the men folks wouldn't have raised no objections, but the women egged
'em on to order her to leave town. But she had plenty of spunk, and told
*em to mind their own business.

"So one night they decided to run her away. A crowd of men and
women dr9ve her out of her house, and chased her with sticks and stones.
She run to her father's door, callin* for help. Mike opens it, and when he
sees who it is he hits her with his fist and knocks her down and shuts
the door.

**And then the crowd kept on chunkin' her till she run clear out of
town. And the next day they finds her drowned dead in Hunter's mill
pond. I mind it all now. That was thirty year ago***

I leaned back in my non-rotary revolving chair and nodded gently, like
a mandarin, at my paste-pot.

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES 87!

"When old Mike has a spell," went on Uncle Abner, tepidly garru-
lous, "he thinks he's the Wanderin' Jew."

"He is," said I, nodding away.

And Uncle Abner cackled insinuatingly at the editor's remarks, for he
was expecting at least a "stickful" in the "Personal Notes" of the Bugle.

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES

When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss
Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to reside, they selected for a boarding
place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues.
It was an old-fashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall
white pillars. The yard was shaded by stately locusts and elms, and a
catalpa tree in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass.
Rows of high box bushes lined the fence and walks. It was the Southern
style and aspect of the place that pleased the eyes of the Talbots.

In this pleasant, private boarding house they engaged rooms, including
a study for Major Talbot, who was adding the finishing chapters to his
book, "Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and
Bar."

Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little
interest or excellence in his eyes. His mind lived in that period before
the Civil War, when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine cotton
land and the slaves to till them; when the family mansion was the scene
of princely hospitality, and drew its guests from the aristocracy of the
South. Out of that period he had brought all of its old pride and scruples
of honor, and antiquated and punctilious politeness, and (you would
think) its wardrobe.

Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years. The major was
tall, but whenever he made that wonderful, archaic genuflexion he called
a bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor. That garment was a
surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased to shy at the
frocks and broad-brimmed hats of Southern congressmen. One of the
boarders christened it a "Father Hubbard," and it certainly was high in
the waist and full in the skirt.

But the major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of plaited,
ravelling shirt bosom, and the little black string tie with the bow always
slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in Mrs. Vardeman's
select boarding house. Some of the young department clerks would
often "string him," as they called it, getting him started upon the subject
dearest to him — the traditions and history of his beloved Southland.
During his talks he would quote freely from the "Anecdotes and Remi-

872 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

niscences." But they were very careful not to let him see their designs, for
in spite of his sixty-eight years, he could make the boldest of them un-
comfortable under the steady regard of his piercing gray eyes.

Miss Lydia was a plump, little old maid of thirty-five, with smoothly
drawn, tightly twisted hair that made her look still older. Old fashioned,
too, she was; but ante-bellum glory did not radiate from her as it did
from the major. She possessed a thrifty common sense; and it was she
who handled the finances of the family, and met all comers when there
were bills to pay. The major regarded board bills and wash bills as con-
temptible nuisances. They kept coming in so persistently and so often.
Why, the major wanted to know, could they not be filed and paid in a
lump sum at some convenient period — say when the "Anecdotes and
Reminiscences" had been published and paid for? Miss Lydia would
calmly go on with her sewing and say, "Well pay as we go as long as the
money lasts, and then perhaps they'll have to lump it."

Most of Mrs. Vardeman's boarders were away during the day, being
nearly all department clerks and business men; but there was one of them
who was about the house a great deal from morning to night. This was
a young man named Henry Hopkins Hargraves — every one in the house
addressed hina by his full name — who was engaged at one of the popular
vaudeville theatres. Vaudeville has risen to such a respectable plane in the
last few years, and Mr. Hargraves was such a modest and well-mannered
person, that Mrs. Vardeman could find no objection to enrolling him
upon her list of boarders.

At the theatre Hargraves was known as an all-round dialect comedian,
having a large repertoire of German, Irish, Swede, and black-face spe-
cialties. But Mr. Hargraves was ambitious, and often spoke of his great
desire to succeed in legitimate comedy.

This young man appeared to conceive a strong fancy for Major Talbot
Whenever that gentleman would begin his Southern reminiscences, or
repeat some of the liveliest of the anecdotes, Hargraves could always be
found, the most attentive among his listeners.

For a time the major showed an inclination to discourage the advances
of the "play actor," as he privately termed him; but soon the young man's
agreeable manned and indubitable appreciation of the old gentleman's
stories completely won him over.

It was not long before the two were like old chums. The major set
apart each afternoon to read to him the manuscript of his book. During
the anecdotes Hargraves never failed to laugh at exactly the right point.
The major was moved to declare to Miss Lydia one day that young Har-
graves possessed remarkable perception and a gratifying respect for the
old regime. And when it came to talking of those old days— if Major
Talbot liked to talk, Mr. Hargraves was entranced to listen.

Like almost all old people who talk of the past, the major loved to

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES 873

linger over details. In describing the splendid, almost royal, days of the
old planters, he would hesitate until he had recalled the name of the
Negro who held his horse, or the exact date of certain minor happenings,
or the number of bales of cotton raised in such a year; but Hargraves
never grew impatient or lost interest. On the contrary, he would advance
questions on a variety of subjects connected with the life of that time, and
he never failed to extract ready replies.

The fox hunts, the 'possum suppers, the hoe downs and jubilees in the
Negro quarters, the banquets in the plantation-house hall, when invita-
tions went for fitfy miles around; the occasional feuds with the neighbor-
ing gentry; the major's duel with Rathbone Culbertson about Kitty
Chalmers, who afterward married a Thwaite of South Carolina; and pri-
vate yacht races for fabulous sums on Mobile Bay; the quaint beliefs, im-
provident habits, and loyal virtues of the old slaves — all these were sub-
jects that held both the major and Hargraves absorbed for hours at a time.

Sometimes, at night, when the young man would be coming upstairs
to his room after his turn at the theatre was over, the major would ap-
pear at the door of his study and beckon archly to him. Going in, Har-
graves would find a litde table set with a decanter, sugar bowl, fruit, and
a big bunch of fresh green mint.

"It occurred to me," the major would begin — he was always ceremoni-
ous— "that perhaps you might have found your duties at the — at your
place of occupation — sufficiently arduous to enable you, Mr. Hargraves, to
appreciate what the poet might well have had in his mind when he wrote,
'tired Nature's sweet restorer,' — one of our Southern juleps."

It was a fascination to Hargraves to watch him make it. He took rank
among artists when he began, and he never varied the process. With what
delicacy he bruised the mint; with what exquisite nicety he estimated the
ingredients; with what solicitous care he capped the compound with the
scarlet fruit glowing against the dark green fringe! And then the hospi-
tality and grace with which he offered it, after the selected oat straws had
been plunged into its tinkling depths!

After about four months in Washingon, Miss Lydia discovered one
morning that they were almost without money. The "Anecdotes and
Reminiscences" was completed, but publishers had not jumped at the
collected gems of Alabama sense and wit The rental of a small house
which they still owned in Mobile was two months in arrears. Their board
money for the month would be due in three days. Miss Lydia called her
father to a consultation.

"No money?" said he with a surprised look. "It is quite annoying to be
called on so frequently for these petty sums. Really, I n

The major searched his pockets. He found only a two-dollar bill, which
he returned to his vest pocket.

"I must attead to this at once, Lydia,** he said. "Kindly get me my

874 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

umbrella and I will go down town immediately. The congressman from
our district, General Fulghum, assured me some days ago that he would
use his influence to get my book published at an early date. I will go to
his hotel at once and see what arrangement has been made."

With a sad little smile Miss Lydia watched him button his "Father
Hubbard" and depart, pausing at the door, as he always did, to bow
profoundly.

That evening, at dark, he returned. It seemed that Congressman Fill-
ghum had seen the publisher who had the major's manuscript for read-
ing. That person had said that if the anecdotes, etc., were carefully
pruned down about one half, in order to eliminate the sectional and class
prejudice with which the book was dyed from end to end, he might con-
sider its publication.

The major was in a white heat of anger, but regained his equanimity,
according to his code of manners, as soon as he was in Miss Lydia's
presence.

"We must have money," said Miss Lydia, with a little wrinkle above
her nose. "Give me the two dollars, and I will telegraph to Uncle Ralph
for some to-night'*

The major drew a small envelope from his upper vest pocket and
tossed it on the table,

"Perhaps it was injudicious," he said mildly, "but the sum was so
merely nominal that I bought tickets to the theatre to-night. It's new-war
drama, Lydia. I thought you would be pleased to witness its first produc-
tion in Washington. I am told that the South has very fair treatment in
the play. I confess I should like to see the performance myself."

Miss Lydia threw up her hands in silent despair.

Still, as the tickets were bought, they might as well be used. So that
evening, as they sat in the theatre listening to the lively overture, even
Miss Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour, to second
place. The major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary coat showing
only where it was closely buttoned, and his white hair smoothly reached,
looked really fine and distinguished. The curtain went up on the first
act of "A Magnolia Flower," revealing a typical Southern plantation
scene. Major Talbot betrayed some interest.

"Oh, see!" exclaimed Miss Lydia, nudging his arm, and pointing to
her programme.

The major put on his glasses and read the line in the cast of characters
that her finger indicated.

CoL Webster Calhoun. . » . H. Hopkins Hargraves.

"It's our Mr. Margraves," said Miss Lydia. "It must be his first appear-
ance in what he calls 'the legitimate/ I'm so glad for him."

Not until the second act did CoL Webster Calhoun appear upon the
stage. When he made his entry Major Talbot gave an audible sniff, glared

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES 875

at him, and seemed to freeze solid. Miss Lydia uttered a little ambiguous
squeak and crumpled her programme in her hand. For Colonel Calhoun
was made up as nearly resembling Major Talbot as one pea does another.
The long, thin, white hair, curly at the ends, the aristocratic beak o£ a
nose, the crumpled, wide, ravelling shirt front, the string tie, with the bow
nearly under one ear, were almost exactly duplicated. And then, to clinch
the imitation, he wore the twin to the major's supposed to be unparalleled
coat. High-collared, baggy, empire-waisted, ample-skirted, hanging a
foot lower in front than behind, the garment could have been designed
from no other pattern. From then on, the major and Miss Lydia sat
bewitched, and saw the counterfeit presentment of a haughty Talbot
"dragged,5* as the major afterward expressed it, "through the slanderous
mire of a corrupt stage."

Mr. Hargraves had used his opportunities well He had caught the
major's little idiosyncrasies of speech, accent, and intonation and his
pompous courtliness to perfection — exaggerating all to the purpose of
the stage. When he performed that marvelous bow that the major fondly
imagined to be the pink of all salutations, the audience sent forth a sud-
den round of hearty applause.

Miss Lydia sat immovable, not daring to glance toward her father.
Sometimes her hand next to him would be laid against her cheek, as if
to conceal the smile which, in spite of her disapproval, she could not en-
tirely suppress.

The culmination of Hargraves's audacious imitation took place in the
third act. The scene is where Colonel Calhoun entertains a few of the
neighboring planters in his "den."

Standing at a table in the centre of the stage, with his friends grouped
about him, he delivers that inimitable, rambling, character monologue so
famous in "A Magnolia Flower," at the same time that he deftly makes
juleps for the party.

Major Talbot, sitting quietly, but white with indignation, heard his
best stories retold, his pet theories and hobbies advanced and expanded,
and the dream of the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences" served, exagger-
ated and garbled. His favorite narrative — that of his duel with Rathbone
Culbertson — was not omitted, and it was delivered with more fire, ego-
tism, and gusto than the major himself put into it.

The monologue concluded with a quaint, delicious, witty little lecture
on the art of concocting a julep, illustrated by the act. Here Major Tal-
bot's delicate but showy science was reproduced to a hair's breadth —
from his dainty handling of the fragrant weed— "the one-thousandth part
of a grain too much pressure, gentlemen, and you extract the bitterness,
instead of the aroma, of this heaven-bestowed plant" — to his solicitous
selection of the oaten straws.

At Che close of the scene the audience raised a tumultuous roar of ap-

876 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

preciation. The portrayal of the type was so exact, so sure and thorough,
that the leading characters in the play were forgotten. After repeated
calls, Hargraves came before the curtain and bowed, his rather boyish
face bright and flushed with the knowledge of success.

At last Miss Lydia turned and looked at the major. His thin nostrils
were working like the gills of a fish. He laid both shaking hands upon the
arms of his chair to rise.

"We will go, Lydia," he said, chokingly. "This is an abominable-
desecration."

Before he could rise, she pulled him back into his seat.

"We will stay it out," she declared. "Do you want to advertise the
copy by exhibiting the original coat?" So they remained to the end.

Hargraves's success must have kept him up late that night, for neither
at the breakfast nor at the dinner table did he appear.

About three in the afternoon he tapped at the door of Major Talbot's
study. The major opened it, and Hargraves walked in with his hands full
of the morning papers — too full of his triumph to notice anything un-
usual in the major's demeanor.

"I put it all over 'em last night, major," he began, exultantly. "I had
my inning, and, I think, scored. Here's what the Post says :

"His conception and portrayal of the old-time Southern colonel, with
his absurd grandiloquence, his eccentric garb, his quaint idioms and
phrases, his moth-eaten pride of family, and his really kind heart, fastidi-
ous sense of honor, and lovable simplicity, is the best delineation of a
character role on the boards to-day. The coat worn by Colonel Calhoun
is itself nothing less than an evolution of genius. Mr. Hargraves has cap-
tured his public.

"How does that sound, major, for a first nighter?"

"I had the honor"— the major's voice sounded ominously frigid — "of
witnessing your very remarkable performance, sir, last night."

Hargraves looked disconcerted.

"You were there? I didn't know you ever — I didn't know you cared
for the theatre. Oh, I say, Major Talbot," he exclaimed, frankly, "don't
you be offended. I admit I did gtt a lot of pointers from you that helped
me out wonderfully in the part But it's a type, you know— not individual.
The way the audience caught on shows that. Half the patrons of that
theatre art Southerners, They recognized it."

**Mr. Hargraves," said the major, who had remained standing, "you
have put upon me an unpardonable insult. You have burlesqued my
person, grossly betrayed my confidence, and misused my hospitality. If I
thought you possessed the faintest conception of what is the sign manual
of a gentleman, or what is due one, I would call you out, sir, old as I am.
I will ask you to leave the room, sir."

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES 877

The actor appeared to be slightly bewildered, and seemed hardly to
take in the full meaning of the old gentleman's words.

"I am truly sorry you took offence," he said, regretfully. "Up here we
don't look at things just as you people do. I know men who would buy
out half the house to have their personality put on the stage so the public
would recognize it."

"They are not from Alabama, sir," said the major, haughtily.

"Perhaps not. I have a pretty good memory, major; let me quote a few
lines from your book. In response to a toast at a banquet given in Mil-
ledgeville, I believe — you uttered, and intend to have printed these words:

"The Northern man is utterly without sentiment or warmth except
in so far as the feelings may be turned to his own commercial profit. He
will suffer without resentment any imputation cast upon the honor of
himself or his loved ones that does not bear with it the consequence of
pecuniary loss. In his charity, he gives with a liberal hand; but it must
be heralded with the trumpet and chronicled in brass.

"Do you think that picture is fairer than the one you saw of Colonel
Calhoun last night?"

"The description," said the major frowning, "is — not without grounds.
Some exag — latitude must be allowed in public speaking."

"And in public acting," replied Hargraves.

"That is not the point," persisted the major, unrelenting. "It was a
personal caricature* I positively decline to overlook it, sir."

"Major Talbot," said Hargraves, with a winning smile, "I wish you
would understand me. I want you to know that I never dreamed of in-
sulting you. In my profession, all life belongs to me. I take what I want,
and what I can, and return it over the footlights. Now, if you will, let's
let it go at that. I came in to see you about something else. We've been
pretty good friends for some months, and I'm going to take the risk of
offending you again. I know you are hard up for money — never mind
how I found out; a boarding house is no place to keep such matters secret
— and I want you to let me help you out of the pinch. I've been there
often enough myself. I've been getting a fair salary all the season, and I've
saved some money." You're welcome to a couple hundred — or even more
—until you get "

"Stop!" commanded the major, with his arm outstretched. "It seems
that my book didn't lie, after all You think your money salve will heal all
the hurts of honor. Under no circumstances would I accept a loan from a
casual acquaintance; and as to you, sir, I would starve before I would
consider your insulting offer of a financial adjustment of the circum-
stances we have discussed, I beg to repeat my request relative to your
quitting the apartment."

Hargraves took his departure without another word. He also left the

878 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

house the same day, moving, as Mrs. Vardeman explained at the supper
table, nearer the vicinity of the down-town theatre, where "A Magnolia
Flower" was booked for a week's run.

Critical was the situation with Major Talbot and Miss Lydia. There
was no one in Washington to whom the major's scruples allowed him
to apply for a loan. Miss Lydia wrote a letter to Uncle Ralph, but it was
doubtful whether that relative's constricted affairs would permit him to
furnish help. The major was forced to make an apologetic address to Mrs.
Vardeman regarding the delayed payment for board, referring to "delin-
quent rentals" and "delayed remittances" in a rather confused strain.

Deliverance carne from an entirely unexpected source.

Late one afternoon the door maid came up and announced an old
colored man who wanted to see Major Talbot. The major asked that he
be sent up to his study. Soon an old darkey appeared in the doorway,
with his hat in hand, bowing, and scraping with one clumsy foot. He
was quite decently dressed in a baggy suit of black. His big, coarse shoes
shone with a metallic lustre suggestive of stove polish. His bushy wool
was gray — almost white. After middle life, it is difficult to estimate the age
of a Negro. This one might have seen as many years as had Major Talbot.

"I be bound you don't know me? Mars* Pendleton," were his first words.

The major rose and came forward at the old, familiar style of address.
It was one of the old plantation darkeys without a doubt; but they had
been widely scattered, and he could not recall the voice or face. *

"I don't believe I do," he said, kindly— "unless you will assist ^ny
memory."

"Don't you 'member Cindy's Mose, Mars' Pendleton, what 'migrated
'mediately after de war?**

"Wait a moment," said the major, rubbing his forehead with the tips
of his fingers. He loved to recall everything connected with those beloved
days. "Cindy's Mose,M he reflected. "You worked among the horses —
breaking the colts. Yes, I remember now. After the surrender, you took
the name of— don't prompt me — Mitchell, and went to the West — to
Nebraska."

**Yassir, yassir/'—^the old man's face stretched with a delighted grin —
"dat's him, dat's it. Newbraska. Dat's me — Mose Mitchell. Old Uncle
Mose Mitchell, dey calls me now. Old mars', your pa, girnme a pah of dem
mule colts when I lef fur to staht me goin' with. You 'member dem
colts, Mars' Pendletoa ?"

*I don't seem to recall the colts,5* said the major. "You know I was
married the first year of the war and living at the old Follinsbee place.
But sit down, sit down, Uncle Mose. Pm glad to see you. I hope you have
prospered."

Uncle Mose took a chair and laid his hat carefully on the floor beside it.

"Yassir; of late I done mouty famous. When I first got to Newbraska,

THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES 879

dey folks come all roun* me to see dem mule colts. Dey ain't see no
mules like dem in Newbraska. I sold dem mules for three hundred dol-
lars. Yassir — three hundred.

"Den I open a blacksmith shop, suh, and made some money and
bought some Ian*. Me and my old 'oman done raised up seb'm chillun,
and all doin' well 'cept two of 'em what died. Fo* year ago a railroad
come along and staht a town slam ag'inst my Ian', and, suh, Mars* Pendle-
ton, Uncle Mose am worth lem'm thousand dollars in money, property,
and Ian1."

"I'm glad to hear it," said the major heartily. "Glad to hear it."

"And dat little baby of yo'n, Mars* Pendleton — one what you name Miss
Lyddy — I be bound dat little tad done growed up tell nobody wouldn't
know her."

The major stepped to the door and called: "Lydia, dear, will you
come?"

Miss Lydia, looking quite grown up and a little worried, came in from
her room.

"Dar, now! What'd I tell you? I knowed dat baby be plum growed up.
You don't 'member Uncle Mose, child?"

"This is Aunt Cindy's Mose, Lydia," explained the major. "He left
Sunnymead for the West when you were two years old."

"Well," said Miss Lydia, "I can hardly be expected to remember you,
Uncle Mose, at that age. And, as you say, Fm 'plum growed up,' and was
a blessed long time ago. But I'm glad to see you, even if I can't remember
you."

And she was. And so was the major. Something alive and tangible
had come to link them with the happy past. The three sat and talked over
the olden times, the major and Uncle Mose, correcting or prompting
each other as they reviewed the plantation scenes and days.

The major inquired what the old man was doing so far from his home.

"Uncle Mose am a delicate," he explained, "to de grand Baptis' conven-
tion in dis city. I never preached none, but bein* a residin' elder in de
church, and able fur to pay my own expenses, dey sent me along."

"And how did you know we were in Washington?" inquired Miss
Lydia.

"Dey's a cullud man works in de hotel whar I stops, what comes from
Mobile. He told me he seen Mars' Pendleton comin* outen dish here
house one mawnin'.

"What I come fur," continued Uncle Mose, reaching into his pocket—
"besides de sight of home folks—was to pay Mars' Pendleton what I
owes him."

"Owe me?" said the major, in surprise.

"Yassir-- three hundred dollars." He handed the major a roll of bills.
"When I let9 old mars' says: Take dem mule colts, Mose, and, if it be so
you gits able, pay fur 'em.* Yas sir — dem was his words. De war had

88O BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

done lef old mars po' hisself. Old mars' bein' long ago dead, de debt
descends to Mars1 Pendleton. Three hundred dollars. Uncle Mose is
plenty able to pay now. When dat railroad buy my Ian* I laid off to pay
for dem mules. Count de money, Mars' Pendleton. Dat's what I sold dem
mules fur. Yassin"

Tears were in Major Talbot's eyes. He took Uncle Mose's hand and
laid his other upon his shoulder.

"Dear, faithful old servitor," he said in an unsteady voice, "I don't
mind saying to you that 4Mars' Pendleton' spent his last dollar in the
world a week ago. We will accept this money, Uncle Mose, since, in a
way, it is a sort of payment, as well as a token of the loyalty and devotion
of the old regime. Lydia, my dear, take the money. You are better fitted
than I to manage its expenditure."

"Take it, honey," said Uncle Mose. "Hit belongs to you. Hit's Talbot
money."

After Unc5e Mose had gone, Miss Lydia had a good cry — for joy; and
the major turned his face to a corner, and smoked his clay pipe vol-
canically.

The succeeding days saw the Talbots restored to peace and ease. Miss
Lydia's face lost its worried look. The major appeared in a new frock
coat, in which he looked like a wax figure personifying the memory of
his golden age. Another publisher who read the manuscript of the "Anec-
dotes and Reminiscences" thought that, with a little retouching and ton-
ing down of the high lights, he could make a really bright and salable
volume of it. Altogether, the situation was comfortable, and not without
the touch of hope that is often sweeter than arrived blessings.

One day, about a week after their piece of good luck, a maid brought
a letter for Miss Lydia to her room. The postmark showed that it was
from New York. Not knowing any one there, Miss Lydia, in a mild
flutter of wonder, sat down by her table and opened the letter with her
scissors. This was what she read:

Dear Miss Talbot:

I thought you might be glad to learn of my good fortune. I have re-
ceived and accepted an offer of two hundred dollars per week by a New
York stock company to play Cofonel Calhoun in "A Magnolia Flower."

There is something else I wanted you to know. I guess you'd better
not tell Major Talbot I was anxious to make him some amends for the
great help he was to me in studying the part, and for the bad humor
he was in about it He refused to let me, so I did it anyhow. I could
easily spare the three hundred.

Sincerely yours,
H. Hopkins Hargraves
P. S. How did I play Uncle Mose?

LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE 88l

Major Talbot, passing through the hall, saw Miss Lydia's door open
and stopped.

"Any mail for us this morning, Lydia dear?" he asked.

Miss Lydia slid the letter beneath a fold of her dress.

"The Mobile Chronicle came," she said, promptly. "It's on the table in
your study."

LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE

So I went to a doctor.

"How long has it been since you took any alcohol into your system?"
he asked.

Turning my head sidewise, I answered, "Oh, quite awhile."

He was a young doctor, somewhere between twenty and forty. He
wore heliotrope socks, but he looked like Napoleon. I liked him im-
mensely.

"Now," said he, "I am going to show you the effect of alcohol upon
your circulation." I think it was "circulation" he said; though it may have
been "advertising."

He bared my left arm to the elbow, brought out a bottle of whiskey,
and gave me a drink. He began to look more like Napoleon. I began to
like him better.

Then he put a tight compress on my upper arm, stopped my pulse
with his fingers, and squeezed a rubber bulb connected with an apparatus
on a stand that looked like a thermometer. The mercury jumped up and
down without seeming to stop anywhere; but the doctor said it registered
two hundred and thirty-seven or one hundred and sixty-five or some such
number.

"Now," said he, "you see what alcohol does to the blood-pressure."

"It's marvelous," said I, "but do you think it a sufficient test? Have
one on me, and let's try the other arm." But, no!

Then he grasped my hand. I thought I was doomed and he was saying
good-bye. But all he wanted to do was to jab a needle into the end of a
finger and compare the red drop with a lot of fifty-cent poker chips that
he had fastened to a card.

"It's the haemoglobin test," he explained. "The color of your blood is
wrong."

"Well," said I, "I know it should be blue; but this is a country of mix-
ups. Some of my ancestors were cavaliers; but they got thick with some
people on Nantucket Island, so *'

"I mean," said the doctor, "that the shade of red is too light."

"Oh," I said, "it's a case of matching instead of matches."

882 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

The doctor then pounded me severely in the region of the chest. When
he did that I don't know whether he reminded me most of Napoleon or
Battling or Lord Nelson, Then he looked grave and mentioned a string
of grievances that the flesh is heir to— mostly ending in "itis." I imme-
diately paid him fifteen dollars on account.

"Is' or are it or some or any of them necessarily fatal?" I asked. I
thought my connection with the matter justified my manifesting a cer-
tain amount of interest.

"All of them," he answered, cheerfully. "But their progress may be
arrested. With care and proper continuous treatment you may live to be
eighty-five or ninety."

I began to think of the doctor's bill. "Eighty-five would be sufficient,
I am sure," was my comment. I paid him ten dollars more on account.

"The first thing to do," he said, with renewed animation, "is to find a
sanitarium where you will get a complete rest for a while, and allow
your nerves to get into a better condition. I myself will go with you and
sekct a suitable one."

So he took me to a mad-house in the Catskills. It was on a bare moun-
tain frequented only by infrequent frequenters. You could see nothing
but stones and boulders, some patches of snow, and scattered pine trees.
The young physician in charge was most agreeable. He gave me a stim-
ulant without applying a compress to the arm. It was luncheon time, and
we were invited to partake. There were about twenty inmates at little
tables in the dining room. The young physician in charge came to our
table and said: ult is a custom with our guests not to regard themselves
as patients, but merely as tired ladies and gentlemen taking a rest. What-
ever slight maladies they may have are never alluded to in conversation."

My doctor called loudly to a waitress to bring some phosphoglycerate
of lime hash, dog-bread, bromo-sehzer pancakes, and nux vomica tea for
my repast. Then a sound arose like a sudden wind storm among pine
trees. It was produced by every guest in the room whispering loudly,
"Neurasthenia!"— except one man with a nose, whom I distinctly heard
say, "Chronic alcoholism." I hope to meet him again. The physician in
charge turned and walked away.

An hour or so after luncheon he conducted us to the workshop — say
fifty yards from the house. Thither the guests had been conducted by the
physician in charge's understudy and sponge-holder — a man with feet
and a blue sweater. He was so tall that I was not sure he had a face; but
the Armour Packing Company would have been delighted with his
hands.

"Here/* said the physician in charge, "our guests find relaxation from
past mental worries by devoting themselves to physical labor — recreation,
in reality."

There were turning-lathes, carpenters' ourfits, clay-modelling tools,

LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE 883

spinning-wheels, weaving-frames, treadmills, bass drums, enlarged-crayon-
portrait apparatuses, blacksmith forges, and everything, seemingly, that
could interest the paying lunatic guests of a first-rate sanitarium.

"The lady making mud pies in the corner," whispered the physician
in charge, "is no other than — Lulu Lulington, the authoress of the novel
entitled 'Why Love Loves.9 What she is doing now is simply to rest her
mind after performing that piece of work."

I had seen the book. "Why doesn't she do it by writing another one
instead?" I asked.

As you see, I wasn't as far gone as they thought I was.

"The gentleman pouring water through the funnel," continued the
physician in charge, "is a Wall Street broker broken down from over-
work."

I buttoned my coat.

Others he pointed out were architects playing with Noah's arks, min-
isters reading Darwin's "Theory of Evolution," lawyers sawing wood,
tired-out society ladies talking Ibsen to the blue-sweater sponge-holder,
a neurotic millionaire lying asleep on the floor, and a prominent artist
drawing a little red wagon around the room.

"You look pretty strong," said the physician in charge of me. "I think
the best mental relaxation for you would be throwing small boulders over
the mountainside and then bringing them up again."

I was a hundred yards away before my doctor overtook rne.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"The matter is," said I, "that there are no aeroplanes handy. So I am
going to merrrily and hastily jog the foot-pathway to yon station and
catch the first unlimited-soft-coal express back to town."

"Well," said the doctor, "perhaps you are right. This seems hardly the
suitable place for you. But what you need is rest— absolute rest and
exercise."

That night I went to a hotel in the city, and said to the clerk: 'What
I need is absolute rest and exercise. Can you give rne a room with one of
those tall folding beds in it, and a relay of bellboys to work it up and
down while I rest?"

The clerk rubbed a speck off one of his finger nails and glanced side-
wise at a tall man in a white hat sitting in the lobby. That man came over
and asked me politely if I had seen the shrubbery at the west entrance.
I had not, so he showed it to me and then looked me over.

"I thought you had *em," he said, 0ot unkindly, "but I guess you're all
right. You'd better go see a doctor, old man."

A week afterward my doctor tested my blood pressure again without
the preliminary stimulant. He looked to me a little less like Napoleon.
And his socks were at a shade of tan that did not appeal to me.

"What you need," he decided, "is sea air and companionship."

?4 BOOK VII SIXES AN?D SEVENS

"Would a mermaid " I began; but he slipped on his professional

manner.

"I myself/* he said, "will take you to the Hotel Bonair off the coast of
Long Island and see that you get in good shape. It is a quiet, comfortable
resort where you will soon recuperate.71

The Hotel Bonair proved to be a nine-hundred-room fashionable hos-
telry on an island off the main shore. Everybody who did not dress for
dinner was shoved into a side dining room and given only a terrapin and
champagne table d'hote. The bay was a great stamping ground for
wealthy yachtsmen. The Corsair anchored there the day we arrived. I saw
Mr. Morgan standing on deck eating a cheese sandwich and gazing long-
ingly at the hotel. Still, it was a very inexpensive place. Nobody could
afford to pay their prices. When you went away you simply left your bag-
gage, stole a skiff, and beat it for the mainland in the night

When I had been there one day I got a pad of monogrammed tele-
graph blanks at the clerk's desk and began to wire to all my friends for
get-away money. My doctor and I played one game of croquet on the golf
links and went to sleep on the lawn.

When we got back to town a thought seemed to occur to him suddenly.
"By the way," he asked, "how do you feel?"

"Relieved of very much," I replied.

Now a consulting physician is different. He isn't exactly sure whether
he is to be paid or not, and this uncertainty insures you either the most
careful or the most careless attention. My doctor took me to see a con-
sulting physician. He made a poor guess and gave me careful attention.
I liked him immensely. He put me through some coordination exercises.

"Have you a pain in the back of your head?" he asked. I told him I
had not.

"Shut your eyes,** he ordered, "put your feet close together, and jump
backward as far as you can."

I always was a good backward jumper with my eyes shut, so I obeyed.
My head struck the edge of the bathroom door, which had been left open
and was only three feet away. The doctor was very sorry. He had over-
looked the fact that the door was open. He closed it.

"Now touch your nose with your right forefinger," he said.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"On your face,** said he.

"I mean my right forefinger," I explained.

"Oh, excuse me," said he. He reopened the bathroom door, and I took
my finger out of the crack of it After I had performed the marvelous
digi to-nasal feat I said:

"I do not wish to deceive you as to symptoms, Doctor; I really have
something like a pain in the back of my head." He ignored the symptom
and examined my heart carefully with a ktest-jpopular-air-penny-m-the-

LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE 005

slot ear-trumpet. I felt like a ballad. "Now," he said, "gallop like a horse
for about five minutes around the room."

I gave the best imitation I could of a disqualified Percheron being led
out of Madison Square Garden, Then, without dropping in a penny, he
listened to my chest again.

"No glanders in our family, Doc," I said.

The consulting physician held up his forefinger within three inches of
my nose. "Look at my finger," he commanded.

"Did you ever try Pears* " I began; but he went on with his test

rapidly.

"Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger.
At my finger. Across the bay. Across the bay. At my finger. Across the
bay." This for about three minutes.

He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It seemed
easy to me. I never once mistook his finger for the bay. Ill bet that if he
had used the phrases: "Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied, outward — or
rather laterally — in the direction of the horizon, underlaid, so to speak,
with the adjacent fluid inlet," and "Now, returning— or rather, in a man-
ner, withdrawing your attention, bestow it upon my upraised digit" — Til
bet, I say, that Henry James himself could have passed the examination.

After asking me if I had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the
spine or a cousin with swelled ankles, the two doctors retired to the
bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation. I
ate an apple, and gazed first at my finger and then across the bay.

The doctors came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones
and Tennessee-papers-please-copy. They wrote out a diet list to which I
was to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to eat on
it, except snails. And I never eat a snail unless it overtakes me and bites
me first.

"You must follow this diet strictly," said the doctors.

"I'd follow it a mile if I could get one-tenth of what's on it," I
answered.

"Of next importance,** they went on, "is outdoor air and exercise. And
here is a prescription that will be of great benefit to you."

Then all of us took something. They took their hats, and I took my
departure.

I went to a druggist and showed him the prescription,

"It will be $2.87 for an ounce bottle," he said.

"Will you give me a piece of your wrapping cord ?" said I. ^

I made a hole in the prescription, ran the cord through it, tied it around
my neck, and tucked it inside. All of us have a little superstition, and
mine runs to a confidence in amulets.

Of course there was nothing the matter with me, but I was very ill.
I couldn't work, sleep, eat, or bowl. The only way I could get any sym-

886 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

pathy was to go without shaving for four days. Even then somebody
would say: uOld man, you look as hardy as a pine knot. Been up for a
jaunt in the Maine Woods, eh?"

Then, suddenly, I remembered that I must have outdoor air and ex-
ercise. So I went down South to John's. John is an approximate relative
by verdict of a preacher standing with a little book in his hands in a
bower of chrysanthemums while a hundred thousand people looked on.
John has a country house seven miles from Pineville. It is at an altitude
and on the Blue Ridge Mountains in a state too dignified to be dragged
into this controversy. John is mica, which is more valuable and clearer
than gold.

He met me at Pineville, and we took the trolley car to his home. It is
a big, neighborless cottage on a hill surrounded by a hundred mountains.
We got off at his little private station, where John's family and Amaryllis
met and greeted us. Amaryllis looked at me a trifle anxiously.

A rabbit came bounding across the hill between us and the house. I
threw down my suit-case and pursued it hotfoot. After I had run twenty
yards and seen it disappear, I sat down on the grass and wept discon-
solately.

"I can't catch a rabbit any more," I sobbed. "I'm of no further use in
the world. I may as well be dead."

uOht what is it— what is it, Brother John?" I heard Amaryllis say.

"Nerves a little unstrung," said John, in his calm way. "Don't worry.
Get up, you rabbit-chaser, and come on to the house before the biscuits
get cold." It was about twilight, and the mountains came up nobly to
Miss Murfree's descriptions of them.

Soon after dinner I announced that I believed I could sleep for a year
or two, including legal holidays. So I was shown to a room as big and
cool as a flower garden, where there was a bed as broad as a lawn. Soon
afterward the remainder of the household retired, and then there fell
upon the land a silence.

I had act heard a silence before in years. It was absolute. I raised my-
self on my elbow and listened to it. Sleep! I thought that if I only could
bear a star twinkle or a blade of grass sharpen itself I could compose
myself to rest I thought once that I heard a sound like the sail of a cat-
boat flapping as it veered about in a breeze, but I decided that it was
probably only a tack in the carpet Still I listened*

Suddenly some belated little bird alighted upon the window-sill, and,
in what he no doubt considered sleepy tones, enunciated the noise gen-
erally translated as "cheep!"

I leaped into the air.

"Hey! what's the matter down there?" called John from his room
above mine.

LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE 007

"Oh, nothing," I answered, "except that I accidentally bumped my
head against the ceiling."

The next morning I went out on the porch and looked at the moun-
tains. There were forty-seven of them in sight. I shuddered, went into
the big hall sitting room of the house, selected "Pancoast's Family Prac-
tice of Medicine" from a bookcase, and began to read. John came in, took
the book away from me, and led me outside. He has a farm of three
hundred acres furnished with the usual complement of barns, mules,
peasantry, and harrows with three front teeth broken off. I had seen such
things in my childhood, and my heart began to sink.

Then John spoke of alfalfa, and I brightened at once. "Oh, yes/* said
I, "wasn't she in the chorus of — let's see "

"Green, you know," said John, "and tender, and you plow it under
after the first season."

"I know," said I, "and the grass grows over her."

"Right," said John. "You know something about farming, after all"

"I know something of some farmers," said I, "and a sure scythe will
mow them down some day."

On the way back to the house a beautiful and inexplicable creature
walked across our path. I stopped irresistibly fascinated, grazing at it.
John waited patiently, smoking his cigarette. He is a modern farmer.
After ten minutes he said: "Are you going to stand there looking at
that chicken all day? Breakfast is nearly ready."

"A chicken?" said L

"A white Orpington hen, if you want to particularize."

"A white Orpington hen?" I repeated, with intense interest The fowl
walked slowly away with graceful dignity, and I followed like a child
after the Pied Piper. Five minutes more were allowed me by John, and
then he took me by the sleeve and conducted me to breakfast

After I had been there a week I began to grow alarmed. I was sleep-
ing and eating well and actually beginning to enjoy life. For a man in
my desperate condition that would never do. So I sneaked down to the
trolley-car station, took the car for Pineville, and went to see one of the
best physicians in town. By this time I knew exactly what to do when I
needed medical treatment I hung my hat on the back of a chair, and
said rapidly:

"Doctor, I have cirrhosis of the heart, indurated arteries, neurasthenia,
neuritis, acute indigestion, and convalescence. I am going to live on a
strict diet. I shall also take a tepid bath at night and a cold one in the
morning. I shall endeavor to be cheerful, and fix my mind on pleasant
subjects. In the way of drugs I intend to take a phosphorus pill three
times a day, preferably after meals, and a tonic composed of the tinctures
of gentian, cinchona, calisaya, and cardamon compound. Into each tea-

888 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

spoonful of this I shall mix tincture of nux vomica, beginning with one
drop ancl increasing it a drop each day until the maximum dose is
reached. I shall drop this with a medicine-dropper, which can be procured
at a trifling cost at any pharmacy. Good-morning."

I took rny hat and walked out. After I had closed the door I remem-
bered something that I had forgotten to say. I opened it again. The doc-
tor had not moved from where he had been sitting, but he gave a slightly
nervous start when he saw me again.

"I forgot to mention," said I, "that I shall also take absolute rest and
exercise."

After this consultation I felt much better. The reestablishing in my
mind of the fact that I was hopelessly ill gave me so much satisfaction
that I almctft became gloomy again. There is nothing more alarming to a
neurasthenic than to feel himself growing well and cheerful.

John looked after me carefully. After I had evinced so much interest
in his White Orpington chicken he tried his best to divert my mind, and
was particular to lock his hen house of nights. Gradually the tonic moun-
tain air, the wholesome food, and the daily walks among the hills so
alleviated my malady that I became utterly wretched and despondent. I
heard of a country doctor who lived in the mountains near-by. I went to
see him and told him the whole story. He was a gray-bearded man with
clear, blue, wrinkled eyes, in a home-made suit of gray jeans.

In order to save time I diagnosed my case, touched my nose with my
right forefinger, struck myself below the knee to make my foot kick,
sounded my chest, stuck out my tongue, and asked him the price of
cemetery lots in Pineville.

He lit his pipe and looked at me for about three minutes. "Brother,"
he said, after a while, "y°u arc *n a mighty bad way. There's a chance
for you to pull through, but it's a mighty slim one."'

"What can it be?*' I asked, eagerly. "I have taken arsenic and gold,
phosphorus, exercise, nux vomica, hydrotherapeutic baths, rest, excite-
ment, codein, and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Is there anything left in
the pharmacopoeia?"

"Somewhere in these mountains," said the doctor, "there's a plant
growing— a flowering plant that'll cure you, and it's about the only thing
that will. It's of a kind that's as old as the world; but of late it's powerful
scarce and hard to find. Yoy and I will have to hunt it up, I'm not en-
gaged in active practice now: I'm getting along in years; but I'll take
your case. You'll have to come every day in the afternoon and help me
hunt for this plant till we find it. The city doctors may know a lot about
new scientific things, but they don't know much about the cures that
naure carries around in her saddle bags."

So every day the old doctor and I hunted the cure-all plant among the
mountains and valleys of the Blue Ridge. Together we toiled up steep

LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE 009

heights so slippery with fallen autumn leaves that we had to catch
every sapling and branch within our reach to save us from falling. We
waded through gorges and chasms, breast-deep with laurel and ferns;
we followed the banks of mountain streams for miles, we wound our
way like Indians through brakes of pine — road side, hill side, river side,
mountain side we explored in our search for the miraculous plant.

As the old doctor said, it must have grown scarce and hard to find. But
we followed our quest. Day by day we plumbed the valleys, scaled the
heights, and tramped the plateaus in search of the miraculous plant.
Mountain-bred, he never seemed to tire. I often reached home too fatigued
to do anything except fall into bed and sleep until morning. This we
kept up for a month.

One evening after I had returned from a six-mile tramp with the old
doctor, Amaryllis and I took a little walk under the trees near the road.
We looked at the mountains drawing their royal-purple robes around
them for their night's repose.

"Pm glad you're well again," she said. "When you first came you
frightened me. I thought you were really ill."

"Well again!" I almost shrieked. "Do you know that I have only one
chance in a thousand to live?"

Amaryllis looked at me in surprise. "Why," said she, "you are as strong
as one of the plow-mules, and sleep ten or twelve hours every night, and
you are eating us out of house and home. What more do you want?"

"I tell you," said I, "that unless we find the magic — that is, the plant we
are looking for— in time, nothing can save me. The doctor tells me so."

"What doctor?"

"Doctor Tatum — the old doctor who lives halfway up Black Oak
Mountain. Do you know him?"

"I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go
every day — is it he who takes you on these long walks and climbs that
have brought back your health and strength ? God bless the old doctor."

Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down to road in his
rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him and shouted that I would be
on hand the next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and called
to Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes while I
waited. Then the old doctor drove on.

When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged out an encyclopaedia
and sought a word in it. "The doctor said," she told me, "that you
needn't call any more as a patient, but he'd be glad to see you any time
as a friend. And then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopaedia
and tell you what it means. It seems to be the name of a genus of flower-
ing plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus and VirgiL
What do you suppose the doctor meant by that?"

"I know what he meant," said L "I know now."

890 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

A word to a brother who may have come under the spell o£ the un-
quiet Lady Neurasthenia.

The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians
of the walled cities had put their fingers upon the specific medicament.

And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black
Oak Mountain— take the road to your right at the Methodist meeting
house in the pine-grove.

Absolute rest and exercise!

What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade, and,
with a sixth sense, read the wordless Theocritan idyl of the gold-bannered
blue mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of the night?

OCTOBER AND JUNE

The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In
the closet near by was stored his faded uniform, stained and worn by
weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since those old
days of war's alarms!

And now, veteran that he was of his country's strenuous times, he had
been reduced to abject surrender by a woman's soft eyes and smiling lips.
As he sat in his quiet room he held in his hand the letter he had just
received from her— the letter that had caused him to wear that look of
gloom. He re-read the fatal paragraph that had destroyed his hope.

In declining the honor you have done me in asking me to be
your wife, I feel that I ought to speak frankly. The reason I have
for so doing is the great difference between our ages. I like you very,
very much, but I am sure that our marriage would not be a happy
one. I am sorry to have to refer to this, but I believe that you will
appreciate my honesty in giving you the true reason.

The Captain sighed, and leaned his head upon his hand. Yes, there
were many years between their ages. But he was strong and rugged, he
had position and wealth. Would not his love, his tender care, and the
advantages he could bestow upon her make her forget the question of
age? Besides, he was almost sure that she cared for him.

The Captain was a man of prompt action. In the field he had been
distinguished for his decisiveness and energy. He would see her and
plead his cause again in person. Age! — what was it to come between him
and the one he loved?

In two hours he stood ready, in light marching order, for his greatest
battle. He took the train for the old Southern town in Tennessee where
she lived.

OCTOBER AND JUNE 89!

Theodora Deming was on the steps of the handsome, porticoed old
mansion, enjoying the summer twilight, when the Captain entered the
gate and came up the gravelled walk. She met him with a smile that was
free from embarrassment. As the Captain stood on the step below her, the
difference in their ages did not appear so great. He was tall and straight
and clear-eyed and browned. She was in the bloom of lovely womanhood.

"I wasn't expecting you," said Theodora; "but now that you've come
you may sit on the step. Didn't you get my letter?"'

"I did," said the Captain, "and that's why I came. I say, now, Theo,
reconsider your answer, won't you?"

Theodora smiled softly upon him. He carried his years well. She was
really fond of his strength, his wholesome looks, his manliness — perhaps,
if

"No, no," she said, shaking her head, positively; "it's out of the ques-
tion. I like you a whole lot, but marrying won't do. My age and yours
are — but don't make me say it again— I told you in my letter."

The Captain flushed a little through the bronze on his face. He was
silent for a while, gazing sadly into the twilight. Beyond a line of woods
that he could see was a field where the boys in blue had once bivouacked
on their march toward the sea, How long ago it seemed now! Truly,
Fate and Father Time had tricked him sorely. Just a few years interposed
between himself and happiness!

Theodora's hand crept down and rested in the clasp of his firm brown
one. She felt, at least, that sentiment that is akin to love.

"Don't take it so hard, please," she said, gently. "Its all for the best.
I've reasoned it out very wisely all by myself. Some day you'll be glad I
didn't marry you. It would be very nice and lovely for a while — but, just
think! In only a few short years what different tastes we would have.
One of us would want to sit by the fireside and read, and maybe nurse
neuralgia or rheumatism of evenings, while the other would be crazy for
balls and theatres and late suppers. No, rny dear friend. While it isn't
exactly January and May, it's a clear case of October and pretty early in
June."

"I'd always do what you wanted me to do, Theo. If you wanted to *

"No, you wouldn't. You think now that you would, but you wouldn't.
Please don't ask me any more/'

The Captain had lost his battle. But he was a gallant warrior, and
when he rose to make his final adieu his mouth was grimly set and his
shoulders were squared.

He took the train for the North that night On the next evening he
was back in his room, where his sward was hanging against the wall. He
was dressing for diaper, tying his white tie into a very careful bow. And
at the same time he was indulging in a pensive soliloquy.

" Ten my honor, I believe Theo was right, after all. Nobody can deny

892 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

that she's a peach, but she must be twenty-eight, at the very kindest
calculation."

For you see, the Captain was only nineteen, and his sword had never
been drawn except on the parade ground at Chattanooga, which was as
near as he ever got to the Spanish- American War.

THE CHURCH WITH AN O V ERS H OT-W HEEL

Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer
resorts. It lies on a low spur of the Cumberland range of mountains ^ on a
little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is a contented village
of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrow-gauge railroad line.
You wonder whether the railroad lost itself in the pine woods and ran
into Lakelands from fright and lineliness, or whether Lakelands got lost
and huddled itself along the railroad to wait for the cars to carry it home.

You wonder again why it was named Lakelands. There are no lakes,
and the lands about are too poor to be worth mentioning.

Half a mile from the village stands the Eagle House, a big, roomy old
mansion run by Josiah Rankin for the accommodation of visitors who
desire the mountain air at inexpensive rates. The Eagle House is delight-
fully mismanaged. It is full of ancient instead of modern improvements,
and it is altogether as comfortably neglected and pleasingly disarranged
as your own home. But you are furnished with clean rooms and good and
abundant fare: yourself and the piny woods must do the rest. Nature has
provided a mineral spring, grape-vine swings, and croquet — even the
wickets are wooden. You have Art to thank only for the fiddle-and-guitar
music twice a week at the hop in the rustic pavilion.

The patrons of the Eagle House are those who seek recreation as a
necessity, as well as a pleasure. They are busy people, who may be lik-
ened to clocks that need a fortnight's winding to insure a year's running
their wheels. You will find students there from the lower towns, now and
then an artist, or a geologist absorbed in construing the ancient strata of
the hills. A few quiet families spend the summers there; and often one
or two tired members of that patient sisterhood known to Lakelands as
"schoolmarms."

A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been
described to its guests as "an object of interest" in a catalogue, had the
Eagk House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that was no
longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was "the only church in
the United States, sah, with a overshot- wheel; and the only mill in the
world, sah, with pews and a pipe-organ." The guests of the Eagle House
attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard the preacher liken

THE CHURCH WITH AN O VERS H O T- WH EEL 893

the purified Christian to bolted flour ground to usefulness between the
millstones o£ experience and suffering.

Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle
House one Abram Strong, who remained for a time an honored and be-
loved guest. In Lakelands he was called "Father Abram," because his hair
was so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry,
and his black clothes and broad hat so priestly in appearance. Even new
guests, after three or four days* acquaintance gave him this familiar title.

Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roar-
ing town in the northwest where he owned milk, not little mills with
pews and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountain-like mills that the
freight trains crawled around all day like ants round an ant-heap. And
now you must be told about Father Abram and the mill that was a
church, for their stories run together.

In days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the miller. There
was no jollier, dustier, busier, happier miller in all the land than he. He
lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill. His hand was
heavy, but his toll was light, and the mountaineers brought their grain to
him across many weary miles of rocky roads.

The delight of the miller's life was his little daughter, Aglaia. That
was a brave name, truly, for a flaxen-haired toddler; but the mountain-
eers love sonorous and stately names. The mother had encountered it
somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her babyhood Aglaia
herself repudiated the name, as far as common use went, and persisted
in calling herself "Dums." The miller and his wife often tried to coax
from Aglaia the source of this mysterious name, but without results. At
last they arrived at a theory. In the little garden behind the cottage was
a bed of rhododendrons in which the child took a peculiar delight and
interest. It may have been that she perceived in "Dums" a kinship to
the formidable name of her favorite flowers.

When Aglaia was four years old she and her father used to go through
a little performance in the mill every afternoon, that never failed to come
off, the weather permitting. When supper was ready her mother would
brush her hair and put on a clean apron and send her across to the mill
to bring her father home. When the miller saw her coming in the mill
door he would corne forward, all white with the flour dust, and wave his
hand and sing an old miller's song that was familiar in those parts and
ran something like this:

"The wheel goes round, He sings all day,

The grist is ground, His work is play,

The dusty miller's merry. While thinking of his dearie."

Then Aglaia would run to him laughing, and call: "Da-da, come take
Duins home**; and the miller would swing her to his shoulder and march

894 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

over to supper, singing the miller's song. Every evening this would take
place.

One day, only a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared.
When last seen she was plucking wild flowers by the side of the road in
front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to see that
she did not stray too far away, and she was already gone.

Of course every effort was made to find her. The neighbors gathered
and searched the woods and the mountains for miles around. They
dragged every foot of the mill race and the creek for a long distance
below the dam. Never a trace of her did they find. A night or two before
there had been a family of wanderers camped in a grove near by. It was
conjectured that they might have stolen the child; but when their wagon
was overtaken and searched she could not be found.

The miller remained at the mill for nearly two years; and then his
hope of finding her died out He and his wife moved to the Northwest.
In a few years he was the owner of a modern mill in one of the impor-
tant milling cities in that region. Mrs. Strong never recovered from the
shock caused by the loss of Aglaia, and two years after they moved away
the miller was left to bear his sorrow alone.

When Abram Strong became prosperous he paid a visit to Lakelands
and the old mill. The scene was a sad one for him, but he was a strong
man, and always appeared cheery and kindly. It was then that he was
inspired to convert the old mill into a church. Lakelands was too poor to
build one; and the still poorer mountaineers could not assist. There was
no place of worship nearer than twenty miles.

The miller altered the appearance of the mill as little as possible. The
big overshot-wheel was left in its place. The young people who came to
the church used to cut their initials in its soft and slowly decaying wood.
The dam was partly destroyed, and the clear mountain stream rippled
unchecked down its rocky bed. Inside the mill the changes were greater.
The shafts and millstones and belt and pulleys were, of course, all re-
moved. There were two rows of benches with aisles between, and a little
raised platform and pulpit at one end. On three sides overhead was a
gallery containing seats, and reached by a stairway inside. There was also
an organ— a real pipe organ— in the gallery, that was the pride of the
congregation of the Old Mill Church. Miss Phoebe Summers was the
organist. The Lakelands boys proudly took turns at pumping it for her
at each Sunday's service. The Rev. Mr. Bainbridge was the preacher, and
rode down from Squirrel Gap on his old white horse without ever miss-
ing a service. And Abram Strong paid for everything. He paid the
preacher five hundred dollars a year; and Miss Phoebe two hundred
dollars.

Thus, in memory of Aglaia, the old mill was converted into a blessing
for the community in which she had oace lived. It seemed that the brief

THE CHURCH WITH AN O VERS H O T- W H E E L 895

life of the child had brought about more good than the three score years
and ten of many. But Abram Strong set up yet another monument to her
memory.

Out from his mills in the Northwest came the "Aglaia" flour, made
from the hardest and finest wheat that could be raised. The country soon
found out that the "Aglaia" flour had two prices. One was the highest
market price, and the other was — nothing.

Wherever there happened a calamity that left people destitute — a fire,
a flood, a tornado, a strike, or a famine, there would go hurrying a gen-
erous consignment of the "Aglaia" at its "nothing" price. It was given
away cautiously and judiciously, but it was freely given, and not a penny
could the hungry ones pay for it. There got to be a saying that whenever
there was a disastrous fire in the poor districts of a city the fire chiefs
buggy reached the scene first, next the "Aglaia" flour wagon, and then
the fire engines.

So this was Abram Strong's other monument to Aglaia. Perhaps to a
poet the theme may seem too utilitarian for beauty; but to some the
fancy will seem sweet and fine that the pure, white, virgin flour, flying
on its mission of love and charity, might be likened to the spirit of the
lost child whose memory it signalized.

There came a year that brought hard times to the Cumberlands. Grain
crops everywhere were light, and there were no local crops at all. Moun-
tain floods had done much damage to property. Even game in the woods
was so scarce that the hunters brought hardly enough home to keep their
folks alive. Especially about Lakelands was the rigor felt

As soon as Abram Strong heard of this his messages flew; and the
little narrow-gauge cars began to unload "Aglaia'* flour there. The miller's
orders were to store the flour in the gallery of the Old Mill Church; and
that every one who attended the Church was to carry home a sack of it.

Two weeks after that Abram Strong came for his yearly visit to the
Eagle House, and became "Father Abram" again*

That season the Eagle House had fewer guests than usual Among
them was Rose Chester. Miss Chester came to Lakelands from Atlanta,
where she worked in a department store. This was the first vacation out-
ing of her life. The wife of the store manager had once spent a summer
at the Eagle House. She had taken a fancy to Rose, and had persuaded
her to go there for her three weeks* holiday. The manager's wife gave her
a letter to Mrs. Rankin, who gladly received her in her own charge and
care.

Miss Chester was not very strong. She was about twenty, and pale and
delicate from an indoor life. But one week of Lakelands gave her a bright-
ness and spirit that changed her wonderfully. The time was early Sep-
tember when the Cumberlands are at their greatest beauty. The mountain
foliage was growing brilliant witb autumnal colors; one breathed aerial

896 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

champagne, the nights were deliriously cool, causing one to snuggle cosily
under the warm blankets of the Eagle House.

Father Abram and Miss Chester became great friends. The old miller
learned her story from Mrs. Rankin, and his interest went out quickly to
the slender, lonely girl who was making her own way in the world.

The mountain country was new to Miss Chester. She had lived many
years in the warm, flat town of Atlanta; and the grandeur and variety of
the Cumberlands delighted her. She was determined to enjoy every mo-
ment of her stay. Her little hoard of savings had been estimated so
carefully in connection with her expenses that she knew almost to a penny
what her very small surplus would be when she returned to work.

Miss Chester was fortunate in gaining Father Abram for a friend and
companion. He knew every road and peak and slope of the mountains
near Lakelands. Through him she became acquainted with the solemn
delight of the shadowy, tilted aisles of the pine forests, the dignity of the
bare crags, the crystal, tonic mornings, the dreamy, golden afternoons full
of mysterious sadness. So her health improved and her spirits grew light.
She had a laugh as genial and hearty in its feminine way as the famous
laugh of Father Abram. Both of them were natural optimists; and both
knew how to present a serene and cheerful face to the world.

One day Miss Chester learned from one of the guests the history of Fa-
ther Abram's lost child. Quickly she hurried away and found the miller
seated on his favorite rustic bench near the chalybeate spring. He was sur-
prised when his little friend slipped her hand into his, and looked at him
with tears in her eyes.

uOh, Father Abram," she said. "I'm so sorry! I didn't know until to-day
about your little daughter. You will find her yet some day — Oh, I hope
you will.**

The miller looked down at her with his strong, ready smile.

"Thank you, Miss Rose," he said, in his usual cheery tones. "But I do
no expect to find Aglaia. For a few years I hoped that she had been stolen
by vagrants, and that she still lived; but I have lost that hope, I believe
that she was drowned."

"I can understand," said Miss Chester, "how the doubt must have
made it so hard to bear* And yet you are so cheerful and so ready to make
oiher people's burden light. Good Father Abram!"

"Good Miss Rose!" mimicked the miller, smiling. "Who thinks of
others more than you do?"

A whimsical mood seemed to strike Miss Chester.

uOh, Father Abrarn," she cried, "wouldn't it be grand if I should
prove to be your daughter? Wouldn't it be romantic? And wouldn't you
like to have me for a daughter?"

"Indeed, I would/' said the miller, heartily. "If Aglaia had lived I could
wish for nothing better than for her to have grown up to be just such a

THE CHURCH WITH AN O VER S H O T- W H EEL 897

little woman as you are. Maybe you are Aglaia," he continued, falling
in with her playful mood; "can't you remember when we lived at the
mill?"

Miss Chester fell swiftly into serious meditation. Her large eyes were
fixed vaguely upon something in the distance. Father Abram was amused
at her quick return to seriousness. She sat thus for a long time before she
spoke.

"No," she said at length, with a long sigh, "I can't remember anything
at all about a mill. I don't think that I ever saw a flour mill in my life un-
til I saw your funny little church. And if I were your little girl I would
remember it, wouldn't I? I'm so sorry, Father Abram."

"So am I," said Father Abram, humoring her. "But if you cannot re-
member that you are my little girl, Miss Rose, surely you can recollect
being some one else's. You remember your own parents, of course."

"Oh, yes; I remember them very well—especially my father. He wasn't
a bit like you, Father Abram. Oh, I was only making believe. Come,
now, you've rested long enough. You promised to show me the pool where
you can see the trout playing, this afternoon. I never saw a trout."

Late one afternoon Father Abram set out for the old mill alone. He
often went to sit and think of the old days when he lived in the cottage
across the road. Time had smoothed away the sharpness of his grief until
he no longer found the memory of those times painful. But whenever
Abram Strong sat in the melancholy September afternoons on the spot
where "Dums" used to run in every day with her yellow curls flying, the
smile that Lakelands always saw upon his face was not there.

The miller made his way slowly up the winding, steep road. The trees
crowded so close to the edge of it that he walked in their shade, with his
hat in his hand. Squirrels ran playfully upon the old rail fence at his right.
Quails were calling to their young broods in the wheat stubble. The low
sun sent a torrent of pale gold up the ravine that opened to the west.
Early September! — it was within a few days only of the anniversary of
Aglaia's disappearance.

The old overshot-wheel, half covered with mountain ivy, caught
patches of the warm sunlight filtering through the trees. The cottage
across the road was still standing, but it would doubtless go down before
the next winter's mountain blasts. It was overrun with morning glory
and wild gourd vines, and the door hung by one hinge.

Father Abram pushed open the mill door, and entered softly. And then
he stood still, wondering. He hear the sound of some one within, weep-
ing inconsolably, He looked, and saw Miss Chester sitting in a dim pew,
with her head bowed upon an open letter that her hands held.

Father Abram went to her, and laid one of his strong hands firmly
upon hers. She looked up, breathed his name and tried to speak further.

"Not yet, Mks Rose,** said the miller kindly. "Don't try to talk yet.

898 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

There's nothing as good for you as a nice, quiet little cry when you are
feeling blue."

It seemed that the old miller, who had known so much sorrow himself,
was a magician in driving it away from others. Miss Chester's sobs grew
easier. Presently she took her little plain-bordered handkerchief and
wiped away a drop or two that had fallen from her eyes upon Father
Abram's big hand. Then she looked up and smiled through her tears.
Miss Chester could always smile before her tears had dried, just as Father
Abram could smile through his own grief. In that way the two were very
much alike.

The miller asked her no questions; but by and by Miss Chester began
to tell him.

It was the old story that always seems so big and important to the
young, and that brings reminiscent smiles to their elders. Love was the
theme, as may be supposed. There was a young man in Atlanta, full of
all goodness and the graces, who had discovered that Miss Chester also
possessed these qualities above all other people in Atlanta or anywhere
else from Greenland to Patagonia. She showed Father Abram the letter
over which she had been weeping. It was a manly, tender letter, a little
superlative and urgent, after the style of love letters written by young
men full of goodness and the graces. He proposed for Miss Chester's
hand in marriage at once. Life, he said, since her departure for a three
weeks' visit, was not to be endured. He begged for an immediate answer;
and if it were favorable he promised to fly, ignoring the narrow-gauge
railroad, at once to Lakelands.

"And now where does the trouble come in?" asked the miller when
he had read the letter.

"I cannot marry him," said Miss Chester.

"Do you want to marry him?" asked Father Abram.

"Oh, I love him," she answered, "but " Down went her head and

she sobbed again.

"Come, Miss Rose," said the miller; "you can give me your confidence.
I do not question you, but I think you can trust me."

"I do trust you," said the girl. "I will tell you why I must refuse Ralph.
I am nobody; I haven't even a name; the name I call myself is a lie. Ralph
is a noble man. I love him with all my heart, but I can never be his."

"What talk is this?" said Father Abram. "You said that you remember
your parents. Why do you say that you have ao name? I do not under-
stand."

"I do remember them," said Miss Chester. "I remember them too well.
My first recollections are of our life somewhere in the far South. We
moved many times to different towns and states. I have picked cotton,
and worked in factories, and have often gone without enough food and

THE CHURCH WITH AN O V ER S H O T- W H E E L 899

clothes. My mother was sometimes good to me; my father was always
cruel, and beat me. I think they were both idle and unsettled.

"One night when we were living in a little town on a river near At-
lanta they had a great quarrel. It was while they were abusing and taunt-
ing each other that I learned— oh, Father Abram, I learned that I didn't
even have the right to be—don 't you understand? I had no right even to
a name; I was nobody.

"I ran away that night. I walked to Atlanta and found work. I gave my-
self the name of Rose Chester, and have earned my own living ever
since. Now you know why I cannot marry Ralph — and, oh, I can never
tell him why."

Better than any sympathy, more helpful than pity, was Father Abram's
depreciation of her woes.

"Why, dear! is that all?" he said. "Fie, fie! I thought something was
in the way. If this perfect young man is a man at all he will not care a
pinch of bran for your family tree. Dear Miss Rose, take my word for it,
it is yourself he cares for. Tell him frankly, just as you have told me, and
I'll warrant that he will laugh at your story, and think all the more of you
for it"

"I shall never tell him," said Miss Chester, sadly, "And I shall never
marry him nor any one else. I have not the right."

But they saw a long shadow come bobbing up the sunlit road. And
then came a shorter one bobbing by its side; and presently two strange
figures approached the church. The long shadow was made by Miss
Phoebe Summers, the organist, come to practice. Tommy Teague, aged
twelve, was responsible for the shorter shadow. It was Tommy's day to
pump the organ for Miss Phcebe, and his bare toes proudly spurned the
dust of the road.

Miss Phoebe, in her lilac-spray chintz dress; with her accurate little
curls hanging over each ear, courtesied low to Father Abram, and shook
her curls ceremoniously at Miss Chester. Then she and her assistant
climbed the steep stairway to the organ loft.

In the gathering shadows below, Father Abram and Miss Chester lin-
gered. They were silent; and it is likely that they were busy with their
memories. Miss Chester sat, leaning her head on her hand, with her eyes
fixed far away. Father Abram stood in the next pew, looking thoughtfully
out of the door at the road and the ruined cottage.

Suddenly the scene was transformed for him back almost a score of
years into the past For, as Tommy pumped away, Miss Phoebe struck a
low bass note on the organ and held it to test the volume of air that it con-
tained. The church ceased to exist, so far as Father Abram was concerned.
The deep, booming vibration that shook the little frame building was no
note from an organ, but the humming of the mill machinery. He felt sure
that the old overshot-wheel was turning; that he was back again, a dusty,

CJOO BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

merry miller in the old mountain mill. And now evening was come, and
soon would come Aglaia with flying colors, toddling across the road to
take him home to supper. Father Abram's eyes were fixed upon the
broken door of the cottage.

And then came another wonder. In the gallery overhead the sacks of
flour were stacked in long rows. Perhaps a mouse had been at one of
them; anyway, the jar of the deep organ note shook down between the
cracks of the gallery floor a stream of flour, covering Father Abram from
head to foot with the white dust. And then the old miller stepped into the
aisle, and waved his arms and began to sing the miller's song:

"The wheel goes round.
The grist is ground,

The dusty miller's merry."

— and then the rest of the miracle happened. Miss Chester was leaning
forward from her pew, as pale as the flour itself, her wide-open eyes star-
ing at Father Abram like one in a waking dream. When he began the
song she stretched out her arms to him; her lips moved; she called to
him in dreamy tones: "Da-da, come take Dums home!"

Miss Phoebe released the low key of the organ. But her work had been
well done. The note that she struck had beaten down the doors of a closed
memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his arms.

When you visit Lakelands they will tell you more of this story. They
will tell you how the lines of it were afterward traced, and the history of
the miller's daughter revealed after the gipsy wanderers had stolen her
on that September day, attracted by her childish beauty. But you should
wait until you sit comfortably on the shaded porch of the Eagle House,
and then you can have the story at your ease. It seems best that our part
of it should close while Miss Phoebe's deep bass note was yet reverberat-
ing softly.

And yet, to my mind, the finest thing of it all happened while Father
Abram and his daughter were walking back to the Eagle House in the
long twilight, almost too glad to speak.

"Father," she said, somewhat timidly and doubtfully, "have you a great
deal of money?"

"A great deal?" said the miller. "Well, that depends. There is plenty
unless you want to buy the moon or something equally expensive."

"Would it cost very, very much," asked Aglaia, who had always
counted her dimes so carefully, "to send a telegram to Atlanta?"

"Ah," said Father Abram, with a little sigh, "I see. You want to ask
Ralph to come."

"I want to ask him to wait/* she said, "I have just found my father, and
[ want it to be just two for a while. I want to tell him he will have to
wait."

NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT

Away out in the Creek Nation we learned things about New York.

We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the
bank of a little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our skilled hunter and
guide, and it was from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan
and the queer folks that inhabit it. Bud had once spent a month in the
metropolis, and a week or two at other times, and he was pleased to dis-
course to us of what he had seen.

Fifty yards away from our camp was pitched the teepee of a wander-
ing family of Indians that had come up and settled there for the night.
An old, old Indian woman was trying to build a fire under an iron pot
hung upon three sticks.

Bud went over to her assistance, and soon had her fire going. When he
came back we complimented him playfully upon his gallantry.

"Oh," said Bud, "don't mention it. It's a way I have. Whenever I see a
lady trying to cook things in a pot and having trouble I always go to the
rescue. I done the same thing once in a high-toned house in New York
City. Heap big society teepee on Fifth Avenue. That Injun lady kind of
recalled it to my mind. Yes, I endeavors to be polite and help the ladies
out.'*

The camp demanded the particulars.

"I was manager o£ the Triangle B Ranch in the Panhandle," said
Bud. "It was owned at that time by old man Sterling, of New York. He
wanted to sell out, and he wrote for me to come on to New York and ex-
plain the ranch to the syndicate that wanted to buy. So I sends to Fort
Worth and has a forty-dollar suit of clothes made, and hits the trail for the
big village.

"Well, when I got there, old man Sterling and his outfit certainly laid
themselves out to be agreeable. We had business and pleasure so mixed
up that you couldn't tell whether it was a treat or a trade half the time.
We had trolley rides, and cigars, and theatre round-ups, and rubber par-
ties."

"Rubber parties?" said a listener, inquiringly.

"Sure,'* said Bud. "Didn't you never attend 'em? You walk around
and try to look at the tops of the skyscrapers. Well, we sold the ranch,
and old man Sterling asks me 'round to his house to take grub on the
night before I started back. It wasn't any high-collared affair— just me and
the old man and his wife and daughter. But they was a fine-haired outfit
all right, and the lilies of the field wasn't in it, They made my Fort Worth
clothes carpenter look like a dealer in horse blankets and gee strings. And

902 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

then the table was all pompous with flowers, and there was a whole kit of
tools laid out beside everybody's plate. You'd have thought you was fixed
out to burglarize a restaurant before you could get your grub. But I'd been
in New York over a week then, and I was getting on to stylish ways. I
kind of trailed behind and watched others use the hardware supplies, and
then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble to
travel with the high-flyers after you find out their gait. I got along fine,
I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty soon I was talking away flu-
ent as you please, all about the ranch and the West, and telling 'em how
the Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and you never saw people
so interested.

"But the real joy of that feast was that Miss Sterling. Just a little trick
she was, not bigger than two bits' worth of chewing plug; but she had
a way about her that seemed to say she was the people, and you believed
it. And yet, she never put on any airs, and she smiled at me the same as
if I was a millionaire while I was telling about a Creek dog feast and lis-
tened like it was news from home.

"By and by, after we had eat oysters and some watery soup and truck
that never was in my repertory, a Methodist preacher brings in a kind of
camp stove arrangement, all silver, on long legs, with a lamp under it.

"Miss Sterling lights up and begins to do some cooking right on the
supper table, I wondered why old man Sterling didn't hire a cook with
all the money he had. Pretty soon she dished out some cheesy tasting
truck that she said was rabbit, but I swear there had never been a Molly
cotton tail in a mile of it.

"The last thing on the programme was lemonade. It was brought
around in little flat glass bowls and set by your plate. I was pretty thirsty,
and I picked up mine and took a big swig of it. Right there was where
the little lady had made a mistake. She had put in the lemon all right,
but she'd forgot the sugar. The best housekeepers slip up sometimes. I
thought maybe Miss Sterling was just learning to keep house and cook —
that rabbit would surely make you think so— and I says to myself, 'Little
lady, sugar or no sugar I'll stand by you,' and I raises up my bowl again
and drirdts the last drop of the lemonade. And then all the balance of *em
picks up their bowls and does the same. And then I gives Miss Sterling
the laugh proper, just to carry it off like a joke, so she wouldn't feel bad
about the mistake.

"After we all went into the sitting room she sat down and talked to
me quite awfeile,

** *It was so kind of you* Mr. Kingshury/ says she, £to bring my blun-
der off so nicely. It was so stupid of me to forget the sugar/

" 'Never you mind,' says !, 'some lucky man will throw his rope over a
mighty elegant little housekeeper some day, not far from here.'

" 'If you mean me, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she laughing out loud, I hope

NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT 903

he will be as lenient with my poor housekeeping as you have been.'

" 'Don't mention it,' says L 'Anything to oblige the ladies.' "

Bud ceased his reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he
considered the most striking and prominent trait of New Yorkers.

"The most visible and peculiar trait of New York folks," answered
Bud, "is New York. Most of 'em has New York on the brain. They have
heard of other places, such as Waco, and Paris, and Hot Springs, and
London; but they don't believe in *em. They think that town is all Me-
rino. Now to show you how much they care for their village I'll tell you
about one of Jem that strayed out as far as the Triangle B while I was
working there.

"This New Yorker come out there looking for a job on the ranch. He
said he was a good horseback rider, and there were pieces of tanbark
hanging on his clothes yet from his riding school.

"Well, for a while they put him to keeping books in the ranch store,
for he was a devil at figures. But he got tired of that, and asked for some-
thing more in the line of activity. The boys on the ranch like him all
right, but he made us tired shouting New York all the time. Every night
he'd tell us about East River and J. P. Morgan and the Eden Musee and
Hetty Green and Central Park till we used to throw tin plates and brand-
ing irons at him.

"One day this chap gets on a pitching pony, and the pony kind of sidled
up his back and went to eating grass while the New Yorker was com-
ing down.

"He come down on his head on a chunk of mesquite wood, and he
didn't show any designs toward getting up again. We laid him out in a
tent, and he begun to look pretty dead. So Gideon Pease saddles up and
burns the wind for old Doc Sleeper's residence in Dogtown, thirty miles
away.

"The doctor comes over and he investigates the patient,

" 'Boys,' says he, *you might as well go to playing seven-up for his sad-
dle and clothes, for his head's fractured and if he lives ten minutes it will
be a remarkable case of longevity/

"Of course we didn't gamble for the poor rooster's saddle— that was
one of Doc's jokes. But we stood around feeling solemn, and all of us for-
give him for having talked us to death about New York,

"I never saw anybody about to hand in his checks act more peaceful
than this fellow. His eyes were fixed 'way up in the air, and he was using
rambling words to himself all about sweet music and beautiful streets
and white-robed forms, and he was smiling like dying was a pleasure.

"'He's about gone now,' said Doc. * Whenever they begin to think they
see heaven it's all off.*

"Blamed if that New York man didn't sit right up when he heard the
Doc say that.

904 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

"'Say/ says he, kind of disappointed, 'was that heaven? Confound^
all, I thought it was Broadway. Some of you fellows get my clothes. I'm
going to get up.'

"And I'll be blamed," concluded Bud, "if he wasn't on the tram with
a ticket for New York in his pocket four days afterward!"

THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES

I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York de-
tective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the "inside
man" of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use of the type-
writer, and it is his duty, whenever there is a "murder mystery" to be
solved, to sit at a desk telephone at headquarters and take down the mes-
sage of "cranks" who 'phone in their confessions to having committed
the crime.

But on certain "off" days when confessions are coming in slowly and
three or four newspapers have run to earth as many different guilty per-
sons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my great
delight and instruction, his marvellous powers of observation and deduc-
tion. *

The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great de-
tective gazing thoughtfully at a string that was tied tightly around his
little finger.

"Good morning, Whatsup," he said, without turning his head. "I'm
glad to notice that you've had your house fitted up with electric lights at
last"

"Will you please tell me," I said, in surprise, "how you knew that? I
am sure that I never mentioned the fact to any one, and the wiring was
a rush order not completed until this morning."

"Nothing easier," said Jolnes, genially. "As you came in I caught the
odor of the cigar you are smoking. I know an expensive cigar; and I
know that not more than three men in New York can afford to smoke
cigars and pay gas bills too at the present time. That was an easy one.
But I am working just now on a little problem of my own.'1

"Why have you that string on your finger?" I asked.

"That's the problem," said Jolnes. "My wife tied that on this morning
to remind me of something I was to send up to the house. Sit down,
Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments."

The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone, and stood with
the receiver to his ear for probably ten minutes.

"Were you listening to a confession?" I asked, when he had returned
to his chair.

THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES 905

'Terhaps," said Jolnes, with a smile, "it might be called something of
the sort To be frank with you, Whatsup, I've cut out the dope. I've been
increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn't have much ef-
fect on me any more. I've got to have something more powerful. That tel-
ephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf where
there's an author's reading in progress. Now, to get at the solution of this
string."

After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me, with a
smile, and nodded his head.

"Wonderful man!" I exclaimed; "already?"

"It is quite simple," he said, holding up his finger. "You see that knot?
That is to prevent my forgetting. It is, therefore, a forget-me-knot A for-
get-me-not is a flower. It was a sack of flour that I was to send home!"

"Beautiful!" I could not help crying out in admiration.

"Suppose we go out for a ramble," suggested Jolnes.

"There is only one case of importance on hand now. Old man McCarty,
one hundred and four years old, died from eating too many bananas. The
evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police have surrounded
the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2, and the cap-
ture of the assassin is only the matter of a few hours. The detective force
has not yet been called on for assistance."

Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner, where we
were to catch a surface car.

Halfway up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours,
who held a City Hall position.

"Good morning, Rheingelder," said Jolnes, halting.

"Nice breakfast that was you had this morning."

Always on the lookout for the detective's remarkable feats of deduc-
tion, I saw Jolnes's eyes flash for an instant upon a long yellow splash on
the shirt bosom and a smaller one upon the chin of Rheingelder — both
undoubtedly made by the yolk of an egg.

"Oh, dot is some of your detectiveness," said Rheingelder, shaking all
over with a smile. "VeU, I bet you trinks and cigars all around dot you
cannot tell vot I haf eaten for breakfast.**

"Done," said Jolnes. "Sausage, pumpernickel, and coffee."

Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet.
When we had proceeded on our way I said to Jolnes:

"I thought you looked at the egg spilled on his chin and shirt front"

"I did," said Jolnes. "That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder
is a very economical, saving man. Yesterday eggs dropped in the market
to twenty-eight cents per dozen. To-day they are quoted a forty-two.
Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and to-day he went back to his usual
fare. A little thing like this isn't anything, Whatsup; it belongs to the
primary arithmetic class,**

906 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

When we boarded the street car we found the seats all occupied— prin-
cipally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood on the rear platform.

About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short, gray
beard, who looked to be the typical, well-dressed New Yorker. At suc-
cessive corners other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four of
them were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring mean-
ingly at the man who occupied the coveted seat. But he resolutely re-
tained his place.

"We New Yorkers," I remarked to Jolnes, "have about lost our man-
ners, as far as the exercise of them in public goes."

"Perhaps so," said Jolnes, lightly; "but the man you evidently refer to
happens to be a very chivalrous and courteous gentleman from Old Vir-
ginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two
daughters, and he leaves for the South to-night."

"You know him, then?" I said, in amazement.

"I never saw him before we stepped on the car," declared the detective,
smilingly.

"By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!" I cried, "if you can construe
all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else than black art."

'The habit of observation— nothing more," said Jolnes. "If the old gen-
tleman gets off the car before we do, I think I can demonstrate to you the
accuracy of my deduction."

Three blocks farther along the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes
addressed him at the door:

"Pardon me, sir, but are you not Colonel Hunter, of Norfolk, Vir-
ginia?"

"No, suh," was the extremely courteous answer. "My name, suh, is El-
lison—Major Winfield R. Ellison, from Fairfax County, in the same state.
I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk — the Goodriches, the Tolli-
vers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of meeting yo'
friend, Colonel Hunter. I am happy to say, suh, that I am going back to
Virginia to-night, after having spent a week in yo' city with my wife and
three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten days, and if you will
give me yo' name, suh, I will take pleasure in looking up Colonel
Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him, suh."

**Thaek you," said Jolnes; "tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if
you will be so kind."

I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of in-
tense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features. Failure in the slightest
point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.

"Did you say your three daughters?" he asked of the Virginia gentk-
man.

"Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in Fairfax
County," was the answer.

THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES 907

With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.

Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.

"One moment, sir," he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone
detected the anxiety— "am I not right in believing that one of the young
ladies is an adopted daughter ?"

"You are, suh," admitted the major, from the ground, "but how the
devil you knew it, suh, is mo' than I can tell."

"And mo5 than I can tell, too," I said, as the car went on.

Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested
victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he invited
me into a cafe promising to reveal the process of his latest wonderful feat.

"In the first place/' he began after we were comfortably seated, "I
knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and
uneasy and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although
he did not rise and give them his seat, I decided from his appearance
that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.

"Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat to
a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly, impelled
to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that one of his eyes
had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and inflamed, and
that all over his face were tiny round marks about the size of the end of
an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his patent-leather shoes were a
number of deep imprints shaped like ovals cut off square at one end.

"Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is
bound to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort— and that
is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth
Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French
heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from um-
brellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that he had
been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a man of intel-
ligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such dangers unless
he had been dragged thither by his own women folk. Therefore, when
he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was sufficient
to make him keep his seat in spite of his traditions of Southern chivalry."

"That is all very well," I said, "but why did you insist upon daughters
—and especially two daughters? Why couldn't a wife alone have taken
him shopping?**

"There had to be daughters,** said Jolnes, calmly. "If he had only a wife,
and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going alone. If
he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there you are/*

"111 admit that," I said; "but, now, why two daughters? And how, in
the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when
he told you he had three?*

"Don't say guess," said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air; "there is

908 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major Ellison's button-
hole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed_by a geranium leaf . No
woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into a boutonniere. Close
your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your imagination a chance. Can-
not you see the lovely Adele fastening the carnation to the lapel so that
papa may be gay upon the street? And then the romping Edith May
dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add her rosebud to the adornment?"

"And then," I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, "when he declared
that he had three daughters "

"I could see," said Jolnes, "one in the background who added no flower;
and I knew that she must be "

"Adopted!'* I broke in. "I give you every credit; but how did you
know he was leaving for the South to-night?"

"In his breast pocket," said the great detective, "something large and
oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a long
journey from New York to Fairfax County."

"Again, I must bow to you," I said. "And tell me this, so that my last
shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was from
Virginia?"

"It was very faint, I admit," answered Shamrock Jolnes, "but no trained
observer could have failed to detect the odor of mint in the car."

THE LABY HIGHER UP

New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless,
for the sounds carrying so far in the tranquil summer air. The breeze was
south-by-southwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of femi-
nine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixty-five feet
above the heated asphalt the tiptoeing symbolic deity on Manhattan
pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in the direction of her
exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of the great Garden were out;
the benches in the Square were filled with sleepers in postures so strange
that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the Inferno
would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on
the tower of the Garden— its constancy shown by its weathercock ways,
its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its devotion to
style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candor and artlessness by its
habit of ever drawing the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of
swift flight to catch a Harlem train — remained poised with its arrow
pointed across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally
it would have passed fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose
duty it is to offer a cast-ironical welcome to the oppressed of other lands*

THE LADY HIGHER UP 909

Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines
began to cut steerage rates. The translators, too, have put an extra burden
upon her. "Liberty Lighting the World" (as her creator christened her)
would have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it, than
that of an electrician or a Standard Oil magnate. But to "enlighten" the
world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it) requires abler quali-
ties. And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illumi-
nator, must be converted into a Chautauqua schooima'am, with the
oceans for her field instead of the placid, classic lake. With a fireless
torch and an empty head must she dispel the shadows of the world,
and teach it its A, B, C's.

"Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!" called a clear, rollicking soprano voice
through the still, midnight air.

"Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I'm not as
flighty and whirly-whirly as some. And 'tis so hoarse I am I can hardly
talk on account of the peanut-hulls left on the stairs in me throat by that
last boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. Tis after being a fine eve-
ning, miss."

"If you don't mind my asking," came the bell-like tones of the golden
statue, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall brogue. I didn't
know that Liberty was necessarily Irish,"

"If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye'd not
need to ask," replied the offshore statue. "If ye wasn't so lightheaded and
giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and presented to the Ameri-
can people on behalf of the French Government for the purpose of wel-
comin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New York. Tis that I've
been doing night and day since I was erected. Ye must know, Miss
Diana, that 'tis with statues the same as with people— 'tis not their makers
nor the purposes for which they were created that influence the opera-
tions of their tongues at all— it's the associations with which they become
associated, I'm telling ye."

"You're dead right," agreed Diana. "I notice it on myself. If any of the
old guys from Olympus were to come along and hand me any hot air in
the ancient Greek I couldn't tell it from a conversation between a Coney
Island car conductor and a five-cent fare."

"Fm right glad yeVe made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana,**
said Mrs. Liberty. " Tis a lonesome life I have down here. Is there any-
thing doin' up in the city. Miss Diana, dear?"

"Oh, la, la, la!— no," said Diana. "Notice that 'la, la, la,' Aunt Liberty?
Got that from 'Paris by Night5 on the roof garden tinder me, You'll hear
that 'la, la, la' at tie Cafe McCann now, along with 'garsong.' The bohe-
mian crowd there have become tired of 'garsong' since O'Rafferty, the
head waiter, punched three of them for calling him it. Oh, no; the town's
strictly on the bum these nights. Everybody's away. Saw a downtown

910 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

merchant on the roof garden this evening with his stenographer. Show
was so dull he went to sleep. A waiter biting on a dime tip to see if it was
good half woke him up. He looks around and sees his little pothooks per-
petrator. 'H'mP says he, 'will you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmo-
rency ?' 'Sure, in a minute/ says she, *if you make it an X.'

"That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it
is. La, la, la!"

" Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the cat
show and the horse show and the military tournaments where the privates
look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand as floor-walkers.
And ye have the Sportsmen's Show, where the girl that measures 36, 19,
45 cooks breakfast food in a birch-bark wigwam on the banks of the
Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the Vanderbilts, Bernard
McFaddcn, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And ye have the French
ball, where the original Cohens and the Robert Emmet-Sangerbund So-
ciety dance the Highland fling one with another. And ye have the grand
O'Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant in the world, where the
French students vie with the Tyrolean warblers in doinj the cake walk.
Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole town, Miss Diana.

" Tis weary work," sighed the island statue, "disseminatin' the science
of liberty in New York Bay. Sometimes when I take a peep down ^ at
Ellis Island and see the gang of immigrants I'm supposed to light up, 'tis
tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write out their
naturalization papers."

"Say, it's a shame, ain't it, to give you the worst end of it?" came the
sympathetic antiphony of the steeplechase goddess. "It must be awfully
lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don't see how
you ever keep your hair in curl And that Mother Hubbard you are wear-
ing went out ten years ago. I think those sculptor guys ought to be held
for damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady. That's where
Mr. St. Gaudens was wise. Tm always a little ahead of the styles; but
they're coming my way pretty fast. Excuse my back a moment — I caught
a puff of wind from the north — shouldn't wonder if things had loosened
up in Esopus. There, BOW! It's in the West-— I should think that gold
plank would have calmed the air out in that direction. What were you
saying, Mrs. Liberty?"

**A fine chat I've had with ye, Miss Diana, ma'am, but I see one of
them European steamers a-sailin' up the Narrows, and I must be attendin*
to me duties. Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of Liberty to welcome
all them that survive the kicks that the steerage stewards give *em while
landin** Sure 'tis a great country ye can come to for $8.50, and the doctor
waitin* to send ye back home free if he sees yer eyes red from cryin* for it.**

The golden statue veered in the changing breeze, menacing many
points on the horizon with its aureate arrow*

THE GREATER CONEY 9!!

"So long, Aunt Liberty," sweetly called Diana of the Tower. "Some
night, when the wind's right, I'll call you up again. But— say! you haven't
got such a fierce kick coming about your job. I've kept pretty good watch
on the island of Manhattan since I've been up here. That's a pretty sick-
looking bunch of liberty chasers they dump down at your end of it; but
they don't all stay that way. Every little while up here I see guys signing
checks and voting the right ticket, and encouraging the arts and taking
a bath every morning, that was shoved ashore by a dock laborer born in
the United States who never earned over forty dollars a month. Don't run
down your job, Aunt Liberty; you're all right, all right."

THE GREATER CONEY

"Next Sunday," said Dennis Carnahan, "I'll be after going down to see
the new Coney Island that's risen like a phoenix bird from the ashes of
the old resort I'm going with Norah Flynn, and we'll fall victims to all
the dry goods deceptions, from the red-flannel eruption of Mount Vesuvius
to the pink silk ribbons on the race-suicide problems in the incubator kiosk.

"Was I there before? I was. I was there last Tuesday. Did I see the
sights? I did not.

"Last Monday I amalgamated myself with the Bricklayers' Union, and
in accordance with the rules I was ordered to quit work the same day on
account of a sympathy strike with the Lady Salmon Canners* Lodge No.
2, of Tacoma, Washington.

" Twas disturbed I was in mind and proclivities by losing me job, bein'
already harassed in me soul on account of havin' quarrelled with Norah
Flynn a week before by reason of hard words spoken at the Dairymen and
Street-Sprinkler Drivers' semi-annual ball, caused by jealousy and prickly
heat and that divil, Andy Coghlin.

"So, I says, it will be Coney for Tuesday; and if the chutes and the
short change and the green-corn silk between the teeth don't create diver-
sions and get me feeling better, then I don't know at all.

"Ye will have heard that Coney has received moral reconstruction. The
old Bowery, where they used to take your tintype by force and give ye
knockout drops before having your palm read, is now called the Wall
Street of the island. The wienerwurst stands are required by law to keep
a news ticker in 'em; and the doughnuts are examined every four years
by a retired steamboat inspector. The nigger man's head that was used by
the old patrons to throw baseballs at is now illegal; and, by order of the
Police Commissioner the image of a man drivin' an automobile has been
substituted. I hear that the old immoral amusements have been sup-
pressed. People who used to go down from New York to sit in the sand

912 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

and dabble in the surf now give up their quarters to squeeze through
turnstiles and see imitations of city fires and floods painted on canvas. The
reprehensible and degradin' resorts that disgraced old Coney are said to be
wiped out. The wipin'-out process consists of raisin' the price from 10
cents to 25 cents, and hirin' a blonde named Maudie to sell tickets instead
of Mickey, the Bowery Bite. That's what they say— I don't know.

"But to Coney I goes a-Tuesday. I gets off the *L' and starts for the
glitterin' show. Twas a fine sight. The Babylonian towers and the Hindoo
roof gardens was blazin' with thousands of electric lights, and the streets
was thick with people. Tis a true thing they say that Coney levels all
rank. I see millionaires eatin' popcorn and trampin' along with the crowd;
and I see eight-dollar-a-week clothin'-store clerks in red automobiles
fight-in* one another for who'd squeeze the horn when they come to a
corner.

" *I made a mistake/ I says to myself. 'Twas not Coney I needed. When
a man's sad 'tis not scenes of hilarity he wants. T would be far better for
him to meditate in a graveyard or to attend services at the Paradise Roof
Gardens. Tis no consolation when a man's lost his sweetheart to order
hot corn and have the waiter bring him the powdered sugar cruet instead
of salt and then conceal himself, or to have Zozookum, the gipsy palmist,
tell him that he has three children and to look out for another serious
calamity; price twenty-five cents.

"I walked far away down on the beach, to the ruins of an old pavilion
near one corner of this new private park, Dreamland. A year ago that old
pavilion was standin* up straight and the old-style waiters was slammin'
a week's supply of clam chowder down in front of you for a nickel and
callin* you 'cully' friendly, and vice was rampant, and you got back to
New York with enough change to take a car at the bridge. Now they
tell me that they serve Welsh rabbits on Surf Avenue, and you get the
right change back in the movin'-picture joints.

"I sat down at one side of the old pavilion and looked at the surf
spreadin' itself on the beach, and thought about the time me and Norah
Flynn sat on that spot last summer. Twas before reform struck the
island; and we was happy. We had tintypes and chowder in the ribald
dives, and the Egyptian Sorceress of the Nile told Norah out of her hand,
while I was waitin* in the door, that 'twould be the luck of her to marry
a red-headed gossoon with two crooked legs, and I was overrunnin*
with joy on account of the illusion. And 'twas there that Norah Flynn
put her ts$o bauds in mine a year before and we talked of flats and the
things flbe could cook and the love business that goes with such episodes.
And that was Coney as we loved it, and as the hand of Satan was upon
it, friendly and noisy and your money's worth, with no fence around the
ocean and not too many electric lights to show the sleeve o£ a black serge
coat against a white shirtwaist.

THE GREATER CONEY 913

"I sat with my back to the parks where they had the moon and the
dreams and the steeples corralled, and longed for the old Coney. There
wasn't many people on the beach. Lots of them was feedin' pennies to
the slot machines to see the 'Interrupted Courtship' in the movin* pic-
tures; and a good many was takin' the air in the Canals of Venice and
some was breathin* the smoke of the sea battle by actual warships in a
tank filled with real water. A few was down on the sands enjoyin' the
moonlight and the water. And the heart of me was heavy for the new
morals of the old island, while the bands behind me played and the sea
pounded on the bass drum in front.

"And directly I got up and walked along the old pavilion, and there on
the other side of, half in the dark, was a slip of a girl sittin' on the tumble-
down timbers, and unless I'm a liar she was cryin* by herself there, all
alone.

"'Is it trouble you are in, now, Miss,' says I; *and what's to be done
about it?'

" * Tis none of your business at all, Denny Carnahan,* says she, sittin5
up straight. And it was the voice of no other than Norah Flynn.

"'Then it's not,' says I, 'and we're after having a pleasant evening,
Miss Flynn. Have ye seen the sights of this new Coney Island, then? I
presume ye have come here for that purpose,* says I.

" 1 have,' says she. 'Me mother and Uncle Tim they are waiting be-
yond. 'Tis an elegant evening I've had. I've seen all the attractions that be/

" 'Right ye are,' says I to Norah; and I don't know when I've been that
amused. After disportin* meself among the most laughable moral im-
provements of the revised shell games I took meself to the shore for the
benefit of the cool air. 'And did ye observe the Durbar, Miss Flynn?*

"'I did,' says she, reflectin'; 'but 'tis not safe, I'm thinkin', to ride
down them slantin' things into the water.5

" 'How did ye fancy the shorn the chutes?* I asks.

"'True, then, I'm afraid of guns/ says Norah. 'They make such
noise in my ears. But Uncle Tim, he shot them, he did, and won cigars.
Tis a fine time we had this day, Mr. Carnahaa.'

"Tin glad you've enjoyed yerself/ I says. *I suppose you've had a
roarin' fine time seem' the sights. And how did the incubators and the
helter-skelter and the midgets suit the taste of ye?'

" 'I— I wasn't hungry/ says Norah, faint. 'But mother ate a quantity of
all of 'em. I'm that pleased with the fine things in the new Coney
Island,' says she, 'that it's the happiest day I've seen in a long time, at all*

" 'Did you see Venice?* says L

"'We dicV says she. 'She was a beauty. She was all dressed in red,
she was, with *

"I listened no more to Norah Hyan. I stepped up and gathered her
in my arms.

914 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

rt ' Tis a story-teller ye are, Norah Flynn,' says I. Te've seen no more o£
the greater Coney Island than I have meself. Come, now, tell the truth—-
ye came to sit by the old pavilion by the waves where you sat last summer
and made Dennis Carnahan a happy man. Speak up, and tell the truth."

"Norah stuck her nose against me vest.

" 'I despise it, Denny/ she says, half cryin'. 'Mother and Uncle Tim
went to see the shows, but I came down here to think of you. I couldn't
bear the lights and the crowd. Are you forgivin' me, Denny, for the
words we had?'

" ' JTwas me fault,' says I. 'I came here for the same reason meself.
Look at the lights, Norah,' I says, turning my back to the sea — 'ain't they
pretty ?*

"'They are,' says Norah, with her eyes shinin'; 'and do ye hear the
bands playin*? Oh, Denny, I think I'd like to see it all*

"'The old Coney is gone, darlin'/ I says to her. 'Everything moves.
When a man's glad it's not scenes of sadness he wants. 'Tis a great Coney
we have here, but we couldn't see it till we got in the humor for it. Next
Sunday, Norah darlin', we'll see the new place from end to end.' "

LAW AND ORDER

I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and vistas. At a
sheep ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I stopped for a week.
And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged into the business at hand, which
happened to be that of dipping the sheep.

Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism that
it deserves a word of itself. A vast iron cauldron with half the fires of
Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that soon boils furiously.
Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur, which is allowed to
stew and fume until the witches* broth is strong enough to scorch the
third arm of Palladino herself.

Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with cubic
gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their hind legs and
flung into the compound. After being thoroughly ducked by means of a
forked pole in the hands of a gentleman detailed for that purpose, they are
allowed to clamber up an incline into a corral and dry or die, as the state
of their constitutions may decree. If you ever caught an able-bodied, two-
year-old mutton by the hind legs and felt the 750 volts of kicking that he
can send through your arm seventeen times before you can hurl him
into the vat, you will, of course, hope that he may die instead of dry.

But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched
ourselves on the bank of the near-by chc&co after the dipping, glad for the

LAW AND ORDER 915

welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our muscle-
racking labors. The flock was a small one, and we finished at three in
the afternoon so Bud brought from the morral on his saddle horn, coffee
and a coffee pot and a big hunk of bread and some side bacon. Mr. Mills,
the ranch owner and my old friend, rode away to the ranch with his
force of Mexican trabajadores.

While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of horses*
hoofs behind us. Bud's six-shooter lay in its scabbard ten feet away from
his hand. He paid not the slightest heed to the approaching horseman.
This attitude of a Texas ranchman was so different from the old-time
custom that I marvelled. Instinctively I turned to inspect the possible foe
that menaced us in the rear. 1 saw a horseman dressed in black, who
might have been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker, trotting peace-
ably along the road by the arroyo.

Bud noticed my precautionary movement and smiled sarcastically and
sorrowfully.

"You've been away too long," said he. "You don't need to look around
any more when anybody gallops up behind you in this state, unless some-
thing hits you in the back ; and even then it's liable to be only a bunch of
tracts or a petition to sign against the trusts. I never looked at that hombre
that rode by; but 111 bet a quart of sheep dip that he's some double-dyed
son of a popgun out rounding up prohibition votes."

"Times have changed, Bud/* said I, oracularly. "Law and order is the
rule now in the South and the Southwest."

I caught a cold gleam from Bud's pale blue eyes.

"Not that I " I began, hastily.

"Of course you don't," said Bud, warmly. "You know better. YouVe
lived here before. Law and order, you say? Twenty years ago we had
'em here. We only had two or three laws, such as against murder before
witnesses, and being caught stealing horses, and voting the Republican
ticket. But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the
state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but
make laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the
state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening
after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make
laws to repeal aforesaid laws. Me, I'm for the old days when law and
order meant what they said, A law was a law, and a order was a order."

-But " I began.

"I was going on/* continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling to de-
scribe to you a case of genoine law and order that I knew of once in the
rimes when cases was decided in the chambers of a six-shooter instead of
a supreme court,

"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattk king? His ranch run
from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In them days, as you know, there

gi6 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

was cattle barons and cattle kings. The difference was this: when a cattle-
man went to San Antone and bought beer for the newspaper reporters
and only give them the number of cattle he actually owned, they wrote
him up for a baron. When he bought *em champagne wine and added in
the amount of cattle he had stole, they called him a king.

"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king's
ranch comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New York or
Kansas City or thereabouts. Luke was tailed with a squad to ride about
with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got fair warning when they was
coming, and drive the deer out of their way. Among the bunch was a
black-eyed girl that wore a number two shoe. That's all I noticed about
her. But Luke must have seen more, for he married her one day before
the caballard started back, and went over on Canada Verde and set up a
ranch of his own. I'm skipping over the sentimental stuff on purpose,
because I never saw or wanted to see any of it. And Luke takes me along
with him because we was old friends and I handles cattle to suit him.

"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or
wanted to see any of it — but three years afterward there was a boy kid
stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors of Luke's ranch.
I never had no use for kids; but it seems they did. And I'm skipping over
much what followed until one day out to the ranch drives in hacks and
buck-boards a lot of Mrs, Summers's friends from the East— a sister or so
and two or three men. One looked like an uncle to somebody; and one
looked like nothing; and the other one had on corkscrew pants and
spoke in a tone of voice. I never liked a man who spoke in a tone of
voice.

*Tm skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I
rides up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of beeves
that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off. I waits at
the hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on private affairs. In a little while
Luke comes out and gives some orders to some of his Mexican hands, and
they go and hitch up sundry and divers vehicles; and mighty soon out
comes one of the sisters or so and some of the two or three men. But two
of the two or three men carries between 'em the corkscrew man who
spoke in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in one of the wagons.
And they all might have been seen wending their way away.

" 'Bud,' says Luke to me, 1 want you to fix up a little and go up to San
Antone with me.*

" 'Let me get on my Mexican spurs,* says I, 'and I'm your company.*

"One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with Mrs.
Summm and the kid* We rides to Encinal and catches the International,
and hits San Antone in the morning. After breakfast Luke steers me
straight to the office of a lawyer. They go in a room and talk and then
come out.

LAW AND ORDER 917

" 'Oh, there won't be any trouble, Mr. Summers/ says the lawyer. Til
acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day and the matter will be put
through as promptly as possible. Law and order reigns in this state as
swift and sure as any in the country.'

" Til wait for the decree if it won't take over half an hour/ says Luke.

" 'Tut, tut,' says the lawyer man. 'Law must take its course. Come back
day after to-morrow at half-past nine.1

"At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a
folded document. And Luke writes him out a check.

"On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the
size of a kitchen door latch on it and says:

" "Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.'

" 'Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,'
says I, 'it looks to me like a split. Couldn't the lawyer man have made it
a strike for you?

" 'But,' says he, in a pained style, 'that child is the one thing I have to
live for. She may go; but the boy is mine!— think of it— I have the cus-
to-dy of the child/

" 'All right,' says I. 'If it's the law, let's abide by it. But I think,' says I,
'that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary clemency, or whatever
is the legal term, in our case.'

"You see, I wasn't inveigled much into the desirableness of having
infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed themselves and sell for
so much on the hoof when they grow up. But Luke was struck with that
sort of parental foolishness that I never could understand. All the way
riding from the station back to the ranch, he kept pulling that decree out
of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it and reading off to me
the sum and substance of it. 'Cus-to-dy of the child, Bud,* says he. 'Doa't
forget it — cus-to-dy of the child.5

"But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court obviated,
nolle prossed, and remanded for trial Mrs. Summers and the kid was
gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had started for San
Antone she had a team hitched and lit out for the nearest station with her
trunks and the youngster.

"Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its emoluments.

" It ain't possible, Bud/ says he, 'for this to be. It's contrary to law aad
order. It's wrote as plain as day here— "Cus-to-dy of the child." '

"'There is what you might call a human leaning/ says I, 'toward
smashing 'em both — not to mention the child.*

" 'Judge Simmons,* goes on Luke, *is a incorporated officer of the law.
She can't take the boy away. He belongs to me by statutes passed and
approved by the state of Texas/

"'And he's removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,5
says J> *by the unearthly statutes of female partiality. Let us praise the

918 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies * I begins; but I see

Luke don't listen to me. Tired as he was, he calls for a f*esh horse
starts back again for the station.

"He come back two weeks afterward, not saying much.

"'We can't get the trail,* says he; 'but we've done all the telegraphing
that the wiresll stand, and we've got these city rangers they call detectives
on the lookout. In the meanime, Bud,' says he, Veil round up them cows
on Brush Creek, and wait for the law to take its course."

And after that we never alluded to allusions, as you might say.

"Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke
was made sheriff of Mojada County, He made me his office deputy. Now,
don't get in your mind no wrong apparitions of a office deputy doing
sums in a book or mashing letters in a cider press. In them days his job
was to watch the back windows so nobody didn't plug the sheriff in the
rear while he was adding up mileage at his desk in front. And in them
days I had qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in
Mojada County, and schoolbooks, and all the whiskey you wanted, and
the Government built its own battleships instead of collecting nickels
from the school children to do it with. And, as I say, there was law and
order instead of enactments and restrictions such as disfigure our umpire
state to-day. We had our office at Bildad, the county seat, from which we
emerged forth on necessary occasions to soothe whatever fracases and
unrest that might occur in our jurisdiction.

"Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff,
I want to give you an idea of how the law was respected in them days.
Luke was what you would call one of the most conscious men in the
world. He never knew much book law, but he had the inner emoluments
of justice and mercy inculcated into his system. If a respectable citizen
shot a Mexican or held up a train and cleaned out the safe in the express
car, and Luke ever got hold of him, he'd give the guilty party such a
reprimand and a cussin* out that he'd probable never do it again. But
of*ce let somebody steal a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut a
wire fence, or otherwise impair the peace and indignity of Mojada County,
Luke and me would be on 'em with habeas corpuses and smokeless pow-
der and all the modern inventions of equity and etiquette,

"We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I've known
persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and buttoned-up
shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat sandwiches at the railroad
station without being shot at or even roped and drug about by the citizens
of the town.

**Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of train-
ing me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was always looking
ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing. What he wanted to do was
to build a yellow house with lattice-work under the porch and have hens

LAW AND ORDER 919

scratching in the yard. The one main thing in his mind seemed to be the
yard.

"'Bud/ he says to me, 'by instinct and sentiment I'm a contractor. I
want to be a contractor. That's what Fll be when I get out of office/

"What kind of a contractor?* says I. 'It sounds like a kind of business
to me. You ain't going to haul cement or establish branches or work on a
railroad, are you?'

" 'You don't understand/ says Luke. Tm tired of space and horizons
and territory and distances and things like that. What I want is reason-
able contraction. I want a yard with a fence around it that you can go out
and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills/ says Luke.

"That's the kind of a man he was. He was homelike, although he'd
had bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times
on the ranch. It seemed like he'd forgotten about it. I wondered how,
with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of lattice-work, he'd
seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken
away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he wasn't a
man you could ask about such things as he didn't refer to in his own con-
versation.

"I reckon he'd put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff. I've
read in books about men that was disappointed in these poetic and fine-
haired and high-collared affairs with ladies renouncing truck of that kind
and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting pictures,
or herding sheep, or science, or teaching school — something to make *em
forget. Well, I guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he couldn't
paint pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves and in making
Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well armed and not
afraid of requisitions or tarantulas,

"One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors
from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner station
on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking after
mines and such. There was five of 'em — four solid parties, with gold
watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the hoof,
and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.

"This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots
bring West with 'em; and you could see he was aching to wing a couple
of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearl-handled gun he
had buckled around his waist.

"I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that
they didn't locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front of
Murchison's store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a gang
of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and 1 always looked after the law and
order when he wasn't there.

"After dinner this boy comes out of the dining room while the train was

920 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to shoot all ante-
lope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavor to molest or come too
near him. He was a good-looking kid; only he was like all them tender-
foots— he didn't know a law-and-order town when he saw it.

"By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the Crystal
Palace chili-concarne stand in Bildad. Pedro was a man who liked to
amuse himself; so he kind of herd rides this youngster, laughing at him,
tickled to death. I was too far away to hear, but the kid seems to mention
some remarks to Pedro, and Pedro goes up and slaps him about nine feet
away, and laughs harder than ever. And then the boy gets up quicker
than he fell and jerks out his little pearl-handle, and— bing! bing! bing!
Pedro gets it three times in special and treasured portions of his carcass.
I saw the dust fly off his clothes every time the bullets hit. Sometimes
them little thirty-twos cause worry at close range.

"The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I goes up
to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away his gun. But the
first thing I knew that caballard of capitalists makes a break for the train.
One of *em hesitates in front of me for a second, and kind of smiles and
shoves his hand up against my chin, and I sort of laid down on the plat-
form and took a nap. I never was afraid of guns; but I don't want any
person except a barber to take liberties like that with my face again.
When I woke up, the whole outfit — train, boy, and all — was gone. I asked
about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he would recover provided
his wounds didn't turn out to be fatal.

"When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he was
mad all over.

" *Why Vt you telegraph to San Antone,' he asks, 'and have the bunch
arrested there?1

"'Oh, well,* says I, 'I always did admire telegraphy; but astronomy was
what I had took up just then/ That capitalist sure knew how to gesticulate
with his hands.

"Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the depot
a card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of some hombre
called Scudder in New York City.

" 'Bud,' says Luke, Tm going after that bunch. I'm going there and get
the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back. I'm sheriff of
Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in its precincts while I'm
able to draw a gun. And I want you to go with me. No Eastern Yankee
can shoot up a respectable and well-known citizen of Bildad, 'specially
with a thirty-two calibre, and escape the law, Pedro Johnson,' says Luke,
'is one of our most prominent citizens and business men. I'll appoint Sam
Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary powers while I'm away, and you and
me will take a six forty-five northbound to-morrow evening and follow
up this trail.'

LAWAN00RDER 921

" Tm your company/ says L 'I never see this New York, but I'd like
to. But, Luke,' says I, 'don't you have to have a dispensation or a habeas
corpus or something from the state, when you reach out that far for rich
men and malef actors ?*

"'Did I have a requisition,' says Luke, 'when I went over into the
Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for holding
up the International? Did me and you have a search warrant or a posse
comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican cow thieves down in
Hidalgo? It's my business to keep order in Mojada County.'

"'And it's my business as office deputy,' says I, 'to see that business is
carried on according to law. Between us both we ought to keep things
pretty well cleaned up.'

"So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his
mileage book in a haversack, and him and me hits the breeze for New
York. It was a powerful long ride. The seats in the cars was too short for
six-footers like us to sleep comfortable on; and the conductor had to keep
us from getting off at every town that had five-story houses in it. But we
got there finally; and we seemed to see right away that he was right
about it.

"'Luke,' says I, *as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it don't
look to me like this place is properly and legally in the jurisdiction of
Mojada County, Texas."

" 'From the standpoint of order,' says he, "it's amenable to answer for
its sins to the properly appointed authorities from Bildad to Jerusalem.'

" 'Amen,' says L 'But let's turn our trick sudden, and ride. I don't like
the looks of this place/

" 'Think of Pedro Johnson,* says Luke, 'a friend of mine and yours shot
down by one of these gilded abolitionists at his very door!'

" 'It was at the door of the freight depot,* says I. 'But the law will not be
balked at a quibble like that/

"We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway. The next morning
I goes down about two miles of stairsteps to the bottom and hunts for
Luke. It ain't no use. It looks like San Jacinto day in San Antone. There's
a thousand folks milling around in a kind of a roofed-over plaza with
marble pavements and trees growing right out of *em, and I see no more
chance of finding Luke than if we was hunting each other in the big pear
flat down below Old Fort EwelL But soon Luke and me runs together in
one of the turns of them marble alleys.

" It ain't no use, Bud/ says he. 'I can't find no place to cat at. I've been
looking for restaurant signs and smelling for ham all over the camp. But
I'm used to going hungry when I have to. Now,' says, he, Tm going out
and get a hack and ride dawn to the address on this Scudder card. You
stay here and try to hustle some grub. But I doubt if you'll find it. I wish

922 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

we'd brought along some cornmeal and bacon and beans. I'll be back
when I see this Scudder, if the trail ain't wiped out.'

"So I starts foraging for breakfast For the honor of old Mojada County
I didn't want to seem green to them abolitionists, so every time I turned
a corner in them marble halls I went up to the first desk or counter I see
and looks around for grub. If I didn't see what I wanted I ask for some-
thing else. In about half an hour I had a dozen cigars, five story maga-
zines, and seven or eight railroad timetables in my pockets, and never a
smell of coffee or bacon to point out the trail.

"Once a kind lady sitting at a table and playing a game kind of like
pushpin told me to go into a closet that she called No. 3. I went in and
shut the door, and the blamed thing lit itself. I set down on a stool before
a shelf and waited. Thinks I, This is a private dining room.' But no
waiter never came. When I got to sweating good and hard, I goes out
again.

*4 'Did you get what you wanted?' says she*

" 'No, ma'am, says I. 'Not a bite.*

" Then there's no charge/ says she.

" Thanky, ma'am,* says I, and takes up the trail again.

"By and by I thinks I'll shed etiquette; and I picks up one of them boys
with blue clothes and yellow buttons in front, and he leads me to what
he calls the caffay breakfast room. And the first thing I lays my eyes on
when I go in is that boy that had shot Pedro Johnson. He was setting all
alone at a little table, hitting a egg with a spoon like he was afraid he'd
break it.

"I takes the chair across the table from him; and he looks insulted and
makes a move like he was going to get up.

" *Keep still, son,' says I. 'You're apprehended, arrested, and in charge
of the Texas authorities. Go on and hammer that egg some more if it's
the inside of it you want. Now, what did you shoot. Mr. Johnson, of Bil-
dad, for?'

" *And may I ask who you are?' says he.

" 'You may/ says I. 'Go ahead.*

" *I suppose you Ve on,* says this kid, without batting his eyes. 'But what
are you eating? Here, waiter!* he calls out, raising his finger. Take this
gentleman's order.'

** 'A beefsteak,* says I, *and some fried eggs and a can of peaches and a
quart of coffee will about suffice.'

"We talk awhile about the sundries of life and then he says:

"'What are you going to do about that shooting? I had a right to shoot
that man,1 says he. 'He called me names that I couldn't overlook, and then
he struck me. He carried a gun, too. What else could I do?*

" "We'll have to take you back to Texas,' says I.

" Td like to go back,' says the boy, with a kind of a grin— 'if it wasn't

LAW AND ORDER 923

on an occasion of this kind. It's the life I like. I've always wanted to ride
and shoot and live in the open air ever since I can remember.'

" 'Who was this gang of stout parties you took this trip with?' I asks.

" 'My stepfather/ says he, 'and some business partners of his in some
Mexican mining and land schemes/

" 'I saw you shoot Pedro Johnson,' says I, 'and I took that little pop-gun
away from you that you did it with. And when I did so I noticed three or
four little scars in a row over your right eyebrow. You've been in
rookus before, haven't you?'

"Tve had these scars ever since I can remember,' says he, 'I don't
know how they came there.'

" 'Was you ever in Texas before?* says I,

" 'Not that I remember of/ says he. 'But I thought I had when we
struck the prairie country. But I guess I hadn't.*

" 'Have you got a mother?* I asks.

" 'She died five years ago/ says he.

"Skipping over the most of what followed — when Luke came back
I turned the kid over to him. He had seen Scudder and told him what
he wanted; and it seems that Scudder got active with one of these tele-
phones as soon as he left. For in about an hour afterward there comes to
our hotel some of these city rangers in everyday clothes that they call
detectives, and marches the whole outfit of us to what they call a magis-
trate's court. They accuse Luke of attempted kidnapping, and ask him
what he has to say.

" This snipe/ says Luke to the judge, 'shot and wilfully punctured
with malice and forethought one of the most respected and prominent
citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor. And in so doing laid
himself liable to the penitence of law and order. And I hereby make claim
and demand restitution of the State of New York City for the said alleged
criminal; and I know he done it'

" 'Have you the usual and necessary requisition papers from the gov-
ernor of your state?' asks the judge.

" 'My usual papers/ says Luke, 'was taken away from me at the hotel
by these gentlemen who represent law and order in your city. They was
two Colt's 45's that I've packed for nine years; and if I don't get 'em
back, there'll be more trouble. You can ask anybody in Mojada County
about Luke Summers. I don't usually need any other kind of papers for
what I do/

"I sec the judge looks mad, so I steps up and says:

" 'Your, Honor, the aforesaid defendant; Mr. Luke Summers, sheriff of
Mojada County, Texas, is as fine a maa as ever threw a rope or upheld
the statutes and codicils of the greatest state in the Union. But he *

"The judge hits his table with a wooden hammer and asks who I am.

* 'Bud Oakley/ says I. *Office deputy of the sheriff's office of Mojada

924 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

County, Texas. Representing,* says I, 'the Law. Luke Summers/ I goes
on, 'represents Order. And if Your Honor will give me about ten minutes
in private talk, I'll explain the whole thing to you, and shov^ you the
equitable and legal requisition papers which I carry in my pocket/

"The judge kind of half smiles and says he will talk with me in his
private room. In there I put the whole thing up to him in such language
as I had, and when we goes outside, he announces the verdict that the
young man is delivered into the hands of the Texas authorities; and calls
the next case.

"Skipping over much of what happened on the way back, 1 11 tell you
how the thing wound up in Bildad.

"When we got the prisoner in the sheriff's office, I says to Luke:

"'You remember that kid of yours— that two-year-old that they stole
away from you when the bust-up come?'

"Luke looks black and angry. He'd never let anybody talk to him about
that business^ and he never mentioned it himself.

"Toe the mark/ says L 'Do you remember when he was toddling
around on the porch and fell down on a pair of Mexican spurs and cut
four little holes over his right eye? Look at the prisoner,' says I, look at
his nose and the shape of his head and— why, you old fool, don't you
know your own son? — I knew him/ says I, 'when he perforated Mr.
Johnson at the depot.'

"Luke comes over to me shaking all over. I never saw him lose his
nerve before.

" *Bud/ says he, Tve never had that boy out of my mind one day or
one night since he was took away. But I never let on. But can we hold
him?— Can we make him stay?— Ill make the best man of him that ever
put his foot in a stirrup. Wait a minute/ says he, all excited and out of his
mind— I've got something here in my desk— -I reckon it'll hold legal yet—
Fve looked at it a thousand times— "Cus-to-dy of the child/' says Luke
— "Cus-to-dy of the child." We can hold him on that, can't we? Le'me
see if I can find that decree/

"Luke begins to tear his desk to pieces.

" *Hdd on/ says L 'You are Order and I'm Law. You needn't look for
that paper, Luke. It ain't a decree any more. It's requisition papers. It's
on file in that Magistrate's office in New York. I took it along when we
went, because I was office deputy and knew the law.'

" Tve got him back/ says Luke. 'He's mine again. I never thought '

" 'Wait a minute/ says L *WeVe got to have law and order. You and
me have got to preserve 'em both in Mojada County according to our
oath and conscience. The kid shot Pedro Johnson, one of Bildad's most
prominent and *

" 'Oh, hell!* says Luke. That don't amount to anything. That fellow
was half Mexican, anyhow.* "

TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY

In behalf of Sir Walter's soothing plant let us look into the case of Martin
Burney.

They were constructing the Speedway along the west bank of the
Harlem River. The grub-boat of Dennis Corrigan, sub-contractor, was
moored to a tree on the bank. Twenty-two men belonging to the little
green island toiled there at the sinew-cracking labor. One among them,
who wrought in the kitchen of the grub-boat, was of the race of the
Goths. Over them all stood the exorbitant Corrigan, harrying them like the
captain of a galley crew. He paid them so little that most of the gang,
work as they might, earned little more than food and tobacco; many of
them were in debt to him. Corrigan boarded them all in the grub-boat,
and gave them good grub, for he got it back in work.

Martin Burney was furthest behind of all. He was a little man, all
muscles and hands and feet, with a gray-red, stubbly beard. He was too
light for the work, which would have glutted the capacity of a steam
shovel.

The work was hard. Besides that, the banks of the river were humming
with mosquitoes. As a child in a dark room fixes his regard on the
pale light of a comforting window, these toilers watched the sun that
brought around the one hour of the day that tasted less bitter. After the
sundown supper they would huddle together on the river bank, and send
the mosquitoes whining and eddying back from the malignant puffs of
twenty-three reeking pipes. Thus socially banded against the foe, they
wrenched out of the hour a few well-smoked drops from the cup of joy.

Each week Burney grew deeper in debt Corrigan kept a small stock
of goods on the boat, which he sold to the men at prices that brought tim
no loss. Burney was a good customer at the tobacco counter. One sack
when he went to work in the morning and one when he came in at night,
so much was his account swelled daily. Burney was something of a
smoker. Yet it was not true that he ate his meals with a pipe in his
mouth, which had been said of him- The little man was not discontented.
He had plenty to eat, plenty of tobacco* and a tyrant to curse; so why
should not be, an Irishman, be well satisfied?

One morning as he was starting with the others for work he stopped
at the pine counter for his usual sack of tobacco.

"There's no more for ye," said Corrigan. "Your account's dosed. Ye
are a losing investment. No, not even tobaccy, my son. No more tobaccy
on account. If ye want to work on and eat, do so, but the smoke of ye
has all ascended. Tis my advice that ye hunt a new job.**

926 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

"I have no tobaccy to smoke in my pipe this day, Mr. Corrigan," said.
Burney, not quite understanding that such a thing could happen to him.

"Earn it," said Corrigan, "and then buy it."

Burney stayed on. He knew of no other job. At first he did not realize
that tobacco had got to be his father and mother, his confessor and sweet-
heart, and wife and child.

For three days he managed to fill his pipe from the other men's sacks,
and then they shut him off, one and all. They told him, rough but
friendly, that of all things in the world tobacco must be quickest forth-
coming to a fellow-man desiring it, but that beyond the immediate
temporary need requisition upon the store of a comrade is pressed with
great danger to friendship.

Then the blackness of the pit arose and filled the heart of Burney,
Sucking the corpse of his deceased dudheen, he staggered through his
duties with his barrowful of stones and dirt, feeling for the first time that
the curse of Adam was upon him. Other men bereft of a pleasure might
have recourse to other delights, but Burney had only two comforts in life.
One was his pipe, the other was an ecstatic hope that there would be no
Speedways to build on the other side of Jordan.

At meal times he would let the other men go first into the grub-boat,
and then he would go down on his hands and knees, grovelling fiercely
upon the ground where diey had been sitting, trying to find some stray
crumbs of tobacco. Once he sneaked down the river bank and filled his
pipe with dead willow leaves. At the first whiff of the smoke he spat in
the direction of the boat and put the finest curse he ever knew on Cor-
rigan—one that began with the first Corrigans born on earth and ended
with the Corrigans that shall hear the trumpet of Gabriel blow. He began
to hate Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and soul Even murder oc-
curred to him in a vague sort of way. Five days he went without the taste
of tobacco— he who had smoked all day and thought the night misspent
in which he had not awakened for a pipeful or two under the bedclothes.

One day a man stopped at the boat to say that there was work to be
had in the Bronx Park, where a large number of laborers were required in
making some improvements.

After dinner Burney walked thirty yards down the river bank away
from the maddening smell of the others' pipes. He sat down upon a
stoic. He was thinking he would set out for the Bronx, At least he could
earn tobacco there. What if the books did say he owned Corrigan? Any
man's work was worth his keep. But then he hated to go without getting
even with the hard-hearted screw who had put his pipe out. Was there
any way to do it?

Softly stepping among the clods came Tony, he of the race of Goths,
who worked in the kitchen. He grinned at Burney's elbow, and that

TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY 9^7

unhappy man, full of race animosity and holding urbanity in contempt,
growled at him: "What d'ye want, ye Dago?"

Tony also contained a grievance— and a plot. He, too, was a Corrigan
hater, and had been primed to see it in others.

"How you like-a Mr. Corrigan?" he asked. "You think-a him a nice-a
man?"

"To hell with 'm," he said. "May his liver turn to water, and the bones
of him crack in the cold of his heart. May dog fennel grow upon his
ancestors' graves, and the grandsons of his children be born without eyes.
May whiskey turn to clabber in his mouth, and every time he sneezes may
he blister the soles of his feet. And the smoke of his pipe— may it make
his eyes water, and the drops fall on the grass that his cows eat and
poison the butter that he spreads on his bread."

Though Tony remained a stranger to the beauties of this imagery, he
gathered from it the conviction that it was sufficiendy anti-Corrigan in its
tendency. So, with the confidence of a fellow-conspirator, he sat by
Burney upon the stone and unfolded his plot

It was very simple in design. Every day after dinner it was Corrigan's
habit to sleep for an hour in his bunk. At such times it was the duty of the
cook and his helper, Tony, to leave the boat so that no noise might disturb
the autocrat. The cook always spent this hour in walking exercise. Tony's
plan was this. After Corrigan should be asleep he (Tony) and Burney
would cut the mooring ropes that held the boat to the shore. Tony lacked
the nerve to do the deed alone. Then the awkward boat would swing out
into a swift current and surely overturn against a rock there was below.

"Come on and do it," said Burney. "If the back of ye aches from the
lick he gave ye as the pit of me stomach does for the taste of a bite of
smoke, we can't cut the ropes too quick."

"All a-right," said Tony. "But better wait 1x>ut-a ten minute more.
Give-a Corrigan plenty time get good-a sleep."

They waited, sitting upon the stone. The rest of the men were at work
out of sight around a bend in the road. Everything would have gone
well— except, perhaps, with Corrigan, had not Tony been moved to
decorate the plot with its conventional accompaniment He was of
dramatic blood, and perhaps he intuitively divined the appendage to
villainous machinations as prescribed by the stage. He pulled from his
shirt bosom a long, black, beautiful, venomous cigar, and handed it to
Burney.

"You like-a smoke while we wait?" he asked.

Burney clutched it and snapped off the end as a terrier bites at a rat
He laid it to his lips like a long-lost sweetheart. When the smoke began to
draw he gave a long, deep sigh, and the bristles of his gray-red mustache
curled down over the cigar like the talons of an eagle. Slowly the red

928 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

faded from the whites of his eyes. He fixed his gaze dreamily upon the
hills across the river. The minutes came and went.

44 'Bout time to go now," said Tony. "That damn-a Corrigan he be in
the reever very quick."

Burney started out of his trance with a grunt. He turned his head and
gazed with a surprised and pained severity at his accomplice. He took the
cigar partly from his mouth, but sucked it back again immediately,
chewed it lovingly once or twice, and spoke in virulent puffs, from the
corner of his mouth:

"What is it, ye yaller haythen? Would ye lay contrivances against the
enlightened races of the earth, ye instigator of illegal crimes? Would ye
seek to persuade Martin Burney into the dirty tricks of an indecent Dago?
Would ye be for murderin' your benefactor, the good^man that gives ye
food and work? Take that, ye punkin-colored assassin!*'

The torrent of Burney's indignation carried with it bodily assault. The
toe of his shoe sent the would-be cutter of ropes tumbling from his seat.

Tony arose and fled. His vendetta he again relegated to the files of
things that might have been. Beyond the boat he fled and away— away;
he was afraid to remain.

Burney, with expanded chest, watched his late co-plotter disappear.
Then he, too, departed, setting his face in the direction of the Bronx.

In his wake was a rank and pernicious trail of noisome smoke that
brought peace to his heart and drove the birds from the roadside into the
deepest thickness.

THE CALIPH AND THE CAD

Surely there is no pastime more diverting than that of mingling, incog-
nito, with persons of wealth and station. Where else but in those circles
can one see life in its primitive, crude state unhampered by the conven-
tions that bind the dwellers in a lower sphere?

There was a certain Caliph of Bagdad who was accustomed to go down
among the poor and lowly for the solace obtained from the relation of
their talcs and histories. Is it not strange that the humble and poverty-
stricken have not availed themselves of the pleasure they might glean
by donning diamonds and silks and playing Caliph among the haunts
of the upper world?

There was one who saw the possibilities of thus turning the tables on
Haroun al Raschid. His name was Corny Brannigan, and he was a
truck driver for a Canal Street importing firm. And if you read further
you will learn how he turned upper Broadway into Bagdad and learned
something about himself that he did not know before.

THE CALIPH AND THE CAD 929

Many people would have called Corny a snob — preferably by means of
a telephone. His chief interest in life, his chosen amusement, and his
sole diversion after working hours, was to place himself in juxtaxposition
— since he could not hope to mingle — with people of fashion and means.

Every evening after Corny had put up his team and dined at a lunch-
counter that made immediateness a specialty, he would clothe himself in
evening raiment as correct as any you will see in the palm rooms. Then
he would betake himself to that ravishing, radiant roadway devoted to
Thespis, Thais, and Bacchus.

For a time he would stroll about the lobbies of the best hotels, his soul
steeped in blissful content. Beautiful women, cooing like doves, but
feathered like birds of Paradise, flicked him with their robes as they
passed. Courtly gentlemen attended them, gallant and assiduous. And
Corny's heart within him swelled like Sir Lancelot's, for the mirror spoke
to him as he passed and said: "Corny, lad, there's not a guy among *em
that looks a bit the sweller than yerself. And you drivin' of a truck and
them swearin1 off their taxes and playin' the red in art galleries with the
best in the land!"

And the mirrors spake the truth. Mr. Corny Brannigan had acquired
the outward polish, if nothing more. Long and keen observation of polite
society had gained for him its manner, its genteel air, and— most difficult
of acquirement — its repose and ease.

Now and then in the hotels Corny had managed conversation and
temporary acquaintance with substantial, if not distinguished, guests.
With many of these he had exchanged cards, and the ones he received he
carefully treasured for his own use later. Leaving the hotel lobbies, Corny
would stroll leisurely about, lingering at the theatre entrance, dropping
into the fashionable restaurants as if seeking some friend. He rarely
patronized any of these places; he was no bee come to suck honey, but a
butterfly flashing his wings among the flowers whose calyces held no
sweets for him. His wages were not large enough to furnish him with
more than the outside garb of the gentleman. To have been one of the
beings he so cunningly imitated, Corny Brannigan would have given his
right hand.

One night Corny had an adventure. After absorbing the delights of
an hour's lounging in the principal hotels along Broadway, he passed
up into the stronghold of Thespis. Cab drivers hailed him as a likely fare,
to his prideful content. Languishing eyes were turned upon him as a
hopeful source of lobsters and the delectable, ascendant globules of ef-
fervescence. These overtures and unconscious compliments Corny swal-
lowed as manna, and hoped Bill, the off horse, would be less lame in the
left forefoot in the morning.

Beneath a cluster of nulky globes of electric light Corny paused to
admire the sheen of his low-cut patent leather shoes. The building oc-

930 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

cupying the angle was a pretentious cafe. Out of this came a couple, a lady
in a white, cobwebby evening gown, with a lace wrap like a wreath of
mist thrown over it, and a man, tall, faultless, assured— too assured. They
moved to the edge of the sidwalk and halted. Corny 's eye, ever alert
for "pointers" in "swell1' behavior, took them in with a sidelong glance.

'The carriage is not here," said the lady. "You ordered it to wait?"

"I ordered it for nine-thirty," said the man. "It should be here now,"

A familiar note in the lady's voice drew a more special attention from
Corny. It was pitched in a key well known to him. The soft electric
shone upon her face. Sisters of sorrow have no quarters fixed for them. In
the index to the book of breaking hearts you will find that Broadway
follows very soon after the Bowery. This lady's face was sad, and her
voice was attuned with it. They waited, as if for the carriage. Corny waited
too, for it was out of doors, and he was never tired of accumulating and
profiting by knowledge of gentlemanly conduct.

"Jack," said the lady, "don't be angry. I've done everything I could to
please you this evening. Why do you act so?"

"Oh, you're an angel," said the man. "Depend upon woman to throw
the blame upon a man.

"I'm not blaming you. I'm only trying to make you happy."

"You go about it in a very peculiar way,"

"You have been cross with me all the evening without any cause."

"Oh, there isn't any cause except— you make me tired."

Corny took out his card case and looked over his collection. He se-
lected one that read: "Mr. R. Lionel Whyte-Melville, Bloomsbury Square,
London." This card he had inveigled from a tourist at the King Eward
Hotel. Corny stepped up to the man and presented it with a correctly
formal air.

"May I ask why I am selected for the honor?" asked the lady's escort.

Now, Mr. Corny Brannigan had a very wise habit of saying little dur-
ing his imitations of the Caliph of Bagdad. The advice of Lord Chester-
field: "Wear a black coat and hold your tongue," he believed in without
having heard. But now speech was demanded and required of him.

uNo gent," said Corny, "would talk to a lady like you done. Fie upon
you, Willie! Even if she happens to be your wife you ought to have more
respect for your clothes than to chin her back that way. Maybe it ain't
my butt-in, but it goes, anyhow — you strike rne as beia' a whole lot to the
wrong."

The lady's escort indulged in more elegantly expressed but fetching
repartee. Corny, eschewing his truck driver's vocabulary, retorted as
nearly as he could in polite phrases. Then diplomatic relations were
severed; there was a brief but lively set-to with other than oral weapons,
from which Corny came forth easily victor.

A carriage dashed up, driven by a tardy and solicitous coachman.

THE DIAMOND OF KALI 93!

"Will you kindly open the door for me?" asked the lady. Corny assisted
her to enter, and took of? his hat. The escort was beginning to scramble
up from the sidewalk.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said Corny, "if he's your man.n

"He's no man of mine," said the lady. "Perhaps he— but there's no
chance of his being now. Drive home, Michael. If you care to take this—
with my thanks."

Three red roses were thrust out through the carriage window into
Corny's hand. He took them., and the hand for an instant; and then the
carriage sped away.

Corny gathered his foe's hat and began to brush the dust from his
clothes.

"Come along," said Corny, taking the other man by the arm.

His late opponent was yet a little dazed by the hard knocks he had re-
ceived. Corny led him carefully into a saloon three doors away,

"The drinks for us," said Corny, "me and my friend."

"You're a queer feller/' said the lady's late escort— "lick a man and
then want to set *em up."

"You're my best friend," said Corny, exultantly. "You don't^ under-
stand? Well, listen. You just put me wise to somethin'. I been playin* gent
a long time, thinkin* it was just the glad rags I had and nothin' else. Say
—you're a swell, ain't you? Well, you trot in that class, I guess. I don't; but

I found out one thing— I'm a gentleman, by and I know it now.

What'U you have to drink?"

THE DIAMOND OF KALI

The original news item concerning the diamond of the goddess Kali was
handed in to the city editor. He smiled and held it for a moment above
the waste-basket. Then he laid it back on his desk and said: "Try the
Sunday people; they might work something out of it."

The Sunday editor glanced the item over and said: "H'm!" Afterward
he sent for a reporter and expanded his comment.

"You might see General Ludlow/* he said, "and make a story out of
this if you can. Diamond stories are a drug; but this one is big enough to
be found by a scrubwoman wrapped up in a piece of newspaper and
tucked under the corner of the hall linoleum. Find out first if the General
has a daughter who intends to go on the stage. If not, you can go ahead
with the story. Run cuts of the Kohinoor and J. P. Morgan's collection,
and work in pictures of the Kiraberley mines and Barney Barnato. Fill
in with a tabulated comparison of the values of diamonds, radium, and
veal cutlets siace the meat strike; and let it run to a half page."

932 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

On the following day the reporter turned in his story. The Sunday
editor let his eye sprint along its lines. UH m" he said again. This time
the copy went into the waste-basket with scarcely a flutter.

The reporter stiffened a little around the lips; but he was whistling
softly and contentedly between his teeth when I went over to talk with
him about an hour later. t

"I don't blame the 'old man,'" said he, magnanimously, for cutting it
out. It did sound like funny business; but it happened exactly as I wrote
it. Say, why don't you fish that story out of the w.-b., and use it?
Seems to me it's as good as the tommyrot you write."

I accepted the tip, and if you read further you will learn the facts
about the diamond of the goddess Kali as vouched for by one of the
most reliable reporters on the staff.

Gen. Marcellus B, Ludlow lives in one of those decaying but venerated
old red-brick mansions in the West Twenties, The General is a member
of an old New York family that does not advertise. He is a globe-trotter
by birth, a gentleman by predilection, a millionaire by the mercy of
Heaven, and a connoisseur of precious stones by occupation.

The reporter was admitted promptly when he made himself known
at the General's residence at about eight thirty on the evening that he
received the assignment. In the magnificent library he was greeted by the
distinguished traveller and connoisseur, a tall, erect gentleman in the early
fifties, with a nearly white mustache, and a bearing so soldierly that one
perceived in him scarcely a trace of the national Guardsman. His weather-
beaten countenance lit up with a charming smile of interest when the
reporter made known his errand.

"Ah, you have heard of my latest find. I shall be glad to show you what
I conceive to be one of the six most valuable blue diamonds in existence."

The General opened a small safe in a corner of the library and brought
forth a plush-covered box. Opening this, he exposed to the reporter's
bewildered gaze a huge and brilliant diamond— nearly as large as a hail-

stone.

Lit.

'This stone," said the General, "is something more than a mere jewel.
It once formed the central eye of the three-eyed goddess Kali, who is wor-
shipped by one of the fiercest and most fanatical tribes of India. If you
wiU arrange yourself comfortably I will give you a brief history of it for
your paper."

General Ludlow brought a decanter of whisky and glasses from a cabi-
net, and set a comfortable armchair for the lucky scribe.

**The Phansigars, or Thugs, of India," began the General, "are the most
dangerous and dreaded of the tribes of North India. They are extremists
in religion, and worship the horrid goddess Kali in the form of images.
Their rites are interesting and bloody. The robbing and murdering of
travellers are taught as a worthy and obligatory deed by their strange

THE DIAMOND OF KALI 933

religious code. Their worship o£ the three-eyed goddess Kali is conducted
so secretly that no traveller has ever heretofore had the honor of witness-
ing the ceremonies. That distinction was reserved for myself.

"While at Sakaranpur, between Delhi and Khelat, I used to explore
the jungle in every direction in hope of learning something new about
these mysterious Phansigars.

"One evening at twilight I was making my way through a teakwood
forest, when I came upon a deep circular depression in an open space, in
the centre of which was a rude stone temple. I was sure that this was one
of the temples of the Thugs, so I concealed myself in the undergrowth
to watch.

"When the moon rose the depression in the clearing was suddenly filled
with hundreds of shadowy, swiftly gliding forms. Then a door opened
in the temple, exposing a brightly illuminated image of the goddess Kali,
before which a white-robed priest began a barbarous incantation, while
the tribe of worshippers prostrated themselves upon the earth.

"But what interested me most was the central eye of the huge wooden
idol. I could see by its flashing brilliancy that it was an immense diamond
of the purest water.

"After the rites were concluded the Thugs slipped away into the forest
as silently as they had come. The priest stood for a few minutes in the
door of the temple enjoying the cool of the night before closing his rather
warm quarters. Suddenly a dark, lithe shadow slipped down into the
hollow, leaped upon the priest, and struck him down with a glittering
knife. Then the murderer sprang at the image of the goddess like a cat
and pried out the glowing central eye of Kali with his weapon. Straight
toward me he ran with his royal prize. When he was within two paces
I rose to my feet and struck him with all my force between the eyes. He
rolled over senseless and the magnificent jewel fell from his hand. That
is the splendid blue diamond you have just seen — a stone worthy of a
monarch's crown.1*

"That's a corking story," said the reporter. "That decanter is exactly
like the one that John W. Gates always sets out during an interview."

"Pardon me," said General Ludlow, "for forgetting hospitality In the
excitemeat of my narrative. Help yourself/'

"Here's looking at you," said the reporter.

"What I am afraid of now," said the General, lowering his voice, "is
that I may be robbed of the diamond. The jewel that formed an eye
of their goddess is their most sacred symbol Somehow the tribe suspected
me of having it; and members o£ the baad have followed me half around
the earth. They are the most cunning and cruel fanatics in the world, and
their religious vows would compel them to assassinate the unbeliever who
has desecrated their sacred treasure.

"Once ia Lucknow three of their agents, disguised as servants in a

934 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

hotel, endeavored to strangle me with a twisted cloth. Again, in London,
two Thugs, made up as street musicians, climbed into my window at night
and attacked me. They have even tracked me to this country. My life is
never safe. A month ago, while I was at a hotel in the Berkshires, three
of them sprang upon me from the roadside weeds. I saved myself then
by my knowledge of their customs."

"How was that, General?" asked the reporter.

"There was a cow grazing near by," said General Ludlow, "a gentle
Jersey cow. I ran to her side and stood. The three Thugs ceased their
attack, knelt and struck the ground thrice with their foreheads. Then,
after many respectful salaams, they departed/'

"Afraid the cow would hook ?" asked the reporter.

"No; the cow is a sacred animal to the Phansigars. Next to their
goddess they worship the cow. They have never been known to commit
any deed of violence in the presence of the animal they reverence."

"It's a mighty interesting story," said the reporter. "If you don't mind
I'll take another drink, and then a few notes."

"I will join you," said General Ludlow, with a courteous wave of his
hand.

"If I were you," advised the reporter, "I'd take that sparkler to Texas.
Get on a cow ranch there, and the Pharisees "

"Phansigars," corrected the General.

"Oh, yes; the fancy guys would run up against a long horn every
time they made a break."

General Ludlow closed the diamond case and thrust it into his bosom.

"The spies of the tribe have found me out in New York," he said,
straightening his tall figure, Tm familiar with the East Indian cast of
countenance, and I know that my every movement is watched. They will
undoubtedly attempt to rob and murder me here,"

"Here?" exclaimed the reporter, seizing the decanter and pouring out
a liberal amount of its contents.

"At any moment," said the General. "But as a soldier and a connoisseur
I shall sell my life and my diamond as dearly as I can/'

At this point of the reporter s story there is a certain vagueness, but it
can be gathered that there was a loud crashing at the rear of the house
they were in. General Ludlow buttoned his coat closely and sprang for
the door. But the reporter clutched him firmly with one hand, while he
held the decanter with the other.

"Tell me before we fly," he urged, in a voice thick with some inward
turmoil, "do any of your daughters contemplate going on the stage?"

"I have no daughters— fly for your life — the Phansigars are upon us!"
cried the General,

The two men dashed out of the front door of the house.

The hour was late. As their feet struck the sidewalk strange men of

THE DIAMOND OF KALI 935

dark and forbidding appearance seemed to rise up out of the earth and
encompass them. One with Asiatic features pressed close to the General
and droned in a terrible voice:

"Buy cast clo'!"

Another, dark-whiskered and sinister, sped lithely to his side and began
in a whining voice:

"Say, mister, have yer got a dime fer a poor feller what "

They hurried on, but only into the arms of a black-eyed, dusky-browed
being, who held out his hat under their noses, while a confederate of
Oriental hue turned the handle of a street organ near by.

Twenty steps farther on General Ludlow and the reporter found them-
selves in the midst of half a dozen villainous-looking men with high-
turned coat collars and faces bristling with unshaven beards.

"Run for it!" hissed the General. "They have discovered the possessor
of the diamond of the goddess Kali."

The two men took to their heels. The avengers of the goddess pursued.

"Oh, Lordy!" groaned the reporter, "there isn't a cow this side of
Brooklyn. We're lost!"

When near the corner they both fell over an iron object that rose from
the sidewalk close to the gutter. Clinging to it desperately, they awaited
their fate.

"If I only had a cow!" moaned the reporter — "or another nip from
that decanter, General!1*

As soon as the pursuers observed where their victims had found refuge
they suddenly fell back and retreated to a considerable distance.

"They are waiting for reinforcements in order to attack us," said Gen-
eral Ludlow.

But the reporter emitted a ringing laugh, and hurled his hat trium-
phantly into the air.

"Guess again," he shouted, and leaned heavily upon the iron object
<{Your old fancy guys or thugs, whatever you call 'em, are up to date.
Dear General, this is a pump we're stranded upon — same as a cow in
New York (hie!) see? Thas'h why the 'nfuriated smoked guys don't
attack us — see? Sacred an'mal, the pump in N* York, my dear General!"

But further down in the shadows of Twenty-eighth Street the ma-
rauders were holding a parley.

"Come on, Reddy," said one. "Let's go frisk the old 'un. He's been
showin' a sparkler as big as a hen egg all around Eighth Avenue for two
weeks past"

"Not on your silhouette," decided Reddy. "You see *ern rallyin' round
The Pump? They're friends of Bill's, Bill won't stand for Bothin' of this
kind in his district since he gat that bid to Esopus,"

This exhausts the facts corK^nnng the Kali diamond. But it is deemed

936 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

not inconsequent to close with the following brief (paid) item that
appeared two days later in a morning paper.

"It is rumored that a niece of Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow, of New York
City, will appear on the stage next season.

"Her diamonds are said to be extremely valuable and of much historic
interest."

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE

"la the tropics" ("Hop-along" Bibb, the bird fancier, was saying to me)
"the seasons, months, fortnights, week-ends, holidays, dog-days, Sundays,
and yesterdays get so jumbled together in the shuffle that you never know
when a year has gone by until you're in the middle of the next one."

"Hop-along" Bibb kept his bird store on lower Fourth Avenue. He
was an ex-seaman and beachcomber who made regular voyages to south-
ern ports and imported personally conducted invoices of talking parrots
and dialectic paroquets. He had a stiff knee, neck, and nerve. I had gone
to him to buy a parrot to present, at Christmas, to my Aunt Joanna.

"This one," said I, disregarding his homily on the subdivisions of time
—"this one that seems all red, white and blue— to what genus of beasts
does he belong? He appeals at once to my patriotism and to my love of
discord in color schemes."

"That's a cockatoo from Ecuador," said Bibb. "All he has been taught
to say is 'Merry Christmas.' A seasonable bird. He's only seven dollars;
and I'll bet many a human has stuck you for money by making the
same speech to you."

And then Bibb laughed suddenly and loudly.

"That bird," he exclaimed, "reminds me. He's got his dates mixed. He
ought to be saying '£ pluribus unum,' to match his feathers, instead of
trying to work the Santa Claus graft. It reminds me of the time me and
Liverpool Sam got our ideas of things tangled up on the coast of Costa
Rica on account of the weather and other phenomena to be met with in
the tropics.

"We were, as it were, stranded on that section of the Spanish Main
with no money to speak of and no friends that should be talked about
either. We had stoked and second-cooked ourselves down there on a fruit
steamer from New Orkans to try our luck, which was discharged, after
we got there, for lack of evidence. There was no work suitable to our
instincts; so rae and Liverpool began to subsist on the red rum of the
country and such fruit as we could reap where we had not sown. It was
an alluvial town, called Soledad, where there was no harbor or future or
recourse. Between steamers the town slept aad drank rum* It only woke

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE 937

up when there were bananas to ship. It was like a man sleeping through
dinner until the dessert.

"When me and Liverpool got so low down that the American consul
wouldn't speak to us we knew we'd struck bed rock.

"We boarded with a snuff-brown lady named Chica, who kept a rum-
shop and a ladies' and gents' restaurant in a street called the calle de los
Forty-seven Inconsolable Saints, When our credit played out there, Liver-
pool, whose stomach overshadowed his sensations of noblesse oblige,
married Chica. This kept us in rice and fried plantain for a month;
and then Chica pounded Liverpool one morning sadly and earnestly for
fifteen minutes with a casserole handed down from the stone age, and
we knew that we had out-welcomed our liver. That night we signed an
engagement with Don Jaime McSpinosa, a hybrid banana fancier of the
place, to work on his fruit preserves nine miles out of town. We had to
do it or be reduced to sea water and broken doses of feed and slumber.

"Now, speaking of Liverpool Sam, I don't malign or inexculpate him to
you any more than I would to his face. But in my opinion, when an Eng-
lishman gets as low as he can he's got to dodge so that the dregs of other
nations don't drop ballast on him out of their balloons, And if he's a
Liverpool Englishman, why, fire-damp is what he's got to look out for.
Being a natural American, that's my personal view. But Liverpool and me
had much in common. We were without decorous clothes or ways and
means of existence; and, as the saying goes, misery certainly does enjoy
the society of accomplices.

"Our job on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana
stalks and loading the bunches of fruit on the backs of horses. Then a
native dressed up in an alligator-hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA
sheeting pajamas, drives 'em over to the coast and piles rem up on the
beach.

"You ever been in a banana grove? It's as solemn as a rathskeller at
seven A.M. It's like being lost behind the scenes at one of these mushroom
musical shows. You can't see the sky for the foliage above you; and the
ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it's so still that you can hear the
stalks growing again after you chop *em down*

"At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge
of a lagoon, with die red, yellow, and black employes of Don Jaime.
There we lay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling
and the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon until daylight
with only snatches of sleep between times*

"We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was. It's Just about
eighty degrees there in December and June aBd on Fridays and at mid-
night and election day and any other old rime. Sometimes it rains more
than at others, aad that's all die difference you notice, A man is liable
to live along there without noticing any fugiting of tempus until some

93§ BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

day the undertaker calls In for him just when he's beginning to think
about cutting out the gang and saving up a little to invest in real estate.

"I don't know how long we worked for Don Jaime; but it was through
two or three rainy spells, eight or ten hair cuts, and the life of three pairs
of sailcloth trousers. All the money we earned went for rum and tobacco;
but we ate, and that was something.

"All of a sudden one day me and Liverpool find the trade of commit-
ting surgical operations on banana stalks turning to aloes and quinine
in our mouths. It's a seizure that often comes upon white men in Latin
and geographical countries. We wanted to be addressed again in language
and see the smoke of a steamer and read the real estate transfers and
gents' outfitting ads in an old newspaper. Even Soledad seemed like a
center of civilization to us, so that evening we put our thumbs on our
nose at Eton Jaime's fruit stand and shook his grass burrs off our feet.

"It was only twelve miles to Soledad, but it took me and Liverpool
two days to get there. It was banana grove nearly all the way; and we got
twisted time and again. It was like paging the palm room of a New York
hotel for a man named Smith.

"When we saw the houses of Soledad between the trees all my disin-
clination toward this Liverpool Sam rose up in me. I stood him while
we were two white men against the banana brindles; but now, when
there were prospects of my exchanging even cuss words with an American
citizen, I put him back in his proper place. And he was a sight, too, with
his rum-painted nose and his red whiskers and elephant feet with leather
sandals strapped to them. I suppose I looked about the same.

" It looks to me,* says I, 'like Great Britain ought to be made to keep
such gin-swilling, scurvy, unbecoming mud larks as you at home instead
of sending 'em over here to degrade and taint foreign lands. We kicked
you out of America once and we ought to put on rubber boots and do it
again.'

" *Oh» you go to 'ell,* says Liverpool, which was about all the repartee
he ever had.

"Well, Soledad looked fine to me after Don Jaime's plantation. Liver-
pool and me walked into it side by side, from force of habit, past the cala-
bosa and the Hotel Grande, down across the plaza toward Chica's hut,
where we hoped that Liverpool, being a husband of hers, might work his
luck for a meaL

"As we passed the two-story little frame house occupied by the Ameri-
can Club, we noticed that the balcony had been decorated all around with
wreaths of evergreens and flowers, and the flag was flying from the pole
on the roof. Stanley, the consul, and Arkright, a gold-mine owner, were
smoking on the balcony. Me and Liverpool waved our dirty hands toward
Jem and smiled real society smiles; but they turned their backs to us and
went on talking. And we had pkyed whist once with the two of 'em up

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE 939

to the time when Liverpool held all thirteen trumps for four hands in
succession. It was some holiday, we knew; but we don't know the day
nor the year.

"A little further along we saw a reverend man named Pendergast, who
had come to Soledad to build a church, standing under a cocoanut palm
with his little black alpaca coat and green umbrella.

"'Boys, boys!1 says he, through his blue spectacles, 'is it as bad as this?
Are you so far reduced?*

" 'We're reduced,' says I, 'to very vulgar fractions/

"'It is indeed sad/ says Pendergast, *to see my countrymen in such
circumstances.*

" 'Cut 'arf of that out, old party,' says Liverpool 'Cawn't you tell a
member of the British upper classes when you see one?*

" 'Shut up/ I told Liverpool. 'You're on foreign soil now, or that por-
tion of it that's not on you.'

"'And on this day, too!' goes on Pendergast, grievous— 'on this most
glorious day of the year when we should all be celebrating the dawn of
Christian civilization and the downfall of the wicked/

" 'I did notice bunting and bouquets decorating the town, reverend/
says I, 'but I didn't know what it was for. We've been so long out of
touch with calendars that we didn't know whether it was summer time or
Saturday afternoon/

"'Here is two dollars/ says Pendergast, digging up two Chili silver
wheels and handing 'em to me. 'Go, men, and observe the rest of the day
in a befitting manner/

"Me and Liverpool thanked him kindly, and walked away.

"'Shall we eat?' I asks.

" 'Oh 'ell!' says Liverpool. 'What's money for?'

" 'Very well, then/ 1 says, 'since you insist upon it, we'll drink/

"So we pull up in a rum shop and get a quart of it and go down on the
beach under a cocoanut tree and celebrate.

"Not having eaten anything but oranges in two days, the rum has
immediate effect; and once more I conjure up great repugnance toward
the British nation.

" 'Stand up here/ I says to Liverpool, 'y°u scum of a despot limited
monarchy, and have another dose of Bunker Hill. That good man, Mr.
Pendergast/ says I, 'said we were to observe the day in a befitting man-
ner, and I'm not going to see his money misapplied/

"'Oh, you go to *ellf says Liverpool, and I started in with a fine left-
hander on his right eye.

"Liverpool had been a fighter once, but dissipation and bad company
had taken the nerve out of him. In ten minutes I had him lying on the
sand waving the white flag.

" 'Get up/ says I, kicking him in the ribs, 'and come along with me/

940 BOOK VII SIXES AND SEVENS

Liverpool got up and followed behind me because it was bis habit,
wiping the red off his face and nose. I led him to Reverend Pendergast's
shack and called him out.

" 'Look at this, sir,* says I—look at this thing that was once a proud
Britisher, You gave us two dollars and told us to celebrate the day. The
star-spangled banner still waves. Hurrah for the stars and eagles!*

" 'Dear me,' says Pendergast, holding up his hands. 'Fighting on this
day of all days! On Christmas day, when peace on *

" 'Christmas, hell!' says 1. 1 thought it was the Fourth of July.' *

"Merry Christmas!" said the red, white, and blue cockatoo.
"Take him for six dollars," said Hop-along Bibb. "He's got his dates
and colors mixed."

BOOK

STOKES

THE DREAM

This was the last work of O. Henry. The Cosmopolitan Magazine
had ordered it from him and, after his death, the unfinished manuscript
was found in his room. The story as it here appears was published in
the Cosmopolitan for September, 1910.

Murray dreamed a dream.

Both psychology and science grope when they would explain to us the
strange adventures of our immaterial selves when wandering in the realm
of "Death's twin brother, sleep." This story will not attempt to be illu-
minative; it is no more than record of Murray's dream. One of the most
puzzling phases of that strange waking sleep is that dreams which seem
to cover months or even years may take place within a few seconds or
minutes.

942 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Murray was waiting in his cell in the ward of the condemned. An elec-
tric arc light in the ceiling of the corridor shone brightly upon his table.
On a sheet of white paper an ant crawled wildly here and there as Murray
blocked its way with an envelope. The electrocution was set for eight
o'clock in the evening. Murray smiled at the antics of the wisest of insects.

There were seven other condemned men in the chamber. Since he had
been there Murray had seen three taken out to their fate; one gone mad
and fighting like a wolf caught in a trap; one, no less mad, offering up a
sanctimonious lip-service to Heaven; the third, a weakling, collapsed and
strapped to a board. He wondered with what credit to himself his own
heart, foot, and face would meet his punishment; for this was his eve-
ning. He thought it must be nearly eight o'clock.

Opposite his own in the two rows of cells was the cage of Bonifacio,
the Sicilian slayer of his betrothed and of two officers who came to arrest
him. With him Murray had played checkers many a long hour, each
calling his move to his unseen opponent across the corridor.

Bonifacio's great booming voice with its indestructible singing quality
called out:

"Eh, Meestro Murray; how you feel — all-a right — yes?"

"All right, Bonifacio," said Murray steadily, as he allowed the ant to
crawl upon the envelope and then dumped it gendy on the stone floor.

"Dat's good-a, Meestro Murray. Men like us, we must-a die like-a men.
My time come nexj-a week. All-a right. Remember, Meestro Murray, I
beat-a you dat las* game of de check. Maybe we play again some-a time.
I don'-a know. Maybe we have to call-a de move damn-a loud to play
de check where dey goin* send us."

Bonifacio's hardened philosophy, followed closely by his deafening
musical peal of laughter, warmed rather than chilled Murray's numbed
heart. Yet, Bonifacio had until next week to live.

The cell-dwellers heard the familiar, loud click of the steel bolts as the
door at the end of the corridor was opened. Three men came to Murray's
cell and unlocked it. Two were prison guards; the other was "Len" — no;
that was in the old days; now the Reverend Leonard Winston, a friend
and neighbor from their barefoot days.

"I got them to let me take the prison chaplain's place," he said, as he
gave Murray's hand one short, strong grip. In his left hand he held a small
Bible, with his forefinger marking a page.

Murray smiled slightly and arranged two or three books and some pen-
holders orderly on his small table. He would have spoken, but no appro-
priate words seemed to present themsevles to his mind.

The prisoners had christected this cellhouse, eighty feet long, twenty-
eight feet wide, Limbo Lane. The regular guard of Limbo Lane, an
immense, rough, kindly man, drew a pint bottle of whiskey from his
pocket and offered it to Murray, saying:

THE DREAM 943

"It's the regular thing, you know. AH has it who feel like they need a
bracer. No danger of it becoming a habit with 'em, you see."

Murray drank deep into the bottle.

"That's the boy!" said the guard. "Just a little nerve tonic, and every-
thing goes smooth as silk."

They stepped into the corridor, and each one of the doomed seven
knew. Limbo Lane is a world on the outside of the world; but it had
learned, when deprived of one or more of the five senses, to make an-
other sense supply the deficiency. Each one knew that it was nearly eight,
and that Murray was to go to the chair at eight. There is also in the many
Limbo Lanes an aristocracy of crime. The man who kills in the open,
who beats his enemy or pursuer down, flushed by the primitive emo-
tions and the ardor of combat, holds in contempt the human rat, the
spider, and the snake.

So, of the seven condemned only three called their farewells to Murray
as he marched down the corridor between the two guards — Bonifacio,
Marvin, who had killed a guard while trying to escape from the prison,
and Bassett, the train-robber, who was driven to it because the express-
messenger wouldn't raise his hands when ordered to do so. The remain-
ing four smoldered, silent, in their cells, no doubt feeling their social
ostracism in Limbo Lane society more keenly than they did the memory
of their less picturesque offences against the law.

Murray wondered at his awn calmness and nearly indifference. In the
execution room were about twenty men, a congregation made up of
prison officers, newspaper reporters, and lookers-on who had succeeded.

Here, in the very middle of a sentence, the hand of Death interrupted
the telling of O. Henry's last story. He had planned to make this story
different from his others, the beginning of a new series in a style he had
not previously attempted. "I want to show the public," he said, "that I
can write something new — new for me, I mean — a story without slang,
a straightforward dramatic plot treated in a way that will come nearer
my idea of real story-writing." Before starting to write the present story,
he outlined briefly how he intended to develop it: Murray, the criminal
accused and convicted of the brutal murder of his sweetheart — a murder
prompted by jealous rage— at first faces the death penalty, calm, and,
to all outward appearances, indifferent to his fate. As he nears the electric
chair he is overcome by a revulsion of feeling. He is left dazed, stupefied,
stunned. The entire scene in the death-chamber — the witnesses, the spec-
tators, the preparations for execution — become unreal to him. The thought
flashes through his brain that a terrible mistake is being made. Why is he
being strapped to the chair? What has he done? What crime has he com-
mitted? In the few moments while the straps are being adjusted a vision
comes to him. He dreams a dreaUi. He sees a little country cottage, bright,

944 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

sun-lit, nestling in a bower of flowers. A woman is there, and a little
child. He speaks with them and finds that they are his wife, his child—
and the cottage their home. So, after all, it is a mistake. Some one has
frightfully, irretrievably blundered. The accusation, the trial, the con-
viction, the sentence to death in the electric chair— all a dream. He takes
his wife in his arms and kisses the child. Yes, here is happiness. It was a
dream. Then — at a sign from the prison warden the fatal current is
turned on.

Murray had dreamed the wrong dream.

A RULER OF MEN

I walked the street of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight of a
stranger face. For the City is a desert of familiar types as thick and alike
as the grains in a sand-storm; and you grow to hate them as you do a
friend who is always by you, or one of your kin.

And my desire was granted, for I saw near a corner of Broadway and
Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a scaly-
bark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that omnige-
nously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screw-driver, a button-hook, a
nail-file, a shoe-horn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an ornament
to any gentleman's key-ring.

And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of
customers. The vender, plainly used to having his seasons of trade thus
abrupdy curtailed, closed his satchel and slipped like a weasel through
the opposite segment of the circle. The crowd scurried aimlessly away
like ants from a disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly becoming oblivious
of the earth and its inhabitants, stood still, swelling his bulk and putting
his club through an intricate drill of twirls. I hurried after Kansas Bill
Bowers, and caught him by an arm.

Without his looking at me or slowing his pace, I found a five-dollar bill
crumpled neatly into my hand.

"I wouldn't have thought, Kansas Bill," I said, "that you'd hold an old
friend that cheap.**

Then he turned his head, and the hickory-nut cracked into a wide
smik.

"Give back the money," said he, "or Fll have the cop after you for false
pretenses. I thought you was the cop."

"I want to talk to you, Bill," I said. "When did you leave Oklahoma?
Where is Reddy McGill now? Why are you selling those impossible
contraptions on the street? How did your Big Horn gold-mine pan out?
How did you get so badly sunburned? What will you drink?"

A RULER OF MEN 945

"A year ago," answered Kansas Bill, systematically. "Putting up wind-
mills in Arizona. For pin money to buy etceteras with. Salted. Been
down in the tropics. Beer."

We foregathered in a propitious place and became Elijahs, while a
waiter of dark plumage played the raven to perfection. Reminiscence
needs must be had before I could steer Bill into his epic mood.

"Yes," said he, "I mind the time Timoteo's rope broke on that cow's
horns while the calf was chasing you. You and that cow! I'd never forget

it."

"The tropics," said I, "are a broad territory. What part of Cancer or
Capricorn have you been honoring with a visit?"

"Down along China or Peru— or maybe the Argentine Confederacy,*'
said Kansas Bill. "Anyway 'twas among a great race of people, off-colored
but progressive. I was there three months."

"No doubt you are glad to be back among the truly great race," I sur-
mised. "Especially among New Yorkers, the most progressive and inde-
pendent citizens of any country in the world," I continued, with the
fatuity of the provincial who has eaten the Broadway lotus.

"Do you want to start an argument?" ask Bill.

"Can there be one?" I answered.

"Has an Irishman humor, do you think?" asked he.

"I have an hour or two to spare," said I, looking at the cafe clock.

"Not that the Americans aren't a great commercial nation," conceded
Bill. "But the fault laid with the people who wrote lies for fiction."

"What was this Irishman's name?" I asked.

"Was that last beer cold enough?" said he.

"I see there is talk of further outbreaks among the Russian peasants,"
I remarked.

"His name was Barney O'Connor," said Bill

Thus, because of our ancient prescience of each other's trail of thought,
we travelled ambiguously to the point where Kansas Bill's story began:

"I met O'Connor in a boarding-house on the West Side. He invited me
to his hall-room to have a drink, and we became like a dog and a cat
that had been raised together. There he sat, a tall, fine, handsome man,
with his feet against one wall and his back against the other, looking over
a map. On the bed and sticking three feet out of it was a beautiful gold
sword with tassels on it and rhinestones in the handle.

" What this?' says I (for by that time we were well acquainted). The
annual parade in vilification of the ex-snakes of Ireland? And what's the
line of march? Up Broadway to Forty-second; thence east to McCarty's
cafe; thence r

" 'Sit down on the wash-stand/ says O'Connor, 'and listen. And cast
no perversions on the sword. Twas my father's in old Munster. And this
map, Bowers, is no diagram of a holiday procession. If ye look again

946 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

yell see that it's the continent known as South America, comprising
fourteen green, blue, red, and yellow countries, all crying out from time
to time to be liberated from the yoke of the oppressor.'

" *I know/ says I to O'Connor. The idea is a literary one. The ten-
cent magazine stole it from "Ridpath's History of the World from the
Sand-store Period to the Equator." You'll find it in every one of 'em.
It's a continued story of a soldier of fortune, generally named O'Keefe,
who gets to be dictator while the Spanish-American populace cries
"Cospetto!" and other Italian maledictions. I misdoubt if it's ever been
done. You're not thinking of trying that, are you, Barney?' I asks.

" "Bowers/ says he, 'you're a man of education and courage.'

"'How can I deny it?* says L 'Education runs in my family; and I
have acquired courage by a hard struggle with life.'

"The O'Connors/ says he, 'are a warlike race. There is me father's
sword; and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. The
O'Connors were born to rule. Tis a ruler of men I must be.'

"'Barney/ I says to him, 'why don't you get on the force and settle
down to a quiet life of carnage and corruption instead of roaming off to
foreign parts? In what better way can you indulge your desire to subdue
and maltreat the oppressed?'

" 'Look again at the map/ says he, 'at the country I have the point of
me knife on. 'Tis that one I have selected to aid and overthrow with me
father's sword/

" 4I see/ says L 'It's the green one; and that does credit to your patri-
otism, and it's the smallest one; and that does credit to your judgment/

" 'Do ye accuse me of cowardice?' says Barney, turning pink.

" 'No man/ says I, 'who attacks and confiscates a country singlehanded
could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is plagiarism
or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get away with it,
nobody else will have any right to kick.'

" Tm not joking/ says O'Connor. 'And I've got $1,500 cash to work the
scheme with. I've taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?*

"Tm not working/ I told him; 'but how is it to be? Do I eat
during the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be Secretary
of War after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay envelope or only
a portfolio?*

"Til pay all expenses/ says O'Connor. 'I want a man I can trust.
If we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift
of the government*

" *AII right, then/ says L 'You can get me a bunch of draying contracts
and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme Court
bench so I won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of cannon they
chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too much. You can
consider me on the pay-roll/

A RULER OF MEN 947

"Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small,
green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor
said he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the com-
manding general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details con-
cealed from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T.
Bowers. Three dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause
of liberating an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or
sustained it. Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade
rest, and O'Connor handed over the twenty-one dollars.

"The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me.
*Not for me/ says I. 'It'll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville or Cherry
Tree Corners when I speak of it. It's a clear case where Spelling Reform
ought to butt in and disenvowel it."

"But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was
white, with green ruching, and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf
slashed up on the sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as the
pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger depart-
ment of the Long Island Railroad,

"We went through the quarantine and custom house indignities; and
then O'Connor leads me to a 'dobe house on a street called The Avenue
of the Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective Saints.' Ten
feet wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar stumps.

" 'Hooligan Alley,' says I, rechristemng it.

" l 'Twill be our headquarters,' says O'Connor, *My agent here, Don
Fernando Pacheco, secured it for us.'

"So in that house O'Connor and me established the revolutionary
centre. In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a guitar,
and a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room O'Connor had his
desk and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a roll of straw
matting. We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in the wall; and
took our meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the American
plan by a German proprietor with Chinese cooking served a" la Kansas
City lunch counter.

"It seems that O'Connor really did have some sort of system planned
out beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some
native gent would stroll round to headquarters and be shut up in the back
room for half an hour with O^Connor and the interpreter. I noticed that
when they went in they were always smoking eightrinch cigars and at
peace with the world; but when they came out they would be folding up
a ten- or twenty-dollar bill and cursing the government horribly,

"One evening after we had been In Guaya — in this town of Smellville-
by-the-Sea — about a monthf and me and O'Connor were sitting outside
the door helping along old tempos fugit with rum and ice and limes,
I says to him:

948 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"If you'll excuse a patriot that don't exactly know what he's patroniz-
ing, for the question— what is your scheme for subjugating this country?
Do you intend to plunge it into bloodshed, or do you mean to buy its
votes peacefully and honorably at the polls?'

'"Bowers," says he, 'ye're a fine little man and I intend to make great
use of ye after the conflict. But ye do not understand statecraft. Already
by now we have a network of strategy clutching with invisible fingers at
the throat of the tyrant Calderas. We have agents at work in every town
in the republic. The Liberal party is bound to win. On our secret lists
we have the names of enough sympathizers to crush the administration
forces at a single blow/

" *A straw vote,* says I, 'only shows which way the hot air blows.*

"'Who has accomplished this?' goes on O'Connor. 'I have. I have
directed everything. The time was ripe when we came, so my agents
inform me. The people are groaning under burdens of taxes and levies.
Who will be their natural leader when they rise? Could it be any one
but meself ? TTwas only yesterday that Zaldas, our representative in the
province of Durasnas, tells me that the people, in secret, already call me
"El Library Door/* which is the Spanish manner of saying "The
Liberator." '

" Was Zaldas that maroon-colored old Aztec with a paper collar on and
unbleached domestic shoes?* I asked.

" 'He was,' says O'Connor.

" *I saw him tucking a yellow-back into his vest pocket as he came out,'
says L clt may be,5 says I, 'that they call you a library door, but they treat
you more like the side door of a bank. But let us hope for the worst.'

"'It has cost money, of course,* says O'Connor; 'but we'll have the
country in our hands inside of a month.'

"In the evenings we walked about in the plaza and listened to the band
playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and obnoxious
pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the upper classes,
mostly rock-aways and old-style barouches, such as the mayor rides in at
the unveiling of the new poor-house at Milledgeville, Alabama. Round
and round the desiccated fountain in the middle of the plaza they drove,
and lifted their high silk hats to their friends. The common people walked
around in barefooted bunches, puffing stogies that a Pittsburg millionaire
wouldn't have chewed for a dry smoke on Ladies* Day at his club. And
the grandest figure in the whole turnout was Barney O'Connor. Six foot
two he stood in his Fifth Avenue clothes, with his eagle eye and his
black moustache that tickled his ears. He was a born dictator and czar
and hero and harrier of the human race. It looked to me that all eyes were
turned upon O'Connor, and that every woman there loved him, and every
man feared him. Once or twice I looked at him and thought of funnier
things that had happened than his winning out in his game; and I began

A RULER OF MEN 949

to feel like a Hidalgo de Officio de Grafto de South America myself.
And then I would come down again to solid bottom and let my im-
agination gloat, as usual, upon the twenty-one American dollars due me
on Saturday night.

" 'Take note/ says O'Connor to me as thus we walked, {of the mass of
the people. Observe their oppressed and melancholy air. Can ye not see
that they are ripe for revolt? Do ye not perceive that they are disaffected?*

" 'I do not,' says I. 'Nor disinfected either. Fm beginning to understand
these people. When they look unhappy they're enjoying themselves.
When they feel unhappy they go to sleep. They're not the kind of
people to take an interest in revolutions.'

" 'They'll flock to our standard/ says O'Connor. 'Three thousand men
in this town alone will spring to arms when the signal is given. I am
assured of that. But everything is in secret. There is no chance for us to
fail.'

"On Hooligan Alley, as I prefer to call the street our headquarters
was on, there was a row of flat 'dobe houses with red tile roofs, some
straw shacks full of Indians and dogs, and one two-story wooden house
with balconies a little farther down. That was where General Tumbalo,
the comandante and commander of the military forces, lived. Right across
the street was a private residence built like a combination bake-oven and
folding-bed. One day, O'Connor and me were passing it, single file, on
the flange they called a sidewalk, when out of the window flies a big red
rose. O'Connor, who is ahead, picks it up, presses it to his fifth rib, and
bows to the ground. By Carrambos! that man certainly had the Irish
drama chaunceyized. I looked around expecting to see the little boy and
girl in white sateen ready to jump on his shoulder while he jolted their
spinal columns and ribs together through a breakdown, and sang: 'Sleep,
Little One, Sleep/

"As I passed the widow I glanced inside and caught a glimpse of a
white dress and a pair of big, flashy black eyes and gleaming teeth under
a dark lace mantilla.

"When we got back to our house O'Connor began to walk up and
down the floor and twist his moustaches.

" 'Did ye see her eyes, Bowers?* he asks me.

"1 did/ says I, 'and I can see more than that. It's all coming out
according to the story-books. I knew there was something missing,
Twas the love interest. What is it that comes in Chapter VII to cheer
the gallant Irish adventurer? Why, Love, of course — Love that makes the
hat go around. At last we have the eyes of midnight hue and the rose
flung from the barred window. Now, what comes next? The under-
ground passage—the intercepted letter— the traitor in camp — the hero
thrown into a dungeon— the mysterious message from the senorita — then
the outburst—the fighting on the plaza— the *

950 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"'Don't be a fool,' says O'Connor, interrupting. 'But that's the only
woman in the world for me, Bowers. The O'Connors are as quick to
love as they are to fight. I shall wear that rose over me heart when I lead
me men into action. For a good battle to be fought there must be some
woman to give it power."1

u 'Every time; I agreed, If you want to have a good lively scrap.
There's only one thing bothering me. In the novels the light-haired friend
of the hero always gets killed. Think 'em all over that you've read, and
you'll see that I'm right. I think I'll step down to the Botica Espanola and
lay in a bottle of walnut stain before war is declared.'

"'How will I find out her name?' says O'Connor, laying his chin
in his hand.

" 4Why don't you go across the street and ask her?' says I.

"'Will ye never regard anything in life seriously?' says O'Connor,
looking down at me like a school-master.

"'Maybe she meant the rose for me,' I said, whistling the Spanish
Fandango.

"For the first time since I'd known O'Connor, he laughed. He got up
and roared and clapped his knees, and leaned against the wall till the tiles
on the roof clattered to the noise of his lungs. He went into the back
room and looked at himself in the glass and began and laughed all over
from the beginning again. Then he looked at me and repeated himself.
That's why I asked you if you thought an Irishman had any humor. HeM
been doing farce comedy from the day I saw him without knowing it; and
the first time he had an idea advanced to him with any intelligence in it he
acted like two twelfths of the sextet in a Tloradora' road company.

"The next afternoon he comes in with a triumphant smile and begins
to pull something like ticker tape out of his pocket.

"'Great!' says I: *This is something like home. How is Amalgamated
Copper to-day?*

" Tve got her name; says O'Connor, and he reads off something like
this: *Dofia Isabel Antonia Inez Lolita Carreras y Buencaminos y Monte-
kon. She lives with her mother,' explains O'Connor. 'Her father was
killed in the last revolution. She is sure to be in sympathy with our cause.*

"And sure enough the next day she flung a little bunch of roses clear
across the street into our door. O'Connor dived for it and found a piece
of paper curled around a step with a line In Spanish on it. He dragged
the interpreter out of his corner and got him busy. The interpreter
scratched his head, and gave us as a translation three best bets: 'Fortune
had got a face like the man fighting*; 'Fortune looks like a brave man*;
and 'Fortune favors the brave.' We put our money on the last one.

"'Do ye see?* says O'Connor. 'She intends to encourage me sword to
save her country.'

" "It looks to me like an invitation to supper,5 says L

A RULER OF MEN

"So every day this senorita sits behind the barred windows and ex-
hausts a conservatory or two, one posy at a time. And O'Connor walks
like a Dominecker rooster and swells his chest and swears to me he will
win her by feats o£ arms and big deeds on the gory field of battle.

"By and by the revolution began to get ripe. One day O'Connor takes
me into the back room and tells me all.

" 'Bowers,* says he, 'at twelve o'clock one week from to-day the struggle
will take place. It has pleased ye to find amusement and diversion in this
project because ye have not sense enough to perceive that it is easily
accomplished by a man of courage, intelligence, and historical superiority,
such as meself. The whole world over/ says he, 'the O'Connors have
ruled men, women, and nations. To subdue a small and indifferent
country like this is a trifle. Ye see what little bare-footed manikins the
men of it are. I could lick four of 'em single-handed/

" 'No doubts/ says I. 'But could you lick six? And suppose they hurled
an army of seventeen against you?1

" 'Listen/ says O'Connor, 'to what will occur. At noon next Tuesday
25,000 patriots will rise up in the towns of the republic. The government
will be absolutely unprepared. The public buildings will be taken, the
regular army made prisoners, and the new administration set up. In the
capital it will not be so easy on account of most of the army being sta-
tioned there. They will occupy the president's palace and the strongly
fortified government buildings and stand a siege. But on the very day
of the outbreak a body of our troops will begin a march to the capital
from every town as soon as the local victory has been won. The thing
is so well planned that it is an impossibility for us to fail. I meself will
lead the troops from here. The new president will be Senor Espadas,
now Minister of Finance in the present cabinet*

" 'What do you get?' I asked.

" * Twill be strange/ said O'Connor, smiling, 'if I don't have all the
jobs handed to me on a silver salver to pick what I choose. Fve been the
brains of the scheme, and when the fighting opens I guess I won't be in
the rear rank. Who managed it so our troops could get arms smuggled
into this country? Didn't I arrange it with a New York firm before I left
there? Our financial agents inform me that 20,000 stands of Winchester
rifles have been delivered a month ago at a secret place up coast and dis-
tributed among the towns. I tell you, Bowers, the game is already won.9

"Well, that kind of talk kind of shook my disbelief in the infallibility
of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It certainly seemed that
the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing in a business way. I looked
upon O'Connor with more respect, and began to figure on what kind of
uniform I might wear as Secretary of War.

"Tuesday, the day set for the revolution, came around according to
schedule, O'Connor said that a signal had been agreed upon for the

952 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

uprising. There was an old cannon on the beach near the national ware-
house. That had been secretly loaded and promptly at twelve o'clock was
to be fired off. Immediately the revolutionists would seize their con-
cealed arms, attack the comandante's troops in the cuartel, and capture
the custom-house and all government property and supplies.

"I was nervous all the morning. And about eleven o'clock O'Connor
became infused with the excitement and martial spirit of murder. He
geared his father's sword around him, and walked up and down in the
back room like a lion in the Zoo suffering from corns. I smoked a couple
of dozen cigars, and decided on yellow stripes down the trouser legs of
my uniform.

"At half-past eleven O'Connor asks me to take a short stroll through
the streets to see if I could notice any signs of the uprising. I was back
in fifteen minutes.

" 'Did you hear anything?' he asks.

"'I did,* says I. 'At first I thought it was drums. But it wasn't; it
was snoring. Everybody in town's asleep.'

"O'Connor tears out his watch.

"Tools!' says he. They've set the time right at the siesta hour when
everybody takes a nap. But the cannon will wake 'em up. Everything
will be all right, depand upon it.*

"Just at twelve o'clock we heard the sound of a cannon — BOOM! —
shaking the whole town.

"O'Connor loosens his sword in its scabbard and jumps for the door. I
went as far as the door and stood in it.

"People were sticking their heads out of doors and windows. But there
was one grand sight that made the landscape look tame.

"General Tumbalo, the comandate, was rolling down the steps of his
residential dugout, waving a five-foot sabre in his hand. He wore his
cocked and plumed hat and his dress-parade coat covered with gold
braid and buttons. Sky-blue pajamas, one rubber boot, and one red-plush
slipper completed his make-up.

"The general had heard the cannon, and he puffed down the side-
walk toward the soldiers* barracks as fast as his rudely awakened two
hundred pounds could travel,

"O'Connor sees him and lets out a battle-cry and draws his father's
sward and rushes across the street and tackles the enemy.

"Right there in the street he and the general gave an exhibition of black-
smithing and butchery. Sparks flew from their blades, the general
roaitd, and O'Connor gave the slogan of his race and proclivities.

"Then the general's sabre broke in two; and he took to his ginger-
colored heels crying out, 'Policios,* at every jump. O'Connor chased him
a block, imbued with the sentiment of man-slaughter, and slicing buttons
off the general's coat tails with the paternal weapon. At the corner five

A RULER OF MEN 953

barefooted policemen in cotton undershirts and straw hats climbed over
O'Connor and subjugated him according to the municipal statutes.

They brought him past the late revolutionary headquarters on the way
to jail I stood in the door. A policeman had him by each hand and foot,
and they dragged him on his back through the grass like a turtle. Twice
they stopped, and the odd policeman took another's place while he rolled
a cigarette. The great soldier of fortune turned his head and looked at me
as they passed. I blushed, and lit another cigar. The procession passed
on, and at ten minutes past twelve everybody had gone back to sleep
again. *

"In the afternoon the interpreter came around and smiled as he laid
his hand on the big red jar we usually kept ice-water in.

"'The ice-man didn't call to-day,' says I. 'What's the matter with
everything, Sancho?'

"'Ah, yes/ says the liver-colored linguist. They just tell me in the
town. Verree bad act that Senor O'Connor make fight with General
Tumbalo. Yes, General Tumbalo great soldier and big mans.'

" 'Whatll they do to Mr. O'Connor?* I asks.

" 'I talk little while presently with the Juez de la Paz— what you call
Justice-with-the-peace/ says Sancho. 'He tell me it verree bad crime that
one Senor Americano try kill General Tumbalo. He say they keep Senor
O'Connor in jail six months; then have trial and shoot him with guns.
Verree sorree.'

" 'How about this revolution that was to be pulled off?5 1 asks.

" 'Oh,' says this Sancho. 1 think too hot weather for revolution. Revo-
lution better in winter-time. Maybe so next winter. Qui£n sabe?f

" 'But the cannon went off/ says I. 'The signal was given.'

"'That big sound?* says Sancho, grinning. "The boiler in ice
factory he blow up — BOOM! Wake everybody up from siesta. Verree
sorree. No ice. Mucho hot day.'

"About sunset I went over to the jail, and they let me talk to O'Connor
through the bars.

"'What's the news, Bowers?' says he, 'Have we taken the town? Fve
been expecting a rescue party all the afternoon. I haven't heard any
firing. Has any word been received from the capital?'

"'Take it easy, Barney,' says I. 'I think there's been a change o£
plans. There's something more important to talk about Have you any
money?*

" 'I have not,' says O'Connor. 'The last dollar went to pay our hotel
bill yesterday. Did our troops capture the custom-house? There ought to
be plenty of government money there.'

" 'Segregate your mind from battles/ says I. Tve been making inquiries.
You're to be shot six months from date for assault and battery. I'm ex-
pecting to receive fifty years at hard labor for vagrancy. All they furnish

954 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

you while you're a prisoner is water. You depend on your friends for
food, Fll see what I can do.'

UI went away and found a silver Chile dollar in an old vest ot O Con-
nor's. I took him some fried fish and rice for his supper. In the morning
I went down to a lagoon and had a drink of water, and then went back
to the jail O'Conor had a porterhouse steak look in his eye.

" 'Barney/ says I, Tve found a pond full of the finest kind of water. It's
the grandest, sweetest, purest water in the world. Say the word and I'll
go fetch you a bucket of it and you can throw this vile government stuff
out the window. I'll do anything I can for a friend.' *

"4Has it come to this?'1 says O'Connor, raging up and down his cell.
'Am I to be starved to death and then shot? I'll make those traitors feel
the weight of an O'Connor's hand when I get out of this.3 And then he
comes to the bars and speaks softer. 'Has nothing been heard from Dona
Isbel?' he asks. Though every one else in the world fail/ says he, 1
trust those eyes of hers. She will find a way to effect my release. Do ye
think ye could communicate with her? One word from her— cven^a rose
would' make me sorrow light. But don't let her know except with the
utmost delicacy. Bowers. These high-bred Castilians are sensitive and
proud/

" Well said, Barney/ says I. 'You've given me an idea. I'll report later.
Something's got to lie pulled off quick, or we'll both starve/

*4I walked out and down to Hooligan Alley, and then on the other
side of the street. As I went past the window of Dona Isabel Antonia
Concha Regalia, out flies the rose as usual and hits me on the ear.

"The door was open, and I took off my hat and walked in. It wasn't
very light inside, but there she sat in a rocking-chair by the window
smoking a black cheroot. And when I got closer I saw that she was about
thirty-nine, and had never seen a straight front in her life. I sat down on
the arm of her chair, ad took the cheroot out of her mouth and stole a
kiss.

" *Hullo> Izzy/ I says. 'Excuse my unconventionally, but I feel like I
have known you for a month. Whose Izzy is oo?*

"The lady ducked her head under her mantilla, and drew in a long
breath. I thought she was going to scream, but with all that intake of air
she only came out with: 'Me likee Ammericanos.*

"As soon as she said that, I knew that O'Connor and me would be
doing things with a knife and fork before the day was over. I drew a chair
beside her, and inside of half an hour we were engaged. Then I took my
hat and said 1 must go out for a while.

" *You come back?' says Izzy, in alarm.

"*Me go bring preacher/ says I. 'Come back twenty minutes. We
marry now. How you likee?M

"*Marry to-day?* says Izzy. *GoodF

A RULER OF MEN 955

"I went down on the beach to the United States consul's shack. He was
a grizzly man, eighty-two pounds, smoked glasses, five foot eleven,
pickled. He was playing chess with an india-rubber man in white clothes.

" 'Excuse me for interrupting/ says I, 'but can you tell me how a man
could get married quick?*

"The consul gets up and fingers in a pigeonhole.

"'I believe I had a license to perform the ceremony myself, a year
or two ago/ he said. Til look, and *

"I caught hold of his arm.

" 'Don't look it up/ says I. 'Marriage is a lottery anyway. I'm willing
to take the risk about the license if you are.*

"The consul went back to Hooligan Alley with me. Izzy called her
ma to come in, but the old lady was picking a chicken in the patio and
begged to be excused. So we stood up and the consul performed the
ceremony.

"That evening Mrs. Bowers cooked a great supper of stewed goat,
tamales, baked bananas, fricasseed red peppers and coffee. Afterward I
sat in die rocking-chair by the front window, and she sat on the floor
plunking at a guitar and happy, as she should be, as Mrs. William T. B,

"All at once I sprang up in a hurry. Fd forgotten all about O'Connor. I
asked Izzy to fix up a lot of truck for him to eat.

" 'That big, oogly man,' said Izzy. 'But all right— he your friend.*

"I pulled a rose out a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket around
to the jail. O'Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face with a
banana peel and said: 'Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel yet?'

"'Hist!' says I, slipping the rose between the bars. 'She send you this.
She bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought it to
the ruined chateau in the orange grove. How did you like that goat hash,
Barney?'

"O'Connor pressed the rose to his lips.

" This is more to me than all the food in the world/ says he. 'But the
supper was fine. Where did you raise it?'

"'I've negotiated a stand-off at a delicatessen hut downtown/ I tells
him. 'Rest easy. If there's anything to be done 111 do it*

"So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great cook;
and if she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a little
better brand of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense of respon-
sibility for the honor I had conferred on her. But as time went on I began
to hunger for the sight of a real lady standing before me in a street-car.
All I was staying in that land of bilk and money for was because I
couldn't get away, and I thought it no more than decent to stay and see
O'Connor shot.

"One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour
says that the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on him. I

956 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of the town; and
there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the usual cinnamon-colored
natives in congress gaiters and one of Pizzaro's cast-off hats. What I saw
was an elegant gentleman of a slightly claybank complexion sitting in an
upholstered leather chair, sipping a highball and reading Mrs. Humphry
Ward. I had smuggled into my brain a few words of Spanish by the help
of Izzy, and I began to remark in a rich Andalusian brogue:

" 'Buenas dias, senor. Yo tengo— yo tengo '

" 'Oh, sit down, Mr. Bowers/ says he. 'I spent eight years in your
country in colleges and law schools. Let me mix you a highball. Lemon
peel, or not?'

'Thus we got along. In about half an hour I was beginning to tell him
about the scandal in our family when Aunt Elvira ran away with a Cum-
berland Presbyterian preacher. Then he says to me:

* *1 sent for you, Mr. Bowers, to let you know that you can have your
friend Mr. O'Connor now. Of course we had to make a show of punish-
ing him on account of his attack on General Tumbalo. It is arranged that
he shall be released to-morrow night. You and he will be conveyed on
board the fruit steamer Voyager, bound for New York, which lies in the
harbor. Your passage will be arranged for/

" 4One moment, judge/ says I; 'that revolution *

'The judge lays back in his chair and howls.

** 'Why,' says he presently, 'that was all a little joke fixed up by the
boys around the court-room, and one or two of our cut-ups, and a few
clerks in the stores. The town is bursting its sides with laughing. The
boys made themselves up to be conspirators, and they—what you call
it? — stick Senor O'Connor for his money. It is very funny/

"It was/ says 1. 'I saw the joke all along. Ill take another highball, if
your Honor don^t mind/

"The next evening just at dark a couple of soldiers brought O'Connor
down to the beach, where I was waiting under a cocoanut-tree.

"*Hi$tP says I in his ear. 'Dona Isabel has arranged our escape. Not
a word!*

"They rowed us in a boat out to a little steamer that smelled of table
d'hote salad oil and bone phosphate,

"The great, mellow, tropical moon was rising as we steamed away,
O'Connor leaned on the taifrail or rear balcony of the ship and gazed
silently at Guaya — at Buncoville-on-the-Beach. He had the red rose in
his hand.

u *She will wait,* I heard him say. 'Eyes like hers never deceive. But I
shall see her again. Traitors cannot keep an O'Connor down forever/

" 'You talk like a sequel/ says I. 'But in Volume II please omit the
light-haired friend who totes the grub to the hero in his dungeon cell/

"And thus reminiscing, we came back to New York."

THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR 957

There was a little silence broken only by the familiar roar of the streets
after Kansas Bill Bowers ceased talking.

"Did O'Connor ever go back?" I asked.

"He attained his heart's desire," said Bill. "Can you walk two blocks?
I'll show you."

He led me eastward and down a flight of stairs that was covered by a
curious-shaped glowing, pagoda-like structure. Signs and figures on the
tiled walls and supporting columns attested that we were in the Grand
Central station of the subway. Hundreds of people were on the midway
platform.

An uptown express dashed up and halted. It was crowded. There was
a rush for it by a still larger crowd.

Towering above every one there a magnificent, broad-shouldered, ath-
letic man leaped into the centre of the struggle. Men and women he
seized in either hand and hurled them like manikins toward the open
gates of the train.

Now and then some passenger with a shred of soul and self-respect
left to him turned to offer remonstrance; but the blue uniform on the
towering figure, the fierce and conquering glare of his eye and the
ready impact of his ham-like hands glued together the lips that would
have spoken complaint.

When the train was full, then he exhibited to all who might observe
and admire his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, with
his elbows, with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he shoved, crushed,
slammed, heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus of passengers
aboard. Then with the sounds of its wheels drowned by the moans,
shrieks, prayers, and curses of its unfortunate crew, the express dashed
away.

"That's him. Ain't he a wonder?" said Kansas Bill, admiringly. "That
tropical country wasn't the place for him. I wish the distinguished trav-
eler, writer, war correspondent, and playwright, Richmond Hobson
Davis, could see him now. O'Connor ought to be dramatized/'

THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR

I saw a light in Jeff Peters's room over the Red Front Drug Store. I
hastened toward it, for I had not known that Jeff was in town. He is a
man of the Hadji breed, of a hundred occupations, with a story to tell
(when he will) of each one.

I found Jeff repacking his grip for a run down to Florida to look at an
orange grove for which he had traded, a month before, his mining claim
on the Yukon. He kicked me a chair, with the same old humorous, pro-

958 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

found smile on his seasoned countenance. It had been eight months since
we had met, but his greeting was such as men pass from day to day.
Time is Jeffs servant, and the continent is a big lot across which he cuts
to his many roads.

For a while we skirmished along the edges of unprofitable talk which
culminated in that unquiet problem of the Philippines.

"All them tropical races/' said Jeff, "could be run out better with their
own jockeys up. The tropical man knows what he wants. All he wants
is a season ticket to the cock-fights and a pair of Western Union climbers
to go up the bread-fruit tree. The Anglo-Saxon man wants him to learn
to conjugate and wear suspenders. He'll be happiest in his own way."

I was shocked.

''Education, man," I said, "is the watchword. In time they will rise to
our standard of civilization. Look at what education has done for the
Indian."

"O-hof" sang Jeff, lighting his pipe (which was a good sign). "Yes,
the Indian! I'm looking. I hasten to contemplate the redman as a standard
bearer of progress. He's the same as the other brown boys. You can't
make an Anglo-Saxon of him. Did I ever tell you about the time my
friend John Tom Little Bear bit off the right ear of the arts of culture
and education and spun the teetotum back round to where it was when
Columbus was a little boy? I did not?

"John Tom Little Bear was an educated Cherokee Indian and an old
friend of mine when I was in the Territories. He was a graduate of one
of them Eastern football colleges that have been so successful in teaching
the Indian to use the gridiron instead of burning his victims at the stake,
As an Anglo-Saxon, John Tom was copper-colored in spots. As an Indian,
he was one of the whitest men I ever knew. As a Cherokee, he was a
gentleman on the first ballot. As a ward of the nation, he was mighty hard
to carry at the primaries.

"John Tom and me got together and began to make medicine — how
to get up some lawful, genteel swindle which we might work in a quiet
way so as not to excite the stupidity of the police or the cupidity of the
larger corporations. We had close upon $500 between us, and we pined
to make it grow, as all respectable capitalists do.

"So we figured out a proposition which seems to be as honorable as a
gold mine prospectus and as profitable as a church raffle. And inside of
thirty days you find us swarming into Kansas with a pair of fluent horses
and a red camping wagon on the European plan. John Tom is Chief
Wish-Heap-Dough, the famous Indian medicine man and Samaritan
Sachem of the Seven Tribes. Mr. Peters is business manager and half
owner. We needed a third man, so we looked around and found J. Con-
yngham Binkly leaning against the want column o£ a newspaper. This
Binkly has a disease for Shakespearian r&es, and an hallucination about

THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR 959

a 200 nights' run on the New York stage. But he confesses that he never
could earn the butter to spread on his William S. roles, so he is willing to
drop to the ordinary baker's kind, and be satisfied with a 20O-mile run be-
hind the medicine ponies. Besides Richard III, he could do twenty-seven
coon songs and banjo specialties, and was willing to cook, and curry the
horses. We carried a fine line of excuses for taking money* One was a
magic soap for removing grease spots and quarters from clothes. One was
a Sum-wah-tah, the great Indian Remedy made from a prairie herb re-
vealed by the Great Spirit in a dream to his favorite medicine men, the
great chiefs McGarrity and Siberstein, bottlers, Chicago. And the other
was a frivolous system of pick-pocketing the Kansasters that had the
department stores reduced to a decimal fraction. Look yel A pair of silk
garters, a dream book, one dozen clothespins, a gold tooth, and 'When
Knighthood Was in Flower* all wrapped up in a genuine Japanese
silkarina handkerchief and handed to the handsome lady by Mr. Peters
for the trivial sum of fifty cents, while Professor Binkly entertains us in
a three-minute round with the banjo.

" 'Twas an eminent graft we had. We ravaged peacefully through the
State, determined to remove all doubt as to why 'twas called bleeding
Kansas. John Tom Little Bear, in full Indian chief's costume, drew
crowds away from the parchesi sociables and government ownership
conversaziones. While at the football college in the East he had acquired
quantities of rhetoric and the art of calisthenics and sophistry in his
classes, and when he stood up in the red wagon and explained to the
farmers, eloquent, about chilblains and hyperaesthesia of the cranium, Jeff
couldn't hand out the Indian Remedy fast enough for 'em.

"One night we was camped on the edge of a little town out west of
Salina. We always camped near a stream, and put up a little tent. Some-
times we sold out of the Remedy unexpected, and then Chief Wish-
Heap-Dough would have a dream in which the Manitou commanded him
to fill up a few bottles of Sum-wah-tah at the most convenient place. Twas
about ten o'clock, and we'd just got in from a street performance. I was
in the tent with a lantern, figuring up the day's profits. John Tom hadn't
taken off his Indian make-up, and was string by the campfire minding
a fine sirloin steak in the pan for the Professor till he finished his hair-
raising scene with the trained horses.

"All at once out of dark bushes comes a pop like a fire-cracker, and
John Tom gives a grunt and digs out of his bosom a little bullet that has
dented itself against his collar-bone. John Tom makes a dive in the direc-
tion of the fireworks, and cornes bade dragging by the collar a kid about
nine or ten years young, in a velveteen suit, with a little nickel-mounted
rifle in his hand about as big as a fountain-pen.

" 'Here, you papoose,* says John Tom, 'what are you gunning for with
that howitzer? You might hit somebody in the eye. Come out, Jeff, and

960 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

mind the steak. Don't let it burn, while I investigate this demon with the
pea shooter/ £

" 'Cowardly redskin/ says the kid like he was quoting from a favorite
author. 'Dare to burn me at the stake and the paleface will sweep you
from the prairies like— like everything. Now, you lemme go, or I'll tell
mamma.'

"John Tom plants the kid on a camp-stool, and sits down by him.
'Now, tell the big chief/ he says, 'why you try to shoot pellets into your
Uncle John's system. Didn't you know it was loaded?*

44 'Are you a Indian?' asks the kid, looking up cute as you please at
John Tom's buckskin and eagle feathers. 'I am/ says John Tom. Well,
then, that's why/ answered the boy, swinging his feet. I nearly let the
steak burn watching the nerve of the youngster.

"'O-hoP says John Tom, 'I see. You're the Boy Avenger. And you've
sworn to rid the continent of the savage redman. Is that about the way
of it, son?'

"The kid halfway nodded his head. And then he looked glum. Twas
indecent to wring his secret from his bosom before a single brave had
fallen before his parlor-rifle.

"'Now, tell us where your wigwam is, papoose/ says John Tom—
'where you live? Your mamma will be worrying about your being out so
late. Tell me, and I'll take you home/

"The kid grins. 'I guess not/ he says. *I live thousands and thousands
of miles over there.' He gyrated his hand toward the horizon, CI come
on the train/ he says, *by myself, I got off here because the conductor
said my ticket had ex-pirated.' He looks at John Tom with a sudden sus-
picion. 'I bet you ain't a Indian/ he says. Tou don't talk like a Indian.
You look like one, but all a Indian can say is "heap good" and "paleface
die." Say, I bet you are one of them make-believe Indians that sell
medicine on the streets. I saw one once in Quincy/

"*You never mind/ says John Tom, 'whether I'm a cigar-sign or a
Tammany cartoon. The question before the council is what's to be done
with you. You've run away from home. You've been reading Howells.
You've disgraced the profession of boy avengers by trying to shoot a tame
Indian, and never saying: "Die, dog of a redskin! You have crossed the
path of the Boy Avenger nineteen times too often." What do you mean
by it?'

"The kid thought for a minute. *I guess I made a mistake/ he says.
1 ought to have gone farther west. They find 'em wild out there in the
canons.' He holds out his hand to John Tom, the little rascal. Tlease
excuse me, sir/ says he, 'for shooting at you. I hope it didn't hurt you.
But you ought to be more careful. When a scout sees a Indian in his
war-dress, his rifle must speak/ Little Bear gave a big laugh with a whoop
at the end of it, and swings the kid tea feet high and sets him on his

THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR 961

shoulder, and the runaway fingers the fringe and the eagle feathers and
is full of the joy the white man knows when he dangles his heels against
an inferior race. It is plain that Little Bear and that kid are chums from
that on. The little renegade has already smoked the pipe of peace with
the savage; and you can see in his eye that he is figuring on a tomahawk
and a pair of moccasins, children's size.

"We have supper in the tent. The youngster looks upon me and the
Professor as ordinary braves, only intended as background to the camp
scene. When he is seated on a box of Sum-wah-tah, with the edge of the
table sawing his neck, and his mouth full of beefsteak, Little Bear calls
for his name, 'Roy/ says the kid, with a sirloiny sound to it. But when the
rest of it and his post-office address is referred to, he shakes his head. 1
guess not,' he says. 'You'll send me back. I want to stay with you. I like
this camping out At home, we fellows had a camp in our back yard.
They called me Roy, the Red Wolf! I guess that'll do for a name. Gimme
another piece of beefsteak, please.'

"We had to keep that kid. We knew there was a hullabaloo about him
somewheres, and that Mamma, and Uncle Harry, and Aunt Jane, and
the Chief of Police were hot after finding his trail, but not another word
would he tell us. In two days he was the mascot of the Big Medicine out-
fit, and all of us had a sneaking hope that his owners wouldn't turn up.
When the red wagon was doing business he was in it, and passed up the
bottles to Mr. Peters as proud and satisfied as a prince that's abjured a
two-hundred-dollar crown for a million-dollar parvenuess. Once John
Tom asked him something about his papa. CI ain't got any papa,' he says.
'He runned away and left us. He made my mamma cry. Aunt Lucy says
he's a shape/ 'A what?' somebody asks him. *A shape,' says the kid; 'some
kind of a shape— lemme see— oh, yes, a feendenuman shape. I don't know
what it means.' John Tom was for putting our brand on him, and dress-
ing him up like a little chief, with wampum and beads, but I vetoes it.
'Somebody's lost that kid, is my view of it, and they may want him. You
let me try him with a few stratagems, and see if I can't get a look at his
visiting-card.'

"So that night I goes up to Mr. Roy Blank by the camp-fire, and looks
at him contemptuous and scornful. "Snickenwitzel!' says I, like the word
made me sick; 'Snickenwitzel! Bah! Before I'd be named Snickenwitzel!'

" * What's the matter with you, Jeff?' says the kid, opening his eyes wide.

"^Snickenwitzel!5 I repeats, and I spat the word out. 'I saw a^rnati to-
day from your town and he told me your name, I'm not surprised you
was ashamed to tell it. Snickenwitzel! Whew!*

"'Ah, here, now,' says the boy, indignant and wriggling all over,
'what's the matter with you? That ain't my name. It's Coayers, What's
the matter with you?'

" 'And that' s mpt the worst of it/ I went on quick, keeping him hot and

962 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

not giving him time to think. *We thought you was from a nice, well-to-do
family. Here's Mr. Little Bear, a chief of the Cherokee, entitled to wear
nine otter tails on his Sunday blanket, and Professor Binkly, who plays
Shakespeare and the banjo, and me, that's got hundreds of dollars in that
black tin box in the wagon, and we've got to be careful about the com-
pany we keep. That man tells me your folks live 'way down in little old
Hencoop Alley, where there are no sidewalks, and the goats eat off the
table with you.*

"That kid was almost crying now. * Tain't so,' he splutters. 'He— he
don't know what he's talking about. We live on Poplar Av'noo. I don't
'sociate with goats. What's the matter with you?'

w Toplar Avenue/ says I, sarcastic. Toplar Avenue! That's a street to
live on! It only runs two blocks and then falls off a bluff. You can throw
a keg of nails the whole length of it. Don't talk to me about Poplar
Avenue.'

« 'It's— it's miles long,* says the kid. 'Our number's 862 and there are
lots of houses after that. What's the matter with— aw, you make me tired,
Jeff.'

14 'Well, well, now,* says I. *I guess that man made a mistake. Maybe it
was some other boy he was talking about. If I catch him I'll teach him
to go around slandering people.' And after supper I goes up town and
telegraphs to Mrs. Conyers, 862 Poplar Avenue, Quincy, 111,, that the kid
is safe and sassy with us, and will be held for further orders. In two hours
an answer comes to hold him tight, and she'll start for him by next train.

"The next train was due at 6 P.M. the next day, and me and John Tom
was at the depot with the kid. You might scour the plains in vain for the
big Chief Wish-Heap-Dough. In his place is Mr. Litde Bear, in the
human habiliments of the Anglo-Saxon sect; and the leather of his shoes
is patented and the loop of his necktie is copyrighted. For these things
John Tom had grafted on him at college along with metaphysics and the
knockout guard for the low tackle. But for his complexion, which is some
yellowish, and the black rnop of his straight hair, you might have thought
here was an ordinary man out of the city directory that subscribes for
magazines and pushes the lawn-mower in his shirt-sleeves of evenings.

"Then the train rolled in, and a little woman in a gray dress, with sort
of illuminating hair, slides off and looks around quick. And the Boy
Avenger sees her, and yells 'Mamma,* and she cries CO!' and they meet
in a clinch, and now the pesky redskin can come forth from their caves
on the plains without fear any more of the rifle of Roy, the Red Wolf.
Mrs. Conyers comes up and thanks me an' John Tom without the usual
extremities you always look for in a woman. She says just enough, in a
way to convince, and there is no incidental music by the orchestra. I made
a few illiterate requisitions upon the art of conversation, at which the
lady smiles friendly, as if she had known me a week. And then Mr. Litde

THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR 963

Bear adorns the atmosphere with the various idioms into which education
can fracture the wind of speech. I could see the kid's mother didn't quite
place John Tom; but it seemed she was apprised of his dialects, and she
played up to his lead in the science of making three words do the work
of one.

"That kid introduced us, with some footnotes and explanations that
made things plainer than a week of rhetoric. He danced around, and
punched us in the back, and tried to climb John Tom's leg. 'This is John
Tom, mamma/ says he. 'He's an Indian. He sells medicine in a red
wagon. I shot him, but he wasn't wild. The other one's Jeff. He's a fakir,
too. Come on and see the camp where we live, won't you, mamma?'

"It is plain to see that the life of the woman is in that boy. She has
got him again where her arms can gather him, and that's enough. She's
ready to do anything to please him. She hesitates the eighth of a second
and takes another look at these men. I imagine she says to herself about
John Tom, 'Seems to be a gentleman, if his hair don't curl.' And Mr.
Peters she disposes of as follows: 'No ladies' man, but a man who knows
a lady.*

"So we all rambled down to the camp as neighborly as coming from
a wake. And there she inspects the wagon and pats the place with her
hand where the kid used to sleep, and dabs around her eyewinkers with
her handkerchief. And Professor Binkly gives us 'Trovatore* on one string
of the banjo, and is about to slide off into Hamlet's monologue when one
of the horses gets tangled in his rope and he must go look after him, and
says something about 'foiled again.*

"When it got dark me and John Tom walked back to the Corn Ex-
change Hotel, and the four of us had supper there. I think the trouble
started at that supper, for then was when Mr. Little Bear made an in-
tellectual balloon ascension. I held on to the tablecloth, and listened to
him soar. That redman, if I could judge, had the gift of information. He
took languages, and did with it all a Roman can do with macaroni. His
vocal remarks was all embroidered over with the most scholarly verbs
and prefixes. And his syllables was smooth, and fitted nicely to the joints
of his idea. I thought Fd heard him talk before, but I hadn't. And it
wasn't the size of his words, but the way they come; and 'twasn't his
subjects, for he spoke of common things like cathedrals and football and
poems and catarrh and souls and freight rates and sculpture. Mrs. Con-
yers understood his accents, and the elegant sounds went back and forth
between *em. And now and then Jefferson D. Peters would intervene
a few shopworn, senseless words to have the butter passed or another leg
of the chicken.

"Yes, John Tom Little Bear appeared to be inveigled some in his
bosom about that Mr. Conyers. She was of the kind that pleases. She had
the good looks and more, 111 tell you. You take one of those cloak models

964 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

in a big store. They strike you as being on the impersonal system. They
are adapted for the eye. What they run to is inches around and complex-
ion, and the art of fanning the delusion that the sealskin would look just as
well on the lady with the warts and the pocket-book. Now, i£ one of them
models was off duty, and you took it, and it would say 'Charlie' when you
pressed it, and sit up at the table, why, then you would have something
similar to Mrs. Conyers. I could see how John Tom could resist any in-
clination to hate that white squaw.

"The lady and the kid stayed at the hotel. In the morning, they say,
they will start for home. Me and Little Bear left at eight o'clock, and
sold Indian Remedy on the courthouse square till nine. He leaves me
and the Professor to drive down to camp, while he stays up town. I am
not enamored with that plan, for it shows John Tom is uneasy in his
composures, and that leads to fire-water, and sometimes to the green-corn
dance and costs. Not often does Chief Wish-Heap-Dough get busy with
the firewater, but whenever he does there is heap much doing in the
lodges of the palefaces who wear blue and carry the club.

"At half-past nine Professor Binkly is rolled in his quilt snoring in
blank verse, and I am sitting by the fire listening to the frogs. Mr. Little
Bear slides into camp and sits down against a tree. There is no symptoms
of firewater.

"'Jdft' says he, after a long time, 'a little boy came West to hunt
Indians.'

" 'Well, then?1 says I, for I wasn't thinking as he was.

" 'And he bagged one/ says John Tom, 'and 'twas not with a gun, and
he never had on a velveteen suit of clothes in his life.' And then I began
to catch his smoke.

" 1 know it,* says I. *And 111 bet you his pictures are on valentines, and
fool men are his game, red and white.5

"'You win on the red,* says John Tom, calm. ejeff> for how many
ponies do you think I could buy Mrs. Conyers?'

"'Scandalous talk!' I replies. *Tis not a paleface custom.' John Tom
laughs loud and bites into his cigar. *No,J he answers; ' 'tis the savage
equivalent for the dollars of the white man's marriage settlement. Oh,
I know. There's an eternal wall between the races. If I could do it, Jeff,
I*d put a torch to every white college that a redman has ever set foot
inside. Why don't you leave us alone,' he says, cto our own ghost-dances
and dog-feasts and our dingy squaws to cook our grass-hopper soup and
darn our moccasins?*

"'Now, you don't mean disrespect to the perennial blossom entitled
education?' says I, scandalized, 'because I wear it in the bosom of my
own intellectual shirtwaist. I've had education,1 says I, 'and never took
any harm from it/

" 'You lasso us,* goes on Little Bear, not noticing my prose insertions,

THE ATAVISM OF JOHN TOM LITTLE BEAR 965

'and teach us what is beautiful in literature and life, and how to appre-
ciate what is fine in men and women. What have you done to me?' says
he. 'You've made me a Cherokee Moses. YouVe taught me to hate the
wigwams and love the white man's ways. I can look over into the prom-
ised land and see Mrs. Conyers, but my place is — on the reservation/

"Little Bear stands up in his chief's dress, and laughs again. 'But,
white man Jeff,' he goes on, 'the paleface provides a recourse. Tis a
temporary one, but it gives a respite and the name of it is whiskey.' And
straight off he walks up the path to town again. 'Now,' says I in my mind,
'may the Manitou move him to do only bailable things this night!' For
I perceive that John Tom is about to avail himself of the white man's
solace.

"Maybe it was 10:30, as I sat smoking, when I hear pit-a-pats on the
path, and here comes Mrs. Conyers running, her hair twisted up any
way, and a look on her face that says burglars and mice and the flour's-
all-out rolled in one. 'Oh, Mr. Peters,* she calls out, as they will, 'oh, oh!'
I made a quick think, and I spoke tie gist of it out loud. 'Now,* says I,
'we've been brothers, me and that Indian, but 111 make a good one of
him in two minutes if *

"'No, no,' she says, wild and cracking her knuckles, *I haven't seen
Mr. Little Bear. Tis my — husband. He's stolen my boy. Oh/ she says,
'just when I had him back in my arms again! That heartless villain!
Every bitterness life knows,' she says, 'he's made me drink. My poor little
lamb, that ought to be warm in his bed, carried off by that fiend!*

" 'How did all this happen?' I ask. 'Let's have the facts.*

"1 was fixing his bed,' she explains, 'and Roy was playing on the
hotel porch and he drives up to the steps. I heard Roy scream, and ran
out. My husband had him in the buggy then. I begged him for my child.
This is what he gave me.' She turns her face to the light. There is a crim-
son streak running across her cheek and mouth. 'He did that with his
whip,* she says.

" 'Come back to the hotel,* says I, 'and well see what can be done,'

"On the way she tells me some of the wherefores. When he slashed
her with the whip he told her he found out she was coming for the kid,
and he was on the same train. Mrs. Conyers had been living with her
brother, and they'd watched the boy always, as her husband had tried to
steal him before. I judge that man was worse than a street railway pro-
moter. It seems he had spent her money and slugged her and killed her
canary bird, and told it around that she had cold feet.

"At the hotel we found a mass meeting of five infuriated citizens chew-
ing tobacco and denouncing the outrage. Most of the town was asleep by
ten o'clock. I talks to the lady some quiet, and tells her I will take the one
o'clock train for the next town, forty miles east, for it is likely that the
esteemed Mr. Conyers wii drive there to take the cars. 'I don't know/

966 BOOK. VHI ROLLING STONES

I tells her, 'but what he has legal rights; but if I find him I can give him
an illegal left in the eye, and tie him up for a day or two, anyhow, on a
disturbal of the peace proposition.'

"Mrs. Conyers goes inside and cries with the landlord's wife, who is
fixing some catnip tea that will make everything all right for the poor
dean The landlord comes out on the porch, thumbing his one suspender,
and says to me:

" 'Ain't had so much excitement in town since Bedford SteegalPs wife
swallowed a spring lizard. I seen him through the winder hit her with
the buggy whip, and everything. What's that suit of clothes cost you you
got on? 'Pears like we'd have some rain, don't it? Say, doc, that Indian
of yorn's on a kind of a whizz to-night, ain't he? He comes along just
before you did, and I told him about this here occurrence. He gives a
cur'us kind of a hoot, and trotted off. I guess our constable'll have him
in the lock-up 'fore morning/

"I thought I'd sit on the porch and wait for the one o'clock train. I
wasn't feeling saturated with mirth. Here was John Tom on one of his
sprees, and this kidnapping business losing sleep for me. But then, Fm
always having trouble with other people's trouble. Every few minutes
Mrs. Conyers would come out on the porch and look down the road the
way the buggy went, like she expected to see that kid coming back on a
white pony with a red apple in his hand. Now, wasn't that like a
woman? And that brings up cats. 'I saw a mouse go in this hole,' says
Mrs. Cat; 'you can go prize up a plank over there if you like; 111 watch
this hole.'

"About a quarter to one o'clock the lady comes out again, restless, cry-
ing easy, as females do for their own amusement, and she looks down
that road again and listens. 'Now, ma'am, says I, 'there's no use watching

cold wheel-tracks. By this time they're halfway to ' 'Hush,* she says,

holding up her hand. And I do hear something coming 'flip-flap* in the
dark; and then there is the awfullest war-whoop ever heard outside of
Madison Square Garden at a Buffalo Bill matinee. And up the steps and
on to the porch jumps the disrespectable Indian. The lamp in the hall
shines on him, and I fail to recognize Mr. J. T. Little Bear, alumnus of
the class of '91. What I see is a Cherokee brave, and the warpath is what
he has been traveling. Firewater and other things have got him going.
His buckskin is hanging in strings, and his feathers are mixed up like a
frizzly hen's. The dust of miles is on his moccasins, and the light in his
eye is the kind the aborigines wear. But in his arms he brings that kid,
his eyes half closed, with his little shoes dangling and one hand fast
around the Indian's collar.

" TapooseP says John Tom, and I notice that the flowers of the white
man's syntax have left his tongue. He is the original proposition in bear's
daws and copper color. 'Me bring,' says lie, and he lays the kid in his

HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW 967

mother's arms. 'Run fifteen mile/ says John Tom— 'Ugh! Catch white
man. Bring papoose.'

"The little woman is in extremities of gladness. She must wake up
that stir-up trouble youngster and hug him and make proclamation that
he is his mamma's own precious treasure. I was about to ask questions,
but I looked at Mr. Little Bear, and my eye caught the sight of some-
thing in his belt. 'Now go to bed, ma'am,' says I, 'and this gadabout
youngster likewise, for there's no more danger, and the kidnapping busi-
ness is not what it was earlier in the night.'

"I inveigled John Tom down to camp quick, and when he tumbled
over asleep I got that thing out of his belt and disposed of it where the
eye of education can't see it. For even the football colleges disapprove of
the art of scalp-taking in their curriculums.

"It is ten o'clock next day when John Tom wakes up and looks around.
I am glad to see the nineteenth century in his eyes again.

" 'What was it, Jeff?' he asks.

" "Heap firewater/ says I.

"John Tom frowns, and thinks a little. 'Combined,* says he directly,
'with the interesting little physiological shake-up known as reversion to
type. I remember now. Have they gone yet?'

" 'On the 7:30 train,' I answers.

"'Ugh!' says John Tom; 'better so. Paleface, bring big Chief Wish-
Heap-Dough a little bromo-sehzer, and then hell take up the red man's
burden again.' "

HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW

"But can thim that kelps others help thimselves!" MULVANEY

This is the story that William Trotter told rne on the beach at Aguas
Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer
Andador which was to take me abroad. Reluctantly I was leaving the
Land of Always Afternoon. William was remaining, and he favored rne
with a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade
cast by the Bodega Nacional

As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already
written the story; but as he had compressed it to an eight- word sentence,

I have become an expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with
apologies to him and best regards to Terence.

II "Don't you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats
and starched collars?" I asked him. "You seem to be a handy man and

968 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

a man of action " I continued, "and I am sure I could find you a com-
fortable job somewhere in the States."

Ragged, shiftless, barefooted, a confirmed eater of the lotos, William
Trotter had pleased me much, and I hated to see him gobbled up by the
tropics.

"I've no doubt you could," he said, idly splitting the bark from a sec-
tion of sugar-cane. "I've no doubt you could do much for me. If every
man could do as much for himself as he can for others, every country in
the world would be holding millenniums instead of centennials."

There seemed to be a pabulum in W. T.'s words. And then another
idea carne to me.

I had a brother in Chicopee Falls who owned manufactories— cotton,
or sugar, or A. A. sheetings, or something in the commercial line. He
was vulgarly rich, and therefore reverenced art. The artistic tempera-
ment of the family was monopolized at my birth. I knew that Brother
James would honor my slightest wish. I would demand from him a posi-
tion in cotton, sugar, or sheeting for William Trotter— something say, at
two hundred a month or thereabouts. I confided my beliefs and made
my large proposition to William. He had pleased me much, and he was
ragged.

While we were talking, there was a sound of firing guns— four or five,
rattlingly, as if by a squad. The cheerful noise came from the direction
of the cuartel, which is a kind of make-shift barracks for the soldiers of
the republic.

"Hear that?" said William Trotter. "Let me tell you about it.

"A year ago I landed on this coast with one solitary dollar. I have the
same sum in my pocket to-day. I was second cook on a tramp fruiter;
and they marooned me here early one morning, without benefit of clergy,
just because I poulticed the face of the first mate with cheese omelette
at dinner. The fellow had kicked because I'd put horseradish in it instead
of cheese.

uWhen they threw me out of the yawl into three feet of surf, I waded
ashore and sat down under a palm-tree. By and by a fine-looking white
man with a red face and white clothes, genteel as possible, but somewhat
under the influence, came and sat down beside me*

"I had noticed there was a kind of a village back of the beach, and
enough scenery to outfit a dozen moving-picture shows. But I thought,
of course, it was a cannibal suburb, and I was wondering whether I was
to be served with carrots or mushrooms. And, as I say, this dressed-up
man sits beside me, and we become friends in the space of a minute or
two. For an hour we talked, and he told me all about it

"It seems that he was a man of parts, conscientiousness, and plausi-
bility, besides being educated and a wreck to his appetites. He told me
all about it. Colleges had turned him out, and distilleries had taken him

HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW 969

in. Did I tell you his name? It was Clifford Wainwright. I didn't exactly
catch the cause o£ his being cast away on that particular stretch of South
America; but I reckon it was his own business. I asked him if he'd ever
been second cook on a tramp fruiter, and he said no: so that concluded
my line of surmises. But he talked like the encyclopedia from 'A— Berlin'
to Trilo— Zyria/ And he carried a watch— a silver arrangement with
works, and up to date within twenty-four hours, anyhow.

" Tm pleased to have met you/ says Wainwright Tm a devotee to the
great joss Booze; but my ruminating facilities are unrepaired,' says he—
or words to that effect. 'And I hate,' says he, 4to see fools trying to run
the world.'

" 'I never touch a drop,' says I, 'and there are many kinds of fools; and
the world runs on its own apex, according to science, with no meddling
from me.'

"1 was referring,' says he, 'to the president of this republic. His
country is in a desperate condition. Its treasury is empty, it's on the verge
of war with Nicamala, and if it wasn't for the hot weather the people
would be starting revolutions in every town. Here is a nation,' goes on
Wainwright, 'on the brink of destruction. A man of intelligence could
rescue it from its impending doom in one day by issuing the necessary
edicts and orders. President Gomez knows nothing of statesmanship or
policy. Do you know Adam Smith?'

" 'Lemme see,' says I. There was a one-eared man named Smith in
Fort Worth, Texas, but I think his first name was *

" 'I am referring to the political economist/ says Wainwright.

" 'S'mother Smith, then/ says I. 'The one I speak of never was arrested.1

"So Wainwright boils some more with indignation at the insensibility
of people who are not corpulent to fill public positions; and then he tells
me he is going out to the president's summer palace, which is four miles
from Aguas Frescas, to instruct him in the art of running steam-heated
republics.

"'Come along with me, Trotter/ says he, 'and I'll show you what

brains can do.*

"'Anything in it?' I asks.

" The satisfaction/ says he, *of redeeming a country of two hundred
thousand population from ruin back to prosperity and peace.'

" 'Great/ says L I'll go with you. I'd prefer to eat a live broiled lobster
just now; but give nie liberty as second choice if I caa't be in at the death/

"Wainwright and me permeates through the town, and he halts at a
rum-dispensary.

" 'Have you any money ?' he asks.

" 1 have,* says I, fishing out my silver dollar. *I always go about with
adequate sums of money/

" 'Then well drink,' says Wainwrigfct

970 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"*Not me,* says I. 'Not any demon rum or any of its ramifications for
mine. It's one of my non-weaknesses.'

" 'It's my failing/ says he. What's your particular soft point?'

" Industry/ says I, promptly. Tm hard-working, diligent, industrious,
and energetic.*

" 'My dear Mr. Trotter; says he, 'surely I've known you long enough
to tell you you are a liar. Every man must have his own particular weak-
ness, and his own particular strength in other things. Now, you will buy
me a drink of rum, and we will call on President Gomez.'

Ill "Well, sir," Trotter went on, "we walks the four miles out, through
a virgin conservatory of palms and ferns and other roof-garden products,
to the president's summer White House. It was blue, and reminded you
of what you see on the stage in the third act, which they describe as 'same
as the first' on the programs.

"There was more than fifty people waiting outside the iron fence that
surrounded the house and grounds. There was generals and agitators
and cpergnes in gold-laced uniforms, and citizens in diamonds and
Panama hats— all waiting to get an audience with the Royal Five-Card
Draw. And in a kind of summer-house in front of the mansion we could
see a burnt-sienna man eating breakfast out of gold dishes and taking
his time. I judged that the crowd outside had come out for their morning
orders and requests, and was afraid to intrude.

"But C. Wainwright wasn't. The gate was open, and he walked Inside
and up to the president's table as confident as a man who knows the
head waiter in a fifteen-cent restaurant. And I went with him, because
I had only seventy-five cents, and there was nothing else to do.

"The Gomez man rises from his chair, and looks, colored man as he
was, like he was about to call out for corporal of the guard, post number
one. But Waiawright says some phrases to him in a peculiarly lubricating
manner; and the first thing you know we was all three of us seated at the
table, with coffee and rolls and iguana cutlets coming as fast as about
ninety peons could rustle 'em.

"And then Wainwright begins to talk; but the president interrupts him.

***You Yankees; says he, polite, 'assuredly take the cake for assurance,
I assure you*— or words to that effect. He spoke English better than you
or mt. 'You've had a long walk; says he, 'but it's nicer in the cool morn-
ing to walk than to ride. May I suggest some refreshments?* says he.

u 'Rum,* says Wainwright

" 'Gimme a cigar,* says L

"Well, sir, the two talked an hour, keeping the generals and equities
all in their good uniforms waiting outside the fence. And while I smoked,
silent, I listened to Clifford Wainwright making a solid republic out of
the wreck of one. I didn*t follow his arguments with any special colloca-

HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW

tion of international intelligibility; but he had Mr. Gomez's attention
glued and riveted. He takes out a pencil and marks the white linen table-
cloth all over with figures and estimates and deductions. He speaks more
or less disrespectfully of import and export duties and custom-house re-
ceipts and taxes and treaties and budgets and concessions and such truck
that politics and government require; and when he gets through the
Gomez man hops up and shakes his hand and says he's saved the country
and the people.

" 'You shall be rewarded/ says the President.

"'Might I suggest another — rum?' says Wainwright.

" 'Cigar for me — darker brand,' says I.

"Well, sir, the president sent me and Wainwright back to the town in
a victoria hitched to two flea-bitten selling-platers — but the best the
country afforded.

"I found out afterwards that Wainwright was a regular beachcomber
— the smartest man on the whole coast? but kept down by rum. I liked
him.

"One day I inveigled him into a walk out a couple of miles from the
village, where there was an old grass hut on the bank of a little river.
While he was sitting on the grass, talking beautiful of the wisdom of
the world that he had learned in books, I took hold of him easy and
tied his hands and feet together with leather thongs that I had in my
pocket.

" 'Lie still,' says I, *and meditate on the exigencies and irregularities of
life till I get back.'

"I went to a shack in Aguas Frescas where a mighty wise girl named
Timotea Carrizo lived with her mother. The girl was just about as nice
as you ever saw. In the States she would have been called a brunette; but
she was better than a brunette — I should say she was what you might
term an ecru shade. I knew her pretty well I told her about my friend
Wainwright. She gave me a double handful of bark — calisaya, I think it
was — and some more herbs that I was to mix with it, and told me what
to do. I was to make tea of it and give it to him, and keep him from rum
for a certain time. And for two weeks I did it. You know, I liked Wain-
wright. Both of us was broke; but Timotea sent us goat-meat and plan-
tains and tortillas every day; and at last I got the curse of drink lifted
from Clifford Wainwright. He lost his taste for it. And in the cool of the
evening him and me would sit on the roof of Timotea*s mother's hut,
eating harmless truck like coffee and rice and stewed crabs, and playing
the accordion.

"About that time President Gomez found out that the advice of C.
Wainwright was the s^iff be had been looking for. The country was
pulling out of debt, and the treasury had enough boodle in it for him
to amuse himself occasionally with the night-latch. The people were

972 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

beginning to take their two-hour siestas again every day— which was the
surest sign of prosperity.

"So down from the regular capital he sends for Clifford Wainwright
and makes him his private secretary at twenty thousand Peru dollars a
year, Yes, sir— so much. Wainwright was on the water-wagon—thanks to
me and Timotea — and he was soon in clover with the government gang.
Don't forget what done it— calisaya bark with them other herbs mixed-
make a tea of it, and give a cupful every two hours. Try it yourself. It
takes away the desire.

"As I said, a man can do it a lot more for another party than he can
for himself. Wainwright, with his brains, got a whole country out of
trouble and on its feet; but what could he do for himself? And without
any special brains, but with some nerve and common sense, I put him
on his feet because I never had the weakness that he did— nothing but a
cigar for mine, thanks. And "

Trotter paused. I looked at his tattered clothes and at his deeply sun-
burnt, hard, thoughtful face.

"Didn't Cartwright ever offer to do anything for you?" I asked.

"Wainwright," corrected Trotter, "Yes, he offered me some pretty
good jobs. But Fd have had to leave Aguas Frescas; so I didn't take any
of >m up. Say, I didn't tell you much about that girl— Timotea. We rather
hit it off together. She was as good as you find 'em anywhe^-Spanish,
mostly, with just a twist of lemon-peel on top. What if they cEa live in a
grass hut and went bare-armed?

"A month ago," went on Trotter, "she went away. I don't know
where to. But "

"You'd better come back to the States," I insisted. "I can promise you
positively that my brother will give you a position in cotton, sugar, or
sheetings — I am not certain which/*

"I think she went back with her mother," said Trotter, "to the village
in the mountains that they come from. Tell me, what would this job
you speak of pay?"

"Why," said I, hesitating over commerce, "I should say fifty or a hun-
dred dollars a month — maybe two hundred."

"Ain*t it funny," said Trotter, digging his toes in the sand, "what a
chump a man is when it comes to paddling his own canoe? I don't know.
Of course, I'm not making a living here. I'm on the bum. But — well, I
wish you could have seen that Timotea. Every man has his own weak
spot"

The gig from the Andador was coming ashore to take out the captain,
purser, and myself, the lone passenger.

"I'll guarantee," said I, confidently, "that my brother will pay you
seventy-five dollars a month."

"All right, then," said William Trotter. "Ill—"

THE MARIONETTES 973

But a soft voice called across the blazing sands. A girl, faintly lemon-
tinted, stood in the Calle Real and called. She was bare-armed—but what
of that?

"It's her!" said William Trotter, looking. "She's come back! I'm
obliged; but I can't take the job. Thanks, just the same. Ain't it funny
how we can't do nothing for ourselves, but we can do wonders for the
other fellow? You was about to get me with your financial proposition;
but we've all got our weak points. Timotea's mine. And, say!" Trotter
had turned to leave, but he retraced the step or two that he had taken.
"I like to have left you without saying good-bye," said he. "It kind of
rattles you when they go away unexpected for a month and come back
the same way. Shake hands. So longl Say, do you remember them gun-
shots we heard a while ago up at the cuartel? Well, I knew what they
was, but I didn't mention it. It was Clifford Wainwright being shot by a
squad of soldiers against a stone wall for giving away secrets of state to
that Nicamala republic. Oh, yes, it was rum that did it. He backslided
and got his. I guess we all have our weak points, and can't do much
toward helping ourselves. Mine's waiting for me. I'd have liked to have
that job with your brother, but — we've all got our weak points. So long!"

IV A big black Carib carried me on his back through the surf to the
ship's boat. On the way the purser handed me a letter that he had
brought for me at the last moment from the post-office in Aguas Frescas.
It was from my brother. He requested me to meet him at the St. Charles
Hotel in New Orleans and accept a position with his house — in either
cotton, sugar, or sheetings, and with five thousand dollars a year as my
salary.

When I arrived at the Crescent City I hurried away— far away from the
St. Charles to a dim chambre garnie in Bienville Street. And there,
looking down from my attic window from time to time at the old, yellow,
absinthe house across the street, I wrote this story to buy my bread and
butter.

"Can thim that helps others help thimselves?"

THE MARIONETTES

The policeman was standing at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and
a prodigiously dark alley near where the elevated railroad crosses the
street. The time was two o'clock in the morning; the outlook a stretch of
cold, drizzling, unsociable blackness until the dawn.

A man, wearing a long overcoat, with his hat tilted down in front, and
carrying something in. one hand, walked softly but rapidly out of the

974 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

black alley. The policeman accosted him civilly, but with the assured air
that is linked with conscious authority. The hour^the alley's musty rep-
utation, the pedestrian's haste, the burden he carried— these easily com-
bined into the "suspicious circumstances" that required illumination at
the officer's hands.

The "suspect" halted readily and tilted back his hat, exposing, in the
flicker of the electric lights, an emotionless, smooth countenance with a
rather long nose and steady dark eyes. Thrusting his gloved hand into a
side pocket of his overcoat, he drew out a card and handed it to the po-
liceman. Holding it to catch the uncertain light, the officer read the name
"Charles Spencer James, M.D." The street and number of the address
were of a neighborhood so solid and respectable as to subdue even curi-
osity. The policeman's downward glance at the article carried in the doc-
tor's hand— a handsome medicine case of black leather, with small silver
mountings — further endorsed the guarantee of the card.

"All right, doctor,*' said the officer, stepping aside, with an air of bulky
affability. "Orders are to be extra careful. Good many burglars and hold-
ups lately. Bad night to be out. Not so cold, but — clammy."

With a formal inclination of his head, and a word or two corroborative
of the officer's estimate of the weather, Doctor James continued his sqme-
what rapid progress. Three times that night had a patrolman accepted his
professional card and the sight of his paragon of a medicine case as voacji-
ers for his honesty of person and purpose. Had any one of those office!^
seen fit, on the morrow, to test the evidence of that card he would have
found it borne out by the doctor's name on a handsome doorplate, his
presence, calm and well dressed, in his well-equipped office — provided it
were not too early, Doctor James being a late riser — and the testimony
of the neighborhood to his good citizenship, his devotion to his family,
and his success as a practitioner the two years he had lived among them.

Therefore, it would have much surprised any one of those zealous
guardians of the peace could they have taken a peep into that immaculate
medicine case. Upon opening it, the first article to be seen would have
been an elegant set of the latest conceived tools used by the "box man,"
as the ingenious safe burglar now denominates himself. Specially de-
signed and constructed were the implements — the short but powerful
"jimmy," the collection of curiously fashioned keys, the blued drills and
punches of the finest temper — capable of eating their way into chilled
steel as a mouse eats into a cheese, and the clamps that fasten like a leech
to the polished door of a safe and pull out the combination knob as a
dentist extracts a tooth. In a little pouch in the inner side of the "medi-
cine" case was a four-ounce vial of nitroglycerine, now half empty. Un-
derneath the tools was a mass of crumpled banknotes and a few hand-
fuls of gold coin, the money, altogether, amounting to eight hundred and
thirty dollars.

THE MARIONETTES 975

To a very limited circle of friends Doctor James was known as "The
Swell 'Greek.' " Half of the mysterious term was a tribute to his cool and
gentlemanlike manners; the other half denoted, in the argot of the broth-
erhood, the leader, the planner, the one who, by the power and prestige
of his address and position, secured the information upon which they
based their plans and desperate enterprises.

Of this elect circle the other emmbers were Skitsie Morgan and Gum
Decker, expert "box men," and Leopold Pretzfelder, a jeweller down
town, who manipulated the "sparklers" and other ornaments collected
by the working trio. All good and loyal men, as loose-tongued as Mem-
non and as fickle as the North Star.

That night's work had not been considered by the firm to have yielded
more than a moderate repayal for their pains. An old-style two-story side-
bolt safe in the dingy office of a very wealthy old-style dry-goods firm on
a Saturday night should have excreted more than twenty-five hundred
dollars. But that was all they found, and they had divided it, the three of
them, into equal shares upon the spot, as was their custom. Ten or twelve
thousand was what they expected. But one of the proprietors had proved
to be just a trifle too old style. Just after dark he had carried home in a
shirt box most of the funds on hand.

Doctor James proceeded up Twenty-fourth Street, which was, to all
appearance, depopulated. Even the theatrical folk, who affect this district
as a place of residence, were long since abed. The drizzle had accumu-
lated upon the street; puddles of it among the stones received the fire of
the arc lights, and returned it, shattered into a myriad liquid spangles. A
captious wind, shower-soaked and chilling, coughed from the laryngeal
flues between the houses.

As the practitioner's foot struck even with the corner of a tall brick
residence of more pretension than its fellows the front door popped open,
and a bawling negress clattered down the steps to the pavement. Some
medley of words came forth from her mouth, addressed, like as not, to
herself— the recourse of her race when alone and beset by evil She looked
to be one of that old vassal class of the South— voluble, familiar, loyal,
irrepressible; her person pictured it— fat, neat, aproned, kerchiefed.

This sudden apparition, spewed from the silent house, reached the bot-
tom of the steps as Doctor James came opposite. Her brain transferring
its energies from sound to sight, she ceased her clamor and fixed her pop-
eyes upon the case the doctor carried.

"Bress de Lawdf" was the benison the sight drew from her. "Is you a
doctor, suh?"

"Yes, I am a physician," said Doctor James, pausing,

"Den fo* God's sake come and see Mister Chandler, suh. He done had
a fit or sump'n. He layin' jist Eke he wuz dead. Miss Amy sont me to git
a doctor. Lawd knows whar old Cindy'd a skeared one up from, if you,

976 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

suh, hadn't come along. Ef old Mar's knowed one ten-hundredth part of
dese doin's de'd be shoctm gwine on, suh-pistol shootm--lebm ieet
marked off on de ground, and ev ybody a-duellin'. And dat po lamb,

Miss Arny " f , «.£

"Lead the way," said Doctor James, setting his foot upon the step, it
you want me as a doctor. As an auditor I'm not open to engagements.

The negress preceded him into the house and up a flight of thickly
carpeted stairs. Twice they came to dimly lighted branching hallways. At
the second one the now panting conductress turned down a hall, stopping
at a door and opening it.

"I done brought de doctor, Miss Amy."

Doctor James entered the room, and bowed slightly to a young lady
standing by the side of a bed. He set his medicine case upon a chair, re-
moved his overcoat, throwing it over the case and the back of the chair,
and advanced with quiet self-possession to the bedside.

There lay a man, sprawling as he had fallen— a man dressed richly in
the prevailing mode, with only his shoes removed; lying relaxed, and
as still as the dead.

There emanated from Doctor James an aura of calm, force and reserve
strength that was as manna in the desert to the weak and desolate among
his patrons. Always had women, especially, been attracted by something
in his sick-room manner. It was not the indulgent suavity of the fashion-
able healer, but a manner of poise, of sureness, of ability to overcome fate,
of deference and protection and devotion. There was an exploring mag-
netism in his steadfast, luminous brown eyes; a latent authority in the
impassive, even priestly, tranquillity of his smooth countenance that out-
wardly fitted him for the part of confidant and consoler. Sometimes, at
his first professional visit, women would tell him where they hid their
diamonds at night from the burglars.

With the ease of much practice, Doctor James's unroving eyes esti-
mated the order and quality of the room's furnishings. The appointments
were rich and costly. The same glance had secured cognizance of the
lady's appearance. She was small and scarcely past twenty. Her face pos-
sessed the title to a winsome prettiness, now obscured by (you would
say) rather a fixed melancholy than the more violent imprint of a sudden
sorrow. Upon her forehead, above one eyebrow, was a livid bruise, suf-
fered, the physician's eye told him, within the past six hours.

Doctor James's fingers went to the man's wrist. His almost vocal eyes
questioned the lady.

"I am Mrs. Chandler," she responded, speaking with the plaintive
Southern slur and intonation. "My husband was taken suddenly ill about
ten minutes before you came. He has had attacks of heart trouble before
— some of them were very bad." His clothed state and the late hour

THE MARIONETTES 977

seemed to prompt her to further explanation. "He had been out late; to
—a supper, I believe."

Doctor James now turned his attention to his patient. In whichever of
his "professions" he happened to be engaged he was wont to honor the
"case" or the "job" with his whole interest.

The sick man appeared to be about thirty. His countenance bore a look
of boldness and dissipation, but was not without a symmetry of feature
and the fine lines drawn by a taste and indulgence in humor that gave
the redeeming touch. There was an odor of spilled wine about his clothes.

The physician laid back his outer garments, and then, with a pen-
knife, slit the shirt-front from collar to waist. The obstacles cleared, he
laid his ear to the heart and listened intently.

"Mitral regurgitation?" he said, softly, when he rose. The words ended
with the rising inflection of uncertainty. Again he listened long; and this
time he said, "Mitral insufficiency," with the accent of an assured diag-
nosis.

"Madam," he began, in the reassuring tones that had so often allayed

anxiety, "there is a probability " As he slowly turned his head to face

the lady, he saw her fall, white and swooning, into the arms of the old
negress.

"Po' lamb! po* lamb! Has dey done killed Aunt Cindy's own blessed
child? May de Lawd 'stroy wid his wrath dem what stole her away; what
break dat angel heart; what left "

"Lift her feet," said Doctor James, assisting to support the drooping
form. "Where is her room? She must be put to bed."

"In here, suh." The woman nodded her kerchiefed head toward a door.
"Dat's Miss Amy's room."

They carried her in there, and laid her on the bed. Her pulse was faint,
but regular. She passed from the swoon, without recovering conscious-
ness, into a profound slumber.

"She is quite exhausted," said the physician. "Sleep Is a good remedy.
When she wakes, give her a toddy— with an egg in it, if she can take it.
How did she get that bruise upon her forehead?"

"She done got a lick there, suh. De po* lamb fell No, suh"— the

old woman's racial mutability swept her in a sudden flare of indignation
—"old Cindy ain't gwineter lie for dat debble. He done it, suh. May de
Lawd wither de hand what — dar now! Cindy promise her sweet lamb
she ain't gwine tell. Miss Amy got hurt, suh, on de head."

Doctor James stepped to a stand where a handsome lamp burned, and
turned the flame low,

"Stay here with your mistress," he ordered, "and keep quiet so she will
sleep. If she wakes, give her the toddy. If she grows any weaker, let me
know. There is something strange about it.*9

"Dar's mo* strange t'ings dan dat Vound here," began the negress, but

97§ BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

the physician hushed her in a seldom-employed peremptory, concentrated
voice with which he had often allayed hysteria itself. He turned to the
other room, closing the door softly behind him. The man on the bed had
not moved, but his eyes were open. His lips seemed to form words. Doc-
tor James bent his head to listen. 'The money! the money!" was what
they were whispering.

"Can you understand what I say?" asked the doctor, speaking low, but
distinctly.

The head nodded slightly.

"I am a physician, sent for by your wife. You are Mr. Chandler, I am
told. You are quite ill. You must not excite or distress yourself at all."

The patient's eyes seemed to beckon to him. The doctor stooped to
catch the same faint words.

"The money — the twenty thousand dollars."

"Where is this money?— in the bank?"

The eyes expressed a negative. "Tell her" — the whisper was growing
fainter — "the twenty thousand dollars — her money" — his eyes wandered
about the room.

"You have placed this money somewhere?" — Doctor James's voice was
toiling like a siren's to conjure the secret from the man's failing intelli-
gence— "Is it in this room?"

He thought he saw a fluttering assent in the dimming eyes. The pulse
under his fingers was as fine and small as a silk thread.

There arose in Doctor James's brain and heart the instincts of his other
profession. Promptly, as he acted in everything, he decided to learn the
whereabouts of this money, and at the calculated and certain cost of a
human life.

Drawing from his pocket a little pad of prescription blanks, he scrib-
bled upon one of them a formula suited, according to the best practice,
to the needs of the sufferer. Going to the door of the inner room, he softly
called the old woman, gave her the prescription, and bade her take it to
some drug store and fetch the medicine.

When she had gone, muttering to herself, the doctor stepped to the
bedside of the lady. She still slept soundly; her pulse was a little stronger;
her forehead was cool, save where the inflammation of the bruise ex-
teuded, and a slight moisture covered it. Unless disturbed, she would yet
sleep for hours. He found the key in the door, and locked it after him
when he returned.

Doctor James locked at his watch. He could call half an hour his own,
since before that time the old woman could scarcely return from her mis-
sion. Then he sought and found water in a pitcher and a glass tumbler.
Opening his medicine case he took out the vial containing the nitro-
glycerine—"the oil," as his brethren of the brace-and-bit term it.

One drop of the faint yellow, thickish liquid he let fall in the tumbler.

THE MARIONETTES 979

He took out his silver hypodermic syringe case, and screwed the needle
into its place. Carefully measuring each modicum of water in the grad-
uated glass barrel of the syringe, he diluted the one drop with nearly
half a tumbler of water.

Two hours earlier that night Doctor James had, with that syringe, in-
jected the undiluted liquid into a hole drilled in the lock of a safe, and
had destroyed, with one dull explosion, the machinery that controlled
the movement of the bolts. He now purposed, with the same means, to
shiver the prime machinery of a human being — to rend its heart — and
each shock was for the sake of the money to follow.

The same means, but in a different guise. Whereas, that was the giant
in its rude, primary dynamic strength, this was the courtier, whose no
less deadly arms were concealed by velvet and lace. For the liquid in the
tumbler and in the syringe that the physician carefully filled was now a
solution of glonoin, the most powerful heart stimulant known to medi-
cal science. Two ounces had riven the solid door of the iron safe; with
one fiftieth part of a minim he was now about to still forever the intri-
cate mechanism of a human life.

But not immediately. It was not so intended. First there would be a
quick increase of vitality; a powerful impetus given to every organ and
faculty. The heart would respond bravely to the fatal spur; the blood in
the veins return more rapidly to its source.

But as Doctor James well knew, over-stimulation in this form of heart
disease means death, as sure as by a rifle shot. When the clogged arteries
should suffer congestion from the increased flow of blood pumped into
them by the power of the burglar's "oil," they would rapidly become
"no thoroughfare," and the fountain of life would cease to flow.

The physician bared the chest of the unconscious Chandler. Easily and
skilfully he injected, subcutaneously, the contents of the syringe into the
muscles of the region over the heart. True to his neat habits in both pro-
fessions, he next carefully dried his needle and re-inserted the fine wire
that threaded it when not in use.

In three minutes Chandler opened his eyes, and spoke, in a voice faint
but audible, inquiring who attended upon him. Doctor James again ex-
plained his presence there.

"Where is my wife?** asked the patient.

"She is asleep — from exhaustion and worry,** said the doctor. "I would
not awaken her, unless "

"It isn't— necessary/' Chandler spoke with spaces between his words
caused by his short breath that some demon was driving too fast. "She
wouldn't— thank you to disturb her^-on my— account"

Doctor James drew a chair to the bedside. Conversation must not be
squandered.

"A few minutes ago," he began, in the grave, candid tones of his other

980 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

profession, "you were trying to tell me something regarding some money.
I do not seek your confidence, but it is my duty to advise you that anx-
iety and worry will work against your recovery. If you have any com-
munication to make about this— to relieve your mind about this— twenty
thousand dollars, I think was the amount you mentioned— you would
better do so."

Chandler cold not turn his head, but he rolled his eyes in the direc-
tion of the speaker.

"Did I — say where this — money is?**

"No," answered the physician. "I only inferred, from yor scarcely in-
telligible words, that you felt a solicitude concerning its sfaety. If it is in
this room "

Doctor James paused. Did he only seem to perceive a flicker of under-
standing, a gleam of suspicion upon the ironical features of his patient?
Had he seemed too eager? Had he said too much? Chandler's next words
restored his confidence.

"Where— should it be,** he gasped, "but in— the safe— there?"

With his eyes he indicated a corner of the room, where now, for the
first time, the doctor perceived a small iron safe, half-concealed by the
trailing end of a window curtain.

Rising, he took the sick man's wrist. His pulse was beating in great
throbs, with ominous intervals between.

*4Lift your arm," said Doctor James.

"You know— I can't move, Doctor."

The physician stepped swiftly to the hall door, opened it, and listened.
All was still. Without further circumvention he went to the safe, and
examined it. Of a primitive make and simple design, it afforded a little
more security than protection against light-fingered servants. To his skill
it was a mere toy, a thing of straw and pasteboard. The money was as
good as in his hands. With his clamps he could draw the knob, punch
the tumblers, and open the door in two minutes. Perhaps, ia another
way, he might open it in one.

Kneeling upon the floor, he laid his ear to the combination plate, and
slowly turned the knob. As he had surmised, it was locked at only a "day
com."— upon one number. His keen ear caught the faint warning click
as the tumbler was disturbed; he used the clue—the handle turned. He
swung the door wide open.

Tte interior of the safe was bare — not even a scrap of paper rested,
within the hollow iron cube.

Doctor James rose to his feet and walked back to the bed.,

A thick dew had formed upon the dying man's brow, but there was a
mocking, grim stnile oa his lips aad in his eyes.

"I never— saw it before,** he said, painfully, "medicine and— burglary
wedded! Do you— make the— combiaadon pay— dear Doctor?"

THE MARIONETTES 981

Than that situation afforded, there was never a more rigorous test of
Doctor James's greatness. Trapped by the diabolic humor of his victim
into a position both ridiculous and unsafe, he maintained his dignity as
well as his presence of mind. Taking out his watch, he waited for the
man to die.

"You were — just a shade — too — anxious — about that money. But it
never was — in any danger — from you, dear Doctor. It's safe. Perfectly safe.
It's all— in the hands — of the bookmakers. Twenty — thousand — Amy's
money. I played it at the races — lost every — cent of it. Fve been a pretty
bad boy, Burglar— excuse me — Doctor, but I've been a square sport. I
don't think — I ever met — such an — eighteen-carat rascal as you are. Doc-
tor— excuse me — Burglar, in all my rounds. Is it contrary — to the ethics
— of your — gang, Burglar, to give a victim — excuse me — patient, a drink
of water?"

Doctor James brought him a drink. He could scarcely swallow it. The
reaction from the powerful drug was coming in regular, intensifying
waves. But his moribund fancy must have one more grating fling.

"Gambler — drunkard — spendthrift— I've been those, but — a doctor-
burglar!"

The physician indulged himself to but one reply to the other's caustic
taunts. Bending low to catch Chandler's fast crystallizing gaze, he pointed
to the sleeping lady's door with a gesture so stern and significant that
the prostrate man half-lifted his head, with his remaining strength, to
see. He saw nothing; but he caught the cold words of the doctor — the
last sounds he was to hear:

"I never yet— struck a woman."

It were vain to attempt to con such men. There is no curriculum that
can reckon with them in its ken. They are offshoots from the types
whereof men say, "He will do this," or "He will do that." We only know
that they exist; and that we can observe them, and tell one another of
their bare performances, as children watch and speak of the marionettes.

Yet it were a droll study in egoism to consider these two — one an as-
sassin and a robber, standing above his victim; the other baser in his
offences, if a lesser law-breaker, lying, abhorred, in the house of the wife
he had persecuted, spoiled, and smitten, one a tiger, the other a dog-wolf
— to consider each of them sickening at the foulness of the other; and
each flourishing out of the mire of his manifest guilt his own immaculate
standard — of conduct, if not of honor.

The one retort of Doctor James must have struck home to the other's
remaining shreds of shame and manhood, for it proved the coup de
grfae. A deep blush suffused his face— aa ignominious rosa mortis; the
respiration ceased, and, with scarcely a tremor, Chandler expired.

Close following upon his last breath came the negress, bringing the
medicine. With a hand gently pressing upon the closed eyelids* Doctor

982 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

James told her of the end. Not grief, but a hereditary rapprochement
with death in the abstract, moved her to a dismal, watery sniffling, ac-
companied bv her usual jeremiad.

"Dar now! It's in de Lawd's hands. He am de jedge ob dc transgres-
sor, and de suppo't of dcm in distress. He gwine hab suppot us now.
Cindy done paid out de last quarter fer dis bottle of physic, and it nebber
come to no use.*1 , ,

"Do I understand," asked Doctor James, "that Mrs. Chandler has no

money?" - , »

"Money, suh? You know what make Miss Amy fall down and so weak.''
Stahvation, suh. Nothin' to eat in dis house but some crumbly crackers
in three days. Dat angel sell her finger rings and watch mom's ago. Dis
fine house/suh, wid de red cyarpets and shiny bureaus, it's all hired and
de man talkin1 scan'lous about de rent. Dat debble— 'scuse me, Lawd—
he done in Yo' hands fer jedgment, now— he made way wid everything.

The physician's silence encouraged her to continue. The history that he
gleaned from Cindy's disordered monologue was an old one, of illusion,
wilfulness, disaster, cruelty, and pride. Standing out from the blurred
panorama of her gabble were little clear pictures— an ideal home in the
far South; a quickly repented marriage; an unhappy season, full of
wrongs and abuse, and, of late, an inheritance of money that promised
deliverance; its seizure and waste by the dog-wolf during a two months'
absence, and his return in the midst of a scandalous carouse. Unobtruded,
but visible between every line, ran a pure white thread through the
smudged warp of the story— the simple, all-enduring, sublime love of the
old negress, following her mistress unswervingly through everything to
the end.

When at last she paused, the physician spoke, asking if the house con-
tained whiskey or liquor of any sort. There was, the old woman informed
him, half a bottle of brandy left in the sideboard by the dog-wolf.

"Prepare a toddy as I told you," said Doctor James. "Wake your mis-
tress; have her drink it, and tell her what has happened."

Some ten minutes afterward, Mrs. Chandler entered, supported by old
Cindy's arm. She appeared to be a little stronger since her sleep and the
stimulant she had takea. Doctor James had covered, with a sheet, the
form upon the bed,

The lady turned her mournful eyes once, with a half-frightened look,
toward it, and pressed closer to her protector. Her eyes were dry and
bright. Sorrow seemed to have done its utmost with her. The fount of
tears was dried; feeling itself paralyzed.

Doctor James was standing near the table, his overcoat donned, his hat
and medicine case in his hand. His face was calm and impassive — prac-
tice had inured him to the sight of human suffering. His lambent brown
eyes alone expressed a discreet professional sympathy.

THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY 983

He spoke kindly and briefly, stating that, as the hour was late, and
assistance, no doubt, difficult to procure, he would himself send the proper
persons to attend to the necessary finalities.

"One matter, in conclusion," said the doctor, pointing to the safe with
its still wide-open door. "Your husband, Mrs. Chandler, toward the end,
felt that he could not live; and directed me to open that safe, giving me
the number upon which the combination is set. In case you may need
to use it, you will remember that the number is forty-one. Turn several
times to the right; then to the left once; stop at forty-one. He would not
permit me to waken you, though he knew the end was near.

"In that safe he said he had placed a sum of money not large — but
enough to enable you to carry out his last request. That was that you
should return to your old home, and, in after days, when time shall have
made it easier, forgive his many sins against you."

He pointed to the table, where lay an orderly pile of banknotes, sur-
mounted by two stacks of gold coins,

"The money is there— as he described it — eight hundred and thirty
dollars. I beg to leave my card with you, in case I can be of any service
later on."

So, he had thought of her— and kindly— at the last! So late! And yet
the lie fanned into life one last spark of tenderness where she had
thought all was turned to ashes and dust. She cried aloud "Rob! Rob!"
She turned, and, upon the ready bosom of her true servitor, diluted her
grief in relieving tears. It is well to think, also, that in the years to fol-
low, the murderer's falsehood shone like a little star above the grave of
love, comforting her, and gaining the forgiveness that is good in itself,
whether asked for or no.

Hushed and soothed upon the dark bosom, like a child, by a crooning,
babbling sympathy, at last she raised her head — but the doctor was gone.

THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY

Without knowing it, Old Bill Bascom had the honor of being overtaken
by fate the same day with the Marquis of Borodale.

The Marquis lived in Regent Square, London. Old Bill lived on Limp-
ing Doe Creek, Hardeman County, Texas. The cataclysm that engulfed
the Marquis took the form of a bursting bubble known as the Central
and South American Mahogany and Caoutchouc Monopoly. Old Bill's
Nemesis was in the no less perilous shape o£ a band of civilized Indian
cattle thieves from the Territory who ran ofi his entire herd of four hun-
dred head, and shot old Bill dead as he trailed after them. To even up
the consequences of the two catastrophes, the Marquis^ as soon as he

984 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

found that all he possessed would pay only fifteen shillings on the pound
of his indebtedness, shot himself.

Old Bill left a family of six motherless sons and daughters, who found
themselves without even a red steer left to eat or a red cent to buy one
with.

The Marquis left one son, a young man, who had come to the States
and established a large and well-stocked ranch in the Panhandle of
Texas. When this young man learned the news he mounted his pony
and rode to town. There he placed everything he owned except his horse,
saddle, Winchester, and fifteen dollars in his pockets, in the hands of
his lawyers, with instructions to sell and forward the proceeds to Lon-
don to be applied upon the payment of his father debts. Then he
mounted his pony and rode southward.

One day, arriving about the same time, but by different trails, two
young chaps rode up to the Diamond-Cross ranch, on the Little Piedra,
and asked for work. Both were dressed neatly and sprucely in cowboy
costume. One was a straight-set fellow, with delicate, handsome features,
short brown hair, and smooth face, sunburned to a golden brown. The
other applicant was stouter and broad-shouldered, with fresh red com-
plexion, somewhat freckled, reddish, curling hair, and a rather plain face,
made attractive by laughing eyes and a pleasant mouth.

The superintendent of the Diamond-Cross was of the opinion that he
could give them work. In fact, word had reached him that morning that
the carnp cook — a most important member of the outfit—had straddled
his bronco and departed, being unable to withstand the fire of fun and
practical jokes of which he was, ex-officio, the legitimate target.

"Can either of you cook?" asked the superintendent.

"I can," said the reddish-haired fellow, promptly. "I've cooked in camp
quite a lot. I'm willing to take the job until you've got something else
to offer."

"Now, that's the way I like to hear a man talk," said the superintend-
ent, approvingly. "Ill give you a note to Saunders, and hell put you to
work."

Thus the names of John Bascom and Charles Norwood were added
to the pay-roll of the Diamond-Cross. The two left for the round-up
camp immediately after dinner. Their directions were simple, but suffi-
cient: **Keep down the arroyo for fifteen miles till you get there." Both
being strangers from afar, young, spirited, and thus thrown together by
chance for a long ride, it is likely that the comradeship that afterward
existed so strongly between them began that afternoon as they mean-
dered along the littfc valley of the Candad Verda.

They reached their destination just after sunset. The main camp of the
round-up was comfortably located on the bank of a long water-hole, un-
der a fine mott of timber. A number of small A tents pitched upon grassy

THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY 985

spots and the big wall tent for provisions showed that the camp was in-
tended to be occupied for a considerable length of time.

The round-up had ridden in but a few moments before, hungry and
tired, to a supperless camp. The boys were engaged in an emulous dis-
play of anathemas supposed to fit the case of the absconding cook. While
they were unsaddling and hobbling their ponies, the newcomers rode in
and inquired for Pink Saunders. The boss of the round-up came forth
and was given the superintendent's note.

Pink Saunders, though a boss during working hours, was a humorist
in camp, where everybody, from cook to superintendent, is equal. After
reading the note he waved his hand toward the camp and shouted, cere-
moniously, at the top of his voice, "Gentlemen, allow me to present to you
the Marquis and Miss Sally."

At the words both the new arrivals betrayed confusion. The newly
employed cook started, with a surprised look on his face, but, immedi-
ately recollecting that "Miss Sally" is the generic name for the male cook
in every west Texas cow camp, he recovered his composure with a grin
at his own expense.

His companion showed little less discomposure, even turning angrily,
with a bitten lip, and reaching for his saddle pommel, as if to remount
his pony; but "Miss Sally" touched his arm and said, laughingly, "Come
now, Marquis; that was quite a compliment from Saunders. It's that dis-
tinguished air of yours and aristocratic nose that made him call you that."

He began to unsaddle, and the Marquis, restored to equanimity, fol-
lowed his example. Rolling up his sleeves, Miss Sally sprang for the grub
wagon, shouting:

*Tm the new cook b'thunder! Some of you chaps rustle a little wood
for a fire, and 111 guarantee you a hot square meal inside of thirty min-
utes." Miss Sally's energy and good-humor as he ransacked the grub
wagon for coffee, flour, and bacon, won the good opinion of the camp
instantly.

And also, in days following, the Marquis, after becoming better ac-
quainted, proved to be a cheerful, pleasant fellow, always a little re-
served, and taking no part in the rough camp frolics; but the boys
gradually came to respect this reserve — which fitted the title Saunders
had given him — and even to like him for it. Saunders had assigned him
to a place holding the herd during the cuttings. He proved to be a skil-
ful rider and as good with the lariat or in the branding pen as most of
them.

The Marquis and Miss Sally grew to be quite close comrades. After
supper was over, and everything cleaned up, you would generally find
them together, Miss Sally smoking his brier-root pipe, and the Marquis
plaiting a quirt or scraping rawhide for a new pair of hobbles.

The superintendent did not forget his promise to keep an eye on the

986 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

cook. Several times, when visiting the camp, he held long talks with him.
He seemed to have taken a fancy to Miss Sally. One afternoon he rode
up, on his way back to the ranch from a tour of the camps and said to
him:

"There!! be a man here in the morning to take your place. As soon
as he shows up you come to the ranch. I want you to take charge of the
ranch accounts and correspondence. I want somebody that I can depend
upon to keep things straight when I'm away. The wagesll be all right.
The Diamond-Crossll hold its end up with a man who'll look after its
interests."

"All right," said Miss Sally, as quiedy as if he had expected the notice
all along. "Any objections to my bringing my wife down to the ranch?"

"You married?" said the superintendent, frowning a little. "You didn't
mention it when we were talking,'*

"Because Fm not," said the cook. "But I'd like to be. Thought I'd wait
til I got a job under roof. I couldn't ask her to live in a cow camp.*'

"Right," agreed the superintendent, "A camp isn't quite the place for
a married man— but— well, there's plenty of room at the house, and if
you suit us as well as I think you will you can afford it. You write to her

to come on."

"All right," said Miss Sally again, "I'll ride in as soon as I am relieved
to-morrow."

It was a rather chilly night, and after spper the cow-punchers were
lounging about a big fire of dried mesquite chunks.

Their usual exchange of jokes and repartee had dwindled almost to
silence, but silence in a cow camp generally betokens the brewing of mis-
chief.

Miss Sally and the Marquis were seated upon a log, discussing the rel-
ative merits of the lengthened or shortened stirrup in long-distance rid-
ing. The Marquis arose presently and went to a tree near by to examine
some strips of rawhide he was seasoning for making a lariat. Just as he
left a little puff of wind blew some scraps of tobacco from a cigarette
that Dry-Creek Smltfaers was rolling, into Miss Sally's eyes. While the
cook was rubbing at them, with tears flowing, "Phonograph" Davis—
so called oa account of his strident voice— arose and began a speech,

"Fellers and citizens! I desire to perpound a interrogatory. What is the
most grievous spectacle what the human mind can contemplate?"

A volky of answers responded to his question.

^A busted flush!1*

"A Maverick when you ain't got your branding iron!'*

"Yourself!"

"The hole in the end of some other feller's gunl"

"Shet up, you ignoramuses," said Old Taller, the fat cow-punchen
"Phony knows what it is. He's waitin* for to tdl us."

THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY 987

"No, fellers and citizens," continued Phonograph. "Them spectacles
you've e-numerated air shore grievious, and way up yonder close to the
so-lution, but they ain't it. The most grievious spectacle air that" — he
pointed to Miss Sally, who was still rubbing his streaming eyes — "a
trustin' and a in-veegled female a-weepin} tears on account of her heart
bein' busted by a false deceiver. Air we men or air we catamounts to gaze
upon the blightin' of our Miss Sally's affections by a a-risto-crat, which
has come among us with his superior beauty and his glitterin' title to give
the weeps to the lovely critter we air bound to pertect? Air we goin' to act
like men, or air we goin' to keep on eatin* soggy chuck from her cryin*
so plentiful over the bread-pan?"

"It's a gallopin' shame," said Dry-Creek, with a sniffle, "It ain't hu-
man. IVe noticed the varmint a-palaverin' round her frequent. And him a
Marquis! Ain't that a title, Phony?"

"It's somethin' like a king," the Brushy Creek Kid hastened to explain,
"only lower in the deck. Guess it comes in between the Jack and the
ten-spot."

"Don't misconstruct rne," went on Phonograph, "as undervaluatin' the
a-risto-crats. Some of 'em air proper people and can travel right along
with the Watson boys. I've herded some with 'em myself. I've viewed the
elephant with the Mayor of Fort Worth, and I've listened to the owl with
the general passenger agent of the Katy, and they can keep up with the
percession from where you laid the chunk. But when a Marquis monkeys
with the innocent affections of a cook-lady, may I inquire what the case
seems to call for?"

"The leathers," shouted Dry-Creek Smithers.

"You hear 'er, Charity!" was the Kid's form of corroboration.

"We've got your company," assented the cowpunchers, in chorus.

Before the Marquis realized their intention, two of them seized him
by each arm and led him up to the log. Phonograph Davis, self-appointed
to carry out the sentence, stood ready, with a pair of stout leather leggings
in his hands.

It was the first time they had ever laid hands on the Marquis during
their somewhat rude sports.

"What are you up to?" he asked, indignantly, with flashing eyes.

"Go easy, Marquis," whispered Rube Fellows, one of the boys that
held him. "It's all in fun. Take it good-natured and they'll let you off
light. They're only goin* to stretch you over the log and tan you eight or
ten times with the leggin's. Twon't hurt much."

The Marquis, with an exclamation of anger, his white teeth gleaming,
suddenly exhibited a surprising strength. He wrenched with his arms so
violently that the four men were swayed and dragged many yards from
the log. A cry of anger escaped him, and then Miss Sally, his eyes cleared
of the tobacco, saw, and he immediately mixed with the struggling group.

988 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

But at that moment a loud "Hallo!" rang in their ears, and a buck-
board drawn by a team of galloping mustangs spun into the campfires
circle of light. Every man turned to look, and what they saw drove from
their minds all thoughts of carrying out Phonograph Davis s rather time-
worn contribution to the evening's amusement. Bigger gaine than the
Marquis was at hand, and his captors released him and stood staring at
the approaching victim.

The buckboard and team belonged to Sam Holly, a cattleman from the
Big Muddy. Sam was driving, and with him was a stout, smooth-faced
man, wearing a frock coat and a high silk hat. That was the county judge,
Mr. Dave Hackett, candidate for reelection. Sam was escorting him about
the country, among the camps, to shake up the sovereign voters.

The men got out, hitched the team to a mesquite, and walked toward
the fire.

Instandy every man in camp, except the Marquis, Miss Sally, and Pink
Saunders, who had to play host, uttered a frightful yell of assumed
terror and fled on all sides into the darkness.

"Heavens alive!" exclaimed Hackett, "are we as ugly as that? How do
you do, Mr. Saunders? Glad to see you again. What are you doing to my
hat, Holly?"

"I was afraid of this hat," said Sam Holly, meditatively. He had taken
the hat from Hackett's head and was holding it in his hand, looking
dubiously around at the shadows beyond the firelight where now absolute
stillness reigned. "What do you think, Saunders?'*

Pink grinned.

"Better elevate It some," he said, in the tone of one giving disinterested
advice. "The light ain't none too good. I wouldn't want it on my head."

Holly stepped upon the hub of a hind wheel of the grub wagon and
hung the hat upon a limb of a live-oak. Scarcely had his foot touched the
ground when die crash of a dozen six-shooters split the air, and the hat
fell to the ground riddled with bullets,

A hissing noise was heard as if from a score of rattlesnakes, and the
cow-punchers emerged on all sides from the darkness, stepping high,
with ludicrously exaggerated caution, and "hist"-ing to one another to
observe the utmost prudence in approaching. They formed a solemn,
wide circle about the hat, gazing at it in manifest alarm, and seized
every few moments by little stampedes of panicky flight.

**It*s the varmint," said one in awed tones, "that flits up and down in
the low grounds at night, saying, * Willie- walloP "

"It's the venomous Kypootuin," proclaimed another. "It stings after it's
dead, and boilers after it's buried"

"It's the chief of the hairy tribe," said Phonograph Davis. "But it's stone
dead, now, boys."

"Don't you believe it,*' demurred Dry-Creek. "It's only 'possuminV

THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY 909

It's the dreaded Highgollacum fantod from the forest. There's only one
way to destroy its life."

He led forward Old Taller, the 240-pound cow-puncher. Old Taller
placed the hat upright on the ground and solemnly sat upon it, crushing
it as flat as a pancake.

Hackett had viewed these proceedings with wide-open eyes. Sam
Holly saw that his anger was rising and said to him:

"Here's where you win or lose, Judge. There are sixty votes on the
Diamond-Cross. The boys are trying your mettle. Take it as a joke, and
I don't think you'll regret it." And Hackett saw the point and rose to
the occasion.

Advancing to where the slayers of the wild beast were standing about
its remains and declaring it to be at last defunct, he said, with deep
earnestness:

"Boys, I must thank you for this gallant rescue. While driving through
the arroyo the cruel monster that you have so fearlessly and repeatedly
slaughtered sprang upon us from the tree tops. To you I shall consider
that I owe my life, and also, I hope, reelection to the office for which I
am again candidate. Allow me to hand you my card."

The cow-punchers, always so sober-faced while engaged in their mon-
key-shines, relaxed into a grin of approval.

But Phonograph Davis, his appetite for fun not yet appeased, had
something more up his sleeve.

"Pardner," he said, addressing Hackett with grave severity, "many a
camp would be down on you for turnin* loose a pernicious varmint like
that in it; but, bein* as we all escaped without loss of life, we'll overlook
it. You can play square with us if you'll do it."

"How's that?" asked Hackett, suspiciously.

"You're authorized to perform the sacred rights and lefts of matter-
mony, air you not?"

"Well, yes," replied Hackett. "A marriage ceremony conducted by me
would be legal."

"A wrong air to be righted in this here camp," said Phonograph, virtu-
ously. "A a-ristocrat have slighted a 'umble but beautchoos female wat's
pinin' for his affections. It's the jooty of the camp to drag forth the
haughty descendant of a hundred—or maybe a hundred and twenty-five
— earls, even so at the p'int of a lariat, and jine him to the weepin' lady.
Fellows! round up Miss Sally and the Marquis, there's goin' to be a
weddinV

This whim of Phonograph's was received with whoops of appreciation.
The cow-punchers started to apprehend the principals of the proposed
ceremony.

"Kindly prompt me," said Hackett, wiping his forehead, though the
night was cool, "how far this thing is to be carried. And might I expect

990 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

any further portions of my raiment to be mistaken for wild animals and

"The boys are livelier than usual to-night," said Saunders. "The ones
they are talking about marrying are two of the boys— a herd rider and the
cook. It's another joke. You and Sam will have to sleep here to-night
anyway; p'rhaps you'd better see 'em through with it. Maybe theyll
quiet down after that."

The matchmakers found Miss Sally seated on the tongue of the grub
wagon, calmly smoking his pipe. The Marquis was leaning idly against
one of the trees under which the supply tent was pitched.

Into this tent they were both hustled, and Phonograph, as master of
ceremonies, gave orders for the preparations.

"You, Dry-Creek and Jimmy, and Ben and Taller— hump yourselves
to the wildwood and rustle flowers for the blow-out— mesquite'll do—
and get the Spanish dagger blossom at the corner of the horse corral for
the bride to pack. You, Limpy, get out that red and yaller blanket of
your'n for Miss Sally's skyirt. Marquis, you'll do 'thout fixing nobody
don't ever look at the groom "

During their absurd preparations, the two principals were left alone
for a few minutes in the tent The Marquis suddenly showed wild per-
turbation.

"This foolishness must not go on," he said, turning to Miss Sally a face
white in the light of the lantern, hanging to the ridge-pole.

"Why not?" said the cook, with an amused smile. "It's fun for the
boys; and they've always let you off pretty light in their frolics. I don't
mind it.'*

"But you don't understand," persisted the Marquis, pleadingly. "That
man is county judge, and his acts are binding. I can't— oh, you don't

The cook stepped forward and took the Marquis's hands.

"Sally Bascom," he said, "I KNOW!"

"You knowl" faltered the Marquis, trembling. "And you— want to - "

"More than I ever wanted anything. Will you — here come the boys!"

The cow-punchers crowded in, laden with armfuls of decorations.

''Perfidious coyote!" said Phonograph, sternly, addressing the Marquis.
"Air you willing to patch up the damage you've did this ere slab-sided
but tnistm' bunch o* calico by single-footin* easy to the altar, or will we
have to rope ye, and drag you thar?"

The Marquis pushed lick his hat, and leaned jauntily against some
high-piled sacks of beans. His cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were
shining.

"Go on with the rat killing said he.

A little while after a procession approached the tree tinder which
Hackett, Holly, and Saunders were sitting smoking.

Limpy Walker was in the lead, extracting a doleful tune on his con-

THE MARQUIS AND MISS SALLY 9QI

certina. Next came the bride and groom. The cook wore the gorgeous
Navajo blanket tied around his waist and carried in one hand the waxen-
white Spanish dagger blossom as large as a peck-measure and weighing
fifteen pounds. His hat was ornamented with mesquite branches and
yellow ratama blooms. A resurrected mosquito bar served as a veil. After
them stumbled Phonograph Davis, in the character of the bride's father,
weeping into a saddle blanket with sobs that could be heard a mile away.
The cow-punchers followed by twos, loudly commenting upon the bride's
appearance, in a supposed imitation of the audiences at fashionable
weddings.

Hackett rose as the procession halted before him, and after a little
lecture upon matrimony, asked:

"What are your names ?"

"Sally and Charles," answered the cook.

"Join hands, Charles and Sally."

Perhaps there never was a stranger wedding. For, wedding it was,
though only two of those present knew it.

When the ceremony was over, the cow-punchers gave one yell of con-
gratulation and immediately abandoned their foolery for the night.
Blankets were unrolled and sleep became the paramount question.

The cook (divested of his decorations) and the Marquis lingered for
a moment in the shadow of the grub wagon. The Marquis leaned her
head against his shoulder.

"I didn't know what else to do," she was saying. "Father was gone,
and we kids had to rustle. I had helped him so much with the cattle that
I thought Fd turn cowboy. There wasn't anything else I could make a
living at. I wasn't much stuck on it though, after I got here, and I'd have
left only "

"Only what?"

"You know. Tell me something. When did you first — what made
you "

"Oh, it was as soon as we struck the camp, when Saunders bawled out
'The Marquis and Miss Sally!* I saw how rattled you got at the name, and
I had rny sus "

"Cheeky!" whispered the Marquis. "And why should you think that I
thought he was calling me 'Miss Sally*?"

"Because," answered the cook, calmly, "I was the Marquis. My father
was the Marquis of Borodale. But you'll excuse that, won't you, Sally?
It really isn't rny fault, you know."

992 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

A FOG IN S ANTON E

The drug clerk looked sharply at the white face half concealed by the
high-turned overcoat collar,

"I would rather not supply you," he said, doubtfully. "I sold you a
dozen morphine tablets less than an hour ago,"

The customer smiles wanly. 'The fault is in your crooked streets. I
didn't intend to call upon you twice, but I guess I got tangled up. Excuse
me."

He draws his collar higher, and moves out slowly. He stops under an
electric light at the corner, and juggles absorbedly with three or four
little pasteboard boxes. "Thirty-six,*' he announces to himself. "More than
plenty." For a gray mist had swept upon Santone that night, an opaque
terror that laid a hand to the throat of each of the city's guests. It was
computed that three thousand invalids were hibernating in the town. They
had come from far and wide, for here, among these contracted river-side
streets, the goddess Ozone has elected to linger.

Purest atmosphere, sir, on earth! You might think from the river wind-
ing through our town that we are malarial, but, no, sir! Repeated experi-
ments made both by the Government and local experts show that our
air contains nothing deleterious — nothing but ozone, sir, pure ozone. Lit-
mus paper tests made all along the river show— but you can read it all in
the prospectuses; or the Santonian will recite it for you, word by word.

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us. Santone, then,
cannot be blamed for this cold gray fog that came and kissed the lips of
the three thousand, and then delivered them to the cross. That night
the tubercles, whose ravages hope holds in check, multiplied. The writh-
ing fingers of the pale mist did not go thence bloodless. Many of the
wooers of ozone capitulated with the enemy that night, turning their
faces to the wall in that dumb, isolated apathy that so terrifies their
watchers. On the red streams of Hemorrhagia a few souls drifted away,
leaving behind pathetic heaps, white and chill as the fog itself. Two or
three came to view this atmospheric wraith as the ghost of impossible
joys, sent to whisper to them of the egregious folly it is to inhale breath
into the lungs, only to exhale it again, and these used whatever came
handy to their relief, pistols, gas, or the beneficent muriate.

The purchaser of the morphine wanders into the fog, and at length
finds himself upon a little iron bridge, one of the score or more in the
heart of the city, under which the small tortuous river flows. He leans on
the rail and grasps, for here the mist has concentrated, lying like a footpad
to garrot such of the Three Thousand as creep that way. The iron bridge

A FOG IN SANTONE 993

guys rattle to the strain of his cough, a mocking phthisical rattle, seeming
to say to him: "Clickety-clack! just a little rusty cold, sir — but not from
our river. Litmus paper all along the banks and nothing but ozone.
Clacket-y-clack!"

The Memphis man at last recovers sufficiently to be aware of another
overcoated man ten feet away, leaning on the rail, and just coming out
of a paroxysm. There is a freemasonry among the Three Thousand that
does away with formalities and introductions. A cough is your card; a
hemorrhage a letter of credit. The Memphis man, being nearer recovered,
speaks first.

"Goodall. Memphis — pulmonary tuberculosis — guess last stages." The
Three Thousand economize on words. Words are breath and they need
breath to write checks for the doctors.

"Kurd," gasps the other. "Hurd; of T'leder. T'leder, Ah-hia. Catarrhal
bronkeetis. Name's Dennis, too — doctor says. Says I'll live four weeks if I
— take care of myself. Got your walking papers yet?"

"My doctor," says Goodall of Memphis, a little boastingly, "gives me
three months."

"Oh," remarks the man from Toledo, filling up great gaps in his con-
versation with wheezes, "damn the difference. What's months! Expect
to — cut mine down to one week — and die in a hack — a four wheeler, not
a cough. Be considerable moanin' of the bars when I put out to sea. I've
patronized 'em pretty freely since I struck my — present gait. Say, Goodall
of Memphis — if your doctor has set your pegs so close — why don't you —
get on a big spree and go — to the devil quick and easy — like I'm doing?"

"A spree," says Goodall, as one who entertains a new idea, "I never
did such a thing. I was thinking of another way, but "

"Come on," invites the Ohioan, "and have some drinks. I've been at
it— for two days, but the inf— ernal stuff won't bite like it used to. Goodall
of Memphis, what's your respiration?"

"Twenty-four."

"Daily — temperature ? **

"Hundred and four."

"You can do it in two days. It'll take me a — week. Tank up, friend
Goodall — have all the fun you can; then — off you go, in the middle of a
jag, and s-s-save trouble and expense. Pm a s-son of a gun if this ain't a
health resort — for your whiskers! A Lake Erie fog'd get lost here in two
minutes."

"You said something about a drink," says Goodall,

A few minutes later they line up at a glittering bar, and hang upon the
arm rest. The bartender, blond, heavy, weU-groorried, sets out their drinks,
instantly perceiving that he serves two of the Three Thousand. He
observes that one is a middle-aged man, well-dressed, with a lined and
sunken face; the other a mere boy who is chiefly eyes and overcoat. Dis-

994 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

guising well the tedium begotten by many repetitions, the server of drinks
begins to chant the sanitary saga of Santone. "Rather a moist night,
gentlemen, for our town. A little fog from our river, but nothing to hurt.
Repeated Tests.'* tc . , ,

"Damn your litmus papers," gasps Toledo-' without any-personal

offense intended." - U1 -_-

"We've heard of 'em before. Let Jem turn red, white, and blue. What
we want is a repeated test of that-whiskey. Come again. I paid for the
last round, Goodall of Memphis."

The bottle oscillates from one to the other, continues to do so, and is not
removed from the counter. The bartender sees two emaciated invalids
dispose of enough Kentucky Belle to floor a dozen cowboys, without
displaying any emotion save a sad and contemplative interest in the
peregrinations of the botde. So he is moved to manifest a solicitude as to
the consequences.

"Not on your Uncle Mark Hanna," responds Toledo, will we get
drunk. We've been— vaccinated with whiskey— and— cod liver oil. What
would send you to the police station-only gives us a thirst. S-s-set out
another bottle."

It is slow work trying to meet death by that route. Some quicker way
must be found. They leave the saloon and plunge again into the mist.
The sidewalks are mere flanges at the base of the houses; the streets a
cold ravine, the fog filling it like a freshet. Not far away is the Mexican
quarter. Conducted as if by wires along the heavy air comes a guitar's
tinkle, and the demoralizing voice of some senorita singing:

"En las tardes sombrillos del invierro Y maldigo mi fausto destino —
En el prado a Marar me reclino Una vida la mas infeliz."

The words of it they do not understand— neither Toledo nor Memphis,
but words are the least important things in life. The music tears the
breasts of the seekers after Nepenthe, inciting Toledo to remark:

"Those kids of mine— I wonder— by God, Mr. Goodall of Memphis,
we had too little of that whiskey I No slow music in mine, if you please.
It makes you dkremember to forget.**

Hurd of Toledo here pulls out his watch, and says:

*Tm a son of a gun! Got an engagement for a hack ride out to San
Pedro Springs at eleven. Forgot it. A fellow from Noo York, and me,
and the Castillo sisters at Rhinegelder's Garden. That Noo York chap's
a lucky dog— got one whole lung— good for a year yet Plenty of money,
too. He pays for everything. I can't afford— to miss the jamboree. Sorry
you ain't going along. Good4>ye, Goodall of Memphis.**

He rounds the comer and shuffles away, casting off thus easily the ties
of acquaintanceship as the moribund do, the season of dissolution being
man's supreme hour of egoism and selfishness. But he turns and calls back

A FOG IN SAN TONE 995

through the fog to the other: "I say, Goodall, o£ Memphis! If you get there
before I do, tell 'em Hurd's a-comin* too. Hurd, of Tleder, Ah-hia."

Thus GoodalPs tempter deserts him. That youth, uncomplaining and
uncaring, takes a spell at coughing, and, recovered, wanders desultorily
on down the street, the name of which he neither knows nor recks. At a
certain point he perceives swinging doors, and hears, filtering between
them, a noise of wind and string instruments. Two men enter from the
street as he arrives, and he follows them in. There is a kind of ante-
chamber, plentifully set with palms and cactuses and oleanders. At little
marble-topped tables some people sit, while soft-shod attendants bring
the beer. All is orderly, clean, melancholy, gay, of the German method of
pleasure. At his right is the foot of a stairway. A man there holds out
his hand. Goodall extends his, full of silver, the man selects therefrom a
coin. Goodall goes upstairs and sees there two galleries extending along
the sides of a concert hall which he now perceives to lie below and be-
yond the anteroom he first entered. These galleries are divided into
boxes or stalls, which bestow with the aid of hanging lace curtains a cer-
tain privacy upon their occupants.

Passing with aimless feet down the aisle contiguous to these saucy and
discreet compartments, he is half checked by the sight in one of them of
a young woman, alone and seated in an attitude of reflection. This young
woman becomes aware of his approach. A smile from her brings him to a
standstill, and her subsequent invitation draws him, though hesitating, to
the other chair in the box, a little table between them.

Goodall is only nineteen. There are some whom, when the terrible
god Phthisis wishes to destroy he first makes beautiful; and the boy
is one of these. His face is wax, and an awful pulchritude is born of the
menacing flame in his cheeks. His eyes reflect an unearthly vista en-
gendered by the certainty of his doom. As it is forbidden man to guess
accurately concerning his fate, it is inevitable that he shall tremble at the
slightest lifting of the veil.

The young woman is well-dressed, and exhibits a beauty of distinctly
feminine and tender sort; an Eve-like comeliness that scarcely seems pre-
destined to fade.

It is immaterial, the steps by which the two mount to a certain plane
of good understanding; they are short and few, as befits the occasion.

A button against the wall of the partition is frequently disturbed and
a waiter comes and goes at a signal.

Pensive beauty would nothing of wine; two thick plaits of her blonde
hair hang almost to the floor; she is a lineal descendant of the Lorelei. So
the waiter brings the brew; effervescent, icy, greenish golden. The
orchestra on the stage is playing "Oh, RacheL" The youngsters have ex-
changed a good bit of information. She" calls him "Walter" and he calls
her "Miss Rosa."

996 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Goodall's tongue is loosened and he has told her everything about him-
self, about his home in Tennessee, the old pillared mansion under the
oaks, the stables, the hunting; the friends he has; down to the chickens,
and the box bushes bordering the walks. About his coming South for the
climate, hoping to escape the hereditary foe of his family. All about his
three months on a ranch; the deer hunts, the rattlers, and the rollicking
in the cow camps. Then of his advent to Santone, where he had indirectly
learned, from a great specialist, that his life's calendar probably contains
but two more leaves. And then of this death-white, choking night which
has come and strangled his fortitude and sent him out to seek a port amid
its depressing billows.

"My weekly letter from home failed to come," he told her, "and I was
pretty blue. I knew I had to go before long and I was tired of waiting.
I went out and bought morphine at every drug store where they would
sell me a few tablets. I got thirty-six quarter grains, and was going back
to my room and take them, but I met a queer fellow on a bridge, who
had a new idea."

Goodall fillips a little pasteboard box upon the table. "I put *em all
together in there."

Miss Rosa, being a woman, must raise the lid, and give a slight shiver
at the innocent-looking triturates. "Horrid things! but those little, white
bits — they could never kill one!"

Indeed they could. Walter knew better. Nine grains of morphia! Why,
half the amount might.

Miss Rosa demands to know about Mr. Hurd, of Toledo, and is told.
She laughs like a delighted child. "What a funny fellow! But tell me
more about your home and your sisters, Walter. I know enough about
Texas and tarantulas and cowboys."

The theme is dear, just now, to his mood, and he lays before her the
simplest details of a true home; the little ties and endearments that so
fill the exile's heart. Of his sisters, one, Alice, furnishes him a theme he
loves to dwell upon.

"She is like you, Miss Rosa," he says. "Maybe not quite so pretty, but
just as nice, and good* and n

**Thdtf Walter,** says Miss Rosa, "now talk about something else."

But a shadow falls upon the wall outside, preceding a big, softly tread-
ing man, finely dressed, who pauses a second before the curtains and
then passes on. Presently comes the waiter with a message: "Mr. Rolfe

"Tell Rolfe I'm engaged."

"I don't know why it is," says Goodall, of Memphis, <cbut I don't feel
as bad as I did. An hour ago I wanted to die, but since I've met you,
Miss Rosa, I'd like so much to live.**

A FOG IN SANTONE 997

The young womaa whirls around the table, lays an arm behind his
neck and kisses him on the cheek.

"You must, dear boy," she says. "I know what was the matter. It was
the miserable foggy weather that has lowered your spirit and mine too —
a little. But look, now."

With a little spring she has drawn back the curtains. A window is in
the wall opposite, and lo! the mist is cleared away. The indulgent anoon
is out again, revoyaging the plumbless sky. Roof and parapet and spire
are softly pearl enamelled. Twice, thrice the retrieved river flashes back,
between the houses, the light of the firmament A tonic day will dawn,
sweet and prosperous.

"Talk of death when the world is so beautiful I" says Miss Rosa, laying
her hand on his shoulder. "Do something to please me, Waken Go home
to your rest and say: CI mean to get better,' and do it**

"If you ask it," says the boy, with a smile, "I wilL"

The waiter brings full glasses. Did they ring? No; but it is well. He
may leave them. A farewell glass. Miss Rosa says: "To your better health,
Walter." He says: "To our next meeting."

His eyes look no longer into the void, but gaze upon the antithesis of
death. His foot is set in an undiscovered country to-night He is obedient,
ready to go. "Good-night," she says.

"I never kissed a girl before," he confesses, "except my sisters."

"You didn't this time," she laughs, "I kissed you— good-night"

"When shall I see you again?" he persists.

c*You promised me to go home," she frowns, "and get well. Perhaps
we shall meet again soon. Good-night." He hesitates, his hat in hand. She
smiles broadly and kisses htm once more upon the forehead. She watches
him far down the aisle, then sits again at the table.

The shadow falls once more against the walL This time the big, softly
stepping man parts the curtains and looks in. Miss Rosa's eyes meet his
and for half a minute they remain thus, silent, fighting a battle with that
king of weapons. Presently the big man drops the curtains and passes on.

The orchestra ceases playing suddenly, and an important voice can be
heard loudly talking in one of the boxes farther down the aisle. No doubt
some citizen entertains there some vsitor to the town, and Miss Rosa
leans back in her ch?ir and smiles at some of the words she catches:

"Purest atmosphere — in the world — litmus paper all long — nothing
hurtful— our city—nothing but pure ozone."

The waiter returns for the tray and glasses. As he enters, the girl
crushes a little empty pasteboard box in her hand and throws it in a
corner. She is stirring something in her glass with her hatpin,

"Why, Miss Rosa," says the waiter with the civil familiarity he uses—
"putting salt in your beer this early in the night!"

BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

THE FRIENDLY CALL

When I used to sell hardware in the West, I often "made" a little town
called Saltillo, in Colorado. I was always certain of securing a small or a
larger order from Simon Bell, who kept a general store there. Bell was
one of those six-foot, low-voiced products, formed from a union of the
West and the South. I liked him. To look at him you would think he
should be robbing stage coaches or juggling gold mines with both hands;
but he would sell you a paper of tacks or a spool of thread, with ten times
more patience and courtesy than any saleslady in a city department store.

1 had a twofold object' in my last visit to Saltillo. One was to sell a
bill of goods; the other to advise Bell of a chance that I knew of by which
I was certain he could make a small fortune.

In Mountain City, a town on the Union Pacific, five times larger than
Saltillo, a mercantile firm was about to go to the wall It had a lively
and growing custom, but was on the edge of dissolution and ruin. Mis-
management and the gambling habits of one of the partners explained it.
The condition of the firm was not yet public property. I had my knowl-
edge of it from a private source. I knew that, if the ready cash were
offered, the stock and good will could be bought for about one fourth
their value.

On arriving in Saltillo I went to Bell's store. He nodded to me, smiled
his broad, lingering smile, went on leisurely selling some candy to a little
girl, then came around the counter and shook hands.

"Well,** he said (his invariably preliminary jocosity at every call I
made), **I suppose you are out here making kodak pictures of the moun-
tains. It's the wrong time of the year to buy any hardware, of course."

I told Bell about the bargain in Mountain City. If he wanted to take
advantage of it, I would rather have missed a sale than have him over-
stocked in Saltilfo.

"It sounds good/' he said, with enthusiasm. "Pd like to branch out and
do a bigger bminess, and I'm obliged to you for mentioning it. But — well,
you come and stay at my house to-night and I'll think about it."

It was thcis after sundown and time for the larger stores in Saltillo to
close. The clerks in Bell's put away their books, whirled the combination
of the safe, put on their coats and hats and left for their homes. Bell
padlocked the big, double wooden front doors, and we stood, for a mo-
ment, breathing the keen; fresh mountain air coming across the foothills.

A big man walked down the street and stopped in front of the high
porch of the store. His long, black moustache, black eyebrows, and curly
black hair contrasted queerly with his light, pink complexion, which

THE FRIENDLY CALL 999

belonged, by rights, to a blonde. He was about forty, and wore a white
vest, a white hat, a watch chain made of five-dollar gold pieces linked
together, and a rather well-fitting two-piece gray suit of the cut that col-
lege boys of eighteen are wont to affect. He glanced at me distrustfully,
and then at Bell with coldness and, I thought, something of enmity in
his expression.

"Well," asked Bell, as if he were addressing a stranger, "did you fix up
that matter?"

"Did I!" the man answered, in a resentful tone. "What do you sup-
pose I've been here two weeks for? The business is to be settled tonight.
Does that suit you, or have you got something to kick about?"

"It's all right," said Bell. "I knew you'd do it"

"Of course you did," said the magnificent stranger. "Haven't I done
it before?"

"You have," admitted Bell. "And so have I. How do you find it at the
hotel?"

"Rocky grub. But I ain't kicking. Say — can you give me any pointers
about managing that — affair? It's my first deal in that line of business,
you know."

"No, I can't," answered Bell, after some thought. "I've tried all kinds
of ways. You'll have to try some of your own."

"Tried soft soap?"

"Barrels of it."

"Tried a saddle girth with a buckle on the end of it?"

"Never none. Started to once; and here's what I got."

Bell held out his right hand. Even in the deepening twilight I could
see on the back of it a long, white scar, that might have been made by a
claw or a knife or some sharp-edged tool.

"Oh, well,*' said the florid man, carelessly, "111 know what to do later
on."

He walked away without another word. When he had gone ten steps
he turned and called to Bell:

"You keep well out of the way when the goods are delivered, so there
won't be any hitch in the business."

"All right," answered Bell, "I'll attend to my end of the line."

This talk was scarcely clear in its meaning to me; but as it did not
concern me, I did not let it weigh upon my mind. But the singularity of
the other man's appearance lingered with me for a while; and as we
walked toward Bell's house I remarked to him:

*Tour customer seems to be a surly kind of fellow — not one that you'd
like to be snowed in with in a camp on a hunting trip."

"He is that," assented Bell, heartily. "He reminds me of a rattlesnake
that's been poisoned by the bite of a tarantula."

"He doesn't look like a citizen of SaltiUo," I went on.

1000 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"No,*1 said Bell, "he lives in Sacramento. He's down here on a little
business trip. His name is George Ringo, and he's been my best friend
—in fact, the only friend I ever had—for twenty years."

I was too surprised to make any further comment.

Bell lived in a comfortable, plain, square, two-story white house on the
edge of the little town, I waited in the parlor— a room depressingly gen-
teel—furnished with red plush, straw matting, looped-up lace curtains,
and a glass case large enough to contain a mummy, full of mineral speci-
mens.

While I waited I heard, upstairs, that unmistakable sound instantly
recognized the world over— a bickering woman's voice, rising as her an-
ger and fury grew. I could hear, between the gusts, the temperate rumble
of Bell's tones, striving to oil the trouble waters.

The storm subsided soon; but not before I had heard the woman say,
in a lower, concentrated tone, rather more carrying than her high-pitched
railings: "This is the last time. I tell you — the last time. Oh, you will
understand."

The household seemed to consist of only Bell and his wife and a ser-
vant or two. I was introduced to Mrs. Bell at supper.

At first sight she seemed to be a handsome woman, but I soon per-
ceived that her charm had been spoiled. An uncontrolled petulance, I
thought, and emotional egotism, an absence of poise and a habitual dis-
satisfaction had marred her womanhood. During the meal, she showed
that fake gayety, spurious kindliness and reactionary softness that mark
the woman addicted to tantrums. Withal, she was a woman who might
be attractive to many men.

After supper, Bell and I took our chairs outside, set them on the grass
in the moonlight and smoked. The full moon is a witch. In her light,
truthful men dig up for you nuggets of purer gold; while liars squeeze
out brighter colors from the tubes of their invention. I saw Bell's broad,
stow smile come out upon his face and linger there.

**I reckon you think George and me are a funny kind of friends," he
said. *The fact is we never did take much interest in each other's com-
pany. But his idea and miae, of what a friend should be, was always
synonymous and we lived up to it, strict, all these years. Now, I'll give
you an idea of what our idea is.

"A man don't need but one friend. The fellow who drinks your liquor
and hangs around you, slapping you on the back and taking up your
time, telling you how much he likes you, ain't a friend, even if you did
play marbks at school aod fish in the same creek with him. As long as
you don't need a friend we of that kind may answer. But a friend, to my
mind, is one you can deal with on a strict reciprocity basis like me and
George have always done,
"A good many years ago, him and me was connected in a number of

THE FRIENDLY CALL 1001

ways. We put our capital together and run a line of freight wagons in
New Mexico, and we mined some and gambled a few. And then, we got
into trouble of one or two kinds; and I reckon that got us on a better un-
derstandable basis than anything else did, unless it was the fact that we
never had much personal use for each other's ways. George is the vainest
man I ever see, and the biggest brag. He could blow the biggest geyser
in the Yosemite valley back into its hole with one whisper. I am a quiet
man, and fond of studiousness and thought. The more we used to see
each other, personally, the less we seemed to like to be together. If he
ever had slapped me on the back and snivelled over me like I've seen
men do to what they called their friends, I know Fd have had a rough-
and-tumble with him on the spot. Same way with George. He hated my
ways as bad as I did his. When we were mining, we lived in separate
tents, so as not to intrude our obnoxiousness on each other.

"But after a long time, we begun to know each of us could depend on
the other when we were in a pinch, up to his last dollar, word of honor
or perjury, bullet, or drop of blood we had in the world. We never even
spoke of it to each other, because that would have spoiled it. But we
tried it out, time after time, until we came to know. I've grabbed my hat
and jumped a freight and rode 200 miles to identify him when he was
about to be hung by mistake, in Idaho, for a train robber. Once, I laid
sick of typhoid in a tent in Texas, without a dollar or a change of clothes,
and sent for George in Boise City. He came on the next train. The first
thing he did before speaking to me, was to hang up a little looking glass
on the side of the tent and curl his moustache and rub some hair dye on
his head. His hair is naturally a light reddish. Then he gave me the most
scientific cussing I ever had, and took off his coat

" 'If you wasn't a Moses-meek little Mary's lamb, you wouldn't have
been took down this way,* says he. 'Haven't you got gumption enough
not to drink swamp water or fall down and scream whenever you have a
little colic or feel a mosquito bite you?5 He made me a little mad.

"'You've got the bedside manners of a Piute medicine man,* says I.
'And I wish you'd go away and let me die a natural death. I'm sorry I
sent for you/

" I've a mind to,' says George, cfor nobody cares whether you live or
die. But now I've been tricked into coining, I might as well stay until
this little attack of indigestion or nettle rash or whatever it is, passes away.'

"Two weeks afterward, when I was beginning to get around again, the
doctor laughed and said he was sure that my friend's keeping me mad all
the time did more than his drugs to cure me.

"So that's the way George and me was friends. There wasn't any senti-
ment about it — it was just give and take, and each of us knew that the
other was ready for the call at any time.

"I remember, once, I played a sort of joke on George, just to try him.

1002 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

I felt a little mean about it afterward, because I never ought to have
doubted he'd do it.

"We was both living in a little town in the San Luis valley, running
some flocks of sheep and a few cattle. We were partners, but, as usual, we
didn't live together. I had an old aunt, out from the East, visiting for the
summer, so I rented a little cottage. She soon had a couple of cows and
some pigs and chickens to make the place look like home. George lived
alone in a little cabin half a mile out of town.

"One day a calf that we had, died. That night I broke its bones,
dumped it into a coarse sack and tied it up with wire. I put on an old
shirt, tore a sleeve 'most out of it, and the collar half off, tangled up my
hair, put some red ink on my hands and splashed some of it over my shirt
and face. I must have looked like I'd been having the fight of my life. I
put the sack in a wagon and drove out to George's cabin. When I halloed,
he come out in a yellow dressing-gown, a Turkish cap, and patent leather
shoes. George always was a great dresser.

"I dumped the bundle to the ground.

" 'Sh-shr says I, kind of wild in my way. Take that and bury it, George,
out somewhere behind your house — bury it just like it is. And don *

"'Don't get excited/ says George. 'And for the Lord's sake go and
wash your hands and face and put on a clean shirt.'

*4And he lights his pipe, while I drove away at a gallop. The next morn-
ing he drops around to our cottage, where my aunt was fiddling with her
flowers and truck in the front yard. He bends himself and bows and
makes compliments as he could do, when so disposed, and begs a rose
bush from her, saying he had turned up a little land back of his cabin,
and wanted to plant something on it by way of usefulness and orna-
ment. So my aunt, flattered, pulls up one of her biggest by the roots and
gives it to him. Afterward I see it growing where he planted it, in a
place where the grass had been cleared off and the dirt levelled. But
neither George nor me ever spoke of it to each other again."

The moon rose higher, possibly drawing water from the sea, pixies
from their dells, and certainly more confidences from Simms Bell, the
friend of a friend.

**Thenc come a time, not long afterward/* he went on, "when I was
abfc to do a good turn for George Ringo. George had made a little pile of
money in beeves and he was up in Denver, and he showed up when I saw
him, wearing deer-skin vests, yellow shoes, clothes like the awnings in
front of drug stores, and his hair dyed so blue that it looked black in the
dark. He wrote me to come up there, quick— that he needed me, and to
bring the best outfit of cfothes I had. I had 'em on when I got the letter,
so I left on the next train. George was H

Bell stopped for half a minute, listening intently.

"I thought I heard a team coming down the road/' he explained.

THE FRIENDLY CALL 1003

"George was at a summer resort on a lake near Denver and was putting
on as many airs as he knew how. He had rented a little two-room cottage,
and had a Chihuahua dog and a hammock and eight different kinds of
walking sticks.

" 'Simms,' he says to me, 'there's a widow woman here that's petering
the soul out of me with her intentions. I can't get out of her way. It ain't
that she ain't handsome and agreeable, in a sort of style, but her atten-
tions is serious, and I ain't ready for to marry nobody and settle down,
I can't go to no festivity nor sit on the hotel piazza or mix in any of the
society round-ups, but what she cuts me out of the herd and puts her
daily brand on me. I like this here place/ goes on George, 'and I'm mak-
ing a hit here in the most censorious circles, so I don't want to have to run
away from it. So I sent for you.'

" 'What do you want me to do?' I asks George.

" 'Why,' says he, 'I want you to head her off. I want you to cut me out.
I want you to come to the rescue. Suppose you seen a wildcat about for
to eat me, what would you do?'

" 'Go for it,' says I.

" 'Correct,' says George. "Then go for this Mrs. De Clinton the same.*

"'How am I to do it?' I asks. 'By force and awfulness or in some
gender and less lurid manner?'

" 'Court her,' George says, 'get her off my trail. Feed her. Take her out
in boats. Hang around her and stick to her. Get her mashed on you if you
can. Some women are pretty big fools. Who knows but what she might
take a fancy to you.'

" 'Had you ever thought,' I asks, 'of repressing your fatal fascinations
in her presence; of squeezing a harsh note in the melody of your siren
voice, of veiling your beauty— in other words, of giving her the bounce
yourself?'

"George sees no essence of sarcasm in my remark. He twists his mous-
tache and looks at the points of his shoes.

" 'Well, Simms,* he said, 'you know how I am about the ladies. I can't
hurt none of their feelings. I'm by nature polite and esteemful of their
intents and purposes. This Mrs. De Clinton don't appear to be the suita-
ble sort for me. Besides, I ain't a marrying man by all means/

" 'All right,' said I, I'll do the best I can in the case.'

"So I bought a new outfit of clothes and a book on etiquette and made
a dead set for Mrs. De Clinton, She was a fine-looking woman, cheerful
and gay. At first, I almost had to hobble her to keep her from loping
around at George's heels; but finally I got her so she seemed glad to go
riding with me and sailing on the lake; and she seemed real hurt on the
mornings when I forgot to send her a bunch of flowers. Still, I didn't like
the way she looked at George, sometimes, out of the corner of her eye.
George was having a fine time now, going with the whole bunch just as

1004 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

he pleased. Yes'm," continued Bell, "she certainly was a fine-looking
woman at that time. She's changed some since, as you might have no-
ticed at the supper table."

"What!" I exclaimed.

"I married Mrs. De Clinton;' went on Bell. "One evening while we
were up at the lake. When I told George about it, he opened his mouth
and I thought he was going to break our traditions and say something
grateful, but he swallowed it back.

" 'All right/ says he, playing with his dog. 'I hope you won't have too
much trouble. Myself, I'm not never going to marry.'

"That was three years ago," said Bell. "We came here to live. For a
year we got along medium fine. And then everything changed. For two
years I've been having something that rhymes first-class with my name.
You heard the row upstairs this evening? That was a merry welcome
compared to the usual average. She's tired of me and of this little town
life and she rages all day, like a panther in a cage. I stood it until two
weeks ago and then I had to send out The Call. I located George In Sac-
ramento. He started the day he got my wire."

Mrs. Bell came out of the house swiftly toward us. Some strong excite-
ment or anxiety seemed to possess her, but she smiled a faint hostess
smile, and tried to keep her voice calm.

"The dew is falling," she said, "and it's growing rather late. Wouldn't
you gentlemen rather come into the house?"

Bell took some cigars from his pocket and answered : "It's most too fine
a night to turn in yet. I think Mr. Ames and I will walk out along the
road a mile or so and have another smoke. I want to talk with him about
some goods that I want to buy."

uUp the road or down the road?'* asked Mrs. BelL

"Down," said Bell.

I thought she breathed a sigh of relief.

When we had gone a hundred yards and the house became concealed
by trees, Bell guided me into the thick grove that lined the road and back
through them toward the house again* We stopped within twenty yards of
the house, concealed by the dark shadows. I wondered at this maneuver.
And then I heard in the distance coming down the road beyond the
house, the regular hoofbeats of a team of horses. Bell held his watch in a
ray of tnooalighk

**On time, within a minute,** he said. "That's George's way."

The team sfowtd up as it drew near the house and stopped in a patch
of black sbtacbws. We saw the figure of a woman carrying a heavy valise
move swiftly from the other sick of the house, and hurry to the waiting
vehicle. Then it rolled away briskly in the direction from which it had
come.

I looked at Bell inquiringly* I suppose. I certainly asked him no question.

A DINNER AT 1005

"She's running away with George," said Bell, simply. "He's kept me
posted about the progress of the scheme all along. She'll get a divorce in
six months and then George will marry her. He never helps anybody
halfway. It's all arranged between them."

I began to wonder what friendship was, after all.

When we went into the house, Bell began to talk easily on other sub-
jects; and I took his cue. By and by the big chance to buy out the business
in Mountain City came back to my mind and I began to urge it upon
him. Now that he was free, it would be easier for him to make the move;
and he was sure of a splendid bargain.

Bell was silent for some minutes, but when I looked at him I fancied
that he was thinking of something else — that he was not considering the
project.

"Why, no, Mr. Ames," he said, after a while, "I can't make that deal.
I'm awful thankful to you, though, for telling me about it. But I've got
to stay here. I can't go to Mountain City."

"Why?" I asked.

"Missis Bell," he replied, "won't live in Mountain City. She hates the
place and wouldn't go there. I've got to keep right on here in Saltillo."

"Mrs. Bell!" I exclaimed, too puzzled to conjecture what he meant

"I ought to explain," said Bell. "I know George and I know Mrs. Bell.
He's impatient in his ways. He can't stand things that fret him, long, like
I can. Six months, I give them — six months of married life, and there'll
be another disunion. Mrs. Bell will come back to me. There's no other
place for her to go. I've got to stay here and wait At the end of six
months, I'll have to grab a satchel and catch the first train. For George
will be sending out The Call."

A DINNER AT-

The Adventures of an Author with His Own Hera

All that day — in fact from the moment of his creation-— Van Sweller had
conducted himself fairly well in my eyes. Of course I had had to make
many concessions; but in return he had been no less considerate. Once or
twice we had had sharp, brief contentions over certain points of behavior;
but, prevailingly, give and take had been our rule.

His morning toilet provoked our first tilt. Van Sweller went about it
confidently.

"The usual thing, I suppose, old chap," he said, with a smile and a

1 See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily newspapers.

1006 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

yawn. UI ring for a.b. and s., and then I have my tub. I splash a good deal
in the water, of course. You are aware that there are two ways in which
I can receive Tommy Carmichael when he looks in to have a chat about
polo. I can talk to him through the bathroom door, or I can be picking
at a grilled bone which my man has brought in. Which would you pre-
fer?"

I smiled with diabolic satisfaction at his coming discomfiture.

"Neither," I said. "You will make your appearance on the scene when
a gentleman should—after you are fully dressed, which indubitably pri-
vate function shall take place behind closed doors. And I will feel in-
debted to you if, after you do appear, your deportment and manners are
such that it will not be 'necessary to inform the public, in order to appease
its apprehension, that you have taken a bath."

Van Sweller slightly elevated his brows.

"Oh, very well," he said, a trifle piqued. "I rather imagine it concerns
you more than it does me. Cut the 'tub' by all means, if you think best.
But it has been the usual thing, you know."

This was my victory; but after Van Sweller emerged from his apart-
ments in the "Beaujclie" I was vanquished in a dozen small but well-
contested skirmishes. I allowed him a cigar; but routed him on the ques-
tion of naming its brand. But he worsted me when I objected to giving
him a "coat unmistakably English in its cut." I allowed him to "stroll
down Broadway," and even permitted "passers by" (God knows there's
nowhere to pass but by) to "turn their heads and gaze with evident ad-
miration at his erect figure." I demeaned myself, and, as a barber, gave
him a "smooth, dark face with its keen, frank eye, and firm jaw."

Later on he looked in at the club and saw Freddy Vavasour, polo
team captain, dawdling over grilled bone No. i.

"Dear old boy," began Van Sweller; but in an instant I had seized him
by the collar and dragged him aside with the scantiest courtesy.

"For heaven's sake talk like a man," I said, sternly. "Do you think it is
manly to use those mushy and inane forms of address? That man is
neither dear nor old nor a boy."

To my surprise Van Sweller turned upon me a look of frank pleasure.

"I am glad to hear you say that," he said, heartily. "I used those words
because I have been forced to say them so often. They really are con-
temptible* Thanks for correcting me, dear old boy."

Still I must admit that Van Sweller's conduct in the park that morning
was almost without flaw. The courage, the dash, the modesty, the skill,
the fidelity that he displayed atoned foe everything.

This is the way the story runs.

Van Sweller has beea a gentleman member of the "Rugged Riders,"
the company that made a war with a foreign country famous. Among
his comrades was Lawrence OTlooa, a man whom Van Sweller liked. A

A DINNER AT 1007

strange thing — and a hazardous one in fiction — was that Van Sweller and
O'Roon resembled each other mightily in face, form, and general appear-
ance. After the war Van Sweller pulled wires, and O'Roon was made a
mounted policeman.

Now, one night in New York there are commemorations and libations
by old comrades, and in the morning, Mounted Policeman O'Roon, un-
used to potent liquids — another premise hazardous in fiction— finds the
earth bucking and bounding like a bronco, with no stirrup into which
he may insert foot and save his honor and his badge.

Noblesse oblige? Surely. So out along the driveways and bridle paths
trots Hudson Van Sweller in the uniform of his incapacitated comrade,
as like unto him as one French pea is unto a petit pots.

It is, of course, jolly larks for Van Sweller, who has wealth and social
position enough for him to masquerade safely even as a police commis-
sioner doing his duty, if he wished to do so. But society, not given to
scanning the countenances of mounted policemen, sees nothing unusual
in the officer on the beat.

And then comes the runaway.

That is a fine scene — the swaying victoria, the impetuous, daft horses
plunging through the line of scattering vehicles, the driver stupidly hold-
ing his broken reins, and the ivory-white face of Amy Ffolliott, as she
clings desperately with each slender hand. Fear has come and gone: it has
left her expression pensive and just a little pleading, for life is not so bitter.

And then the clatter and swoop of Mounted Policeman Van Sweller!
Oh, it was — but the story has not yet been printed. When it is you shall
learn how he sent his bay like a bullet after the imperilled victoria. A
Crichton, a Croesus, and a Centaur in one, he hurls the invincible com-
bination into the chase.

When the story is printed you will admire the breathless scene where
Van Sweller checks the headlong team. And then he looks into Amy Ffol-
liott's eyes and sees two things — the possibilities of a happiness he has long
sought, and a nascent promise of it. He is unknown to her; but he stands
in her sight, illuminated by the hero's potent glory, she his and he hers
by all the golden, fond, unreasonable laws of love and light literature.

Ay, that is a rich moment. And it will stir you to find Van Sweller in
that fruitful nick of time thinking of his comrade O'Roon, who is cursing
his gyrating bed and incapable legs in an unsteady room in a West Side
hotel while Van Sweller holds his badge and his honor.

Van Sweller hears Miss Ffolliott's voice tfarillingly asking the name of
her preserver. If Hudson Van Sweller, in policeman's uniform, has saved
the life of palpitating beauty in the park — where is Mounted Policeman
O'Roon, in whose territory the deed is done? How quickly by a word can
the hero reveal himself, thus discarding his masquerade of ineligibility
and doubling the romance! But there is his friend 1

IOCS BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Van Sweiler touches his cap. "It's nothing, Miss," he says, sturdily;
"that's what we arc paid for— to do our duty." And away he rides. But
the story does not end there.

As I 'have said, Van Swcller carried off the park scene to my decided
satisfaction. Even to me he was a hero when he foreswore, for the sake of
his friend, the romantic promise of his adventure. It was later in the day,
amongst the more exacting conventions that encompass the society hero,
when we had our liveliest disagreement. At noon he went to O'Roon's
room and found him far enough recovered to return to his post, which
he at once did.

At about six o'clock in the afternoon Van Sweiler fingered his watch,
and flashed at me a brief look full of such shrewd cunning that I sus-
pected him at once.

"Time to dress for dinner, old man," he said, with exaggerated care-
lessness.

"Very well," I answered, without giving him a clue to my suspicions;
"I will go with you to your rooms and see that you do the thing properly.
I suppose that every author must be a valet to his own hero."

He affected cheerful acceptance of my somewhat officious proposal to
accompany him. I could see that he was annoyed by it, and that fact
fastened deeper in my mind the conviction that he was meditating some
act of treachery.

When he had reached his apartments he said to me, with a too patron-
izing air: "There are, as you perhaps know, quite a number of little dis-
tinguishing touches to be had out of the dressing process. Some writers
rely almost wholly upon them. I suppose that I am to ring for my man,
and that he is to enter noiselessly, with an expressionless countenance."

"He may enter," I said, with decision, "and only enter. Valets do not
usually enter a room shouting college songs or with St. Vitus's dance
in their faces; so the contrary may be assumed without fatuous or gratui-
tous asseveration."

**I must ask you to pardon me/* continued Van Sweiler, gracefully,
"for annoying you with questions, but some of your methods are a little
new to me. Shall I don a full-dress suit with an immaculate white tie — or
is there aiK>ther tradition to be upset?"

"You will wear," I replied, "evening dress, such as a gentleman wears.
If it is full, your tailor should be responsible for its bagginess. And I will
kave it to whatever erudition you are supposed to possess whether a white
tie is rendered any whiter by being immaculate. And I will leave it to the
consciences of you and your man whether a tie that is not white, and
therefore not immaculate, could possibly form any part of a gentleman's
evening dress. If not, then the perfect tie is included and understood in
the term "dress,' and its expressed addition predicates either a redundancy
of speech or the spectacle of a man weariag two ties at once."

A DINNER AT

With this mild but deserved rebuke I left Van Sweller in his dressing-
room and waited for him in his library.

About an hour later his valet came out, and I heard him telephone for
an electric cab. Then out came Van Sweller, smiling, but with that sly,
secretive design in his eye that was puzzling me.

"I believe," he said, easily, as he smoothed a glove, "that I will drop in
at l for dinner.'*

I sprang up, angrily, at his words. This, then, was the paltry trick he
had been scheming to play upon me. I faced him with a look so grim that
even his patrician poise was flustered.

"You will never do so/* I exclaimed, "with my permission. What kind
of a return is this/* I continued, hotly, "for the favors I have granted you?
I gave you a 'Van' to your name when I might have called you 'Perkins*
or 'Simpson.' I have humbled myself so far as to brag of your polo ponies,
your automobiles, and the iron muscles that you acquired when you were
stroke-oar of your Varsity eight* or 'eleven/ whichever it is. I created you
for the hero of this story; and I will not submit to having you queer it.
I have tried to make you a typical young New York gentleman of the
highest social station and breeding. You have no reason to complain of
my treatment to you. Amy Ffolliott, the girl you are to win, is a prize for
any man to be thankful for, and cannot be equalled for beauty — provided
the story is illustrated by the right artist. I do not understand why you
should try to spoil everything. I had thought you were a gentleman."

"What is it you are objecting to, old man?" asked Van Sweller, in a
surprised tone.

"To your dining at ,*" I answered. "The pleasure would be yours,

no doubt, but the responsibility would fall upon me. You intend de-
liberately to make me out a tout for a restaurant Where you dine to-night
has not the slightest connection with the thread of our story. You know
very well that the plot requires that you be in front of the Alhambra
Opera House at 11:30 where you are to rescue Miss Ffolliott a second
time as the fire engine crashes into her cab. Until that time your move-
ments are immaterial to the reader. Why can't you dine out of sight
somewhere, as many a hero does, instead of insisting upon an inapposite
and vulgar exhibition of yourself?**

"My dear fellow/* said Van Sweller, politely, but with a stubborn
tightening of his lips, "I'm sorry it doesn't please you, but there's no help
for it. Even a character in a story has rights that an author cannot ignore.

The hero of a story of New York social life must dine at l at least

once during its action."

"'Must/ " I echoed, disdainfully; "why 'must*? Who demands it?"

'*The magazine editors/* answered Van Sweller, giving me a glance o£
significant warning.

1 See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well,** in the daily newspapers.

IOIQ BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"But why?" I persisted

"To please subscribers around Kankakee, 111.," said Van Sweller, with-
out hesitation.

"How do you know these things ?" I inquired, with sudden suspicion.
"You never came into existence until this morning. You are only a char-
acter in fiction, anyway. I, myself, created you. How is it possible for you
to know anything?"

"Pardon me for referring to it," said Van Sweller, with a sympathetic
smile, "but I have been the hero of hundreds of stories of this kind."

I felt a slow flush creeping into my face,

"I thought . . ." I stammered; "I was hoping . . . that is ... Oh,
well, of course an absolutely original conception in fiction is impossible
in these days,"

"Metropolitan types," continued Van Sweller, kindly, "do not offer a
hold for much originality. I've sauntered through every story in pretty
much the same way. Now and then the women writers have made me cut
some rather strange capers, for a gentleman; but the men generally pass
me along from one to another without much change. But never yet, in any
story, have I failed to dine at .1>J

"You will fail this time," I said, emphatically.

"Perhaps so," admitted Van Sweller, looking out of the window into
the street below, "but if so it will be for the first time. The authors all
send me there. I fancy that many of them would have liked to accom-
pany me, but for the little matter of the expense."

"I say I will be touting for no restaurant," I repeated, loudly. C£You are
subject to my will, and I declare that you shall not appear on record this
evening until the time arrives for you to rescue Miss Ffolliott again. If
the reading public cannot conceive that you have dined during that inter-
val at some one of the thousands of establishments provided for ttiat pur-
pose that do not receive literary advertisement it may suppose, for aught
I care, that you have gone fasting.'*

**Thank you," said Van Sweller, rather coolly, "you are hardly courte-
ous. But take care! it is at your own risk that you attempt to disregard a
fundamental principle in metropolitan fiction — one that is dear alike to
author and reader. I shall, of course, attend to my duty when it comes
time to rescue your heroine; but I warn you that it will be your loss if
you fail to send me to-night to dine at .*"

"I wiH take the consequences if there are to be any," I replied. "I am
not yet come to be sandwich man for an eating-house."

I walked over to a table where I had left my cane and gloves. I heard
the whirr of the alarm in the cab below and I turned quickly. Van
Sweller was gone,

1 See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily newspapers.

A DINNER AT IOII

I rushed down the stairs and out to the curb. An empty hansom was
just passing. I hailed the driver excitedly.

"See that auto cab halfway down the block?" I shouted. "Follow it.
Don't lose sight of it for an instant, and I will give you two dollars!"

If I only had been one of the characters in my story instead of myself I
could easily have offered $10 or $25 or even f 100* But $2 was all I felt
justified in expending, with fiction at its present rates.

The cab driver, instead of lashing his animal into a foam, proceeded at
a deliberate trot that suggested a by-the-hour arrangement.

But I suspected Van Sweller *s design; and when we lost sight of his cab
I ordered my driver to proceed at once to .*

I found Van Sweller at a table under a palm, just glancing over the
menu, with a hopeful waiter hovering at his elbow.

"Come with me,'* I said, inexorably. "You will not give me the slip
again. Under my eye you shall remain until n 130."

Van Sweller countermanded the order for his dinner, and rose to
accompany me. He could scarcely do less. A fictitious character is but
poorly equipped for resisting a hungry but live author who comes to drag
him forth from a restaurant. All he said was: "You were just in time;
but I think you are making a mistake. You cannot afford to ignore the
wishes of the great reading public.**

I took Van Sweller to my own rooms — to my room. He had never seen
anything like it before.

"Sit on that trunk,** I said to him, "while I observe whether the land-
lady is stalking us. If she is not, I will get things at a delicatessen store
below, and cook something for you in a pan over the gas jet. It will not
be so bad. Of course nothing of this will appear in the story."

"Jove! old man!*' said Van Sweller, looking about him with interest,
"this is a jolly little closet you live in! Where the devil do you sleep? — O
that pulls down! And I say — what is this under the corner of the carpet?
— Oh, a frying pan! I see — clever idea! Fancy cooking over the gas! What
larks it will be!"

"Think of anything you could eat?" I asked; "try a chop, or what?"

"Anything," said Van Sweller, enthusiastically, "except a grilled bone,'*

Two weeks afterward the postman brought me a large fat envelope. I
opened it, and took out something that I had seen before, and this type-
written letter from a magazine that encourages society fiction:

Your short story, "The Badge o£ Policeman O'Roon," is herewith re-
turned.

We are sorry that it has been unfavorably passed upon; but it seems to
lack in some of the essential requirements of our publication.

1 Sec advertising column, "Where to Dine WeO," in the daily newspapers.

1012 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

The story is splendidly constructed; its style is strong and inimitable,
and its action and character-drawing deserve the highest praise. As a story
per se it has merit beyond anything that we have read for some time. But,
as we have said, it fails to come up to some of the standards we have set.

Could you not re-write the story, and inject into it the social atmos-
phere, and return it to us for further consideration? It is suggested to you
that you have the hero, Van Sweller, drop in for luncheon or dinner once

or twice at l or at the * which will be in line with the changes

desired.

Very truly yours,

The Editors

SOUND AND FURY

PERSONS OF THE DRAMA Mr. Pennc An Author

Miss Lore An Amanuensis
SCENE Workroom of Mr. Penne's popular novel factory.

MR. PENNE Good morning, Miss Lore. Glad to see you so prompt. We
should finish that June installment for the Epoch to-day. Leverett is crowd-
ing me for it. Are you quite ready? We will resume where we left off yes-
terday. (Dictates.) "Kate, with a sigh, rose from his knees, and "

MISS LORE Excuse me; you mean "rose from her knees," instead of
"his," don't you?

MR. PENNE Er— no — "his," if you please. It is the love scene in the
garden. (Dictates.) "Rose from his knees where, blushing with youth's
bewitching coyness, she had rested for a moment after Cortland had de-
clared his love. The hour was one of supreme and tender joy. When Kate
— scene that Cortland never "

MISS LORE Excuse me; but wouldn't it be more grammatical to say
"when Kate saw" instead of "seen"?

MR. PENNB The context will explain. (Dictates.) "When Kate— scene
that Cortland never forgot — came tripping across the lawn it seemed to
him the fairest sight that earth had ever offered to his gaze,"

HISS LO&E Oh!

ML PENNE (dictates) "Kate had abandoned herself to the joy of her
newfound love so completely that no shadow of her former grief was cast
upon it. Cortland, with his arm firmly entwined about her waist, knew
nothing of her sighs "

MISS LORE Goodness! If he couldn't tell her size with his arm around

MR. PENNE (trotming) "Of her sighs and tears of the previous night/*
1 See advertising column, "Where to Dine Well," in the daily newspapers.

SOUND AND FURY 1013

MISS LORE Oh!

MR. PENNE (dictates) "To Cortland the chief charm of this girl was
her look of innocence and unworldliness. Never had nun "

MISS LORE How about changing that to "never had any"?

MR. PENNE (emphatically) "Never had nun in cloistered cell a face
more sweet and pure."

MISS LORE Oh!

MR. PENNE (dictates) "But now Kate must hasten back to the house
lest her absence be discovered. After a fond farewell she turned and sped
lightly away, Cortland's gaze followed her. He watched her rise "

MISS LORE Excuse me, Mr. Penne; but how could he watch her eyes
while her back was turned toward him?

MR. PENNE (with extreme politeness) Possibly you would gather my
meaning more intelligently if you would wait for the conclusion of the
sentence. (Dictates.) "Watched her rise as gracefully as a fawn as she
mounted the eastern terrace."

MISS LORE Oh!

MR. PENNE (dictates) "And yet Cortland's position was so far above
that of this rustic maiden that he dreaded to consider the social upheaval
that would ensue should he marry her. In no uncertain tones the tradi-
tional voices of his caste and world cried out loudly to him to let her go.
What should follow "

MISS LORE (looking up with a start) I'm sure I can't say, Mr. Penne.
Unless (with a giggle) you would want to add "Gallegher."

MR. PENNE (coldly) Pardon me. I was not seeking to impose upon you
the task of a collaborator. Kindly consider the question as a part of the
text.

MISS LORE Oh!

MR. PENNE (dictates) "On one side was love and Kate; on the other
side his heritage of social position and family pride. Would love win?
Love, that the poets tell us will last forever!" (Perceives that Miss Lore
loo\s fatigued, and loo\s at his watch.) That's a good long stretch. Per-
haps we'd better knock off a bit.

(Miss Lore does not reply.)

MR. PENNE I said, Miss Lore, we've been at it quite a long time—
wouldn't you like to knock off for a while?

MISS LORE Oh! Were you addressing me before? I put what you said
down. I thought it belonged in the story. It seemed to fit in all right. Oh,
no; I'm not tired.

MR. PENNE Very well, then, we will continue. (Dictates?) "In spite of
these qualms and doubts, Cortland was a happy man. That night at the
club he silently toasted Kate's bright eyes in a bumper of the rarest
vintage. Afterward he set out for a stroll with, as Kate on "

ioi4 BOOK: vm ROLLING STONES

MISS LORE Excuse me, Mr. Penne, for venturing a suggestion; but
don't you think you might state that in a less coarse manner?

MR. PENNE (astounded) Wh-wh-1'm afraid I fail to understand you.

MISS LORE His condition. Why not say he was "full" or "intoxicated' ?
It would sound much more elegant than the way you express it. ,

MR. PENNE (still darkly wandering) Will you kindly point out, Miss
Lore, where I have intimated that Cortland was "full," if you prefer that

word? § \ T • • u t,

MISS LORE (calmly consulting her stenographic notes) It is right here,
word for word. (Reads.) "Afterwards he set out for a stroll with a skate

on.

MR. PENXE (with peculiar emphasis) Ah! And now will you kindly
take down the expurgated phrase? (Dictates.) "Afterward he set out for
a stroll with, as Kate on one occasion had fancifully told him, her spirit
leaning upon his arm."

MISS LORE Oh!

MR. PENNE (dictates) Chapter thirty-four. Heading— "What Kate
Found in the Garden." "That fragrant summer morning brought gracious
tasks to all The bees were at the honeysuckle blossoms on the porch.
Kate, singing a little song, was training the riotous branches of her favor-
ite woodbine. The sun, himself, had rows "

MISS LORE Shall I say "had risen"?

MR. PENNE (t/ery slowly and with desperate deliberation) "The — sun —
himself — had — rows — of — blushing — pinks — and — hollyhocks —
and — hyacinths — waiting — that — he — might — dry — their — dew-
drenched — cups,9'

MISS LORE Oh!

MR. PENNE (dictates) "The earliest trolley, scattering the birds from
its pathway like some marauding cat, brought Cordand over from Old-
port. He had forgotten his fair "

MISS LORE Hm! Wonder how he got the conductor to

MR. PENNE (very loudly) "Forgotten his fair and roseate visions of
the night in the practical light of the sober morn."

MISS urns, Oh!

MR. PINNE (dictates) "He greeted her with his usual smile and man-
tier. *Sec the waves,* he cried, pointing to the heaving waters of the sea,
'ever wooing and returning to the rock-bound shore/ 'Ready to break,*
Kate said, with "

MISS LORE My! One evening he has his arm around her, and the next
morning he's ready to break her head! Just like a man!

MR. PENNE (with suspicions cdmness) There are times, Miss Lore,

when a man becomes so far exasperated that even a woman But sup

pose we finish the sentence, (Dictates) " 'Ready to break,* Kate said, with

TICTOCQ 1015

the thrilling look of a soul-awakened woman, 'into foam and spray, de-
stroying themselves upon the shore they love so well* "

MISS LORE Oh!

MR. PENNE (dictates) "Cortland in Kate's presence heard faintly the
voice of caution. Thirty years had not cooled his ardor. It was in his power
to bestow great gifts upon this girl. He still retained the beliefs that he
had at twenty." (To Miss Lore, wearily) I think that will be enough for
the present.

MISS LORE (wisely) Well, if he had the twenty that he believed he had,
it might buy her a rather nice one.

MR. PENNE (faintly) The last sentence was my own. We will discon-
tinue for the day, Miss Lore.

MISS LORE Shall I come again to-morrow?

MR. PENNE (helpless under the spell) If you will be so good.

(Exit Miss Lore.)

ASBESTOS CURTAIN

TICTOCQ

These two farcical stories about Tictocq appeared in the Rolling
Stone. They are reprinted here with all of their local references because,
written hurriedly and for neighborly reading, they nevertheless have
an interest for the admirer of O. Henry. They were written in 1894.

The Great French Detective, in Austin — A Successful Political Intrigue

CHAPTER i It is not generally known that Tictocq, the famous French de-
tective, was in Austin last week. He registered at the Avenue Hotel under
an assumed name, and his quiet and reserved manners singled him out at
once for one not to be singled out.

No one knows why he came to Austin, but to one or two he vouchsafed
the information that his mission was an important one from the French
Government.

One report is that the French Minister of State has discovered an old
statute among the laws of the empire, resulting from a treaty between the
Emperor Charlemagne and Governor Roberts which expressly provides
for the north gate of the Capital grounds being kept open, but this is
merely a conjecture.

Last Wednesday afternoon a well-dressed gentleman knocked at the
door of Tictocq 's room in the hotel.

IOl6 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

The detective opened the door.

"Monsieur Tictocq, I believe," said the gentleman,

"You will see on the register that I sign my name Q. X. Jones," said
Tictocq, "and gentlemen would understand that I wish to be known as
such. If you do not like being referred to as no gentleman, I will give you
satisfaction any time after July ist, and fight Steve O'Donnell, John Mc-
Donald, and Ignatius Donnelly in the meantime if you desire."

"I do not mind it in the least," said the gentleman. "In fact, I am accus-
tomed to it. I am Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee,
Platform No. 2, and I have a friend in trouble. I knew you were Tictocq
from your resemblance to yourself."

"Entrez vous," said the detective.

The gentleman entered and was handed a chair.

"I am a man of few words," said Tictocq. "I will help your friend if
possible. Our countries are great friends. We have given you Lafayette
and French fried potatoes. You have given us California champagne and
— taken back Ward McAllister. State your case."

"I will be very brief," said the visitor. "In room No. 76 in this hotel
Is stopping a prominent Populist Candidate. He is alone. Last night some
one stole his socks. They cannot be found. If they are not recovered, his
party will attribute their loss to the Democracy. They will make great
capital of the burglary, although I am sure it was not a political move at
all. The socks must be recovered. You are the only man that can do it."

Tictocq bowed*

"Am I to have carte blanche to question every person connected with
the^hotel?"

uThe proprietor has already been spoken to. Everything and everybody
is at your service."

Tictocq consulted his watch.

"Come to this room to-morrow afternoon at 6 o'clock with the land-
lord, the Populist Candidate, and any other witnesses elected from both
parties, and I will return the socks."

"Biea, Monsieur; schlafen sic wohL"

"Au revoir.n

The Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee, Platform No.
2, bowed couteously and withdrew.

Tictocq sent for the bell boy.

"Did you go to room 76 last night?"

'Tes,sir."

^Who was there?"

"An old hayseed what come on the

"What did he want?"

"The bouncer."

TICTOCQ 1017

"What for?"

"To put the light out.*'

"Did you take anything while in the room?"

"No, he didn't ask me."

"What is your name?"

"Jim."

"You can go."

CHAPTER ii The drawing-rooms of one of the most magnificent private
residences in Austin are a blaze of lights. Carriages line the streets in
front, and from gate to doorway is spread a velvet carpet, on which the
delicate feet of the guests may tread.

The occasion is the entree into society of one of the fairest buds in
the City of the Violet Crown* The rooms are filled with the culture, the
beauty, the youth and fashion of society. Austin society is acknowledged
to be the wittiest, the most select, and the highest bred to be found south-
west of Kansas City.

Mrs. Rutabaga St. Vitus, the hostess, is accustomed to draw around her
a circle of talent and beauty rarely equalled anywhere. Her evenings come
nearer approaching the dignity of a salon than any occasion, except, per-
haps, a Tony Faust and Marguerite reception at the Iron Front.

Miss St. Vitus, whose advent into society's maze was heralded by such
an auspicious display of hospitality, is a slender brunette, with large,
lustrous eyes, a winning smile, and a charming ingenue manner. She
wears a china silk, cut princesse, with diamond ornaments, and a couple of
towels inserted in the back to conceal prominence of shoulder blades. She
is chatting easily and naturally on a plush-covered tete-a-tete with Harold
St. Clair, the agent for a Minneapolis pants company. Her friend and
schoolmate, Elsie Hicks, who married three drummers in one day, a
week or two before, and won a wager of two dozen bottles of Budweiser
from the handsome and talented young hack-driver, Bum Smithers, is
promenading in and out the low French windows with Ethelbert Windup,
the popular young candidate for hide inspector, whose name is familiar to
every one who reads police court reports.

Somewhere, concealed by shrubbery, a band is playing, and during
the pauses in conversation, onions can be smelt frying in the kitchen.

Happy laughter rings out from ruby lips, handsome faces grow tender
as they bend over white necks and drooping heads; timid eyes convey
things that lips dare not speak, and beneath silken bodice and broadcloth,
hearts beat time to the sweet notes of "Love's Young Dream/'

"And where have you been for some time past, you recreant cavalier?"
says Miss St. Vitus to Harold St. Clair. "Have you been worshipping at
another shrine? Are you recreant to your whilom friends? Speak, Sir
Knight, and defend yourself."

I0l8 BOOK VII! ROLLIN'G STONES

"Oh, come off," says Harold, in his deep, musical baritone; "I've been
having a devil of a tir^e fitting pants on a lot of bow-legged jays from the
cotton-patch. Got knobs on their legs, some of 'em big as gourds, and all
expect a fit. Did you ever try to measure a bow-legged— I mean—can't
you imagine what a jarn-swizzlcd time I have getting pants to fit em?
Business dull too, nobody wants 'em over three dollars."

"You witty boy/* says Miss St. Vitus. "Just as full of bon mots and
clever sayings as ever. What do you take now?"

"Oh, beer."

"Give me your arm and let's go into the drawing-room and draw a
cork. I'm chewing a little cotton myself."

Arm in arm, the handsome couple pass across the room, the cynosure
of all eyes. Luderic Hetherington, the rising and gifted night-watchman
at the Lone Star slaughter house, and Mabel Grubb, the daughter of
the millionaire owner of the Humped-back Camel saloon, are standing
under the oleanders as they go by.

"She is very beautiful," says Luderic.

"Rats," says Mabel.

A keen observer would have noted all this time the figure of a solitary
man who seemed to avoid the company but by adroit changing of his
position, and perfectly cool and self-possessed manner, avoided drawing
any special attention to himself.

The lion of the evening is Herr Professor Ludwig von Bum, the pianist.

He had been found drinking beer in a saloon on East Pecan Street by
Colonel St. Vitus about a week before, and according to the Austin cus-
tom in such cases, was invited home by the colonel, and the next day
accepted into society, with large music classes at his service.

Professor von Bum is playing the lovely symphony in G minor from
Beethoven's "Songs Without Music." The grand chords fill the room
with exquisite harmony. He plays the extremely difficult passages in the
obligato home run in a masterly manner, and when he finishes with that
grand te deum with arpeggios on the side, there is that complete hush in
the mom that is dearer to the artist's heart than the loudest applause.

The professor looks around.

The room is empty.

Empty with the exception of Tictocq, the great French detective, who
springs from behind a mass of tropical plants to his side.

The professor rises in alarm.

"Hush," says Tictocq: "Make no noise at all. You have already made
enough.**

Footsteps are heard outside.

"Be quick,** says Tictocq: "give me those socks. There is not a moment
to spare."

"Vas sagst du?"

TICTOCQ 1019

"Ah, he confesses," says Tictocq. "No socks will do but those you
carried off from the Populist Candidate's room."

The company is returning, no longer hearing the music.

Tictocq hesitates not. He seizes the professor, throws him upon the
floor, tears off his shoes and socks, and escapes with the latter through the
open window into the garden.

CHAPTER in Tictocq's room in the Avenue Hotel

A knock is heard at the door.

Tictocq opens it and looks at his watch.

"Ah," he says, "it is just six. Entrez, Messieurs."

The messieurs entrez. There are seven of them; the Populist Candidate
who is there by invitation, not knowing for what purpose; the chairman
of the Democratic Executive Committee, Platform No. 2; the hotel pro-
prietor, and three or four Democrats and Populists, as near as could be
found out.

"I don't know," begins the Populist Candidate, "what in the h *

"Excuse me," says Tictocq, firmly. "You will oblige me by keeping
silent until I make my report. I have been employed in this case, and I
have unravelled it. For the honor of France I request that I be heard with
attention."

"Certainly," says the chairman; "we will be pleased to listen."

Tictocq stands in the centre of the room. The electric light burns
brightly above him. He seems the incarnation of alertness, vigor, clev-
erness, and cunning.

The company seat themselves in chairs along the wall.

"When informed of the robbery," begins Tictocq, "I first questioned
the bell boy. He knew nothing, I went to the police headquarters. They
knew nothing. I invited one of them to the bar to drink. He said there
used to be a little colored boy in the Tenth Ward who stole things and
kept them for recovery by the police, but failed to be at the place agreed
upon for arrest one time, and had been sent to jail.

"I then began to think. I reasoned. No man, said I, would carry a
Populist's socks in his pocket without wrapping them up. He would not
want to do so in the hotel. He would want a paper. Where would he get
one? At the Statesman office, of course. I went there. A young man with
his hair combed down on his forehead sat behind the desk. I knew he was
writing society items, for a young lady's slipper, a piece of cake, a fan,
a half emptied bottle of cocktail* a bunch of roses, and a police whistle
lay on the desk before him.

"Can you tell me if a man purchased a paper here in the last three
months?" I said.

"Yes," he replied; "we sold one last night,"

"Can you describe the man?"

1020 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"Accurately. He had blue whiskers, a wart between ^ his shoulder
blades, a touch of colic, and an occupation tax on his breath.**
"Which way did he go?"
"Out."

"I then went " ttr , , ,

"Wait a minute," said the Populist Candidate, rising: I don t see why

in the h " , _ ,

"Once more I must beg that you will be silent,' said Tictocq, rather
sharply. "You should not interrupt me in the midst of my report."

"I made one false arrest," continued Tictocq. "I was passing two finely
dressed gentlemen on the street, when one of them remarked that he
had 'stole his socks.' I handcuffed him and dragged him to a lighted ^store,
when his companion explained to me that he was somewhat intoxicated
and his tongue was not entirely manageable. He had been speaking of
some business transaction, and what he intended to say was that he had
'sold his stocks.*

"I then released him.

"An hour afterward I passed a saloon, and saw this Professor von Bum
drinking beer at a table. I knew him in Paris. I said 'here is my man.*
He worshipped Wagner, lived on limburger cheese, beer, and credit, and
would have stolen anybody's socks. I shadowed him to the reception at
Colonel St. Vitus's, and in an opportune moment I seized him and tore
the socks from his feet. There they are."

With a dramatic gesture, Tictocq threw a pair of dingy socks upon
the table, folded his arms, and threw back his head*

With a loud cry of rage, the Populist Candidate sprang once more to
his feet

"Gol darn it! I WILL say what I want to. I "

The two other Populists in the room gazed at him coldly and sternly.

**Is this tale true?** they demanded of the Candidate.

"No, by gosh* it ain't!" he repMed, pointing a trembling finger at the
Democratic Chairman, "There stands the man who has concocted the
whole scheme. It is an infernal, unfair political trick to lose votes for our
party* How Ear has this thing gone?" he added, turning savagely to the
detective.

**A11 the newspapers have my written report on the matter, and the
Statesman will have it in plate matter next week," said Tictocq, com-
placeatly*

"All is lost!** said the PopuKsts> turning toward the door.

"For God's sake» my friends," pleaded the Candidate, following them;
"listen to me; I swear before high heaven that I never wore a pair of
socks in my life. It is all a devilish campaign lie."

The Populists turn their backs.

TRACKED TO DOOM 1021

"The damage is already done," they said, "The people have heard the
story. You have yet time to withdraw decently before the race."

All left the room except Tictocq and the Democrats.

"Let's all go down and open a bottle of fizz on the Finance Com-
mittee," said the Chairman of the Executive Committee, Platform No. 2.

TRACKED TO DOOM

or The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud

Tis midnight in Paris.

A myriad of lamps that line the Champs filysees and the Rouge et Noir,
cast their reflection in the dark waters of the Seine as it flows gloomily
past the Place Vend6me and the black walls of the Convent Notadam.

The great French capital is astir.

It is the hour when crime and vice and wickedness reign.

Hundreds of fiacres drive madly through the streets conveying women,
flashing with jewels and as beautiful as dreams, from opera and concert,
and the little bijou supper rooms of the Cafe Tout le Temps are filled
with laughing groups, while bon mots, persiflage, and repartee fly upon
the air— the jewels of thought and conversation.

Luxury and poverty brush each other in the streets. The homeless
gamin, begging a sou with which to purchase a bed, and the spend-
thrift rou4 scattering golden louis d'or, tread the same pavement

When other cities sleep, Paris has just begun her wild revelry.

The first scene of our story is a cellar beneath the Rue de Peychaud.

The room is filled with smoke of pipes, and is stifling with the reeking
breath of its inmates. A single flaring gas jet dimly lights the scene, which
is one Rembrandt or Moreland and Keisel would have loved to paint

A gar^on is selling absinthe to such of the motley crowd as have a
few sous, dealing it out in niggardly portions in broken teacups.

Leaning against the bar is Carnaignole Cusheau— • generally known as
the Gray Wolf.

He is the worst man in Paris.

He is more than four feet ten in height, and his sharp, ferocious-
looking face and the mass of long, tangled gray hair that covers his face
and head, have earned for him the name he bears.

His striped blouse is wide open at the neck and falls outside of his
dingy leather trousers. The handle of a deadly looking knife protrudes
from his belt. One stroke of its blade would open a box of the finest
French sardines.

1022 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"Voila, Gray Wolf,*' cries Couteau, the bartender. "How many victims
to-day ? There is no blood upon your hands. Has the Gray Wolf forgotten
how to bite?'*

"Sacre Bleu, Mille Tonnerre, by George," hisses the Gray Wolf. "Mon-
sieur Couteau, you are bold indeed to speak to me thus.

"By Ventre St. Gris! I have not even dined to-day. Spoils indeed. There
is no living in Paris now. But one rich American have I garroted in a
fortnight.

"Bah! those Democrats. They have ruined the country. With their
income tax and their free trade, they have destroyed the millionaire busi-
ness. Carrambo! Diable! D— n it!"

"Hist!" suddenly says Chamounix the rag-picker, who is worth 20,-
000,000 francs, "some one comes !"

The cellar door opened and a man crept softly down the rickety steps.
The crowd watches him with silent awe.

He went to the bar, laid his card on the counter, bought a drink of
absinthe, and then drawing from his pocket a little mirror, set it up on
the counter and proceeded to don a false beard and hair and paint his face
into wrinkles, until he closely resembled an old man seventy-one years
of age.

He then went into a dark corner and watched the crowd of people with
sharp, ferret-like eyes.

Gray Wolf slipped cautiously to the bar and examined the card left by
the newcomer.

"Holy Saint Bridget!" he exclaims. "It is Tictocq, the detective."

Ten minutes later a beautiful woman enters the cellar.

Tenderly nurtured, and accustomed to every luxury that money could
procure, she had, when a young vivandiere at the Convent of Saint Susan
de la Moutarde, run away with the Gray Wolf, fascinated by his many
crimes and the knowledge that his business never allowed him to scrape
his feet in the hall or snore.

"Parblcau, Marie,** snark the Gray Wolf. "Que voulez vous? Avez-
vous le beau cheval de mon fr£re, ou le joli chien de votre pere?"

"No, no. Gray Wolf,** shouts the motley group of assassins, rogues,
and pickpockets, even their hardened hearts appalled at his fearful words.
"M00 Dteu! You cannot be so cruel!"

Tiens!" shouts the Gray Wolf, now maddened to desperation, and
dtawing his gleaming knife. "Voila! Canaille! Tout le monde, carte
blanche embonpoint sauve que peut entre nous revenez nous a nous
moutons!"

The horrified sans-culottes shrink back in terror as the Gray Wolf
seizes Marie by the hair and cuts her into twenty-nine pieces, each exactly
the same size.
As he stands with reeking hands above the corpse, amid a deep silence,

TRACKED TO DOOM 1023

the old, gray-bearded man who has been watching the scene springs for-
ward, tears off his false beard and locks, and Tictocq, the famous French
detective, stands before them.

Spellbound and immovable, the denizens of the cellar gaze at the
greatest modern detective as he goes about the customary duties of his
office.

He first measures the distance from the murdered woman to a point
on the wall, then he takes down the name of the bartender and the day
of the month and the year. Then drawing from his pocket a powerful
microscope, he examines a little of the blood that stands upon the floor in
little pools.

"Mon Dieu!" he mutters, "it is as I feared— human blood."

He then enters rapidly in a memorandum book the result of his in-
vestigations, and leaves the cellar.

Tictocq bends his rapid steps in the direction of the headquarters of
the Paris gendarmerie, but suddenly pausing, he strikes his hand upon
his brow with a gesture of impatience.

"Mille tonnerre," he mutters. "I should have asked the name of that
man with the knife in his hand."

It is reception night at the palace of the Duchess Valerie du Bellairs.

The apartments are flooded with a mellow light from paraffine candles
in solid silver candelabra.

The company is the most aristocratic and wealthy in Paris.

Three or four brass bands are playing behind a portiere between the
coal shed, and also behind time. Footmen in gay-laced livery bring in beer
noiselessly and carry out apple-peelings dropped by the guests.

Valerie, seventh Duchess du Bellairs, leans back on a solid gold otto-
man on eiderdown cushions, surrounded by the wittiest, the bravest, and
the handsomest courtiers in the capital.

"Ah, madame," said the Prince Champvilliers, of Palais Royale, corner
of Seventy-third Street, "as Montesquiaux says, *Rien de plus bon tutti
frutti'— Youth seems your inheritance. You are to-night the most beautiful,
the wittiest in your own salon. I can scarce believe my own senses, when
I remember that thirty-one years ago you "

"Saw it off!" says the Duchess, peremptorily.

The Prince bows low, and drawing a jewelled dagger, stabs himself
to the heart.

"The displeasure of your grace is worse than death,5' he says, as he
takes his overcoat and hat from a comer of the mantelpiece and leaves
the room.

"Voila," says Beebe Fran^illon, fanning herself languidly. "That is the
way with men. Flatter them, and they kiss your hand. Loose but a
moment the silken leash that holds them captive through their vanity

1024 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

and self-opinionativcncss, and the son-of-a-gun gets on his ear at once. The
devil go with him, I say."

"Ah, mon Princessc," sighs the Count Pumpernickel, stooping and
whispering with eloquent eyes into her ear. "You are too hard upon us.
Balzac says, 'All women are not to themselves what no one else is to an-
other/ Do you not agree with him?"

"Cheese it!" says the Princess. "Philosophy palls upon me. Ill shake
you."

"Hosscs?" says the Count

Arm and arm they go out to the salon au Beurre.

Armande de Fleury, the young pianissimo danseuse from the Folies
Bergere, is about to sing.

She slightly clears her throat and lays a voluptuous cud of chewing
gum upon the piano as the first notes of the accompaniment ring through
the salon.

As she prepares to sing, the Duchess du Bellairs grasps the arm of her
ottoman in a vicelike grip, and she watches with an expression of almost
anguished suspense.

She scarcely breathes.

Then, as Armande de Fleury, before uttering a note, reels, wavers,
turns white as snow and falls dead upon the floor, the Duchess breathes a
sigh of relief.

The Duchess had poisoned her.

Then the guests crowd about the piano, gazing with bated breath, and
shuddering as they look upon the music rack and observe that the song
that Armande came so near singing is "Sweet Marie.**

Twenty minutes later a dark and muffled figure was seen to emerge
from a recess in the mullioned wall of the Arc de Triomphe and pass
rapidly northward.

It was no other than Tictocq, the detective.

The network of evidence was fast being drawn about the murderer
of Marie Cusheau,

It is midnight on the steeple of the Cathedral of Notadam.

It is ako the same time at other given points in the vicinity.

The spire of the Cathedral is 20,000 feet above the pavement, and a
casual observer* by making a rapid mathematical calculation, would have
readily perceived that this Cathedral is, at least, double the height of
others that measure only ioyooo feet.

At the summit of the spire there is a little wooden platform on which
there is room for but one man to stand.

Crouching on this precarious footing, which swayed dizzily with every
breeze that blew, was a maa closely muffled, and disguised as a wholesale
grocer.

TRACKED TO DOOM 1025

Old Francois Beongfallong, the great astronomer, who is studying the
sidereal spheres from his attic window in the Rue de Bologny, shudders
as he turns his telescope upon the solitary figure upon the spire.

"Sacre Bleu!" he hisses between his new celluloid teeth. "It is Tictocq,
the detective. I wonder whom he is following now?"

While Tictocq is watching with lynx-like eyes the hill of Montmartre,
he suddenly hears a heavy breathing beside him, and turning gazes into
the ferocious eyes of the Gray Wolf.

Carnaignole Cusheau had put on his W. U. Tel. Co. climbers and
climbed the steeple.

"Parbleu, monsieur," says Tictocq. "To whom am I indebted for the
honor of this visit?"

The Gray Wolf smiled softly and depreciatingly.

"You are Tictocq, the detective?" he said.

"I am."

"Then listen. I am the murderer of Marie Cusheau. She was my wife
and she had cold feet and ate onions. What was I to do? Yet life is sweet
to me. I do not wish to be guillotined. I have heard that you are on my
track. It is true that the case is in your hands?"

"It is."

"Thank le bon Dieu, then, I am saved."

The Gray Wolf carefully adjusts the climbers on his feet and descends
the spire.

Tictocq takes out his notebook and writes in it.

"At last," he says, "I have a clue."

Monsieur le Compte Carnaignole Cusheau, once known as the Gray
Wolf, stands in the magnificent drawing-room of his palace on East 47th
Street.

Three days after his confession to Tictocq, he happened to look in the
pockets of a discarded pair of pants and found twenty million francs
in gold.

Suddenly the door opens and Tictocq, the detective, with a dozen
gens d'arme, enters the room.

"You are my prisoner," says the detective.

"On what charge?"

"The murder of Marie Cusheau on the night of August iTth."

"Your proofs?"

"I saw you do it, and your own confession on the spire of Notadam."

The Count laughed and took a paper from his pocket.

"Read this," he said, "here is proof that Marie Cusheau died of heart
failure."

Tictocq looked at the paper.

It was a check for 100,000 francs.

1026 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Tictocq dismissed the gens d'arme with a wave of his hand.

"We have made a mistake, monsieurs," he said, but as he turns to leave
the room, Count Carnaignole stops him.

"One moment, monsieur,"

The Count Carnaignole tears from his own face a false beard and
reveals the flashing eyes and well-known features of Tictocq, the detective.

Then, springing forward, he snatches a wig and false eyebrows from
his visitor, and the Gray Wolf, grinding his teeth in rage, stands before
him.

The murderer of Marie Cusheau was never discovered.

A SNAPSHOT AT THE PRESIDENT

This is the kind of waggish editorial O. Henry was writing in 1894 for
the readers of the Rolling Stone. The reader will do well to remember
that the paper was for local consumption and that the allusions are to a
very special place and time.

(It will be remembered that about a month ago there were special
rates offered to the public for a round trip to the City of Washington.
The price of the ticket being exceedingly low, we secured a loan of
twenty dollars from a public-spirited citizen of Austin, by mortgaging
our press and cow, with the additional security of our brother's name
and a slight draught on Major Hutchinson for $4,000.

We purchased a round trip ticket, two loaves of Vienna bread, and
quite a large piece of cheese, which we handed to a member of our
reportorial staff, with instructions to go to Washington, interview Presi-
dent Cleveland, and get a scoop, if possible, on all other Texas papers.

Our reporter came in yesterday morning, via the Manor dirt road,
with a large piece of folded cotton bagging tied under each foot.

It seems that he lost his ticket in Washington, and having divided
the Vienna bread and cheese with some disappointed office seekers
who were coming home by the same route, he arrived home hungry,
desiring food, and with quite an appetite.

Although somewhat late, we give his description of his interview
with President Cleveland.)

I am chief reporter on the staff of the Rolling Stone.

About a month ago the managing editor came into the room where
we were both sitting engaged in conversation and said:

**Oh, by the way, go to Washington and interview President Cleve-
land."

"All right," said I. "Take care of yourself."

A SNAPSHOT AT THE PRESIDENT 1027

Five minutes later I was seated in a palatial drawing-room car bound-
ing up and down quite a good deal on the elastic plush-covered seat

I shall not linger upon the incidents of the journey. I was given carte
blanche to provide myself with every comfort, and to spare no expense
that I could meet. For the regalement of my inside the preparations had
been lavish. Both Vienna and Germany had been called upon to furnish
dainty viands suitable to my palate.

I changed cars and shirts once only on the journey. A stranger wanted
me to also change a two-dollar bill, but I haughtily declined.

The scenery along the entire road to Washington is diversified. You
find a portion of it on one hand by looking out of the window, and upon
turning the gaze upon the other side the eye is surprised and delighted
to discovering some more of it.

There were a great many Knights of Pythias on the train. One of them
insisted upon my giving him the grip I had with me, but he was un-
successful.

On arriving in Washington, which city I instantly recognized from
reading the history of George, I left the car so hastily that I forgot to fee
Mr. Pullman's representative.

I went immediately to the Capitol.

In a spirit of jew d 'esprit I had made a globular representation of a
"rolling stone." It was of wood, painted a dark color, and about the
size of a small cannon ball. I had attached to it a twisted pendant about
three inches long to indicate moss. I had resolved to use this in place
of a card, thinking people would readily recognize it as an emblem of
my paper.

I had studied the arrangement of the Capitol, and walked directly to
Mr. Cleveland's private office.

I met a servant in the hall, and held up my card to him smilingly.

I saw his hair rise on his head, and he ran like a deer to the door, and,
lying down, rolled down the long flight of steps into the yard.

"Ah," said I to myself, "he is one of our delinquent subscribers,"

A little farther along I met the President's private secretary, who had
been writing a tariff letter and cleaning a duck gun for Mr. Cleveland.

When I showed him the emblem of my paper he sprang out of a high
window into a hothouse filled with rare flowers.

This somewhat surprised me.

I examined myself. My hat was on straight, and there was nothing at
all alarming about my appearance.

I went into the President's private office.

He was alone. He was conversing with Tom Ochiltree. Mr. Ochiltree
saw my little sphere, and with a loud scream rushed out of the room.

President Cleveland slowly turned his eyes upon me.

He also saw what I had in my hand, and said in a husky voice:

1028 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"Wait a moment, please."

He searched his coat pocket, and presently found a piece of paper on
which some words were written.

He laid this on his desk and rose to his feet, raised one hand above
him, and said in deep tones:

"I die for Free Trade, my country, and— and— all that sort of thing."

I saw him jerk a string, and a camera snapped on another table, taking
our picture as we stood.

"Don't die in the house, Mr. President," I said. "Go over into the
Senate Chamber."

"Peace, murderer!" he said. "Let your bomb do its deadly work."

"I'm no bum," I said, with spirit. "I represent the Rolling Stone of
Austin, Texas, and this I hold in my hand does the same thing, but, it
seems unsuccessfully."

The President sank back in his chair greatly relieved.

"I thought you were a dynamiter," he said. "Let me see; Texas!
Texas!" He walked to a large wall map of the United States, and placing
his finger thereon at about the location of Idaho, ran it down in a zigzag,
doubtful way until he reached Texas.

"Oh, yes, here it is. I have so many things on my mind, I sometimes
forget what I should know well.

"Let's see; Texas? Oh, yes, that's the State where Ida Wells and a
lot of colored people lynched a socialist named Hogg for raising a riot
at a camp-meeting. So you are from Texas. I know a man from Texas
named Dave Culberson, How is Dave and his family? Has Dave got
any children?"

"He has a boy in Austin," I said, "working around the Capitol."

"Who is President of Texas now?"

"I don't exactly "

"Oh accuse me. I forgot again. I thought I heard some talk of its hav-
ing been made a Republic again."

"Now, Mr. Cleveland," I said, "you answer some of my questions."

A curious film carne over the President's eyes. He sat stiffly in his chair
like an automaton.

"Proceed," he said.

"What do you think of the political future of this country?"

"I will state that political exigencies demand emergentistical promp-
titude, and while the United States is indissoluble in conception and
invisible in intent, treason and internecine disagreement have ruptured
the cosanguinity of patriotism, and "

"One moment, Mr. President," I interrupted; "would you mind chang-
ing that cylinder? I could have gotten all that from the American Press
Association if I had wanted plate matter. Do you wear flannels? What

AN UNFINISHED CHRISTMAS STORY 1029

is your favorite poet, brand of catsup, bird, flower, and what are you
going to do when you are out of a job?"

"Young man," said Mr. Cleveland, sternly, "you are going a little too
far. My private affairs do not concern the public."

I begged his pardon, and he recovered his good humor in a moment.

"You Texans have a great representative in Senator Mills," he said. "I
think the greatest two speeches I ever heard were his address before the
Senate advocating the removal of the tariff on salt and increasing it on
the chloride of sodium."

"Tom Ochiltree is also from our State,*' I said.

"Oh, no, he isn't. You must be mistaken," replied Mr. Cleveland, "for
he says he is. I really must go down to Texas some time, and see the
State. I want to go up into the Panhandle and see if it is really shaped like
it is on the map."

"Well, I must be going," said I.

"When you get back to Texas," said the President, rising, "you must
write to me. Your visit has awakened in me quite an interest in your
State which I fear I have not given the attention it deserves. There are
many historical and otherwise interesting places that you have revived in
my recollection — the Alamo, where Davy Jones fell; Goliad, Sam Hous-
ton's surrender to Montezuma, the petrified boom found near Austin,
five-cent cotton and the Siamese Democratic platform born in Dallas. I
should so much like to see the gals in Galveston, and go to the wake in
Waco. I am glad I met you. Turn to the left as you enter the hall and
keep straight on out." I made a low bow to signify that the interview was
at an end, and withdrew immediately. I had no difficulty in leaving the
building as soon as I was outside.

I hurried downtown in order to obtain refreshments at some place
where viands had been placed upon the free list

I shall not describe my journey back to Austin. I lost my return ticket
somewhere in the White House, and was forced to return home in a
manner not especially beneficial to my shoes. Everybody was well in
Washington when I left, and all send their love.

AN UNFINISHED CHRISTMAS STORY

Now, a Christmas story should be one. For a good many years the in-
genious writers have been putting forth tales for the holiday numbers
that employed every subtle, evasive, indirect, and strategic scheme they
could invent to disguise the Christmas flavor. So far has this new practice
been carried that nowadays when you read a story in a holiday magazine
the only way you can tell it is a Christmas story is to look at the footnote

I03O BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

which reads: ["The incidents in the above story happened on December
25th.— ED/']

There is progress in this; but it is all very sad. There are just as many
real Christmas stories as ever, if we would only dig 'em up. Me, I am for
the Scrooge and Marley Christmas story, and the Annie and Willie's
prayer poem, and the long lost son coming home on the stroke of twelve
to the poorly thatched cottage with his arms full of talking dolls and
popcorn balls and—Zip! you hear the second mortgage on the cottage
go flying off it into the deep snow.

So, this is to warn you that there is no subterfuge about this story—
and you might come upon stockings hung to the mantel and plum pud-
dings and hark! the chimes! and wealthy misers loosening up and hand-
ing over penny whistles to lame newsboys if you read further.

Once I knocked at a door (I have so many things to tell you I keep
on losing sight of the story). It was the front door of a furnished room
house in West Teenth Street. I was looking for a young illustrator named
Paley originally and irrevocably from Terre Haute. Paley doesn't enter
even into the first serial rights of this Christmas story; I mention him
simply in explaining why I came to knock at the door — some people have
so much curiosity.

The door was opened by the landlady. I had seen hundreds like feer.
And I had smelled before that cold, dank, furnished draught of air that
hurried by her to escape immurement in the furnished house.

She was stout, and her face and hands were as white as though she
had been drowned in a barrel of vinegar. One hand held together at her
throat a buttonless flannel dressing sacque whose lines had been cut by
no tape or butterick known to mortal woman. Beneath this a too long,
flowered, black sateen skirt was draped about her, reaching the floor in
stiff wrinkles and folds.

The rest of her was yellow. Her hair, in some bygone age, had been
dipped in the fountain of folly presided over by the merry nymph
Hydrogen; but now, except at the roots, it had returned to its natural grim
and grizzled white.

Her eyes and teeth and finger nails were yellow. Her chops hung low
and shook when she moved. The look on her face was exactly that smile-
less look of fatal melancholy that you may have seen on the countenance
of a hound left sitting on the doorstep of a deserted cabin.

I inquired for Paley. After a long look of cold suspicion the land-
lady spoke, and her voice matched the dingy roughness of her flannel
sacque.

Paley? Was I sure that was the name? And wasn't it, likely, Mr.
Sanderson I meant, in the third floor rear? No; it was Paley I wanted.
Again that frozen, shrewd, steady study of my soul from her pale-yellow,
unwinking eyes, trying to penetrate may mask of deception and rout out

AN UNFINISHED CHRISTMAS STORY 103!

my true motives from my lying lips. There was a Mr. Tompkins in the
front hall bedroom two flights up. Perhaps it was he I was seeking. He
worked of nights; he never came in till seven in the morning. Or if it
was really Mr. Tucker (thinly disguised as Paley) that I was hunting I
would have to call between five and

But no; I held firmly to Paley. There was no such name among her
lodgers. Click! the door closed swiftly in my face; and I heard through
the panels the clanking of chains and bolts.

I went down the steps and stopped to consider. The number of this
house was 43. 1 was sure Paley had said 43 — or perhaps it was 45 or 47 — I
decided to try 47, the second house farther along.

I rang the bell. The door opened; and there stood the same woman.
I wasn't confronted by just a resemblance — it was the same woman hold-
ing together the same old sacque at her throat and looking at me with the
same yellow eyes as if she had never seen me before on earth. I saw on
the knuckle of her second finger the same rsd-and-black spot made,
probably, by a recent burn against a hot stove.

I stood speechless and gaping while one with moderate haste might
have told fifty. I couldn't have spoken Paley's name even if I had re-
membered it. I did the only thing that a brave man who believes there
are mysterious forces in nature that we do not yet fully comprehend
could have done in the circumstances. I backed down the steps to the
sidewalk and then hurried away frontward, fully understanding how
incidents like that must bother the psychical research people and the
census takers.

Of course I heard an explanation of it afterward, as we always do about
inexplicable things.

The landlady was Mrs. Kannon; and she leased three adjoining houses,
which she made into one by cutting arched doorways through the walls.
She sat in the middle house and answered the three bells.

I wonder why I have maundered so slowly through the prologue, I
have itl it was simply to say to you, in the form of introduction rife
through the Middle West: "Shake hands with Mrs. Kannon."

For, it was in her triple house that the Christmas story happened; and
it was there where I picked up the incontrovertible facts from the gossip
of many roomers and met Stickney — and saw the necktie.

Christmas came that year on Thursday, and snow came with it.

Stickney (Harry Clarence Fowler Stickney to whomsoever his full
baptismal cognominal burdens may be of interest) reached his address
at six-thirty Wednesday afternoon. "Address*' is New Yorkese for
"Home." Stickney roomed at 45 West Teenth Street, third floor rear
hall room. He was twenty years and four months old, and he worked in
a cameras-of-all-kinds, photographic supplies and films-developed store.
I don't know what kind of work he did in the store; but you must have

10J2 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

seen him. He is the young man who always comes behind the counter
to wait on you and lets you talk for five minutes, telling him what you
want. When you are done, he calls the proprietor at the top of his voice
to wait on you, and walks away whistling between his teeth.

I don't want to bother about describing to you his appearance; but,
if you are a man reader, I will say that Stickney looked precisely like the
young chap that you always find sitting in your chair smoking a cigarette
after you have missed a shot while playing pool— not billiards, but pool-
when you want to sit down yourself.

There are some to whom Christmas gives no Christmassy essence. Of
course, prosperous people and comfortable people who have homes or flats
or rooms with meals, and even people who live in apartment houses with
hotel service get something of the Christmas flavor. They give one an-
other presents with the cost mark scratched off with a penknife; and they
hang holly wreaths in the front windows, and when they are asked
whether they prefer light or dark meat from the turkey they say : "Both,
please," and giggle and have lots of fun. And the very poorest people
have the best time of it. The Army gives *em a dinner, and the 10 A.M.
issue of the Night Final edition of the newspaper with the largest cir-
culation in the city leaves a basket at their door full of an ?pple, a Lake
Ronkonkoma squab, a scrambled eggplant, and a bunch of Kalamazoo
bleached parsley. The poorer you are the more Christmas does for you.

But, I'll tell you to what kind of a mortal Christmas seems to be only
the day before the twenty-sixth day of December, It's the chap in the big
city earning sixteen dollars a week, with no friends and few acquaintances,
who finds himself with only fifty cents in his pocket on Christmas eve.
He can't accept charity; he can't borrow; he knows no one who would
invite him to dinner. I have a fancy that when the shepherds left their
flocks to follow the star of Bethlehem there was a bandy-legged young
fellow among them who was just learning the sheep business. So they
said to him, "Bobby, we're going to investigate this star route and see
what's in it. If it should turn out to be the first Christmas day we don't
want to miss it And, as you are not a wise man, and as you couldn't
possibly purchase a present to take along, suppose you stay behind and
miad the sheep." So as we may say, Harry Stickney was a direct de-
scendant of the shepherd who was left behind to take care of the flocks.

Getting back to facts, Stickney rang the door-bell of 45. He had a habit
of forgetting his latchkey.

Instantly the door opened and there stood Mrs. Kannon, clutching her
sacque together at the throat and gorgonizing him with her opaque
yellow eyes.

(To give you good measure, here is a story within a story. Once a
roomer in 47 who had a Scotch habit, not kilts, but a habit of drinking
Scotch — began to figure to himself what might happen if two persons

THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT 1033

should ring the doorbells of 43 and 47 at the same time. Visions of two
halves of Mrs. Kannon appearing respectively and simultaneously at the
two entrances, each clutching at a side of an open, flapping sacque that
could never meet, overpowered him. Bellevue got him.)

"Evening," said Stickney cheerlessly, as he distributed little piles o£
muddy slush along the hall matting. 'Think well have snow?"

"You left your key," said

(Here the manuscript ends.)

THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT

I am the richer by the acquaintance of four newspaper men. Singly, they
are my encyclopedias, friends, mentors, and sometimes bankers. But now
and then it happens that all of them will pitch upon the same print-
worthy incident of the passing earthly panorama and will send in repor-
torial constructions thereof to their respective journals. It is then that,
for me, it is to laugh. For it seems that to each of them, trained and
skilled as he may be, the same occurrence presents a different facet of
the cut diamond, life.

One will have it (let us say) that Mme. Andre Macarte's apartment
was looted by six burglars, who descended via the fire-escape and bore
away a ruby tiara valued at two thousand dollars and a five-hundred-dollar
prize Spitz dog, which (in violation of the expectoration ordinance) was
making free with the halls of the Wutta-pesituckquesunoo-wetunquah
Apartments.

My second "chie!" will take notes to the effect that while a friendly
game of pinochle was in progress in the tenement rooms of Mrs. Andy
McCarty, a lady guest named Ruby O'Hara threw a burglar down six
flights of stairs, where he was pinioned and held by a two-thousand-dol-
lar English bulldog amid a crowd of five hundred excited spectators.

My third chronicler and friend will gather the news threats of the hap-
pening in his own happy way; setting forth on the page for you to read
that the house of Antonio Macartini was blown up at 6 A M^ by the Black
Hand Society, on his refusing to leave two thousand dollars at a certain
street corner, killing a pet five-hundred-dollar Pomeranian belonging to
Alderman Rubitara's little daughter (see photo and diagram opposite).

Number four of my history-makers will simply construe from the prem-
ises the story that while an audience of two thousand enthusiasts was lis-
tening to a Rubinstein concert on Sixth Street, a woman who said she
was Mrs. Andrew M. Carter threw a brick through a plate-glass window
valued at five hundred dollars. The Carter woman claimed that some one
in the building had stolen her dog.

1034 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Now, the discrepancies in these registrations of the day's doings need
do no one hurt. Surely, one newspaper is enough for any man to prop
against his morning water-bottle to fend off the smiling hatred o£ his
wife's glance. If he be foolish enough to read four he is no wiser than a

Higher Critic.

I remember (probably as well as you do) having read the parable of
the talents. A prominent citizen, about to journey into a far country, first
hands over to his servants his goods. To one he gives five talents; to an-
other two; to another one— to every man according to his several ability,
as the text has it There are two versions of this parable, as you well
know. There may be more — I do not know.

When the p. c. returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have
put their talents out at usury and gained one hundred per cent. Good.
The unprofitable one simply digs up the talent deposited with him and
hands it out on demand. A pattern of behavior for trust companies and
banks, surely! In one version we read that he had wrapped it in a napkin
and laid it away. But the commentator informs us that the talent men-
tioned was composed of 750 ounces of silver — about $900 worth. So the
chronicler who mentioned the napkin had either to reduce the amount
of the deposit or do a lot of explaining about the size of the napery used
in those days. Therefore in his version we note that he uses the word
"pound" instead of "talent"

A pound of silver may very well be laid away—and carried away— in
a napkin, as any hotel or restaurant man will tell you.

But let us get away from our mutton.

When the returned nobleman finds that the one-talented servant has
nothing to hand over except the original fund entrusted to him, he is as
angry as a multi-millionaire would be if some one should hide under his
bed and make a noise like an assessment. He orders the unprofitable
servant cast into outer darkness, after first taking away his talent and giv-
ing it to the one-hundred-per-cent financier, and breathing strange saws,
saying: "From him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he
hath." Which is the same as to say: "Nothing from nothing leaves noth-
ing."

And MW closer draw the threads of parable, precept, allegory, and
narrative, leading nowhere if you will, or else weaving themselves into
the little fiction story about Cliff McGowan and his one talent There is
but a definition to follow; and then the homely actors trip on.

Talent: A gift, endowment, or faculty; some peculiar ability, power,
or accomplishment, natural or acquired. (A metaphor borrowed from the
parable in Matt XXV» 14-30.)

In New York City to-day there are (estimated) 125,000 living creatures
training for the stage. This does not include seals, pigs, dogs, elephants,
prizefighters, Carmens, mind-readers, or Japanese wrestlers. The bulk of

THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT 1035

them are in the ranks of the Four Million. Out o£ this number will sur-
vive a thousand.

Nine hundred of these will have attained their fulness of fame when
they shall dubiously indicate with the point of a hatpin a blurred figure
in a flashlight photograph of a stage tout ensemble with the proud com-
mentary: "That's me."

Eighty, in the pinkest of (male) Louis XIV court costumes, shall wel-
come the Queen of the (mythical) Pawpaw Isles in a few well-memo-
rized words, turning a tip-tilted nose upon the nine hundred.

Ten, in tiny lace caps, shall dust Ibsen furniture for six minutes after
the rising of the curtain.

Nine shall attain the circuits, besieging with muscle, skill, eye, hand,
voice, wit, brain, heel, and toe the ultimate high walls of stardom.

One shall inherit Broadway. Sic venit gloria mundi.

Cliff McGowan and Mac McGowan were cousins. They lived on the
West Side and were talented. Singing, dancing, imitations, trick bicycle
riding, boxing, German and Irish dialect comedy, and a little sleight-of-
hand and balancing of wheat straws and wheelbarrows on the ends of
their chins came as easy to them as it is for you to fix your rat so it won't
show or to dodge a creditor through the swinging-doors of a well-lighted
cafe — according as you may belong to the one or the other division of the
greatest prestidigitators — the people. They were slim, pale, consummately
self-possessed youths, whose fingernails were always irreproachably (and
clothes seams reproachfully) shiny. Their conversation was in sentences
so short that they made Kipling's seem as long as court citations.

Having the temperament, they did no work. Any afternoon you could
find them on Eighth Avenue either in front of Spinelli's barber shop,
Mike Dugan's place, or the Limerick Hotel, rubbing their forefinger
nails with dingy silk handkerchiefs. At any time, if you had happened
to be standing, undecisive, near a pool-table, and Cliff and Mac had, cas-
ually, as it were, drawn near, mentioning something, disinterestedly,
about a game, well, indeed would it have been for you had you gone your
way, unresponsive. Which assertion, carefully considered, is a study in
tense, punctuation, and advice to strangers.

Of all kinships it is likely that the closest is that of cousin. Between
cousins there exist the ties of race, name, and favor — ties thicker than
water, and yet not coagulated with the jealous precipitations of brother-
hood or the enjoining obligations of the matrimonial yoke. You can bestow
upon a cousin almost the interest and affection that you would give to a
stranger; you need not feel toward him the contempt and embarrassment
that you have for one of your father's sons— it is the closer clan-feelings
that sometimes makes the branch of a tree stronger than its trunk.

Thus were the two McGowans bonded. They enjoyed a quiet celebrity
in their district, which was a strip west of Eight Avenue with the

1036 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Pump for its pivot. Their talents were praised in a hundred "joints"; their
friendship was famed even in a neighborhood where men had been
known to fight off the wives o£ their friends — when domestic onslaught
was being made upon their friends by the wives of their friends. (Thus
do the limitations of English force us to repetends.)

So, side by side, grim, sallow, lowering, inseparable, undefeated, the
cousins fought their way into the temple of Art— art with a big A, which
causes to intervene a lesson in geometry.

One night at about eleven o'clock Del Delano dropped into Mike's
place on Eighth Avenue. From that moment, instead of remaining a
Place, the cafe became a Resort. It was as though King Edward had con-
descended to mingle with ten-spots of a different suit; or Joe Cans had
casually strolled in to look over the Tuskegee School; or Mr. Shaw, of
England, had accepted an invitation to read selections from "Rena the
Snow-Bird" at an unveiling of the proposed monument to James Owen
O'Connor at Chinquapin Falls, Mississippi. In spite of these comparisons,
you will have to be told why the patronizing of a third-rate saloon on the
West Side by the said Del Delano conferred such a specific honor upon
the place.

Del Delano could not make his feet behave; and so the world paid him
$300 a week to see them misconduct themselves on the vaudeville stage.
To make the matter plain to you (and to swell the number of words),
he was the best fancy dancer on any of the circuits between Ottawa and
Corpus Christi. With his eyes fixed on vacancy and his feet apparently
fixed on nothing, he "nightly charmed thousands," as his press-agent in-
correctly stated. Even taking night performance and matinee together, he
scarcely could have charmed more than eighteen hundred, including
those who left after Zora, the Nautch girl, had squeezed herself through
a hoop twelve inches in diameter, and those who were waiting for the
moving pictures.

But Del Delano was the West Side's favorite; and nowhere is there a
more loyal Side. Five years before our story was submitted to the editors,
Del had crawled from some Tenth Avenue basement like a lean rat and
had bitten his way into the Big Cheese. Patched, half starved, cuffless, and
as scornful of the Hook as an interpreter of Ibsen, he had danced his way
into health (as you and I view it) and fame in sixteen minutes on Ama-
teur Night at Creary's (Variety) Theatre in Eighth Avenue. A book-
maker (one of the kind that talent wins with instead of losing) sat in the
audience, asleep, dreaming of an impossible pick-up among the amateurs.
After a snore, a glass of beer from the handsome waiter, and a temporary
blindness caused by the diamonds of a transmontane blonde in Box E,
the bookmaker woke up long enough to engage Del Delano for a three-
weeks' trial engagement fused with a trained-dog short-circuit covering
the three Washington^— Heights, Statue, and Square.

THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT 1037

By the time this story was read and accepted, Del Delano was drawing
his three hundred dollars a week, which, divided by seven (Sunday acts
not in costume being permissible), dispels the delusion entertained by
most of us that we have seen better days. You can easily imagine the wor-
shipful agitation of Eighth Avenue whenever Del Delano honored it
with a visit after his terpsichorean act in a historically great and vilely
ventilated Broadway theatre. If the West Side could claim forty-two min-
utes out of his forty-two weeks' bookings every year, it was an occasion
for bonfires and repainting of the Pump. And now you know why Mike's
saloon is a Resort, and no longer a simple Place.

Del Delano entered Mike's alone. So nearly concealed in a fur-lined
overcoat and a derby two sizes too large for him was Prince Lightfoot
that you saw of his face only his pale, hatchet-edged features and a pair
of unwinking, cold, light blue eyes. Nearly every man lounging at Mike's
bar recognized the renowned product of the West Side. To those who
did not, wisdom was conveyed by prodding elbows and growls of one-
sided introduction.

Upon Charley, one of the bartenders, both fame and fortune descended
simultaneously. He had once been honored by shaking hands with the
great Delano at a Seventh Avenue boxing bout. So with lungs of brass
he now cried: "Hello, Del, old man; what'll it be?"

Mike, the proprietor, who was cranking the cash register, heard. On
the next day he raised Charley's wages five a week.

Del Delano drank a pony beer, paying for it carelessly out of his nightly
earnings of $42.85 5/7. He nodded amiably but coldly at the long line of
Mike's patrons and strolled past them into the rear room of the cafe. For
he heard in there sounds pertaining to his own art — the light, stirring
staccato of a buck-and-wing dance.

In the back room Mac McGowan was giving a private exhibition of the
genius of his feet. A few young men sat at tables looking on critically
while they amused themselves seriously with beer. They nodded approval
at some new fancy steps of Mac's own invention.

At the sight of the great Del Delano, the amateur's feet stuttered,
blundered, clicked a few times, and ceased to move. The tongues of one's
shoes become tied in the presence of the Master. Mac's sallow face took on
a slight flush.

From the uncertain cavity between Del Delano's hat brim and the la-
pels of his high fur coat collar came a thin puff of cigarette smoke and
then a voice:

"Do that last step over again, kid. And don't hold your arms quite so
stiff. Now, then!"

Once more Mac went through his paces. According to the traditions of
the man dancer, his entire being was transformed into mere feet and legs.
His gaze and expression becaine cataleptic; his bodys unbending above

1038 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

the waist, but as light as a cork, bobbed like the same cork dancing on the
ripples of a running brook. The beat of his heels and toes pleased you like
a snare-drum obbligato. The performance ended with an amazing clatter
of leather against wood that culminated in a sudden flat-footed stamp,
leaving the dancer erect and as motionless as a pillar of the colonial portico
of a mansion in a Kentucky prohibition town. Mac felt that he had done
his best and that Del Delano would turn his back upon him in derisive
scorn.

An approximate silence followed, broken only by the mewing of a
cafe cat and the hubbub and uproar of a few million citizens and
transportation facilities outside.

Mac turned a hopeless but nervy eye upon Del Delano's face. In it he
read disgust, admiration, envy, indifference, approval, disappointment,
praise, and contempt.

Thus, in the countenances of those we hate or love we find what we
most desire or fear to see. Which is an assertion equalling in its wisdom
and chiaroscuro the most famous sayings of the most foolish philosophers
that the world has ever known.

Del Delano retired within his overcoat and hat. In two minutes he
emerged and turned his left side to Mac. Then he spoke.

"You've got a foot movement, kid, like a baby hippopotamus trying to
sidestep a jab from a humming-bird. And you hold yourself like a truck
driver having his picture taken in a Third Avenue photograph gallery.
And you haven't got any method or style. And your knees are about as
limber as a couple of Yale pass-keys. And you strike the eye as weighing,
let us say, 450 pounds while you work. But, say, would you mind giving
me your name?"

"McGowan," said the humbled amateur— "Mac McGowan."

Delano the Great slowly lighted a cigarette and continued, through its
smoke:

"In other words, youVe rotten. You can't dance. But I'll tell you one
thing you've got."

"Throw it all off your system while you're at it," said Mac. "What've
I got?"

"Genius,** said Del Delano. "Except myself, it's up to you to be the best
fancy dancer in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the colonial posses-
sions of all three."

"Smoke up!** said Mac McGowan.

"Genius," repeated the Master— -"you've got a talent for genius. Your
brains arc in your feet, where a dancer's ought to be. You've been self-
taught until you're almost ruiiKd, but not quite. What you need is a
trainer. Ill take you in hand and put you at the top of the profession.
There's room there for the two of us. You may beat me," said the Master,
casting upon him a cold, savage look combining so much rivalry, affection,

THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT 1039

justice, and human hate that it stamped him at once as one of the little
great ones of the earth — "you may beat me; but I doubt it. I've got the
start and the pull. But at the top is where you belong. Your name, you
say, is Robinson?"

"McGowan," repeated the amateur, "Mac McGowan."

"It don't matter," said Delano. "Suppose you walk up to my hotel with
me. I'd like to talk to you. Your footwork is the worst I ever saw, Madi-
gan — but — well, I'd like to talk to you. You may not think so, but I'm not
so stuck up. I came off of the West Side myself. That overcoat cost me
eight hundred dollars; but the collar ain't so high but what I can see over
it. I taught myself to dance, and I put in most of nine years at it before
I shook a foot in public. But I had genius. I didn't go too far wrong on
teaching myself as you've done. You've got the r^ttenest method and
style of anybody I ever saw."

"Oh, I don't think much of the few little steps I take," said Mac, with
hypocritical lightness.

"Don't talk like a package of self-raising buckwheat flour," said Del
Delano. "You've had a talent handed to you by the Proposition Higher
Up; and it's up to you to do the proper thing with it. Fd like to have you
go up to my hotel for a talk, if you will."

In his rooms in the King Clovis Hotel, Del Delano put on a scarlet
house coat bordered with gold braid and set out Appollinaris and a box
of sweet crackers.

Mac's eye wandered.

"Forget it," said Del. "Drink and tobacco may be all right for a man
who makes his living with his hands; but they won't do if you're depend-
ing on your head or your feet. If one end of you gets tangled, so does the
other. That's why beer and cigarettes don't hurt piano players and pic-
ture painters. But you've got to cut *em out if you want to do mental or
pedal work. Now, have a cracker, and then we'll talk some."

"All right," said Mac. "I take it as an honor, of course, for you to notice
my hopping around. Of course Pd like to do something in a professional
line. Of course I can sing a little and do card tricks and Irish and German
comedy stuff, and of course I'm not so bad on the trapeze and comic bi-
cycle stunts and Hebrew monologues and "

"One moment," interrupted Del Delano, "before we begin. I said you
couldn't dance. Well, that wasn't quite right. You've only got two or three
bad tricks in your method. You're handy with your feet, and you belong
at the top, where I am. Ill put you there. I've got six weeks continuous
in New York; and in four I can shape up your style till the booking
agents will fight one another to get you. And I'll do it, too, Pm of, from,
and for the West Side. 'Del Delano* looks good on bill-boards, but the
family name's Crowley. Now, Mackintosh — McGowan, I mean — you've
gat your chance — fifty times a better one than I had.*'

1040 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Td be a shine to turn it down," said Mac. "And I hope you under-
stand I appreciate it Me and my cousin Cliff McGowan was thinking of
getting a try-out at Creary's on amateur night a month from tomorrow."

"Good stuff!" said Delano. "I got mine there. Junius T. Rollins, the
hooker for Kuhn & Dooley, jumped on the stage and engaged me after
my dance. And the boards were an inch deep in nickels and dimes and
quarters. There wasn't but nine penny pieces found in the lot.'*

"I ought to tell you/' said Mac, after two minutes of pensiveness, "that
my Cousin Cliff can beat me dancing. We've always been what you might
call pals. If you'd take him up instead of me, now, it might be better. He's
invented a lot of steps that I can't cut."

"Forget it," said Delano. "Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Satur-
days of every week from now till amateur night, a month off, I'll coach
you. Ill make you as good as I am; and nobody could do more for you.
My act's over every night at 10:15. Half an hour later 111 take you up and
drill you till twelve. I'll put you at the top of the bunch, right where I
am. You've got talent. Your style's bum; but you've got the genius. You
let me manage it. I'm from the West Side myself, and I'd rather see one
of the same gang win out before I would an East-Sider, or any of the Flat-
bush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-iners. I'll see that Junius Rol-
lins is present on your Friday night; and if he don't climb over the foot-
lights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I'll let you draw it down
from my own salary every Monday night. Now, am I talking on the level
or am I not?"

Amateur night at Creary's Eighth Avenue Theatre is cut by the same
pattern as amateur nights elsewhere. After the regular performance the
humblest talent may, by previous arrangement with the management,
make its debut upon the public stage. Ambitious nonprofessionals, mostly
self-instructed, display their skill and powers of entertainment along the
broadest lines. They may sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort, recite, or
disport themselves along any of the ragged boundary lines of Art. From
the ranks of these anxious tyros are chosen the professionals that adorn
or otherwise make conspicuous the full-blown stage. Press-agents delight
in recounting to open-mouthed and close-eared reporters stories of the
humble beginnings of the brilliant stars whose orbits they control.

Such and such a prima donna (they will tell you) made her initial
bow to the public while turning handsprings on an amateur night. One
great matinee favorite made his debut on a generous Friday evening sing-
ing coon songs of his own composition. A tragedian famous on two
continents and an island first attracted attention by an amateur imper-
sonation of a newly landed Scandinavian peasant girl. One Broadway
comedian that turns 'em away got a booking on a Friday night by reciting
(seriously) the graveyard scene in "Hamlet."

Thus they get their chance. Amateur night is a kindly boon. It is char-

THE UNPROFITABLE SERVANT 104!

ity divested of alms-giving. It is a brotherly hand reached down by mem-
bers of the best united band of coworkers in the world to raise up less
fortunate ones without labelling them beggars. It gives you the chance,
if you can grasp it, to step for a few minutes before some badly painted
scenery and during the playing by the orchestra of some ten or twelve bars
of music, and while the soles of your shoes may be clearly holding to the
uppers, to secure a salary equal to a Congressman's or any orthodox
minister's. Could an ambitious student of literature or financial methods
get a chance like that by spending twenty minutes in a Carnegie library?
I do not trow so.

But shall we look in at Creary's? Let us say that the specific Friday
night had arrived on which the fortunate Mac McGowan was to justify
the flattering predictions of his distinguished patron and, incidentally,
drop his silver talent into the slit of the slot-machine of fame and fortune
that gives up reputation and dough. I offer, sure of your acquiescence,
that we now forswear hypocritical philosophy and bigoted comment, per-
mitting the story to finish itself in the dress of material allegations — a me-
dium more worthy, when held to the line, than the most laborious crea-
tions of the word-milliners . . .

(Page of manuscript missing here.)

easily among the wings with his patron, the great Del Delano. For, what-
ever footlights shone in the City-That-Would-Be-Amused, the freedom of
their unshaded side was Del's. And if he should take up an amateur —
see? and bring him around — see? and, winking one of his cold blue eyes,
say to the manager: "Take it from me — he's got the goods — see?'*
you wouldn't expect that amateur to sit on an unpainted bench sudorif-
ically awaiting his turn, would you? So Mac strolled around largely with
the nonpareil; and the seven waited, clammily, on the bench.

A giant in shirt-sleeves with a grim, kind face in which many stitches
had been taken by surgeons from time to time, *. e., with a long stick,
looped at the end. He was the man with the Hook. The manager, with
his close-smoothed blond hair, his one-sided smile, and his abnormally
easy manner, pored with patient condescension over the difficult program
of the amateurs. The last of the professional turns — the Grand March of
the Happy Huzzard— had been completed; the last wrinkle and darn of
their blue silk-olene cotton tights had vanished from the stage. The man
in the orchestra who played the kettle-drum, cymbals, triangle, sandpa-
per, whangdoodle, hoof-beats, and catcalls, and fired the pistol shots, had
wiped his brow. The illegal holiday of the Romans had arrived.

While the orchestra plays the famous waltz from "The Dismal Wife,"
let us bestow two hundred words upon the psychology of the audience.

The orchestra floor was filled by People. The boxes contained Persons.
In the galleries was the Foreordaiiied Verdict. The claque was there as
it had originated in the Stone Age and was afterward adopted by the

1042 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

French. Every Micky and Maggie who sat upon Creary's amateur bench,
wise beyond their talents, knew that their success or doom lay already
meted out to them by that crowded, whistling, roaring mass of Romans
in the three galleries. They knew that the winning or the losing of the
game for each one lay in the strength of the "gang" aloft that could turn
the applause to its favorite. On a Broadway first night a wooer of fame
may win it from the ticket buyers over the heads of the cognoscenti. But
not so at Creary's. The amateur's fate is arithmetical. The number of his
supporting admirers present at his try-out decides it in advance. But how
these outlying Friday nights put to a certain shame the Mondays, Tues-
days, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and matinees of the Broadway
stage you should know, , . . (Here the manuscript ends.)

ARISTOCRACY VERSUS HASH

The snake reporter of the Rolling Stone was wandering up the avenue
last night on his way home from the Y. M. C A, rooms when he was ap-
proached by a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled
hair. He accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.

"'Can you tell me. Sir, where I can find in this town a family of
scrubs?'

" *I don't understand exactly.*

" 'Let me tell you how it is,' said the stranger, inserting his forefinger
in the reporter's buttonhole and badly damaging his chrysanthemum. 'I
am a representative from Soapstone County, and I and my family are
houseless, homeless, and shelterless. We have not tasted food for over a
week. I brought my family with me, as I have indigestion and could not
get around much with the boys. Some days ago I started out to find a
boarding house, as I cannot afford to put up at a hotel. I found a nice aris-
tocratic-looking place, that suited me, and went in and asked for the pro-
prietress. A very stately lady with a Roman nose came in the room. She
had one hand laid across her stom — across her waist, and the other held
a lace handkerchief. I told her I wanted board for myself and family, and
she condescended to take us. I asked for her terms, and she said $300 per
week.

" *I had two dollars in my pocket and I gave her that for a fine teapot
that I broke when I fell over the table when she spoke.'

" Tou appear surprised,' says she, 'You will please remembah that I
am the widow of Governor Riddle of Georgian; my family is very highly
connected; I give you board as a favah; I nevah considah money any
equivalent for the advantage of my society, I '

** 'Well, I got out of there, and I went to some other places. The next

ARISTOCRACY VERSUS HASH r°43

lady was a cousin o£ General Mahone of Virginia, and wanted four dol-
lars an hour for a back room with a pink motto and a Burnet granite bed
in it. The next one was an aunt of Davy Crockett, and asked eight
dollars a day for a room furnished in imitation of the Alamo, with prunes
for breakfast and one hour's conversation with her for dinner. Another
one said she was a descendant of Benedict Arnold on her father's side
and Captain Kidd on the other,

" 'She took more after Captain Kidd.

"'She only had one meal and prayers a day, and counted her society
worth $100 a week.

"'I found nine widows of Supreme Judges, twelve relicts of Gover-
nors and Generals, and twenty-two ruins left by various happy Colonels,
Professors, and Majors, who valued their aristocratic worth from $90 to
$900 per week, with weak-kneed hash and dried apples on the side. I ad-
mire people of fine descent, but my stomach yearns for pork and beans
instead of culture. Am I not right?*"

"'Your words/ said the reporter, 'convince me that you have uttered
what you have said.'

" 'Thanks. You see how it is. I am not wealthy; I have only my per
diem and my per quisites, and I cannot afford to pay for high lineage and
moldy ancestors. A little corned beef goes further with me than a
coronet, and when I am cold a coat of arms does not warm me.*

"'I greatly fear,* said the reporter, with a playful hiccough, 'that you
have run against a high-toned town. Most all the first-class boarding
houses here are run by ladies of the old Southern families, the very first
in the land/

"'I am now desperate/ said the Representative, as he chewed a tack
awhile, thinking it was a clove. 'I want to find a boarding house where
the proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was
a dago from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on
the map. I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-
woodsy, piebald gang, who never heard of finger bowls or Ward McAl-
lister, but who can get up a mess of hot corn-bread and Irish stew at reg-
ular market quotations/

" 'Is there such a place in Austin?*

"The snake reporter sadly shook his head. *I do not know/ he said, 'but
I will shake you for the beer/

"Ten minutes later the slate in the Blue Ruin saloon bore two addi-
tional characters : io/'

J044 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

THE PRISONER OF ZEMBLA

So the king fell into a furious rage, so that none durst go near him for
fear, and he gave out that since the Princess Ostla had disobeyed him
there would be a great tourney, and to the knight who should prove him-
self of the greatest valor he would give the hand of the princess.

And he sent forth a herald to proclaim that he would do this.

And the herald went about the country making his desire known, blow-
ing a great tin horn and riding a noble steed that pranced and gambolled;
and the villagers gazed upon him and said: "Lo, that is one of them tin-
hora gamblers concerning which the chroniclers have told us."

And when the day came, the king sat in the grandstand, holding the
gage of battle in his hand, and by his side sat the Princess Ostla, looking
very pale and beautiful, but with mournful eyes from which she scarce
could keep the tears. And the knights which came to the tourney gazed
upon the princess in wonder at her beauty, and each swore to win so
that he could marry her and board with the king. Suddenly the heart of
the princess gave a great bound, for she saw among the knights one of
the poor students with whom she had been in love.

The knights mounted and rode in a line past the grandstand, and the
king stopped the poor student, who had the worst horse and the poorest
caparisons of any of the knights and said:

"Sir Knight, prithee tell me of what that marvellous shacky and rusty-
looking armor of thine is made?"

"Oh, king," said the young knight, "seeing that we are about to en-
gage in a big fight, 1 would call it scrap iron, wouldn't you?"

"Ods Bodkins!" said the king. "The youth hath a pretty wit."

About this time the Princess Ostla, who began to feel better at the sight
of her lover, slipped a piece of gum into her mouth and closed her teeth
upon it, and even smiled a little and showed the beautiful pearls with
which her mouth was set. Whereupon, as soon as the knights perceived
this, 217 of them went over to the king's treasurer and settled for their
horse feed and went home.

"It seems very hard," said the princess, "that I cannot marry when I
choose/'

But two of the knights were left, one of them being the princess's lover.

"Here's enough for a fight, anyhow," said the king. "Come hither, O
knights, will ye joust for the hand of this fair lady?"

"We joust will," said the knights.

The two knights fought for two hours, and at length the princess's
lover prevailed and stretched the other upon the ground. The victorious

A STRANGE STORY 1045

knight made his horse caracole before the king and bowed low in his sad-
dle.

On the Princess Ostla's cheeks was a rosy flush; in her eyes the light of
excitement vied with the soft glow of love; her lips were parted, her
lovely hair unbound, and she grasped the arms of her chair and leaned
forward with heaving bosom and happy smile to hear the words of her
lover.

"You have foughten well, sir knight," said the king. "And if there is
any boon you crave you have but to name it"

"Then," said the knight, "I will ask you this: I have bought the patent
rights in your kingdom for Schneider's celebrated monkey wrench, and
I want a letter from you endorsing it."

"You shall have it," said the king, "but I must tell you that there is not
a monkey in my kingdom."

With a yell of rage the victorious knight threw himself on his horse
and rode away at a furious gallop.

The king was about to speak, when a horrible suspicion flashed upon
him and he fell dead upon the grandstand.

"My God!" he cried. "He has forgotten to take the princess with him!"

A STRANGE STORY

In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the
name of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, his wife, him-
self, their little daughter, five years of age and her parents, making six
people toward the population of the city when counted for a special write-
up, but only three by actual count.

One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic, and
John Smothers hurried downtown to get some medicine.

He never came back.

The little girl recovered and in time grew up to womanhood.

The mother grieved very much over her husband's disappearance, and
it was nearly three months before she married again, and moved to San
Antonio.

The little girl also married in time, and after a few years had rolled
around, she also had a little girl five years of age.

She still lived in the same house where they dwelt when her father
had left and never returned.

One night by a remarkable coincidence her little girl was taken with
cramp colic on the anniversary of the disappearance of John Smothers,
who would now have been her grandfather if he had been alive and had
a steady job.

1046 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

"I will go downtown and get some medicine for her/' said John Smith
(for it was none other than he whom she had married).

"No, no, dear John," cried his wife. "You, too, might disappear for-
ever, and then forget to come back."

So John Smith did not go, and together they sat by the bedside of little
Pansy (for that was Pansy's name).

After a little Pansy seemed to grow worse, and John Smith again at-
tempted to go for medicine, but his wife would not let him.

Suddenly the door opened, and an old man, stooped and bent, with
long white hair, entered the room.

"Hello, here is grandpa," said Pansy, She had recognized him before
any of the others.

The old man drew a bottle of medicine from his pocket and gave Pansy
a spoonful.

She got well immediately.

"I was a little late," said John Smothers, "as I waited for a street car."

FICKLE FORTUNE OR HOW GLADYS HUSTLED

"Press me no more, Mr. Snooper," said Gladys Vavasour-Smith. "I can
never be yours."

"You have led me to believe different, Gladys," said Bertram D.
Snooper.

The setting sun was flooding with golden light the oriel windows of a
magnificent mansion situated in one of the most aristocratic streets west of
the brick yard.

Bertram D. Snooper, a poor but ambitious and talented young lawyer,
had just lost his first suit. He had dared to aspire to the hand of Gladys
Vavasour-Smith, the beautiful and talented daughter of one of the oldest
and proudest families in the county. The bluest blood flowed in her veins.
Her grandfather had sawed wood for the Hornsbys and an aunt on her
mother's side had married a man who had been kicked by General Lee's
mule.

The lines about Bertram D. Snooper's hands and mouth were drawn
tighter as he paced to and fro, waiting for a reply to the question he in-
tended to ask Gladys as soon as he thought of one.

At last an idea occurred to him.

"Why will you sot marry me?n he asked in an inaudible tone.

"Because," said Gladys, firmly, speaking easily with great difficulty, "the
progression and enlightenment that the woman of to-day possesses de-
mand that the man shall bring to the marriage altar a heart and body as

FICKLE FORTUNE OR HOW GLADYS HUSTLED 1047

free from the debasing and hereditary iniquities that now no longer exist
except in the chimerical imagination of enslaved custom."

"It is as I expected," said Bertram, wiping his heated brow on the win-
dow curtain. "You have been reading books."

"Besides that," continued Gladys, ignoring the deadly charge, "you have
no money,"

The blood of the Snoopers rose hastily and mantled the cheek of Ber-
tram D. He put on his coat and moved proudly to the door.

"Stay here till I return," he said, "I will be back in fifteen years."

When he had finished speaking he ceased and left the room.

When he had gone, Gladys felt an uncontrollable yearning take posses-
sion of her. She said slowly, rather to herself than for publication, "I won-
der if there was any of that cold cabbage left from dinner."

She then left the room.

When she did so, a dark-complexioned man with black hair and
gloomy, desperate-looking clothes, came out of the fireplace where he had
been concealed and stated :

"Aha! I have you in my power at last, Bertram D. Snooper. Gladys
Vavasour-Smith shall be mine. I am in the possession of secrets that not
a soul in the world suspects. I have papers to prove that Bertram Snooper
is the heir to the Tom Bean estate,1 and I have discovered that Gladys*
grandfather who sawed wood for the Hornsbys was also a cook in Major
Rhoads Fisher's command during the war. Therefore, the family repu-
diate her, and she will marry me in order to drag their proud name down
in the dust. Ha, ha, ha!"

As the reader has doubtless long also discovered, this man was no
other than Henry R. Grasty. Mr. Grasty then proceeded to gloat some
more, and then with a sardonic laugh left for New York.

Fifteen years have elapsed.

Of course, our readers will understand that this is only supposed to be
the case.

It really took less than a minute to make the little stars that represent
an interval of time.

We could not afford to stop a piece in the middle and wait fifteen years
before continuing it.

We hope this explanation will suffice. We are careful not to create any
wrong impressions.

Gladys Vavasour-Smith and Henry R. Grasty stood at the marriage
altar.

1 An estate famous in Texas legal history. It took many, many years for adjustment and
a large part of tne property was, of course, consumed as expenses of litigation.

1048 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Mr. Grasty had evidently worked his rabbit's foot successfully, al-
though he was quite a while in doing so.

Just as the preacher was about to pronounce the fatal words on which
he would have realized ten dollars and had the laugh on Mr. Grasty, the
steeple of the church fell off and Bertram D. Snooper entered.

The preacher fell to the ground with a dull thud. He could ill afford to
lose ten dollars. He was hastily removed and a cheaper one secured.

Bertram D. Snooper held a Statesman in his hand.

"Ah!" he said, "I thought 1 would surprise you. I just got in this morn-
ing. Here is a paper noticing my arrival."

He handed it to Henry R. Grasty.

Mr. Grasty looked at the paper and turned deadly pale. It was dated
three weeks after Mr. Snooper's arrival.

"Foiled again!" he hissed.

"Speak, Bertram D. Snooper," said Gladys, "why have you come be-
tween me and Henry?"

"I have just discovered that I am the sole heir to Tom Bean's estate and
am worth two million dollars."

With a glad cry Gladys threw herself in Bertram's arms.

Henry R. Grasty drew from his breast pocket a large tin box and
opened it, took therefrom 467 pages of closely written foolscap.

"What you say is true, Mr. Snooper, but I ask you to read that," he said,
handing it to Bertram Snooper.

Mr. Snooper had no sooner read the document than he uttered a pierc-
ing shriek and bit off a large chew of tobacco.

"All is lost," he said.

"What is that document?" asked Gladys, "Governor Hogg's message?"

"It is not as bad as that," said Bertram, "but it deprives me of my entire
fortune. But I care not for that, Gladys, since I have won you."

"What is it? Speak, I implore you," said Gladys.

"Those papers," said Henry R. Grasty, "are the proofs of my appoint-
ment as administrator of the Tom Bean estate."

With a loving cry Gladys threw herself in Henry R. Grasty's arms.

Twenty minutes later Bertram D. Snooper was seen deliberately to
enter a beer saloon on Seventeenth Street.

AN APOLOGY

The person who sweeps the office, translates letters from foreign countries,
deciphers communications from graduates of business colleges, and does
most of the writing for this paper, has been confined for the past two

LORD OAKHURST S CURSE 1049

weeks to the under side of a large red quilt, with a joint caucus of la
grippe and measles.

We have missed two issues of the Rolling Stone, and are now slightly
convalescent, for which we desire to apologize and express our regrets.

Everybody's term of subscription will be extended long enough to
cover all missed issues, and we hope soon to report that the goose remains
suspended at a favorable altitude. People who have tried to run a funny
paper and entertain a congregation of large piebald measles at the same
time will understand something of the tact, finesse, and hot sassafras tea
required to do so. We expect to get out the paper regularly from this time
on, but are forced to be very careful, as improper treatment and deleteri-
ous after-effects of measles, combined with the high price of paper and
presswork, have been known to cause a relapse. Any one not getting their
paper regularly will please come down and see about it, bringing with
them a ham or any little delicacy relished by invalids.

LORD OAKHURST S CURSE

Lord Oakhurst lay dying in the oak chamber in the eastern wing of Oak-
hurst Castle. Through the open window in the calm of the summer eve-
ning, came the sweet fragrance of the early violets and budding trees, and
to the dying man it seemed as if earth's loveliness and beauty were never
so apparent as on this bright June day, his last day of life.

His young wife, whom he loved with a devotion and strength that the
presence of the king of terrors himself could not alter, moved about the
apartment, weeping and sorrowful, sometimes arranging the sick man's
pillow and inquiring of him in low, mournful tones if anything could be
done to give him comfort, and again, with stifled sobs, eating some choco-
late caramels which she carried in the pocket of her apron. The servants
went to and fro with that quiet and subdued tread which prevails in a
house where death is an expected guest, and even the crash of broken
china and shivered glass, which announced their approach, seemed to fall
upon the ear with less violence and sound than usual.

Lord Oakhurst was thinking of days gone by, when he wooed and won
his beautiful young wife, who was then but a charming and innocent girl.
How clearly and minutely those scenes rose up at the call of his memory.
He seemed to be standing once more beneath the old chestnut grove
where they had plighted their troth in the twilight under the stars; while
the rare fragrance of the June roses and the smell of supper came gently
by on the breeze. There he had told her his love; how that his whole
happiness and future joy lay in the hope that he might win her for a
bride; that if she would trust her future to his care the devotedness of his

1050 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

lifetime should be hers, and his only thought would be to make her life
one long day of sunshine and peanut candy.

How plainly he remembered how she had, with girlish shyness and
coyness, at first hesitated, and murmured something to herself about "an
old bald-headed galoot/' but when he told her that to him life without
her would be a blasted mockery, and that his income was £50,000 a year,
she threw herself on to him and froze there with the tenacity of a tick on a
brindled cow, and said, with tears of joy, "Hen-ery, I am thine/'

And now he was dying. In a few short hours his spirit would rise up at
the call of the Destroyer and, quitting his poor, weak, earthly frame,
would go forth into that dim and dreaded Unknown Land, and solve with
certainty that Mystery which revealeth itself not to mortal man.

II A carriage drove rapidly up the avenue and stopped at the door. Sir
Everhard FitzArmond, the famous London physician, who had been
telegraphed for, alighted and quickly ascended the marble steps. Lady
Oakhurst met him at the door, her lovely face expressing great anxiety
and grief. uOh, Sir Everhard, I am so glad you have come. He seems to
be sinking rapidly. Did you bring the cream almonds I mentioned in the
telegram?1*

Sir Everhard did not reply, but silently handed her a package, and,
slipping a couple of cloves into his mouth, ascended the stairs that led to
Lord Oakhurst's apartment. Lady Oakhurst followed.

Sir Everhard approached the bedside of his patient and laid his hand
gently on this sick man's diagnosis. A shade of feeling passed over his
professional countenance as he gravely and solemnly pronounced these
words: "Madam, your husband has croaked."

Lady Oakhurst at first did not comprehend his technical language, and
her lovely mouth let up for a moment on the cream almonds. But soon
his meaning flashed upon her, and she seized an ax that her husband was
accustomed to keep by his bedside to mangle his servants with, and struck
open Lord Oakhurst's cabinet containing his private papers, and with
eager hands opened the document which she took therefrom. Then, with
a wild, unearthly shriek that would have made a steam piano go out
behind a barn and kick itself in despair, she fell senseless to the floor.

Sir Everhard FritzArmond picked up the paper and read its contents.
It was Lord Oakhurst's will, bequeathing all his property to a scientific in-
stitution which should have for its object the invention of a means for
extracting peach brandy from sawdust.

Sir Everhard glanced quickly around the room. No one was in sight
Dropping the will, he rapidly transferred some valuable ornaments and
rare specimens of gold and silver filigree work from the centre table to
his pockets, and rang the bell for the servants.

BEXAR SCRIP NO. 2692 105!

HI THE CURSE Sir Everhard FitzArmond descended the stairway of
hurst Castle and passed out into the avenue that led from the doorway to
the great iron gates of the park* Lord Oakhurst had been a great sports-
man during his life and always kept a well-stocked kennel of curs, which
now rushed out from their hiding places and with loud yelps sprang upon
the physician, burying their fangs in his lower limbs and seriously damag-
ing his apparel.

Sir Everhard, startled out of his professional dignity and usual indif-
ference to human suffering, by the personal application of feeling, gave
vent to a most horrible and blighting CURSE and ran with great swiftness
to his carriage and drove off toward the city.

BEXAR SCRIP NO. 2692

Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see the General
Land Office.

As you pass up the avenue you turn sharp round the corner of the court
house, and on a steep hill before you you see a mediaeval castle.

You think of the Rhine; the "castled crag of Drachenfels"; the Lorelei;
and the vine-clad slopes of Germany. And German it is in every line of its
architecture and design.

The plan was drawn by an old draftsman from the "Vaterland," whose
heart still loved the scenes of his native land, and it is said he produced
the design of a certain castle near his birthplace with remarkable fidelity.

Under the present administration a new coat of paint has vulgarized
its ancient and venerable walls. Modern tiles have replaced the limestone
slabs of its floors, worn in hollows by the tread of thousands of feet, and
smart and gaudy fixtures have usurped the place of the timewora furni-
ture that has been consecrated by the touch of hands that Texas will never
cease to honor.

But even now, when you enter the building, you lower your voice, and
time turns backward for you, for the atmosphere which you breathe is
cold with the exudations of buried generations.

The building is stone with a coating of concrete; the walls are im-
mensely thick; it is cold in the summer and warm in the winter; it is
isolated and sombre; standing apart from the other state buildings, sullen
and decaying, brooding on the past.

Twenty years ago it was much the same as now; twenty years from now
the garish newness will be worn off and it will return to its appearance of
gloomy decadence.

People living in other states can form BO conception of the vastness and

1052 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

importance of the work performed and the significance of the millions of
records and papers composing the archives of this office.

The title deeds, patents, transfers, and legal documents connected with
every foot of land owned in the state of Texas are filed here.

Volumes could be filled with accounts of the knavery, the double-
dealing, the cross purposes, the perjury, the lies, the bribery, the altera-
tion and erasing, the suppressing and destroying of papers, the various
schemes and plots that for the sake of the almighty dollar have left their
stains upon the records of the General Land Office.

No reference is made to the employees. No more faithful, competent,
and efficient force of men exists in the clerical portions of any govern-
ment, but there is— or was, for their day is now over— a class of land
speculators commonly called land sharks, unscrupulous and greedy, who
have left their trail in every department of this office, in the shape of
titles destroyed, patents cancelled, homes demolished and torn away,
forged transfers and lying affidavits.

Before the modern dies were laid upon the floors, there were deep
hollows in the limestone slabs, worn by the countless feet that daily trod
uneasily through its echoing corridors, pressing from file room to busi-
ness room, from commissioner's sanctum to record books and back again.

The honest but ignorant settler, bent on saving the little plot of land
he called home, elbowed the wary land shark who was searching the
records for evidence to oust him; the lordly cattle baron, relying on his
influence and money, stood at the Commissioner's desk side by side with
the pre-emptor, whose little potato patch lay like a minute speck of island
in the vast, billowy sea of his princely pastures, and played the old
game of "freeze-out," which is as old as Cain and Abel.

The trail of the serpent is through it all.

Honest, earnest men have wrought for generations striving to disen-
tangle the shameful coil that certain years of fraud and infamy have
wound. Look at the files and see the countless endorsements of those in
authority:

"Transfer doubtful — locked up."

"Certificate a forgery— locked up."

"Signature a forgery.**

"Patent refused--duplicate patented elsewhere."

"Field notes forged,"

"Certificates stolen from office" — and so on, ad infiniturn.

The record books, spread upon long tables in the big room upstairs, are
open to the examination of all.

Open them, and you will find the dark and greasy fingerprints of half
a century's handling. The quick hand of the land grabber has fluttered the
leaves a million times; the damp clutch of the perturbed tiller of the soil
has left traces of his calling on the ragged leaves.

BEXAR SCRIP NO. 2692 1053

Interest centres in the file room*

This is a large room, built as a vault, fireproof, and entered by but a
single door.

There is "No Admission*' on the portal; and the precious files are
handed out by a clerk in charge only on presentation of an order signed
by the Commissioner or chief clerk.

In years past too much laxity prevailed in its management, and the files
were handled by all comers, simply on their request, and returned at their
will or not at all.

In those days most of the mischief was done. In the file room, there are

about files, each in a paper wrapper, and comprising the title papers

of a particular tract of land.

You ask the clerk in charge for the papers relating to any survey in
Texas. They are arranged simply in districts and numbers.

He disappears from the door, you hear the sliding of a tin box, the lid
snaps, and the file is in your hand.

Go up there some day and call for Bexar Scrip No. 2692.

The file clerk stares at you for a second, says shordy :

"Out of file."

It has been missing twenty years.

The history of that file has never been written before.

Twenty years ago there was a shrewd land agent living in Austin who
devoted his undoubted talents and vast knowledge of land tides, and the
laws governing them, to the locating of surveys made by illegal certifi-
cates or improperly made, and otherwise of no value through non-compli-
ance with the statutes, or whatever flaws his ingenious and unscrupulous
mind could unearth.

He found a fatal defect in the tide of the land as on file in Bexar Scrip
No. 2692 and pkced a new certificate upon the survey in his own name.

The law was on his side.

Every sentiment of justice, of right, and humanity was against him.

The certificate by virtue of which tie original survey had been made was
missing.

It was not to be found in the file, and no memorandum or date on the
wrapper to show that it had ever been filed.

Under the law the land was vacant, unappropriated public domain and
open to location.

The land was occupied by a widow and her only son, and she sup-
posed her title good.

The railroad had surveyed a new line through the property, and it had
doubled in value.

Sharp, the land agent, did not communicate with her in any way until
he had filed his papers, rushed his claim through the departments and
into the patent room for patenting.

1054 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Then he wrote her a letter, offering her the choice of buying from him
or vacating at once.

He received no reply.

One day he was looking through some files and came across the missing
certificate, Some one, probably an employee of the office, had by mistake,
after making some examination, placed it in the wrong file, and curiously
enough another inadvertence, in there being no record of its filing on the
wrapper, had completed the appearance of its having never been filed.

Sharp called for the file in which it belonged and scrutinized it care-
fully, fearing he might have overlooked some endorsement regarding its
return to the office.

On the back of the certificate was plainly endorsed the date of filing,
according do law, and signed by the chief clerk.

If this certificate should be seen by the examining clerk, his own claim,
when it came up for patenting, would not be worth the paper on which
it was written.

Sharp glanced furtively around. A young man, or rather a boy about
eighteen years of age, stood a few feet away regarding him closely with
keen black eyes.

Sharp, a litde confused, thrust the certificate into the file where it
properly belonged and began gathering up the other papers.

The boy came up and leaned on the desk beside him.

"A right interesting office, sir!" he said. "I have never been in here
before. All those papers, now, they are about lands, are they not? The
titles and deeds, and such things?"

"Yes," said Sharp. "They are supposed to contain all the title papers."

"This one, now," said the boy, taking up Bexar Scrip No. 2692, "what
land does this represent the title of? Ah, I see 'Six hundred and forty

acres in B county? Absalom Harris, original grantee." Please tell me, I

arn so ignorant of these things, how can you tell a good survey from a bad
one? I am told that there are a great many illegal and fraudulent surveys
in this office. I suppose this one is all right?"

"No," said Sharp. "The certificate is missing. It is invalid/*

"That paper I just saw you place in that file I suppose is something else
— field notes, or a transfer probably?"

"Yes," said Sharp, hurriedly, "corrected field notes. Excuse me, I am a
little pressed for time."

The boy was watching him with bright, alert eyes.

It would never do to leave the certificate in the file; but he could not
take it out with that inquisitive boy watching him.

He turned to the file room, with a dozen or more files in his hands,
and accidentally dropped part of them on the floor. As he stooped to pick
them up he swiftly thrust Bexar Scrip No. 2692 in the inside breast pocket
of his coat.

BEXAR SCRIP NO. 2692 1055

This happened at just half-past four o'clock, and when the file clerk took
the files he threw them in a pile in his room, came out and locked the door.

The clerks were moving out of the doors in long, straggling lines,

It was closing time.

Sharp did not desire to take the file from the Land Office.

The boy might have seen him place the file in his pocket, and the
penalty of the law for such an act was very severe.

Some distance back from the file room was the draftsman's room now
entirely vacated by its occupants.

Sharp dropped behind the outgoing stream of men, and slipped slyly
into this room.

The clerks trooped noisily down the iron stairway, singing, whistling,
and talking.

Below, the night watchman awaited their exit, ready to close and bar
the great doors to the south and east

It is his duty to take careful note each day that no one remains in the
building after the hour of closing.

Sharp waited until aU sounds had ceased.

It was his intention to linger until everything was quiet, and then to
remove the certificate from the file, and throw the latter carelessly on
some draftsman's desk, as if it had been left there during the business of
the day.

He knew also that he must remove the certificate from the office or
destroy it, as the chance finding of it by a clerk would lead to its immedi-
ately being restored to its proper place, and the consequent discovery that
his location over the old survey was absolutely worthless.

As he moved cautiously along the stone floor the loud barking of the
little black dog, kept by the watchman, told that his sharp ears had heard
the sounds of his steps.

The great, hollow rooms echoed loudly, move as lightly as he could,

Sharp sat down at a desk and laid the file before him.

In all his queer practices and cunning tricks he had not yet included
any act that was down-right criminal.

He had always kept on the safe side of the law, but in the deed he was
about to commit there was no compromise to be made with what little
conscience he had left.

There is no well-defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty.

The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and
he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in the
one domain and sometimes in lite other; so the only safe road is the broad
highway that leads straight through and has been well defined by line
and compass.

Sharp was a man of what is called high standing in the community.
That is> his word in a trade was as good as any man's; his check was as

1056 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

good as so much cash, and so regarded; he went to church regularly;
went in good society and owed no man anything.

He was regarded as a sure winner in any land trade he chose to make>
but that was his occupation.

The act he was about to commit now would place him forever in the
ranks of those who chose evil for their portion — if it was found out.

More than that, it would rob a widow and her son of property soon to
be of great value, which, if not legally theirs, was theirs certainly by every
claim of justice.

But he had gone too far to hesitate.

His own survey was in the patent room for patenting. His own title
was about to be perfected by the State's own hand.

The certificate must be destroyed.

He leaned his head on his hands for a moment, and as he did so a
sound behind him caused his heart to leap with guilty fear, but before he
could rise, a hand came over his shoulder and grasped the file.

He rose quickly, as white as paper, rattling his chair loudly on the
stone floor.

The boy who had spoken to him earlier stood contemplating him with
contemptuous and flashing eyes, and quietly placed the file in the left
breast pocket of his coat.

"So, Mr. Sharp, by nature as well as by name," he said, "it seems that I
was right in waiting behind the door in order to see you safely out. You
will appreciate the pleasure I feel in having done so when I tell you my
name is Harris. My mother owns the land on which you have filed, and
if there is any justice in Texas she shall hold it. I am not certain, but I
think I saw you place a paper in this file this afternoon, and it is barely
possible that it may be of value to me. I was also impressed with the idea
that you desired to remove it again, but had not the opportunity. Any-
way, I shall keep it until to-morrow and let the Commissioner decide."

Far back among Mr, Sharp s ancestors there must have been some of
the old berserker blood, for his caution, his presence of mind left him,
and left him possessed of a blind, devilish, unreasoning rage that showed
itsetf in a moment in the white glitter of his eye.

"Give me that file, boy/' he said, thickly, holding out his hand.

"I am no such fool, Mr. Sharp," said the youth. "This file shall be laid

before the Commissioner to-morrow for examination. If he finds

Help! Help!"

Sharp was upon him like a tiger and bore him to the floor. The boy was
strong and vigorous, but the suddenness of the attack gave him no chance
to resist. He struggled up again to his feet, but it was an animal, with
blazing eyes and cruel-looking teeth, that fought him, instead of a man.

Mr. Sharp, a man of high standing and good report, was battling for
his reputation.

BEXAR SCRIP NO. 2692 1057

Presently there was a dull sound, and another, and still one more, and
a blade flashing white and then red, and Edward Harris dropped down
like some stuffed effigy of a man, that boys make for sport, with limbs
all crumpled and lax, on the stone floor of the Land Office.

The old watchman was deaf and heard nothing.

The little dog barked at the foot of the stairs until his master made him
come into his room.

Sharp stood there for several minutes holding in his hand his bloody
clasp knife, listening to the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the loud
ticking of the clock above the receiver's desk.

A map rustled on the wall and his blood turned to ice; a rat ran across
some strewn papers, and his scalp prickled, and he could scarcely moisten
his dry lips with his tongue.

Between the file room and the draftsman's room there is a door that
opens on a small dark spiral stairway that winds from the lower floor to
the ceiling at the top of the house.

This stairway was not used then, nor is it now.

It is unnecessary, inconvenient, dusty, and dark as night, and was a
blunder of the architect who designed the building.

This stairway ends above at the tent-shaped space between the roof
and the joists.

That space is dark and forbidding, and being useless is rarely visited.

Sharp opened this door and gazed for a moment up this narrow cob-
webbed stairway.

After dark that night a man opened cautiously one of the lower win-
dows of the Land Office, crept out with great circumspection and disap-
peared in the shadows.

One afternoon, a week after this time, Sharp lingered behind again
after the clerks had left and the office closed.

The next morning the first comers noticed a broad mark in the dust on
the upstairs floor, and the same mark was observed below stairs near
a window.

It appeared as if some heavy and rather bulky object had been dragged
along through the limestone dust. A memorandum book with "E. Harris"
written on the flyleaf was ricked up on the stairs, but nothing particular
was thought of any of these signs.

Circulars and advertisements appeared for a long time in the papers
asking for information concerning Edward Harris, who left his mother's
home on a certain date and had never been heard of since.

After a while these things were succeeded by affairs of more recent in-
terest, and faded from the pdbKc mind.

1058 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

Sharp died two years ago, respected and regretted. The last two years of
his life were clouded with a settled melancholy for which his friends could

assign no reason.

The bulk of his comfortable fortune was made from the land he ob-
tained by fraud and crime.

The disappearance of the file was a mystery that created some commo-
tion in the Land Office, but he got his patent.

It is a well-known tradition in Austin and vicinity that there is a buried
treasure of great value somewhere on the banks of Shoal Creek, about
a mile west of the city.

Three young men living in Austin recently became possessed of what
they thought was a clue of the whereabouts of the treasure, and Thurs-
day night they repaired to the place after dark and plied the pickaxe and
shovel with great diligence for about three hours.

At the end of that time their efforts were rewarded by the finding o£ a
box buried about four feet below the surface, which they hastened to open.

The light of a lantern disclosed to their view the fleshless bones of a
human skeleton with clothing still wrapping its uncanny limbs.

TTbey immediately left the scene and notified the proper authorities of
their ghastly find.

On closer examination, in the left breast pocket of the skeleton's coat,
there was found a flat, oblong packet of papers, cut through and through
in three places by a knife blade, and so completely soaked and clotted
with blood that it had become an almost indistinguishable mass.

With the aid of a microscope and the exercise of a little imagination
this much can be made out of the letters at the top of the papers :

rip >j— 2—92.

QUERIES AND ANSWERS

CGIXBGE GRAWATB Can you inform me where I can buy an interest in a
newspaper of some kind? I have some money and would be glad to invest
it in something of the sort, if some one would allow me to put in my capi-
tal against his experience.

Telegraph us your address at once, day message. Keep telegraphing
every ten minutes at our expense until we see you. Will start on first
train after receiving your wire.

G. F. Who was the author of the line, "Breathes there a man with soul
so dead"?

This was written by a visitor to the State Saengerfest of 1892 while con-

QUERIES AND ANSWERS 1059

versing with a member who had just eaten a large slice of limburger
cheese.

GEOLOGIST Where can I get the "Testimony of the Rocks"?

See the reports of the campaign committees after the election in Novem-
ber.

SCHOLAR Please state what the seven wonders of the world are. I know
five of them, I think, but can't find out the other two.

The Temple of Diana, at Lexington, Ky.; the Great Wall of China;
Judge Von Rosenberg (the Colossus of Roads); the Hanging Gardens
at Albany; a San Antonio Sunday school; Mrs. Frank Leslie, and the
Populist party.

CONTANT READER What day did Christmas come on in the year 1847?
The 25th of December.

IGNORANT What does an F. F. V. mean?

What does he mean by what? If he takes you by the arm and tells you
how much you are like a brother of his in Richmond, he means Feel For
Your Vest, for he wants to borrow a five. If he holds his head high and
don't speak to you on the street he means that he already owes you ten
and is Following a Fresh Victim.

R. Please decide a bet for us. My friend says that the sentence, "The
negro bought the watermelon of the farmer" is correct, and I say it should
be "The negro bought the watermelon from the farmer." Which is correct?
Neither. It should read, "The negro stole the watermelon from the
farmer."

HUNTER When do the Texas game laws go into effect?
When you sit down at the table.

LAND AGENT Do you know where I can trade a section of fine Panhandle
land for a pair of pants with a good title?

We do not. You can't raise anything on land in that section. A man can
always raise a dollar on a good pair of pants.

ADVERTISER Name in order the three best newspapers in Texas.

Well, the Galveston News runs about second, and the San Antonio
Express third. Let us hear from you again.

PROSPECTOR Has a married woman any rights in Texas ?

Hush, Mr. Prospector. Not quite so loud, if you please. Come up to the

1060 BOOK VIII ROLLING STONES

office some afternoon, and if everything seems quiet, come inside, and
look at our eye, and our suspenders hanging on to one button, and feel
the lump on the top of our head. Yes, she has some rights of her own,
and everybody else's she can scoop in.

Who was the author of the sayings, "A public office is a public trust,"
and "I would rather be right than President"?
EU Perkins.

INQUISITIVE Is the Lakeside Improvement Company making anything
out of their own town tract on the lake?
Yes, lots.

BOOK:

THE P E WEE

In the hush of the drowsy afternoon,

When the very wind on the breast of June

Lies settled, and hot white tracery

Of the shattered sunlight filters free

Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward;

On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard

Of the birds that be;

*Tis the lone Pewee.

Its note is a sob, and its note is pitched
In a single key, like a soul bewitched

To a mournful minstrelsy.

1062 BOOK IX POEMS

aPeewee9 Pewee," doth it ever cry;

A sad, sweet minor threnody
That the aisles of the dim hot grove

Like a tale of a wrong or a vanished love;
And the fancy conies that the wee doe bird
Perchance was a maid, and her heart was stirred

By some lover's rhyme

In a

And the world turned false and cold;

And her grew dark and her faith grew cold

In fairy far-off clime.

And her crept into the Pcwee's breast;
And she cries with a unrest

For lost, in the afternoon;

For the lavish June;

For the In the ago;

For the pierceth so.'

Thus the Pewee cries.

While the lies

in the still sunshine,

to the leaf and the bough and the vine

Of paradise.

NOTHING TO SAY

"You can tell your paper," the great man said,

"1 aa interview.

1 to say on the question, sir;

to say to you.**

he till the sun went down

the went to roost;

And he the collar of the poor young

his hold he loosed

And the sun went down and the moon came up,

And he talked till the dawn of day;
Though he said, "On this subject mentioned by you,

1 have nothing whate?er to say/1

THE MURDERER 1063

And down the reporter dropped to sleep

And flat on the floor he lay;
And the last he heard was the great man's words,

"I have nothing at all to say/*

THE MURDERER

"I push my boat among the reeds;

I sit and stare about;
Queer slimy things crawl through the weeds,

Put to a sullen rout.
I paddle under cypress trees;

All fearfully I peer
Through oozy channels when the breeze

Comes rustling at my ear.

"The long moss hangs perpetually;

Gray scalps of buried years;
Blue crabs steal out and stare at me,

And seem to gauge my fears;
I start to hear the eel swim by;

I shudder when the crane
Strikes at his prey; I turn to fly

At drops of sudden rain.

"In every little cry of bird

I hear a tracking shout;
From every sodden leaf that's stirred

I see a face frown out;
My soul shakes when the water rat

Cowed by the blue snake flies;
Black knots from tree holes glimmer at

Me with accusive eyes.

"Through all the murky silence rings

A cry not born of earth;
And endless, deep, unechoing thing

That owns not human birth,
I see no colors in the sky

Save red, as blood is red;
I pray to God to still that cry

From pallid lips and dead.

1064 BOOK IX POEMS

"One spot in all that stagnant waste

I shun as moles shun lights
And turn my prow to make all haste

To ly before the night.
A poisonous mound hid from the su%

Where crabs hold revelry;
Where eels and fishes feed upon

The Thing that once was He,

4CAt night I along the shore;

Within my hut 1 creep;
But awful stars blink through the door*

To hold me from my sleep.
The river gurgles like his throat^

la little choklag coves,
And loudly dins that phantom note

From out the awful groves.

"I shout with laughter through the night:

I in greatest glee;
My all vanish with the light

Oh! splendid aights they be!
I see her weep; she calls his name;

He answers not, nor will;
My soul with joy is all aflame;

I laugh, and laugh, and thrill.

"I count her teardrops as they fall;

I my daytime fears;
I to God for all

These and happy jeers.
But, the warning dawn awakes.

Begins my wandering;
With stealthy strokes dirough tangled brakes,

A wasted, frightened thing.**

SOME POSTSCRIPTS

Two Portraits

Wild hair flying, in a matted maze,
Hand firm as iron3 eyes all ablaze;

SOME POSTSCRIPTS 1065

Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze,
As o'er the keno board boldly he plays.

—That's Texas Bill.

Wild hair flying, in a matted maze,
Hand firm as iron, eyes all ablaze;
Bystanders timidly, breathlessly gaze,
As o'er the keyboard boldly he plays.
— That's Paderewski.

A Contribution

There came unto ye editor
A poet, pale and wan,

And at the table sate him down,
A roll within his hand.

Ye editor accepted it,

And thanked his lucky fates;
Ye poet had to yield it up

To a king full on eights.

The Old Farm

Just now when the whitening blossoms flare
On the apple trees and the growing grass
Creeps forth, and a balm is in the air;

With my lighted pipe and well-filled glass
Of the old farm I am dreaming.
And softly smiling, seeming
To see the bright sun beaming
Upon the old home farm.

And when I think how we milked the cows,

And hauled the hay from the meadows low;
And walked the furrows behind the plows*
And chopped the cotton to make it grow
Fd much rather be here dreaming
And smiling, only seeming
To see the hot sun gleaming
Upon the old home farm.

1066 BOOK IX POEMS

Vanity

A Poet sang so wondrous sweet

That toiling thousands paused and listened long;
So lofty, strong noble were his themes,

It that strength supernal swayed his song.

He, god-like, chided poor, weak, weeping man,
And him dry his foolish, shameful tears;

Taught that each sou! on its proud self should lean,
And that rampart scorn all earth-born fears.

The Poet grovelled on a fresh heaped mound,

o'er the clay of one he'd fondly loved;
And cursed the world, and drenched the sod with tears
And all the iimsy mockery of his precepts proved.

The Lullaby Boy

Hie lullaby boy to the same old tune
Who his drum and toys

For the purpose of dying in early June
Is the kind the public enjoys.

But, just for a change, please sing us a song,

Of the sore-toed boy that's fly,
And and mean, and ugly, and bad,

And positively will not die.

Chanson de BoMme

Urns of all remind us

is red and violet's blue;
Johnny's got his behind us

"Cause the lamb loved Mary too.
—Robert Burns9 "Hocht Time in the aud Town,"

I'd rather write this* as bad as it is

Than be Will Shakespeare's shade;
Fd rather be known as an F. F. V.
Than in Mount Vernon laid.

SOME POSTSCRIPTS 1067

I'd rather count ties from Denver to Troy
Then to head Booth's old programme;

Fd rather be special for the New York World
Than to lie with Abraham.

For there's stuff in the can, there's Dolly and Fan

And a hundred things to choose;
There's a \iss in the ring, and every old thing

That a real live man can use.

Fd rather fight flies in a boarding house

Than fill Napoleon's grave,
And snuggle up warm in my three slat bed

Than be Andre the brave.
Td rather distribute a coat of red

On the town with a wad of dough
Just now, than to have my cognomen

Spelled "Michael Angelo."

For a small live man, if he's prompt on hand
When the good things pass around,

While the world's on tap has a better snap
Than a big man under ground.

Hard to Forget

I'm thinking to-night of the old farm, Ned,

And my heart is heavy and sad
As I think of the days that by have fled

Since I was a little lad.
There rises before me each spot I know

Of the old home in the dell,
The fields, and woods, and meadows below

That memory holds so well.

The city is pleasant and lively, Ned,

But what to us is its charm?
To-night all my thoughts are fixed, instead,

On our childhood's old home farm.
I know you are thinking the same, dear Ned,

With your head bowed on your arm,
For to-morrow at four well be jerked out of bed

To plow on that darned old farm.

IO68 BOOK IX POEMS

DROP A TEAR IN THIS SLOT

He who, when torrid Summer's sickly glare

Beat down upon the city's parched walls,

Sat him within a room scarce 8 by 9,

And, with tongue hanging out and panting breath,

Perspiring, pierced by pangs of prickly heat.

Wrote variations of the seaside joke

We all do know and always loved so well,

And of cool breezes and sweet girls that lay

In shady nooks, and pleasant windy coves

Anon

Will in that self -same room, with tattered quilt

Wrapped round him, and blue stiffening hands,

All shivering, fireless, pinched by winter's blasts,

Will hale us forth upon the rounds once more,

So that we may expect it not in vain,

The joke of how with curses deep and coarse

Papa puts up the pipe of parlor stove.

So ye

Who greet with tears this olden favorite,

Drop one for him who, though he strives to please

Must write about the things he never sees.

TAM ALES

This is the Mexican This is the reason,

Don Jose Calderon Hark to the wherefore;

One of God's countrymen. Listen and tremble.

Land of the buzzard. One of his ancestors,

Cheap silver dollar, and Ancient and garlicky

Cacti and murderers. Probably grandfather,

Why has he left his land? Died with his boots on.

Land of the lazy man, Killed by the Texans,

Land of the pulque Texans with big guns,

Land of the bull fight, At San Jacinto.

Fleas and revolution. Died without benefit

Of priest or clergy;
Died full of minie balls,
Mescal and pepper.

Don Jose Calderon
Heard of the tragedy.
Heard of it, thought of it,
Vowed a deep vengeance;
Vowed retribution
On the Americans,
Murderous gringos,
Especially Texans.
"Valgame Dios! que
Ladrones, diablos,
Matadores, mentidores,
Carracos y perros,
Voy a matarles,
Con solo mis manos,
Toditas sin f alta."
Thus swore the Hidalgo
Don Jose Calderon.
He hied him to Austin-
Bought him a basket,
A barrel of pepper,
And another of garlic;
Also a rope he bought.
That was his stock in trade;
Nothing else had he.
Nor was he rated in
DUE or in Bradstreet,
Though he meant business,
Don Jose Calderon,
Champion of Mexico,
Don Jose Calderon,
Seeker of vengeance.

With his stout lariat,
Then he caught swiftly
Tomcats and puppy dogs,
Caught them and cooked them,
Don Jos£ Calderon,
Vower of vengeance.
Now on the sidewalk
Sits the avenger

TAMALES

Selling Tamales to
Innocent purchasers.
Dire is thy vengeance,
Oh, Jose Calderon,
Pitiless Nemesis
Fearful Redresser
Of the wrongs done to thy
Sainted grandfather.

Now the doomed Texans,
Rashly hilarious,
Buy of the deadly wares,
Buy and devour.
Rounders at midnight,
Citizens solid,
Bankers and newsboys.
Bootblacks and preachers,
Rashly importunate,
Courting destruction,
Buy and devour.
Beautiful maidens
Buy and devour,
Gentle society youths
Buy and devour.

Buy and devour.
This thing called Tamale;
Made of rat terrier,
Spitz dog and poodle,
Maltese cat, boarding house
Steak and red pepper,
Garlic and tallow,
Corn meal and shucks.
Buy without shame
Sit on store steps and eat^
Stand on the street and eat,
Ride on the cars and eat.
Strewing the shucks around
Over creation*

Dire is thy vengeance,
Don Jos£ Calderon,
For the slight thing we did
Killing thy grandfather.

1069

BOOK IX POEMS

What boots it if we killed With your Tamales,

Only one greaser, Don Jose Calderon.

Don Jose Calderon? Santos Esperitos,

This is your deep revenge, Vicente Camillo,

You have greased all of us, Quitana de Rios,

Greased a whole nation De Rosa y Ribera.

SOME LETTERS

Letter to Mr. Oilman Hall, O. Henry's friend and Associate Editor of
Everybody's Magaz'ne*

"the Gallic"—

Excavation Road — Sundy.

my dear mr. hall:

in your October E'bodys' i read a story in which i noticed some sentences
as follows :

"Day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out, day
in, day out, it had rained, rained, and rained and rained & rained & rained
& rained & rained till the mountains loomed like a chunk of rooined velvet"

And the other one was: ui don't keer whether you are any good or not,"
she cried. "YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! You're
alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe
alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive] YouVe alive! YouVe alivel
YouVe alive!"

I thought she would never stop saying it, on and on and on and on
and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. "YouVe
alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe
alive! YouVe ALIVE!

"YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe alive!
YouVe alive! YouVe alive! YouVe ALIVE!

"YOU'RE ALIVE!"

Say, bill; do you get this at a rate, or does every word go?

i want to know, because if the latter is right i'm going to interduce in
compositions some histerical personages that will loom up large as re-
peeters when the words are counted up at the polls.

Yours truly
O. henry
28 West 26th St.,

West of Broadway
Mr. hall,
part editor
of everybody's.

SOME LETTERS IQJI

Letter to Mrs. Hall, a friend back in North Carolina.

KYNTOEKNEEYOUGH RANCH, November 31, 1883
Dear Mrs. Hall:

As I have not heard from you since the shout you gave when you set
out from the station on your way home I guess you have not received
some seven or eight letters from me, and hence your silence. The mails
are so unreliable that they may all have been lost. If you don't get this you
had better send to Washington and get them to look over the dead letter
office for the others. I have nothing to tell you of any interest, except that
we all nearly froze to death last night, thermometer away below 32 de-
grees in the shade all night.

You ought by all means to come back to Texas this winter; you would
love it more and more; that same little breeze that you looked for so
anxiously last summer is with us now, as cold as Callum Bros, suppose
their soda water to be.

My sheep are doing finely; they never were in better condition. They
give me very little trouble, for I have never been able to see one of them
yet. I will proceed to give you all the news about this ranch. Dick has
got his new house well under way, the pet lamb is doing finely, and I
take the cake for cooking mutton steak and fine gravy. The chickens are
doing mighty well, the garden produces magnificent prickly pears and
grass; onions are worth two for five cents, and Mr. Haynes has shot a
Mexican.

Please send by express to this ranch 75 cooks and 200 washwomen,
blind or wooden legged ones preferred. The climate has a tendency to make
them walk off every two or three days, which must be overcome. Ed
Brockman has quit the store and I think is going to work for Lee among
the cows. Wears a red sash and swears so fluently that he has been mis-
taken often for a member of the Texas Legislature.

If you see Dr. Beall bow to him for me, politely but distantly; he re-
fuses to waste a line upon me. I suppose he is too much engaged in court-
ing to write any letters. Give Dr. Hall my profoundest regards. I think
about him invariably whenever he is occupying my thoughts.

Influenced by the contents of the Bugle, there is an impression general
at this ranch that you are president, secretary, and committee, &C-, of the
various associations of fruit fairs, sewing societies, church fairs, Presbytery,
general assembly conference, medical conventions, and baby shows that
go to make up the glory and renown of North Carolina in general, and
while I heartily congratulate the aforesaid institutions on their having
such a zealous and efficient officer, I tremble lest their requirements leave
you not time to favor me with a letter in reply to this, and assure you that
if you would so honor me I would highly appreciate the effort I would

1072 BOOK IX POEMS

rather have a good long letter from you than many Bugles. In your letter
be certain to refer as much as possible to the advantages of civilized life
over the barbarous; you might mention the theatres you see there, the nice
things you eat, warm fires, niggers to cook and bring in wood; a special
reference to nice beefsteak would he advisable. You know our being
reminded of these luxuries make us contented and happy. When we hear
of you people at home eating turkeys and mince pies and getting drunk
Christmas and having a fine time generally we become more and more
reconciled to this country and would not leave it for anything.

I must close now as I must go and dress for the opera. Write soon.

Yours very truly,

W. S. Porter

Dr. Beall, of Greensboro, N. G, was one of Porter's best friends. Between
them there was an almost regular correspondence during Porter's first
years in Texas.

TO DR. W. P. BEALL

LA SALLE COUNTY, Texas, December 8, 1883

Dear Doctor: I send you a play — a regular high art full orchestra, gilt-
edged drama. I send it to you because of old acquaintance and as a revival
of old associations. Was I not ever ready in times gone by to generously
furnish a spatula and other assistance when you did buy the succulent
watermelon? And was it not by my connivance and help that you did oft
from the gentle Oscar Mayo skates entice? But I digress. I think that I
have so concealed the identity of the characters introduced that no one
will be able to place them, as they all appear under fictitious names, al-
though I admit that many of the incidents and scenes were suggested
by actual experiences of the author in your city.

You will, of course, introduce the play upon the stage if proper ar-
rangements can be made. I have not yet an opportunity of ascertaining
whether Edwin Booth, John McCullough, or Henry Irving can be secured.
However, I will leave all such matters to your judgment and taste. Some
few suggestions I will make with regard to the mounting of the piece
which may be of value to you. Discrimination will be necessary in se-
lecting a fit person to represent the character of Bill Slax, the tramp. The
part is that of a youth of great beauty and noble manners, temporarily
under a cloud, and is generally rather difficult to fill properly. The other
minor characters, such as damfools, citizens, police, customers, country-
men, £c., can be very easily supplied, especially the first.

Let it be announced in the Patriot for several days that in front of

SOME LETTERS 1073

Benbow Hall, at a certain hour, a man will walk a tight rope seventy feet
from the ground who has never made the attempt before; that the ex-
hibition will be FREE, and that the odds are 20 to i that the man will be
killed. A large crowd will gather. Then let the Guildford Grays charge
one side, the Reidsville Light Infantry the other, with fixed bayonets,
and a man with a hat commence taking up a collection in the rear. By
this means they can be readily driven into the hall and the door locked.

I have studied a long time about devising a plan for obtaining pay from
the audience and have finally struck upon the only feasible one I think.

After the performance let some one come out on the stage and announce
that James Forbis will speak two hours. The result, easily explainable by
philosophical and psychological reasons, will be as follows: The minds of
the audience, elated and inspired by the hope of immediate departure
when confronted by such a terror-inspiring and dismal prospect, will
collapse with the fearful reaction which will take place, and for a space
of time they will remain in a kind of comatose, farewell-vain-world con-
dition. Now, as this is the time when the interest of the evening is at its
highest pitch, let the melodious strains of the orchestra steal forth as a
committee appointed by the managers of lawyers, druggists, doctors, and
revenue officers, go around and relieve the audience of the price of ad-
mission for each one. Where one person has no money let it be made up
from another, but on no account let the whole sum taken be more than
the just amount at usual rates.

As I said before, the characters in the play are purely imaginary, and
therefore not to be confounded with real persons. But lest any one,
feeling some of the idiosyncrasies and characteristics apply too forcibly
to his own high moral and irreproachable self, should allow his warlike
and combative spirits to arise, you might as you go, kind of casually like,
produce the impression that I rarely miss my aim with a Colt's forty-
five, but if that does not have the effect of quieting the splenetic individual,
and he still thirsts for Bill Slax's gore, just inform him that if he comes
out here he can't get any whiskey within two days' journey of my present
abode, and water will have to be his only beverage while on the warpath.
This, I am sure, will avert the bloody and direful conflict

Accept my lasting regards and professions of respect.

Ever yours,

Bill Slax

TO DR. W. P. BEALL

My dear Doctor: I wish you a happy, &c., and all that sort of thing,
don't you know, &c., &c. I send you a few little productions in the way
of poetry, &c., which, of course, were struck off in an idle moment. Some
of the pictures are not good likenesses, and so I have not labelled them,

1074 BOOK IX POEMS

which you may do as fast [as] you discover whom they represent, as some
of them resemble others more than themselves, but the poems are good
without exception, and will compare favorably with Baron Alfred's latest
on spring.

I have just come from a hunt, in which I mortally wounded a wild
hog, and as my boots are full of thorns I can't write any longer than this
paper will contain, for it's all I've got, because I'm too tired to write any
more for the reason that I have no news to tell

I see by the Patriot that you are Superintendent of Public Health, and
assure you that all such upward rise as you make like that will ever be
witnessed with interest and pleasure by me, &c., &c. Give my regards to
Dr. and Mrs. Hall It would be uncomplimentary to your powers of
perception as well as superfluous to say that I will now close and remain,

yours truly,

7 W. S. Porter

LETTER TO DR. W. P. BEAU-
LA SALLE COUNTY, Texas, February 2% 1884

My dear Doctor: Your appreciated epistle of the i8th received. I was
very glad to hear from you. I hope to hear again if such irrelevant cor-
respondence will not interfere with your duties as Public Health
Eradicator, which I believe is the office you hold under county authority.
I supposed the very dramatic Shakespearean comedy to be the last, as I
heard nothing from you previous before your letter, and was about to
write another of a more exciting character, introducing several bloody
single combats, a dynamite explosion, a ladies' oyster supper for charitable
purposes, &c., also comprising some mysterious sub rosa transactions
known only to myself and a select few, new songs and dances, and the
Greensboro Poker Club. Having picked up a few points myself relative
to this latter amusement, I feel competent to give a lucid, glittering por-
trait of the scenes presented under its auspices. But if the former drama
has reached you safely, I will refrain from burdening you any more with
the labors of general stage manager, &c.

If long hair, part of a sombrero, Mexican spurs, &c., would make a
fellow famous, I already occupy a topmost niche in the Temple Frame.
If my wild, untamed aspect had not been counteracted by my well-
known benevolent and amiable expression of countenance, I would have
been arrested long ago by the Rangers on general suspicions of murder
and horse stealing. In fact, I owe all my present means of lugubrious
living to my desperate and bloodthirsty appearance, combined with the
confident and easy way in which I tackle a Winchester rifle. There is a
gentleman who lives about fifteen miles from the ranch, who for amuse-
ment and recreation, and not altogether without an eye to the profit, keeps

SOME LETTERS 1075

a general merchandise store. This gent for the first few months has been
trying very earnestly to sell me a little paper, which I would like much to
have, but am not anxious to purchase. Said paper is my account, receipted.
Occasionally he is absent, and the welcome news coming to my ear, I
mount my fiery hoss and gallop wildly up to the store, enter with something
of the sang froid, grace, abandon, and recherche nonchalance with which
Charles Yates ushers ladies and gendemen to their seats in the opera-
house, and, nervously fingering my butcher knife, fiercely demand goods
and chattels of the clerk. This plan always succeeds. This is by way of
explanation of this vast and unnecessary stationery of which this letter is
composed. I am always in too big a hurry to demur at kind and quality,
but when I get to town I will write you on small gilt-edged paper that
would suit even the fastidious and discriminating taste of a Logan.

When I get to the city, which will be shortly, I will send you some
account of this country and its inmates.

You are right, I have almost forgotten what a regular old, gum-
chewing, ice-cream-destroying, opera ticket vortex, ivory-clawing girl
looks like. Last summer a very fair specimen of this kind ranged over
about Fort Snell, and I used to ride over twice a week on mail days and
chew the end of my riding whip while she "Stood on the Bridge" and
"Gathered up Shells on the Sea Shore*' and wore the "Golden Slippers."
But she has vamoosed, and my ideas on the subject are again growing dim.

If you see anybody about to start to Texas to live, especially to this
part, if you will take your scalpyouler and sever the jugular vein, cut the
brachiopod artery and hamstring him, after he knows what you have
done for him he will rise and call you blessed. This country is a silent but
eloquent refutation of Bob IngersolTs theory; a man here gets prema-
turely insane, melancholy and unreliable and finally dies of lead poisoning,
in his boots, while in a good old land like Greensboro a man can die,
as they do every day, with all the benefits of the clergy.

W. S. Porter

AUSTIN, Texas, April 21, 1885

Dear Dave: I take my pen in hand to let you know that I am well,
and hope these few lines will find you as well as can be expected.

I carried out your parting injunction of a floral nature with all the
solemnity and sacredness that I would have bestowed upon a dying man's
last request. Promptly at half-past three I repaired to the robbers* den,
commonly known as Radams Horticultural and Vegetable Emporium,
and secured the high-priced offerings according to promise. I asked if
the bouquets were ready, and the polite but piratical gentleman in charge
pointed proudly to two objects on the counter reposing in a couple of
vases, and said they were.

1076 BOOK IX POEMS

I then told him I feared there was some mistake, as no buttonhole
bouquets had been ordered, but he insisted on his former declaration,
and so I brought them away and sent them to their respective destinations.

I though it a pity to spoil a good deck of cards by taking out only
one, so I bundled up the whole deck, and inserted them m the bouquet,
but finally concluded it would not be right to violet (JOKE) my prom-
ise and I rose (JOKE) superior to such a mean trick and sent only one
as directed. .

I have a holiday to-day, as it is San Jacinto day. Thermopylae had its
messenger of defeat, but the Alamo had none. Mr. President and fellow
citizens, those glorious heroes who fell for their country on the bloody
field of San Jacinto, etc.

There is a bazaar to-night in the representatives' hall You people out
in Colorado don't know anything, A bazaar is cedar and tacks and girls
and raw-cake and step-ladders and Austin Grays and a bass solo by Bill
Stacy, and net profits $2.65.

Albert has got his new uniform and Alf Menille is in town, and the
store needs the "fine Italian hand" of the bookkeeper very much, besides
some of his plain Anglo-Saxon conversation.

Was interviewed yesterday by Genl Smith, Clay's father. He wants
Jim S. and me to represent a manufactory in Jeff. City: Convict labor.
Says parties in Galveston and Houston are making good thing of it. Have
taken him up. Hope to be at work soon. Glad, by jingo! Shake. What'll
you have? Claret and sugar? Better come home, Colorado no good.

Strange thing happened in Episcopal Church Sunday. Big crowd.
Choir had sung jolly tune and preacher come from behind scenes. Every-
thing quiet. Suddenly fellow comes down aisle, Late. Everybody looks.
Disappointment. It is a stranger. Jones and I didn't go. Service proceeds.

Jones talks about his mashes and Mirabeau B. Lamar, daily. Yet there
is hope. Cholera infantum; Walsh's crutch; Harvey, or softening of the
brain may carry him off yet

Society notes are few. Bill Stacey is undecided where to spend the
summer. Henry Harrison will resort at Wayland and Crisers. Charlie
Cook will not go near a watering place if he can help it.

If you don't strike a good thing out West, I hope we will see you soon.

Yours as ever,

W. S. P.

AUSTIN, Texas, April 28, 1885
Dear Dave: I received your letter in answer to mine, which you never

got till sometime after you had written.

I snatch a few moments from my arduous labors to reply. The Colorado

has been on the biggest boom I have seen since '39. In the pyrotechnical

SOME LETTERS 1077

and not strictly grammatical language of the Statesman— The cruel,
devastating flood swept, on a dreadful holocaust of swollen, turbid waters,
surging and dashing in mad fury which have never been equalled in
human history. A pitiable sight was seen the morning after the flood.
Six hundred men, out of employment, were seen standing on the banks
of the river, gazing at the rushing stream, laden with debris of every
description. A wealthy New York Banker, who was present, noticing
the forlorn appearance of these men, at once began to collect a subscription
for them, appealing in eloquent terms for help for these poor sufferers by
the flood. He collected one dollar and five horn buttons. The dollar he had
given himself. He learned on inquiry that these men had not been at any
employment in six years, and all they had lost by the flood was a few
fishing poles. The Banker put his dollar in his pocket and stepped up to
the Pearl Saloon,

As you will see by this morning's paper, there is to be a minstrel show
next Wednesday for benefit of Austin Grays.

I attended the rehearsal last night, but am better this morning, and
the doctor thinks I will pull through with careful attention.

The jokes are mostly mildewed, rockribbed, and ancient as the sun.
I can give you no better idea of the tout ensemble and sine die of the affair
than to state that Scuddy is going to sing a song. . , .

Mrs. Harrell brought a lot of crystallized fruits from New Orleans
for you. She wants to know if she shall send them around on Bois d'arc or
keep them 'til you return. Answer.

Write to your father. He thinks you are leaving him out, writing to
everybody else first Write.

We have the boss trick here now. Have sold about ten boxes of cigars
betting on it in the store.

Take four nickels, and solder them together so the solder will not ap-
pear. Then cut out of three of them a square hole like this: (Illustration.)
Take about twelve other nickels, and on top of them you lay a small die
with the six up, that will fit easily in the hole without being noticed. You
lay the four nickels over this, and all presents the appearance of a stack
of nickles. You do all this privately so everybody will suppose it is nothing
but a stack of five-cent pieces. You then lay another small die on top of
the stack with the ace up. You have a small tin cup shaped like this
(Illustration) made for the purpose. You let everybody see the ace, and
then say you propose to turn the ace into a six. You lay the tin cup care-
fully over the stack this way, and feel around in your pocket for a pencil
and not finding one, . . . [The rest of this letter is lost]

1078 BOOK IX POEMS

AUSTIN, Texas, May 10, 1885

Dear Dave: I received your two letters and have commenced two or
three in reply, but always failed to say what I wanted to, and destroyed
them all I heard from Joe that you would probably remain in Colorado.
J hope you will succeed in making a good thing out of it, if you conclude
to do so, but would like to see you back again in Austin. If there is any-
thing I can do for you here let me know.

Town is fearfully dull, except for the frequent raids of the Servant
Girl Annihilators, who make things lively during the dead hours of the
night; if it were not for them, items of interest would be very scarce, as
you may see by the Statesman.

Our serenading party has developed new and alarming modes of torture
for our helpless and sleeping victims. Last Thursday night we loaded up
a small organ on a hack and with our other usual instruments made an
assault upon the quiet air of midnight that made the atmosphere turn pale.

After going the rounds we were halted on the Avenue by Fritz Hart-
kopf and ordered into his salon. We went in, carrying the organ, etc. A
large crowd of bums immediately gathered, prominent among which
were to be seen Percy James, Theodore Hillyer, Randolph Burmond,
Charlk Hicks, and after partaking freely of lemonade we wended our
way down, and were duly halted and treated in the same manner by
other hospitable gentlemen.

We were called in at several places while wit and champagne, Rhine
Wine, etc., flowed in a most joyous and hilarious manner. It was one
of the most recherche and per diem affairs ever known in the city. Nothing
occurred to mar the pleasure of the hour, except a trifling incident that
might be construed as malapropos and post-meridian by the hypercritical.
Mr. Charles Sims on attempting to introduce Mr. Charles Hicks and your
humble servant to young ladies, where we had been invited inside, for-
our names and required to be informed on the subject before proceeding.

Yours,
W. S. P.

AUSTIN, Texas, December 22, 1885

Dear Dave: Everything wept at your departure. Especially the clouds.
Last night the clouds had a silver lining, three dollars and half's worth.
I fulfilled your engagement in grand, tout ensemble style, but there is
a sad bonjour look about the thirty-eight cents left in my vast pocket
that would make a hired man weep. All day long the heavens wept,
and the heavy, somber clouds went drifting about overhead, and the
north wind howled in maniacal derision, and the hack drivers danced on

SOME LETTERS 1079

the pavements in wild, fierce glee, for they knew too well what the stormy
day betokened. The hack was to call for me at eight. At five minutes to
eight I went upstairs and dressed in my usual bijou and operatic style,
and rolled away to the opera. Emma sang finely. I applauded at the wrong
times, and praised her rendering of the chromatic scale when she was
performing on "c" flat andante pianissimo, but otherwise the occasion
passed off without anything to mar the joyousness of the hour. Everybody
was there. Isidor Moses and John Ireland, and Fritz Hartkopf and Prof.
Herzog and Bill Stacy and all the bong ton elight. You will receive a
draft to-day through the First National Bank of Colorado for $3.65, which
you will please honor.

There is no news, or there are no news, either you like to tell. Lavaca
Street is very happy and quiet and enjoys life, for Jones was sat on by
his Uncle Wash and feels humble and don't sing any more, and the spirit
of peace and repose broods over its halls. Martha rings the matin bell,
it seems to me before cock crow or ere the first faint streaks of dawn are
limned in the eastern sky by the rosy fingers of Aurora. At noon the
foul ogre cribbage stalks rampant, and seven-up for dim, distant oysters
that only the eye of faith can see.

The hour grows late. The clock strikes! Another day has vanished.
Gone into the dim recesses of the past leaving its record of misspent
hours, false hopes, and disappointed expectations. May a morrow dawn
that will bring recompense and requital for the sorrows of the days gone
by, and a new order of things when there will be more starch in cuff
and collar, and less in handkerchiefs.

Come with me out into the starlight night. So calm, so serene, ye lights
of heaven, so high above earth; so pure and majestic and mysterious;
looking down on the mad struggle of life here below, is there no pity
in your never-closing eyes for us mortals on which you shine?

Come with me on to the bridge. Ah, see there, far below, the dark,
turbid stream. Rushing and whirling and eddying under the dark pillars
with ghostly murmur and siren whisper. What shall we find in your
depths? The stars do not reflect themselves in your waters, they are too
dark and troubed and swift! What shall we find in your depths? Rest? —
Peace? — catfish? Who knows? *Tis but a moment. A leap! A plunge!
—and — then oblivion or another world? Who can tell? A man once dived
into your depths and brought up a horse collar and a hoop-skirt. Ah! what
do we know of the beyond? We know that death comes, and we return
no more to our world of tremble and care — but where do we go? Are there
lands where no traveler has been? A chaos — perhaps where no human
foot had trod — perhaps Bastrop — perhaps New Jersey Who knows?
Where do people go who are in McDade? Do they go where they have to
fare worse? They cannot go where they have worse fare.

Let us leave the river. The night grows cold. We could pierce the future

IC)8o BOOK IX POEMS

or pay the toll. Come, the ice factory is deserted! No one sees us. My
partner, W. P. Anderson, will never destroy himself. Why? His credit is
good. No one will sue a side-partner of mine!

You have heard of a brook murmuring, but you never knew a sewer
sighed! But we digress! We will no longer pursue a side issue like this.

Au revoir. I will see you later.

Yours truly,

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE INGOMAR JUNIUS BRUTUS CALLIOPE SIX-HANDED EUCHRE

GROVER CLEVELAND HILL CITY QUARTETTE JOHNSON

AN EARLY PARABLE

In one of his early letters, written from Austin, O. Henry wrote a long
parable that was evidently to tell his correspondent some of the local gos-
sip. Here it is:

Once upon a time there was a maiden in a land not far away — a
maiden of much beauty and rare accomplishments. She was beloved by
all on account of her goodness of heart, and her many charms of dis-
position. Her father was a great lord, rich and powerful, and a mighty
man, and he loved his daughter with exceeding great love, and he cared
for her with jealous and loving watchfulness, lest any harm should befall
her, or even the least discomfort should mar her happiness and cause any
trouble in her smooth and peaceful life. The cunningest masters were en-
gaged to teach her from her youngest days; she played upon the harp-
sichord the loveliest and sweetest music; she wrought fancy work in divers
strange and wonderful forms that might puzzle all beholders as to what
manner of things they might be; she sang, and all listeners hearkened
thereunto, as to the voice of an angel; she danced stately minuets with
gay knights as graceful as a queen and as light as the thistledown borne
above the clover blossoms by the wind; she could paint upon china,
rare and unknown flowers the like unto which man never saw in colors,
crimson and blue and yellow, glorious to behold; she conversed in un-
known tongues whereof no man knew the meaning and sense; and
created wild admiration in all, by the ease and grace with which she did
play upon a new and strange instrument of wondrous sound and structure
which she called a banjo.

She had gone into a strange land, far away beyond the rivers that
flowed through her father's dominion — farther than one could see from
the highest castle tower — up into the land of ice and snow, where wise
men, famous for learning and ancient lore, had gathered together from
many lands and countries the daughters of great men. Kings and power-
ful rulers, railroad men, bankers, mighty men who wished to bring up

AN EARLY PARABLE Io8l

their children to be wise and versed in all things old and new. Here, the
Princess abode for many seasons, and she sat at the feet of old wise men,
who could tell of the world's birth, and the stars, and read the meaning of
the forms of the rocks that make the high mountains and knew the history
of all created things that are; and here she learned to speak strange
tongues, and studied the deep mysteries of the past — the secrets of the
ancients; Chaldic lore; Etruscan inscription; hidden and mystic sciences,
and knew the names of all the flowers and things that grow in fields or
wood; even unto the tiniest weed by the brook.

In due time the Princess came back to her father's castle. The big bell
boomed from the high tower; the heavy iron gates were thrown open;
banners floated all along the battlemented walls, and in the grand hall,
servants and retainers hurried to and fro, bearing gold dishes, and great
bowls of flaming smoking punch, while oxen were roasted whole and
hogsheads of ale tapped on the common by the castle walls, and thither
hied them the villagers one and all to make merry at the coming of the
dear Princess again. "She will come back so wise and learned," they said,
"so far above us that she will not notice us as she did once/* but not so:
the Princess with a red rose in her hair, and dressed so plain and neat that
she looked more like a farmer's daughter than a great king's, came down
among them from her father's side with nods of love and welcome on her
lips, and a smile upon her face, and took them by the hands as in the old
days, and none among them so lowly or so poor but what received a kind
word from the gracious Princess, and carried away in their hearts glad
feelings that she was still the same noble and gracious lady she always was.
Then night came, and torches by thousands lit up the great forest, and
musicians played and bonfires glowed, with sparks flying like myriads
of stars among the gloomy trees.

In the great castle hall were gathered the brave knights and the fairest
ladies in the kingdom. The jolly old King, surrounded by the wise men
and officers of state, moved about among his guests, stately and courteous,
ravishing music burst forth from all sides, and down the hall moved the
fair Princess in the mazy dance, on the arm of knight who gazed upon
her face in rapt devotion and love. Who was he that dared to look thus
upon the daughter of the King, sovereign prince of the kingdom, and
the heiress of her father's wealth and lands?

He had no title, no proud name to place beside a royal one, beyond that
of an honorable knight, but who says that that is not a title that, borne
worthily, makes a man the peer of any that wears a crown ?

He had loved her long. When a boy they had roamed together in the
great forest about the castle, and played among the fountains of the court
like brother and sister. The King saw them together often and smiled
and went his way and said nothing. The years went on and they were
together as much as they could be. The summer days when the court

I082 BOOK IX POEMS

went forth into the forest mounted on prancing steeds to chase the stags
with hounds; all clad in green and gold with waving plumes and shin-
ing silver and ribbons of gay colors, this knight was by the Princess' side
to guide her through the pathless swamps where the hunt ranged, and
saw that no harm came to her. And now that she had come back after
years of absence, he went to her with fear lest she should have changed
from her old self, and would not be to him as she was when they were
boy and girl together. But no, there was the same old kindly welcome,
the same smiling greeting, the warm pressure of the hand, the glad look in
the eyes as of yore. The Knight's heart beat wildly and a dim new-
awakened hope arose in him. Was she too far away, after all?

He felt worthy of her, and of any one in fact, but he was without riches,
only a knight-errant with his sword for his fortune, and his great love
his only title; and he had always refrained from ever telling her anything
of his love, for his pride prevented him* and you know a poor girl even
though she be a princess cannot say to a man,, "I am rich, but, let that be
no bar between us, I am yours and I will let my wealth pass if you will
give up your pride.** No princess can say this, and the Knight's pride
would not let him say anything of the kind and so you see there was small
chance of their ever coming to an understanding.

Well, the feasting and dancing went on, and the Knight and the
Princess danced and sang together, and walked out where the moon was
making a white wonder of die great fountain, and wandered under the
rows of great oaks, but spoke no word of love, though no mortal man
knows what thoughts passed in their heads; and she gave long accounts of
the wonders she had seen in the far, icy north, in the great school of
wise men, and the Knight talked of the wild and savage men he had
seen in the Far West, where he had been in battles with tie heathen in a
wild and dreary land; and she heard with pity his tales of suffering and
trials in the desert among wild animals and fierce human kings; and in-
side the castle the music died away and the lights grew dim and the vil-
lagers had long since gone to their homes and the Knight and the Princess
still talked of old times, and the moon climbed high in the eastern sky.

One day there came news from a country far to the west where lay the
possessions of the Knight The enemy had robbed him o£ his treasure,
driven away his cattle, and he found it was best to hie him away and
rescue his inheritance and goods. He buckled on his sword and mounted
his good war-horse. He rode to the postern gate of the casde to make his
adieus to the Princess.

When he told her he was going away to the wild western country to do
battle with the heathen, she grew pale, and her eyes took on a look of
such pain and fear that the Knight's heart leaped and then sank in his
bosom, as his pride still kept him from speaking the words that might
have made all well.

AN EARLY PARABLE 1083

She bade him farewell in a low voice, and tears even stood in her eyes,
but what could she say or do?

The Knight put spurs to his horse, and dashed away over the hills with-
out ever looking back, and the Princess stood looking over the gate at
him till the last sight of his plume below the brow of the hill The Knight
was gone. Many suitors flocked about the Princess. Mighty lords and bar-
ons of great wealth were at her feet and attended her every journey. They
came and offered themselves and their fortunes again and again, but none
of them found favor in her eyes. "Will the Princess listen to no one?"
they began to say among themselves. "Has she given her heart to some
one who is not among us?" No one could say.

A great and mighty physician, young and of wondrous power in his
art, telephoned to her every night if he might come down. How his suit
prospered no one could tell, but he persevered with great and astonishing
diligence. A powerful baron who assisted in regulating the finances of the
kingdom and who was a direct descendant of a great prince who was cast
into a lion's den, knelt at her feet.

A gay and lively lord who lived in a castle hung with ribbons and
streamers and gay devices of all kinds, with other nobles of like character,
prostrated themselves before her, but she would listen to none of them.

The Princess rode about in quiet ways in the cool evenings upon a gray
palfrey, alone and very quiet* and she seemed to grow silent and thought-
ful as time went on and no news came from the western wars, and the
Knight came not back again. [Written to his daughter Margaret.]

TOLEDO, Ohio, Oct. i, 1900

Dear Margaret: I got your very nice, long letter a good many days ago.
It didn't come straight to rne, but went to a wrong address first. I was
very glad indeed to hear from you, and very, very sorry to learn of your
getting your finger so badly hurt. I don't think you were to blame at all,
as you couldn't know just how that villainous old "hossn was going to
bite. I do hope that it will heal up nicely and leave your finger strong. I
am learning to play the mandolin, and we must get you a guitar, and we
will learn a lot of duets together when I come home which will certainly
not be later than next summer, and maybe earlier.

I suppose you have started to school again some time ago. I hope you
like to go, and don't have to study too hard. When one grows up, a thing
they never regret is that they went to school long enough to learn all they
could. It makes everything easier for them, and if they like books and
study they can always content and amuse themselves that way even if
other people are cross and tiresome, and the world doesn't go to suit them.
You mustn't think that I've forgotten somebody's birthday. I couldn't
find just the thing I wanted to send, but I know where it can be had, and

1084 BOOK IX POEMS

it will reach you in a few days. So, whea it comes you'll know it is for a
birthday remembrance. 1 / i_. - i

I think you write the prettiest hand o£ any little girl (or big one, either)
I ever knew. The letters you make are as even and regular as printed
ones. The next time you write, tell me how far you have to go to school
and whether you go alone or not.

I am busy all the time writing for the papers and magazines all over
the country, so I don't have a chance to come home, but I'm going to try
to come this winter. If I don't I will by summer sure, and then you'll have
somebody to boss and make trot around with you.

Write me a letter whenever you have some time to spare, for I am al-
ways glad and anxious to hear from you. Be careful when you are on the
streets not to feed shucks to strange dogs, or pat snakes on the head or
shake hands with cats you haven't been introduced to, or stroke the noses
of electric car horses.

Hoping you are well and your finger is getting all right, I am, with

much love, as ever,

Papa

My dear Margaret: Here it is summertime, and the bees are blooming
and the flowers are singing and the birds making honey, and we haven't
been fishing yet. Well, there's only one more month till July, and then
well go, and no mistake, I thought you would write and tell me abwt
the high water around Pittsburg some time ago, and whether it came
up to where you live, or not. And I haven't heard a thing about Easter,
and about the rabbit's eggs— but I suppose you have learned by this time
that eggs grow on egg plants and are not laid by rabbits.

I would like very much to hear from you oftener, it has been more than
a month now since you wrote. Write soon and tell me how you are, and
when school will be wit, for we want plenty of holidays in July so we can
have a good time. I am going to send you something nice the last of this
wtek. What do you guess it will be?

Lovingly,

Papa

The Caledonia

Wednesday
My dear Mr. Jack:

I owe Oilman Hall $175 (or mighty close to it) pussonally— -so he tells
me. I thought it was only about $30, but he has been keeping the account.

He's just got to have it to-day. McClure's will pay me some money on
the i5th of June, but I can't get it until then* I was expecting it before
this — anyhow before Oilman left, but they stick to the letter.

AN EARLY PARABLE 1085

I wonder if you could give me a check for that much to pay him to-day.
If you will I'll hold up my right hand— thus; that 111 have you a first-class
story on your des\ before the last of this weef(.

I reckon I'm pretty well overdrawn, but Tve sure got to see that Hall
gets his before he leaves. I don't want anything for myself.

Please, sir, let me know right away, by return boy if you'll do it.

If you can't, Pll have to make a quick dash at the three-ball magazines;
and I do hate to tie up with them for a story.

The Same

Sydney Porter

Mr. J. O. H. COSGRAVE,

at this time editor of Everybody's Magazine.

A letter to Oilman Hall, written Just before the writer's marriage to Miss
Sara Lindsay Coleman of Asheville, N. C.

Wednesday
Dear Oilman:

Your two letters received this A.M. Mighty good letters, too, and cheer-
ing.

Mrs. Jas. Coleman is writing Mrs. Hall to-day. She is practically the
hostess at Wynn Cottage where the hullabaloo will occur.

Say, won't you please do one or two little things for me before you
leave, as you have so kindly offered?

(1) Please go to Tiffany's and get a wedding ring, size 5^. Sara says
the bands worn now are quite narrow — and that's the kind she wants.

(2) And bring me a couple of dress colors, size 16^2- 1 have ties.

(3) And go to a florist's — there is one named Mackintosh (or some-
thing like that) on Broadway, East side of street five or six doors north
of 26th St., where I used to buy a good many times. He told me he could
ship flowers in good shape to Asheville — you might remind him that I
used to send flowers to 36 West i7th Street some time ago. I am told by
the mistress of ceremonies that I am to furnish two bouquets — one of lil-
ies of the valley and one of pale pink roses. Get plenty of each — say
enough lilies to make a large bunch to be carried in the hand and say
three or four dozen of the roses,

I note what you say about hard times and will take heed. I'm not going
into any extravagances at all, and Fm going to pitch into hard work just
as soon as I get the rice grains out of my ear.

I wired you to-day "MS, mailed to-day, please rush one century by
wire/'

That will exhaust the Reader check— if it isn't too exhausted itself to
come. You, of course, will keep the check when it arrives — I doa't think

I086 BOOK IX POEMS

they will fall down on it surely. I wrote Howland^a pretty sharp letter
and ordered him to send it at once care of Everybody's.

When this story reaches you it will cut down the overdraft "right
smart," but if the house is willing I'd mighty well like to run it up to the
limit again, because cash is sure scarce, and 111 have to have something
like $300 more to see me through. The story I am sending is a new one; I
still have another partly written for you, which I shall finish and turn
in before I get back to New York and then well begin to clean up all
debts.

Just after the wedding we are going to Hot Spring, N. C, only thirty-
five miles from Asheville, where there is a big winter resort hotel, and
stay there about a week or ten days. Then back to New York.

Please look over the story and arrange for bringing me the $300 when
you come— it will still keep me below the allowed limit and thereafter I
will cut down instead of raising it.

Just had a 'phone message from S. L. C. saying how pleased she was
with your letter to her.

Fm right with you on the question of the "home-like" system of hav-
ing fun. I think well all agree beautifully on that. I've had all the cheap
bohemia that I want I can tell you, none of the "climbers" and the cock-
tail crowd are going to bring their vaporings into my house. It's for the
clean, merry life, with your best friends in the game and a general Con-
centration of energies and aims. I am having a cedar-wood club cut from
the mountains with knots on it, and I am going to stand in my hallway
(when I have one) and edit with it the cards of all callers. You and Mrs.
will have latchkeys, of course.

Yes, I think you'd better stay at the hotel— Of course they'd want
you out at Mrs. Cs. But suppose we take Mrs. Hall out there, and you
and I remain at the B. P. We'll be out at the Cottage every day anyhow,
and it'll be scrumptious all round.

I'm simply tickled to death that "y°u all" are coming.

The protoplasm is in Heaven; alPs right with the world. Pippa passes.

Yours as ever,

Bill

Friday

My dear Col Griffith:

Keep your shirt on. I found I had to re-write the story when it came
in. I am sending you part of it so you will have something tangible to
remind you that you can't measure the water from the Pierian Spring in
spoonfuls.

I've got the story in much better form; and I'll have the rest of it ready
this evening.

AN EARLY PARABLE 1087

I'm sorry to have delayed it; but it's best for both of us to have it a lit-
tle late and a good deal better.

I'll send over the rest before closing time this afternoon or the first
thing in the morning.

In its revised form I'm much better pleased with it

Yours truly,
Sydney Porter

[Mr. Al. Jennings, of Oklahoma City, was an early friend of O. Hen-
ry's. Now, in 1912, a prominent attorney, Mr. Jennings, in his youth, held
up trains.]

N. Y. SUNDAY

28 W. 26

ALGIE JENNINGS, ESQ., THE WEST
Dear Bill:

Glad you've been sick too. I'm well again. Are you?

Well, as I had nothing to do I thought I would write you a letter; and
as I have nothing to say I will close.

How are ye, Bill? How's old Initiative and Referendum? When you
coming back to Manhattan? You wouldn't know the old town now. Main
Street is building up, and there is talk of an English firm putting up a
new hotel. I saw Duffy a few days ago. He looks kind of thoughtful as
if he were trying to calculate how much he'd have been ahead on Ger-
ald's board and clothes by now if you had taken him with you. Mrs. Hale
is up in Maine for a 3 weeks' vacation.

Say, Bill, I'm sending your MS. back by mail to-day. I kept it a little
longer after you sent for it because one of the McClure & Phillips firm
wanted to see it first. Everybody says it is full of good stuff, but thinks
it should be put in a more connected shape by some skilful writer who
has been trained to that sort of work.

It seems to me that you ought to do better with it out there than you
could here. If you can get somebody out there to publish it it ought to
sell all right. N. Y. is a pretty cold proposition and it can't see as far as
the Oklahoma country when it is looking for sales. How about trying In-
dianapolis or Chicago? Duffy told me about the other MS. sent out by
your friend Abbott. Kind of a bum friendly trick, wasn't it?

Why don't you get "Arizona's Hand" done and send it on? Seems to
me you could handle a short story all right.

My regards to Mrs. Jennings and Bro. Frank. Write some more.

Still

Bill

I088 BOOK IX POEMS

N. Y.3 May 23, '05
Dear Jennings:

Got your letter all right. Hope you'll follow it soon.
I'd advise you not to build any high hopes on your book — just con-
sider that you're on a little pleasure trip, and taking it along as a side line.
Mighty few MSS. ever get to be books, and mighty few books pay.

I have to go to Pittsburgh the first of next week to be gone about 3 or
4 days. If you decide to come here any time after the latter part of next
week I will be ready to meet you. Let me know in advance a day or two.
Gallot is in Grand Rapids— maybe he will run over for a day or two.

In haste and truly yours,

W. S. P.

[It was hard to get O. Henry to take an interest in his books. He was
always eager to be at the undone work, to be writing a new story instead
of collecting old ones. This letter came from North Carolina. It shows
how much thought he gave always to tides.]

LAND o' THE SKY, MONDAY, 1909

My dear Colonel Steger: As I wired you to-day, I like "Man About
Town" for a title.

But I am sending in a few others for you to look at; and if any other
suits you better, Pm agreeable. Here they are, in preferred order:

The Venturers.

Transfers.

Merry-Go-Rounds.

Babylonica.

Brickdust from Babel.

Babes in the Jungle.

If none of these hit you right, let me know and I'll get busy again. But
I think "Man About Town" is about the right thing. It gives the city
idea without using the old hackneyed words.

I am going to write you a letter in a day or so "touchin* on and apper-
tainin' to" other matters and topics. I am still improving and feeling
pretty good. Colonel Bingham has put in a new ash-sifter and expects
you to come down and see that it works all right.

All send regards to you. You seem to have made quite a hit down here
for a Yankee.

Salutations and good wishes.

Yours,

S.P.

AN EARLY PARABLE 1 089

[This letter was found unfinished, among his papers after his death. His
publishers had discussed many times his writing of a novel, but the fol-
lowing letter constitutes the only record of his own opinions in the mat-
ter. The date is surely 1909 or 1910.]

My dear Mr. Steger: My idea is to write the story of a man— an in-
dividual, not a type — but a man who, at the same time, I want to repre-
sent a "human nature type," if such a person could exist. The story will
teach no lesson, inculcate no moral, advance no theory.

I want it to be something that it won't or can't be—but as near as I can
make it — the true record of a man's thoughts, his description of his mis-
chances and adventures, his true opinions of life as he has seen it and
his absolutely honest deductions, comments, and views upon the different
phases of life that he passes through.

I do not remember ever to have read an autobiography, a biography,
or a piece of fiction that told the truth. Of course, I have read stuff
such as Rousseau and Zola and George Moore; and various memoirs
that were supposed to be window panes in their respective breasts; but,
mostly, all of them were either liars, actors, or posers. (Of course, I'm not
trying to belittle the greatness of their literary expression.)

All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of
our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first
day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes.
It is for the best.

The trouble about writing the truth has been that the writers have
kept in their minds one or another or all of three thoughts that made a
handicap — they were trying either to do a piece of immortal literature, or
to shock the public or to please editors. Some of them succeeded in all
three, but they did not write the truth. Most autobiographies are insin-
cere from beginning to end. About the only chance for the truth to be
told is in fiction.

It is well understood that "all the truth" cannot be told in print— but
how about "nothing but the truth"? That's what I want to do.

I want the man who is telling the story to tell it — not as he would to a
reading public or to a confessor — but something in this way: Suppose he
were marooned on an island in mid-ocean with no hope of ever being
rescued; and, in order to pass away some of the time he should tell a
story to himself embodying his adventure and experiences and opinions.
Having a certain respect for himself (let us hope) he would leave out the
"realism" that he would have no chance of selling in the market; he
would omit the lies and self-conscious poses, and would turn out to his
one auditor something real and true.

So, as truth is not to be found in history, autobiography, press reports

I09O BOOK IX POEMS

(nor at the bottom of an H. G. Wells), let us hope that fiction may be
the means of bringing out a few grains of it

The "hero" o£ the story will be a man born and "raised" in a somno-
lent little southern town. His education is about a common school one,
but he learns afterward from reading and life. I'm going to try to give him
a "style" in narrative and speech— the best I've got in the shop. I'm go-
ing to take him through all the main phases of life— wild adventure, city,
society, something of the "under world," and among many characteristic
planes of the phases. I want him to acquire all the sophistication that ex-
perience can give him, and always preserve his individual honest human
view, and have him tell the truth about everything.

It is time to say now, that by the "truth" I don't mean the objection-
able stuff that so often masquerades under the name. I mean true opin-
ions, a true estimate of all things as they seem to the "hero." If you find
a word or a suggestive line or sentence in any of my copy, you cut it out
and deduct it from the royalties.

I want this man to be a man of natural intelligence, of individual char-
acter, absolutely open and broad minded; and show how the Creator of
the earth has got him in a rat trap — put him here "willy nilly" (you know
the Omar verse) : and then I want to show what he does about it. There
is always the eternal question from the Primal Source— "What are you
going to do about it?"

Please don't think for the half of a moment that the story is going to
be anything of an autobiography. I have a distinct character in my mind
for the part, and he does not at all [Here the letter ends. He never fin-
ished it.]

THE STORY OF "HOLDING UP A TRAIN*'

In "Sixes and Sevens" there appears an article entitled "Holding Up a
Train." Now the facts were given to O. Henry by a friend who had
actually held up trains. To-day he is Mr. Al Jennings, of Oklahoma City,
Okla., a prominent attorney. He has permitted the publication of two
letters O. Henry wrote him, the first outlining the story as he thought his
friend Jennings ought to write it, and the second announcing that, with
O. Henry's revision, the manuscript had been accepted.

From W. S. Porter to Al Jennings, September 2ist (year not given but
probably 1902).

Dear Pard:

In regard to that article— I will give you my idea of what is wanted.
Say we take for a title "The Art and Humor of the Hold-Up"— or some-

THE STORY OF HOLDING UP A TRAIN

thing like that, I would suggest that in writing you assume a character.
We have got to respect the conventions and delusions of the public to
a certain extent. An article written as you would naturally write it would
be regarded as a fake and an imposition. Remember that the traditions
must be preserved wherever they will not interfere with the truth. Write
in as simple, plain, and unembellished a style as you know how. Make
your sentences short. Put in as much realism and as many facts as possi-
ble. Where you want to express an opinion or comment on the matter
do it as practically and plainly as you can. Give it life and the vitality of
facts.

Now, I will give you a sort of general synopsis of my idea — of course,
everything is subject to your own revision and change. The article, we
will say, is written by a typical train hoister — one without your educa-
tion and powers of expression (bouquet) but intelligent enough to con-
vey his ideas from his standpoint— not from John Wanamaker's. Yet, in
order to please John, we will have to assume a virtue that we do not pos-
sess. Comment on the moral side of the proposition as litde as possible.
Do not claim that holding up trains is the only business a gentleman
would engage in, and, on the contrary, do not depreciate a profession that
is really only financiering with spurs on. Describe the facts and details —
all that part of the proceedings that the passenger sitting with his hands
up in a Pullman looking into the end of a tunnel in the hands of one of
the performers does not see. Here is a rough draft of my idea: Begin
abruptly, without any philosophizing, with your idea of the best times,
places and conditions for the hold-up — compare your opinions of this with
those of others — mention some poorly conceived attempts and failures of
others, giving your opinion why — as far as possible refer to actual occur-
rences, and incidents-— describe the manner of a hold-up, how many men
is best, where they are stationed, how do they generally go into it, nerv-
ous? or joking? or solemnly. The details of stopping the train, the duties
of each man of the gang — the behavior of the train crew and passengers
(here give as many brief odd and humorous incidents as you can think
of) . Your opinions on going through the passengers, when it is done and
when not done. How is the boodle gotten at? How does the express clerk
generally take it? Anything done with the mail car? Under what cir-
cumstances will a train robber shoot a passenger or a train man — suppose
a man refuses to throw up his hands? Queer articles found on passengers
(a chance here for some imaginative work) — queer and laughable inci-
dents of any kind. Refer whenever apropos to actual hold-ups and facts
concerning them of interest. What could two or three brave and deter-
mined passengers do if they were to try? Why don't they try? How long
does it take to do the business. Does the train man ever stand in with
the hold-up? Best means of getting away — how and when is the money
divided. How is it mosdy spent. Best way to maneuver afterward. How

1092 BOOK IX POEMS

to get caught and how not to. Comment on the methods of officials who
try to capture. (Here's your chance to get even.)

These ideas are some that occur to me casually. You will, of course,
have many far better. I suggest that you make the article anywhere from
4,000 to 65ooo words. Get as much meat in it as you can, and by the way
—stuff it full of western genuine slang— (not the eastern story paper
kind). Get all the quaint cowboy expressions and terms of speech you
can think of.

Information is what we want, clothed in the peculiar western style of
the character we want to present The main idea is to be natural, direct,
and concise.

I hope you will understand what I say. I don't. But try her a whack
and send it along as soon as you can, and let's see what we can do. By
the way, Mr. "Everybody" pays good prices. I thought I would, when I
get your story, put it into the shape my judgment decides upon, and then
send both your MS* and mine to the magazine. If he uses mine, we'll
whack up shares on the proceeds. If he uses yours, you get the check di-
rect If he uses neither, we are out only a few stamps.

Sincerely your friend,

W. S. P.

And here is the letter telling his "pard" that the article had been bought
by Everybody's Magazine. This is dated Pittsburg, October 24th, obvi-
ously the same year:

Dear Pard:

You're It. I always told you you were a genius. All you need is to suc-
ceed in order to make a success.

I enclose pub18 letter which explains itself. When you see your baby in
print don't blame me if you find strange ear marks and brands on it. I
slashed it and cut it and added lots of stuff that never happened, but I
followed your facts and ideas, and that is what made it valuable. I'll think
up some other idea for an article and we'll collaborate again some time
-eh?

I have all the work I can do, and am selling it right along. Have aver-
aged about $150 per month since August ist And yet I don't overwork—
don't think I ever will. I commence about 9 AM. and generally knock off
about 4 or 5 P.M.

As soon as check mentioned in letter comes I'll send you your "sheer"
of the boodle.

By the way, please keep my nom de plume strictly to yourself. I don't
want any one to know just yet.

Give my big regards to Billy. Reason with him and try to convince

THE STORY OF HOLDING UP A TRAIN*' 1093

him that we believe him to be pure merino and of more than average
width. With the kindest remembrances to yourself I remain.

Your friend,

W. S. P.

At this time O. Henry was unknown and thought himself lucky to sell
a story at any price.

BOOK

THE WORLD AND THE DOOR

A favorite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert that it
is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction. I do not know
if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but the Spanish purser
of the fruit steamer El Carrero swore to me by the shrine of Santa Guada-
lupe that he had the facts from the U.S. vice-consul at La Paz — a person
who could not possibly have been cognizant of half of them.

As for the adage quoted above, I take pleasure in puncturing it by
affirming that I read in a purely fictional story the other day the line:

"'Be it so,' said the policeman." Nothing so strange has yet cropped
out in Truth.

When H. Ferguson Hedges, millionaire promoter, investor, and man-
about-New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and word

THE WORLD AND THE DOOR 1095

of it went "down the line,'* bouncers took a precautionary turn at the
Indian clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favorite tables, cab
drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafes, and
careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to his
account by way of preface and introduction.

As a money power a one-millionaire is of small account in a city where
the man who cuts your slice of beef behind the free-lunch counter rides
to work in his own automobile. But Hedges spent his money as lavishly,
loudly, and showily as though he were only a clerk squandering a week's
wages. And, after all, the bartender takes no interest in your reserve
fund. He would rather look you up on his cash register than in Brad-
street.

On the evening that the material allegation of facts begins, Hedges was
bidding dull care begone in the company of five or six good fellows —
acquaintances and friends who had gathered in his wake.

Among them were two younger men— Ralph Merriam, a broker, and
Wade, his friend.

Two deep-sea cabmen were chartered. At Columbus Circle they hove
to long enough to revile the statue of the great navigator, unpatriotically
rebuking him for having voyaged in search of land instead of liquids.
Midnight overtook the party marooned in the rear of a cheap cafe far
uptown.

Hedges was arrogant, overriding, and quarrelsome. He was burly and
tough, iron-gray but vigorous, "good" for die rest of the night. There was
a dispute — about nothing that matters— and the five-fingered words were
passed — the words that represent the glove cast into the lists. Merriam
played the role of the verbal Hotspur.

Hedges rose quickly, seized his chair, swung it once and smashed
wildly down at Merriam's head. Merriam dodged, drew a small revolver
and shot Hedges in the chest The leading roysterer stumbled, fell in a
wry heap, and lay still.

Wade, a commuter, had formed that habit of promptness. He juggled
Merriam out a side door, walked him to the corner, ran him a block and
caught a hansom. They rode five minutes and then got out on a dark
corner and dismissed the cab. Across the street the lights of a small saloon
betrayed its hectic hospitality.

"Go in the back room of that saloon," said Wade, "and wait I'll go
find out what's doing and let you know. You may take two drinks while I
am gone — no more/'

At ten minutes to one o'clock Wade returned.

"Brace up, old chap," he said. "The ambulance got there just as I did.
The doctor says he's dead. You may have one more drink. You let me
run this thing for you, YouVe got to skip. I don't believe a chair is legally
a deadly weapon. You've got to make tracks, that's all there is to it."

1096 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and ask for another
drink. "Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his hands?"
he said. "I never could stand — I never could "

"Take one more,'* said Wade, "and then come on. I'll see you through."

Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o'clock the next morning
Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes,
stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East River
pier. The vessel had brought the season's first cargo of limes from Port
Limon, ancf was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance of
$2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile up as
much water as he could between himself and New York. There was no
time for anything more.

From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and
sloop to Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a
tramp bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the
discursive skipper from his course.

It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land — La Paz the Beautiful,
a little harborless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded
the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little steamer stopped
to tread water while the captain's dory took him ashore that he might
feel the pulse of the cocoanut market. Merriam went too, with his suit
case, and remained.

Kalb, the vice-consul, a Graeco-Armenian citizen of the United States,
born in Hesse-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries,
considered all Americans his brothers and bankers. He attached himself
to Merriam 's elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who wore
shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.

There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing
the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped
out of the world into the triste Peruvian town. At Kalb's introductory:
"Shake hands with ," he had obediently exchanged manual saluta-
tions with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and
three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men,
mahogany men — anything but men of living tissue.

After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front galena with
Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank
Scotch "smoke." The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him,
seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The
horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now began,
for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a wretched fugitive,
to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent assuagement to his view. Bibb
had opened the flood-gates of a stream of long-dammed discourse, over-
joyed to have captured an audience that had not suffered under a hun-
dred repetitions of his views and theories.

THE WORLD AND THE DOOR 1097

"One year more," said Bibb, "and I'll go back to God's country. Oh,
I know it's pretty here, and you get dolce far niente handed to you in
chunks, but this country wasn't made for a white man to live in. You've
got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game of base-
ball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you. Still, La Paz
is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And Mrs. Conant is here. When
any of us feels particularly like jumping into the sea we rush around to
her house and propose. It's nicer to be rejected by Mrs. Conant than it
is to be drowned. And they say drowning is a delightful sensation."

"Many like her here?" asked Merriam.

"Not anywhere," said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh. "She's the only
white woman in La Paz. The rest range from a dappled dun to the color
of a b-flat piano key. She's been here a year. Comes from — well, you know
how a woman can talk—ask *em to say 'string' and they'll say 'crow's
foot' or 'cat's cradle.' Sometimes you'd think she was from Oshkosh, and
again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the next day from Cape Cod."

^'Mystery ?" ventured Merriam.

"M — well, she looks it; but her talk's translucent enough. But that's a
woman. I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she'd merely say:
'Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing to eat but
the sand which is here/ But you won't think about that when you meet
her, Merriam. You'll propose to her too."

To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her.
He found her to be a woman in black with hair the color of a bronze
turkey's wings, and mysterious, remembering eyes that — well, that
looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve
was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb
had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of the
lower parishes in Louisiana. The tropical climate and indolent life
suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on; La Paz,
all in all, charmed her.

Merriam's courtship of the Sphinx lasted three months, although he
did not know that he was courting her. He was using her as an antidote
for remorse, until he found, too late, that he had acquired the habit.
During that time he had received no news from home. Wade did not
know where he was; and he was not sure of Wade's exact address, and
was afraid to write. He thought he had better let matters rest as they
were for a while,

One afternoon he and Mrs. Conant hired two ponies and rode out
along the mountain trail as far as the little cold river that came tumbling
down the foothills. There they stopped for a drink, and Merriam spoke
his piece — he proposed, as Bibb had prophesied.

Mrs. Conant gave him one glance of brilliant tenderness, and then her

1090 BOOKS WHIRLIGIGS

face took on such a strange, haggard look that Merriam was shaken out
of his intoxication and back to his senses.

"I beg your pardon, Florence," he said, releasing her hand; "but I'll
have to hedge on part of what I said. I can't ask you to marry me, of
course. I killed a man in New York — a man who was my friend — shot
him down — in quite a cowardly manner, I understand. Of course, the
drinking didn't excuse it. Well, I couldn't resist having my say; and I'll
always mean it. I'm here as a fugitive from justice, and — I suppose that
ends our acquaintance."

Mrs. Conant plucked little leaves assiduously from the low-hanging
branch of a lime tree.

"I suppose so," she said, in low and oddly uneven tones; "but that
depends upon you. Til be as honest as you were. I poisoned my husband.
I am a self-made widow. A man cannot love a murderess. So I suppose
that ends our acquaintance."

She looked up at him slowly. His face turned a little pale, and he
stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb man who was wondering what
it was all about.

She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes blazing.

"Don't look at me like that!" she cried, as though she were in acute
pain. "Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don't look that way. Am
I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you — here on my arms, and on
my back are scars — and it has been more than a year — scars that he made
in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and struck the fiend
down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible words that he hurled at
me that last day are repeated in my ears every night when I sleep. And
then came his blows, and the end of my endurance. I got the poison that
afternoon. It was his custom to drink every night in the library before
going to bed a hot punch made of rum and wine. Only from my fair
hands would he receive it — because he knew that the fumes of spirits
always sickened me. That night when the maid brought it to me I sent
her downstairs on an errand. Before taking him his drink I went to my
little private cabinet and poured into it more than a teaspoonful of
tincture of aconite — enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had
drawn $6,000 that I had in bank, and with that and a few things in a
satchel I left the house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library
I heard him stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train
for New Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast
anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can you open your
mouth?"

Merriam came back to life.

"Florence," he said, earnestly, "I want you. I don't care what you've
done. If the world "

"Ralph," she interrupted, almost with a scream, "be my world!"

THE WORLD AND THE DOOR 1099

Her eyes melted; she relaxed magnificently and swayed toward Mer-
riam so suddenly that he had to jump to catch her.

Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But
it can't be helped. It's the subconscious smell of the footlights' smoke
that's in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook's soul sufficiently and she
will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese.

Merriam and Mrs. Conant were very happy. He announced their en-
gagement at the Hotel Orilla del Mar. Eight foreigners and four native
Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations at him.
Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra duty until
his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate clerk a pale
lilac with envy.

They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of
the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when
united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the world
out and bolted the doors. Each was the other's world. Mrs. Conant lived
again. The remembering look left her eyes. Merriam was with her every
moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a grove of palms
and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy bungalow. They were
to be married in two months. Many hours of the day they had their heads
together over the house plans. Their joint capital would set up a business
in fruit or woods that would yield a comfortable support. "Good-night,
my world," would say Mrs. Conant every evening when Merriam left her
for his hotel. They were very happy. Their love had, circumstantially,
that element of melancholy in it that it seems to require to attain its
supremest elevation. And it seemed that their mutual great misfortune
or sin was a bond that nothing could sever.

One day a steamer hove in the offing. Bare-legged and bare-shouldered
La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was
their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day, and four-o'clock tea.

When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she
was the Pdjaro, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.

The Pdjaro put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing
shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the shal-
low water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a
mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain,
and two passengers ploughing their way through the deep sand toward
the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to
strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of
the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to straw-
berry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever, H. Fer-
guson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten feet
away.

When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he

IIOO BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

shouted in his old, bluff way: "Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn't
expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam, o£
New York — Merriam, Mr. Quinby."

Merriam gave Hedges and then Quinby an ice-cold hand.

"Br-r-r-r!" said Hedges. "But you've got a frappeed flipper! Man, you're
not well. You're as yellow as a Chinaman. Malarial here? Steer us to a
bar if there is such a thing, and let's take a prophylactic."

Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del Mar.

"Quinby and I," explained Hedges, puffing through the slippery sand,
"are looking out along the coast for some investments. We've just come
up from Concepcion and Valparaiso and Lima. The captain of this sub-
sidized ferry boat told us there was some good picking around here in
silver mines. So we got off. Now, where is that cafe, Merriam? Oh, in
this portable soda-water pavilion?'*

Leaving Quinby at the bar, Hedges drew Merriam aside.

"Now, what does this mean?" he said, with gruff kindness. "Are you
sulking about that fool row we had?"

"I thought/' stammered Merriam — "I heard — they told me you were
—that I had "

"Well, you didn't, and I'm not," said Hedges. "That fool young am-
bulance surgeon told Wade I was a candidate for a coffin just because
Fd got tired and quit breathing. I laid up in a private hospital for a
month; but here I am, kicking as hard as ever. Wade and I tried to find
you, but couldn't. Now, Merriam, shake hands and forget it all. I was as
much to blame as you were; and the shot really did me good — I came
out of the hospital as healthy and fit as a cab horse. Come on; that drink's
waiting."

"Old man," said Merriam, brokenly, "I don't know how to thank you
— I — well, you know "

"Oh, forget it," boomed Hedges. "Quinbyll die of thirst if we don't
join him."

Bibb was sitting on the shady side of the gallery waiting for the eleven-
o'clock breakfast. Presently Merriam came out and joined him. His eye
was strangely bright.

"Bibb, my boy," said he, slowly waving his hand, "do you see those
mountains and that sea and sky and sunshine? — they're mine, Bibbsy —
all mine."

"You go in," said Bibb, "and take eight grains of quinine, right away.
It won't do in this climate for a man to get to thinking he's Rockefeller,
or James O'Neill either."

Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of
them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the Pdjaro to be dis-
tributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers scat-
ter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains.

THE WORLD AND THE DOOR IIOI

Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver-rimmed anteojos
upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of smaller rolls. A
barefooted muchacho dashed in, desiring the post of messenger.

"Vien venido" said Tio Pancho. "This to Senora Conant; that to el
Doctor S-S-Schlegel—D/o^/ what a name to say! that to Senor Davis —
one for Don Alberto. These two for the Casa de Huespedes, Numero 6,
en la calle de las Buenas Gracias. And say to them all, muchacho, that the
Pdjaro sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have letters to send
by the post, let them come quickly, that they may first pass through the
correo"

Mrs. Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o'clock. The boy
was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his duty
by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately gave
chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send.

She was idling in a hammock in the patio of the house that she occu-
pied, half awake, half happily dreaming of the paradise that she and
Merriam had created out of the wrecks of their pasts. She was content
now for the horizon of that shimmering sea to be the horizon of her life.
They had shut out the world and closed the door.

Merriam was coming to her house at seven, after his dinner at the hotel.
She would put on a white dress and an apricot-colored lace mantilla, and
they would walk an hour under the cocoanut palms by the lagoon. She
smiled contentedly, and chose a paper at random from the roll the boy
had brought.

At first the words of a certain headline of a Sunday newspaper meant
nothing to her; they conveyed only a visualized sense of familiarity. The
largest type ran thus: "Lloyd B. Conant secures divorce." And then the
sub headings: "Well-known Saint Louis paint manufacturer wins suit,
pleading one year's absence of wife." "Her mysterious disappearance re-
called." "Nothing has been heard of her since."

Twisting herself quickly out of the hammock, Mrs. Conant's eye soon
traversed the half-column of the Recall It ended thus: "It will be re-
membered that Mrs. Conant disappeared one evening in March of last
year. It was freely rumored that her marriage with Lloyd B. Conant
resulted in much unhappiness. Stories were not wanting to the effect
that his cruelty toward his wife had more than once taken the form of
physical abuse. After her departure a full bottle of tincture of aconite, a
deadly poison, was found in a small medicine cabinet in her bedroom.
This might have been an indication that she meditated suicide. It is
supposed that she abandoned such an intention if she possessed it, and
left her home instead."

Mrs. Conant slowly dropped the paper, and sat on a chair, clasping her
hands tightly.

"Let me think— O God!— let me think," she whispered. "I took the

1102 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

bottle with me ... I threw it out of the window of the train . . . I

. . . there was another bottle in the cabinet . . . there were two, side by
side—the aconite— and the valerian that I took when I could not sleep
... If they found the aconite bottle full, why— but, he is alive, of course
—I gave him a harmless dose of valerian . . . I am not a murderess in
fact. . . Ralph, I—O God, don't let this be a dream!"

She went into the part of the house that she rented from the old
Peruvian man and his wife, shut the door, and walked up and down
her room swiftly and feverishly for half an hour. Merriam's photograph
stood in a frame on a table. She picked it up, looked at it with a smile
of exquisite tenderness, and — dropped four tears on it. And Merriam
only twenty rods away! Then she stood still for ten minutes, looking
into space. She looked into space through a slowly opening door. On her
side of the door was the building material for a castle of Romance— love,
an Arcady of waving palms, a lullaby of waves on the shore of a haven
of rest, respite, peace, a lotus land of dreamy ease and security— a life of
poetry and heart's ease and refuge. Romanticist, will you tell me what
Mrs. Conant saw on the other side of the door? You cannot? — that is,
you will not? Very well; then listen.

She saw herself go into a department store and buy -jive spools of sil\
thread and three yards of gingham to ma^e an apron for the coof(. "Shall
I charge it, ma'am" asf^s the cler\. As she walked out a lady whom' she
met greeted her cordially. "Oh, where did you get the pattern for those
sleeves, dear Mrs. Conant?" she said. At the corner a policeman helped
her across the street and touched his helmet.^" Any callers?" she asked
the maid when she reached home. "Mrs. Waldron" answered the maid,
"and the two Misses Jentynson." "Very well" she said. "You may bring
me a cup of tea, Maggie"

Mrs. Conant went to the door and called Angela, the old Peruvian
woman. "If Mateo is there send him to me.'1 Mateo, a half -breed, shuffling
and old but efficient, came.

"Is there a steamer or a vessel of any kind leaving this coast to-night
or to-morrow that I can get passage on?" she asked.

Mateo considered.

"At Punta Reina, thirty miles down the coast, senora," he answered,
"there is a small steamer loading with cinchona and dyewoods. She
sails for San Francisco to-morrow at sunrise. So says my brother, who
arrived in his sloop to-day, passing by Punta Reina."

"You must take me in that sloop to the steamer to-night. Will you do
that?"

"Perhaps " Mateo shrugged a suggestive shoulder. Mrs. Conant

took a handful of money from a drawer and gave it to him.

"Get the sloop ready behind the little point of land below the town,"
she ordered. "Get sailors, and be ready to sail at six o'clock. In half an

THE WORLD AND THE DOOR 1103

hour bring a cart partly filled with straw into the patio here, and take
my trunk to the sloop. There is more money yet. Now, hurry."

For one time Mateo walked away without shuffling his feet.

"Angela/5 cried Mrs. Conant, almost fiercely, "come and help me
pack. I am going away. Out with this trunk. My clothes first. Stir your-
self. Those dark dresses first. Hurry."

From the first she did not waver from her decision. Her view was
clear and final. Her door had opened and let the world in. Her love for
Merriam was not lessened; but it now appeared a hopeless and un-
realizable thing. The visions of their future that had seemed so blissful
and complete had vanished. She tried to assure herself that her renuncia-
tion was rather for his sake than for her own. Now that she was cleared
of her burden — at least, technically — would not his own weigh too heavily
upon him? If she should cling to him, would not the difference forever
silently mar and corrode their happiness? Thus she reasoned; but there
were a thousand little voices calling to her that she could feel rather than
hear, like the hum of distant, powerful machinery — the little voices of
the world, that, when raised in unison, can send their insistent call
through the thickest door.

Once, while packing, a brief shadow of the lotus dream came back to
her. She held Merriam's picture to her heart with one hand, while she
threw a pair of shoes into the trunk with her other.

At six o'clock Mateo returned and reported the sloop ready. He and
his brother lifted the trunk into the cart, covered it with straw, and con-
veyed it to the point of embarkation. From there they transferred it on
board in the sloop's dory. Then Mateo returned for additional orders.

Mrs. Conant was ready. She had settled all business matters with
Angela, and was impatiently waiting. She wore a long, loose black-
silk duster that she often walked about in when the evenings were
chilly. On her head was a small round hat, and over it the apricot-colored
lace mantilla.

Dusk had quickly followed the short twilight. Mateo led her by dark
and grass-grown streets toward the point behind which the sloop was
anchored. On turning a corner they beheld the Hotel Orilla del Mar
three streets away, nebulously aglow with its array of kerosene lamps.

Mrs. Conant paused, with streaming eyes. "I must, / must see him
once before I go," she murmured in anguish. But even then she did not
falter in her decision. Quickly she invented a plan by which she might
speak to him, and yet make her departure without his knowing. She
would walk past the hotel, ask some one to call him out, and talk a few
moments on some trivial excuse, leaving him expecting to see her at her
home at seven.

She unpinned her hat and gave it to Mateo. "Keep this, and wait here
till I come," she ordered. Then she draped the mantilla over her head

1104 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

as she usually did when walking after sunset, and went straight to the
Orilla del Mar,

She was glad to see the bulky, white-clad figure o£ Tio Pancho stand-
ing alone on the gallery.

"Tio Pancho/' she said, with a charming smile, "may I trouble you to
ask Mr. Merriam to come out for just a few moments that I may speak
with him?"

Tio Pancho bowed as an elephant bows.

"Buenas tardes, Senora Conant," he said, as a cavalier talks. And then
he went on, less at his ease:

"But does not the senora know that Senor Merriam sailed on the
Pdjaro for Panama at three o'clock of this afternoon?"

THE THEORY AND THE HOUND

Not many days ago my old friend from the tropics, J. P. Bridger, United
States consul on the island of Ratona, was in the city. We had wassail
and jubilee and saw the Flatiron building, and missed seeing the Bronx-
less menagerie by about a couple of nights. And then, at the ebb tide,
we were walking up a street that parallels and parodies Broadway.

A woman with a comely and mundane countenance passed us, hold-
ing in leash a wheezing, vicious, waddling brute of a yellow pYig. The
dog entangled himself with Bridgets legs and mumbled his ankles in
a snarling, peevish, sulky bite. Bridger, with a happy smile kicked the
breath out of the brute; the woman showered us with a quick rain of
well-conceived adjectives that left us in no doubt as to our place in her
opinion, and we passed on. Ten yards farther an old woman with dis-
ordered white hair and her bankbook tucked well hidden beneath her
tattered shawl begged. Bridger stopped and disinterred for her a quarter
from his holiday waistcoat.

On the next corner a quarter of a ton of well-clothed man with a rice-
powdered, fat, white jowl, stood holding the chain of a devil-born bull-
dog whose forelegs were strangers by the length of a dachshund. A little
woman in a last-season's hat confronted him and wept, which was plainly
all she could do, while he cursed her in low, sweet, practised tones.

Bridger smiled again— strictly to himself— and this time he took out a
little memorandum book and made a note of it. This he had no right to
do without due explanation, and I said so.

"It's a new theory," said Bridger, "that I picked up down in Ratona.
Fve been gathering support for it as I knock about. The world isn't
ripe for it yet, but— well, I'll tell you; and then you run your mind back
along the people you've known and see what you make of it."

THE THEORY AND THE HOUND 1105

And so I cornered Bridger in a place where they have artificial palms
and wine; and he told me the story which is here in my words and on
his responsibility.

One afternoon at three o'clock, on the island o£ Ratona, a boy raced
along the beach screaming, "Pdjaro, ahoy!"

Thus he made known the keenness of his hearing and the justice of
his discrimination in pitch.

He who first heard and made oral proclamation concerning the toot
of an approaching steamer's whistle, and correctly named the steamer,
was a small hero in Ratona— until the next steamer came. Wherefore,
there was rivalry among the barefoot youth of Ratona, and many fell
victims to the softly blown conch shells of sloops which, as they enter
harbor, sound surprisingly like a distant steamer's signal And some could
name you the vessel when its call, in your duller ears, sounded no louder
than the sigh of the wind through the branches of the cocoanut palms.

But to-day he who proclaimed the Pdjaro gained his honors. Ratona
bent its ear to listen; and soon the deep-tongued blast grew louder and
nearer, and at length Ratona saw above the line of palms on the low
"point" the two black funnels of the fruiter slowly creeping toward the
mouth of the harbor.

You must know that Ratona is an island twenty miles off the south
of a South American republic. It is a port of that republic; and it sleeps
sweetly in a smiling sea, toiling not nor spinning; fed by the abundant
tropics where all things "ripen, cease and fall toward the grave."

Eight hundred people dream life away in a green-embowered village
that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbor. They are mostly
Spanish and Indian mestizos, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes,
a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials, and a slight leavening of the
froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at
Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their banana inspectors
there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday newspapers, ice,
quinine, bacon, watermelons, and vaccine matter at the island and that
is about all the touch Ratona gets with the world.

The Pdjaro paused at the mouth of the harbor, rolling heavily in the
swell that sent the whitecaps racing beyond the smooth water inside.
Already two dories from the village — one conveying fruit inspectors, the
other going for what it could get — were halfway out to the steamer.

The inspector's dory was taken on board with them, and the Pdjaro
steamed away for the mainland for its load of fruit.

The other boat returned to Ratona bearing a contribution from the
Pdjaro's store of ice, the usual roll of newspapers, and one passenger —
Taylor Plunkett, sheriff of Chatham County, Kentucky.

Bridger, the United States consul at Ratona, was cleaning his rifle in
the official shanty under a bread-fruit tree twenty yards from the water

II06 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

o£ the harbor. The consul occupied a place somewhat near the tail of his
political party's procession. The music of the band wagon sounded very
faintly to him in the distance. The plums of office went to others.
Bridgets share of the spoils — the consulship at Ratona — was little more
than a prune — a dried prune from the boarding-house department of
the public crib. But $900 yearly was opulence in Ratona. Besides, Bridger
had contracted a passion for shooting alligators in the lagoons near his
consulate, and he was not unhappy.

He looked up from a careful inspection of his rifle lock and saw a
broad man filling his doorway. A broad, noiseless, slow-moving man
sunburned almost to the brown of Vandyke. A man of forty-five, neatly
clothed in homespun, with scanty light hair, a close-clipped brown-and-
gray beard and pale-blue eyes expressing mildness and simplicity.

"You are Mr. Bridger, the consul," said the broad man. "They directed
me here. Can you tell me what those big bunches of things like gourds
are in those trees that look like feather dusters along the edge of the
water?"

"Take that chair," said the consul, reoiling his cleaning rag. "No, the
other one — that bamboo thing won't hold you. Why, they're cocoanuts —
green cocoanuts. The shell of 'em is always a light green before they're
ripe."

"Much obliged/' said the other man, sitting down carefully. "I didn't
quite like to tell the folks at home they were olives unless I was sure
about it. My name is Plunkett. I'm sheriff of Chatham County, Ken-
tucky. I've got extradition papers in my pocket authorizing the arrest of
a man on this island. They've been signed by the President of this
country, and they're in correct shape. The man's name is Wade Williams.
He's in the cocoanut raising business. What he's wanted for is the mur-
der of his wife two years ago. Where can I find him?"

The consul squinted an eye and looked through his rifle barrel.

"There's nobody on the island who calls himself Williams/" he re-
marked.

"Didn't suppose there was," said Plunkett mildly. "He'll, do by any
other name."

"Besides myself," said Bridger, "there are only two Americans on
Ratona— Bob Reeves and Henry Morgan."

"The man I want sells cocoanuts," suggested Plunkett,

"You see the cocoanut walk extending up to the point?" said the
consul, waving his hand toward the open door. "That belongs to Bob
Reeves. Henry Morgan owns half the trees to loo'ard on the island."

"One month ago," said the sheriff, "Wade Williams wrote a confiden-
tial letter to a man in Chatham County, telling him where he was and
how he was getting along. The letter was lost; and the person that found

THE THEORY AND THE HOUND IIOJ

it gave it away. They sent me after him, and I've got the papers. I
reckon he's one of your cocoanut men for certain."

"You've got his picture, of course," said Bridger. "It might be Reeves
or Morgan, but I'd hate to think it. They're both as fine fellows as you'd
meet in an all-day auto ride."

"No," doubtfully answered Plunkett; "there wasn't any picture of
Williams to be had. And I never saw him myself. I've been sheriff only
a year. But I've got a pretty accurate descriptipn of him. About 5 feet
ii ; dark hair and eyes; nose inclined to be Roman; heavy about the
shoulders; strong, white teeth, with none missing; laughs a good deal,
talkative; drinks considerably but never to intoxication; looks you square
in the eye when talking; age thirty-five. Which one of your men does
that description fit?"

The consul grinned broadly.

"I'll tell you what you do," he said, laying down his rifle and slipping
on his dingy black alpaca coat. "You come along, Mr. Plunkett, and I'll
take you up to see the boys. If you can tell which one of 'em your de-
scription fits better than it does the other you have the advantage of me."

Bridger conducted the sheriff out and along the hard beach close to
which the tiny houses of the village were distributed. Immediately back
of the town rose sudden, small, thickly wooded hills. Up one of these, by
means of steps cut in the hard clay, the consul led Plunkett. On the very
verge of an eminence was perched a two-room wooden cottage with a
thatched roof. A Carib woman was washing clothes outside. The consul
ushered the sheriff to the door of the room that overlooked the harbor.

Two men were in the room, about to sit down, in their shirt sleeves,
to a table spread for dinner. They bore little resemblance one to the
other in detail; but the general description given by Plunkett could have
been justly applied to either. In height, color of hair, shape of nose, build,
and manners each of them tallied with it. They were fair types of jovial,
ready-witted, broad-gauged Americans who had gravitated together for
companionship in an alien land.

"Hello, Bridger!" they called in unison at sight of the consul, "Come
and have dinner with us!" And then they noticed Plunkett at his heels,
and came forward with hospitable curiosity.

"Gentlemen," said the consul, his voice taking an unaccustomed for-
mality, "this is Mr. Plunkett, Mr. Plunkett — Mr. Reeves and Mr, Mor-
gan."

The cocoanut barons greeted the newcomer joyously. Reeves seemed
about an inch taller than Morgan, but his laugh was not quite as loud.
Morgan's eyes were deep brown; Reeves 's were black. Reeves was the
host and busied himself with fetching other chairs and calling to the
Carib woman fpr supplemental table ware. It was explained that Morgan
lived in a bamboo shack to "loo'ard," but that every day the two friends

II08 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

dined together. Plunkett stood still during the preparations, looking
about mildly with his pale-blue eyes. Bridger looked apologetic and
uneasy.

At length two other covers were laid and the company was assigned
to places. Reeves and Morgan stood side by side across the table from
the visitors. Reeves nodded genially as a signal for all to seat themselves.
And then suddenly Plunkett raised his hand with a gesture of authority.
He was looking straight between Reeves and Morgan.

"Wade Williams," he said quietly, "you are under arrest for murder."

Reeves and Morgan instantly exchanged a quick, bright glance, the
quality of which was interrogation, with a seasoning of surprise. Then,
simultaneously they turned to the speaker with a puzzled and frank
deprecation in their gaze.

"Can't say that we understand you, Mr. Plunkett," said Morgan, cheer-
fully. "Did you say Williams'?"

"What's the joke, Bridgy?" asked Reeves, turning to the consul with
a smile.

Before Bridger could answer, Plunkett spoke again.

"I'll explain," he said, quietly. "One of you don't need any explana-
tion, but this is for the other one. One of you is Wade Williams of
Chatham County, Kentucky. You murdered your wife on May 5, two
years ago, after ill-treating and abusing her continually for five years.
I have the proper papers in my pocket for taking you back with me,
and you are going. We will return on the fruit steamer that comes back
by this island to-morrow to leave its inspectors. I acknowledge, gentle-
men, that I'm not quite sure which one of you is Williams. But Wade
Williams goes back to Chatham County to-morrow. I want you to under-
stand that."

A great sound of merry laughter from Morgan and Reeves went out
over the still harbor. Two or three fishermen in the fleet of sloops
anchored there looked up at the house of the diablos Americanos on the
hill and wondered.

^ "My ^ dear Mr. Plunkett," cried Morgan, conquering his mirth, "the
dinner is getting cold. Let us sit down and eat. I am anxious to get my
spoon into that shark-fin soup. Business afterward."

"Sit down, gentlemen, if you please," added Reeves, pleasantly. "I am
sure Mr. Plunkett will not object. Perhaps a little time may be of advan-
tage to him in identifying— the gentleman he wishes to arrest."

"No objections, I'm sure," said Plunkett, dropping into his chair
heavily. "I'm hungry myself. I didn't want to accept the hospitality of
you folks without giving you notice; that's all."
Reeves set bottles and glasses on the table.

"There's cognac," he said, "and anisada, and Scotch 'smoke,' and rye.
Take your choice."

THE THEORY AND THE HOUND 110$

Bridger chose rye, Reeves poured three fingers of Scotch for himself,
Morgan took the same. The sheriff, against much protestation, filled his
glass from the water bottle.

"Here's to the appetite," said Reeves, raising his glass, "of Mr. Wil-
liams!" Morgan's laugh and his drink encountering sent him into a
choking-splutter. All began to pay attention to the dinner, which was
well cooked and palatable.

"Williams!" called Plunkett, suddenly and sharply.

All looked up wonderingly. Reeves found the sheriffs mild eye resting
upon him. He flushed a little.

"See here," he said, with some asperity, "my name's Reeves, and I

don't want you to " But the comedy of the thing came to his rescue

and he ended with a laugh.

"I suppose, Mr. Plunkett," said Morgan, carefully seasoning an alli-
gator pear, "that you are aware of the fact that you will import a good
deal of trouble for yourself into Kentucky if you take back the wrong
man — that is, of course, if you take anybody back?"

"Thank you for the salt," said the sheriff. "Oh, I'll take somebody back.
It'll be one of you two gentlemen. Yes, I know I'll get stuck for damages
if I make a mistake. But I'm going to try to get the right man."

"Ill tell you what you do," said Morgan, leaning forward with a jolly
twinkle in his eyes. "You take me. I'll go without any trouble. The cocoa-
nut business hasn't panned out well this year, and I'd like to make some
extra money out of your bondsmen."

"That's not fair," chimed in Reeves. "I got only $16 a thousand for my
last shipment. Take me, Mr. Plunkett."

'Til take Wade Williams," said the sheriff, patiently, "or I'll come
pretty close to it."

"It's like dining with a ghost," remarked Morgan, with a pretended
shiver. "The ghost of a murderer, too! Will somebody pass the tooth-
picks to the shade of the naughty Mr. Williams?"

Plunkett seemed as unconcerned as if he were dining at his own table
in Chatham County. He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange
tropic viands tickled his palate. Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in
his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watch-
fulness of the sleuth. He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or
attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken
with surprising self-confidence to drag away upon the serious charge of
wife-murder. Here, indeed, was a problem set before him that if wrongly
solved would have amounted to his serious discomfiture, yet there he sat
puzzling his soul (to all appearances) over the novel flavor of a broiled
iguana cutlet.

The consul felt a decided discomfort. Reeves and Morgan were his
friends and pals; yet the sheriff from Kentucky had a certain right to

IIIO BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

his official aid and moral support. So Bridger sat the silentest around the
board and tried to estimate the peculiar situation. His conclusion was
that both Reeves and Morgan, quickwitted, as he knew them to be, had
conceived at the moment of Plunkett's disclosure of his mission— and in
the brief space of a lightning flash— the idea that the other might be the
guilty Williams; and that each of them had decided in that moment
loyally to protect his comrade against the doom that threatened him.
This was the consul's theory, and if he had been a bookmaker at a race
of wits for life and liberty he would have offered heavy odds against the
plodding sheriff from Chatham County, Kentucky.

When the meal was concluded the Carib woman came and removed
the dishes and cloth. Reeves strewed the table with excellent cigars, and
Plunkett, with the others, lighted one of these with evident gratification.

"I may be dull," said Morgan, with a grin and a wink at Bridger; "but
I want to know if I am. Now, I say this is all a joke of Mr. Plunkett's
concocted to frighten two babes-in-the-woods. Is this Williamson to be
taken seriously or not?"

"'Williams,'" corrected Plunkett, gravely. "I never got off any jokes
in my life. I know I wouldn't travel 2,000 miles to get off a poor one as
this would be if I didn't take Wade Williams back with me. Gentle-
men !r> continued the sheriff, now letting his mild eyes travel impartially
from one of the company to another, "see if you can find any joke in
this case. Wade Williams is listening to the words I utter now; but out
of politeness I will speak of him as a third person. For five years he made
his wife lead the life of a dog— No; I'll take that back. No dog in Ken-
tucky was ever treated as she was. He spent the money that she brought
him — spent it at races, at the card table, and on horses and hunting. He
was a good fellow to his friends, but a cold, sullen demon at home. He
wound up the five years of neglect by striking her with his closed hand—
a hand as hard as a stone — when she was ill and weak from suffering.
She died the next day; and he skipped. That's all there is to it. It's enough.
I never saw Williams; but I knew his wife. I'm not a man to tell half.
She and I were keeping company when she met him. She went to Louis-
ville on a visit and saw him there. I'll admit that he spoilt my chances in
no time. I lived then on the edge of the Cumberland Mountains. I was
elected sheriff of Chatham County a year after Wade Williams killed his
wife. My official duty sends me out here after him; but I'll admit that
there's personal feeling, too. And he's going back with me. Mr.— er—
Reeves, will you pass me a match?"

"Awfully imprudent of Williams,5* said Morgan, putting his feet up
against the waU, "to strike a Kentucky lady. Seems to me I've heard
they were scrappers."

"Bad, bad Williams," said Reeves, pouring out more "Scotch."

The two men spoke lightly, but the consul saw and felt the tension

THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE IIII

and the carefulness in their actions and words. "Good old fellows," he
said to himself; "they're both all right. Each of 'em is standing by the
other like a little brick church."

And then a dog walked into the room where they sat — a black-and-tan
hound, long-eared, lazy, confident of welcome.

Plunkett turned his head and looked at the animal, which halted, con-
fidently, within a few feet of his chair.

Suddenly the sheriff, with a deep-mouthed oath, left his seat and
bestowed upon the dog a vicious and heavy kick, with his ponderous
shoe.

The hound, heart-broken, astonished, with flapping ears and in-curved
tail, uttered a piercing yelp of pain and surprise.

Reeves and the consul remained in their chairs, saying nothing, but
astonished at the unexpected show of intolerance from the easy-going
man from Chatham County.

But Morgan, with a suddenly purpling face, leaped to his feet and
raised a threatening arm above the guest.

"You— brute!" he shouted, passionately; "why did you do that?"

Quickly the amenities returned, Plunkett muttered some indistinct
apology and regained his seat. Morgan with a decided effort controlled
his indignation and also returned to his chair.

And then Plunkett, with the spring of a tiger, leaped around the
corner of the table and snapped handcuffs on the paralyzed Morgan's
wrists.

"Hound-lover and woman-killer!" he cried; "get ready to meet your
God."

When Bridger had finished I asked him:

"Did he get the right man?"

"He did," said the consul.

"And how did he know?" I inquired, being in a kind of bewilderment.

"When he put Morgan in the dory," answered Bridger, "the next day
to take him aboard the Pdjaro, this man Plunkett stopped to shake hands
with me and I asked him the same question.

" 'Mr. Bridger,' said he. I'm a Kentuckian, and I've seen a great deal
of both men and animals. And I never yet saw a man that was overfond
of horses and dogs but what was cruel to women.* "

THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE

Lawyer Gooch bestowed his undivided attention upon the engrossing
arts of his profession. But one flight of fancy did he allow his mind to
entertain. He was fond of likening his suite of office rooms to the bot-

III2 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

torn of a ship. The rooms were three in number, with a door opening
from one to another. These doors could also be closed.

"Ships," Lawyer Gooch would say, "are constructed for safety, with
separate, water-tight compartments in their bottoms. If one compart-
ment springs a leak it fills with water; but the good ship goes on un-
hurt. Were it not for the separating bulkheads one leak would sink the
vessel. Now it often happens that while I am occupied with clients, other
clients with conflicting interests call. With the assistance of Archibald —
an office boy with a future — I cause the dangerous influx to be diverted
into separate compartments, while I sound with my legal plummet the
depth of each. If necessary, they may be baled into the hallway and per-
mitted to escape by way of the stairs, which we may term the lee scuppers.
Thus the good ship of business is kept afloat; whereas if the element that
supports her were allowed to mingle freely in her hold we might be
swamped — ha, ha, ha!"

The law is dry. Good jokes are few. Surely it might be permitted
Lawyer Gooch to mitigate the bore of briefs, the tedium of torts and the
prosiness of processes with even so light a levy upon the good property
of humor.

Lawyer Gooch's practice leaned largely to the settlement of marital
infelicities. Did matrimony languish through complications, he medi-
ated, soothed, and arbitrated. Did it suffer from implications, he read-
justed, defended, and championed. Did it arrive at the extremity of
duplications, he always got light sentences for his clients.

But not always was Lawyer Gooch the keen, armed, wily belligerent,
ready with his two-edged sword to lop off the shackles of HymeivHe
had been known to build up instead of demolishing, to reunite inMad
of severing, to lead erring and foolish ones back into the fold instead of
scattering the flock. Often had he by his eloquent and moving appeals
sent husband and wife, weeping, back into each other's arms. Frequently
he had coached childhood so successfully that, at the psychological mo-
ment (and at a given signal), the plaintive pipe of "Papa, won't you turn
home adain to me and muvver?" had won the day and upheld the pillars
of a tottering home.

Unprejudiced persons admitted that Lawyer Gooch received as big
fees from these reyoked clients as would have been paid him had the
cases been contested in court. Prejudiced ones intimated that his fees
were doubled, because the penitent couples always came back later for
the divorce, anyhow.

There came a season in June when the legal ship of Lawyer Gooch
(to borrow his own figure) was nearly becalmed. The divorce mill grinds
slowly in June. It is the month of Cupid and Hymen.

Lawyer Gooch, then, sat idle in the middle room of his clientless suite.
A small anteroom connected—or rather separated — this apartment from

THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE III3

the hallway. Here was stationed Archibald, who wrested from visitors
their cards or oral nomenclature which he bore to his master while they
waited.

Suddenly, on this day, there came a great knocking at the outermost
door.

Archibald, opening it, was thrust aside as superfluous by the visitor,
who without due reverence at once penetrated to the office of Lawyer
Gooch and threw himself with good-natured insolence into a comfortable
chair facing that gentleman.

"You are Phineas C. Gooch, attorney-at-law?" said the visitor, his tone
of voice and inflection making his words at once a question, an assertion,
and an accusation.

Before committing himself by a reply, the lawyer estimated his possible
client in one of his brief but shrewd and calculating glances.

The man was of the emphatic type — large-sized, active, bold and deb-
onair in demeanor, vain beyond a doubt, slightly swaggering, ready and
at ease. He was well clothed, but with a shade too much ornateness. He
was seeking a lawyer; but if that fact would seem to saddle him with
troubles they were not patent in his beaming eye and courageous air.

"My name is Gooch," at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure
he would also have confessed to the Phineas C. But he did not consider
it good practice to volunteer information. "I did not receive your card/'
he continued, by way of rebuke, "so I "

"I know you didn't," remarked the visitor, coolly; "and you won't just
yet Light up?" He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed a
handful of rich-hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the
brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke.

"You are a divorce lawyer," said the cardless visitor. This time there
was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a simple
assertion. They formed a charge— a denunciation — as one would say to
a dog: "You are a dog." Lawyer Gooch was silent under the imputation.

"You handle," continued the visitor, "all the various ramifications of
busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might say, who extracts
Cupid's darts when he shoots rem into the wrong parties. You furnish
patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has
burned so low you can't light a cigar at it. Am I right, Mr. Gooch?"

"I have undertaken cases," said the lawyer, guardedly, "in the line to
which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me
professionally, Mr. " The lawyer paused, with significance.

"Not yet," said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, "not just yet.
Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have been used
in the original act that makes this pow-wow necessary. There exists a
matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before I give you names
I want your honest — well, anyhow, your professional opinion on the

III4 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

merits o£ the mix-up. I want you to size up the catastrophe — abstractly —
you understand? I'm Mr. Nobody; and I've got a story to tell you. Then
you say what's what. Do you get my wireless?"

"You want to state a hypothetical case?" suggested Lawyer Gooch.

"That's the word I was after. 'Apothecary' was the best shot I could
make at it in my mind. The hypothetical goes. I'll state the case. Suppose
there's a woman — a deuced fine-looking woman — who has run away
from her husband and home? She's badly mashed on another man who
went to her town to work up some real estate business. Now, we may
as well call this woman's husband Thomas R. Billings, for that's his name.
I'm giving you straight tips on the cognomens. The Lothario chap is
Henry K. Jessup. The Billingses lived in a little town called Susanville —
a good many miles from here. Now, Jessup leaves Susanville two weeks
ago. The next day Mrs. Billings follows him. She's dead gone on this man
Jessup; you can bet your law library on that,'*

Lawyer Gooch's client said this with such unctuous satisfaction that
even the callous lawyer experienced a slight ripple of repulsion. He now
saw clearly in his fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer, the egoistic
complacency of the successful trifler.

"Now," continued the visitor, "suppose this Mr. Billings wasn't happy
at home? We'll say she and her husband didn't gee worth a cent. They've
got incompatibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings wouldn't have
as a gift with trading-stamps. It's Tabby and Rover with them all the
time. She's an educated woman in science and culture, and she reads
things out loud at meetings. Billings is not on. He don't appreciate
progress and obelisks and ethics, and things of that sort. Old Billings is
simply a blink when it comes to such things. The lady is out and out
above his class. Now, lawyer, don't it look like a fair equalization of
rights and wrongs that a woman like that should be allowed to throw down
Billings and take the man that can appreciate her?"

"Incompatibility," said Lawyer Gooch, "is undoubtedly the source of
much marital discord and unhappiness. Where it is positively proved,
divorce would seem to be the equitable remedy. Are you— excuse me—-
is this man Jessup one to whom the lady may safely trust her future?"

"Oh, you can bet on Jessup," said the client, with a confident wag of
his head. "Jessup's all right. He'll do the square thing. Why, he left
Susanville just to keep people from talking about Mrs. Billings. But she
followed him up, and now, of course, he'll stick to her. When she gets
a divorce, all legal and proper, Jessup will do the proper thing."

"And now," said Lawyer Gooch, "continuing the hypothesis, if you
prefer, and supposing that my services should be desired in the case,
what "

The client rose impulsively to his feet,

"Oh, dang the hypothetical business," he exclaimed, impatiently. "Let's

THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE III5

let her drop, and get down to straight talk. You ought to know who I am
by this time. I want that woman to have her divorce. I'll pay for it. The
day you set Mrs. Billings free I'll pay you five hundred dollars."

Lawyer Gooch's client banged his fist upon the table to punctuate his
generosity.

"If that is the case " began the lawyer.

"Lady to see you, sir," bawled Archibald, bouncing in from his ante-
room. He had orders to always announce immediately any client that
might come. There was no sense in turning business away.

Lawyer Gooch took client number one by the arm and led him suavely
into one of the adjoining rooms. "Favor me by remaining here a few
minutes, sir," said he. "I will return and resume our consultation with
the least possible delay. I am rather expecting a visit from a very wealthy
old lady in connection with a will. I will not keep you waiting long."

The breezy gentleman seated himself with obliging acquiescence, and
took up a magazine. The lawyer returned to the middle office, carefully
closing behind him the connecting door.

"Show the lady in, Archibald," he said to the office boy, who was await-
ing the order.

A tall lady, of commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered
the room. She wore robes — robes; not clothes — ample and fluent. In her
eye could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul. In her
hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an umbrella that
also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. She accepted a chair.

"Are you Mr. Phineas C Gooch, the lawyer?" she asked, in formal
and unconciliatory tones.

"I am," answered Lawyer Gooch, without circumlocution. He never
circumlocuted when dealing with a woman. Women circumlocute. Time
is wasted when both sides in debate employ the same tactics.

"As a lawyer, sir," began the lady, "You may have acquired some
knowledge of the human heart. Do you believe that the pusillanimous
and petty conventions of our artificial social life should stand as an ob-
stacle in the way of a noble and affectionate heart when it finds its true
mate among the miserable and worthless wretches in the world that are
called men?"

"Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, in the tone that he used in curbing his
female clients, "this is an office for conducting the practices of law. I
am a lawyer, not a philosopher, nor the editor of an 'Answers to the
Lovelorn' column of a newspaper. I have other clients waiting. I will ask
you kindly to come to the point."

"Well, you needn't get so stiff around the gills about it," said the lady,
with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her um-
brella. "Business is what IVe come for. I want your opinion in the mat-
ter of a suit for a divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but which is really

IIl6 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

only the readjustment of the false and ignoble conditions that the short-
sighted laws of man have interposed between a loving "

"I beg your pardon, madam," interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some
impatience, "for reminding you again that this is a law office. Perhaps
Mrs. Wilcox "

"Mrs. Wilcox is all right/5 cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity.
"And so are Tolstoi, and Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam,
and Mr. Edward Bok. Fve read 'em all. I would like to discuss with you
the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying restric-
tions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will proceed to busi-
ness. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in an impersonal way
until you pass upon its merits. That is to describe it as a supposable in-
stance, without "

"You wish to state a hypothetical case?" said Lawyer Gooch.

"I was going to say that," said the lady, sharply. "Now, suppose there
is a woman who is all soul and heart and aspirations for a complete
existence. This woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect, in
taste — in everything. Bah! he is a brute. He despises literature. He sneers
at the lofty thoughts of the world's great thinkers. He thinks only of real
estate and such sordid things. He is no mate for a woman with soul. We
will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets with her ideal — a man
with brain and heart and force. She loves him. Although this man feels
the thrill of a new-found affinity he is too noble, too honorable to declare
himself. He flies from the presence of his beloved. She flies after him^
trampling, with superb indifference, upon the fetters with which an
unenlightened social system would bind her. Now, what will a divorce
cost? Eliza Ann Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap, got one for
three hundred and forty dollars. Can I— I mean can this lady I speak of
get one that cheap?"

"Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, "your last two or three sentences delight
me with their intelligence and clearness. Can we not now abandon the
hypothetical and come down to names and business?"

"I should say so," exclaimed the lady, adopting the practical with
admirable readiness. "Thomas R. Billings is the name of the low brute
who stands between the happiness of his legal — his legal, but not his
spiritual — wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom nature in-
tended for her mate. I," concluded the client, with an air of dramatic
revelation, "am Mrs. Billings!"

"Gentleman to see you, sir," shouted Archibald, invading the room
almost at a handspring. Lawyer Gooch arose from his chair.

"Mrs. Billings," he said, courteously, "allow me to conduct you into
the adjoining office apartment for a few minutes. I am expecting a very
wealthy old gentleman on business connected with a will In a very short
while I will join you, and continue our consultation."

THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE III7

With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer Gooch ushered his
soulful client into the remaining unoccupied room, and came out, closing
the door with circumspection.

The next visitor introduced by Archibald was a thin, nervous, irritable-
looking man of middle age, with a worried and apprehensive expression
of countenance. He carried in one hand a small satchel, which he set
down upon the floor beside the chair which the lawyer placed for him.
His clothing was of good quality, but it was worn without regard to
neatness or style, and appeared to be covered with the dust of travel.

"You make a specialty of divorce cases," he said, in an agitated but
businesslike tone.

"I may say," began Lawyer Gooch, "that my practice has not altogether
avoided "

"I know you do," interrupted client number three. "You needn't tell
me. I've heard all about you. I have a case to lay before you without

necessarily disclosing any connection that I might have with it— that
• j>

CfYou wish," said Lawyer Gooch, "to state a hypothetical case."

"You may call it that I am a plain man of business. I will be as brief
as possible. We will first take up the hypothetical woman. We will say
she is married uncongenially. In many ways she is a superior woman.
Physically she is considered to be handsome. She is devoted to what she
calls literature — poetry and prose, and such stuff. Her husband is a plain
man in the business walks of life. Their home has not been happy, al-
though the husband has tried to make it so. Some time ago a man— a
stranger — came to the peaceful town in which they lived and engaged
in some real estate operations. This woman met him, and became unac-
countably infatuated with him. Her attentions became so open that the
man felt the community to be no safe place for him, so he left it. She
abandoned husband and home, and followed him. She forsook her home,
where she was provided with every comfort, to follow this man who had
inspired her with such a strange affection. Is there anything more to be
deplored," concluded the client, in a trembling voice, "than the wrecking
of a home by a woman's uncalculating folly?"

Lawyer Gooch delivered the cautious opinion that there was not.

"This man she has gone to join," resumed the visitor, "is not the man
to make her happy. It is a wild and foolish self-deception that makes her
think he will. Her husband, in spite of their many disagreements, is the
only one capable of dealing with her sensitive and peculiar nature. But
this she does not realize now."

'Would you consider a divorce the logical cure in the case you pre-
sent?" asked Lawyer Gooch, who felt that the conversation was wander-
ing too far from the field of business.

"A divorce!" exclaimed the client, feelingly— almost tearfully. "No, no

IIl8 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

—not that. I have read, Mr. Gooch, of many instances where your sym-
pathy and kindly interest led you to act as a mediator between estranged
husband and wife, and brought them together again. Let us drop the
hypothetical case — I need conceal no longer that it is I who am the
sufferer in this said affair — the names you shall have — Thomas R. Billings
and Wife— and Henry K. Jessup, the man with whom she is infatuated."

Client number three laid his hand upon Mr. Gooch's arm. Deep emo-
tion was written upon his careworn face. "For Heaven *s sake," he said
fervently, "help me in this hour of trouble. Seek out Mrs, Billings, and
persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her lamentable folly.
Tell her, Mr. Gooch, that her husband is willing to receive her back to his
heart and home — promise her anything that will induce her to return.
I have heard of your success in these matters. Mrs. Billings cannot be
very far away. I am worn out with travel and weariness. Twice during
the pursuit I saw her, but various circumstances prevented our having an
interview. Will you undertake this mission for me, Mr. Gooch, and earn
my everlasting gratitude?"

"It is true," said Lawyer Gooch, frowning slightly at the other's last
words, but immediately calling up an expression of virtuous benevolence,
"that on a number of occasions I have been successful in persuading
couples who sought the severing of their matrimonial bonds to think
better of their rash intentions and return to their homes reconciled., But
I assure you that the work is often exceedingly difficult. The amount of
argument, perseverance, and, if I may be allowed to say it, eloquence that
it requires would astonish you. But this is a case in which my sympathies
would be wholly enlisted. I feel deeply for you, sir, and I would be most
happy to see husband and wife reunited. But my time," concluded the
lawyer, looking at his watch as if suddenly reminded of the fact, "is
valuable.'*

"I am aware of that," said the client, "and if you will take the case and
persuade Mrs. Billings to return home and leave the man alone that
she is following — on that day I will pay you the sum of one thousand
dollars. I have made a little money in real estate during the recent boom
in Susanville, and I will not begrudge that amount."

"Retain your seat for a few moments, please," said Lawyer Gooch,
arising and again consulting his watch. "I have another client waiting in
an adjoining room whom I had very nearly forgotten. I will return in
the briefest possible space."

The situation was now one that fully satisfied Lawyer Gooch's love of
intricacy and complication. He revelled in cases that presented such subtle
problems and possibilities. It pleased him to think that he was master of
the happiness and fate of the three individuals who sat, unconscious of
one another's presence, within his reach. His old figure of the ship
glided into his mind. But now the figure failed, for to have filled every

THE HYPOTHESES OF FAILURE

compartment of an actual vessel would have been to endanger her safety;
while here, with his compartments full, his ship of affairs could but sail
on to the advantageous port of a fine, fat fee. The thing for him to do,
of course, was to wring the best bargain he could from some one of his
anxious cargo.

First he called to the office boy: "Lock the outer door, Archibald, and
admit no one." Then he moved, with long, silent strides, into the room
in which client number one waited. That gentleman sat, patiently scan-
ning the pictures in the magazine, with a cigar in his mouth and his feet
upon a table.

"Well," he remarked, cheerfully, as the lawyer entered, "have you
made up your mind? Does five hundred dollars go for getting the fair
lady a divorce?"

"You mean that as a retainer?" asked Lawyer Gooch, softly inter-
rogative.

"Hey? No; for the whole job. It's enough, ain't it?"

"My fee," said Lawyer Gooch, "would be one thousand five hundred
dollars. Five hundred dollars down, and the remainder upon issuance
of the divorce."

A loud whistle came from client number one. His feet descended to
the floor.

"Guess we can't close the deal," he said, arising. "I cleaned up five
hundred dollars in a little real estate dicker down in Susanville. I'd do
anything I could to free the lady, but it outsizes my pile."

"Could you stand one thousand two hundred dollars?" asked the
lawyer, insinuatingly.

"Five hundred is my limit, I tell you. Guess I'll have to hunt up a
cheaper lawyer." The client put on his hat.

"Out this way, please," said Lawyer Gooch, opening the door that led
into the hallway.

As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and down the stairs,
Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself. "Exit Mr. Jessup," he murmured, as
he fingered the Henry Clay tuft of hair at his ear. "And now for the
forsaken husband." He returned to the middle office, and assumed a
businesslike manner.

"I understand," he said to client number three, "that you agree to pay
one thousand dollars if I bring about, or am instrumental in bringing
about, the return of Mrs. Billings to her home, and her abandonment of
her infatuated pursuit of the man for whom she has conceived such a
violent fancy. Also that the case is now unreservedly in my hands on
that basis. Is that correct?"

"Entirely," said the other, eagerly. "And I can produce the cash any
time at two hours' notice."

Lawyer Gooch stood up at his full height. His thin figure seemed to

1120 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

expand. His thumbs sought the armholes of his vest. Upon his face was
a look of sympathetic benignity that he always wore during such under-
takings.

"Then, sir," he said, in kindly tones, "I think I can promise you an
early relief from your troubles. I have that much confidence in my pow-
ers of argument and persuasion, in the natural impulses of the human
heart towards good, and in the strong influence of a husband's unfaltering

love. Mrs. Billings, sir, is here— in that room " the lawyer's long arm

pointed to the door. "I will call her in at once; and our united plead-
ings "

Lawyer Gooch paused, for client number three had leaped from his
chair as if propelled by steel springs, and clutched at his satchel.

"What the devil," he exclaimed, harshly, "do you mean? That woman
in there! I thought I shook her off forty miles back."

He ran to the open window, looked out below, and threw one leg
over the sill.

"Stop!" cried Lawyer Gooch, in amazement. "What would you do?
Come, Mr. Billings, and face your erring but innocent wife. Our com-
bined entreaties cannot fail to "

"Billings!" shouted the now thoroughly moved client; 'Til Billings you,
you old idiot!"

Turning, he hurled his satchel with fury at the lawyer's head. It struck
that astounded peacemaker between the eyes, causing him to stagger
backward a pace or two. When Lawyer Gooch recovered his wits he saw
that his client had disappeared. Rushing to the window, he leaned out,
and saw the recreant gathering himself up from the top of a shed upon
which he had dropped from the second-story window. Without stop-
ping to collect his hat he then plunged downward the remaining ten
feet to the alley, up which he flew with prodigious celerity until the
surrounding building swallowed him up from view.

Lawyer Gooch passed his hand tremblingly across his brow. It was an
habitual act with him, serving to clear his thoughts. Perhaps also it now
seemed to soothe the spot where a very hard alligator-hide satchel had
struck.

The satchel lay upon the floor, wide open, with its contents spilled
about. Mechanically Lawyer Gooch stooped to gather up the articles.
The first was a collar; and the omniscient eye of the man of law per-
ceived, wonderingly, the initials H. K. J. marked upon it. Then came a
comb, a brush, a folded map and a piece of soap. Lastly, a handful of
old business letters, addressed—every one of them— to "Henry K. Jessup,
Esq."

Lawyer Gooch closed the satchel, and set it upon the table. He hesi-
tated for a moment, and then put on his hat and walked into the office
boy's anteroom.

GALLOWAY'S CODE 1121

"Archibald/* he said mildly, as he opened the hall door, "I am going
to the Supreme Court rooms. In five minutes you may step into the inner
office, and inform the lady who is waiting there that" — here Lawyer
Gooch made use of the vernacular — "that there's nothing doing."

GALLOWAY S CODE

The New York Enterprise sent H. B. Galloway as special correspondent
to the Russo-Japanese-Portsmouth war.

For two months Galloway hung about Yokohama and Tokio, shaking
dice with the other correspondents for drinks of 'rickshaws — oh, no, that's
something to ride in; anyhow, he wasn't earning the salary that his paper
was paying him. But that was not Galloway's fault. The little brown
men who held the strings of Fate between their fingers were not ready for
the readers of the Enterprise to season their breakfast bacon and eggs
with the battles of the descendants of the gods.

But soon the column of correspondents that were to go out with the
First Army tightened their field-glass belts and went down to the Yalu
with Kuroki. Galloway was one of these.

Now, this is no history of the battle of Yalu River. That has been told
in detail by the correspondents who gazed at the shrapnel smoke rings
from a distance of three miles. But, for justice's sake, let it be under-
stood that the Japanese commander prohibited a nearer view.

Galloway's feat was accomplished before the battle. What he did was
to furnish the Enterprise with the biggest beat of the war. That paper
published exclusively and in detail the news of the attack on the lines of
the Russian General Zassulitch on the same day that it was made. No
other paper printed a word about it for two days afterward, except a
London paper, whose account was absolutely incorrect and untrue.

Galloway did this in face of the fact that General Kuroki was making
his moves and laying his plans with the profoundest secrecy as far as the
world outside his camps was concerned. The correspondents were for-
bidden to send out any news whatever of his plans; and every message
that was allowed on the wires was censored with rigid severity.

The correspondent for the London paper handed in a cablegram
describing Kuroki's plans; but as it was wrong from beginning to end
the censor grinned and let it go through.

So, there they were— Kuroki on one side of the Yalu with forty-two
thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and one hundred and twenty-
four guns. On the other side Zassulitch waited for him with only twenty-
three thousand men, and with a long stretch of river to guard. And
Galloway had got hold of some important inside information that he

1122 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

knew would bring the Enterprise staff around a cablegram as thick as
flies around a Park Row lemonade stand. If he could only get that
message past the censor — the new censor who had arrived and taken his
post that day!

Galloway did the obviously proper thing. He lit his pipe and sat down
on a gun carnage to think it over. And there we must leave him; for
the rest of the story belongs to Vesey, a sixteen-dollar-a-week reporter
on the Enterprise.

Galloway's cablegram was handed to the managing editor at four
o'clock in the afternoon. He read it three times; and then drew a pocket
mirror from a pigeon-hole in his desk, and looked at his reflection care-
fully. Then he went over to the desk of Boyd, his assistant (he usually
called Boyd when he wanted him), and laid the cablegram before him.
"It's from Galloway," he said. "See what you make of it."
The message was dated at Wi-ju, and these were the words of it:

Foregone preconcerted rash witching goes muffled rumor mine dark
silent unfortunate richmond existing great hotly brute select mooted
parlous beggars ye angel incontrovertible.

Boyd read it twice.

"It's either a cipher or a sunstroke," said he.

"Ever hear of anything like a code in the office — a secret code?" asked
the m. e., who had held his desk for only two years. Managing editors
come and go.

"None except the vernacular that the lady specials write in/' said
Boyd. "Couldn't be an acrostic, could it?"

"I thought of that," said the m. e., "but the beginning letters contain
only four vowels. It must be a code of some sort."

"Try 'em in groups," suggested Boyd. "Let's see— 'Rash witching goes'
not with me it doesn't. 'Muffled rumor mine'— must have an under-
ground wire. 'Dark silent unfortunate richmond'— no reason why he
shold knock that town so hard. 'Existing great hotly'— no, it doesn't pan
out. 1*11 call Scott."

The city editor came in a hurry, and tried his luck. A city editor must
know something about everything; so Scott knew a little about cipher-
writing.

"It may be what is called an inverted alphabet cipher," said he. "I'll
try that. 4R' seems to be the oftenest used initial letter, with the exception
of W Assuming V to mean V the most frequently used vowel, we
transpose the letters— so."

Scott worked rapidly with his pencil for two minutes; and then showed
the first word according to his reading— the word "Scejtzez."

GALLOWAY S CODE 1123

"Great!" cried Boyd. "It's a charade. My first is a Russian General. Go
on, Scott.'*

"No, that won't work," said the city editor. "It's undoubtedly a code.
It's impossible to read it without the key. Has the office ever used a ci-
pher code?"

"Just what I was asking," said the m. e. "Hustle everybody up that
ought to know. We must get at it some way. Galloway has evidendy
got hold of something big, and the censor has put the screws on, or he
wouldn't have cabled in a lot of chop suey like this."

Throughout the office of the Enterprise a dragnet was sent, hauling
in such members of the staff as would be likely to know of a code, past
or present, by reason of their wisdom, information, natural intelligence,
or length of servitude. They got together in a group in the city room,
with the m. e. in the centre. No one had heard of a code. All began to
explain to the head investigator that newspapers never use a code, any-
how— that is, a cipher code. Of course the Associated Press stuff is a sort
of code — an abbreviation, rather — but

The m. e. knew all that, and said so. He asked each man how long
he had worked on the paper. Not one of them had drawn pay from an
Enterprise envelope for longer than six years. Galloway had been on the
paper twelve years.

"Try old Heffelbauer," said the m. e. "He was here when Park Row
was a potato patch."

Heffelbauer was an institution. He was half janitor, half handyman
about the office, and half watchman — thus becoming the peer of thirteen
and one-half tailors. Sent for, he came, radiating his nationality.

"Heffelbauer," said the m. e., "did you ever hear of a code belonging
to the office a long time ago — a private code? You know what a code is,
don't you?"

"Yah," said Heffelbauer. "Sure I know vat a code is. Yah, apout dwelf
or fifteen year ago der office had a code. Der reborters in der city-room
hafithere."

"Ah!" said the m. e. "We're getting on the trail now. Where was it
kept, Heffelbauer? What do you know about it?"

"Somedimes," said the retainer, "dey keep it in der little room behind
der library room."

"Can you find it?" asked the m. e., eagerly. "Do you know where it is?"

"Mein Gott!" said Heffelbauer. "How long you dink a code live? Der
reborters call him a maskeet. But von day he butt mit his head der editor,
und "

"Oh^ he's talking about a goat," said Boyd. "Get out, Heffelbauer."

Again discomfited, the concerted wit and resource of the Enterprise
huddled around Galloway's puzzle, considering its mysterious words in
vain.

1124 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

Then Vesey came in.

Vesey was the youngest reporter. He had a thirty-two-inch chest and
wore a number fourteen collar; but his bright Scotch plaid suit gave
him presence and conferred no obscurity upon his whereabouts. He wore
his hat in such a position that people followed him about to see him
take it off, convinced that it must be hung upon a peg driven into the
back of his head. He was never without an immense, knotted, hard-wood
cane with a German-silver tip on its crooked handle. Vesey was the best
photograph hustler in the office. Scott said it was because no living hu-
man being could resist the personal triumph it was to hand his picture
over to Vesey. Vesey always wrote his own news stories, except the big
ones, which were sent to the rewrite men. Add to this fact that among
the inhabitants, temples, and groves of the earth nothing existed that
could abash Vesey, and his dim sketch is concluded.

Vesey butted into the circle of cipher readers very much as Heffel-
bauer's "code" would have done, and asked what was up. Some one
explained, with the touch of half-familiar condescension that they always
used toward him. Vesey reached out and took the cablegram from the
m. e.'s hand. Under the protection of some special Providence, he was
always doing appalling things like that, and coming off unscathed.

"It's a code," said Vesey. "Anybody got the key?*'

"The office has no code," said Boyd, reaching for the message. Vesey
held to it.

"Then old Galloway expects us to read it, anyhow," said he. "He's up
a tree, or something, and he's made this up so as to get it by the censor.
It's up to us. Gee! I wish they had sent me, too. Say — we can't afford to
fall down on our end of it. 'Foregone, preconcerted rash, witching' —
h'm."

Vesey sat down on a table corner and began to whisde softly, frown-
ing at the cablegram.

"Let's have it, please/' said the m. e. "We've got to get to work on
it."

"I believe I've got a line on it," said Vesey. "Give me ten minutes."

He walked to his desk, threw his hat into a waste-basket, spread out
flat on his chest like a gorgeous lizard, and started his pencil going. The
wit and wisdom of the Enterprise remained in a loose group, and smiled
at one another, nodding their heads toward Vesey. Then they began to
exchange their theories about the cipher.

It took Vesey exactly fifteen minutes. He brought to the m. e. a pad
with the code-key written on it.

"I felt the swing of it as soon as I saw it," said Vesey. "Hurrah -for old
Galloway! He's done the Japs and every paper in town that prints litera-
ture instead of news. Take a look at that.1"

Thus had Vesey set forth the reading of the code:

GALLOWAY'S CODE

Foregone— conclusion Existing— conditions

Preconcerted— arrangement Great— White Way

Rash — act Hotly — contested

Witching— hour of midnight Brute— force

Goes— without saying Select— few

Muffled— report Mooted— question

Rumor— hath it Parlous— times

Mine — host Beggars — description

Dark — horse Ye — correspondent

Silent— maj ority Angel— unawares

Unfortunate— pedestrians1 Incontrovertible— fact
Richmond — in the field

"It's simply newspaper English/' explained Vesey. "Fve been report-
ing on the Enterprise long enough to know it by heart. Old Galloway gives
us the cue word, and we use the word that naturally follows it just as
we use 'em in the paper. Read it over, and you'll see how pat they drop
into their places. Now, here's the message he intended us to get."

Vesey handed out another sheet of paper.

Concluded arrangement to act at hour of midnight without saying.
Report hath it that a large body of cavalry and an overwhelmong force
of infantry will be thrown into the field. Conditions white. Way contested
by only a small force. Question the Times description. Its correspondent
is unaware of the facts.

"Great stuff!" cried Boyd, excitedly, "Kuroki crosses the Yalu to-
night and attacks. Oh, we won't do a thing to the sheets that make up
with Addison's essays, real estate transfers, and bowling scores!"

"Mr. Vesey," said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-re-
gard-as-a-favor manner, "you have cast a serious reflection upon the liter-
ary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted ma-
terially in giving us the biggest 'beat' of the year. I will let you know in a
day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at larger salary.
Somebody send Ames to me."

Ames was the king-pin, the snowy-petalled marguerite, the star-bright
looloo of the rewrite men. He saw attempted murder in the pains of
green-apple colic, cyclones in the summer zephyr, lost children in every
top-spinning urchin, an uprising of the down-trodden masses in every
hurling of a derelict potato at a passing automobile. When not rewriting,
Ames sat on the porch of his Brooklyn villa playing checkers with his
ten-year-old son.

1 Mr. Vesey afterward explained that the logical journalistic complement of the word Un-
fortunate** was once the word "victim.*' But, since the automobile became so popular, the
correct following word is now "pedestrians." Of course, in Galloway's code it meant infantry.

1126 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

Ames and the "war editor" shut themselves in a room. There was a
map in there stuck full of little pins that represented armies and divi-
sions. Their fingers had been itching for days to move those pins along
the crooked line of the Yalu. They did so now; and in words of fire Ames
translated Galloway's brief message into a front page masterpiece that set
the world talking. He told of the secret councils of the Japanese officers;
gave Kuroki's flaming speeches in full; counted the cavalry and infantry
to a man and a horse; described the quick and silent building of the
bridge at Suikauchen, across which the Mikado's legions were hurled
upon the surprised Zassulitch, whose troops were widely scattered along
the river. And the battle! — well, you know what Ames can do with a
battle if you give him just one smell of smoke for a foundation. And in
the same story, with seemingly supernatural knowledge, he gleefully
scored the most profound and ponderous paper in England for the false
and misleading account of the intended movements of the Japanese First
Army printed in its issue of the same date.

Only one error was made; and that was the fault of the cable operator
at Wi-ju. Galloway pointed it out after he came back. The word "great"
in his code should have been "gage" and its complemental words "of
battle." But it went to Ames "conditions white," and of course he took
that to mean snow. His description of the Japanese army struggling
through the snowstorm, blinded by whirling flakes, was thrillingly vivid.
The artists turned out some effective illustrations that made a hit as
pictures of the artillery dragging their guns through the drifts. But, as
the attack was made on the first day of May, the "conditions white"
excited some amusement. But it made no difference to the Enterprise,
anyway.

It was wonderful. And Galloway was wonderful in having made the
new censor believe that his jargon of words meant no more than a com-
plaint of the dearth of news and a petition for more expense money.
And Vesey was wonderful. And most wonderful of all are words, and
how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not
even obituary notices them do part.

On the second day following, the city editor halted at Vesey's desk
where the reporter was writing the story of a man who had broken his
leg by falling into a coal-hole — Ames having failed to find a murder
motive in it.

"The old man says your salary is to be raised to twenty a week," said
Scott.

"All right," said Vesey. "Every little helps. Say— Mr. Scott, which
would you say— 'We can state without fear of successful contradiction,'
or, 'On the whole it can be safely asserted'?"

A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION 1127

A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION

One winter the Alcazar Opera Company of New Orleans made a specu-
lative trip along the Mexican, Central American, and South American
coasts. The venture proved a most successful one. The music-loving, im-
pressionable Spanish-Americans deluged the company with dollars and
"vivas." The manager waxed plump and amiable. But for the prohibi-
tive climate he would have put forth the distinctive flower of his prosper-
ity— the overcoat of fur, braided, frogged, and opulent. Almost was he per-
suaded to raise the salaries of his company. But with a mighty effort he
conquered the impulse toward such an unprofitable effervescence of joy.

At Macuto, on the coast of Venezuela, the company scored its greatest
success. Imagine Coney Island translated into Spanish and you will
comprehend Macuto. The fashionable season is from November to March.
Down from La Guayra and Caracas and Valencia and other interior
towns flock the people for their holiday season. There are bathing and
fiestas and bull fights and scandal. And then the people have a passion
for music that the bands in the plaza and on the sea beach stir but do not
satisfy. The coming of the Alcazar Opera Company aroused the utmost
ardor and zeal among the pleasure seekers.

The illustrious Guzman Blanco, President and Dictator of Venezuela,
sojourned in Macuto with his court for the season. That potent ruler —
who himself paid a subsidy of 40,000 pesos each year to grand opera in
Caracas — ordered one of the government warehouses to be cleared for
a temporary theatre. A stage was quickly constructed and rough wooden
benches made for the audience. Private boxes were added for the use of
the President and the notables of the army and Government.

The company remained in Macuto for two weeks. Each performance
filled the house as closely as it could be packed. Then the music-mad
people fought for room in the open doors and windows, and crowded
about, hundreds deep on the outside. Those audiences formed a bril-
liantly diversified patch of color. The hue of their faces ranged from the
clear olive of the pure-blood Spaniards down through the yellow and
brown shades of the mestizos to the coal-black Carib and the Jamaica
Negro. Scattered among them were little groups of Indians with faces
like stone idols, wrapped in gaudy fibre-woven blankets— Indians down
from the mountain states of Zamora and Los Andes and Miranda to trade
their gold dust in the coast towns.

The spell cast upon these denizens of the interior fastnesses was re-
markable. They sat in petrified ecstasy, conspicuous among the excitable
Macutians, who wildly strove with tongue and hand to give evidence of

1128 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

their delight. Only once did the sombre rapture of these aboriginals find
expression. During the rendition of "Faust," Guzman Blanco, extrava-
gantly pleased by the "Jewel Song," cast upon the stage a purse of gold
pieces. Other distinguished citizens followed his lead to the extent of
whatever loose coin they had convenient, while some of the fair and
fashionable senoras were moved, in imitation, to fling a jewel or a ring
or two at the feet of the Marguerite— who was, according to the bills,
Mile Nina Giraud. Then from different parts of the house rose sundry of
the stolid hillmen and cast upon the stage little brown and dun bags that
fell with soft "thumps" and did not rebound. It was, no doubt, pleasure
at the tribute to her art that caused Mile Giraud's eyes to shine so brightly
when she opened these little deerskin bags in her dressing room and
found them to contain pure gold dust. If so, the pleasure was rightly hers,
for her voice in song, pure, strong, and thrilling with the feeling of the
emotional artist, deserved the tribute that it earned.

But the triumph of the Alcazar Opera Company is not the theme: it
but leans upon and colors it. There happened in Macuto a tragic thing, an
unsolvable mystery, that sobered for a time the gaiety of the happy season.

One evening between the short twilight and the time when she should
have whirled upon the stage in the red and black of the ardent Carmen,
Mile Nina Giraud disappeared from the sight and ken of 6,000 pairs of
eyes and as many minds in Macuto. There was the usual turmoil and
hurrying to seek her. Messengers flew to the little French-kept hotel
where she stayed; others of the company hastened here or there where
she might be lingering in some ticnda or unduly prolonging her bath
upon the beach. All search was fruitless. Mademoiselle had vanished.

Half an hour passed, and she did not appear. The dictator, unused to
the caprices of prime donne, became impatient. He sent an aide from his
box to say to the manager that if the curtain did not at once rise he would
immediately hale the entire company to the calabosa, though it would
desolate his heart, indeed, to be compelled to such an act. Birds in
Macuto could be made to sing.

The manager abandoned hope, for the time, of Mile Giraud. A mem-
ber of the chorus, who had dreamed hopelessly for years of the blessed
opportunity, quickly Carmenized herself and the opera went on.

Afterward, when the lost cantatrice appeared not, the aid of the au-
thorities was invoked. The President at once set the army, the police, and
all citizens to the search. Not one clue to Mile Giraud's disappearance was
found. The Alcazar left to fill engagements farther down the coast.

On the way back the steamer stopped at Macuto and the manager
made anxious inquiry. Not a trace of the lady had been discovered. The
Alcazar could do no more. The personal belongings of the missing lady
were stored in the hotel against her possible later reappearance and the
opera company continued upon its homeward voyage to New Orleans.

A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION 112g

On the camino real along the beach the two saddle mules and the four
pack mules of Senor Don Johnny Armstrong stood, patiently awaiting
the crack of the whip of the arriero, Luis. That would be the signal for
the start on another long journey into the mountains. The pack mules
were loaded with a varied assortment of hardware and cutlery. These
articles Don Johnny traded to the interior Indians for the gold dust that
they washed from the Andean streams and stored in quills and bags
against his coming. It was a profitable business, and Senor Armstrong
expected soon to be able to purchase the coffee plantation that he coveted.

Armstrong stood on the narrow sidewalk, exchanging garbled Spanish
with old Peralto, the rich native merchant who had just charged him
four prices for half a gross of pot-metal hatchets, and abridged English
with Rucker, the little German who was Consul for the United States.

"Take with you, senor," said Peralto, "the blessings of the saints upon
your journey."

"Better try quinine," growled Rucker through his pipe. "Take two
grains every night. And don't make your trip too long, Johnny, because
we haf needs of you. It is ein villainous game dot Melville play of whist,
and dere is no oder substitute. Auj tviedersehen, und keep your eyes
dot mule's ear between when you on der edge of der brecipices ride."

The bells of Luis's mule jingled and the pack train filed after the
warning note. Armstrong waved a good-bye and took his place at the
trail of the procession. Up the narrow street they turned, and passed the
two-story wooden Hotel Ingles where Ives and Dawson and Richards
and the rest of the chaps were dawdling on the broad piazza, reading
week-old newspapers. They crowded to the railing and shouted many
friendly and wise and foolish farewells after him. Across the plaza they
trotted slowly past the bronze statue of Guzman Blanco, within its fence
of bayoneted rifles captured from revolutionists, and out of the town
between the rows of thatched huts swarming with the unclothed youth
of Macuto. They plunged into the damp coolness of banana groves at
length to emerge upon a bright stream, where brown women in scant
raiment laundered clothes destructively upon the rocks. Then the pack
train, fording the stream, attacked the sudden ascent, and bade adieu to
such civilization as the coast afforded.

For weeks Armstrong, guided by Luis, followed his regular route
among the mountains. After he had collected an arroba of the precious
metal, winning a profit of nearly $5,000, the heads of the lightened
mules were turned down-trail again. Where the head of the Guarico
River springs from a great gash in the mountainside, Luis halted the
train.

"Half a day's journey from here, Senor," said he, "is the village of
Tacuzama, which * we have never visited. I think many ounces of gold
may be procured there. It is worth the trial."

1130 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

Armstrong concurred, and they turned again upward toward Tacu-
zama. The trail was abrupt and precipitous, mounting through a dense
forest. As night fell, dark and .gloomy, Luis once more halted. Before
them was a black chasm, bisecting the path as far as they could see.

Luis dismounted, "There should be a bridge," he called, and ran
along the cleft a distance. "It is here,*5 he cried, and remounting, led the
way. In a few moments Armstrong heard a sound as though a thunder-
ous drum were beating somewhere in the dark. It was the falling of the
mules' hoofs upon the bridge made of strong hides lashed to poles and
stretched across the chasm. Half a mile further was Tacuzarna, The
village was a congregation of rock and mud huts set in that profundity
of aa obscure wood. As they rode in a sound inconsistent with that brood-
ing solitude met their ears. From a long, low mud hut that they were
nearing rose the glorious voice of a woman in song. The words were
English, the air familiar to Armstrong's memory, but not to his musical
knowledge.

He slipped from his mule and stole to a narrow window in one end
of the house. Peering cautiously inside, he saw, within three feet of him,
a woman of marvellous, imposing beauty, clothed in a splendid loose
robe of leopard skins. The hut was packed close to the small space in
which she stood with the squatting figures of Indians.

The woman finished her song and seated herself close to the little
window, as if grateful for the unpolluted air that entered it When she
had ceased several of the audience rose and cast little softly falling bags
at her feet. A harsh murmur—no doubt a barbarous kind of applause and
comment— went through the grim assembly.

Armstrong was used to seizing opportunities promptly. Taking advan-
tage of the noise he called to the woman in a low but distinct voice : "Do
not turn your head this way, but listen. I am an American. If you need
assistance tell me how I can render it. Answer as briefly as you
can."

The woman was worthy of his boldness. Only by a sudden flush of
her pale cheek did she acknowledge understanding of his words. Then
she spoke, scarcely moving her lips.

"I am held a prisoner by these Indians. God knows I need help. In
two hours come to the little hut twenty yards toward the mountainside.
There will be a light and a red curtain in the window. There is always
a guard at the door whom you will have to overcome. For the love of
heaven, do not fail to come."

The story seems to shrink from adventure and rescue and mystery.
The theme is one too gentle for those brave and quickening tones. And
yet it reaches as far back as time itself. It has been named "environment,"
which is a weak a word as any to express the unnamable kinship of man

A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION 113!

to nature, that queer fraternity that causes stones and trees and salt water
and clouds to play upon our emotions. Why are we made serious and
solemn and sublime by mountain heights, grave and contemplative by
an abundance of overhanging trees, reduced to inconstancy and monkey
capers by the ripples on a sandy beach ? Did the protoplasm— but enough.
The chemists are looking into the matter, and before long they will have
all life in the table of the symbols.

Briefly, then, in order to confine the story within scientific bounds,
John Armstrong went to the hut, choked the Indian guard and carried
away Mile Giraud. With her was also conveyed a number of pounds of
gold dust she had collected during her six months' forced engagement
in Tacuzama. The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusiastic
lovers of music between the equator and the French Opera House in
New Orleans. They are also strong believers that the advice of Emerson
was good when he said : "The thing thou wantest, O discontented man —
take it, and pay the price." A number of them had attended the per-
formance of the Alcazar Opera Company in Macuto, and found Mile
Giraud's style and technique satisfactory. They wanted her, so they took
her one evening suddenly and without any fuss. They treated her with
much consideration, exacting only one song recital each day. She was
quite pleased at being rescued by Mr. Armstrong. So much for mystery
and adventure. Now to resume the theory of the protoplasm.

John Armstrong and Mile Giraud rode among the Andean peaks,
enveloped in their greatness and sublimity. The mightiest cousins, fur-
thest removed, in Nature's great family became conscious of the tie.
Among those huge piles of primordial upheaval, amid those gigantic
silences and elongated fields of distance the littlenesses of men are pre-
cipitated as one chemical throws down a sediment from another. They
moved reverently, as in a temple. Their souls were uplifted in unison
with the stately heights. They traveled in a zone of majesty and peace.

To Armstrong the woman seemed almost a holy thing. Yet bathed in
the white, still dignity of her martyrdom that purified her earthly beauty
and gave out, it seemed, an aura of transcendent loveliness, in those first
hours of companionship she drew from him an adoration that was half
human love, half the worship of a descended goddess.

Never yet since her rescue had she smiled. Over her dress she still wore
the robe of leopard skins, for the mountain air was cold. She looked to
be some splendid princess belonging to those wild and awesome altitudes.
The spirit of the region chimed with hers. Her eyes were always turned
upon the somber cliffs, the blue gorges, and the snow-clad turrets, looking
a sublime melancholy equal to their own. At times on the journey she
sang thrilling te deums and misereres that struck the true note of the hills,
and made their route seem like a solemn march down a cathedral aisle.

BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

The rescued one spoke but seldom, her mood partaking of the hush of
nature that surrounded them. Armstrong looked upon her as an angel
He could not bring himself to the sacrilege of attempting to woo her as
other women may be wooed.

On the third day they had descended as far as the tierra templada,
the zone of the table lands and foot hills. The mountains were receding
in their rear, but still towered, exhibiting yet impressively their formi-
dable heads. Here they met signs of man. They saw the white houses of
coffee plantations gleam across the clearings. They struck into a road
where they met travelers and pack-mules. Cattle were grazing on the
slopes. They passed a little village where the round-eyed ninos shrieked
and called at sight of them.

Mile Giraud laid aside her leopard-skin robe. It seemed to be a trifle
incongruous now. In the mountains it had appeared fitting and natural.
And 2 Armstrong was not mistaken she laid aside with it something of
the high dignity of her demeanor. As the country became more populous
and significant of comfortable life he saw, with a feeling of joy, that the
exalted princess and priestess of the Andean peaks was changing to a
woman — an earth woman, but no less enticing. A little color crept to the
surface of her marble cheek. She arranged the conventional dress that
the removal of the robe now disclosed with the solicitous touch of one
who is conscious of the eyes of others. She smoothed the careless sweep
of her hair. A mundane interest, long latent in the chilling atmosphere
of the ascetic peaks, showed in her eyes.

This thaw in his divinity sent Armstrong's heart going faster. So might
an Arctic explorer thrill at his first ken of green fields and liquescent
waters. They were on a lower plane of earth and life and were succumb-
ing to its peculiar, subtle influence. The austerity of the hills no longer
thinned the air they breathed. About them was the breath of fruit and
corn and builded homes, the comfortable smell of smoke and warm earth
and the consolations man has placed between himself and the dust of his
brother earth from which he sprung. While traversing those awful moun-
tains, Mile Giraud had seemed to be wrapped in their spirit of reverent
reserve. Was this that same woman — now palpitating, warm, eager, throb-
bing with conscious life and charm, feminine to her fingertips? Ponder-
ing over this, Armstrong felt certain misgivings intrude upon his thoughts.
He wished he could stop there with this changing creature, descending
no farther. Here was the elevation and environment to which her nature
seemed to respond with its best. He feared to go down upon the man-
dominated levels. Would her spirit not yield still further in that artificial
zone to which they were descending?

Now from a little plateau they saw the sea flash at the edge of the
green lowlands. Mile Giraud gave a little, catching sigh.

"Oh, look, Mr. Armstrong, there is the sea! Isn't it lovely? Fm so tired

A MATTER OF MEAN ELEVATION 1133

of mountains.*' She heaved a pretty shoulder in a gesture o£ repugnance.
"Those horrid Indians! Just think of what I suffered! Although I suppose
I attained my ambition of becoming a stellar attraction, I wouldn't care
to repeat the engagement. It was very nice of you to bring me away. Tell
me, Mr. Armstrong — honestly, now — do I look such an awful, awful
fright? I haven't looked into a mirror, you know, for months."

Armstrong made answer according to his changed moods. Also he laid
his hand upon hers as it rested upon the horn of her saddle. Luis was at
the head of the pack train and could not see. She allowed it to remain
there, and her eyes smiled frankly into his.

Then at sundown they dropped upon the coast level under the palms
and lemons among the vivid greens and scarlets and ochres of the tierra
caliente. They rode into Macuto, and saw the line of volatile bathers
frolicking in the surf. The mountains were very far away.

Mile Giraud's eyes were shining with a joy that could not have existed
under the chaperonage of the mountain-tops. There were other spirits
calling to her— nymphs of the orange groves, pixies from the chattering
surfs, imps, born of the music, the perfumes, colors and the insinuating
presence of humanity. She laughed aloud, musically, at a sudden thought.

"Won't there be a sensation?" she called to Armstrong. "Don't I wish
I had an engagement just now, though! What a picnic the press agent
would have! 'Held a prisoner by a band of savage Indians subdued by
the spell of her wonderful voice'— wouldn't that make great stuff? But
I guess I quit the game winner, anyhow — there ought to be a couple of
thousand dollars in that sack of gold dust I collected as encores, don't
you think?"

He left her at the door of the little Hotel de Buen Descansar, where
she had stopped before. Two hours later he returned to the hotel. He
glanced in at the open door of the little combined reception room and
cafe.

Half a dozen of Macuto's representative social and official caballeros
were distributed about the room. Senor Villablanca, the wealthy rubber
concessionist, reposed his fat figure on two chairs^ with an emollient smile
beaming upon his chocolate-colored face. Guilbert, the French mining
engineer, leered through his polished nose-glasses. Colonel Mendez, of
the regular army, in gold-laced uniform and fatuous grin, was busily ex-
tracting corks from champagne bottles. Other patterns of Macutian gal-
lantry and fashion pranced and posed. The air was hazy with cigarette
smoke. Wine dripped upon the floor.

Perched upon a table in the centre of the room in an attitude of easy
pre-eminence was Mile Giraud. A chic costume of white lawn and cherry
ribbons supplanted her traveling garb. There was a suggestion of lace,
and a frill or two, with a discreet* small implication of hand-embroidered
pink hosiery. Upon her lap rested a guitar. In her face was the light of

1134 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

resurrection, the peace o£ elysium attained through fire and suffering.
She was singing to a lively accompaniment a little song:

"When you see de big round moon
Comin* up like a balloon,
Dis nigger skips fur to kiss de lips
Of his stylish, black-faced coon."

The singer caught sight of Armstrong.

"Hi! there, Johnny," she called; "I've been expecting you for an hour.
What kept you? Gee! but these smoked guys are the slowest you ever
saw. They ain't on, at all. Come along in, and 111 make this coffee-colored
old sport with the gold epaulettes open one for you right off the ice."

"Thank you," said Armstrong; "not just now, I believe. I've several
things to attend to/*

He walked out and down the street, and met Rucker coming up from
the Consulate.

"Play you a game of billiards," said Armstrong. "I want something to
take the taste of the sea level out of my mouth."

In gilt letters on the ground glass of the door of room No. 962 were the
words: "Robbins & Hardey, Brokers/' The clerks had gone. It was past
five, and with the solid tramp of a drove of prize Percherons, scrub-
women were invading the cloud-capped twenty-story office building. A
puff of red-hot air flavored with lemon peelings, soft-coal smoke, and
train oil came in through the half-open windows.

Robbins, fifty, something of an overweight beau, and addicted to first
nights and hotel palm-rooms, pretended to be envious of his partner's
commuter's joys.

"Going to be something doing in the humidity line to-night," he said.
"You out-of-town chaps will be the people, with your katydids and moon-
light and long drinks and things out on the front porch."

Hartley, twenty-nine, serious, thin, good-looking, nervous, sighed and
frowned a little.

"Yes," said he, "we always have cool nights in Floralhurst especially
in the winter."

A man with an air of mystery came in the door and went up to
Hartley.

"IVe found where she lives," he announced in the portentous half-
whisper that makes the detective at work a marked being to his fellow
men.

"GIRL" 1135

Hartley scowled him into a state of dramatic silence and quietude.
But by that time Robbins had got his cane and set his tie pin to his liking,
and with a debonair nod went out to his metropolitan amusements.

"Here is the address," said the detective in a natural tone, being de-
prived of an audience to foil.

Hartley took the leaf torn out of the sleuth's dingy memorandum book.
On it were pencilled the words "Vivienne Arlington, No. 341 East — th
Street, care of Mrs. McComus."

"Moved there a week ago," said the detective. "Now, if you want any
shadowing done, Mr. Hartley, I can do you as fine a job in that line as
anybody in the city. It will be only $7 a day and expenses. Can send in a
daily type-written report, covering "

"You needn't go on," interrupted the broker, "It isn't a case of that
kind. I merely wanted the address. How much shall I pay you?"

"One day's work," said the sleuth. "A tenner will cover it."

Hartley paid the man and dismissed him. Then he left the office and
boarded a Broadway car. At the first large crosstown artery of travel he
took an eastbound car that ' deposited him in a decaying avenue, whose
ancient structures once sheltered the pride and glory of the town.

Walking a few squares, he came to the building that he sought. It was
a new flat-house, bearing carved upon its cheap stone portal its sonorous
name, "The Vallambrosa." Fire-escapes zigzagged down its front — these
laden with household goods, drying clothes, and squalling children evicted
by the midsummer heat. Here and there a pale rubber plant peeped from
the miscellaneous mass as if wondering to what kingdom it belonged —
vegetable, animal, or artificial.

Hartley pressed the "McComus" button. The door latch clicked spas-
modically— now hospitably, now doubtfully, as though in anxiety whether
it might be admitting friends or duns. Hartley entered and began to climb
the stairs after the manner of those who seek their friends in city flat-
houses — which is the manner of a boy who climbs an apple-tree, stopping
when he cofnes upon what he wants.

On the fourth floor he saw Vivienne standing in an open door. She
invited him inside, with a nod and a bright, genuine smile. She placed
a chair for him near a window, and poised herself gracefully upon the
edge of one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde pieces of furniture that are masked
and mysteriously hooded, unguessable bulks by day and inquisitorial
racks of torture by night*

Hartley cast a quick, critical, appreciative glance at her before speak-
ing, and told himself that his taste in choosing had been flawless.

Vivienne was about twenty-one. She was of the purest Saxon type. Her
hair was a ruddy golden, each filament of the neatly gathered mass
shining with its own lustre and delicate graduation of color. In perfect
harmony were her ivory-clear complexion and deep sea-blue eyes that

1136 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

looked upon the world with the ingenuous calmness of a mermaid or the
pixie of an undiscovered mountain stream. Her frame was strong and
yet possessed the grace of absolute naturalness. And yet with all her
Northern clearness and frankness of line and coloring, there seemed to
be something of the tropics in her — something of languor in the droop
of her pose, of love of ease in her ingenious complacency of satisfaction
and comfort in the mere act of breathing— something that seemed to
claim for her a right as a perfect work of nature to exist and be admired
equally with a rare flower of some beautiful, milk-white dove among its
sober-hued companions.

She was dressed in a white waist and dark skirt — the discreet mas-
querade of goose-girl and duchess.

"Vivienne," said Hartley, looking at her pleadingly, "y°u did not
answer my last letter. It was only by nearly a week's search that I found
where you had moved to. Why have you kept me in suspense when you
knew how anxiously I was waiting to see you and hear from you?"

The girl looked out the window dreamily.

"Mr. Hartley," she said hesitatingly, "I hardly know what to say to
you. I realize all the advantages of your offer, and sometimes I feel sure
that I could be contented with you. But, again, I am doubtful. I was born
a city girl, and I am afraid to bind myself to a quiet suburban life."

"My dear girl," said Hartley, ardently, "have I not told you that you
shall have everything that your heart can desire that is in my power to
give you? You shall come to the city for the theatres, for shopping, and
to visit your friends as often as you care to. You can trust me, can you
not?"

"To the fullest," she said, turning her frank eyes upon him with a
smile. "I know you are the kindest of men, and that the girl you get
will be a lucky one. I learned all about you when I was at the Mont-
gomerysV

"Ah!" exclaimed Hardey, with a tender, reminiscent light in his eye;
"I remember well the evening I first saw you at the Montgomerys'. Mrs.
Montgomery was sounding your praises to me all the evening. And she
hardly did you justice. I shall never forget that supper. Come, Vivienne,
promise me. I want you. You'll never regret coming with me. No one
else will ever give you as pleasant a home."

The girl sighed and looked down at her folded hands.

A sudden jealous suspicion seized Hartley.

"Tell me, Vivienne," he asked, regarding her keenly, "is there another
—is there some one else?"

A rosy flush crept slowly over her fair cheeks and neck.

"You shouldn't ask that, Mr. Hardey," she said, in some confusion.
"But I will tell you. There is one other— but he has no right— I have
promised him nothing."

GIRL 1137

"His name?" demanded Hartley, sternly.

"Townsend."

"Rafford Townsend!" exclaimed Hartley, with a grim tightening of
his jaw. "How did that man come to know you? After all I've done for
him "

"His auto has just stopped below," said Vivienne, bending over the
window-sill. "He's coming for his answer. Oh, I don't know what to do!"

The bell in the flat kitchen whirred. Vivienne hurried to press the
latch button.

"Stay here," said Hartley. "I will meet him in the hall."

Townsend, looking like a Spanish grandee in his light tweeds, Panama
hat, and curling black mustache, came up the stairs three at a time. He
stopped at sight of Hartley and looked foolish.

"Go back," said Hardey, firmly, pointing downstairs with his fore-
finger.

"Hullo!" said Townsend, feigning surprise. "What's up? What are
you doing here, old man?"

"Go back," repeated Hartley, inflexibly. "The Law of the Jungle. Do
you want the Pack to tear you to pieces? The kill is mine."

"I came here to see a plumber about the bathroom connections," said
Townsend, bravely.

"All right," said Hartley. "You shall have that lying plaster to stick
upon your traitorous soul. But, go back."

Townsend went downstairs, leaving a bitter word to be wafted up the
draught of the stair-case. Hartley went back to his wooing.

"Vivienne," said he, masterfully. "I have got to have you. I will take no
more refusals or dilly-dallying."

"When do you want me?" she asked.

"Now. As soon as you can get ready."

She stood calmly before him and looked him in the eye.

"Do you think for one moment," she said, "that I would enter your
home while Heloi'se is there?"

Hartley cringed as if from an unexpected blow. He folded his arms
and paced the carpet once or twice.

"She shall go," he declared, grimly. Drops stood upon his brow. "Why
should I let that woman make my life miserable? Never have I seen one
day of freedom from trouble since I have known her. You are right,
Vivienne. Heloi'se -must be sent away before I can take you home. But she
shall go. I have decided. I will turn her from my doors."

"When will you do this?" asked the girl.

Hartley clinched his teeth and bent his brows together.

"To-night," he said, resolutely. "I will send her away to-night."

"Then," said Vivienne, "my answer is *yes.' Come for me when you
will."

1138 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

She looked into his eyes with a sweet, sincere light in her own. Hartley
could scarcely believe that her surrender was true, it was so swift and
complete.

"Promise me," he said, feelingly, "on your word and honor."

"On my word and honor," repeated Vivienne, softly.

At the door he turned and gazed at her happily, but yet as one who
scarcely trusts the foundations of his joy.

"To-morrow," he said, with a forefinger of reminder uplifted.

"To-morrow," she repeated with a smile of truth and candor.

In an hour and forty minutes Hartley stepped off the train at Floral-
hurst A brisk walk of ten minutes brought him to the gate of a hand-
some two-story cottage set upon a wide and well-tended lawn. Halfway
to the house he was met by a woman with jet-black braided hair and
flowing white summer gown, who half strangled him without apparent
cause.

When they stepped into the hall she said:

"Mamma's here. The auto is coming for her in half an hour. She came
to dinner, but there's no dinner."

"I've something to tell you," said Hartley. "I thought to break it to you
gently, but since your mother is here we may as well out with it."

He stooped and whispered something at her ear.

His wife screamed. Her mother came running into the hall. The dark-
haired woman screamed again — the joyful scream of a well-beloved and
petted woman.

"Oh, mamma!" she cried, ecstatically, "what do you think? Vivienne
is coming to cook for us! She is the one that stayed with the Montgomerys
a whole year. And now, Billy, dear," she concluded, "you must go right
down into the kitchen and discharge Heloi'se. She has been drunk again
the whole day long."

SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW

The season of irresponsibility is at hand. Come, let us twine round our
brow wreaths of poison ivy (that is for idiocy), and wander hand in
hand with sociology in the summer fields.

Likely as not the world is flat. The wise men have tried to prove that
it is round, with indifferent success. They pointed out to us a ship going
to sea, and bade us observe that, at length, the convexity of the earth hid
from our view all but the vessel's topmast. But we picked up a telescope
and looked, and saw the decks and hull again. Then the wise men said:
"Oh, pshaw! anyhow, the variation of the intersection of the equator and
the ecliptic proves it." We could not see this through our telescope, so

SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW 1139

we remained silent. But it stands to reason that, if the world were round,
the queues of Chinamen would stand straight up from their heads instead
of hanging down their backs, as travelers assure us they do.

Another hot-weather corroboration of the flat theory is the fact that
all of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More justly
than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack!
we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in life we call it
success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. If we are
thrown out, we walk back to the home plate — and sit upon a bench.

The circumnavigators of the alleged globe may have sailed the rim
of a watery circle back to the same port again. The truly great return
at the high tide of their attainments to the simplicity of a child. The
billionaire sits down at his maghogany to his bowl of bread and milk.
When you reach the end of your career, just take down the sign "Goal5*
and look at the other side of it. You will find "Beginning Point" there.
It has been reversed while you were going around the track.

But this is humor, and must be stopped. Let us get back to the serious
questions that arise whenever sociology turns summer boarder. You are
invited to consider the scene of the story — wild, Atlantic waves, thunder-
ing against a wooded and rock-bound shore — in the Greater City of
New York.

The town of Fishampton, on the south shore of Long Island, is noted
for its clam fritters and the summer residence of the Van Plushvelts.

The Van Plusvelts have a hundred million dollars, and their name is
a household word with tradesmen and photographers.

On the fifteenth of June the Van Plushvelts boarded up the front door
of their city house, carefully deposited their cat on the sidewalk, instructed
the caretaker not to allow it to eat any of the ivy on the walls, and whizzed
away in a 40-horse-power to Fishampton to stray alone in the shade —
Amaryllis not being in their class. If you are a subscriber to the Toadies'

Magazine, you have often You say you are not? Well, you buy it at

a news-stand, thinking that the news-dealer is not wise to you. But he
knows about it all. HE knows — HE knows! I say that you have often
seen in the Toadies' Magazine pictures of the Van Plushvelts' summer
home; so it will not be described here. Our business is with young Hay-
wood Van Plushvelt, sixteen years old, heir to the century of millions,
darling of the financial gods, and great grandson of Peter Van Plushvelt,
former owner of a particularly fine cabbage patch that has been ruined
by an intrusive lot of downtown skyscrapers.

One afternoon young Hay wood Van Plushvelt strolled out between the
granite gate posts of "Dolce far Niente"— that's what they called the
place; and it was an improvement on dolce far Rockaway, I can tell you.

Haywood walked down into the village. He was human, after all, and
his prospective millions weighed upon him. Wealth had wreaked upon

1140 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

him its direfullest. He was the product of private tutors. Even under his
first hobby-horse had tan bark been strewn. He had been born with a
gold spoon, lobster fork, and fish-set in his mouth. For which I hope,
later, to submit justification, I must ask your consideration of his haber-
dashery and tailoring.

Young Fortunatus was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat
white straw hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, linen of the well-known^ "im-
maculate" trade mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a
slender, neat, bamboo cane.

Down Persimmon Street (there's never tree north of Hagerstown,
Md.) came from the village "Smoky" Dodson, fifteen and a half, worst
boy in Fishampton. "Smoky" was dressed in a ragged red sweater,
wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and trousers of the
"serviceable" brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture induced by free ex-
ercise, darkened wide areas of his face. "Smoky" carried a baseball bat,
and a league ball that advertised itself in the rotundity of his trousers
pocket. Haywood stopped and passed the time of day.

"Going to play ball?" he asked.

"Smoky's" eyes and countenance confronted him with a frank blue-
and-freckled scrutiny.

"Me?" he said, with deadly mildness; "sure not. Can't you see I've got
a divin' suit on? I'm goin' up in a submarine balloon to catch butterflies
with a two-inch auger."

"Excuse me," said Haywood, with the insulting politeness o£ his caste,
"for mistaking you for a gentleman. I might have known better/*

"How might you have known better if you thought I was one?" said
"Smoky," unconsciously a logician.

"By your appearance," said Haywood. "No gentleman is dirty, ragged,
and a liar."

"Smoky" hooted once like a ferry-boat, spat on his hand, got a firm
grip on his baseball bat and then dropped it against the fence.

"Say,n said he, "I knows you. You're the pup that belongs in that swell
private summer sanitarium for city guys over there. I seen you come out
of the gate. You can't bluff nobody because you're rich. And because you
got on swell clothes. Arabella! Yah!"

"Ragamuffin!" said Haywood.

"Smoky" picked up a fence-rail splinter and laid it on his shoulder.

"Dare you to knock it off," he challenged.

"I wouldn't soil my hands with you/' said the aristocrat.

" 'Fraid," said "Smoky" concisely. "Youse city ducks ain't got the sand.
I kin lick you with one hand."

"I don't wish to have any trouble with you," said Haywood. "I asked
you a civil question; and you replied like a — like a — a cad."

"Wet's a cad?" asked "Smoky."

SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW

"A cad is a disagreeable person," answered Haywood, "who lacks man-
ners and doesn't know his place. They sometimes play baseball."

"I can tell you what a mollycoddle is," said "Smoky." "It's a monkey
dressed up by its mother and sent out to pick daisies on the lawn."

"When you have the honor to refer to the members of my family,"
said Haywood, with some dim ideas of a code in his mind, "you'd better
leave the ladies out of your remarks."

"Ho! ladies!" mocked the rude one. "I say ladies! I know what them
rich women in the city does. They drink cocktails and swear and give
parties to gorillas. The papers say so."

Then Haywood knew that it must be. He took off his coat, folded it
neatly and laid it on the roadside grass, placed his hat upon it and began
to unknot his blue silk tie,

"Hadn't yer better ring fer your maid, Arabella?" taunted "Smoky."
"Wot yer going to do— go to bed?"

"I'm going to give you a good trouncing," said the hero. He did not
hesitate, although the enemy was far beneath him socially. He remem-
bered that his father once thrashed a cabman, and the papers gave it
two columns, first page. And the Toadies' Magazine had a special article
on Upper Cuts by the Upper Classes, and ran new pictures of the Van
Plushvelt country seat, at Fishampton.

"Wot's trouncing?" asked "Smoky," suspiciously. "I don't want your
old clothes. I'm no— oh, you mean to scrap! My, my! I won't do a thing
to mamma's pet. Criminyl I'd hate to be a hand-laundered thing like
you."

"Smoky" waited with some awkwardness for his adversary to prepare
for batde. His own decks were always clear for action. When he should
spit upon the palm of his terrible right it was equivalent to "You may
fire now, Gridley."

The hated patrician advanced, with his shirt sleeves neady rolled up.
"Smoky" waited, in an attitude of ease, expecting the affair to be con-
ducted according to Fishampton's rules of war. These allowed combat
to be prefaced by stigma, recrimination, epithet, abuse, and insult grad-
ually increasing in emphasis and degree. After a round of these "you're
anothers" would come the chip knocked from the shoulder, or the ad-
vance across the "dare" line drawn with a toe on the ground. Next light
taps given and taken, these also increasing in force until finally the blood
was up and fists going at their best

But Haywood did not know Fishampton's rules. Noblesse oblige kept
a faint smile on his face as he walked slowly up to "Smoky" and said:

"Going to play ball?"

"Smoky" quickly understood this to be a putting of the previous
question, giving him the chance to make a practical apology by answer-
ing it with civility and relevance.

1142 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

"Listen this time/' said he. "Fm goin* skatin' on the river. Don't you
see me automobile with Chinese lanterns on it standin' and waitin' for
me?"

Haywood knocked him down.

"Smoky" felt wronged. To thus deprive him of preliminary wrangle
and objurgation was to send an armored knight full tilt against a crash-
ing lance without permitting him first to caracole around the list to the
flourish of trumpets. But he scrambled up and fell upon his foe, head,
feet, and fists.

The fight lasted one round of an hour and ten minutes. It was length-
ened until it was more like a war or a family feud than a fight. Hay-
wood had learned some of the science of boxing and wrestling from his
tutors, but these he discarded for the more instinctive methods of battle
handed down by the cave-welling Van Plushvelts.

So, when he found himself, during the melee, seated upon the kick-
ing and roaring "Smoky's" chest, he improved the opportunity by vig-
orously kneading handfuls of sand and soil into his adversary's ears, eyes,
and mouth, and when "Smoky" got the proper leg hold and "turned"
him, he fastened both hands in the Plushvelt hair and pounded the
Plushvelt head against the lap of mother earth. Of course, the strife was
not incessantly active. There were seasons when one sat upon the other,
holding him down, while each blew like a grampus, spat out the more
inconveniently large sections of gravel and earth, and strove to subdue the
spirit of his opponent with a frightful and soul-paralyzing glare.

At last, it seemed that in the language of the ring, their efforts lacked
steam. They broke away, and each disappeared in a cloud as he brushed
away the dust of the conflict. As soon as his breath permitted, Haywood
walked close to "Smoky" and said:

"Going to play ball?51

"Smoky" looked pensively at the sky, at his bat lying on the ground,
and at the "leaguer" rounding his pocket.

"Sure/' he said off-handedly. "The Tellowjackets' play the 'Long
Islands.* I'm cap'n of the 'Long Islands/ "

"I guess I didn't mean to say you were ragged," said Haywood. "But
you are dirty, you know."

"Sure," said "Smoky." "Yer get that way knockin' around. Say, I don't
believe them New York papers about ladies drinkin' and havin' monkeys
dinin' at the table with 'em. I guess they're lies, like they print about
people eatin' out of silver plates, and ownin' dogs that cost $100."

"Certainly," said Haywood. "What do you play on your team?"

"Ketcher. Ever play any?"

"Never in my life/' said Haywood. "I've never known any fellows ex-
cept one or two of my cousins."

"Jer like to learn? We're goin* to have a practice game before the

SOCIOLOGY IN SERGE AND STRAW 1143

match. Wanter come along? I'll put yer in left-field, and yer won't be
long ketchin* on."

"I'd like it bully/* said Haywood. "IVe always wanted to play base-
ball."

The ladies' maids of New York and the families of Western mine
owners with social ambitions will remember well the sensation that was
created by the report that the young multi-millionaire, Haywood Van
Plushvelt, was playing ball with the village youths of Fishampton. It was
conceded that the millennium of democracy had come. Reporters and
photographers swarmed to the island. The papers printed half-page pic-
tures of him as short-stop stopping a hot grounder. The Toadies' Maga-
zine got out a Bat and Ball number that covered the subject historically,
beginning with the vampire bat and ending with the Patriarchs' ball —
illustrated with interior views of the Van Plushvelt country seat. Min-
isters, educators, and sociologists everywhere hailed the event as the tocsin
call that proclaimed the universal brotherhood of man.

One afternoon I was reclining under the trees near the shore at
Fishampton in the esteemed company of an eminent, bald-headed young
sociologist. By way of note it may be inserted that all sociologists are
more or less bald, and exactly thirty-two. Look 'em over.

The sociologist was citing the Van Plushvelt case as the most impor-
tant "uplift" symptom of a generation and as an excuse for his own
existence.

Immediately before us were the village baseball grounds. And now
came the sportive youth of Fishampton and distributed themselves, shout-
ing, about the diamond.

"There," said the sociologist, pointing, "there is young Plushvelt."

I raised myself (so far a cosycophant with Mary Ann) and gazed.

Young Van Plushvelt sat upon the ground. He was dressed in a ragged
red sweater, wrecked and weather-worn golf cap, run-over shoes, and
trousers of the "serviceable" brand. Dust, clinging to the moisture in-
duced by free exercise, darkened the wide areas of his face.

"That is he," repeated the sociologist. If he had said "him" I could
have been less vindictive.

On a bench, with an air, sat the young millionaire's chum.

He was dressed in a neat suit of dark blue serge, a neat white straw
hat, neat low-cut tan shoes, linen of the well-known "immaculate" trade
mark, a neat, narrow four-in-hand tie, and carried a slender, neat bamboo
cane.

I laughed loudly and vulgarly.

"What you want to do," said I to the sociologist, "is to establish a
reformatory for the Logical Vicious Circle. Or else I've got wheels. It
looks to me as if, things are running round and round in circles instead
of getting anywhere."

1144 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

"What do you mean?" asked the man of progress.
"Why, look what he has done to 'Smoky,' " I replied.
"You will always be a fool," said my friend, the sociologist, getting up
and walking away.

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South,
in Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea struck
us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "during a moment of tempo-
rary mental apparition"; but we didn't find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called
Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and
self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we
needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot
scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of
the hotel Philoprogenitoveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communi-
ties; therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do
better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in
plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit
couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and, maybe,
some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly
Farmers' Budget. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named
Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fan-
cier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloses The kid
was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the color of the cover
of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train.
Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two
thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a
dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave.
There we stored provisions.

One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's
house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the oppo-
site fence.

"Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of candy and
a nice ride?"

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.

"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill,
climbing over the wheel.

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF 1145

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at
last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We
took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After
dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we
had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his fea-
tures. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the
cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard
tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come
up, and says:

"Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the
terror of the plains?"

"He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining
some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo
Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall.
I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chiefs captive, and I'm to be scalped at
daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard."

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of
camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive himself.
He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that,
when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the
stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread
and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech some-
thing like this :

"I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum
once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up six-
teeii of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real
Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving
make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so
red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped
Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads
unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round?
Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six
toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't How many does it
take to make twelve?"

Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin,
and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber
for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a
war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper shiver. That boy had Bill
terrorized from the start.

"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?"

"Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to

1146 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-
eye, will you?"

"Not right away," says I. "Well stay here in the cave awhile."

"All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life."

We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide
blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid
he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reach-
ing for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as
the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young
imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a
troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a
tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from
Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as
you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs — they were simply indecent,
terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts
or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man
scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's
chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he had the sharp
case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realisti-
cally trying to take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been
pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But,
from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of
the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was
with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered
that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of
the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and
leaned against a rock.

"What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill

"Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of pain in my shoulder, I thought sitting
up would rest it."

"You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be burned at sun-
rise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would, too, if he could find a
match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to
get a little imp like that back home?"

"Sure," said I. "A rowdy ikd like that is just the kind that parents dote
on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on
the top of this mountain and reconnoitre."

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the
contiguous vicinity. Over towards Summit I expected to see the sturdy
yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the
countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF

landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was
dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings
of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of som-
nolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of
Alabama that lay exposed to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has
not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lamb-
kin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the
mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it,
breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as
big as a cocoanut.

"He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained Bill, "and
then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun
about you, Sam?"

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argu-
ment. "Ill fix you," says the kid to Bill "No man ever yet struck the Red
Chief but he got paid for it. You better beware!"

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped
around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it

"What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't think he'll run
away, do you, Sam?"

"No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home body.
But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to
be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but
maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's
spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbors. Anyhow, he'll
be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father demand-
ing the two thousand dollars for his return."

Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have
emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that
Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around
his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a
horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size
of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all
over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the
dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an
hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam, do you
know who my favorite Biblical character is?"

"Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently."

"King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me here alone,
will you, Sam?"

I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.

1148 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

"If you don't behave," says I, "111 take you straight home. Now, are
you going to be good, or not?"

"I was only funning," says he, sullenly. "I didn't mean to hurt Old
Hank. But what did he hit me for? Ill behave, Snake-eye, if ^ you won't
send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black Scout to-day."

"I don't know the game," says L "That's for you and Mr. Bill to decide.
He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while, on business.
Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for
hurting him, or home you go, at once."

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told
him I was going to Poplar Grove, a little village three miles from the
cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been re-
garded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to
old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it
should be paid.

"You know, Sam," says Bill, "Fve stood by you without batting an eye
in earthquakes, fire and flood — in poker games, dynamite outrages,
police raids, train robberies, and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we
kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You
won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?"

"Ill be back some time this afternoon," says L "You must keep the boy
amused and quiet till I return. And now well write the letter to old
Dorset."

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red
Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guard-
ing the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom
fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting,"
says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but
we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up
two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm
willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the
difference up to me."

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this
way:

Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:

We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless
for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely,
the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these:
We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the
money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same
box as your reply — as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms,
send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-
past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek on the road to Poplar

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF 1149

Grove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to
the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the
fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard
box.

The messenger will place the answer in this box and return im-
mediately to Summit.

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as
stated, you will never see your boy again.

If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe
and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not
accede to them no further communication will be attempted.

Two Desperate Men

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was
about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:

"Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was
gone."

"Play it, of course," says L "Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of
a game is it?"

"I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride to the
stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm tired of
playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout."

"All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will
help you foil the pesky savages."

"What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.

"You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your hands and
knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?"

"You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the scheme
going. Loosen up."

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rab-
bit's when you catch it in a trap.

"How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky manner of
voice.

"Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to hump yourself
to get there on time. Whoa^ now!"

The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in his side.

"For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I
wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit
kicking me or I'll get up and warm you good."

I walked over to Poplar Grove and sat around the post-office and store,
talking with the chaw-bacons that came in to trade. One whiskerando
says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dor-
set's boy having b£en lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I
bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-
eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously, and came away. The post-

II5O BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

master said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail to
Summit.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I
explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was
no response.

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await develop-
ments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out
into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping
softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took of? his
hat, and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about
eight feet behind him.

"Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't
help it. Fm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-
defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predomi-
nance fail. The boy is gone. I sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs
in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered death rather than give up the
particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such
supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of
depredation; but there came a limit."

"What's the trouble, Bill?" I asks him.

"I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring
an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't
a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him
why there was nothin' in holes, how a road can run both ways, and what
makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much.
I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the mountain.
On the way he kicks my legs black and blue from the knees down; and
I've got to have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.

"But he's gone" — continues Bill — "gone home. I showed him the road
to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm
sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the mad-
house."

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and
growing content on his rose-pink features.

"Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there?"

"No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?"

"Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look behind you."

Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down
plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little
sticks. For an hour I was afraid of his mind. And then I told him that my
scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would
get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with
our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of

THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF

a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him as
soon as he felt a little better.

I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being
caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kid-
nappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left — and the money
later on — was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If
a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come for the note,
they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But
no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree
toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.

Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up .the road on a bicycle, locates
the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence-post, slips a folded piece of
paper into it, and pedals away again back toward Summit.

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down
the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and
was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near
the lantern, and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed
hand, and the sum and substance of it was this;

Two Desperate Men.

Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ran-
som you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in
your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which
I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and
pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him
off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbors be-
lieve he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do
to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very respectfully,

Ebenezer Dorset

"Great pirates of Penzance," says I; "of all the impudent "

But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in
his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.

"Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've
got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bed-
lam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spend-
thrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance
go, are you?"

*Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb has somewhat
got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom, and make
our getaway."

We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his
father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him,
and we were to hunt bears the next day.

It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's front door.

1152 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hun-
dred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original propo-
sition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's
hand.

When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started
up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's
leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.

"How long can you hold him?" asks Bill.

Tni not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but I think I can
promise you ten minutes."

"Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, South-
ern, and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the
Canadian border/'

And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I
am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up
with him.

THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY

Prithee, smite the poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of
the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief
and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods; Puck
and his train of midgets are busy in town and country.

In May Nature holds up at us a chiding finger, bidding us remember
that we are not gods, but overconceited members of her own great family.
She reminds us that we are brothers to the chowder-doomed clam and
the donkey; lineal scions of the pansy and the chimpanzee, and but
cousins-german to the cooing doves, the quacking ducks, and the house-
maids and policemen in the parks.

In May Cupid shoots blindfolded— millionaires marry stenographers;
wise professors woo white-aproned gum-chewers behind quick-lunch
counters; schoolma'ams make big bad boys remain after school; lads with
ladders steal lightly over lawns where Juliet waits in her trellised window
with her telescope packed; young couples out for a walk come home mar-
ried; old chaps put on white spats and promenade near the Normal
School; even married men, grown unwontedly tender and sentimental,
whack their spouses on the back and growl: "How goes it, old girl?"

This May, who is no goddess, but Circe, masquerading at the dance
given in honor of the fair debutante, Summer, puts the kibosh on us alL

Old Mr. Coulson groaned a little, and then sat up straight in his invalid's
chair. He had the gout very bad in one foot, a house near Gramercy Park,
half a million dollars, and a daughter. And he had a housekeeper A/fr«

THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY H53

Widdup. The fact and the name deserve a sentence each. They have it*

When May poked Mr. Coulson he became elder brother to the turtle-
dove. In the window near which he sat were boxes of jonquils, of hya-
cinths, geraniums, and pansies. The breeze brought their odor into the
room. Immediately there was a well-contested round between the breath
of the flowers and the able and active effluvium from gout liniment. The
liniment won easily; but not before the flowers got an uppercut to old
Mr. Coulson's nose. The deadly work of the implacable, false enchantress
May was done.

Across the park to the olfactories of Mr. Coulson came other unmis-
takable, characteristic, copyrighted smells of spring that belong to the-big-
city-above-the-Subway, alone. The smells of hot asphalt, underground
caverns, gasoline, patchouli, orange peel, sewer gas, Albany grabs, Egyp-
tian cigarettes, mortar and the undried ink on newspapers. The inblowing
air was sweet and mild. Sparrows wrangled happily everywhere outdoors.
Never trust May.

Mr. Coulson twisted the ends of his white mustache, cursed his foot,
and pounded a bell on the table by his side.

In came Mrs. Widdup. She was comely to the eye, fair, flustered, forty,
and foxy.

"Higgins is out, sir," she said, with a smile suggestive of vibratory
massage. "He went to post a letter. Can I do anything for you, sir?"

"It's time for my aconite," said old Mr. Coulson. "Drop it for me. The
bottle's there. Three drops. In water. D-— that is, confound Higgins!
There's nobody in this house cares if I die here in this chair for want of
attention."

Mrs. Widdup sighed deeply.

"Don't be saying that, sir," she said. "There's them that would care
more than any one knows. Thirteen drops you said, sir?"

"Three," said old man Coulson.

He took his dose and then Mrs. Widdup's hand. She blushed. Oh, yes,
it can be done. Just hold your breath and compress the diaphragm.

"Mrs. Widdup," said Mr. Coulson, "the springtime's full upon us."

"Ain't that right?" said Mrs. Widdup. "The air's real warm. And
there's bock-beer signs on every corner. And the park's all yaller and pink
and blue with flowers; and I have such shooting pains up my legs and
body."

" cln the spring/ " quoted Mr. Coulson, curling his mustache, " *a y —
that is, a man's — fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love/ "

"Lawsy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Widdup; "ain't that right? Seems like
it's in the air."

" In the spring,' " continued old Mr. Coulson, " *a livelier iris shines
upon the burnished dove.* "

"They do be lively, the Irish," sighed Mrs. Widdup, pensively.

1154 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

"Mrs. Widdup," said Mr. Coulson, making a face at a twinge of his
gouty foot, "this would be a lonesome house without you. I'm an-— that is,
I'm an elderly man — but Fm worth a comfortable lot of money. If half a
million dollars' worth of Government bonds and the true affection of a
heart that* though no longer beating with the first ardor of youth, can still
throb with genuine "

The loud noise of an overturned chair near the portieres of the adjoin-
ing room interrupted the venerable and scarcely suspecting victim of May.

In stalked Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, bony, durable, tall,
high-nosed, frigid, well-bred, thirty-five, in-the-neighborhood-of-Gramer-
cy-Parkish. She put up a lorgnette. Mrs. Widdup hastily stooped and ar-
ranged the bandages on Mr. Coulson's gouty foot.

"I thought Higgins was with you," said Miss Van Meeker Constantia.

"Higgins went out,*' explained her father, "and Mrs. Widdup answered
the bell. That is better now, Mrs. Widdup, thank you. No; there is noth-
ing else I require."

The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring stare of Miss
Coulson.

"This spring weather is lovely, isn't it, daughter?" said the old man,
consciously conscious.

"That's just it," replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, some-
what obscurely. "When does Mrs. Widdup start on her vacation, papa?"

"I believe she said a week from to-day/' said Mr. Coulson.

Miss Van Meeker Constantia stood for a minute at the window gazing
toward the little park, flooded with the mellow afternoon sunlight. With
the eye of a botanist she viewed the flowers—most potent weapons of
insidious May. With the cool pulses of a virgin of Cologne she withstood
the attack of the ethereal mildness. The arrows of the pleasant sunshine
fell back, frostbitten, from the cold panoply of her unthrilled bosom. The
odor of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in the unexplored re-
cesses of her dormant heart. The chirp of the sparrows gave her a pain. She
mocked at May.

But although Miss Coulson was proof against the season, she was keen
enough to estimate its power. She knew that elderly men and thick-
waisted women jumped as educated fleas in the ridiculous train of May,
the merry mocker of the months. She had heard of foolish old gentlemen
marrying their housekeepers before. What a humiliating thing, after all,
was this feeling called love!

The next morning at 8 o'clock, when the iceman called, the cook told
him that Miss Coulson wanted to see him in the basement.

"Well, ain't I the Olcott and Depew; not mentioning the first name at
all?" said the iceman, admiringly, of himself.

As a concession he rolled his sleeves down, dropped his icehooks on a

THE MARRY MONTH OF MAY 1155

syringa and went back. When Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson
addressed him he took off his hat.

"There is a rear entrance to this basement," said Miss Coulson, "which
can be reached by driving into the vacant lot next door, where they are
excavating for a building. I want you to bring in that way within two
hours 1,000 pounds o£ ice. You may have to bring another man or two to
help you. I will show you where I want it placed. I also want 1,000 pounds
a day delivered the same way for the next four days. Your company may
charge the ice on our regular bill. This is for your extra trouble."

Miss Coulson tendered a ten-dollar bill. The iceman bowed, and held
his hat in his two hands behind him.

"Now if you'll excuse me, lady. It'll be a pleasure to fix things up for
you any way you please."

Alas for May!

About noon Mr. Coulson knocked two glasses off his table, broke the
spring of his bell, and yelled for Higgins at the same time.

"Bring an axe," commanded Mr. Coulson, sardonically, "or send out for
a quart of prussic acid, or have a policeman come in and shoot me. I'd
rather that than be frozen to death."

"It does seem to be getting cold, sir," said Higgins. "I hadn't noticed
it before. I'll close the window, sir."

"Do," said Mr. Coulson. "They call this spring, do they? If it keeps up
long I'll go back to Palm Beach. House feels like a morgue."

Later Miss Coulson dutifully came in to inquire how the gout was
progressing.

" 'Stantia," said the old man, "how is the weather outdoors?"

"Bright," answered Miss Coulson, "but chilly."

"Fells like the dead of winter to me," said Mr. Coulson.

"An instance," said Constantia, gazing abstractedly out of the window,
"of 'winter lingering in the lap of spring,' though the metaphor is not in
the most refined taste."

A little later she walked down by the side of the litde park and on west-
ward to Broadway to accomplish a little shopping.

A little later than that Mrs. Widdup entered the invalid's room.

"Did you ring, sir?" she asked, dimpling in many places. "I asked
Higgins to go to the drug store, and I thought I heard your bell."

"I did not," said Mr. Coulson.

"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Widdup, "I interrupted you, sir, yesterday
when you were about to say something."

"How comes it, Mrs, Widdup," said old man Coulson, sternly, "that I
find it so cold in this house?"

"Cold, sir?" said the housekeeper, "why, now, since you speak of it it
do seem cold in this room. But outdoors it's as warm and fine as June, sir.

1156 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

And how this weather do seem to make one's heart jump out of one's
shirt waist, sir. And the ivy all leaved out on the side of the house, and
the hand-organs playing, and the children dancing on the sidewalk— 'tis
a great time for speaking out what's in the heart. You were saying yester-
day, sir "

"Woman!" roared Mr. Coulson; "you are a fool. I pay you to take care
of this house. I am freezing to death in my own room, and you come in
and drivel to me about ivy and hand-organs. Get me an overcoat at once.
See that all doors and windows are closed below. An old, fat, irresponsi-
ble, one-sided object like you pratting about springtime and flowers in the
middle of winter! When Higgins comes back, tell him to bring me a hot
rum punch. And now get out!"

But who shall shame the bright face of May? Rogue though she be and
disturber of sane men's peace, no wise virgin's cunning nor cold storage
shall make her bow her head in the bright galaxy of months.

Oh, yes, the story was not quite finished.

A night passed, and Higgins helped old man Coulson in the morning to
his chair by the window. The cold of the room was gone. Heavenly odors
and fragrant mildness entered.

In hurried Mrs. Widdup, and stood by his chair. Mr. Coulson reached
his bony hand and grasped her plump one.

"Mrs. Widdup," he said, "this house would be no home without you. I
have half a million dollars. If that and the true affection of a heart no
longer in its youthful prime, but still not cold could "

"I found out what made it cold," said Mrs. Widdup, leaning against
his chair. "Twas ice— tons of it— in the basement and in the furnace
room, everywhere. I shut off the registers that it was coming through into
your room, Mr. Coulson, poor soul! And now it's May-time again."

"A true heart," went on old man Coulson, a little wanderingly, "that
the springtime has brought to life again, and — but what will my daughter
say, Mrs. Widdup?"

"Never fear, sir,*' said Mrs. Widdup, cheerfully, "Miss Coulson, she ran
away with the iceman last night, sir!"

A TECHNICAL ERROR

I never cared especially for feuds, believing them to be even more over-
rated products of our country than grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons.
Nevertheless, if I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory
feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and inaccessory during
the fact

I was on a visit to Sam Durkee's ranch, where I had a great time falling

A TECHNICAL ERROR 1157

off unmanicured ponies and waving my bare hand at the lower jaws of
wolves about two miles away. Sam was a hardened person of about
twenty-five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with perfect
equanimity, though often with reluctance.

Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the name of Tatum.
I was told that the Durkees and Tatums had been feuding for years.
Several of each family had bitten the grass, and it was expected that more
Nebuchadnezzars would follow. A younger generation of each family
was growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with them. But I gath-
ered that they had fought fairly; that they had not lain in cornfields and
aimed at the division of their enemies' suspenders in the back — partly,
perhaps, because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more than
one suspender. Nor had any woman or child of either house ever been
harmed. In those days — and you will find it so yet— their women were
safe.

Sam Durkee had a girl. (If it were an all-fiction magazine that I ex-
pected to sell this story to, I should say, "Mr, Durkee rejoiced in a
fiancee.") Her name was Ella Baynes. They appeared to be devoted to
each other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all couples
do who are and have or aren't and haven't. She was tolerably pretty, with
a heavy mass of brown hair that helped her along. He introduced me to
her, which seemed not to lessen her preference for him; so I reasoned
that they were surely soul-mates.

Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from the ranch. Sam
lived on a gallop between the two places.

One day there came to Kingfisher a courageous young man, rather
small, with smooth face and regular features. He made many inquiries
about the business of the town, and especially of the inhabitants cog-
nominally. He said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, with his
yellow shoes and crocheted four-in-hand. I met him once when I rode in
for the mail. He said his name was Beverly Travers, which seemed
rather improbable.

There were active times on the ranch just then, and Sam was too busy
to go to town often. As an incompetent and generally worthless guest, it
devolved upon me to ride in for little things such as post cards, barrels of
flours, baking-powder, smoking-tobacco, and — letters from Ella.

One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of cigarette papers and
a couple of wagon tires, I saw the alleged Beverly Travers in a yellow-
wheeled buggy with Ella Baynes, driving about town as ostentatiously as
the black, waxy mud would permit. I knew that this information would
bring no balm of Gilead to Sam's soul, so I refrained from including it in
the news of the city that I retailed on my return. But on the next after-
noon an elongated ex-cowboy of the name of Simmons, an old-time pal
of Sam's, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher, rode out to the ranch and

1158 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

rolled and burned many cigarettes before he would talk. When he did
make oration, his words were these:

"Say, Sam, there's been a description of a galoot miscallin' himself
Bevel-edged Travels impairing the atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the
past two weeks. You know who he was? He was not otherwise than Ben
Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher Tatum that your
Uncle Newt shot last February. You know what he done this morning?
He killed your brother Lester— shot him in the co't-house yard."

I wondered if Sam had heard. He pulled a twig from a mesquite bush,
chewed it gravely, and said:

"He did, did he? He killed Lester?"

"The same," said Simmons. "And he did more. He run away with
your girl, the same as to say Miss Ella Baynes. I thought you might like to
know, so I rode out to impart the information."

"I am much obliged, Jim," said Sam, taking the chewed twig from his
mouth. 'Tes, I'm glad you rode out. Yes, I'm right glad."

"Well, 111 be ridin' back, I reckon. That boy I left in the feed store
don't know hay from oats. He shot Lester in the bac\?

"Shot him in the back?"

"Yes, while he was hitchin* his boss."

"I'm much obliged, Jim."

"I kind of thought you'd like to know as soon as you could."

"Come in and have some coffee before you ride back, Jim?"

"Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the store."

"And you say "

<cYes, Sam. Everybody seen 'em drive away together in a buckboard,
with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it He was drivin'
the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They'll be hard to
overtake right away,5*

"And which "

"I was goin* on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but there's
no tellin* which forks they'll take— you know that."

"All right, Jim; much obliged."

e<You're welcome, Sam."

Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels.
Twenty yards away he reined up and called back:

"You don't want no— assistance, as you might say?"

"Not any, thanks."

"I didn't think you would. Well, so long!"

Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped
a dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was going
to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite "The Gipsy's Curse." The
few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that way. This

A TECHNICAL ERROR 1159

one seemed to be presented with a new treatment. Thus offered on the
stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of Belasco's thrilling melo-
dramas demanded instead.

"I wonder," said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, "if the
cook has any cold beans left over!"

He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered
him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee. Then we went into
Sam's private room, where he slept, and kept his armory, dogs, and the
saddles of his favorite mounts. He took three or four six-shooters out of
a bookcase and began to look them over, whistling "The Cowboy's La-
ment" abstractedly. Afterward he ordered the two best horses on the
ranch saddled and tied to the hitching-post.

Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country, I have ob-
served that in one particular there is a delicate but strict etiquette be-
longing. You must not mention the word or refer to the subject in the
presence of a feudist. It would be more reprehensible than commenting
upon the mole on the chin of your rich aunt. I found, later on, that there is
another unwritten rule, but I think that belongs solely to the West.

It yet lacked two hours to supper-time; but in twenty minutes Sam and
I were plunging deep into the reheated beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.

"Nothing like a good meal before a long ride," said Sam. "Eat hearty."

I had a sudden suspicion.

"Why did you have two horses saddled?" I asked.

"One, two — one, two," said Sam. "You can count, can't you?"

His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm and a lesson. The
thought had not occurred to him that the thought could possibly occur
to me not to ride at his side on that red road to revenge and justice. It
was the higher calculus. I was booked for the trail. I began to eat more
beans.

In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were
Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben
Tatum's steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he
had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born
in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping
up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.

I knew that Ben Tatum's card to play was flight — flight until he came
within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew
that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it
might lead.

During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of
beef, and of the musical glasses. You would have thought he had never
had a brother or a sweetheart or an enemy on earth. There are some sub-
jects too big even for the words in the "Unabridged." Knowing this phase
of the feud code, but not having practised it sufficiently, I overdid the

Il6o BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

thing by telling some slightly funny anecdotes. Sam laughed at exactly the
right place— laughed with his mouth. When I caught sight o£ his mouth,
I wished I had been blessed with enough sense of humor to have sup-
pressed those anecdotes.

Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie. Tired and hungry, we
stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine hotel and sat at a table. In
the opposite corner we saw the fugitives. They were bent upon their meal,
but looked around at times uneasily.

The girl was dressed in brown—one of these smooth, half-shiny, silky-
looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs, and what I believe they call
an accordion-pleated skirt. She wore a thick brown veil down to her nose,
and a broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers adorning it.
The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his hair was trimmed very short.
He was such a man as you might see anywhere.

There they were — the murderer and the woman he had stolen. There
we were — the rightful avenger, according to the code, and the super-
numerary who writes these words.

For one time, at least, in the heart of the supernumerary there rose the
killing instinct. For one moment he joined the force of combatants —
orally.

"What are you waiting for, Sam?" I said in a whisper. "Let him have
it now!"

Sam gave a melancholy sigh.

"You don't understand; but he does," he said. "He knows. Mr. Tender-
foot, there's a rule out here among white men in the Nation that you
can't shoot a man when he's with a woman. I never knew it to be broke
yet. You can't do it You've got to get him in a gang or by himself. That's
why. He knows it, too. We all know. So, that's Mr. Ben Tatum! One of
the 'pretty men'! I'll cut him out of the herd before they leave the hotel,
and regulate his account!"

After supper the flying pair disappeared quickly. Although Sam
haunted lobby and stairway and halls half the night, in some mysterious
way the fugitives eluded him; and in the morning the veiled lady in the
brown dress with the accordion-pleated skirt and the dapper young man
with the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard with the prancing nags,
were gone.

It is a monotonous story, that of the ride; so it shall be curtailed. Once
again we overtook them on a road. We were about fifty yards behind.
They turned in the buckboard and looked at us; then drove on without
whipping up their horses. Their safety no longer lay in speed. Ben Tatum
knew. He knew that the only rock of safety left to him was the code.
There is no doubt that, had he been alone, die matter would have been
settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way; but he had something

SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE Il6l

at his side that kept still the trigger-finger of both. It seemed likely that he
was no coward.

So, you may perceive that woman, on occasions, may postpone instead
of precipitating conflict between man and man. But not willingly or con-
sciously. She is oblivious of codes.

Five miles farther, we came upon the future great Western city of
Chandler. The horses of pursuers and pursued were starved and weary.
There was one hotel that offered danger to man and entertainment to
beast; so the four of us met again in the dining room at the ringing of a
bell so resonant and large that it had cracked the welkin long ago. The
dining room was not as large as the one at Guthrie.

Just as we were eating apple pie — how Ben Davises and tragedy im-
pinge upon each other! — I noticed Sam looking with keen intentness at
our quarry where they were seated at a table across the room. The girl
still wore the brown dress with lace collar and cuffs, and the veil drawn
down to her nose. The man bent over his plate, with his close-cropped
head held low.

"There's a code/' I heard Sam say, either to me or to himslf, "that
won't let you shoot a man in the company of a woman; but, by thunder,
there ain't one to keep you from killing a woman in the company of a
man!"

And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument, he whipped
a Colt's automatic from under his left arm and pumped six bullets into
the body that the brown dress covered — the brown dress with the lace
collar and cuffs and the accordion-pleated skirt.

The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose head and from
whose life a woman's glory had been clipped, laid her head on her arms
stretched upon the table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum
from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given Sam the op-
portunity to set aside, technically, the obligations of the code.

SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE

Few young couples in the Big-City-of-BIuff began their married existence
with greater promise of happiness than did Mr. and Mrs. Claude Turpin.
They felt no especial animosity toward each other; they were comfort-
ably established in a handsome apartment house that had a name and ac-
commodations like those of a sleeping-car; they were living as expensively
as the couple on the next floor above who had twice their income; and
their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferry-boat, and first acquaint-
ance, thus securing a sensational newspaper notice of their names attached
to pictures of the Queen of Roumania and M. Santos-Dumont.

Il62 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

Turpin's income was $200 per month. On pay day, after calculating the
amounts due for rent, instalments on furniture and piano, gas, and bills
owed to the florist, confectioner, milliner, tailor, wine merchant, and cab
company, the Turpins would find that they still had $200 left to spend.
How to do this is one of the secrets of metropolitan life.

The domestic life of the Turpins was a beautiful picture to see. But
you couldn't gaze upon it as you could at an oleograph of "Don't Wake
Gramdma," or "Brooklyn by Moonlight."

You had to blink when you looked at it and you heard a fizzing sound
just like the machine with a "scope" at the end of it. Yes; there wasn't
much repose about the picture of the Turpins' domestic life. It was some-
thing like "Spearing Salmon in the Columbia River," or "Japanese
Artillery in Action."

Every day was just like another; as the days are in New York. In
the morning Turpin would take bromo-seltzer, his pocket change from
under the clock, his hat, no breakfast, and his departure for the office. At
noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humor, put on a kimono,
airs, and the water to boil for coffee.

Turpin lunched downtown. He came home at 6 to dress for dinner.
They always dined out. They strayed from the chop-house to chop-
sueydom, from terrace to table d'hote, from rathskeller to roadhouse, from
cafe to casino, from Maria's to the Martha Washington. Such is domestic
life in the great city. Your vine is the mistletoe; your fig tree bears dates.
Your household gods are Mercury and John Howard Payne. For the wed-
ding march you now hear only "Come with the Gypsy Bride." You
rarely dine at the same place twice in succession. You tire of the food; and,
besides, you want to give them time for the question of that souvenir silver
sugar bowl to blow over.

The Turpins were therefore happy. They made many warm and de-
lightful friends, some of whom they remembered the next day. Their
home life was an ideal one, according to the rules and regulations of
the Book of Bluff.

There came a time when it dawned upon Turpin that his wife was get-
ting away with too much money. If you belong to the near-swell class in
the Big City, and your income is $200 per month, and you find at the
end of the month, after looking over the bills for current expenses, that
you, yourself, have spent $150, you very naturally wonder what has become
of the other $50. So you suspect your wife. And perhaps you give her a
hint that something needs explanation.

fl say, Vivien,** said Turpin, one afternoon when they were enjoying
in rapt silence the peace and quiet of their cozy apartment, "you've been
creating a hiatus big enough for a dog to crawl through in this month's
honorarium. You haven't been paying your dressmaker anything on ac-
count, have you?"

SUITE HOMES AND THEIR ROMANCE 1163

There was a moment's silence. No sounds could be heard except the
breathing of the fox terrier, and the subdued, monotonous sizzling of
Vivien's fulvous locks against the insensate curling irons. Claude Turpin,
sitting upon a pillow that he had thoughtfully placed upon the convolu-
tions of the apartment sofa, narrowly watched the riante, lovely face of his
wife.

"Claudie, dear/' said she, touching her finger to her ruby tongue and
testing the unresponsive curling irons, "you do me an injustice. Mme.
Toinette has not seen a cent of mine since the day you paid your tailor
ten dollars on account."

Turpin's suspicions were allayed for the time. But one day soon there
came an anonymous letter to him that read:

Watch your wife. She is blowing in your money secretly. I was a suf-
ferer just as you are. The place is No. 345 Blank Street. A word to the
wise, etc.

A Man Who Knows

Turpin took this letter to the captain of police of the precinct that he
lived in.

"My precinct is as clean as a hound's tooth," said the captain. "The
lid's shut down as close there as it is over the eye of a Williamsburg girl
when she's kissed at a party. But if you think there's anything queer at
the address, 111 go there with ye."

On the next afternoon at 3, Turpin and the captain crept softly up the
stairs of No. 345 Blank Street. A dozen plain-clothes men, dressed in full
police uniforms, so as to allay suspicion, waited in the hall below.

At the top of the stairs was a door, which was found to be locked.
The captain took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. The two men
entered.

They found themselves in a large room, occupied by twenty or twenty-
five elegantly clothed ladies. Racing charts hung against the walls, a ticker
clicked in one corner; with a telephone receiver to his ear a man was
calling out the various positions of the horses in a very exciting race. The
occupants of the room looked up at the intruders; but, as if reassured by
the sight of the captain's uniform, they reverted their attention to the
man at the telephone.

"You see," said the captain to Turpin, "the value of an anonymous
letter! No high-minded and self-respecting gentleman should consider
one worthy of notice. Is your wife among this assembly, Mr. Turpin?"

"She is not," said Turpin.

"And if she was," continued the captain, "would she be within the
reach of the tongue of slander? These ladies constitute a Browning So-
ciety. They meet to discuss the meaning of the great poet. The telephone
is connected with Boston, whence the parent society transmits frequently

1164 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

its interpretations of the poems. Be ashamed of yer suspicions, Mr. Tur-
pin."

"Go soak your shield," said Turpin. "Vivien knows how to take care
of herself in a pool-room. She's not dropping anything on the pomes.
There must be something queer going on here."

"Nothing but Browning," said the captain. "Hear that?"

"Thanatopsis by a nose," drawled the man at the telephone.

"That's not Browning; that's Longfellow," said Turpin, who some-
times read books.

"Back to the pasture!" exclaimed the captain. "Longfellow made the
pacing-to-wagon record of 7.53 'way back in 1868."

"I believe there's something queer about this joint," repeated Turpin,

"I don't see it," said the captain.

"I know it looks like a pool-room, all right," persisted Turpin, "but
that's all a blind. Vivien hi been dropping a lot of coin somewhere. I
believe there's some underhanded work going on here."

A number of racing sheets were tacked close together, covering a large
space on one of the walls. Turpin, suspicious, tore several of them down.
A door, previously hidden, was revealed. Turpin placed an ear to the
crack and listened intently. He heard the soft hum of many voices, low
and guarded laughter, and a sharp, metallic clicking and scraping as i£
from a multitude of tiny but busy objects.

"My Godl It is as I feared!" whispered Turpin to himself. "Summon
your men at once!" he called to the captain. "She is in there, I know."

At the blowing of the captain's whistle the uniformed plain-clothes
men rushed up the stairs into the pool-room. When they saw the betting
paraphernalia distributed around they halted, surprised and puzzled to
know why they had been summoned.

But the captain pointed to the locked door and bade them break it
down. In a few moments they demolished it with the axes they carried.
Into the other room sprang Claude Turpin, with the captain at his heels.

The scene was one that lingered long in Turpin's mind. Nearly a
score of women— women expensively and fashionably clothed, many
beautiful and of refined appearance— had been seated at little marble-
topped tables. When the police burst open the door they shrieked and
ran here and there like gayly plumed birds that had been disturbed in a
tropical grove. Some became hysterical; one or two fainted; several knelt
at the feet of the officers and bseought them for mercy on account of their
families and social position.

A man who had been seated behind a desk had seized a roll of cur-
rency as large as the ankle of a Paradise Roof Gardens chorus girl and
jumped out of the window. Half a dozen attendants huddled at one end
of the room, breathless from fear.

Upon the tables remained the damning and incontrovertible evidences

THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE 1165

of the guilt of the habituees of that sinister room— dish after dish heaped
high with ice cream, and surround by stacks of empty ones, scraped
to the last spoonful.

"Ladies," said the captain to his weeping circle of prisoners, 'Til not
hold any of yez. Some of yez I recognize as having fine houses and good
standing in the community, with hard-working husbands and childer at
home. But 111 read ye a bit of a lecture before ye go. In the next room
there's a 20-to-i shot just dropped in under the wire three lengths ahead
of the field. Is this the way ye waste your husbands' money instead of
helping earn it? Home wid yez! The lid's on the ice-cream freezer in this
precinct."

Claude Turpin's wife was among the patrons of the raided room. He
led her to their apartment in stern silence. There she wept so remorse-
fully and besought his forgiveness so pleadingly that he forgot his just
anger, and soon he gathered his penitent golden-haired Vivien in his
arms and forgave her.

"Darling," she murmured, half sobbingly, as the moonlight drifted
through the open window, glorifying her sweet, upturned face, "I know
I done wrong. I will never touch ice cream again. I forgot you were not a
millionaire. I used to go there every day. But to-day I felt some strange,
sad presentiment of evil, and I was not myself. I ate only eleven saucers."

"Say no more," said Claude, gently, as he fondly caressed her waving
curls.

"And you are sure that you fully forgive me?" asked Vivien, gazing
at him entreatingly with dewy eyes of heavenly blue.

"Almost sure, little one," answered Claude, stooping and lightly touch-
ing her snowy forehead with his lips. "I'll let you know later on. I've got
a months's salary down on Vanilla to win the three-year-old steeplechase
to-morrow; and if the ice-cream hunch is to the good you are It again
-see?"

THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE

}ustice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup sat in the door of his office smoking
his elder-stem pipe. Halfway to the Zenith the Cumberland range rose
blue-gray in the afternoon haze. A speckled hen swaggered down the
main street of the "settlement," cackling foolishly.

Up the road came a sound of creaking axles, and then a slow cloud of
dust, and then a bull-cart bearing Ransie Bilbro and his wife. The cart
stopped at the Justice's door, and the two climbed down. Ransie was a
narrow six feet of sallow brown skin and yellow hair. The imperturbabil-
ity of the mountains hung upon him like a suit of armor. The woman

Il66 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

was calicoed, angled, snuff-brushed, and weary with unknown desires.
Through it all gleamed a faint protest o£ cheated youth unconscious o£
its loss.

The Justice of the Peace slipped his feet into his shoes, for the sake
of dignity, and moved to let them enter.

"We-all," said the woman, in a voice like the wind blowing through
pine boughs, "wants a divo'ce." She looked at Ransie to see if he noted
any flaw or ambiguity or evasion or partiality or self-partisanship in her
statement of their business.

"A divo'ce," repeated Ransie, with a solemn nod. "We-all can't git
along together nohow. It's lonesome enough fur to live in die mount'ins
when a man and a woman keers fur one another. But when she's a-spittin'
like a wildcat or a-sullenin' like a hoot-owl in the cabin, a man ain't got
no call to live with her."

"When he's a no-'count varmint," said the woman, without any special
warmth, "a-traipsin* along of scalawags and moonshiners and a-layin' on
his back pizen 'ith co'n whiskey, and a-pesterin' folks with a pack o'
hungry, triflin' houn's to feed!"

"When she keeps a-throwin skillet lids," came Ransie's antiphony,
"and slings b'ilin' water on the best coon-dog in the Cumberlands, and
sets herself again1 cookin' a man's victuals, and keeps him awake o'
nights accusin' him of a sight of doin's!"

"When he's aPays a-fightin' the revenues, and gits a hard name in
the mount'ins fur a mean man, who's gwine to be able fur to sleep o'
nights?"

The Justice of the Peace stirred deliberately to his duties. He placed his
one chair and a wooden stool for his petitioners. He opened his book of
statutes on the table and scanned the index. Presently he wiped his
spectacles and shifted his inkstand.

"The law and the statutes," said he, "air silent on the subjeck of divo'ce
as fur as the jurisdiction of this co't air concerned. But, accordin' to equity
and the Constitution and the golden rule, it's a bad barg'in that can't run
both ways. If a justice of the peace can marry a couple, it's plain that
he is bound to be able to divo'ce 'em. This here office will issue a decree
of divo'ce and abide by the decision of the Supreme Co't to hold it good."

Ransie Bilbro drew a small tobacco-bag from his trousers pocket. Out
of this he shook upon the table a five-dollar note. "Sold a b'arskin and
two foxes fur that," he remarked. "It's all the money we got."

"The regular price of a divo'ce in this co't," said the Justice, "air five
dollars." He stuflfed the bill into the pocket of his homespun vest with
a deceptive air of indifference. With much bodily toil and mental travail
he wrote the decree upon hah0 a sheet of foolscap, and then copied it upon
the other. Ransie Bilbro and his wife listened to his reading of the docu-
ment that was to give them freedom:

THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE 1167

Know all men by these presents that Ransie Bilbro and his wife, Ariela
Bilbro, this day personally appeared before me and promises that herein-
after they will neither love, honor, nor obey each other, neither for better
nor worse, being of sound mind and body, and accept summons for
divorce according to the peace and dignity of the State. Herein fail not,
so help you God. Benaja Widdup, justice of the peace in and for the
county of Piedmont, State of Tennessee.

The Justice was about to hand one of the documents to Ransie. The
voice of Ariela delayed the transfer. Both men looked at her. Their dull
masculinity was confronted by something sudden and unexpected in the
woman.

"Judge, don't you give him that air paper yit. 'Tain't all settled, nohow.
I got to have my rights first. I got to have my ali-money. 'Tain't no kind
of a way to do fur a man to divo'ce his wife 'thout her havin' a cent fur
to do with. I'm a-layin* off to be a-goin' up to brother Ed's up on Hogback
Mount'in. I'm bound fur to hev a pa'r of shoes and some snuff and 'things
besides. Ef Ranee kin affo'd a divo'ce, let him pay me ali-money.'*

Ransie Bilbro was stricken to dumb perplexity. There had been no
previous hint of alimony. Women were always bringing up startling
and unlooked-for issues.

Justice Benaja Widdup felt that the point demanded judicial decision.
The authorities were also silent on die subject of alimony. But the
woman's feet were bare. The trail to Hogback Mountain was steep and
flinty.

"Ariela Bilbro/' he asked, in official tones, "how much did you low
would be good and sufficient ali-money in the case befo* the co't?"

"I lowed," she answered, "fur the shoes and all, to say five dollars.
That ain't much fur ali-money, but I reckon that'll git me up to brother

T? 1> S>

La s.

"The amount," said the Justice, "air not onreasonable. Ransie Bilbro,
you air ordered by the co-t to pay the plaintiff the sum of five dollars
befo' the decree of divo'ce air issued."

"I hain't no mo' money," breathed Ransie, heavily. "I done paid you
all I had."

"Otherwise," said the Justice, looking severely over his spectacles, "you
air in contempt of co't."

"I reckon if you gimme till to-morrow," pleaded the husband, "I mout
be able to rake or scrape it up somewhars. I never looked for to be
a-payin' no ali-money."

"The case air adjourned," said Benaja Widdup, "till to-morrow, when
you-all will present yo'selves and obey the order of the co't. Followin'
of which the decrees of divo'ce will be delivered." He sat down in the
door and began to loosen a shoestring.

Il68 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

"We mout as well go down to Uncle Ziah's," decided Ransie, "and
spend the night." He climbed into the cart on one side, and Ariela climbed
in on the other. Obeying the flat of his rope, the little red bull slowly came
around on a tack, and the cart crawled away in the nimbus arising from
its wheels.

Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup smoked his elder-stem pipe. Late
in the afternoon he got his weekly paper, and read it until the twilight
dimmed its lines. Then he lit the tallow candle on his table, and read until
the moon rose, marking the time for supper. He lived in the double log
cabin on the slope near the girdled poplar. Going home to supper he
crossed a little branch darkened by a laurel thicket. The dark figure of a
man stepped from the laurels and pointed a rifle at his breast. His hat
was pulled down low, and something covered most of his face.

"I want yo' money," said the figure, "'thout any talk. I'm gettin*
nervous, and my finger's a-wabblin on this here trigger."

"I've only got f-f-five dollars," said the Justice, producing it from his
vest pocket.

"Roll it up," came the order, "and stick it in the end of this here gun-
barl"

The bill was crisp and new. Even fingers that were clumsy and trem-
bling found little difficulty in making a spill of it and inserting it (this
with less ease) into the muzzle of the rifle.

"Now I reckon you kin be goin' along," said the robber.

The Justice lingered not on his way.

The next day came the little red bull, drawing the cart to the office
door. Justice Benaja Widdup had his shoes on, for he was expecting the
visit. In his presence Ransie Bilbro handed to his wife a five-dollar bill.
The official's eye sharply viewed it. It seemed to curl up as though it had
been rolled and inserted into the end of a gun-barrel. But the Justice re-
frained from comment. It is true that other bills might be inclined to
curl. He handed each one a decree of divorce. Each stood awkwardly
silent, slowly folding the guarantee of freedom. The woman cast a shy
glance full of constraint at Ransie.

"I reckon you'll be goin' back up to the cabin," she said, "along 'ith
the bull-cart. There's bread in the tin box settin' on the shelf. I put the
bacon in the bilin'-pot to keep the hounds from gettin' it. Don't forget to
wind the clock to-night."

"You air a-goin' to your brother Ed's?" asked Ransie, with fine un-
concern.

"I was 'lowin' to get along up thar afore night. I ain't sayin' as they'll
pester theyselves any to make me welcome, but I hain't nowhar else
fur to go Its a right smart ways, and I reckon I better be goin'. I'll
be a-sayin' good-bye, Ranse— that is, if you keer fur to say so."

THE WHIRLIGIG OF LIFE 1169

"I don't know as anybody's a hound dog," said Ransie, in a martyr's
voice, "fur to not want to say good-bye — 'less you air so anxious to git
away that you don't want me to say it."

Ariela was silent. She folded the five-dollar bill and her decree carefully,
and placed them in the bosom of her dress. Benaja Widdup watched the
money disappear with mournful eyes behind his spectacles.

And then with his next words he achieved rank (as his thoughts ran)
with either the great crowd of the world's sympathizers or the little crowd
of its great financiers.

"Be kind o' lonesome in the old cabin to-night, Ransie," she said.

Ransie Bilbro stared out at the Cumberlands, clear blue now in the
sunlight. He did not look at Ariela.

"I 'low it might be lonesome," he said; "but when folks gits mad and
wants a divo'ce, you can't make folks stay."

"There's others wanted a divo'ce," said Ariela, speaking to the wooden
stool. "Besides, nobody don't want nobody to stay."

"Nobody never said they didn't."

"Nobody never said they did. I reckon I better start on now to brother
Ed's."

"Nobody can't wind that old clock."

"Want me to go along 'ith you in the cart and wind it fur you, Ranse?"

The mountaineer's countenance was proof against emotion. But he
reached out a big hand and enclosed Ariela's thin brown one. Her soul
peeped out once through her impassive face, hallowing it.

"Them hounds sha'n't pester you no more," said Ransie. "I reckon I
been mean and low down. You wind that clock, Ariela."

"My heart hit's in that cabin, Ranse," she whispered, "along 'ith you.
I ain't a-goin' to git mad no more. Le's be starting Ranse, so's we kin git
home by sundown."

Justice-of-the-peace Benaja Widdup interposed as they started for the
door, forgetting his presence.

"In the name of the State of Tennessee," he said, "I forbid you-all to be
a-defyin' of its laws and statutes. This co't is mo3 than willin' and full of
joy to see the clouds of discord and misunderstandin' rollin' away from
two lovin' hearts, but it air the duty of the co't to p'eserve the morals and
integrity of the State. The co't reminds you that you air no longer man and
wife, but air divo?ced by regular decree, and as such air not entitled to
the benefits and 'purtenances of the mattermonal estate."

Ariela caught Ransie's arm. Did those words mean that she must lose
him now when they had just learned the lesson of life?

"But the co't air prepared," went on the Justice, "fur to remove the
disabilities set up by the decree of divo'ce. The co't air on hand to perform
the solemn ceremony of marri'ge, thus fixin' things up and enablin' the
parties in the case to resume the honor'ble and elevatin' state of matter-

1170 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

mony which they desires. The fee fur performin' said ceremony will be,
in this case, to wit, five dollars.'*

Ariela caught the gleam of promise in his words. Swiftly her hand went
to her bosom. Freely as an alighting dove the bill fluttered to the Justice's
table. Her sallow cheek colored as she stood hand in hand with Ransie
and listened to the reuniting words.

Ransie helped her into the cart, and climbed in beside her. The little
red bull turned once more, and they set out, hand-clasped, for the moun-
tains.

Justice-of the-peace Benaja Widdup sat in his door and took off his
shoes. Once again he fingered the bill tucked down in his vest pocket.
Once again he smoked his elder-stem pipe. Once again the speckled hen
swaggered down the main street of the "settlement," cackling foolishly.

A S ACRI FICE HIT

The editor of the Hearthstone Magazine has his own ideas about the
selection of manuscript for his publication. His theory is no secret; in
fact, he will expound it to you willingly sitting at his mahogany desk,
smiling benignandy and tapping his knee gently with his gold-rimmed
eye-glasses.

"The Hearthstone," he will say, "does not employ a staff of readers.
We obtain opinions of the manuscripts submitted to us directly from types
of the various classes of our readers."

That is the editor's theory; and this is the way he carries it out:

When a batch of MSS. is received the editor stuffs every one of his
pockets full of them and distributes them as he goes about during the day.
The office employees, the hall porter, the janitor, the elevator man, mes-
senger boys, the waiters at the cafe where the editor has luncheon, the
man at the news-stand where he buys his evening paper, the grocer and
the milkman, the guard on the 5:30 uptown elevated train, the ticket-
chopper at Sixty — th street, the cook and maid at his home — these are
the readers who pass upon MSS. sent in to the Hearthstone Magazine.
If his pockets are not entirely emptied by the time he reaches the
bosom of his family the remaining ones are handed over to his wife to
read after the baby goes to sleep. A few days later the editor gathers
in the MSS. during his regular rounds and considers the verdict of his
assorted readers.

This system of making up a magazine has been very successful; and
the circulation, paced by the advertising rates, is making a wonderful
record of speed.

The Hearthstone Company also publishes books, and its imprint is to

A SACRIFICE HIT

be found on several successful works— all recommended, says the editor,
by the Hearthstone's army of volunteer readers. Now and then (according
to talkative members of the editorial staff) the Hearthstone has allowed
manuscripts to slip through its fingers on the advice of its heterogeneous
readers, that afterward proved to be famous sellers when brought out by
other houses.

For instance (the gossips say), "The Rise and Fall of Silas Latham"
was unfavorably passed upon by the elevator-man; the office-boy unan-
imously rejected "The Boss"; "In the Bishop's Carriage" was con-
temptuously looked upon by the street-car conductor; "The Deliverance"
was turned down by a clerk in the subscription department whose wife's
mother had just begun a two month's visit at his home; "The Queen's
Quair" came back from the janitor with the comment: "So is the book."

But nevertheless the Hearthstone adheres to its theory and system, and
it will never lack volunteer readers; for each one of the widely scattered
staff, from the young lady stenographer in the editorial office to the man
who shovels in coal (whose adverse decision lost to the Hearthstone
Company the manuscript of "The Under World"), has expectations of
becoming editor of the magazine some day.

This method of the Hearthstone was well known to Allen Slayton
when he wrote his novelette entided "Love Is All." Skyton had hung about
the editorial offices of all the magazines so persistendy that he was
acquainted with the inner workings of every one in Gotham.

He knew not only that the editor of the Hearthstone handed his MSS.
around among different types of people for reading, but that the stories
of sentimental love-interest went to Miss Puffkin, the editor's stenographer.
Another of the editor's peculiar customs was to conceal invariably the
name of the writer from his readers of MSS. so that a glittering name
might not influence the sincerity of their reports.

Slayton made "Love Is All" the effort of his life. He gave it six
months of the best work of his heart and brain. It was a pure love-story,
fine, elevated, romantic, passionate — a prose poem that set the divine
blessing of love (I am transposing from the manuscript) high above all
earthly gifts and honors, and listed it in the catalogue of heaven's
choicest rewards. Slayton's literary ambition was intense. He would have
sacrified all other worldly possessions to have gained fame in his chosen
art. He would almost have cut off his right hand, or have offered him-
self to the knife of the appendicitis fancier to have realized his dream of
seeing one of his efforts published in the Hearthstone.

Slayton finished "Love Is All," and took it to the Hearthstone in person.
The office of the magazine was in a large, conglomerate building, presided
under by a janitor.

As the writer stepped inside the door on his way to the elevator a
potato masher flew through the hall, wrecking Slayton's hat, and smashing

1172 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

the glass of the door. Closely following in the wake of the utensil flew the
janitor, a bulky, unwholesome man, suspenderless and sordid, panic-
stricken and breathless. A frowsy, fat woman with flying hair followed
the missile. The janitor's foot slipped on the tiled floor, he fell in a heap
with an exclamation of despair. The woman pounced upon him and
seized his hair. The man bellowed lustily.

Her vengeance wreaked, the virago rose and stalked, triumphant as
Minerva, back to some cryptic domestic retreat at the rear. The janitor
got to his feet, blown and humiliated.

"This is married life/' he said to Slayton with a certain bruised humor.
"That's the girl I used to lay awake of nights thinking about. Sorry about
your hat, mister. Say, don't snitch to the tenants about this, will yer? I
don't want to lose me job."

Slayton took the elevator at the end of the hall and went up to the offices
of the Hearthstone. He left the MS. of "Love Is All" with the editor, who
agreed to give him an answer as to its availability at the end of the week.

Slayton formulated his great winning scheme on his way down. It
struck him with one brilliant flash, and he could not refrain from admir-
ing his own genius in conceiving the idea. That very night he set about
carrying it into execution.

Miss Puffkin, the Hearthstone stenographer, boarded in the same
house with the author. She was an oldish, thin, exclusive, languishing,
sentimental maid; and Slayton had been introduced to her some time
before.

The writer's daring and self-sacrificing project was this: he knew that
the editor of the Hearthstone relied strongly upon Miss Puff kin's judg-
ment in the manuscript of romantic and sentimental fiction. Her taste
represented the immense average of mediocre women who devour novels
and stories of that type. The central idea and keynote of "Love Is All"
was love at first sight — the enrapturing, irresistible, soul-thrilling feeling
that compels a man or a woman to recognize his or her spirit-mate as soon
as heart speaks to heart. Suppose he should impress this divine truth upon
Miss Puffkin personally! — would she not surely indorse her new and
rapturous sensations by recommending highly to the editor of the Hearth-
stone the novelette "Love Is All"?

Slayton thought so. And that night he took Miss Puffkin to the theatre.
The next night he made vehement love to her in the dim parlor of the
boarding-house. He quoted freely from "Love Is All"; and he wound up
with Miss Puffkin's head on his shoulder, and visions of literary fame
dancing in his head.

But Slayton did not stop at love-making. This, he said to himself, was
the turning point of his life; and, like a true sportsman, he "went the
limit." On Thursday night he and Miss Puffkin walked over to the Big
Church in the Middle of the Block and were married.

A SACRIFICE HIT 1173

Brave Slay ton! Chateaubriand died in a garret, Byron courted a widow,
Keats starved to death, Poe mixed his drinks, De Quincey hit the pipe,
Ade lived in Chicago, James kept on doing it, Dickens wore white socks,
De Maupassant wore a strait-jacket, Tom Watson became a Populist,
Jeremiah wept, all these authors did these things, for the sake of literature,
but thou didst cap them all; thou marriedst a wife for to carve for thyself
a niche in the temple of famel

On Friday morning Mrs. Slayton said she would go over to the Hearth-
stone office, hand in one or two manuscripts that the editor had given her
to read, and resign her position as stenographer.

"Was there anything— er— that— er— you particularly fancied in the
stories you are going to turn in?" asked Slayton with a thumping heart.

"There was one— a novelette, that I liked so much," said his wife. "I
haven't read anything in years that I thought was half as nice and true to
life."

That afternoon Slayton hurried down to the Hearthstone office. He felt
that his reward was close at hand. With a novelette in the Hearthstone,
literary reputation would soon be his.

The office boy met him at the railing in the outer office. It was not for
unsuccessful authors to hold personal colloquy with the editor except at
rare intervals.

Slayton, hugging himself internally, was nursing in his heart the ex-
quisite hope of being able to crush the office boy with his forthcoming
success.

He inquired concerning his novelette. The office boy went into the
sacred precincts and brought forth a large envelope, thick with more than
the bulk of a thousand checks.

"The boss told me to tell you he's sorry," said the boy, "but your
manuscript ain't available for the magazine."

Slayton stood dazed. "Can you tell me," he stammered, "whether or no
Miss Puff— that is my— I mean Miss Puffkin— handed in a novelette
this morning that she had been asked to read?"

"Sure she did," answered the office boy, wisely. "I heard the old man
say that Miss Puffkin said it was a daisy. The name of it was, 'Married
for the Mazuma, or a Working Girl's Triumph/

"Say, you!" said the office boy, confidentially, "your name's Slayton,
ain't it? I guess I mixed cases on you without meanin' to do it. The boss
gave me some manuscript to hand around the other day and I got the
ones for Miss Puffkin and the janitor mixed. I guess it's all right, though."

And then Slayton looked closer and saw on the cover of his manuscript,
under the tide "Love Is All," the janitor's comment scribbled with a
piece of charcoal:

"The - you say!" . .

1 174 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

THE ROADS WE TAKE

Twenty miles west of Tucson the "Sunset Express" stopped at a tank
to take on water. Besides the aqueous addition the engine of that famous
flyer acquired some other things that were not good for it

While the fireman was lowering the feeding hose, Bob Tidball, "Shark"
Dodson, and a quarter-bred Creek Indian called John Big Dog climbed on
the engine and showed the engineer three round orifices in pieces of
ordnance that they carried. These orifices so impressed the engineer with
their possibilities that he raised both hands in a gesture such as ac-
companies the ejaculation "Do tell!"

At the crisp command of Shark Dodson, who was leader of the attack-
ing force, the engineer descended to the ground and uncoupled the engine
and tender. Then John Big Dog, perched upon the coal, sportively held
two guns upon the engine driver and the fireman, and suggested that
they run the engine fifty yards away and there await further orders.

Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, scorning to put such low-grade ore as
the passengers through the mill, struck out for the rich pocket of the ex-
press car. They found the messenger serene in the belief that the "Sunset
Express" was taking on nothing more stimulating and dangerous than
aqua pura. While Bob was knocking this idea out of his head with the
butt-end of his six-shooter Shark Dodson was already dosing the express-
car safe with dynamite.

The safe exploded to the tune of $30,000, all gold and currency. The
passengers thrust their heads casually out of the windows to look for the
thunder-cloud. The conductor jerked at the bell rope, which sagged down
loose and unresisting, at his tug. Shark Dodson and Bob Tidball, with
their booty in a stout canvas bag, tumbled out of the express car and ran
awkwardly in their high-heeled boots to the engine.

The engineer, sullenly angry but wise, ran the engine, according to
orders, rapidly away from the inert train. But before this was accomplished
the express messenger, recovered from Bob TidbalPs persuader to neu-
trality, jumped out of his car with a Winchester rifle and took a trick in
the game, Mr. John Big Dog, sitting on the coal tender, unwittingly made
a wrong lead by giving an imitation of a target, and the messenger
trumped him. With a ball exactly between his shoulder blades the Creek
chevalier of industry rolled off to the ground, thus increasing the share
of his comrades in the loot by one-sixth each.

Two miles from the tank the engineer was ordered to stop.

The robbers waved a defiant adieu and plunged down the steep slope
into the thick woods that lined the track. Five minutes of crashing

THE ROADS WE TAKE 1175

through a thicket of chaparral brought them to open woods, where the
three horses were tied to low-hanging branches. One was waiting for
John Big Dog, who would never ride by night or day again. This animal
the robbers divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the
other two with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with
discretion through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the
animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a
foreleg. They shot him through the head at once and sat down to hold a
council of flight. Made secure for the present by the tortuous trail they
had traveled, the question of time was no longer so big. Many miles and
hours lay between them and the spryest posse that could follow. Shark
Dodson's horse, with trailing rope and dropped bridle, panted and
cropped thankfully of the grass along the steam in the gorge. Bob Tidball
opened the sack, and drew out double handfuls of the neat packages
of currency and the one sack of gold and chuckled with the glee of a
child.

"Say, you old double-decked pirate," he called joyfully to Dodson, "you
said we could do it— you got a head for financing that knocks the horns off
of anything in Arizona."

"What are we going to do about a boss for you, Bob? We ain't got
long to wait here. They'll be on our trail before daylight in the morninV5

"Oh, I guess that cayuse of yourn'U carry double for a while," an-
swered the sanguine Bob. "Well annex the first animal we come across.
By jingoes, we made a haul, didn't we? Accordin' to the marks on this
money there's $30,000— $15,000 apiece!"

"It's short of what I expected," said Shark Dodson, kicking softly at
the packages with the toe of his boot. And then he looked pensively at
the wet sides of his tired horse.

"Old Bolivar's mighty nigh played out," he said, slowly. "I wish
that sorrel of yours hadn't got hurt."

"So do I," said Bob, heartily, "but it can't be helped. Bolivar's got
plenty of bottom— he'll get us both far enough to get fresh mounts. Dang
it, Shark, I can't help thinkin' how funny it is that an Easterner like you
can come out here and give us Western fellows cards and spades in the
desperado business. What part of the East was you from, anyway?"

"New York State," said Shark Dodson, sitting down on a boulder and
chewing a twig. "I was born on a farm in Ulster County. I ran away from
home when I was seventeen. It was an accident my comin' West. I was
walkin' along the road with my clothes in a bundle, makin' for New York
City. I had an idea of goin' there and makin' lots of money. I always felt
like I could do it. I came to a place one evenin' where the road forked
and I didn't know which fork to take. I studied about it for half an hour
and then I took the left-hand. That night I run into the camp of a Wild
West show that was travelin' among the little towns, and I went West

1176 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

with it. I've often wondered if I wouldn't have turned out different if
I'd took the other road." .

"Oh, I reckon you'd have ended up about the same, said Bob iidball,
cheerfully philosophical "It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of
us that makes us turn out the way we do."

Shark Dodson got up and leaned against a tree.

"I'd a good deal rather that sorrel of yourn hadn't hurt himself, Bob,
he said again, almost pathetically.

"Same here," agreed Bob; "he sure was a first-rate kind of a crowbait.
But Bolivar, hell pull us through all right. Reckon we'd better be movin'
on, hadn't we, Shark? I'll bag the boodle ag'in and we'll hit the trail for
higher timber/'

Bob Tidball replaced the spoil in the bag and tied the mouth of it tightly
with a cord. When he looked up the most prominent object that he saw
was the muzzle of Shark Dodson's .45 held upon him without a waver.

"Stop your funnm'," said Bob, with a grin. "We got to be hittin' the
breeze."

"Set still," said Shark. "You ain't goin' to hit no breeze, Bob. I hate to
tell you, but there ain't any chance for but one of us. Bolivar, he's
plenty tired, and he can't carry double.'*

"We been pards, me and you, Shark Dodson, for three years," Bob
said quiedy. "We've risked our lives together time and again. I've always
give you a square deal, and I thought you was a man. I've heard some
queer stories about you shootin' one or two men in a peculiar way, but I
never believed 'em. Now if you're just havin' a little fun with me, Shark,
put your gun up, and we'll get on Bolivar and vamoose. If you mean to
shoot — shoot, you blackhearted son of a tarantula!'*

Shark Dodson's face bore a deeply sorrowful look.

"You don't know how bad I feel," he sighed, "about that sorrel of
yourn breakin' his leg, Bob."

The expression on Dodson's face changed in an instant to one of
cold ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man
showed itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a rep-
utable house.

Truly Bob Tidball was never to "hit the breeze" again. The deadly
.45 of the false friend cracked and filled the gorge with a roar that the
walls hurled back with indignant echoes. And Bolivar, unconscious ac-
complice, swiftly bore away the last of the holders-up of the "Sunset
Express," not put to the stress of "carrying double."

But as Shark Dodson galloped away the woods seemed to fade from
his view; the revolver in his right hand turned to the curved arm of a
mahogany chair; his saddle was strangely upholstered, and he opened
his eyes and saw his feet, not in stirrups, but resting quietly on the edge
of a quartered-oak desk.

A BLACKJACK BARGAINER 1177

I am telling you that Dodson, of the firm of Dodson & Decker, Wall
Street brokers, opened his eyes. Peabody, the confidential clerk, was
standing by his chair, hesitating to speak. There was a confused hum of
wheels below, and the sedative buzz of an electric fan.

"Ahem! Peabody," said Dodson, blinking. "I must have fallen asleep, I
had a most remarkable dream. What is it, Peabody?"

"Mr. Williams, sir, of Tracy & Williams, is outside. He has come to
settle his deal in X. Y. Z. The market caught him short, sir, if you re-
member.'*

"Yes, I remember. What is X. Y. Z. quoted at to-day, Peabody?"

"One eighty-five, sir."

"Then that's his price."

"Excuse me," said Peabody, rather nervously, "for speaking of it, but
I've been talking to Williams. He's an old friend of yours, Mr. Dodson,
and you practically have a corner in X. Y. Z. I thought you might — that is,
I thought you might not remember that he sold you the stock at 98. If
he settles at the market price it will take every cent he has in the world
and his home too to deliver the shares."

The expression on Dodson's face changed in an instant to one of cold
ferocity mingled with inexorable cupidity. The soul of the man showed
itself for a moment like an evil face in the window of a reputable house.

"He will settle at one eighty-five," said Dodson. "Bolivar cannot carry
double,"

A BLACKJACK BARGAINER

The most disreputable thing in Yancey Goree's law office was Goree
himself, sprawled in his creaky old armchair. The rickety little office,
built of red brick, was set flush with the street— the main street of the
town of Bethel.

Bethel rested upon the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. Above it the
mountains were piled to the sky. Far below it the turbid Catawba
gleamed yellow along its disconsolate valley.

The June day was at its sultriest hour. Bethel dozed in the tepid
shade. Trade was not It was so still that Goree, reclining in his chair,
distinctly heard the clicking of the chips in the grand-jury room, where
the "court-house gang" was playing poker. From the open back door
of the office a well-worn path meandered across the grassy lot to the
court-house. The treading out of that path had cost Goree all he ever
had — first inheritance of a few thousand dollars, next the old family
home, and, latterly, the last shreds of his self-respect and manhood. The
"gang" had cleaned him out. The broken gambler had turned drunkard

1178 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

and parasite; he had lived to see this day come when the men who had
stripped him denied him a seat at the game. His word was no longer to
be taken. The daily bout at cards had arranged itself accordingly, and to
him was assigned the ignoble part o£ the onlooker. The sheriff, the county
clerk, a sportive deputy, a gay attorney, and a chalk-faced man hailing
"from the valley," sat at table, and the sheared one was thus tacitly advised
to go and grow more wool.

Soon wearying of his ostracism, Goree had departed for his office, mut-
tering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway. After
a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table he had flung
himself into the chair, staring, in a sort of maudlin apathy, out at the
mountains immersed in the summer haze. The little white patch he saw
away up on the side of Blackjack was Laurel, the village near which he
had been born and bred. There, also, was the birthplace of the feud be-
tween the Gorees and the Coltranes. Now no direct heir of the Gorees
survived except this plucked and singed bird o£ misfortune. To the
Coltranes, also, but one male supporter was left — Colonel Abner Coltrane,
a man of substance and standing, a member of the State Legislature, and
a contemporary with Goree's father. The feud had been a typical one of
the region; it had left a red record of hate, wrong, and slaughter.

But Yancey Goree was not thinking of feuds. His befuddled brain was
hopelessly attacking the problem of the future maintenance of himself
and his favorite follies. Of late, old friends of the family had seen to it that
he had whereof to eat and a place to sleep, but whiskey they would not
buy for him, and he must have whiskey. His law business was extinct; no
case had been intrusted to him in two years. He had been a borrower
and a sponge, and it seemed that if he fell no lower it would be from
lack of opportunity. One more chance — he was saying to himself — if he
had one more stake at the game, he thought he could win; but he had
nothing left to sell, and his credit was more than exhausted.

He could not help smiling, even in his misery, as he thought of the
man to whom, six months before, he had sold the old Goree homestead.
There had come from "back yan' 5J in the mountains two of the strangest
creatures, a man named Pike Garvey and his wife. "Back yan'," with a
wave of the hand toward the hills, was understood among the moun-
taineers to designate the remotest fastnesses, the unplumbed, gorges, the
haunts of lawbreakers, the wolf's den, and the boudoir of the bear. In the
cabin far up on Blackjack's shoulder, in the wildest part of these retreats,
this odd couple had lived for twenty years. They had neither dog nor
children to mitigate the heavy silence of the hills. Pike Garvey was little
known in the settlements, but all who had dealt with him pronounced him
"crazy as a loon." He acknowledged no occupation save that of a squirrel
hunter, but he "moonshined" occasionally by way of diversion. Once the
"revenues" had dragged him from his lair, fighting silently and des-

A BLACKJACK BARGAINER 1179

perately like a terrier, and he had been sent to state's prison for two years.
Released, he popped back into his hole like an angry weasel.

Fortune, passing over many anxious wooers, made a freakish flight into
Blackjack's bosky pockets to smile upon Pike and his faithful partner,

One day a party of spectacled, knickerbockered, and altogether absurd
prospectors invaded the vicinity of the Garveys' cabin. Pike lifted his
squirrel rifle off the hook and took a shot at them at long range on the
chance of their being revenues. Happily he missed, and the unconscious
agents of good luck drew nearer, disclosing their innocence of anything
resembling law or justice. Later on, they offered the Garveys an
enormous quantity of ready, green, crisp money for their thirty-acre
patch of cleared land, mentioning, as an excuse for such a mad action,
some irrelevant and inadequate nonsense about a bed of mica underlying
the said property.

When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they fal-
tered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack began to
grow prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead of tobacco
to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading Martella to a cer-
tain spot on the mountainside, he pointed out to her how a small cannon
—doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their fortune in price— might
be planted so as to command and defend the sole accessible trail to the
cabin, to the confusion of revenues and meddling strangers forever.

But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him
the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an
ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in Mrs.
Garvey's bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty
years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had been the
scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves singing among
the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her vanities. She
had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when the means came,
she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites of her sex—to sit at
tea tables; to buy inutile things; to whitewash the hideous veracity of life
with a little form and ceremony. So she coldly vetoed Pike's proposed
system of fortifications, and announced that they would descend upon
the world, and gyrate socially.

And thus, at length, it was decided, and the thing done. The village of
Laurel was their compromise between Mrs. Garvey's preference for one
of the large valley towns and Pike's hankering for primeval solitudes.
Laurel yielded a halting round of feeble social distractions comportable
with Martella's ambitions, and was not entirely without recommendation
to Pike, its contiguity to the mountains presenting advantages for sudden
retreat in case fashionable society should make it advisable.

Their descent upon Laurel had been coincident with Yancey Goree's
feverish desire to convert property into cash, and they bought the old

Il8o BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

Goree homestead, paying four thousand dollars ready money into the
spendthrift's shaking hand.

Thus it happened that while the disreputable last of the Gorees
sprawled in his disreputable office, at the end of his row, spurned by the
cronies whom he had gorged, strangers dwelt in the halls of his fathers.

A cloud of dust was rolling slowly up the parched street, with some-
thing traveling in the midst of it. A little breeze wafted the cloud to one
side, and a new, brightly painted carryall, drawn by a slothful gray
horse, became visible. The vehicle deflected from the middle of the
street as it neared Goree's office, and stopped in the gutter directly in
front of his door.

On the front seat sat a gaunt, tall man, dressed in black broadcloth, his
rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was a lady
who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armored in a skin-
tight silk dress of the description known as "changeable," being a gor-
geous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a much-orna-
mented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. However
Martella Garvey's heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new
life, Blackjack had done his work with her exterior. He had carved her
countenance to the image of emptiness and inanity; had imbued her with
the stolidity of his crags and the reserve of his hushed interiors. She al-
ways seemed to hear, whatever her surroundings were, the scaly-barks
falling and pattering down the mountainside. She could always hear the
awful silence of Blackjack sounding through the stillest of nights.

Goree watched this solemn equipage, as it drove to his door, with only
faint interest but when the lank driver wrapped the reins about his whip,
and awkwardly descended, and stepped into the office, he rose unsteadily
to receive him, recognizing Pike Garvey, the new, the transformed, the
recently civilized.

The mountaineer took the chair Goree offered him. They who cast
doubts upon Garvey's soundness of mind had a strong witness in the
man's countenance. His face was too long, a dull saffron in hue, and im-
mobile as a statue's. Pale-blue, unwinking round eyes without lashes
added to the singularity of his gruesome visage. Goree was at a loss to
account for the visit.

"Everything all right at Laurel, Mr. Garvey?" he inquired.

"Everything all right, sir, and mighty pleased is Missis Garvey and me
with the property. Missis Garvey likes yo' old place, and she likes the
neighborhood. Society is what she lows she wants, and she is gettin' of
it. The Rogerses, the Hapgoods, the Pratts, and the Torys hev been to
see Missis Garvey, and she hev et meals to most of thar houses. The best
folks hev axed her to differ'nt of doin's. I cyan't say, Mr. Goree, that sech
things suits me — fur me, give me them thar." Garvey's huge yellow-
gloved hand flourished in die direction of the mountains. "That's whar

A BLACK JACK BARGAI NER Il8l

I b'long 'mongst the wild honey bees and the b'ars. But that ain't what
I come fur to say, Mr. Goree. Thar's somethin' you got what me and
Missis Garvey wants to buy."

"Buy!" echoed Goree. "From me?" Then he laughed harshly. "I reckon
you are mistaken about that. I sold out to you, as you yourself expressed
it, lock, stock, and barrel.' There isn't even a ramrod left to sell."

"You've got it; and we 'uns want it. 'Take the money,' says Missis
Garvey, 'and buy it fa'r and squarV "

Goree shook his head. "The cupboard's bare," he said.

"We've riz," pursued the mountaineer, undeflected from his object,
"a heap. We was pore as possums, and now we could hev folks to dinner
every day. We been reco'nized, Missis Garvey says, by the best society.
But there's somethin' we need we ain't got. She says it ought to been
put in the 'ventory ov the sale, but it 'tain't thar. 'Take the money, then,'
she says, 'and buy it fa'r and squarV "

"Out with it," said Goree, his racked nerves growing impatient.

Garvey threw his slouch hat upon the table, and leaned forward, fixing
his unblinking eyes upon Goree's.

"There's a old feud," he said, distinctly and slowly, " 'tween you 'uns
and the Coltranes."

Goree frowned ominously. To speak of his feud to a feudist is a
serious breach of the mountain etiquette. The man from "back yan'"
knew it as well as the lawyer did.

"Na offense," he went on, "but purely in the way of business. Missis
Garvey hev studied all about feuds. Most of the quality folks in the moun-
tains hev 'em. The Settles and the Goforths, the Rankins and the Boyds,
the Silers and the Galloways, hev all been cyarin' on feuds f om twenty
to a hundred year. The last man to drap was when yo' uncle, Jedge
Paisley Goree, 'journed co't and shot Len Coltrane f om the bench. Missis
Garvey and me, we come f Jom the po' white trash. Nobody wouldn't
pick a feud with we'uns, no mo'n with a fam'ly of treetoads. Quality
people everywhar, says Missis Garvey, has feuds. We 'uns ain't quality,
but we're buyin' into it as fur as we can. 'Take the money, then,' says
Missis Garvey, 'and buy Mr. Goree's feud, fa'r and squarY "

The squirrel hunter straightened a leg half across the room, drew a roll
of bills from his pocket, and threw them on the table.

"Thar's two hundred dollars, Mr. Goree, what you would call a fa'r
price for a feud that's been lowed to run down like yourn hev. Thar's
only you left to cyar' on yo' side of it, and you'd make mighty po' killin'.
I'll take it off yo' hands, and it'll set me and Missis Garvey up among
the quality. Thar's the money."

The little roll of currency on the table slowly untwisted itself, writhing
and jumping as its folds relaxed. In the silence that followed Garvey's
last speech the rattling of the poker chips in the court-house could be

Il82 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

plainly heard. Goree knew that the sheriff had just won a pot, for the
subdued whoop with which he always greeted a victory floated across the
square upon the crinkly heat waves. Beads of moisture stood on Goree's
brow. Stooping, he drew the wicker-covered demijohn from under the
table, and filled a tumble from it.

"A little corn liquor, Mr. Garvey? Of course you are joking about—
what you spoke o£? Opens quite a new market, doesn't it? Feuds, prime,
two-fifty to three. Feuds, slightly damaged— two hundred, I believe you
said, Mr. Garvey"

The mountaineer took the glass Goree handed him, and draak the whis-
key without a tremor of the lids of his staring eyes. The lawyer applauded
the feat by a look of envious admiration. He poured his own drink, and
took it like a drunkard, by gulps, and with shudders at the smell and taste.

"Two hundred," repeated Garvey. "Thar's the money."

A sudden passion flared up in Goree's brain. He struck the table with
his fist. One of the bills flipped over and touched his hand. He flinched
as i£ something had stung him.

<cDo you come to me," he shouted, "seriously with such a ridiculous,
insulting, darn-fool proposition ?>s

"It's fa'r and squar*," said the squirrel hunter, but he reached out his
hand as if to take back the money; and then Goree knew that his own
flurry of rage had not been from pride or resentment, but from anger
at himself, knowing that he would set foot in the deeper depths that
were being opened to him. He turned in an instant from an outraged
gentleman to an anxious chaflferer recommending his goods.

"Don't be in a hurry, Garvey,'* he said, his face crimson and his speech
thick. "I accept your p-p-proposition, though it's dirt cheap at two hun-
dred. A t-trade's all right when both p-purchaser and b-buyer are s-sat-
isfied. Shall I w-wrap it up for you, Mr. Garvey ?"

Garvey rose, and shook out his broadcloth. "Missis Garvey will be
pleased. You air out of it, and it stands Coltrane and Garvey. Just a
scrap ov writing Mr. Goree, you bein* a lawyer, to show we traded."

Goree seized a sheet of paper and a pen. The money was clutched in
his moist hand. Everything else suddenly seemed to grow trivial and light.

"Bill of sale, by all means. 'Right, tide, and interest in and to' ... 'for-
ever warrant and ' No, Garvey, well have to leave out that 'defend/ "

said Goree with a loud laugh. "You'll have to defend this title yourself.'*

The mountaineer received the amazing screed that the lawyer handed
him, folded it with immense labor, and placed it carefully in his pocket.

Goree was standing near the window. "Step here,'* he said, raising
his finger, "and I'll show you your recently purchased enemy. There he
goes, down the other side of the street."

The mountaineer crooked his long frame to look through the window

A BLACKJACK BARGAINER 1183

in the direction indicated by the other. Colonel Abner Coltrane, an erect,
portly gentleman of about fifty wearing the inevitable long, double-
breasted frock coat of the Southern lawmaker, and an old high silk hat,
was passing on the opposite sidewalk. As Garvey looked, Goree glanced
at his face. If there be such a thing as a yellow wolf, here was its counter-
part. Garvey snarled as his unhuman eyes followed the moving figure,
disclosing long amber-colored fangs.

"Is that him? Why, that's the man who sent me to the pen'tentiary
once!"

"He used to be district attorney," said Goree, carelessly. "And by the
way, he's a first-class shot."

"I kin hit a squirrel's eye at a hundred yard," said Garvey. "So that
thar's Coltrane! I made a better trade than I was thinkin'. Ill take keer
of this feud, Mr. Goree, better 'n you ever did!"

He moved toward the door, but lingered there, betraying a slight per-
plexity.

"Anything else to-day?" inquired Goree with frothy sarcasm. "Any
family traditions, ancestral ghosts, or skeletons in the closet? Prices as
low as the lowest."

"Thar was another thing," replied the unmoved squirrel hunter, "that
Missis Garvey was thinkia' of. "Tain't so much in my line as t'other, but
she wanted partic'lar that I should inquire, and ef you was willin', 'pay
fur it/ she says, 'fa'r and squar? Thar's a buryin' groun', as you know,
Mr. Goree, in the yard of yo' old place, under the cedars. Them that
lies thar is yo' folks what was killed by the Coltranes. The monyments
has the names on 'em. Missis Garvey says a fam'ly buryin' groun' is a
sho' sign of quality. Shes ays ef we git the feud, thar's somethin' else
ought to go with it. The names on them monyments is 'Goree,* but they
can be changed to ourn by "

"Go! Go!" screamed Goree, his face turning purple. He stretched out
both hands toward the mountaineer, his fingers hooked and shaking.
"Go, you ghoul! Even a Ch-Chinaman protects the g-graves of his an-
cestors— go!"

The squirrel hunter slouched out of the door to his carryall. While he
was climbing over the wheel Goree was collecting, with Feverish celerity,
the money that had fallen from his hand to the floor. As the vehicle
slowly turned about, the sheep with a coat of newly grown wool was
hurrying, in indecent haste, along the path to the courthouse.

At three o'clock in the morning they brought him back to his office,
shorn and unconscious. The sheriff, the sportive deputy, the county
clerk, and the gay attorney carried him, the chalk-faced man "from the
valley" acting as escort.

"On the table," said one of them, and they deposited him there
among the litter of his unprofitable books and papers.

1184 BOOK. X WHIRLIGIGS

"Yance thinks a lot of a pair of deuces when he's liquored up,"
sighed the sheriff, reflectively.

"Too much/' said the gay attorney. "A man has no business to play
poker who drinks as much as he does. I wonder how much he dropped
to-night."

"Close to two hundred. What I wonder is whar he got it. Yance ain't
had a cent fur over a month, I know."

"Struck a client, maybe. Well, let's get home before daylight. Hell be
all right when he wakes up, except for a sort of beehive about the cra-
nium."

The gang slipped away through the early morning twilight. The next
eye to gaze upon the miserable Goree was the orb of day. He peered
through the uncurtained window, first deluging the sleeper in a flood of
faint gold, but soon pouring upon the mottled red of his flesh a searching,
white, summer heat. Goree stirred, half unconsciously, among the table's
debris, and turned his face from the window. His movement dislodged
a heavy law book, which crashed upon the floor. Opening his eyes, he
saw, bending over him, a man in a black frock coat. Looking higher, he
discovered a well-worn silk hat, and beneath it the kindly, smooth
face of Colonel Abner Coltrane.

A little uncertain of the outcome, the colonel waited for the other to
make some sign of recognition. Not in twenty years had male members
of these two families faced each other in peace. Goree's eyelids puckered
as he strained his blurred sight toward this visitor, and then he smiled
serenely.

"Have you brought Stella and Lucy over to play ?" he said, calmly.

"Do you know me, Yancey ?" asked Coltrane.

"Of course I do. You brought me a whip with a whistle in the end."

So he had — twenty-four years ago; when Yancey Js father was his best
friend.

Goree's eyes wandered about the room. The colonel understood. "Lie
still, and I'll bring you some/' said he. There was a pump in the yard at
the rear, and Goree closed his eyes, listening with rapture to the click
of its handle and the bubbling of the falling stream. Coltrane brought a
pitcher of the cool water, and held it for him to drink. Presently Goree
sat up — a most forlorn object, his summer suit of flax soiled and crum-
pled, his discreditable head tousled and unsteady. He tried to wave one
of his hands toward the colonel.

"Ex-excuse — everything, will you?" he said. "I must have drunk too
much whiskey last night, and gone to bed on the table." His brows knit-
ted into a puzzled frown.

"Out with the boys a while?" asked Coltrane, kindly.

"No, I went nowhere. I haven't had a dollar to spend in the last two
months. Struck the demijohn too often, I reckon, as usual."

A BLACK JACK BARGAINER 1185

Colonel Coltrane touched him on the shoulder.

"A little while ago, Yancey," he began, "you asked me i£ I had brought
Stella and Lucy over to play. You weren't quite awake then, and must
have been dreaming you were a boy again. You are awake now, and I
want you to listen to me. I have come from Stella and Lucy to their old
playmate, and to my old friend's son. They know that I am going to
bring you home with me, and you will find them as ready with a welcome
as they were in the old days. I want you to come to my house and stay
until you are yourself again, and as much longer as you will. We heard
o£ your being down in the world, and in the midst of temptation, and we
agreed that you should come over and play at our house once more. Will
you come, my boy? Will you drop our old family trouble and come with
me?"

"Trouble!" said Goree, opening his eyes wide. "There was never any
trouble between us that I know of. I'm sure we've always been the
best of friends. But, good Lord, Colonel, how could I go to your home
as I am — a drunken wretch, a miserable, degraded spendthrift and
gambler "

He lurched from the table to his armchair, and began to weep maudlin
tears, mingled with genuine drops of remorse and shame. Coltrane talked
to him persistently and reasonably, reminding him of the simple moun-
tain pleasures of which he had once been so fond, and insisting upon the
genuineness of the invitation.

Finally he landed Goree by telling him he was counting upon his help
in the engineering and transportation of a large amount of felled timber
from a high mountainside to a waterway. He knew that Goree had once
invented a device for this purpose — a series of slides and chutes — upon
which he had justly prided himself. In an instant the poor fellow, de-
lighted at the idea of his being of use to any one, had paper spread upon
the table, and was drawing rapid but pitifully shaky lines in demonstra-
tion of what he could and would do.

The man was sickened of the husks; his prodigal heart was turning
again toward the mountains. His mind was yet strangely clogged, and
his thoughts and memories were returning to his brain one by one, like
carrier pigeons over a stormy sea. But Coltrane was satisfied with the
progress he had made.

Bethel received the surprise of its existence that afternoon when a Col-
trane and a Goree rode amicably together through the town. Side by side
they rode, out from the dusty streets and gaping townspeople, down across
the creek bridge, and up toward the mountain. The prodigal had brushed
and washed and combed himself to a more decent figure, but he was un-
steady in the saddle, and he seemed to be deep in the contemplation of
some vexing problem. Coltrane left him in his mood, relying upon the
influence of changed surroundings to restore his equilibrium.

Once Goree was seized with a shaking fit, and almost came to a col-

Il86 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

lapse. He had to dismount and rest at the side of the road. The colonel,
foreseeing such a condition, had provided a small flask of whiskey for
the journey but when it was offered to him Goree refused it almost
with violence, declaring he would never touch it again. By and by he was
recovered, and went quietly enough for a mile or two. Then he pulled up
his horse suddenly, and said:

"I lost two hundred dollars last night, playing poker. Now, where did
I get that money?"

"Take it easy, Yancey. The mountain air will soon clear it up. We'll
go fishing, first thing, at the Pinnacle Falls. The trout are jumping there
like bullfrogs. We'll take Stella and Lucy along, and have a picnic on
Eagle Rock. Have you forgotten how a hickory-cured-ham sandwich
tastes, Yancey, to a hungry fisherman?"

Evidently the colonel did not believe the story of his lost wealth; so
Goree retired again into brooding silence,

By late afternoon they had traveled ten of the twelve miles between
Bethel and Laurel. Half a mile this side of Laurel lay the old Goree place;
a mile or two beyond the village lived the Coltranes. The road was now
steep and laborious, but the compensations were many. The tilted ^aisles
of the forest were opulent with leaf and bird and bloom. The tonic air
put to shame the pharmacopoeia. The glades were dark with mossy
shade, and bright with shy rivulets winking from the ferns and laurels.
On the lower side they viewed, framed in the near foliage, exquisite
sketches of the far valley swooning in its opal haze.

Coltrane was pleased to see that his companion was yielding to the
spell of the hills and woods. For now they had but to skirt the base of
Painter's Cliff; to cross Elder Branch and mount the hill beyond, and
Goree would have to face the squandered home of his fathers. Every
rock he passed, every tree, every foot of the roadway, was familiar to
him. Though he had forgotten the woods, they thrilled him like the music
of "Home> Sweet Home''

They rounded the cliff, descended into Elder Branch, and paused
there to let the horses drink and splash in the swift water. On the right
was a rail fence that cornered there, and followed the road and stream.
Inclosed by it was the old apple orchard of the home place; the house
was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the
fence, pofceberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At
a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a
long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale,
unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent
swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple
orchard in the direction of the house zigzagging among the trees.

"That's Garvey," said Coltrane; "the man you sold out to. There's no
doubt but he's considerably cracked. I had to send him up for moon-

A BLACKJACK BARGAINER 1187

shining once, several years ago, in spite of the fact that I believed him
irresponsible. Why, what's the matter, Yancey?"

Goree was wiping his forehead, and his face had lost its color. "Do I
look queer, too?" he asked, trying to smile. "I'm just remembering a few
more things." Some of the alcohol had evaporated from his brain. "I rec-
ollect now where I got that two hundred dollars."

"Don't think of it," said Coltrane, cheerfully. "Later on we'll figure
it all out together."

They rode out of the branch, and when they reached the foot of the
hill Goree stopped again.

"Did you ever suspect I was a very vain kind of fellow, Colonel?" he
asked. "Sort of foolish proud about appearances?"

The colonel's eyes refused to wander to the soiled, sagging suit of flax
and the faded slouch hat.

"It seems to me," he replied, mystified, but humoring him, "I remem-
ber a young buck about twenty, with the tightest coat, the sleekest hair,
and the prancingest saddle horse in the Blue Ridge."

"Right you are," said Goree, eagerly. "And it's in me yet, though it
don't show. Oh, Fm as vain as a turkey gobbler, and as proud as Lucifer.
I'm going to ask you to indulge this weakness of mine in a little matter."

"Speak out, Yancey. We'll create you Duke of Laurel and Baron of
Blue Ridge, if you choose; and you shall have a feather out of Stella's
peacock's tail to wear in your hat."

"I'm in earnest. In a few minutes we'll pass the house up there on the
hill where I was born, and where my people have lived for nearly a cen-
tury. Strangers live there now— and look at me! I am about to show my-
self to them ragged and poverty-stricken, a wastrel and a beggar. Colonel
Coltrane, I'm ashamed to do it. I want you to let me wear your coat and
hat until we are out of sight beyond. I know you think it a foolish pride,
but I want to make as good a showing as I can when I pass the old place."

"Now, what does this mean?" said Coltrane to himself, as he com-
pared his companion's sane looks and quite demeanor with his strange
request. But he was already unbuttoning the coat, assenting readily, as
if the fancy were in no wise to be considered strange.

The coat and hat fitted Goree well. He buttoned the former about him
with a look of satisfaction and dignity. He and Coltrane were nearly the
same size— rather tall, portly and erect. Twenty-five years were between
them, but in appearance they might have been brothers. Goree looked
older than his age; his face was puffy and lined; the colonel had the
smooth, fresh complexion of a temperate liver. He put on Goree's disrep-
utable old flax coat and faded slouch hat.

"Now," said Goree, taking up the reins, Tm all right. I want you to
ride about ten feet in the rear as we go by, Colonel, so that they can get
a good look at me. They'll see I'm no back number yet, by any means. I

Il88 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

guess I'll show up pretty well to them once more, anyhow. Let's ride on."

He set out up the hill at a smart trot, the colonel following, as he had
been requested.

Goree sat straight in the saddle, with head erect, but his eyes^ were
turned to the right, sharply scanning every shrub and fence and hiding-
place in the old homestead yard. Once he muttered to himself, "Will
the crazy fool try it, or did I dream half of it?"

It was when he came opposite the little family burying ground that he
saw what he had been looking for— a puff of white smoke, coming from
the thick cedars in one corner. He toppled so slowly to the left that Col-
trane had time to urge his horse to that side, and catch him with one arm.

The squirrel hunter had not overpraised his arm. He had sent the bul-
let where he intended, and where Goree had expected that it would pass-
pass— through the breast of Colonel Abner Coltrane's black frock coat.

Goree leaned heavily against Coltrane, but he did not fall. The horses
kept pace, side by side, and the colonel's arm kept him steady. The little
white houses of Laurel shone through the trees, half a mile away. Goree
reached out one hand and groped until it rested upon Coltrane's fingers,
which held his bridle.

"Good friend," he said, and that was all.

Thus did Yancey Goree, as he rode past his old home, make, consid-
ering all things, the best showing that was in his power.

THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT

Half a dozen people supping at a table in one of the upper-Broadway
all-night restaurants were making too much noise. Three times the man-
ager walked past them with a politely warning glance; but their argu-
ment had waxed too warm to be quelled by a manager's gaze. It was
midnight, and the restaurant was filled with patrons from the theatres
of that district Some among the dispersed audiences must have recog-
nized among the quarrelsome sextet the faces of the players belonging
to the Carroll Comedy Company.

Four of the six made up the company. Another was the author of the
comedietta, "A Gay Coquette," which the quartet of players had been
presenting with fair sucess at several vaudeville houses in the city. The
sixth at the table was a person inconsequent in the realm of art, but one
at whose bidding many lobsters had perished.

Loudly the six maintained their clamorous debate. But one of the party
was silent except when answers were stormed from him by the excited
snes. That was the comedian of "A Gay Coquette." He was a young man
a face even too melancholy for his profession. The oral warfare of

THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT 110$

four immorderate tongues was directed at Miss Clarice Carroll, the twin-
kling star of the small aggregation. Excepting the downcast comedian,
all members of the party united in casting upon her with vehemence the
blame of some momentous misfortune. Fifty times they told her: "It is
your fault, Clarice — it is you alone who spoilt the scene. It is only of late
that you have acted this way. At this rate the sketch will have to be taken
oft:9

Miss Carroll was a match for any four. Gallic ancestry gave her a vari-
ety that could easily mount to fury. Her large eyes flashed a scorching
denial at her accusers. Her slender, eloquent arms constantly menaced
the tableware. Her high, clear soprano voice rose to what would have
been a scream had it not possessed so pure a musical quality. She hurled
back at the attacking four their denunciations in tones sweet, but of too
great carrying power for a Broadway restaurant.

Finally they exhausted her patience both as a woman and an artist. She
sprang up like a panther, managed to smash half a dozen plates and
glasses with one royal sweep of her arm, and defined her critics. They rose
and wrangled more loudly. The comedian sighed and looked a trifle sad-
der and disinterested. The manager came tripping and suggested peace.
He was told to go to the popular synonym for war so promptly that the
affair might have happened at The Hague.

Thus was the manager angered. He made a sign with his hand and a
waiter slipped out of the door. In twenty minutes the party of six was in
a police station, facing a grizzled and philosophical desk sergeant.

"Disorderly conduct in a restaurant," said the policeman who had
brought the party in.

The author of "A Gay Coquette*5 stepped to the front. He wore nose-
glasses and evening clothes, even if his shoes had been tans before they
met the patent-leather-polish bottle.

"Mr. Sergeant," said he, out of his throat, like Actor Irving, "1 would
like to protest against this arrest. The company of actors who are per-
forming in a little play that I have written, in company with a friend and
myself, were having a little supper. We became deeply interested in the
discussion as to which one of the cast is responsible for a scene in the
sketch that lately has fallen so flat that the piece is about to become a fail-
ure. We may have been rather noisy and intolerant of interruption by the
restaurant people; but the matter was of considerable importance to all
of us. You see that we are sober and are not the kind of people who de-
sire to raise disturbances. I hope that the case will not be pressed and
that we may be allowed to go."

"Who makes the charge?" asked the sergeant.

"Me," said a white-aproned voice in the rear. "De restaurant sent me
to. De gang was raisin* a dough-house and breakin* dishes."

"The dishes were paid for/' said the playwright. "They were not

BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

broken purposely. In her anger, because we remonstrated with her for
spoiling the scene. Miss "

"It's not true, sergeant," cried the clear voice of Miss Clarice Carroll In
a long coat of tan silk and a red-plumed hat, she bounded before the desk.

"It's not my fault/' she cried, indignantly. "How dare they say such
a thing! I've played the title role ever since it was staged, and if you want
to know who made it a success, ask the public— that's all."

"What Miss Carroll says is true in part," said the author. "For five
months the comedietta was a drawing card in the best houses. But dur-
ing the last two weeks it has lost favor. There is one scene in it in which
Miss Carroll made a big hit. Now she hardly gets a hand out of it. She
spoils it by acting it entirely different from her old way."

"It is not my fault," reiterated the actress.

"There are only two of you in the scene," argued the playwright,
hotly, "you and Delmars, here — "

"Then it's his fault/' declared Miss Carroll, with a lightning gknce^of
scorn from her dark eyes. The comedian caught it, and gazed with in-
creased melancholy at the panels of the sergeant's desk.

The night was a dull one in that particular police station.

The sergeant's long-blunted curiosity awoke a little.

"I've heard you/' he said to the author. And then he addressed the thin-
faced and ascetic-looking lady of the company who played "Aunt Turnip-
top" in the little comedy.

"Who do you think spoils the scene you are fussing about?" he asked.

"I'm no knocker," said that lady, "and everybody knows it. So, when
I say that Clarice falls down every time in the scene I'm judging her
art and not herself. She was great in it once. She does it something fierce
now. I'll dope the show if she keeps it up."

The sergeant looked at the comedian.

"You and the lady have this scene together, I understand. I suppose
there's no use asking you which one of you queers it?"

The comedian avoided the direct rays from the two fixed stars of Miss
Carroll's eyes.

"I don't know/' he said, looking down at his patent-leather toes.

"Are you one of the actors?" asked the sergeant of a dwarfish youth
with a middle-aged face.

"Why, say!" replied the last Thespian witness, "you don't notice any
tin spear in my hands, do you? You haven't heard me shout: 'See, the
Emperor comes!' since Fve been in here, have you? I guess I'm on the
stage long enough for *em not to start a panic by mistaking me for a thin
curl of smoke rising above the footlights."

"In your opinion, if youVe got one," said the sergeant, "is the frost that
gathers on the scene in question the work of the lady or the gentleman
who takes part in it?"

THE SONG AND THE SERGEANT IK)!

The middle-aged youth looked pained.

"I regret to say," he answered, "that Miss Carroll seems to have lost her
grip on that scene. She's all right in the rest of the play, but— but I tell
you, sergeant, she can do it— she has done it equal to any of 'em— and
she can do it again."

Miss Carroll ran forward, glowing and palpitating.

"Thank you, Jimmy, for the first good word I've had in many a day,"
she cried. And then she turned her eager face toward the desk.

"I'll show you, sergeant, whether I am to blame. Ill show them whether
I can do that scene. Come, Mr. Delmars, let us begin. You will let us,
won't you, sergeant?"

"How long will it take?" asked the sergeant, dubiously.

"Eight minutes," said the playwright. "The entire play consumes but
thirty."

"You may go ahead," said the sergeant. "Most of you seem to side
against the little lady. Maybe she had a right to crack up a saucer or two
in that restaurant. We'll see how she does the turn before we take that
up"

The matron of the police station had been standing near, listening
to the singular argument She came nigher and stood near the sergeant's
chair. Two or three of the reserves strolled in, big and yawning.

"Before beginning the scene," said the playwright, "and assuming that
you have not seen a production of (A Gay Coquette/ I will make a brief
but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy — burlesque-comedi-
etta. As the tide implies, Miss Carroll's role is that of a gay, rollicking,
mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout
the entire comedy part of the production. And I have designed the ex-
travaganza features so that she may preserve and present the same coquet-
tish idea.

"Now, the scene in which we take exception to Miss Carroll's acting
is called the 'gorilla dance.' She is costumed to represent a wood nymph,
and there is a great song-and-dance scene with a gorilla— played by Mr.
Delmars, the comedian. A tropical-forest stage is s,et

"That used to get four and five recalls. The main thing was the acting
and the dance — it was the funniest thing in New York for five months.
Delmars' song, Til Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home,' while he and Miss
Carroll were cutting hide-and-seek capers among the tropical plants, was
a winner."

"What's the troupe with the scene now?" asked the sergeant.

"Miss Carroll spoils it right in the middle," said the playwright, wrath-
fully.

With a wide gesture of her ever-moving arms the actress waved back
the little group of spectators, leaving a space in front of the desk for the
scene of her vindication or fall. Then she whipped off her long tan cloak

IJ92 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

and tossed it across the arm of the policeman who still stood officially
among them.

Miss Carroll had gone to supper well cloaked, but in the costume of the
tropic wood nymph. A skirt of fern leaves touched her knee; she was
like a humming bird — green and golden and purple.

And then she danced a fluttering, fantastic dance, as agile and light
and mazy in her steps that the other three members of the Carroll
Comedy Company broke into applause at the art of it.

And at the proper time Delmars leaped out at her side, mimicking
the uncouth, hideous bounds of the gorilla so funnily that the grizzled
sergeant himself gave a short laugh like the closing of a padlock. They
danced together the gorilla dance, and won a hand from all.

Then began the most fantastic part of the scene—the wooing of the
nymph by the gorilla. It was a kind of dance itself — eccentric and prankish,
with the nymph in coquettish and seductive retreat, followed by the
gorilla as he sang "111 Woo Thee to My Sylvan Home."

The song was a lyric of merit. The words were nonsense, as befitted the
play, but the music was worthy of something better. Delmars struck into
it in a rich tenor that owned a quality that shamed the flippant words.

During one verse of the song the wood nymph performed the grotesque
evolutions designed for the scene. At the middle of the second verse she
stood still, with a strange look on her face, seeming to gaze dreamily into
the depths of the scenic forest. The gorilla's last leap had brought him to
her feet, and there he knelt, holding her hand, until he had finished the
haunting lyric that was set in the absurd comedy like a diamond in a
piece of putty.

When Delmars ceased Miss Carroll started, and covered a sudden
flow of tears with both hands.

"There!" cried the playwright, gesticulating with violence; "there you
have it, sergeant. For two weeks she had spoiled that scene in just that
manner at every performance. I have begged her to consider diat it is not
Ophelia or Juliet that she is playing. Do you wonder now at our impa-
tience? Tears for the gorilla song! The play is lost!'*

Out of her bewitchment, whatever it was, the wood nymph flared
suddenly, and pointed & desperate finger at Delmars.

"It is you— you have done this," she cried, wildly. "You never sang
that song that way until lately. It is your doing."

"I give it up/* said the sergeant.

And then the gray-Haired matron of the police station came forward
from behind the sergeant's chair.

"Must an old woman teach you all?** she said. She went up to Miss
Carroll and took her hand,

"The man's wearing his heart out for you, my dear. Couldn't you
tell it the first note you heard him sing? All of his monkey flip-flops

ONE DOLLAR'S WORTH 1193

wouldn't have kept it from me. Must you be deaf as well as blind? That's
why you couldn't act your part, child. Do you love him or must he be
a gorilla for the rest of his days?"

Miss Carroll whirled around and caught Delmars with a lightning
glance of her eye. He came toward her, melancholy.

"Did you hear, Mr. Delmars?" she asked, with a catching breath.

"I did," said the comedian. "It is true. I didn't think there was any
use. I tried to let you know with the song/*

"Silly!" said the matron; "why didn't you speak?"

"No, no," cried the wood nymph, "his way was the best, I didn't know,
but—it was just what I wanted, Bobby."

She sprang like a green grasshopper; and the comedian opened his
arms, and — smiled.

"Get out of this," roared the desk sergeant to the waiting waiter from
the restaurant. "There's nothing doing here for you."

ONE DOLLAR S WORTH

The judge of the United States court of the district lying along the Rio
Grande border found the following letter one morning in his mail:

Judge:

When you sent me up for four years you made a talk. Among other
hard things, you called me a ratdesnake. Maybe I am one— anyhow, you
hear me rattling now. Oae year after I got to the pen, my daughter died
of— well, they said it was poverty and the disgrace together. You've got
a daughter, Judge, and I'm going to make you know how it feels to lose
one. And I'm going to bite that district attorney that spoke against me.
I'm free now, and I guess Fve turned to rattlesnake all right. I feel like
one. I don't say much, but this is my rattle. Look out what I strike.

Yours respectfully,

Rattlesnake

Judge Derwent threw the letter carelessly aside. It was nothing new to
receive such epistles from desperate men whom he had been called up to
judge. He felt no alarm. Later on he showed the letter to Littlefield, the
young district attorney, for Litdefield's name was included in the threat,
and tie judge was punctilious in matters between himself and his fellow
men.

Littlefield honored the rattle of the writer, as far as it concerned him-
self, with a smile of contempt; but he frowned a little over the reference
to the Judge's daughter, for he and Nancy Derwent were to be married in
the fall.

1194 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

Littlefield went to the clerk of the court and looked over the records
with him, They decided the the latter might have been sent by Mexico
Sam, a half -breed border desperado who had been imprisoned for man-
slaughter four years before. Then official duties crowded the matter from
his mind, and the rattle of the revengeful serpent was forgotten.

Court was in session at Brownsville. Most of the cases to be tried were
charges of smuggling, counterfeiting, post-office robberies, and violations
of Federal laws along the border. One case was that of a young Mexican,
Rafael Ortiz, who had been rounded up by a clever deputy marshal in the
act of passing a counterfeit silver dollar. He had been suspected of many
such deviations from rectitude, but this was the first time that anything
provable had been fixed upon him. Ortiz languished cozily in jail, smok-
ing brown cigarettes and waiting for trial Kilpatrick, the deputy, brought
the counterfeit dollar and handed it to the district attorney in his office in
the court-house. The deputy and a reputable druggist were prepared to
swear that Ortiz paid for a bottle of medicine with it. The coin was a poor
counterfeit, soft, dull-looking, and made principally of lead. It was the day
before the morning on which the docket would reach the case of Ortiz,
and the district attorney was preparing himself for the trial.

"Not much need of having in high-priced experts to prove the coin's
queer, is there, Kil?" smiled Littlefield, as he thumped the dollar down
upon the table, where it fell with no more ring than would have come
from a lump of putty.

"I guess the Greaser's as good as behind the bars/* said the deputy,
easing up his holsters. "You've got him dead. If it had been just one time,
these Mexicans can't tell good money from bad; but this little yaller rascal
belongs to a gang of counterfeiters, I know. This is the first time I've been
able to catch him doing the trick. He's got a girl down there in them
Mexican jacals on the river bank. I seen her one day when I was watch-
ing him. She's as pretty as a red heifer in a flower bed."

Littlefield shoved the counterfeit dollar into his pocket, and slipped his
memoranda of the case into an envelope. Just then a bright, winsome face,
as frank and jolly as a boy's, appeared in the doorway, and in walked
Nancy Derwent.

"Oh, Bob, didn't court adjourn at twelve to-day until to-morrow?"
she asked of Littlefield.

"It did," said the district attorney, "and Fm very glad of it. I've got a lot
of rulings to look up, and "

"Now, that's just like you. I wonder you and Father don't turn to law
books or rulings or something! I want you to take me out plover-shooting
this afternoon. Lang Prairie is just alive with them. Don't say no, please!
I want to try my new twelve-bore hammerless. I've sent to the livery stable
to engage Fly and Bess for the buckboard; they stand fire so nicely, I was
sure you would go."

ONE DOLLAR S WORTH 1195

They were to be married in the fall. The glamour was at its height.
The plovers won the day — or, rather, the afternoon — over the calf-bound
authorities. Litdefield began to put his papers away.

There was a knock at the door. Kilpatrick answered it. A beautiful,
dark-eyed girl with a skin tinged with the faintest lemon color walked
into the room. A black shawl was thrown over her head and wound once
around her neck.

She began to talk in Spanish, a voluble, mournful stream of melancholy
music. Littlefield did not understand Spanish. The deputy did, and he
translated her talk by portions, at intervals holding up his hands to check
the flow of her words.

"She came to see you, Mr. Littlefield, Her name's Joya Treviiias. She
wants to see you about— well, she's mixed up with that Rafael Ortiz.
She's his— she's his girl. She says he's innocent. She says she made the
money and got him to pass it. Don't you believe her, Mr. Littlefield.
That's the way with these Mexican girls; they'll lie, steal, or kill for a
fellow when they get stuck on him. Never trust a woman that's in love!"

"Mr. KilpatrickP

Nancy Derwent's indignant exclamation caused the deputy to flounder
for a moment in attempting to explain that he had misquoted his own
sentiments, and then he went on with the translation:

"She says she's willing to take his place in the jail if you'll let him out.
She says she was down sick with the fever, and the doctor said she'd die if
she didn't have medicine. That's why he passed the lead dollar on the
drug store. She says it saved her life. This Rafael seems to be her honey,
all right; there's a lot of stuff in her talk about love and such things that
you don't want to hear."

It was an old story to the district attorney*

"Tell her," said he, "that I can do nothing. The case comes up in the
morning, and he will have to make his fight before the court,"

Nancy Derwent was not so hardened. She was looking with sympa-
thetic interest at Joya Trevinas and at Littlefield alternately. The deputy
repeated the district attorney's words to the girL She spoke a sentence or
two in a low voice, pulled her shawl closely about her face, and left the
room.

"What did she say then?" asked the district attorney.

"Nothing special," said the deputy. "She said: 'If the life of the one'—
let's see how it went— fSi la vida de dla a quien tu amas — if the life of the
girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael Ortiz." "

Kilpatrick strolled out through the corridor in the direction of the mar-
shal's office.

"Can't you do anything for them, Bob?" asked Nancy. "It's such a
little thing— -just one counterfeit dollar — to ruin the happiness of two

1196 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

lives! She was in danger of death, and he did it to save her. Doesn't the
law know the feeling of pity?"

"It hasn't a place in jurisprudence, Nan," said Littlefield, "especially
in re the district attorney's duty. I'll promise you that the prosecution will
not be vindictive; but the man is as good as convicted when the case is
called. Witnesses will swear to his passing the bad dollar which I have in
my pocket at this moment as 'Exhibit A.' There are no Mexicans on the
jury, and it will vote Mr. Greaser guilty without leaving the box."

The plover-shooting was fine that afternoon, and in the excitement of
the sport the case of Rafael and the grief of Joya Trevinas was forgotten.
The district attorney and Nancy Derwent drove out from the town three
miles along a smooth, grassy road, and then struck across a rolling prairie
toward a heavy line of timber on Piedra Creek. Beyond this creek lay
Long Prairie, the favorite haunt of the plover. As they were nearing the
creek they heard the galloping of a horse to their right, and saw a man,
with black hair and a swarthy face riding toward the woods at a tangent,
as if he had come up behind them.

*Tve seen that fellow somewhere," said Littlefield, who had a memory
for faces, "but I can't exactly place him. Some ranchman, I suppose, taking
a short cut home/*

They spent an hour on Long Prairie, shooting from the buckboard.
Nancy Derwent, an active, outdoor Western girl, was pleased with her
twelve-bore. She had bagged within two brace of her companion's score.

They started homeward at a gentle trot. When within a hundred yards
of Piedra Creek a man rode out of the timber directly toward them.

"It looks like the man we saw coming over," remarked Miss Derwent.

A$ the distance between them lessened, the district attorney suddenly
pulled up his team sharply, with his eyes fixed upon the advancing horse-
man. That individual had drawn a Winchester from its scabbard on his
saddle and thrown it over his arm.

"Now I know you, Mexico Sam!" muttered Littlefield to himself. "It
was you who shook your ratdes in that gentle epistle.'*

Mexico Sam did not leave things long in doubt. He had a nice eye in a
matters relating to firearms, so when he was within good rifle range, but
outside of danger from No. 8 shot, he threw up his Winchester and
opened fire upon the occupants of the buckboard.

The first shot cracked the back of the seat within the two-inch space
between the shoulders of Littlefield and Miss Derwent. The next went
through the dashboard and Littlefield's trouser leg.

The district attorney hustled Nancy out of the buckboard to the ground.
She was a little pale, but asked no questions. She had the frontier instinct
that accepts conditions in an emergency without superfluous argument.
They kept their guns in hand, and Littlefield hastily gathered some hand-

ONE DOLLAR'S WORTH 1197

fuls of cartridges from the pasteboard box on the seat and crowded them
into his pockets.

"Keep behind the horses, Nan/' he commanded. "That fellow is a
ruffian I sent to prison once. He's trying to get even. He knows our shot
won't hurt him at that distance."

"All right, Bob," said Nancy, steadily. "I'm not afraid. But you come
close, too. Whoa, Bess; stand still, now!"

She stroked Bess's mane. Littlefield stood with his gun ready, praying
that the desperado would come within range.

But Mexico Sam was playing his vendetta along safe lines. He was a
bird of different feather from the plover. His accurate eye drew an imagi-
nary line of circumference around the area of danger from bird-shot, and
upon this line he rode. -His horse wheeled to the right, and as his victims
rounded to the safe side of their equine breastwork he sent a ball through
the district attorney's hat. Once he miscalculated in making a detour, and
overstepped his margin. Littlefield's gun flashed, and Mexico Sam ducked
his head to the harmless patter of the shot A few o£ them stung his
horse, which pranced promptly back to the safety line.

The desperado fired again. A little cry came from Nancy Derwent.
Littlefield whirled, with blazing eyes, and saw the blood trickling down
her cheek.

Tm not hurt, Bob— only a splinter struck me, I think he hit one of the
wheel-spokes."

"Lord!" groaned Littlefield. "If I only had a charge of buckshot!"

The ruffian got his horse still, and took careful aim. Fly gave a snort
and fell in the harness, struck in the neck. Bess, now disabused of the idea
that plover were being fired at, broke her traces and galloped wildly
away. Mexican Sam sent a ball neatly through the fullness of Nancy Der-
went's shooting jacket.

"Lie down— lie down!" snapped Littlefield. "Close to the horse— flat on
the ground— so." He almost threw her upon the grass against the back of
the recumbent Fly. Oddly enough, at that moment die words of the
Mexican girl returned to his mind:

"If the life of the girl you love is ever in danger, remember Rafael
Ortiz."

Littlefield uttered an exclamation.

"Open fire on him, Nan, across the horse's back! Fire as fast as you can!
You can't hurt him, but keep him dodging shot for one minute while I
try to work a little scheme."

Nancy gave a quick glance at Littlefield, and saw him take out his
pocket-knife and open it Then she turned her face to obey orders, keep-
ing up a rapid fire at the enemy.

Mexico Sam waited patiently until this innocuous fusillade ceased. He
had plenty of time, and he did not care to risk the chance of a bird-shot in

1198 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

his eye if £t could be avoided by a little caution. He pulled his heavy
Stetson low down over his face until the shots ceased. Then he drew a
little nearer, and fired with careful aim at what he could see of his victims
above the faDen horse.

Neither of them moved. He urged his horse a few steps nearer. He
saw the district attorney rise to one knee, and deliberately level his shot-
gun. H pulled his hat down and awaited the harmless rattle of the tiny
pellets.

The shotgun blazed with a heavy report. Mexico Sam sighed, turned
limp all over, and slowly fell from his horse — a dead rattlesnake.

At ten o'clock the next morning court opened, and the case of the
United States versus Rafael Ortiz was called. The district attorney, with
his arm in a sling, rose and addressed the court.

"May it please your honor," he said, "I desire to enter a nolle pros, in
this case. Even though the defendant should be guilty, there is not suffi-
cient evidence in the hands of the government to secure a conviction.
The piece of counterfeit coin upon the identity of which the case was
built is not now available as evidence. I ask, therefore, that the case be
stricken off.5*

At the noon recess, Kilpatrick strolled into the district attorney's office,

"I've just been down to take a squint at old Mexico Sam," said the
deputy. "They've got him laid out. Old Mexico was a tough outfit, I
reckon. The boys was wonderin' down there what you shot him with.
Some said it must have been nails. I never see a gun carry anything to
make holes like he had."

UI shot him," said the district attorney, "with Exhibit A of your coun-
terfeiting case. Lucky thing for me—and somebody else—that it was as
bad money as it was! It sliced up into slugs very nicely. Say, Kil, can't you
go down to the jacals and find where that Mexican girl lives? Miss Der-
went wants to know."

A NEWSPAPER STORY

At 8 A. M. it lay on Giuseppi s news-stand, still damp from the presses,
Giuseppi, with the cunning of his ilk, philandered on the opposite corner
leaving his patrons to help themselves, no doubt on a theory related to the
hypothesis of the watched pot.

This particular newspaper was, according to its custom and design, an
educator, a guide, a monitor, a champion, and a household counsellor and
vade mecum.

From its many excellencies might be selected three editorials. One was

A NEWSPAPER STO&Y 1199

in simple and chaste but illuminating language directed to parents and
teachers, deprecating corporal punishment for children.

Another was an accusive and significant warning addressed to a notori-
ous labor leader who was on the point o£ instigating his clients to a trou-
blesome strike.

The third was an eloquent demand that the police force be sustained
and aided in everything that tended to increase its efficiency as public
guardians and servants.

Besides these more important chidings and requisitions upon the store
of good citizenship was a wise prescription or form of procedure laid out
by the editor of the heart-to-heart column in the specific case of a young
man who had complained of the obduracy of his lady love, teaching him
how he might win her.

Again, there was, on the beauty page, a complete answer to a young
lady inquirer who desired admonition toward the securing of bright eyes,
rosy cheeks, and a beautiful countenance.

One other item requiring special cognizance was a brief "personal/*
running thus:

Dear Jack: — Forgive me. You were right. Meet me at corner of Madi-
son and — th at 8:30 this morning. We leave at noon.

Penitent

At 8 o'clock a young man with a haggard look and the feverish gleam
of unrest in his eye dropped a penny and picked up the top paper as he
passed Giuseppi's stand, A sleepless night had left turn a late riser. There
was an office to be reached by nine, and a shave and a hasty cup of coffee
to be crowded into the interval.

He visited his barber shop and then hurried on his way. He pocketed
his paper, meditating a belated perusal of it at the luncheon hour. At the
next corner it fell from his pocket, carrying with it his pair of new gloves.
Three blocks he walked, missed the gloves and turned back fuming,

Just on the half-hour he reached the corner where lay the gloves and
paper. But he strangely ignored that which he had come to seek. He was
holding two little hands as tightly as ever he could and looking into two
penitent brown eyes, while joy rioted in his heart.

"Dear Jack," she said, "I knew you would be here on time."

"I wonder what she means by that," he was saying to himself; "but it's
all right, it's all right."

A big wind pufied out of the west, picked up the paper from the side-
walk, opened it and sent it flying and whirling down a side street. Up
that street was driving a skittish bay to a spider-wheel buggy the young
man who had written to the heart-to-heart editor for a recipe that he
might win her for whom he sighed.

The wind, with a prankish flurry, flapped the flying newspaper against

1200 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

the face of the skittish bay. There was a lengthened streak of bay mingled
with the red of running gear that stretched itself out for four blocks. Then
a water-hydrant played its part in the cosmogony, the buggy became
match wood as foreordained, and the driver rested very quietly where he
had been flung on the asphalt in front of a certain brownstone mansion.

They came out and had him inside very promptly. And there was one
who made herself a pillow for his head, and cared for no curious eyes,
bending over and saying, "Oh, it was you; it was you all the^time, Bobby!
Couldn't you see it? And if you die, why, so must I, and "

But in all this wind we must hurry to keep in touch with our paper.

Policeman O'Brine arrested it as a character dangerous to traffic.
Straightening its dishevelled leaves with his big, slow fingers, he stood a
few feet from the family entrance of the Shandon Bells Cafe. One head-
line he spelled out ponderously. "The Papers to the Front in a Move to
Help the Police."

But, whist! The voice of Danny, the head bartender, through the crack
of the door: "Here's a nip for ye, Mike, ould man,"

Behind the widespread, amicable columns of the press Policeman
O'Brine receives swiftly his nip of the real stuff. He moves away, stalwart,
refreshed, fortified, to his duties. Might not the editor man view with
pride the early, the spiritual, the literal fruit that had blessed his labors.

Policeman O'Brine folded the paper and poked it playfully under the
arm of a small boy that was passing. That boy was named Johnny, and
he took the paper home with him. His sister was named Gladys, and she
had written to the beauty editor of the paper asking for the practicable
touchstone of beauty. That was weeks ago, and she had ceased to look for
an answer. Gladys was a pale girl, with dull eyes and a discontented ex-
pression. She was dressing to go up to the avenue to get some braid.
Beneath her skirt she pinned two leaves of the paper Johnny had brought.
When she walked the rusding sound was an exact Imitation of the real
thing.

On the street she met the Brown girl from the flat below and stopped
to talk. The Brown girl turned green. Only silk at $5 a yard could make
the sound that she heard when Gladys moved, The Brown girl, consumed
by jealousy, said something spiteful and went her way, with pinched lips.

Gladys proceeded towards the avenue. Her eyes now sparkled like
jagerfonteins. A rosy bloom visited her cheeks; a triumphant, subtle,
vivifying smile transfigured her face. She was beautiful. Could the beauty
editor have seen her then! There was something in her answer in the
paper, I believe, about cultivating a kind feeling towards others in order
to make plain features attractive.

The labor leader against whom the paper's solemn and weighty edi-
torial injunction was laid was the father of Gladys and Johnny. He picked
Lip the remains of the journal from which Gladys had ravished a cosmetic

TOMMYS BURGLAR 1201

of silken sounds. The editorial did not come under his eye, but instead it
was greeted by one of those ingenious and specious puzzle problems that
enthrall alike the simpleton and the sage.

The labor leader tore off half of the page, provided himself with table,
pencil, and paper and glued himself to the puzzle.

Three hours later, after waiting vainly for him at the appointed place,
other more conservative leaders declared and ruled in favor of arbitra-
tion, and the strike with its attendant dangers was averted. Subsequent
editions of the paper referred, in colored inks, to the clarion tone of its
successful denunciation of the labor leader's intended designs.

The remaining leaves of the active journal also went loyally to the prov-
ing of its potency.

When Johnny returned from school he sought a secluded spot and
removed the missing columns from the inside of his clothing, where they
had been artfully distributed so as to successfully defend such areas as are
generally attacked during scholastic castigations. Johnny attended a pri-
vate school and had had trouble with his teacher. As has been said, there
was an excellent editorial against corporal punishment in that morning's
issue, and no doubt it had its effect.

After this can any one doubt the power of the press?

TOMMY S BURGLAR

At ten o'clock P.M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the
policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested
the policeman and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She pointed out,
not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall asleep over
one of St. George Rathbone's novels on the third floor, but she was over-
ruled. Raspberries and cops were not created for nothing.

The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we
must have action and not too much description in a 2,ooo-word story.

In the dining room he opened the slide of his dark lantern. With a
brace and centrebit he began to bore into the lock of the silver-closet

Suddenly a click was heard. The room was flooded with electric light.
The dark velvet portieres parted to admit a fair-haired boy of eight in
pink pajamas, bearing a bottle of olive oil in his hand.

"Are you a burglar?" he asked, in a sweet, childish voice.

"Listen to that," exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. "Am I a burglar?
Wot do you suppose I have a three days' growth of bristly beard on my
face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and let me grease
the bit, so I won't wake up your mamma, who is lying down with a

1202 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

headache, and left you in charge of Felicia who has been faithless to her
trust"

"Oh, dear," said Tommy, with a sigh. "I thought you would be more
up-to-date. This oil is for the salad when I bring lunch from the pantry
for you. And mamma and papa have gone to the Metropolitan to hear
De Reszke. But that isn't my fault. It only shows how long the story has
been knocking around among the editors. If the author had been wise
he'd have changed it to Caruso in the proofs.5*

"Be quiet," hissed the burglar, under his breath. "If you raise an alarm
Til wring your neck like a rabbit's/'

"Like a chicken's," corrected Tommy. "You had that wrong. You don't
wring rabbits* necks."

"Aren't you afraid of me?7' asked the burglar.

"You know I'm not/* answered Tommy. "Don't you suppose I know
fact from fiction? If this wasn't a story I'd yell like an Indian when I saw
you; and you'd probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the side-
walk/7

"I see," said the burglar, "that you're on to your job. Go on with the
performance/*

Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him,

"Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burglar? Have you no
friends?"

"I see what you're driving at/' said the burglar, with a dark frown. "It's
the same old story. Your innocence and childish insouciance is going to
lead me back into an honest life. Every time I crack a crib where there's
a kid around, it happens/'

"Would you mind gazing with wolfish eyes at the plate of cold beef
that the butler has left on the dining table?" said Tommy. "I'm afraid it's
growing late."

The burglar accommodated.

"Poor man/' said Tommy. "You must be hungry. If you will please
stand in a listless attitude I will get you something to eat."

The boy brought a roast chicken, a jar of marmalade, and a bottle of
wine from the pantry. The burglar seized a knife and fork sullenly.

"It's only been an hour/' he grumbled, "since I had a lobster and a pint
of musty ale up on Broadway. I wish these story writers would let a fellow
have a pepsin tablet, anyhow, between feeds."

"My papa writes books," remarked Tommy.

The burglar jumped to his feet quickly.

"You said he had gone to the opera/' he hissed, hoarsely and with im-
mediate suspicion.

"I ought to have explained/* said Tommy. "He didn't buy the tickets/'
The burglar sat again and toyed with the wishbone.

"Why do you burgle houses?" asked the boy, wonderingly.

TOMMY S BURGLAR I2O3

"Because," replied the burglar, with a sudden flow of tears. "God bless
my little brown-haired boy Bessie at home."

"Ah," said Tommy, wrinkling his nose, "you got that answer in the
wrong place. You want to tell your hard-luck story before you pull out the
child stop."

"Oh, yes," said the burglar, "I forgot. Well, once I lived up in Milwau-
kee, and "

"Take the silver," said Tommy, rising from his chair.

"Hold on," said the burglar. "But I moved away. I could find no other
employment. For a while I managed to support my wife and child by
passing confederate money; but alas! I was forced to give that up because
it did not belong to the union. I became desperate and a burglar."

]'Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?" asked Tommy.

"I said 'burglar/ not 'beggar,' " answered the cracksman.

"After you finish your lunch," said Tommy, "and experience the usual
change of heart, how shall we wind up the story?'*

"Suppose," said the burglar, thoughtfully, "that Tony Pastor turns out
earlier than usual to-night, and your father gets in from 'Parsifal' at 10:30.
I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my own
little boy Bessie, and "

"Say," said Tommy, "haven't you got that wrong?"

"Not on your colored crayon drawings by B. Cory Kilvert," said the
burglar. "It's always a Bessie that I have at home, artlessly prattling to
the pale-cheeked burglar's bride. As I was saying, your father opens the
front door just as I am departing with admonitions and sandwiches that
you have wrapped up for me. Upon recognizing me as an old Harvard
classmate he starts back in "

"Not in surprise?" interrupted Tommy, with wide-open eyes.

"He starts back in the doorway," continued the burglar. And then he
rose to his feet and began to shout: "Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah, rah,
rah!"

"Well," said Tommy, wonderingly, "that's the first time I ever knew
a burglar to give a college yell when he was burglarizing a house, even in
a story."

"That's one on you," said the burglar, with a laugh, "I was practising
the dramatization. If this is put on the stage that college touch is about
the only thing that will make it go."

Tommy looked his admiration.

"You're on, all right," he said!

"And there's another mistake youVe made," said the burglar. "You
should have gone some time ago and brought me the $9 gold piece your
mother gave you on your birthday to take to Bessie."

"But she didn't give it to me to take to Bessie," said Tommy, pouting.

"Come, come!" said the burglar, sternly. "It's not nice of you to take

1204 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know
what I mean. It's mighty Httle I get out of these fictional jobs, anyhow.
I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all the swag I'm
allowed is the blamed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces that you kids hand
over. Why in one story, all I got was a kiss from a litde girl who came
on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted of molasses candy, too.
I've a good notion to tie this table cover over your head and keep on into
the silver-closet."

"Oh, no, you haven't/' said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his
knees. "Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know
you've got to preserve the unities."

"So've you," said the burglar, rather glumly. "Instead of sitting here
talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man's mouth, what
you'd like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the top
of your voice."

"You're irght, old man," said Tommy, heartily. "I wonder what they
make us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I'm sure it's
neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-
grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates
not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars
act! You'd think editors would know — but what's the use?"

The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.

"Well, let's get through with it," he said. "God bless you, my little
boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night Bessie
shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall
never burglarize another house — at least not until the June magazines are
out. It'll be your litde sister's turn then to run in on me while I am ab-
stracting the U. S. 4 per cent, from the tea urn and buy me off with her
coral necklace and a falsetto kiss."

"You haven't got all the kicks coming to you," sighed Tommy, crawling
out of his chair. "Think of the sleep I'm losing. But it's tough on both of
us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really rob some-
body. Maybe you'll have the chance if they dramatize us."

"Never!" said the burglar, gloomily, "Between the box office and my
better impulses that your leading juveniles are supposed to awaken and
the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I'll always be broke."

"I'm sorry," said Tommy, sympathetically. "But I can't help myself any
more than you can. It's one of the canons of household fiction that no
burglar shall be successful The burglar must be foiled by a kid like me, or
by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by his old pal, Red Mike,
who recognizes the house as one in which he used to be the coachman.
You have got the worst end of it in any kind of a story."

"Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now," said the burglar, taking
up his lantern and bracebit.

A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT 1205

"You have to take the rest of this chicken and the bottle o£ wine with
you for Bessie and her mother," said Tommy, calmly.

"But confound it," exclaimed the burglar, in an annoyed tone, "they
don't want it. I've got five cases of Chateau de Beychsvelle at home that
was bottled in 1853. That claret of yours is corked. And you couldn't get
either of them to look at a chicken unless it was stewed in champagne.
You know, after I get out of the story I don't have so many limitations.
I make a turn now and then."

"Yes, but you must take them," said Tommy, loading his arms with the
bundles.

"Bless you, young master!" recited the burglar, obedient. "Second-Story
Saul will never forget you. And now hurry and let me out, kid. Our 2,000
words must be nearly up."

Tommy led the way through the hall toward the front door. Suddenly
the burglar stopped and called to him softly: "Ain't there a cop out there
in front somewhere sparking the girl?"

"Yes," said Tommy, "but what "

"I'm afraid he'll catch me," said the burglar. "You mustn't forget that
this is fiction."

"Great head!" said Tommy, turning. "Come out by the back door."

A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT

The original cause of the trouble was about twenty years in growing.

At the end of that time it was worth it.

Had you lived anywhere within fifty miles of Sundown Ranch you
would have heard of it. It possessed a quantity of jet-black hair, a pair of
extremely frank, deep-brown eyes, and a laugh that rippled across the
prairie like the sound of a hidden brook. The name of it was Rosita
McMullen; and she was the daughter of old man McMullen of the Sun-
down Sheep Ranch.

There came riding on red roan steeds— or, to be more explicit, on a
paint and flea-bitten sorrel — two wooers. One was Madison Lane, and the
other was the Frio Kid. But at that time they did not call him the Frio
Kid, for he had not earned the honors of special nomenclature. His name
was simply Johnny McRoy.

It must not be supposed that these two were the sum of the agreeable
Rosita's admirers. The bronchos of a dozen others champed their bits at
the long hitching rack of the Sundown Ranch. Many were the sheeps'-
eyes that were cast in those savannas that did not belong to the flocks of
Dan McMullen. But of all the cavaliers, Madison Lane and Johnny Mc-
Roy galloped far ahead, wherefore they are to be chronicled.

1206 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

Madison Lane, a young cattleman from the Nueces country, won the
race. He and Rosita were married one Christmas day. Armed, hilarious,
vociferous, magnanimous, the cowmen and the sheepmen, laying aside
their hereditary hatred, joined forces to celebrate the occasion.

Sundown Ranch was sonorous with the cracking of jokes and six-
shooters, the shine of buckles and bright eyes, the outspoken congratula-
tions of the herders of kine.

But while the wedding feast was at its liveliest there descended upon
it Johnny McRoy, bitten by jealously, like one possessed.

"I'll give you a Christmas present," he yelled, shrilly, at the door, with
his .45 in his hand. Even then he had some reputation as an offhand shot.

His first bullet cut a neat underbit in Madison Lane's right ear. The
barrel of his gun moved an inch. The next shot would have been the
brides had not Carson, a sheepman, possessed a mind with triggers some-
what well oiled and in repair. The guns of the wedding party had been
hung, in their belts, upon nails in the wall when they sat at table, as a con-
cession to good taste. But Carson, with great promptness, hurled his plate
of roast venison and frijoles at McRoy, spoiling his aim. The second bullet
then, only shattered the white petals of a Spanish dagger flower suspended
two feet above Rosita's head.

The guests spurned their chairs and jumped for their weapons. It was
considered an improper act to shoot the bride and groom at a wedding.
In about six seconds there were twenty or so bullets due to be whizzing
in the direction of Mr. McRoy.

"Ill shoot better next time," yelled Johnny; "and there'll be a next
time." He backed rapidly out of the door.

Carson, the sheepman, spurred on to attempt further exploits by the
success of his plate throwing, was first to reach the door. McRoy's bullet
from the darkness laid him low.

The cattlemen then swept out upon him, calling for vengeance, for,
while the slaughter of a sheepman has not always lacked condonement,
it was a decided misdemeanor in this instance. Carson was innocent; he
was no accomplice at the matrimonial proceedings; nor had any one heard
him quote the line "Christmas comes but once a year" to the guests.

But the sortie failed in its vengeance. McRoy was on his horse and
away, shouting back curses and threats as he galloped into the concealing
chaparral.

That night was the birthnight of the Frio Kid. He became the "bad
man" of that portion of the State. The rejection of his suit by Miss Mc-
Mullen turned him to a dangerous man. When officers went after him for
the shooting of Carson, he killed two of them, and entered upon the life
of an outlaw. He became a marvellous shot with either hand, He would
turn up in towns and settlements, raise a quarrel at the slightest oppor-
tunity, pick off his man, and laugh at the officers of the law. He was so

A CHAPARRAL CHRISTMAS GIFT 1207

cool, so deadly, so rapid, so inhumanly bloodthirsty that none but faint
attempts were ever made to capture him. When he was at last shot and
killed by a little one-armed Mexican who was nearly dead himself from
fright, the Frio Kid had the deaths of eighteen men on his head. About
half of these were killed in fair duels depending upon the quickness of the
draw. The other half were men whom he assassinated from absolute wan-
tonness and cruelty.

Many tales are told along the border of his impudent courage and
daring. But he was not one of the breed of desperadoes who have seasons
of generosity and even of softness. They say he never had mercy on the
object of his anger. Yet at this and every Christmastide it is well to give
each one credit, if it can be done, for whatever speck of good he may have
possessed. If the Frio Kid ever did a kindly act or felt a throb of gen-
erosity in his heart it was once at such a time and season, and this is the
way it happened.

One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odor of the
blossoms o£ the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous degree.

One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full
bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the
Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid
reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with
dangerously narrowing eyes. The rich, sweet scent touched him some-
where beneath his ice and iron.

"I don't know what I've been thinking about, Mex," he remarked in
his usual mild draw, "to have forgot all about a Christmas present I got to
give. I'm going to ride over to-morrow night and shoot Madison Lane in
his own house. He got my girl — Rosita would have had me if he hadn't
cut into the game. I wonder why I happened to overlook it up to now?"

"Ah, shucks, Kid," said Mexican, "don't talk foolishness. You know
you can't get within a mile of Mad Lane's house to-morrow night. I see
old man Allen day before yesterday, and he says Mad is going to have
Christmas doings at his house. You remember how you shot up the
festivities when Mad was married, and about the threats you made? Don't
you suppose Mad Lane'll kind of keep his eye open for a certain Mr. Kid?
You plumb make me tired, Kid, with such remarks."

"I'm going," repeated the Frio Kid, without heat, **to go to Madison
Lane's Christmas doings, and kill him. I ought to have done it a long
time ago. Why, Mex, just two weeks ago I dreamed me and Rosita was
married instead o£ her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could
see her smiling at me, and — oh! h — 1, Mex, he got her; and I'll get him —
yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and then's when I'll get him."

"There's other ways of committing suicide," advised Mexican. "Why
don't you go and surrender to the sheriff?**

1208 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

Til get him," said the Kid. .

Christmas Eve fell as balmy as April Perhaps there was a hint of far-
away frostiness in the air, but it tingled like seltzer, perfumed faintly
with late prairie blossoms and the mesquite grass.

When night came the five or six rooms of the ranch-house were
brightly lit. In one room was a Christmas tree, for the Lanes had a boy of
three, and a dozen or more guests were expected from the nearer ranches.

At nightfall Madison Lane called aside Jim Belcher and three other
cowboys employed on his ranch.

"Now, boys," said Lane, "keep your eyes open. Walk around the house
and watch the road well All of you know the Trio Kid,' as they call him
now, and if you see him, open fire on him without asking any questions.
I'm not afraid of his coming around, but Rosita is. She's been afraid he'd
come in on us every Christmas since we were married."

The guests had arrived in buckboards and on horseback, and were
making themselves comfortable inside.

The evening went along pleasantly. The guests enjoyed and praised
Rosita's excellent supper, and afterward the men scattered in groups about
the rooms or on the broad "gallery," smoking and chatting.

The Christmas tree, of course, delighted the youngsters, and above all
were they pleased when Santa Glaus himself in magnificent white beard
and furs appeared and began to distribute the toys.

"It's my papa," announced Billy Sampson, aged six. "I've seen him wear
'em before."

Berkly, a sheepman, an old friend of Lane, stopped Rosita as she was
passing by him on the gallery, where he was sitting smoking.

"Well, Mrs. Lane," said he, "I suppose by this Christmas you've gotten
over being afraid of that fellow McRoy, haven't you? Madison and I have
talked about it, you know."

"Very nearly," said Rosita, smiling, "but I am still nervous sometimes.
I shall never forget that awful time when he came so near to killing us."

"He's the most cold-hearted villain in the world," said Berkly. "The
citizens all along the border ought to turn out and hunt him down like
a wolf."

"He has committed awful crimes," said Rosita, "but— I— don't-— know. I
think there is a spot of good somewhere in everybody. He was not always
bad— that I know."

Rosita turned into the hallway between the rooms. Santa Claus, in
muffling whiskers and furs, was just coming through.

"I heard what you said through the window, Mrs. Lane," he said. "I
was just going down in my pocket for a Christmas present for your hus-
band. But I've left one for you, instead. It's in the room to your right.5*

"Oh, thank you, kind Santa Claus," said Rosita, brightly.

A LITTLE LOCAL COLOR 1209

Rosita went into the room, while Santa Glaus stepped into the cooler
air of the yard.

She found no one in the room but Madison.

"Where is my present that Santa said he left for me in here?" she
asked.

"Haven't seen anything in the way of a present/' said her husband,
laughing, "unless he could have meant me."

The next day Gabriel Radd, the foreman of the XO Ranch, dropped
into the post-office at Loma Alta.

"Well, the Frio Kid's got his dose of lead at last," he remarked to the
postmaster.

"That so? How'd it happen?"

"One of old Sanchez's Mexican sheep herders did it! — think of it! th£
Frio Kid killed by a sheep herder! The Greaser saw him riding along
past his camp about twelve o'clock last night, and was so skeered that he
up with a Winchester and let him have it. Funniest part of it was that
the Kid was dressed all up with white Angora-skin whiskers and a regular
Santy Claus rig-out from head to foot. Think of the Frio Kid playing
Santy!"

A LITTLE LOCAL COLOR

I mentioned to Rivington that I was in search of characteristic New York
scenes and incidents — something typical, I told him, without necessarily
having to spell the first syllable with an "i."

"Oh, for your writing business," said Rivington; "you couldn't have
applied to a better shop. What I don't know about little old New York
wouldn't make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I'll put you right in the middle
of so much local color that you won't know whether you are a magazine
cover or in the erysipelas ward. When do you want to begin?"

Rivington is a young-man-about-town and a New Yorker by birth,
preference, and incommutability.

I told him that I would be glad to accept his escort and guardianship so
that I might take notes of Manhattan's grand, gloomy, and peculiar idio-
syncrasies, and that the time of so doing would be at his own convenience.

"We'll begin this very evening," said Rivington, himself interested, like
a good fellow. "Dine with me at seven, and then Til steer you up against
metropolitan phases so thick youll have to have a kinetoscope to record
'em."

So I dined with Rivington pleasantly at his club, in Forty-eleventh
Street, and then we set forth in pursuit of the elusive tincture of affairs.

1210 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

As we came out of the club there stood two men on the sidewalk near
the steps in earnest conversation.

"And by what process o£ ratiocination," said one of them, "do you
arrive at the conclusion that the division of society into producing and
non-possessing classes predicates failure when compared with competitive
systems that are monopolizing in tendency and result inimically to in-
dustrial evolution?"

"Oh, come off your perch!" said the other man, who wore glasses.
"Your premises won't come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who
apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms and logical
conclusions skally-bootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't pull my
leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx and Hynd-
rnan and Kautsky — what are they? — shines! Tolstoi? — his garret is full
ofe rats. I put it to you over the horne-plate that the idea of a cooperative
commonwealth and an abolishment of competitive systems simply takes
the rag off the bush and gives me hyperesthesia of the roopteetoop! The
skookum house for yours!"

I stopped a few yards away and took out my little notebook.

"Oh, come ahead/5 said Rivington, somewhat nervously; "you don't
want to listen to that."

"Why, man," I whispered, "this is just what I do want to hear. These
slang types are among your city's most distinguishing features. Is this the
Bowery variety? I really must hear more of it."

"If I follow you," said the man who had spoken first, "you do not be-
lieve it possible to reorganize society on the basis of common interest?"

"Shinny on your own side!" said the man with glasses. "You never
heard any such music from my foghorn. What I said was that I did not
believe it practicable just now. The guys with wards are not in the frame
of mind to slack upon the mazuma, and the man with the portable tin
banqueting canister isn't exactly ready to join the Bible class. You can bet
your variegated socks that the situation is all spiflicated up from the
Battery to breakfast! What the country needs is for some bully old bloke
like Cobdea or some wise guy like old Ben Franklin to sashay up to the
front and biff the nigger's head with the baseball. Do you catch my
smoke? What?"

Rivington pulled rne by the arm impatiently.

"Please come on," he said. "Let's go see something. This isn't what you
want."

"Indeed, it is," I said resisting. "This tough talk is the very stuff that
counts. There is a picturesqueness about the speech of the lower order of
people that is quite unique. Did you say that this is the Bowery variety
of slang?"

"Oh, well," said Rivington, giving it up, "I'll tell you straight. That's
one of our college professors talking. He ran down for a day or two

A LITTLE LOCAL COLOR I2II

at the club. It's a sort of fad with him lately to use slang in his con-
versation. He thinks it improves language. The man he is talking to is one
of New York's famous social economists. Now will you come on? You
can't use that, you know."

"No," I agreed; "I can't use that. Would you call that typical of New
York?"

"Of course not," said Rivington, with a sigh of relief. "I'm glad you see
the difference. But if you want to hear the real old tough Bowery slang
I'll take you down where you'll get your fill of it."

"I would like it," I said; "That is, if it's the real thing. I've often read
it in books, but I never heard it. Do you think it will be dangerous to go
unprotected among those characters?"

"Oh, no," said Rivington; "not at this time of night. To tell the truth,
I haven't been along the Bowery in a long time, but I know it as well as
I do Broadway. We'll look up some of the typical Bowery boys and get
them to talk. It'll be worth your while. They talk a peculiar dialect that
you won't hear anywhere else on earth."

Rivington and I went east in a Forty-second Street car and then south
on the Third Avenue line.

At Houston Street we got off and walked.

"We are now on the famous Bowery/* said Rivington; "the Bowery
celebrated in song and story."

We passed block after block of "gents" furnishing stores— the windows
full of shirts with prices attached and cuffs inside. In other windows were
neckties and no shirts. People walked up and down the sidewalks.

"In some ways," said I, "this reminds me of Kokomono, Iad.3 during
the peach-crating season."

Rivington was nettled,

"Step into one of these saloons or vaudeville shows/' said he, "with a
large roll of money, and see how quickly the Bowerry will sustain its
reputation,"

"You make impossible conditions," said I, coldly.

By and by Rivington stopped and said we were in the heart o£ the
Bowery. There was a policeman on the corner whom Rivington knew.

"Hallo, Donahue!" said my guide. "How goes it? My friend and I are
down this way looking up a bit of local color. He's anxious to meet one
of the Bowery types. Can't you put us on to something genuine in that
line — something that's got the color, you know?"

Policeman Donahue urned himself about ponderously, his florid face
full of good-nature. He pointed with his club down the street.

"Sure!" he said, huskily, "Here comes a lad now that was born on
the Bowery and knows every inch of it If he's ever been above Bleecker
Street he's kept it to himself."

A man about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, with a smooth face, was

1212 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

sauntering toward us with his hands in his coat pockets. Policeman
Donahue stopped him with a courteous wave of his cluh.

"Evening, Kerry/' he said. "Here's a couple of gents, friends of mine,
that want to hear you spiel something about the Bowery. Can you reel
'em off a few yards ? "

"Certainly, Donahue," said the young man, pleasantly. "Good eve-
ning, gentlemen/' he said to us, with a pleasant smile. Donahue walked
off on his beat

"This is the goods/' whispered Rivington, nudging me with his elbow.
"Look at his jaw!

"Say> cull/* said Rivingtoo, pushing back his hat, "wot's doin*? Me and
my friend's taking a look down de old line— see? De copper tipped us
off dat you was wise to de Bowery. Is dat right ? "

I could not help admiring Rivington's power of adapting himself to
his surroundings*

"Donahue was right/* said the young man, frankly; "I was brought up
on the Bowery. I have been newsboy, teamster, pugilist, member of an
organized band of 'toughs/ bartender, and a *sportj in various meanings
of the word. The experience certainly warrants the supposition that I have
at least a passing acquaintance with a few phases of Bowery life. I will be
pleased to place whatever knowledge and experience I have at the service
of my friend Donahue's friends,"

Rivington seemed ill at ease.

"I say," he said— somewhat entreatingly, "I thought— you're not string-
ing us> are you? It isn't just the kind of talk we expected. You haven't
even said "Hully gee!r once. Do you really belong on the Bowery?"

"I am afraid," said the Bowery boy, smilingly, "that at some time you
have been enticed into one of the dives of literature and had the counter-
feit coin of the Bowery passed upon you. The 'argot' to which you doubt-
less refer was the invention of certain of your literary 'discoverers' who
invaded the unknown wilds below Third Avenue and put strange sounds
into the mouths of the inhabitants. Safe in their homes far to the north
and west, the credulous readers who were beguiled by this new 'dialect'
perused and believed. Like Marco Polo and Mungo Park — pioneers in-
deed, but ambitious souls who could not draw the line of demarcation
between discovery and invention — the literary bones of these explorers
are dotting the trackless wastes of the subway. While it is true that after
the publication of the mythical language attributed to the dwellers along
the Bowery certain of its pat phrases and apt metaphors were adopted and,
to a limited extent, used in this locality, it was because our people are
prompt in assimilating whatever is to their commercial advantage. To the
tourists who visited our newly discovered clime, and who expressed a
realization of their literary guide books, they supplied the demands of the
market.

GEORGIA'S RULING 1213

"But perhaps I am wandering from the question. In what way can I
assist you, gentlemen? I beg you will believe that the hospitality of the
streets is extended to all There are, I regret to say, many catch-penny
places of entertainment, but I cannot conceive that they would entice you."

I felt Rivington lean somewhat heavily against me.

"Say!" he remarked, with uncertain utterance; "come and have a drink
with us."

"Thank you, but I never drink. I find that alcohol, even in the smallest
quantities, alters the perspective. And I must preserve my perspective,
for I am studying the Bowery. I have lived in it nearly thirty years, and
I am just beginning to understand its heartbeats. It is like a great river
fed by a hundred alien streams. Each influx brings strange seeds on its
flood, strange silt and weeds, and now and then a flower of rare promise.
To construe this river requires a man who can build dykes against the
overflow, who is a naturalist, a geologist, a humanitarian, a diver, and a
strong swimmer. I love my Bowery. It was my cradle and is my inspira-
tion. I have published one book. The critics have been kind. I put my
heart in it. I am writing another, into which I hope to put both heart
and brain* Consider me your guide, gentlemen. Is there anything I can
take you to see, any place to which I can conduct you?"

I was afraid to look at Rivington except with one eye.

"Thanks," said Rivington. "We were looking up ... that is * . . my
friend . , . confound it; it's against all precedent, you know . . . awfully
obliged . . . just the same.'*

"In case," said our friend, "you would like to meet some of our Bowery
young men I would be pleased to have you visit the quarters of our East
Side Kappa Delta Phi Society, only two blocks east of here."

"Awfully sorry," said Rivington, "but my friend's got me on the jump
to-night* He's a terror when he's out after local color. Now, there's noth-
ing I would like better than to drop in at the Kappa Delta Phi, but— some
other time!"

We said our farewells and boarded a home-bound car. We had a rabbit
on upper Broadway, and then I parted with Rivington on a street corner.

"Well, anyhow," said he, braced and recovered, "it couldn't have hap-
pened anywhere but in litde old New York."

Which, to say the least, was typical of Rivington.

GEORGIA S RULING

If you should chance to visit the General Land Office, step into the
draughtsmen's room and ask to be shown the map of Salado County.
A leisurely German— possibly old Kampf er himself— will bring it to you.

1214 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

It will be four feet square, on heavy drawing-cloth. The lettering and the
figures will be beautifully clear and distinct. The title will be in splendid,
undecipherable German text, ornamented with classic Teutonic designs-
very likely Ceres or Pomona leaning against the initial letters with
cornucopias venting grapes and weiners. You must tell him that this is
not the map you wish to see; that he will kindly bring you its official
predecessor. He will then say, "Ach, so!" and bring out a map half the
size of the first, dim, old, tattered, and faded.

By looking carefully near its northwest corner you will presently come
upon the worn contours of Chiquito River, and, maybe, if your eyes are
good, discern the silent witness to this story.

The Commissioner of the Land Office was of the old style; his antique
courtesy was too formal for his day. He dressed in fine black, and there
was a suggestion of Roman drapery in his long coat-skirts. His collars
were "undetached" (blame haberdashery for the word); his tie was a
narrow, funereal strip, tied in the same knot as were his shoe-strings.
His gray hair was a trifle too long behind, but he kept it smooth and
orderly. His face was clean-shaven, like the old statesmen's. Most people
thought it a stern face, but when its official expression was off, a few
had seen altogether a different countenance. Especially tender and g^tle
it had appeared to those who were about him during the last illness of
his only child.

The Commissioner had been a widower for years, and his life, outside
his official duties, had been so devoted to little Georgia that people spoke
of it as a touching and admirable thing. He was a reserved man, and
dignified almost to austerity, but the child had come below it all and
rested upon his very heart, so that she scarcely missed the mother's love
that had been taken away. There was a wonderful companionship
between them, for she had many of his own ways, being thoughtful and
serious beyond her years.

One day, while she was lying with the fever burning brightly in her
cheeks, she said suddenly:

"Papa, I wish I could do something good for a whole lot of children!"

"What would you like to do, dear?" asked the Commissioner. "Give
them a party?"

"Oh, I don't mean those kind. I mean poor children who haven't homes,
and aren't loved and cared for as I am. I tell you what, Papa!"

"What, my own child?"

"If I shouldn't get well, 111 leave them you — not give you, but just
lend you, for you must come to mamma and me when you die too. If
you can find time, wouldn't you do something to help them, if I ask
you, Papa?"

"Hush, hush dear, dear child," said the Commissioner, holding her hot

GEORGIA'S RULING 1215

little hand against his cheek; "you'll get well real soon, and you and I will
see what we can do for them together."

But in whatsoever paths of benevolence, thus vaguely premeditated,
the Commissioner might tread, he was not to have the company of his
beloved. That night the little frail body grew suddenly too tired to
struggle further, and Georgia's exit was made from the great stage when
she had scarcely begun to speak her little piece before the footlights.
But there must be a stage manager who understands. She had given the
cue to the one who was to speak after her.

A week after she was laid away, the Commissioner reappeared at the
office, a little more courteous, a litde paler and sterner, with the black
frock-coat hanging a little more loosely from his tall figure.

His desk was piled with work that had accumulated during the four
heart-breaking weeks of his absence. His chief clerk had done what he
could, but there were questions of law, of fine judicial decisions to be
made concerning the issue of patents, the marketing and leasing of
school lands, the classification into grazing, agricultural, watered, and
timbered, of new tracts to be opened to settlers.

The Commissioner went to work silently and obstinately, putting back
his grief as far as possible, forcing his mind to attack the complicated
and important business of his office. On the second day after his return
he called the porter, pointed to a leather-covered chair that stood near
his own, and ordered it removed to a lumber-room at the top of the
building. In that chair Georgia would always sit when she came to the
office for him of afternoons.

As time passed, the Commissioner seemed to grow more silent, solitary,
and reserved. A new phase of mind developed in him. He could not
endure the presence of a child. Often when a clattering youngster belong-
ing to one of the clerks would come chattering into the big business-room
adjoining his little apartment, the Commissioner would steal softly and
close the door. He would always cross the street to avoid meeting the
school-children when they came dancing along in happy groups upon
the side-walk, and his firm mouth would close into a mere line.

It was nearly three months after the rains had washed the last dead
flower-petals from the mound above litde Georgia when the "land-
shark" firm of Hamlin and Avery filed papers upon what they considered
the "fattest" vacancy of the year.

It should not be supposed that all who were termed "land-sharks" de-
served the name. Many of them were reputable men of good business
character. Some of them could walk into the most august councils of the
state and say: "Gentlemen, we would like to have this, and that, and
matters go thus." But, next to a three years' drought and the boll-worm,
the Actual Settler hated the land-shark. The land-shark haunted the
Land Office, where all the land records were kept, and hunted "vacancies"

I2l6 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

—that is, tracts of unappropriated public domain, generally invisible
upon the official maps, but actually existing "upon the ground/' The law
entitled any one possessing certain State scrip to file by virtue of same
upon any land not previously legally appropriated. Most of the scrip
was now in the hands of the land-sharks. Thus, at the cost of a few
hundred dollars, they often secured lands worth as many thousands.
Naturally, the search for "vacancies" was lively.

But often— very often— the land they thus secured, though legally
"unappropriated," would be occupied by happy and contented settlers,
who had labored for years to build up their homes, only to discover that
their titles were worthless, and to receive peremptory notice to quit.
Thus came about the bitter and not unjustifiable hatred felt by the toiling
settlers toward the shrewd and seldom merciful speculators who so often
turned them forth destitute and homeless from their fruitless labors. The
history of the state teems with their antagonism. Mr. Land-shark seldom
showed his face on "locations" from which he should have to eject the
unfortunate victims of a monstrously tangled land system, but let his
emissaries do the work. There was lead in every cabin, moulded into
balls for him; many of his brothers had enriched the grass with their
blood. The fault of it all lay far back.

When the state was young, she felt the need of attracting newcomers,
and of rewarding those pioneers already within her borders. Year after
year she issued land scrip — Headrights, Bounties, Veteran Donations,
Confederates; and to railroads, irrigation companies, colonies, and tillers
of the soil galore. All required of the grantee was that he or it should
have the scrip properly surveyed upon the public domain by the county'
or district surveyor, and the land thus appropriated became the property
of him or it, or his or its heirs and assigns, forever.

In those days — and here is where the trouble began — the state's domain
was practically inexhaustible, and the old surveyors, with princely — yes,
even Western American — liberality, gave good measure and overflowing.
Often the jovial man of metes and bounds would dispense altogether
with the tripod and chain. Mounted on a pony that could cover something
near a "vara" at a step, with a pocket compass to direct his course, he
would trot out a survey by counting the beat of his pony's hoofs, mark
his corners, and write out his field notes with the complacency produced
by an act of duty well performed. Sometimes— and who could blame the
surveyor?— when the pony was "feeling his oats," he might step a little
higher and farther, and in that case the beneficiary of the scrip might get
a thousand or two more acres in his survey than the scrip called for. But
look at the boundless leagues the state had to spare! However, no one
ever had to complain of the pony under-stepping. Nearly every old survey
in the state contained an excess of land.

In later years, when the state became more populous, and land values

GEORGIA'S RULING 1217

increased, this careless work entailed incalculable trouble, endless litiga-
tion, a period of riotous land-grabbing, and no little bloodshed. The
land-sharks voraciously attack these excesses in the old surveys, and filed
upon such portions with new scrip as unappropriated public domain.
Wherever the identifications of the old tracts were vague, and the corners
were not to be clearly established, the Land Office would recognize the
newer locations as valid, and issue title to the locators. Here was the
greatest hardship to be found. These old surveys, taken from the pick
of the land, were already nearly all occupied by unsuspecting and peace-
ful settlers, and thus their tides were demolished, and the choice was
placed before them either to buy their land over at a double price or to
vacate it, with their families and personal belongings, immediately. Land
locators sprang up by hundreds. The country was held up and searched
for "vacancies" at the point of a compass. Hundreds of thousands of
dollars' worth of splendid acres were wrested from their innocent pur-
chasers and holders. There began a vast hegira of evicted settlers in tat-
tered wagons; going nowhere cursing injustice, stunned, purposeless,
homeless, hopeless. Their children began to look up to them for bread,
and cry.

It was in consequence of these conditions that Hamlin and Avery had
filed upon a strip of land about a mile wide and three miles long, com-
prising about two thousand acres, it being the excess over complement
of the Elias Denny three-league survey on Chiquito River, in one of the
middle-western counties. This two-thousand-acre body of land was as-
serted by them to be vacant land, and improperly considered a part of
the Denny survey. They based this assertion and their claim upon the
land upon the demonstrated facts that the beginning corner of the Denny
survey was plainly identified; that its field notes called to run west 5,760
varas, and then called for Chiquito River; thence it ran south, with the
meanders — and so on — and that the Chiquito River was, on the ground,
fully a mile farther west from the point reached by course and distance.
To sum up: there were two thousand acres of vacant land between the
Denny survey proper and Chiquito River.

One sweltering day in July the Commissioner called for the papers in
connection with this new location. They were brought, and heaped, a
foot deep, upon his desk— field notes, statements, sketches, affidavits, con-
necting lines — documents of every description that shrewdness and money
could call to the aid of Hamlin and Avery.

The firm was pressing the Commissioner to issue a patent upon their
location. They possessed inside information concerning a new railroad
that would probably pass somewhere near this land.

The, General Land Office was very still while the Commissioner was
delving into the heart of the mass of evidence. The pigeons could be

I2l8 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

heard on the roof of the old, castle-like building, cooing and fretting.
The clerks were droning everywhere, scarcely pretending to earn their
salaries. Each little sound echoed hollow and loud from the bare, stone-
flagged floors, the plastered walls, and the iron-joisted ceiling. The im-
palpable, perpetual limestone dust that never settled whitened a long
streamer of sunlight that pierced the tattered window-awning.

It seemed that Hamlin and Avery had builded well. The Denny survey
was carelessly made, even for a careless period. Its beginning corner was
identical with that of a well-defined old Spanish grant, but its other calls
were sinfully vague. The field notes contained no other object that sur-
vived—no tree, no natural object save Chiquito River, and it was a mile
wrong there. According to precedent, the Office would be justified in
giving in its complement by course and distance, and considering the
remainder vacant instead o£ a mere excess.

The Actual Settler was besieging the office with wild protests in re.
Having the nose of a pointer and the eye of a hawk for the land-
shark, he had observed his myrmidons running the lines upon his ground.
Making inquiries, he learned that the spoiler had attacked his home, and
he left the plow in the furrow and took his pen in hand.

One of the protests the Commissioner read twice. It was from a woman,
a widow, the granddaughter of Elias Denny himself. She told how her
grandfather had sold most of the survey years before at a trivial price-
land that was now a principality in extent and value. Her mother had
also sold a part, and she herself had succeeded to this western portion,
along Chiquito River. Much of it she had been forced to part with in
order to live, and now she owned only about three hundred acres, on
which she had her home. Her letter wound up rather pathetically :

'Tve got eight children, the oldest fifteen years. I work all day and half
the night to till what little land I can and keep us in clothes and books.
I teach my children too. My neighbors is all poor and has big families.
The drought kills the crops every two or three years and then we has
hard times to get enough to eat. There is ten families on this land what
the land-sharks is trying to rob us of, and all of them got titles from me.
I sold to them cheap, and they ain't paid out yet, but part of them is,
and if their land should be took from them I would die. My grandfather
was an honest man, and he helped to build up this state, and he taught
his children to be honest, and how could I make it up to them who
bought from me? Mr. Commissioner, if you let them land-sharks take
the roof from over my children and the little from them as they has to
live on, whoever again calls this state great or its government just will
have a lie in their mouths."

The Commissioner laid this letter aside with a sigh. Many, many such
letters he had received. He had never been hurt by them, nor had he ever-
felt that they appealed to him personally. He was but the state's servant,

GEORGIA'S RULING 1219

and must follow its laws. And yet, somehow, this reflection did not always
eliminate a certain responsible feeling that hung upon him. Of all the
state's officers he was supremest in his department, not even excepting
the Governor. Broad, general land laws he followed, it was true, but he
had a wide latitude in particular ramifications. Rather than law, what he
followed was Rulings: Office Rulings and precedents. In the complicated
and new questions that were being engendered by the state's develop-
ment the Commissioner's ruling was rarely appealed from. Even the
courts sustained it when its equity was apparent.

The Commissioner stepped to the door and spoke to a clerk in the
other room— spoke as he always did, as if he were addressing a prince
of the blood:

"Mr. Weldon, will you be kind enough to ask Mr. Ashe, the state
school-land appraiser, to please come to my office as soon as convenient?"

Ashe came quickly from the big table where he was arranging his
reports,

"Mr. Ashe/5 said the Commissioner, "you worked along the Chiquito
River, in Salado County, during your last trip, I believe. Do you remem-
ber anything of the Elias Denny three-league survey?"

"Yes, sir, I do," the blunt, breezy surveyor answered. "I crossed it on
my way back to Block H, on the north side of it The road runs with the
Chiquito River, along the valley. The Denny survey fronts three miles on
the Chiquito.'*

"It is claimed," continued the Commissioner, "that it fails to reach the
river by as much as a mile."

The appraiser shrugged his shoulder. He was by birth and instinct an
Actual Setder, and the natural foe of the land-shark.

"It has always been considered to extend to the river," he said, dryly.

"But that is not the point I desired to discuss," said the Commissioner.
"What kind of country is this valley portion of (let us say, then) the
Denny tract?"

The spirit of the Actual Setder beamed in Ashe's face.

"Beautiful," he said, with enthusiasm. "Valley as level as this floor,
with just a little swell on, like the sea, and rich as cream. Just enough,
brakes to shelter the cattle in winter. Black loamy soil for six feet, and
then clay. Holds water. A dozen nice little houses on it, with windmills
and gardens. People pretty poor, I guess — too far from market— but com-
fortable. Never saw so many kids in my life."

"They raise flocks?" inquired the Commissioner.

"Ho, hoi I mean two-legged kids," laughed the surveyor; "two-legged,
and bare-legged, and tow-headed."

"Children! oh, children!1" mused the Commissioner, as though a new
view had opened to him; "they raise children!"

I22O BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

"It's a lonesome country, Commissioner/' said the surveyor. "Can you
blame 'em?"

UI suppose," continued the Commissioner, slowly, as one carefully
pursues deductions from a new, stupendous theory, "not all of them are
tow-headed. It would not be unreasonable, Mr. Ashe, I conjecture, to
believe that a portion of them have brown, or even black, hair."

"Brown and black sure," said Ashe; "also red,"

"No doubt," said the Commissioner. "Well, I thank you for your
courtesy in informing me, Mr. Ashe. I will not detain you any longer
from your dudes.'1

Later, in the afternoon, came Hamlin and Avery, big, handsome, genial,
sauntering men, clothed in white duck and low-cut shoes. They permeated
the whole office with an aura of debonair prosperity. They passed
among the clerks and left a wake o£ abbreviated given names and fat
brown cigars.

These were the aristocracy of the land-sharks, who went in for big
things. Full of serene confidence in themselves, there was no corpora-
tion, no syndicate, no railroad company or attorney general too big for
them to tackle. The peculiar smoke of their rare, fat brown cigars was
to be perceived in the sanctum of every department of state, in every
committee-room of the Legislature, in every bank parlor and every private
caucus-room in the state capital. Always pleasant, never in a hurry, seem-
ing to possess unlimited leisure, people wondered when they gave their
attention to the many audacious enterprises in which they were known
to be engaged.

By and by the two dropped carelessly into the Commissioner's room
and reclined lazily in the big, leather-upholstered arm-chairs. They
drawled a good-natured complaint of the weather, and Hamlin told the
Commissioner an excellent story he had amassed that morning from the
Secretary of State.

But the Commissioner knew why they were there. He had half
promised to render a decision that day upon their location.

The chief clerk now brought in a batch of duplicate certificates for
the Commissioner to sign. As he traced his sprawling signature, "Hollis
Summerfield, Comr. Genl. Land Office," on each one, the chief clerk
stood, deftly removing them and applying the blotter.

"I notice,'* said the chief clerk, "you've been going through that Salado
County location. Kampfer is making a new map of Salado, and I believe
is platting in that section of the county now.**

"I will see it," said the Commissioner. A few moments later he went
to the draughtsmen's room.

As he entered he saw five or six of the draughtsmen grouped about
Kampfer's desk, gargling away at each other in pectoral German, and
gazing at something thereupon. At the Commissioner's approach they

GEORGIA'S RULING 1221

scattered to their several places. Kampfer, a wizened little German, with
long> frizzled ringlets and a watery eye, began to stammer forth some
sort of an apology, the Commissioner thought,, for the congregation of
his fellows about his desk.

"Never mind," said the Commissioner, "I wish to see the map you are
making"; and, passing around the old German, seated himself upon the
high draughtsman's stool. Kampfer continued to break English in trying
to explain.

"Herr Commissioner, I assure you blenty sat I haf not it bremedi-
tated— sat it wass— sat it itself make. Look you! from se field notes wass
it blatted— blease to observe se calls: South, 10 degrees west 1,050 varas;
soudi, 10 degrees each 300 varas; south, 100; south, 9 west, 200; south, 40
degrees west, 400— and so on. Herr Commissioner, nefer would I
have "

The Commissioner raised one white hand, silendy. Kampfer dropped
his pipe and fled.

With a hand at each side of his face, and his elbows resting upon the
desk, the Commissioner sat staring at the map which was spread and
fastened there — staring at the sweet and living profile of little Georgia
drawn thereupon— at her face, pensive, delicate, and infantile, outlined
in a perfect likeness.

When his mind at length came to inquire into the reason of it, he saw
that it must have been, as Kampfer had said, unpremeditated. The old
draughtsman had been platting in the Elias Denny survey, and Georgia's
likeness, striking though it was, was formed by nothing more than the
meanders of Chiquito River. Indeed, Kampfer's blotter, whereon his
preliminary work was done, showed the laborious tracings of the calls
and the countless pricks of the compasses. Then, over his faint penciling,
Kampfer had drawn in India ink with a full, firm pen the similitude of
Chiquito River, and forth had blossomed mysteriously the dainty, pathetic
profile of the child.

The Commissioner sat for half an hour with his face in his hands,
gazing downward, and none dared approach him. Then he arose and
walked out. In the business office he paused long enough to ask that the
Denny file be brought to his desk.

He found Hamlin and Avery still reclining in their chairs, apparently
oblivious of business. They were lazily discussing summer opera, it being
their habit — perhaps their pride also — to appear supernaturally indifferent
whenever they stood with large interests imperilled. And they stood to
win more on this stake than most people knew. They possessed inside
information to the effect that a new railroad would, within a year, split
this very Chiquito River valley and send land values ballooning all along
its route. A dollar under thirty thousand profit on this location, if it
should hold good, would be a loss to their expectations. So, while they

1222 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

chatted lightly and waited for the Commissioner to open the subject,
there was a quick, side-long sparkle in their eyes, evincing a desire to
read their tide clear to those fair acres on the Chiquito.

A clerk brought in the file. The Commissioner seated himself and
wrote upon it in red ink. Then he rose to his feet and stood for a while
looking straight out of the window. The Land Office capped the sum-
mit of a bold hill. The eyes o£ the Commissioner passed over the roofs
of many houses set in a packing of deep green, the whole checkered
by strips of blinding white streets. The horizon, where his gaze was
focussed, swelled to a fair wooded eminence flecked with faint dots of
shining white. There was a cemetery, where lay many who were for-
gotten, and a few who had not lived in vain. And one lay there occupying
very small space, whose childish heart had been large enough to desire,
while near its last beats, good to others. The Commissioner's lips moved
slightly as he whispered to himself: "It was her last will and testament,
and I have neglected it so long!"

The big brown cigars of Hamlin and Avery were fireless, but they still
gripped them between their teeth and waited, while they marvelled at
the absent expression upon the Commissioner's face.

By and by he spoke suddenly and promptly.

"Gentlemen, I have just endorsed the Elias Denny survey for patent-
ing. This office will not regard your location upon a part of it as legal."
He paused a moment, and then, extending his hand as those dear old-
time ones used to do in debate, he enunciated the spirit of that Ruling
that subsequently drove the land-sharks to the wall, and placed the seal
of peace and security over the doors of ten thousand homes.

"And, furthermore/' he continued, with a clear, soft light upon his
face, "it may interest you to know that from this time on this office will
consider that when a survey of land made by virtue of a certificate granted
by this state to the men who wrested it from the wilderness and the
savage — made in good faith, settled in good faith, and left in good faith
to their children or innocent purchasers — when such a survey, although
overrunning its complement, shall call for any natural object visible to
the eye of man, to that object it shall hold and be good and valid. And
the children of this state shall lie down to sleep at night, and rumors of
disturbers of title shall not disquiet them. For/' concluded the Commis-
sioner, "of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

In the silence that followed, a laugh floated up from the patent-room
below. The man who carried down the Denny file was exhibiting it
among the clerks.

"Look here," he said, delightedly, "the old man has forgotten his name.
He's written 'Patent to original grantee,' and signed it 'Georgia Summer-
field, Comr.'"

The speech of the Commissioner rebounded lightly from the impreg-

BLIND MAN*S HOLIDAY I22J

nable Hamlin and Avery. They smiled, rose gracefully, spoke o£ the
baseball team, and argued feelingly that quite a perceptible breeze had
arisen from the east. They lit fresh fat brown cigars, and drifted cour-
teously away. But later they made another tiger-spring for their quarry
in the courts. But the courts, according to reports in the papers, "coolly
roasted them" (a remarkable performance, suggestive of liquid-air di-
does), and sustained the Commissioner's Ruling.

And this Ruling itself grew to be a Precedent, and the Actual Settler
framed it, and taught his children to spell from it, and there was sound
sleep o' nights from the pines to the sage-brush, and from the chaparral
to the great brown river of the north.

But I think, and I am sure the Commissioner never thought other-
wise, that whether Kampfer was a snuffy old instrument of destiny, or
whether the meanders of the Chiquito accidently platted themselves into
that memorable sweet profile or not, there was brought about "something
good for a whole lot of children," and the result ought to be called
"Georgia's Ruling."

BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY

Alas for the man and for the artist with the shifting point of perspective!
Life shall be a confusion of ways to the one; the landscape shall rise up
and confound the other. Take the case of Lorison. At one time he
appeared to himself to be the feeblest of fools; at another he conceived
that he followed ideals so fine that the world was not yet ready to accept
them. During one mood he cursed his folly; possessed by the other, he
bore himself with a serene grandeur akin to greatness: in neither did he
attain the perspective.

Generations before, the name had been "Larsen." His race had be-
queathed him its fine-strung, melancholy temperament, its saving balance
of thrift and industry.

From his point of perspective he saw himself an outcast from society,
forever to be a shady skulker along the ragged edge of respectability; a
denizen Acs trots-quarts de monde, that pathetic spheroid lying between
the haut and the demif whose inhabitants envy each of their neighbors,
and are scorned by both. He was self-condemned to this opinion, as^he
was self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern city a thousand miles
from his former home. Here he had dwelt for longer than a year, know-
ing but few, keeping in a subjective world of shadows which was invaded
at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring realities. Then he fell in love
with a girl whom he met in a cheap restaurant, and his story begins.

The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, is a street of ghosts. It lies in the

1224 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

quarter where the Frenchman, in his prime, set up his translated pride
and glory; where, also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed of
gold and grants and ladies1 gloves. Every flagstone has its grooves worn
by footsteps going royally to the wooing and the fighting. Every house
has a princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of gallant promise

and slow decay. 1-11

By night the Rue Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the
groping wayfarer sees, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of Moor-
ish iron balconies. The old houses of monsieur stand yet, indomitable
against the century, but their essence is gone. The street is one of ghosts
to whosoever can see them.

A faint heartbeat of the street's ancient glory still survives in a corner
occupied by the Cafe Carabine d'Or. Once men gathered there to plot
against kings, and to warn presidents. They do so yet, but they are not
the same kind of men. A brass button will scatter these; those would
have set their faces against an army. Above the door hangs the sign board,
upon which has been depicted a vast animal of unfamiliar species. In the
act of firing upon this monster is represented an unobtrusive human
leveling an obtrusive gun, once the color of bright gold. Now the legend
above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun's relation to the
title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim
of the hunter, has resolved itself into a shapeless blot.

The place is known as "Antonio's," as the name, white upon the red-
lit transparency, and gilt upon the windows, attests. There is a promise
in "Antonio"; a justifiable expectancy of savory things in oil and pepper
and wine, and perhaps an angel's whisper of garlic. But the rest of the
name is "O'Riley." Antonio O'Riley!

The Carabine d'Or is an ignominious ghost of the Rue Chartres. The
Cafe where Bienville and Conti dined, where a prince has broken bread,
is become a "family ristaurant"

Its customers are working men and women, almost to a unit. Occa-
sionally you will see chorus girls from the cheaper theatres, and men who
follow avocations subject to quick vicissitudes; but at Antonio's — name
rich in Bohemian promise, but tame in fulfillment— manners debonair
and gay are toned down to the "family" standard. Should you light a
cigarette, mine host will touch you on the "arrum" and remind you that
the proprieties are menaced. "Antonio" entices and beguiles from fiery
legend without, but "O'Riley" teaches decorum within.

It was at this restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy fellow
with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to take the
other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison slipped into
the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, and grew, and now for
two months they had sat at the same table each evening, not meeting by
appointment, but as if by a series of fortuitous and happy accidents. After

BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY 1225

dining, they would take a walk together in one of the little city parks,
or among the panoramic markets where exhibits a continuous vaudeville
of sights and sounds. Always at eight o'clock their steps led them to a
certain street corner, where she prettily but firmly bade him good-night
and left him. "I do not live far from here," she frequently said, "and you
must let me go the rest of the way alone."

But now Lorison had discovered that he wanted to go the rest of the
way with her, or happiness would depart, leaving him on a very lonely
corner of life. And at the same time that he made the discovery, the
secret of his banishment from the society of the good laid its ringer in his
face and told him it must not be.

Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love,
the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through
stress of expediency and honor, but it shall bubble from his dying lips,
though it disrupt a neighborhood. It is known, however, that most men
do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of Lorison, his
particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his sentiments, but he
must needs dally with the subject, and woo by innuendo at least.

On this night, after the usual meal at the Carabine d'Or, he strolled
with his companion down the dim old street toward the river.

The Rue Chartres perishes in the old Place d'Armes. The ancient
Cabildo, where Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the Cathedral,
another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its centre is a little, iron-railed
park of flowers and immaculate gravelled walks, where citizens take the
air of evenings. Pedestalled high above it? the General sits his cavorting
steed, with his face turned stonily down the river toward English Turn,
whence come no more Britons to bombard his cotton bales.

Often the two sat in this square, but to-night Lorison guided her past
the stone-stepped gate, and still riverward. As they walked, he smiled to
himself to think that all he knew of her— except that he loved her—was
her name, Norah Greenway, and that she lived with her brother. They
had talked about everything except themselves. Perhaps her reticence
had been caused by his.

They came, at length, upon the levee, and sat upon a great, prostrate
beam. The air was pungent with the dust of commerce. The great river
slipped yellowly past. Across it Algiers lay, a longitudinous black bulk
against a vibrant electric haze sprinkled with exact stars.

The girl was young and of the piquant order. A certain bright melan-
choly pervaded her; she possessed an untarnished, pale prettiness doomed
to please. Her voice, when she spoke, dwarfed her theme. It was the
voice capable of investing little subjects with a large interest. She sat at
ease, bestowing her skirts with the little womanly touch, serene as if the
begrimed pier was a summer garden. Lorison poked the* rotting boards
with his cane.

1226 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

He began by telling her that he was in love with some one to whom
he durst not speak of it. "And why not?n she asked, accepting swiftly
his fatuous presentation of a third person of straw. "My place in the
world," he answered, "is none to ask a woman to share. I am an out-
cast from honest people; I am wrongly accused of one crime, and am,
I believe, guilty of another." .

Thence he plunged into the story of his abdication from society. Ihe
story, pruned of his moral philosophy, deserves no more than the slight-
est touch. It is no new tale, that of the gambler's declension. During one
night's sitting he lost, and then had imperilled a certain amount of his
employer's money, which, by accident, he carried with him. He continued
to lose, to the last wager, and then began to gain, leaving the game win-
ner to a somewhat formidable sum. The same night his employer's safe
was robbed. A search was had; the winnings of Lorison were found in
his room, their total forming an accusative nearness to the sum pur-
loined. He was taken, tried, and, through incomplete evidence, released,
smutched with the sinister devoirs of a disagreeing jury.

"It is not in the unjust accusation," he said to the girl, "that my burden
lies, but in the knowledge that from the moment I staked the first dollar
of the firm's money I was a criminal— no matter whether I lost or won.
You see why it is impossible for me to speak of love to her."

"It is a sad thing," said Norah, after a little pause, "to think what very
good people there are in the world."

"Good?" said Lorison.

"I was thinking of this superior person whom you say you love. She
must be a very poor sort of creature."

"I do not understand."

"Nearly," she continued, "as poor a sort of creature as yourself.**

ccYou do not understand," said Lorisoa, removing his hat and sweeping
back his fine, light hair. "Suppose she loved me in return, and were will-
ing to marry me. Think, if you can, what would follow. Never a day
would pass but she would be reminded of her sacrifice. I would read a
condescension in her smile, a pity even in her affection, that would mad-
den me. No. The thing would stand between us forever. Only equals
should mate. I could never ask her to come down upon my lower plane."

An arc light faintly shone upon Lorison's face. An illumination from
within also pervaded it. The girl saw the rapt, ascetic look; it was the
face either of Sir Galahad or Sir Fool.

"Quite starlike," she said, "is this unapproachable angel. Really too
high to be grasped."

"By me, yes."

She faced him suddenly. "My dear friend, would you prefer your
star fallen?"

Lorison made a Wide gesture. "You push me to the bald fact," he de-

BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY 1227

clared; "you are not 'm sympathy with my argument. But I will answer
you so. If I could reach my particular star, to drag it down, I would not
do it; but i£ it were fallen, I would pick it up, and thank Heaven for the
privilege."

They were silent for some minutes. Norah shivered, and thrust her
hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. Lorison uttered a remorseful
exclamation.

"I'm not cold," she said. "I was just thinking. I ought to tell you some-
thing. You have selected a strange confidante. But you cannot expect
a chance acquaintance, picked up in a doubtful restaurant, to be an
angel."

"Norah," cried Lorison.

"Let me go on. You have told me about yourself. We have been such
good friends. I must tell you now what I never wanted you to know.
I am — worse than you are. I was on the stage ... I sang in the chorus
... I was pretty bad, I guess ... I stole diamonds from the prima
donna . . . they arrested me ... I gave most of them up, and they let
me go ... I drank wine every night ... a great deal ... I was very
wicked, but "

Lorison knelt quickly by her side and took her hands.

"Dear Norah!" he said, exultantly. "It is you, it is you I love! You
never guessed it, did you? Tis you I meant all the time. Now I can
speak. Let me make you forget the past. We have both suffered; let us
shut out the world, and live for each other. Norah, do you hear me say
I love you?"

"In spite of "

"Rather say because of it. You have come out of your past noble and
good. Your heart is an angePs. Give it to me."

"A little while ago you feared the future too much to even speak."

"But for you; not for myself. Can you love me?"

She cast herself, wildly sobbing, upon his breast.

"Better than life— then truth itself— than everything."

"And my own past," said Lorison, with a note of solicitude — "can you
forgive and "

"I answered you that," she whispered, "when I told you I loved you."
She leaned away, and looked thoughtfully at him. "If I had not told you
about myself, would you have — would you "

"No," he interrupted; "I would never have let you know I loved you.
I would never have asked you this— Norah, will you be my wife?"

She wept again.

"Oh, believe me; I am good now—I am no longer wickedl I will be
the best wife in the world. Don't think I am— bad any more. If you do
I shall die, I shall die!"

While he was consoling her, she brightened up eager and impetuous.

1228 ROOK X WHIRLIGIGS

"Will you marry me to-night?" she said. "Will you prove it that way? I
have a reason for wishing it to be to-night. Will you?"

Of one of two things was this exceeding frankness the outcome; either
of importunate brazenness or of utter innocence. The lover's perspective
contained only the one.

"The sooner," said Lorison, "the happier I shall be."

"What is there to do?" she asked. "What do you have to get? Come!
You should know."

Her energy stirred the dreamer to action.

"A city directory first," he cried, gayly, "to find where the man lives
who gives licenses to happiness. We will go together and rout him out.
Cabs, cars, policemen, telephones, and ministers shall aid us."

"Father Rogan shall marry us," said the girl, with ardor. "I will take
you to him."

An hour later the two stood at the open doorway of an immense,
gloomy brick building in a narrow and lonely street. The license was tight
in Norah's hand.

"Wait here a moment/* she said, "till I find Father Rogan/'

She plunged into the black hallway, and the lover was left standing,
as it were, on one leg outside. His impatience was not greatly taxed.
Gazing curiously into what seemed the hallway to Erebus, he was pres-
ently reassured by a stream of light that bisected the darkness, far down
the passage. Then he heard her call, and fluttered lampward, like the
moth. She beckoned him through a doorway into the room whence
emanated the light. The room was bare of nearly everything except books,
which had subjugated all its space. Here and there little spots of territory
had been reconquered. An elderly, bald man, with a superlatively calm,
remote eye, stood by a table with a book in his hand, his finger still
marking a page. His dress was sombre and appertained to a religious
order. His eyes denoted an acquaintance with the perspective.

"Patter Rogan,5' said Norah, "this is he!9

"The two of ye," said Father Rogan, "want to get married?"

They did not deny it. He married them. The ceremony was quickly
done. One who could have witnessed it, and felt its scope, might have
trembled at the terrible inadequacy of it to rise to the dignity of its end-
less chain of results.

Afterward the priest spake briefly, as if by rote, of certain other civil
and legal addenda that either might or should, at a later time, cap the
ceremony. Lorison tendered a fee, which was declined, and before the
door closed after the departing couple Father Regan's book popped open
again where his linger marked it

In the dark hall Norah whirled and clung to her companion, tearful.

"Will you never, never be sorry?*'

BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY 1229

At last she was reassured.

At the first light they reached upon the street, she asked the time, just
as she had each night. Lorison looked at his watch. Half -past eight.

Lorison thought it was from habit that she guided their steps toward
the corner where they always parted. But, arriving there, she hesitated,
and then released his arm, A drug store stood on the corner; its bright,
soft light shone upon them.

"Please leave me here as usual to-night,*' said Norah, sweetly. "I must —
I would rather you would. You will not object? At six to-morrow evening
I will meet you at Antonio's. I want to sit with you there once more. And
then—I will go where you say." She gave him a bewildering, bright smile,
and walked swiftly away.

Surely it needed all the strength of her charm to carry off this astound-
ing behaviour. It was no discredit to Lorison's strength of mind that his
head began to whirl. Pocketing his hands, he rambled vacuously over to
the druggist's windows, and began assiduously to spell over the names of
the patent medicines therein displayed,

As soon as he had recovered his wits, he proceeded along the street in
an aimless fashion. After drifting for two or three squares, he flowed into
a somewhat more pretentious thoroughfare, a way much frequented by
him in his solitary ramblings. For here was a row of shops devoted to
traffic in goods of the widest range of choice— handiworks of art, skill
and fancy products of nature and labor from every zone.

Here, for a time, he loitered among the conspicuous windows, where
was set, emphasized by congested floods of lignt, the cunningest spoil
of the interiors. There were few passers, and of this Lorison was glad.
He was not of the world. For a long time he had touched his fellow man
only at the gear of a levelled cog-wheel — at right angles, and upon a
different axis. He had dropped into a distinctly new orbit. The stroke of
ill fortune had acted upon him, in effect, as a blow delivered upon the
apex of a certain ingenious toy, the musical top, which, when thus
buffeted while spinning, gives forth, with scarcely retarded motion, a
complete change of key and chord.

Strolling along the pacific avenue, he experienced a singular, super-
natural calm, accompanied by an unusual activity of brain. Reflecting
upon recent affairs, he assured himself of his happiness in having won
for a bride the one he had so greatly desired, yet he wondered mildly
at his dearth of active emotion. Her strange behavior in abandoning
him without valid excuse on his bridal eve aroused in him only a vague
and curious speculation. Again, he found himself contemplating, with
complaisant serenity, the incidents of her somewhat lively career. His
perspective seemed to have been queerly shifted.

As he stood before a window near a corner, his ears were assailed by
a waxing clamor and commotion. He stood close to the window to allow

1230 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

passage to the cause of the hubbub — a procession of human beings, which
rounded the corner and headed in his direction. He perceived a salient
hue of blue and a glitter of brass about a central figure of dazzling white
and silver, and a ragged wake of black, bobbing figures.

Two ponderous policemen were conducting between them a woman
dressed as if for the stage, in a short, white, satiny skirt reaching to the
knees, pink stockings, and a sort of sleeveless bodice bright with relucent,
armor-like scales. Upon her curly light hair was perched, at a rollicking
angle, a shining tin helmet. The costume was to be instantly recognized
as one of those amazing conceptions to which competition has harried
the inventors of the spectacular ballet. One of the officers bore a long
cloak upon his arm, which, doubtless, had been intended to veil the
candid attractions of their effulgent prisoner, but, for some reason, it had
not been called into use, to the vociferous delight of the tail of the
procession.

Compelled by a sudden and vigorous movement of the woman, the
parade halted before the window by which Lorison stood. He saw that
she was young, and, at the first glance, was deceived by a sophistical
prettiness of her face, which waned before a more judicious scrutiny. Her
look was bold and reckless, and upon her countenance, where yet the
contours of youth survived, were the fingermarks of old age's credentialed
courier, Late Hours.

The young woman fixed her unshrinking gaze upon Lorison, and
called to him in the voice of the wronged heroine in straits:

"Say! You look like a*good fellow; come and put up the bail, won't
you? I've done nothing to get pinched for. It's all a mistake. See how
they're treating me! You won't be sorry, if you'll help me out of this.
Think of your sister or your girl being dragged along the streets this
way! I say, come along now, like a good fellow."

It may be that Lorison, in spite of the unconvincing bathos of this
appeal, showed a sympathetic face, for one of the officers left the woman's
side, and went over to him.

<elt*s all right, sir," he said, in a husky, confidential tone; "she's the
right party. We took her after the first act at the Green Light Theatre,
on a wire from the chief of police of Chicago. It's only a square or two
to the station. Her rig's pretty bad, but she refused to change clothes —
or, rather," added the officer, with a smile, "to put on some. I thought I'd
explain matters to you so you wouldn't think she was being imposed
upon."

"What is the charge?" asked Lorison.

"Grand larceny. Diamonds. Her husband is a jeweler in Chicago. She
cleaned his show case of the sparklers, and skipped with a comic opera
troupe."

The policeman, perceiving that the interest o£ the entire group of

BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY 123!

spectators was centred upon himself and Lorison — their conference be-
ing regarded as a possible new complication — was fain to prolong the
situation — which reflected his own importance — by a little afterpiece of
philosophical comment.

"A gentleman like you, sir," he went on affably, "would never notice
it, but it comes in my line to observe what an immense amount of trouble
is made by that combination — I mean the stage, diamonds, and light-
headed women who aren't satisfied with good homes. I tell you, sir, a
man these days and nights wants to know what his women folks are
up to."

The policeman smiled a good-night, and returned to the side of his
charge, who had been intently watching Lorison's face during the con-
versation, no doubt for some indication of his intention to render succor.
Now, at the failure of the sign, and at the movement made to continue
the ignominious progress, she abandoned hope, and addressed him thus,
pointedly:

"You damn chalk-faced quitter! You was thinking of giving me a
hand, but you let the cop talk you out of it the first word. YouVe a
dandy to tie to. Say, if you ever get a girl, shell have a picnic. Won't
she work you to the queen's taste! Oh, my!" She concluded with a taunt-
ing, shrill laugh that rasped Lorison like a saw. The policemen urged
her forward; the delighted train of gaping followers closed up the rear;
and the captive Amazon, accepting her fate, extended the scope of her
maledictions so that none in hearing might seem to be slighted.

Then there came upon Lorison an overwhelming revulsion of his per-
spective. It may be that he had been ripe for it, that the abnormal condi-
tion of mind in which he had for so long existed was already about to
revert to its balance; however, it is certain that the events of the last few
minutes had furnished the channel, if not the impetus, for the change.

The initial determining influence had been so small a thing as the fact
and manner of his having been approached by the officer. That agent
had, by the style of his accost, restored the loiterer to his former place in
society. In an instant he had been transformed from a somewhat rancid
prowler along the fishy side streets of gentility into an honest gentleman,
with whom even so lordly a guardian of the peace might agreeably ex-
change the compliments.

This, then, first broke the spell, and set thrilling in him a resurrected
longing for the fellowship of his kind, and the rewards of the virtuous.
To what end, he vehemently asked himself, was this fanciful self-accusa-
tion, this empty renunciation, this moral squeamishness through which
he had been led to abandon what was his heritage in life, and not beyond
his deserts? Technically, he was uncondemned; his sole guilty spot was
in thought rather than deed, and cognizance of it unshared by others.
For what good, moral or sentimental, did he slink, retreating like the

1232 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

hedgehog from his own shadow, to and fro in this musty Bohemia that
lacked even the picturesque?

But the thing that struck home and set him raging was the part played
by the Amazonian prisoner. To the counterpart of that astounding bel-
ligerent—identical, at least, in the way of experience— to one, by her own
confession, thus far fallen, had he, not three hours since, been united in
marriage. How desirable and natural it had seemed to him then, and
how monstrous it seemed now! How the words of diamond thief number
two yet burned in his ears: "If you ever get a girl, she'll have a picnic."
What did that mean but that women instinctly knew him for one they
could hoodwink? Still again there reverberated the policeman's sapient
contribution to his agony: "A man these days and nights wants to know
what his women folks are up to." Oh, yes, he had been a fool; he had
looked at things from the wrong standpoint

But the wildest note in all the clamor was struck by pain's forefinger,
jealousy. Now, at least, he felt that keenest sting— a mounting love un-
worthily bestowed. Whatever she might be, he loved her; he bore in his
own breast his doom. A grating, comic flavor to his predicament struck
him suddenly, and he laughed creakingly as he swung down the echoing
pavement. AJI impetuous desire to act, to batde with his fate, seized him.
He stopped upon his heel, and smote his palms together triumphantly,
His wife was— where? But there was a tangible link; an outlet more or
less navigably through which his derelict ship of matrimony might yet
be safely towed — the priest!

Like all imaginative men with pliable natures, Lorison was, when
thoroughly stirred, apt to become tempestuous. With a high and stubborn
indignation upon him, he retraced his steps to the intersecting street by
which he had come. Down this he hurried to the corner where he had
parted with-— an astringent grimace tinctured the thought— his wife.
Thence still back he harked, following through an unfamiliar district his
stimulated recollections of the way they had come from that preposterous
wedding. Many times he went abroad, and nosed his way back to the
trail, furious.

At last, when he reached the dark, calamitous building in which his
madness had culminated, and found the black hallway, he dashed down
it, perceiving no light or sound. But he raised his voice, hailing loudly;
reckless of everything but that he should find the old mischief-maker
with the eyes that looked too far away to see the disaster he had wrought.
The door opened, and in the stream of light Father Rogan stood, his book
in hand, with his finger marking the place.

"Ah!" cried Lorison. c<You are the man I want, I had a wife of you
a few hours ago. I would not trouble you, but I neglected to note how
it was done. Will you oblige me with the information whether the busi-
ness is beyond remedy?"

BLIND MAN'S HOLIDAY 1233

"Come inside," said the priest; "there are other lodgers in the house,
who might prefer sleep to even a gratified curiosity."

Lorison entered the room and took the chair offered him. The priest's
eyes looked a courteous interrogation.

"I must apologize again," said the young man, "for so soon intruding
upon you with my marital infelicities, but as my wife has neglected to
furnish me with her address, I am deprived of the legitimate recourse of
a family row."

"I am quite a plain man," said father Rogan, pleasantly; "but I do not
see how I am to ask you questions."

"Pardon my indirectness," said Lorison; "I will ask one. In this room
to-night you pronounced me to be a husband. You afterwards spoke of
additional rites or performances that either should or could be effected.
I paid little attention to your words then, but I am hungry to hear them
repeated now. As matters stand, am I married past all help?"

"You are as legally and as firmly bound," said the priest, "as though
it had been done in a cathedral, in the presence of thousands. The addi-
tional observances I referred to are not necessary to the strictest legality
of the act, but were advised as a precaution for the future — for con-
venience of proof in such contingencies as wills, inheritances, and the
like."

Lorison laughed harshly.

"Many thanks," he said. "Then there is no mistake, and I am the happy
benedict. I suppose I should go stand upon the bridal corner, and when
my wife gets through walking the streets she will look me up."

Father Rogan regarded him calmly.

"My son," he said, "when a man and woman come to me to be mar-
ried I always marry them. I do this for the sake of other people whom
they might go away and marry if they did not marry each other. As you
see, I do not seek your confidence; but your case seems to me to be one
not altogether devoid of interest. Very few marriages that have come to
my notice have brought such well-expressed regret within so short a time.
I will hazard one question: were you not under the impression that you
loved the lady you married, at the time you did so?"

"Loved her!" cried Lorison, wildly. "Never so well as now, though she
told me she deceived and sinned and stole. Never more than now, when,
perhaps, she is laughing at the fool she cajoled and left, with scarcely a
word, to return to God only knows what particular line of her former
My."

Father Rogan answered nothing. During the silence that succeeded, he
sat with a quiet expectation beaming in his full, lambent eye.

"If you would listen " began Lorison. The priest held up his hand.

"As I hoped," he said. "I thought you would trust me. Wait but a mo-
ment." He brought a long clay pipe, filled and lighted it.

1234 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

"Now, my son/* he said.

Lorison poured a twelvemonth's accumulated confidence into Father
Rogan's ear. He told all; not sparing himself or omitting the facts of his
past, the events of the night, or his disturbing conjectures and fears.

"The main point," said the priest, when he had concluded, "seems to
me to be this — are you reasonably sure that you love this woman whom
you have married?"

"Why/' exclaimed Lorison, rising impulsively to his feet— "why should
I deny it? But look at me— am I fish, flesh, or fpwl? That is tie main
point to me, I assure you."

"I understand you," said the priest, also rising, and laying down his
pipe. "The situation is one that has taxed the endurance of much older
men than you— in fact, especially much older men than you. I will try
to relieve you from it, and this night You shall see for yourself into ex-
actly what predicament you have fallen, and how you shall, possibly, be
extricated. There is no evidence so credible as that of the eyesight."

Father Rogan moved about the room, and donned a soft black hat. But-
toning his coat to his throat, he laid his hand on the doorknob, "Let us
walk/' he said.

The two went out upon the street. The priest turned his face down it,
and Lorisaa walked with him through a squalid district, where the
houses loomed, awry and desolate-looking, high above them. Presently
they turned into a less dismal side street, where the houses were smaller,
and, though hinting of the most meagre comfort, lacked the concen-
trated wretchedness of the more populous byways.

At a segregated, two-story house Father Rogan halted, and mounted
the steps with the confidence of a familiar visitor. He ushered Lorison
into a narrow hallway, faintly lighted by a cobwebbed hanging lamp. Al-
most immediately a door to the right opened and a dingy Irishwoman
protruded her head.

"Good evening to ye, Mistress Geehan," said the priest, unconsciously,
it seemed, falling into a delicately flavored brogue. "And is it yourself
can tell me if Norah has gone out again, the night, maybe?"

"Oh, it's yer blissid riverence! Sure and I can tell ye the same. The
purty darlin' wint out, as usual, but a bit later. And she says: 'Mother
Geehan,' says she, 'it's me last noight out, praise the saints, this noight
is!' And oh, yer riverence, the swate, beautiful drame of a dress she had
this toime! White satin and silk and ribbons, and lace about the neck and
arrums — 'twas a sin, yer riverence, the gold was spint upon it."

The priest heard Lorison catch his breath painfully and a faint smile
flickered across his own clean-cut mouth.

"Well, then, Mistress Geehan," said he, "I'll just step upstairs and see
the bit boy for a minute^ and I'll take this gentleman up with me,"

"He's awake, thin/' said the woman* "I've just come down from sit-

BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY 1235

ting wid him the last hour, tilling him fine shtories of ould County Ty-
rone. Tis a greedy gossoon, it is, yer riverence, for me shtories,"

"Small the doubt," said Father Rogan. "There's no rocking would put
him to slape the quicker, I'm thinking."

Amid the woman *s shrill protest against the retort, the two men as-
cended the steep stairway. The priest pushed open the door of a room
near its top.

"Is that you already, sister?" drawled a sweet, childish voice from the
darkness.

"It's only ould Father Denny come to see ye, darlin'; and a foine gin-
tleman I've brought to make ye a gr-r-and call. And ye resaves us fast
aslape in bed! Shame on yez manners!"

"Oh, Father Denny, is that you? I'm glad. And will you light the lamp,
please? It's on the table by the door. And quit talking like Mother Gee-
han, Father Denny."

The priest lit the lamp, and Lorison saw a tiny, tousled-haired boy, with
a thin, delicate face, sitting up in a small bed in a corner. Quickly, also,
his rapid glance considered the room and its contents. It was furnished
with more than comfort, and its adornments plainly indicated a woman's
discerning taste. An open door beyond revealed the blackness of an ad-
joining room's interior.

The boy clutched both of Father Rogan's hands. "Fm so glad you
came," he said; "but why did you come in the night? Did sister send
you?"

"Off wid ye! Am I to be sint about, at me age, as was Terence Mc-
Shane of Ballymahone? I come on me own r-r-responsibility."

Lorison had also advanced to the boy's bedside. He was fond of chil-
dren; and the wee fellow, laying himself down to sleep alone in that
dark room, stirred his heart.

"Aren't you afraid, little man?" he asked, stooping down beside
him.

"Sometimes," answered the boy, with a shy smile, "when the rats make
too much noise. But nearly every night, when sister goes out, Mother
Geehan stays a while with me, and tells me funny stories. Fm not often
afraid, sir."

"This brave little gentleman," said Father Rogan, "is a scholar of mine.
Every day from half-past six to half-past eight — when sister comes for
him — he stops in my study, and we find out what's in the inside of books.
He knows multiplication, division, and fractions; and he*s troubling
me to begin wid the chronicles of Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, Corurac Mc-
Cullenan and Cuan O'Lochain, the gr-r-reat Irish hishtorians." The boy
was evidently accustomed to the priest's Celtic pleasantries. A little, ap-
preciative grin was all the attention the insinuation of pedantry received,

Lorison, to have saved his life, could not have put to the child one of

1236 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

those vital questions that were wildly beating about, unanswered, in his
own brain. The little fellow was very like Norah; he had the same shin-
ing hair and candid eyes.

"Oh, Father Denny," cried the boy, suddenly, "I forgot to tell you! Sis-
ter is not going away at night any more! She told me so when she kissed
me good-night as she was leaving. And she said she was so happy, and
then she cried. Wasn't that queer? But I'm glad; aren't you ?"

'Tes, lad. And now, ye omadhaun, go to sleep, and say good-night;
we must be going."

"Which shall I do first, Father Denny?"

"Faith, he's caught me againl Wait till I get the sassench into the an-
nals of Tageruach, the hagiographer; I'll give him enough of the Irish
idiom to make him more respectful."

The light was out, and the small, brave voice bidding them good-night
from the dark room. They groped downstairs, and tore away from the
garrulity o£ Mother Geeban.

Again the priest steered them through the dim ways, but this time in
another direction. His conductor was serenely silent, and Lorison fol-
lowed his example to the extent of seldom speaking. Serene he could not
be. His heart beat suffocatingly in his breast The following of this blind,
menacing trail was pregnant with he knew not what humiliating reve-
lation to be delivered at its end.

They came into a more pretentious street, where trade, it could be sur-
mised, flourished by day. And again the priest paused; this time before a
lofty building, whose great doors and windows in the lowest floor were
carefully shuttered and barred. Its higher apertures were dark, save in the
third story, the windows of which were brilliantly lighted. Lorison's ear
caught a distant, regular, pleasing thrumming, as of music above. They
stood at an angle of the building. Up, along the side nearest them,
mounted an iron stairway. At its top was an upright, illuminated paral-
lelogram. Father Rogan had stopped, and stood, musing.

"I will say this much," he remarked, thoughtfully: "I believe you to
be a better man than you think yourself to be^ and a better man than I
thought some hours ago. But do not take this/' he added, with a smile,
"as much praise. I promised you a possible deliverance from an unhappy
perplexity. I will have to modify that promise. I can only remove the
mystery that enhanced that perplexity. Your deliverance depends upon
yourself. Come."

He led his companion up the stairway. Halfway up, Lorison caught
him by the sleeve. "Remember," he gasped, *1 love that woman.'*

"You desired to know."

"I Go on."

The priest reached the landing at the top of the stairway. Lorison,
behind him, saw that the illuminated space was the glass upper half of

BLIND MAN S HOLIDAY 1237

a door opening into the lighted room. The rhythmic music increased as
they neared it; the stairs shook with the mellow vibrations.

Lorison stopped breathing when he set foot upon the highest step, for
the priest stood aside, and motioned him to look through the glass of the
door.

His eyes, accustomed to the darkness, met first a blinding glare, and
then he made out the faces and forms of many people, amid an extrava-
gant display of splendid robings—billowy laces, brilliant-hued finery,
ribbons, silks, and misty drapery. And then he caught the meaning of
that jarring hum, and he saw the tired, pale, happy face of his wife, bend-
ing, as were a score of others, over her sewing machine — toiling, toiling.
Here was the folly she pursued, and the end of his quest.

But not his deliverance, though even then remorse struck him. His
shamed soul fluttered once more before it retired to make room for the
other and better one. For, to temper his thrill of joy, the shine of the
satin and the glimmer of ornaments recalled the disturbing figure of the
bespangled Amazon, and the base duplicate histories lit by the glare of
footlights and stolen diamonds. It is past the wisdom of him who only
sets the scenes, either to praise or blame the man. But this time his love
overcame his scruples. He took a quick step, and reached out his hand
for the doorknob. Father Rogan was quicker to arrest it and draw him
back.

"You use my trust in you queerly," said the priest, sternly. "What are
you about to do?"

"I am going to my wife/* said Lorison. "Let me pass."

"Listen," said the priest, holding him firmly by the arm. "I am about
to put you in possession of a piece of knowledge of which, thus far, you
have scarcely proved deserving. I do not think you ever will; but I will
not dwell upon that. You see in that room the woman you married, work-
ing for a frugal living for herself, and a generous comfort for an idolized
brother. This building belongs to the chief costumer of the city. For
months the advance orders for the coming Mardi Gras festivals have kept
the work going day and night. I myself secured employment here for
Norah. She toils here each night from nine o'clock until daylight, and,
besides, carries home with her some of the finer costumes, requiring more
delicate needlework, and works there part of the day. Somehow, you
two have remained strangely ignorant of each other's lives. Are you con-
vinced now that your wife is not walking the streets?"

"Let me go to her," cried Lorison, again struggling, "and beg her for-
giveness!"

"Sir," said the priest, "do you owe me nothing? Be quiet. It seems so
often that Heaven lets fall its choicest gifts into hands that must be taught
to hold them. Listen again. You forgot that repentant sin must not com-
promise, but look up, for redemption, to the purest and best. You went

1238 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

to her with the fine-spun sophistry that peace could be found in a mutual
guilt and she, fearful of losing what her heart so craved, thought it worth
the price to buy it with a desperate, pure, beautiful lie. I have known
her since the day she was born; she is as innocent and unsullied in life
aad deed as a holy saint. In that lowly street where she dwells she first
saw the light, and she has lived there ever since, spending her days in
generous self-sacrifice, for others. Och, ye spalpeen!" continued Father
Rogan, raising his finger in kindly anger at Lorison. "What for, I wonder,
could she be afther making a fool of hersilf, and shamin' her swate soul
with lies, for the like of you!"

"Sir/' said Lorison, trembling, "say what you please of me. Doubt it
as you must, I will yet prove my gratitude to you, and my devotion to
her. But let me speak to her once now, let me kneel for just one mo-
ment at her feet, and "

"Tut, tut!" said the priest. "How many acts of a love drama do you
think an old bookworm like me capable of witnessing? Besides, what
kind of figures do we cut, spying upon die mysteries of midnight milli-
nery! Go to meet your wife to-morrow, as she ordered you, and obey her
thereafter, and maybe some time I shall get forgiveness for the part I have
played in this night's work. Of? wid yez down the shtairs, now! TTis late,
and an ould man like me should be takin' his rest."

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES

"Aunt Ellen/' said Qctavia, cheerfully, as she threw her black kid gloves
carefully at the dignified Persian cat on the window-seat, "I'm a pauper."

"You are so extreme in your statements, Qctavia, dear," said Aunt
Ellen, mildly, looking up from her paper. "If you find yourself tempo-
rarily in need of some small change for bonbons, you will find my purse
in the drawer of the writing desk."

Octavia Beaupree removed her hat and seated herself on a footstool
near her aunt's chair, clasping her hands about her knees. Her slim and
flexible figure, clad in a modish mourning costume, accommodated it-
self easily and gracefully to the trying position. Her bright and youthful
face, with its pair of sparkling, life-enamored eyes, tried to compose it-
self to the seriousness that the occasion seemed to demand.

"You good auntie, it isn't a case of bonbons it is abject, staring, unpic-
turesque poverty, with ready-made clothes, gasolined gloves, and probably
one-o'clock dinners all waiting with the traditional wolf at the door. I've
just come from my lawyer, Auntie, and, Tlease, ma'am, I ain't got noth-
ink 't all. Flowers, lady? Buttonhole, gentleman? Pencils, sir, three for
five, to help a poor widow?' Do I do it nicely, Auntie, or, as a bread-

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES 1239

winner accomplishment, were my lessons in elocution entirely wasted?"
"Do be serious, my dear," said Aunt Ellen, letting her paper fall to the

floor, "long enough to tell me what you mean. Colonel Beaupree's estate
j»

"Colonel Beaupree's estate,5* interrupted Octavia, emphasizing her
words with appropriate dramatic gestures, "is of Spanish castellar archi-
tecture. Colonel Beaupree's resources are — wind. Colonel Beaupree's
stocks are—water. Colonel Beaupree's income is— all in. The statement
lacks the legal technicalities to which I have been listening for an hour,
but that is what it means when translated."

"Octavia!" Aunt Ellen was now visibly possessed by consternation. "I
can hardly believe it. And it was the impression that he was worth a
million. And the De Peysters themselves introduced him!"

Octavia rippled out a laugh, and then became properly grave.

"De mortuis nil, Auntie— not even the rest of it. The dear old colonel
—what a gold brick he was, after all! I paid for my bargain fairly—I'm
all here, am I not?— items: eyes, fingers, toes, youth, old family, unques-
tionable position in society as called for in the contract— no wild-cat stock
here." Octavia picked up the morning paper from the floor. "But I'm
not going to 'squeal— isn't that what they call it when you rail at Fortune
because you've lost the game?" She turned the pages of the paper calmly.
"'Stock market'— no use for that. 'Society's doings'— that's done. Here
is my page— the wish column. A Van Dresser could not be said to 'want'
for anything, of course. Chambermaids, cooks, canvassers, stenographers

J»

"Dear/' said Aunt Ellen, with a little tremor in her voice, "please do
not talk in that way. Even if your affairs are in so unfortunate a condi-
tion, there is my three thousand "

Octavia sprang up lithely, and deposited a smart kiss on the delicate
cheek of the prim little elderly maid.

"Blessed auntie, your three thousand is just sufficient to insure your
Hyson to be free from willow leaves and keep the Persian in sterilized
cream. I know I'd be welcome, but I prefer to strike bottom like Beelze-
bub rather than hang around like the Peri listening to the music from the
side entrance. I'm going to earn my own living. There's nothing else to

do. I'm a Oh, oh, oh! — I had forgotten. There's one thing saved from

the wreck. It's a corral— no, a ranch in — let me see — Texas; an asset,
dear old Mr, Bannister called it. How pleased he was to show me some-
thing he could describe as unencumbered! I've a description of it among
those stupid papers he made me bring away with me from his office. I'D.
try to find it."

Octavia found her shopping-bag, and drew from it a long envelope
filled with typewritten documents.

"A ranch in Texas," sighed Aunt Ellen. "It sounds to me more like

1240 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

a liability than an asset. Those are the places where the centipedes are
found, and cowboys, and fandangos."

" The Rancho de las Sombras,' " read Octavia from a sheet of violently
purple typewriting, "is situated one hundred and ten miles southeast of
San Antonio, and thirty-eight miles from its nearest railroad station,
Nopal, on the I. and G. N. Ranch consists of 7,680 acres of well-watered
land, with title conferred by State patents, and twenty-two sections, or
14,080 acres, partly under yearly running lease and partly bought under
State's twenty-year-purchase act. Eight thousand graded merino sheep,
with the necessary equipment of horses, vehicles, and general ranch
paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick, with six rooms comfortably
furnished according to the requirements of the climate. All within a strong
barbed -wire fence.

" The present ranch manager seems to be competent and reliable, and
is rapidly placing upon a paying basis a business that, in other hands,
had been allowed to suffer from neglect and misconduct.

"This property was secured by Colonel Beaupree in a deal with a
Western irrigation syndicate, and the title to it seems to be perfect. With
careful management and the natural increase of land values, it ought to
be made the foundation for a comfortable fortune for its owner.' "

When Octavia ceased reading, Aunt Ellen uttered something as near
a sniff as her breeding permitted.

"The prospectus," she said, with uncompromising metropolitan sus-
picion, "doesn't mention the centipedes, or the Indians. And you never
did like mutton, Octavia. I don't see what advantage you can derive
from this — desert."

But Octavia was in a trance. Her eyes were steadily regarding some-
thing quite beyond their focus. Her lips were parted, and her face was
lighted by the kindling furor of the explorer, the ardent, stirring disquiet
of the adventurer. Suddenly she clasped her hands together exultantly.

"The problem solves itself, auntie," she cried. "I'm going to that ranch.
I'm going to live on it. I'm going to learn to like mutton, and even con-
cede the good qualities of centipedes — at a respectful distance. It's just
what I need. It's a new life that comes when my old one is just ending.
It's a release, auntie; it isn't a narrowing. Think of the gallops over those
leagues of prairies, with the wind tugging at the roots of your hair, the
coming close to the earth and learning over again the stories of the grow-
ing grass and the little wild flowers without names! Glorious is what it
will be. Shall I be a shepherdess with a Watteau hat, and a crook to keep
the bad wolves from the lambs, or a typical Western ranch girl, with
short hair, like the pictures of her in the Sunday papers? I think the lat-
ter. And they'll have my picture, too, with the wild-cats I've slain, sin-
gle-handed, hanging from my saddle horn. 'From the Four Hundred to
the Flocks* is the way they'll headline it, and they'll print photographs

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES 124!

of the old Van Dresser mansion and the church where I was married.
They won't have my picture, but they'll get an artist to draw it. I'll be
wild and woolly, and I'll grow my own wool."

"Octavia!" Aunt Ellen condensed into the one word all the protests
she was unable to utter.

"Don't say a word, auntie. I'm going. I'll see the sky at night fit down
on the world like a big butter-dish cover, and I'll make friends again with
the stars that I haven't had a chat with since I was a wee child. I wish to
go. I'm tired of all this. I'm glad I haven't any money. I could bless
Colonel Beaupree for that ranch, and forgive him for all his bubbles. What
if the life will be rough and lonely! I — I deserve it. I shut my heart to
everything except that miserable ambition. I— oh, I wish to go away, and
forget— forget!"

Octavia swerved suddenly to her knees, laid her flushed face in her
aunt's lap, and shook with turbulent sobs.

Aunt Ellen bent over her, and smoothed the coppery-brown hair.

"I didn't know," she said, gently; "I didn't know — that. Who was it,
dear?"

When Mrs. Octavia Beaupree, nee Van Dresser, stepped from the train
at Nopal, her manner lost, for the moment, some of that easy certitude
which had always marked her movements. The town was of recent es-
tablishment, and seemed to have been hastily constructed of undressed
lumber and flapping canvas. The element that had congregated about the
station, though not offensively demonstrative, was clearly composed of
citizens accustomed to and prepared for rude alarms.

Octavia stood on the platform, against the telegraph office, and at-
tempted to choose by intuition from the swaggering, straggling string
of loungers, the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras, who had been
instructed by Mr. Bannister to meet her there. That tall, serious-looking,
elderly man in the blue flannel shirt and white tie she thought must be he.
But no, he passed by, removing his gaze from the lady as hers rested
on him, according to the Southern custom. The manager, she thought,
with some impatience at being kept waiting, should have no difficulty
in selecting her. Young women wearing the most recent thing in ash-col-
ored traveling suits were not so plentiful in Nopal!

Thus keeping a speculative watch on all persons of possible manage-
rial aspect, Octavia, with a catching breath and a start of surprise, sud-
denly became aware of Teddy Westlake hurrying along the platform in
the direction of the train—of Teddy Westlake or his sun-browned ghost
in cheviot, boots and leather-girdled hat— Theodore Westlake, Jr., ama-
teur polo (almost) champion, all-round butterfly and cucumber of the
soil; but a broader, surer, more emphasized and determined Teddy than
the one she had known a year ago when last she saw him.

1242 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

He perceived Octavia at almost the same time, deflected his course,
and steered for her in his old, straightforward way. Something like awe
came upon her as the strangeness of his metamorphosis was brought into
closer range; the rich, red-brown of his complexion brought out so viv-
idly his straw-colored mustache and steel-gray eyes. He seemed more
grown-up, and, somehow, farther away. But, when he spoke, the old,
boyish Teddy came back again. They had been friends from childhood.

"Why, Tave!" he exclaimed, unable to reduce his perplexity to co-
herence. "How — what — when — where ?"

"Train," said Octavia; "necessity; ten minutes ago; home. Your com-
plexion's gone, Teddy. Now, how— what— when— where?"

"I'm working down here," said Teddy. He cast side glances about the
station as one does who tries to combine politeness with duty.

"You didn't notice on the train," he asked, "an old lady with gray curls
and a poodle, who occupied two seats with her bundles and quarrelled
with the conductor, did you?"

"I think not," answered Octavia, reflecting. "And you haven't, by any
chance, noticed a big, gray-mustached man in a blue shirt and six-shoot-
ers, with little flakes of merino wool sticking in his hair, have you?"

"Lots of 'em," said Teddy, with symptoms of mental delirium under
the strain. "Do you happen to know any such individual?"

"No; the description is imaginary. Is your interest in the old lady
whom you describe a personal one?"

"Never saw her in my life. She's painted entirely from fancy. She
owns the little piece of property where I earn my bread and butter —
the Rancho de las Sombras. I drove up to meet her according to arrange-
ments with her lawyer."

Octavia leaned against the wall of the telegraph office. Was this pos-
sible? And didn't he know?

"Are you the manager of that ranch?" she asked, weakly.

"I am," said Teddy, with pride.

"I am Mrs. Beaupree," said Octavia, faintly; "but my hair never
would curl, and I was polite to the conductor."

For a moment that strange, grown-up look came back, and removed
Teddy miles away from her.

"I hope you'll excuse me," he said, rather awkwardly. "You see, I've
been down here in the chaparral a year. I hadn't heard. Give me your
checks, please, and I'll have your traps loaded into the wagon. Jose will
follow with them. We travel ahead in the buckboard."

Seated by Teddy in a feather-weight buckboard, behind a pair of wild,
cream-colored Spanish ponies, Octavia abandoned all thought for the
exhilaration of the present. They swept out of the little town and down
the level road toward the south. Soon the road dwindled and disappeared,
and they struck across a world carpeted with an endless reach of curly

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES 1243

mesquite grass. The wheels made no sound. The tireless ponies bounded
ahead at an unbroken gallop. The temperate wind, made fragrant by
thousands of acres of blue and yellow wild flowers, roared gloriously in
their ears. The motion was aerial, ecstatic, with a thrilling sense of per-
petuity in its effect. Octavia sat silent, possessed by a feeling of elemen-
tal, sensual bliss. Teddy seemed to be wrestling with some internal prob-
lem.

Tm going to call you madama," he announced as the result of his
labors. "That is what the Mexicans will call you— they're nearly all
Mexicans on the ranch, you know* That seems to me about the proper
thing."

"Very well, Mr. Westlake," said Octavia, primly.

"Oh, now," said Teddy, in some consternation, "that's carrying the
thing too far, isn't it?"

"Don't worry me with your beastly etiquette. I'm just beginning to
live. Don't remind me of anything artificial. If only this air could be
bottled! This much alone is worth coming for. Oh. look! there goes a
deer!"

"Jack-rabbit," said Teddy, without turning his head.

"Could I— might I drive?" suggested Octavia, panting, with rose-
tinted cheeks and the eye of an eager child.

"On one condition. Could I— might I smoke?"

"Forever!" cried Octavia, taking the lines with solemn joy. "How shall
I know which way to drive?"

"Keep her sou' by sou'east, and all sail set. You see that black speck
on the horizon under that lowermost Gulf cloud? That's a group of
live-oaks and a landmark. Steer halfway between that and the little hill
to the left, I'll recite you the whole code of driving rules for the Texas
prairies: keep the reins from under the horses' feet, and swear at em
frequent."

"I'm too happy to swear, Ted. Oh, why do people buy yachts or travel
in palace-cars, when a buckboard and a pair of plugs and a spring morn-
ing like this can satisfy all desire?"

**Now, I'll ask you," protested Teddy, who was futilely striking match
after match on the dashboard, "not to call those denizens of the air plugs.
They can kick out a hundred miles between daylight and dark." At
last he succeeded in snatching a light for his cigar from the flame held
in the hollow of his hands.

"Room!" said Octavia, intensely. "That's what produces the effect. I
know now what I've wanted — scope — range— room! "

"Smoking-room," said Teddy, unsentimentally. "I love to smoke in a
buckboard. The wind blows the smoke into you and out again. It saves
exertion."

The two fell so naturally into their old-time goodfellowship that it

1244 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

was only by degrees that a sense of the strangeness of the new relations
between them came to be felt.

"Madama," said Teddy, wonderingly, "however did you get it into
your head to cut the crowd and come down here? Is it a fad now among
the upper classes to trot off to sheep ranches instead of to Newport?"

"I was broke, Teddy," said Octavia, sweetly, with her interest centred
upon steering safely between a Spanish dagger plant and a clump of
chaparral; "I haven't a thing in the world but this ranch— not even any
other home to go to."

"Come, now," said Teddy, anxiously but incredulously, "you don't
mean it?"

"When my husband," said Octavia, with a shy slurring of the word,
"died three months ago I thought I had a reasonable amount of the
world's goods. His lawyer exploded that theory in a sixty-minute fully
illustrated lecture. I took to the sheep as a last resort. Do you happen to
know of any fashionable caprice among the gilded youth of Manhattan
that induces them to abandon polo and club windows to become mana-
gers of sheep ranches?"

"It's easily explained in my case," responded Teddy, promptly. "I had
to go to work. I couldn't have earned my board in New York, so I
chummed a while with old Sandford, one of the syndicate that owned
the ranch before Colonel Beaupree bought it, and got a place down here.
I wasn't manager at first. I jogged around on ponies and studied the busi-
ness in detail, until I got all the points in my head. I saw where it was
losing and what the remedies were, and then Sandford put me in charge.
I get a hundred dollars a month, and I earn it."

"Poor Teddy!" said Octavia, with a smile.

"You needn't. I like it. I save half my wages, and I'm as hard as a water
plug. It beats polo.'*

"Will it furnish bread and tea and jam for another outcast from
civilization?"

"The spring shearing," said the manager, "just cleaned up a deficit in
last year's business. Wastefulness and inattention have been the rule
heretofore. The autumn clip will leave a small profit over all expenses.
Next year there will be jam."

When, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the ponies rounded a
gentle, brush-covered hill, and then swooped, like a double cream-colored
cyclone, upon the Rancho de las Sombras, Octavia gave a little cry of
delight. A lordly grove of magnificent live-oaks cast an area of grateful,
cool shade, whence the ranch had drawn its name, "de las Sombras"—
of the shadows. The house, of red brick, one story, ran low and long
beneath the trees. Through its middle, dividing its six rooms in half,
extended a broad, arched passageway, picturesque with flowering cactus
and hanging red earthen jars. A "gallery," low and broad, encircled the

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES 1245

building. Vines climbed about it, and the adjacent ground was, for
space, covered with transplanted grass and shrubs. A little lake, long
and narrow, glimmered in the sun at the rear. Farther away stood the
shacks of the Mexican workers, the corrals, wool sheds and shearing
pens. To the right lay the low hills, splattered with dark patches of
chaparral; to the left the unbounded green prairie blending against the
blue heavens.

"It's a home, Teddy," said Octavia, breathlessly; "that's what it is—
it's a home."

"Not so bad for a sheep ranch," admitted Teddy, with excusable pride.
"I've been tinkering on it at odd times."

A Mexican youth sprang from somewhere in the grass, and took
charge of the creams. The mistress and the manager entered the house*

"Here's Mrs. Maclntyre," said Teddy, as a placid, neat, elderly lady
came out upon the gallery to meet them. "Mrs. Mac, here's die boss. Very
likely she will be wanting a hunk of bacon and a dish of beans after her
drive."

Mrs. Maclntyre,, the housekeeper, as much a fixture oa the place as the
lake or the live-oaks, received the imputation of the ranch's resources of
refreshment with mild indignation, and was about to give it utterances
when Octavia spoke.

"Oh, Mrs. Maclntyre, don't apologize for Teddy. Yes, I call him
Teddy. So does every one whom he hasn't duped into taking him seriously.
You see, we used to cut paper dolls and play jackstraws together ages
ago. No one minds what he says,"

"No," said Teddy, "no one minds what he says,, just so he doesn't do
it again."

Octavia cast one of those subtle, sidelong glances toward him from
beneath her lowered eyelids— a glance that Teddy used to describe as an
upper-cut. But there was nothing in his ingenuous, weather-tanned face
to warrant a suspicion that he was making an allusion — nothing. Beyond
a doubt, thought Octavia, he had forgotten.

"Mr. Wesdake likes his fun," said Mrs. Maclntyre, as she conducted
Octavia to her rooms. "But," she added, loyally, "people around here
usually pay atention to what he says when he talks in earnest. I don't
know what would have become of this place without him."

Two rooms at the east end of the house had been arranged for the
occupancy of the ranch's mistress. When she entered them a slight dis-
may seized her at their bare appearance and the scantiness of their
furniture; but she quickly reflected that the climate was a semi-tropical
one, and was moved to appreciation of the well-conceived efforts to con-
form to it The sashes had already been removed from the big windows,
and white curtains waved in the Gulf breeze that streamed through the
wide jalousies. The bare floor was amply strewn with cool rugs; the

1246 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

chairs were inviting, deep, dreamy willows; the walls were papered with
a light, cheerful olive. One whole side of her sitting room was covered
with books on smooth, unpaioted pine shelves. She flew to these at once.
Before her was a well-selected library. She caught glimpses o£ titles of
volumes of fiction and travel not yet seasoned from the dampness of
the press.

Presently, recollecting that she was now in a wilderness given over to
mutton, centipedes, and privations, the incongruity of these luxuries
struck her, and, with intuitive feminine suspicion, she began turning to
the fly-leaves of volume after volume. Upon each one was inscribed in
fluent characters the name of Theodore Westlake, Jr.

Octavia, fatigued by her long jburney, retired early that night. Lying
upon her white, cool bed, she rested deliriously, but sleep coquetted long
with her. She listened to faint noises whose strangeness kept her faculties
on the alert— the fractious yelping of the coyotes, the ceaseless, low sym-
phony of the wind, the distant booming of the frogs about the lake, the
lamentation of a concertina in the Mexicans' quarters. There were many
conflicting feelings in her heart— thankfulness and rebellion, peace and
disquietude, loneliness and a sense of protecting care, happiness and an
old, haunting pain.

She did what any other woman would have done — sought relief in a
wholesome tide of unreasonable tears, and her last words, murmured to
herself before slumber, capitulating, ccume softly to woo her, were, "He
has forgotten."

The manager of the Rancho de las Sombras was no dilettante. He was
a "hustler." He was generally up, mounted, and away of mornings before
the rest of the household were awake, making the rounds of the flocks
and camps. This was the duty of the major-domo, a stately old Mexican
with a princely air and manner, but Teddy seemed to have a great deal
of confidence in his own eyesight. Except in the busy seasons, he nearly
always returned to the ranch to breakfast at eight o'clock, with Octavia
and Mrs. Maclntyre, at the little table set in. the central hallway, bringing
with him a tonic and breezy cheerfulness full of the health and flavor of
the prairies.

A few days after Octavia's arrival he made her get out one of her
riding skirts, and curtail it to a shortness demanded by the chaparral
brakes.

With some misgivings she donned this and the pair of buckskin leg-
gings he prescribed in addition, and mounted upon a dancing pony,
rode with him to view her possessions. He showed her everything — the
flocks of ewes, muttons and grazing lambs, the dipping vats, the shear-
ing pens, the uncouth merino rams in their Iktie pasture, the water-
tanks prepared against the summer drought— giving account of his
stewardship with a boyish enthusiasm that never flagged.

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES 1247

Where was the old Teddy that she knew so well? This side of him
was the same, and it was a side that pleased her; but this was all she ever
saw of him now. Where was his sentimentality — those old, varying moods
of impetuous love-making, of fanciful, quixotic devotion, of heart-break-
ing gloom, of alternating, absurd tenderness and haughty dignity? His
nature had been a sensitive one, his temperament bordering closely on
the artistic. She knew that, besides being a follower of fashion and its
fads and sports, he had cultivated tastes of a finer nature. He had written
things, he had tampered with colors, he was something of a student in
certain branches of art, and once she had been admitted to all his
aspirations and thoughts. But now — and she could not avoid the con-
clusion— Teddy had barricaded against her every side of himself except
one — the side that showed the manager of the Rancho de las Sombras
and a jolly chum who had forgiven and forgotten. Queerly enough the
words of Mr. Bannister's description of her property came into her
mind — "all inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence."

"Teddy's fenced, too," said Octavia to herself.

It was not difficult for her to reason out the cause of his fortifications.
It had originated one night at the Hammersmiths' ball. It occurred at a
time soon after she had decided to accept Colonel Beaupree and his
millions, which was no more than her looks and the entree she held to the
inner circles were worth. Teddy had proposed with all his impetuosity
and fire, and she looked him straight in the eyes, and said, coldly and
finally: "Never let me hear any such silly nonsense from you again."
"You won't," said Teddy, with a new expression around his mouth, and
—now Teddy was inclosed within a strong barbed-wire fence.

It was on this first ride of inspection that Teddy was seized by the
inspiration that suggested the aame of Mother Goose's heroine, and he
at once bestowed it upon Octavia. The idea, supported by both a simi-
larity of names and identity of occupations, seemed to strike him as a
peculiarly happy one, and he never tired of using it. The Mexicans on
the ranch also took up the name, adding another syllable to accommodate
their lingual incapacity for the final "p," gravely referring to her as "La
Madama Bo-Peepy." Eventually it spread, and "Madame Bo-Peep's ranch"
was as often mentioned as the "Rancho de las Sombras."

Came the long, hot season from May to September, when work is
scarce on the ranches. Octavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater's
dream. Books, hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a
renewed interest in her old water-color box and easel— these disposed of
the sultry hours of daylight. The evenings were always sure to bring
enjoyment. Best of all were the rapturous horseback rides with Teddy,
when the moon gave light over the wind-swept leagues, chaperoned by
the wheeling night-hawk and the startled owl. Often the Mexicans would
come up from their shacks with their guitars and sing the weirdest of

1248 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

heart-breaking songs. There were long, cosy chats on the breezy gallery,
and an interminable warfare of wits between Teddy and Mrs. Maclntyre,
whose abundant Scotch shrewdness often more than overmatched the
lighter humor in which she was lacking.

And the nights came, one after another, and were filed away by weeks
and months — nights soft and languorous and fragrant, that should have
driven Strephon to Chloe over wires however barbed, that might have
drawn Cupid himself to hunt, lasso in hand, among those amorous
pastures — but Teddy kept his fences up.

One July night Madame Bo-Peep and her ranch manager were sitting
on the east gallery. Teddy had been exhausting the science of prognosti-
cation as to the probabilities of a price of twenty-four cents for the
autumn clip, and had then subsided into an anesthetic cloud of Havana
smoke. Only as incompetent a judge as a woman would have failed to
note long ago that at least a third of his salary must have gone up in the
fumes of those imported Regalias.

"Teddy," said Octavia, suddenly, and rather sharply, "what are you
working down here on a ranch for?"

"One hundred per," said Teddy, glibly, "and found."

"I've a good mind to discharge you."

"Can't do it," said Teddy, with a grin.

"Why not?" demanded Octavia, with argumentative heat.

"Under contract. Terms of sale respect all unexpired contracts. Mine
runs until 12 P.M., December thirty-first. You might get up at mid-
night on that date and fire me. If you try it sooner I'll be in a position
to bring legal proceedings."

Octavia seemed to be considering the prospects of litigation.

"But," continued Teddy, cheerfully, "I've been thinking of resigning
anyway."

Qctavia's rocking-chair ceased its motion. There were centipedes in
this country, she felt sure; and Indians; and vast, lonely, desolate, empty
wastes; all within strong barbed-wire fence. There was a Van Dresser
pride, but there was also a Van Dresser heart. She must know for certain
whether or not he had forgotten.

"Ah, well, Teddy," she said, with a fine assumption of polite interest,
"it's lonely down here; you're longing to get back to the old life — to polo
and lobsters and theatres and balls."

"Never cared much for balls," said Teddy, virtuously.

"You're getting old, Teddy. Your memory is failing. Nobody ever knew
you to miss a dance, unless it occurred on the same night with another
>ne which you attended. And you showed such shocking bad taste, too,
n dancing too often with the same partner. Let me see, what was that
?orbes girl's name — the one with wall eyes — Mabel, wasn't it?"
"No; Adele. Mabel was the one with the bony elbows. That wasn't wall

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES 1249

in Adele's eyes. It was soul. We used to talk sonnets together, and Ver-
laine. Just then I was trying to run a pipe from the Pierian spring."

"You were on the floor with her," said Octavia, undeflected, "five times
at the Hammersmiths'."

"Hamersmiths5 what?" questioned Teddy, vacuously.

"Ball — ball/' said Octavia, viciously. "What were we talking of ?"

"Eyes, I thought/' said Teddy, after some reflection; "and elbows/'

"Those Hammersmiths," went on Octavia, in her sweetest society
prattle, after subduing an intense desire to yank a handful of sunburnt,
sandy hair from the head lying back contentedly against the canvas of
the steamer chair, "had too much money. Mines, wasn't it? It was some-
thing that paid something to the ton. You couldn't get a glass of plain
water in their house. Everything at that ball was dreadfully overdone."

"It was," said Teddy.

"Such a crowd there was!" Octavia continued conscious that she was
talking the rapid drivel of a school-girl describing her first dance. "The
balconies were as warm as the rooms. I — lost — something at that ball"
The last sentence was uttered in a tone calculated to remove the barbs
from miles of wire.

"So did I," confessed Teddy, in a lower voice.

"A glove," said Octavia, falling back as the enemy approached her
ditches.

"Caste," said Teddy, halting his firing line without loss. "I hob-nobbed,
half evening, with one of Hammersmith's miners, a fellow who kept
his hands in his pockets, and talked like an archangel about reduction
plants and drifts and levels and sluice-boxes."

"A pearl-gray glove, nearly new," sighed Octavia, mournfully.

"A bang-up chap, that McArdle," maintained Teddy, approvingly. "A
man who hated olives and elevators; a man who handled mountains as
croquettes, and built tunnels in the air; a man who never uttered a word
of silly nonsense in his life. Did you sign those lease-renewal applications
yet, madama? They've got to be on file in the land office by the
thirty-first."

Teddy turned his head lazily. Octavia's chair was vacant.

A certain centipede, crawling along the lines marked out by fate,
expounded the situation. It was early one morning while Octavia and
Mrs. Maclntyre were trimming the honeysuckle on the west gallery.
Teddy had risen and departed hastily before daylight in response to a
word that a flock of ewes had been scattered from their bedding ground
during the night by a thtinder-stonru

The centipede, driven by destiny, showed himself on the floor o£ the
gallery, and then, the screeches of the two women giving him his cue,
he scuttled with all his yellow legs through the open door into the
furthermost west room, which was Teddy's. Arming themselves with do-

1250 BOOK X WHIRLIGIGS

mestic utensils selected with regard to their length, Octavia and Mrs. Mac-
lntyre, with much clutching of skirts and skirmishing for the position
of rear guard in the attacking force, followed.

Once inside, the centipede seemed to have disappeared, and his
prospective murderers began a thorough but cautious search for their
victim.

Even in the midst of such a dangerous and absorbing adventure Octavia
was conscious of an awed curiosity on finding herself in Teddy's sanctum.
In that room he sat alone, silently communing with those secret thoughts
that he now shared with no one, dreamed there whatever dreams he now
called on no one to interpret.

It was the room of a Spartan or a soldier. In one corner stood a wide,
canvas-covered cot; in another, a small bookcase; in another, a grim stand
of Winchesters and shotguns. An immense table, strewn with letters,
papers, and documents and surmounted by a set of pigeon-holes, occu-
pied one side.

The centipede showed genius in concealing himself in such bare quar-
ters. Mrs. Maclntyre was poking a broom-handle behind the bookcase.
Octavia approached Teddy's cot. The room was just as the manager
had left it in his hurry. The Mexican maid had not yet given it her atten-
tion. There was his big pillow with the imprint of his head still in the
centre. She thought the horrid beast might have climbed the cot and
hidden itself to bite Teddy, Centipedes were thus cruel and vindictive
toward managers.

She cautiously overturned the pillow, and then parted her lips to give
the signal for reinforcements at sight of a long, slender, dark object lying
there. But, repressing it in time, she caught up a glove, a pearl-gray glove,
flattened— it might be conceived— by many, many months of nightly pres-
sure beneath the pillow of the man who had forgotten the Hammer-
smiths' ball. Teddy must have left so hurriedly that morning that he
had, for once, forgotten to transfer it to its resting-place by day. Even
managers, who are notoriously wily and cunning, are sometimes caught up
with*

Octavia slid the gray glove into the bosom of her summery morning
gown. It was hers. Men who put themselves within a strong barbed-wire
fence, and remember Hammersmith balls only by the talk of miners
about sluice boxes, should not be allowed to possess such articles.

After all, what a paradise this prairie country was! How it blossomed
like the rose when you found things that were thought to be lost! How
delicious was that morning breeze coming in the windows, fresh and
sweet with the breath of the yellow ratama blooms! Might one not stand,
for a minute, with shining, far-gazing eyes, and dream that mistakes
might be corrected?

Why was Mrs. Maclntyre poking about so absurdly with a broom?

"I've found it," said Mrs. Maclntyre, banging the door. "Here it is."

MADAME BO-PEEP, OF THE RANCHES 125!

"Did you lose something?" asked Octavia, with sweetly polite non-
interest.

"The little devil!" said Mrs. Maclntyre, driven to violence. "YeVe no
forgotten him alretty?"

Between them they slew the centipede. Thus was he rewarded for
his agency toward the recovery of things lost at the Hammersmiths' ball.

It seems that Teddy, in due course, remembered the glove, and when
he returned to the house at sunset made a secret but exhaustive search
for it. Not until evening, upon the moonlit eastern gallery, did he find it.
It was upon the hand that he had thought lost to him forever, and so he
was moved to repeat certain nonsense that he had been commanded
never, never to utter again. Teddy's fences were down.

This time there was no ambition to stand in the way, and the wooing
was as natural and successful as should be between ardent shepherd and
gende shepherdess.

The prairies changed to a garden. The Rancho de las Sombras became
the Ranch of Light.

A few days later Octavia received a letter from Mr. Bannister, in reply
to one she had written to him asking some questions about her business.
A portion of the letter ran as follows:

I am at a loss to account for your references to the sheep ranch. Two
months after your departure to take up your residence upon it, it was dis-
covered that Colonel Beaupree's title was worthless. A deed came to
light showing that he disposed of the property before his death. The matter
was reported to your manager, Mr. Westlake, who at once repurchased
the property. It is entirely beyond my powers of conjecture to imagine
how you have remained in ignorance of this fact. I beg that you will at
once confer with that gentleman, who will, at least, corroborate my
statement.

Octavia sought Teddy, with batde in her eye.

"What are you working on this ranch for?" she asked once more.

"One hundred " he began to repeat, but saw in her face that she

knew. She held Mr. Bannister's letter in her hand. He knew that the
game was up.

"It's my ranch," said Teddy, like a schoolboy detected in evil. "It's a
mighty poor manager that isn't able to absorb the boss's business if you
give him time."

"Why were you working down here?" pursued Octavia, still struggling
after the key to the riddle of Teddy.

"To tell the truth, Tave," said Teddy, with quiet candor, "it wasn't
for the salary. That about kept me in cigars and sunburn lotions. I was
sent south by my doctor. 'Twas that right lung that was going to the bad

1252 BOOKX WHIRLIGIGS

on account of over-exercise and strain at polo and gymnastics. I needed
climate and ozone and rest and things of that sort."

In an instant Octavia was close against the vicinity of the affected
organ. Mr. Bannister's letter fluttered to the floor.

"It's — it's well now, isn't it, Teddy?"

"Sound as a mesquite chunk. I deceived you in one thing. I paid
fifty thousand for your ranch as soon as I found you had no title. I had
just about that much income accumulated at my banker's while I've been
herding sheep down here, so it was almost like picking the thing up on
a bargain-counter for a penny. There's another little surplus of unearned
increment piling up there, Tave. I've been thinking of a wedding trip
in a yacht with white ribbons tied to the mast, through the Mediter-
ranean, and then up among the Hebrides and down Norway to the
Zuyder Zee."

"And I was thinking," said Octavia, softly, "of a wedding gallop with
my manager among the flocks of sheep and back to a wedding breakfast
with Mrs. Maclntyre on the gallery, with, maybe, a sprig of orange
blossom fastened to the red jar above the table."

Teddy laughed, and began to chant:

"Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep,
And doesn't know where to find 'em.
Let 'em alone, and they'll come home.
And "

Octavia drew his head down, and whispered in his ear.
But that is one of the tales they brought behind them.

BOOK

THE VOICE OF
THE CITY

THE VOICE OF THE CITY

Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The
manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance
of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no
disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust.

I remember one beautiful and instructive little lyric that emanated
from the physiology class. The most striking line .of it was this:
"The shin-bone is the long-est bone in the human bod-y."
What an inestimable boon it would have been if all the corporeal and
spiritual facts pertaining to man had thus been tunefully and logically
inculcated in our youthful minds! But what we gained in anatomy, music,
and philosophy was meagre.

1254 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

The other day I became confused. I needed a ray of light. I turned
back to those school days for aid. But in all the nasal harmonies we
whined forth from those hard benches I could not recall one that treated
of the voice of agglomerated mankind.

In other words, of the composite vocal message of massed humanity.

In other words, of the Voice of a Big City.

Now, the individual voice is not lacking. We can understand the song
of the poet, the ripple of the brook, the meaning of the man who wants
$5 until next Monday, the inscriptions on the tombs of the Pharaohs, the
language of flowers, the "step lively" of the conductor, and the prelude
of the milk cans at 4 A.M. Certain large-eared ones even assert that
they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum produced by con-
cussion of the air emanating from Mr, H. James. But who can com-
prehend the meaning of the voice of the city?

I went out for to see.

First, I asked Aurelia. She wore white Swiss and a hat with flowers
on it, and ribbons and ends of things fluttered here and there.

"Tell me," I said, stammeringly, for I have no voice of my own, "what
does this big — er — enormous— -er — whopping city say? It must have a
voice of some kind. Does it ever speak to you ? How do you interpret its
meaning? It is a tremendous mass, but it must have a key."

"Like a Saratoga trunk?" asked Aurelia.

"No," said I. "Please do not refer to the lid. I have a fancy that every
city has a voice. Each one has something to say to the one who can hear
it. What does the big one say to you?"

"All cities," said Aurelia, judicially, "say the same thing. When they
get through saying it there is an echo from Philadelphia. So, they are
unanimous."

"Here are 4,000,000 people," said I, scholastically, "compressed upon
an island, which is mostly lamb surrounded by Wall Street water. The
conjunction of so many units into so small a space must result in an
identity—or, or rather a homogeneity— that finds its oral expression
through a common channel. It is, as you might say, a consensus of transla-
tion, concentrating in a crystallized, general idea which reveals itself in
what may be termed the Voice of the City. Can you tell me what it is?"

Aurelia smiled wonderfully. She sat on the high stoop. A spray of
insolent ivy bobbed against her right ear. A ray of impudent moonlight
flickered upon her nose. But I was adamant, nickel-plated.

"I must go and find out," I said, "what is the Voice of this City. Other
cities have voices. It is an assignment. I must have it. New York," I
continued, in a rising tone, "had better not hand me a cigar and say: 'Old
man, I can't talk for publication.' No other city acts in that way. Chicago
says, unhesitatingly, 'I will'; Philadelphia says, 1 should'; New Orleans

THE VOICE OF THE CITY 1255

says, 'I used to'; Louisville says, 'Don't care if I do5; St. Louis says,
'Excuse me'; Pittsburg says, 'Smoke up.' Now, New York "

Aurelia smiled.

"Very well," said I, "I must go elsewhere and find out."

I went into a palace, tile-floored, cherub-ceilinged, and square with
the cop. I put my foot on the brass rail and said to Billy Magnus, the best
bartender in the diocese:

"Billy, youVe lived in New York a long time— what kind of a song-
and-dance does this old town give you? What I mean is, doesn't the gab
of it seem to kind of bunch up and slide over the bar to you in a sort of
amalgamated tip that hits off the burg in a kind of an epigram with a
dash of bitters and a slice of "

"Excuse me a minute," said Billy, "somebody's punching the button
at the side door."

He went away; came back with an empty tin bucket; again vanished
with it full; returned and said to me:

"That was Mame. She rings twice. She likes a glass of beer for supper.
Her and the kid. If you ever saw that little skeesicks of mine brace up

in his high chair and take his beer and But, say, what was yours?

I get kind of excited when I hear them two rings — was it the baseball
score or gin fizz you asked for?n

"Ginger ale," I answered.

I walked up to Broadway. I saw a cop on the corner. The cops take
kids up, women across, and men in. I went up to him.

"If I'm not exceeding the spiel limit," I said, "let me ask you. You see
New York during its vocative hours. It is the function of you and your
brother cops to preserve the acoustics of the city. There must be a civic
voice that is intelligible to you. At night during your lonely rounds you
must have heard it. What is the epitome of its turmoil and shouting?
What does the city say to you?"

"Friend," said the policeman, spinning his club, "it don't say nothing.
I get my orders from the man higher up. Say, I guess you're all right.
Stand here for a few minutes and keep an eye open for the roundsman."

The cop melted into the darkness of the side street. In ten minutes he
had returned.

"Married last Tuesday," he said, half gruffly. "You know how they are.
She comes to that corner at nine every night for a — comes to say 'hello!' I
generally manage to be there. Say, what was it you asked me a bit ago —
what's doing in the city? Oh, there's a roof-garden or two just opened,
twelve blocks up."

I crossed a crow's-foot of street-car tracks, and skirted the edge of an
umbrageous park. An artificial Diana, gilded, heroic, poised, wind-ruled,
on the tower, shimmered in the clear light of her namesake in the sky.

1256 BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

Along came my poet, hurrying, hatted, haired, emitting dactyls, spondees
and dactylis. I seized him.

"Bill," said I (in the magazine he is Cleon), "give me a lift. I am on
an assignment to find out the Voice of the City. You see, it's a special
order. Ordinarily a symposium comprising the views of Henry Clews,
John L. Sullivan, Edwin Markham, May Irwin and Charles Schwab would
be about all But this is a different matter. We want a broad, poetic,
mystic vocalization of the city's soul and meaning. You are the very chap
to give me a hint. Some years ago a man got at the Niagara Falls and
gave us its pitch. The note was about two feet below the lowest G on the
piano. Now, you can't put New York into a note unless it's better
indorsed than that. But give me an idea of what it would say if it should
speak. It is bound to be a mighty and far-reaching utterance. To arrive at
it we must take the tremendous crash of the chords of the day's traffic, the
laughter and music of the night, the solemn tones of Dr. Parkhurst, the
rag-time, the weeping, the stealthy hum of cab-wheels, the shout of the
press agent, the tinkle of fountains on the roof-gardens, the hullabaloo of
the strawberry vender and the covers of Everybody's Magazine, the
whispers of the lovers in the parks— all these sounds must go into your
Voice— not combined, but mixed, and of the mixture an essence made;
and of the essence an extract— an audible extract, of which one drop shall
form the thing we seek."

"Do you remember," asked the poet, with a chuckle, "that California
girl we met at Stiver's studio last week? Well, I'm on my way to see her.
She repeated that poem of mine, 'The Tribute of Spring,' word for word.
She's the smartest proposition in this town just at present. Say, how
does this confounded tie look? I spoiled four before I got one to set right."

"And the Voice that I asked you about?" I inquired.

"Oh, she doesn't sing," said Cleon. "But you ought to hear her recite
my 'Angel of the Inshore Wind.' "

I passed on. I cornered a newsboy and he flashed at me prophetic pink
papers that outstripped the news by two revolutions of the clock's longest
hand.

"Son," I said, while I pretended to chase coins in my penny pocket,
"doesn't it sometimes seem to you as if the city ought to be able to talk ?
All these ups and downs and funny business and queer things Happen-
ing every day — what would it say, do you think, if it could speak?"

"Quit yer kidding" said the boy. "Wot paper yer want? I got no time
to waste. It's Mag's birthday, and I want thirty cents to git her a present."

Here was no interpreter of the city's mouth-piece. I bought a paper,
and consigned its undeclared treaties, its premeditated murders and un-
fought battles to an ash can.

Again I repaired to the park and sat in the moon shade. I thought
and thought, and wondered why none could tell me what I asked for.

THE COMPLETE LIFE OF JOHN HOPKINS 1257

And then, as swift as light from a fixed star, the answer came to me.
I arose and hurried — hurried as so many reasoners must, back around my
circle. I knew the answer and I hugged it in my breast as I flew, fearing
lest someone would stop me and demand my secret.

Aurelia was still on the stoop. The moon was higher and the ivy
shadows were deeper. I sat at her side and we watched a little cloud tilt
at the drifting moon and go asunder quite pale and discomfited.

And then, wonder of wonders and delight of delights! our hands some-
how touched, and our fingers closed together and did not part
After half an hour Aurelia said, with that smile of hers:
"Do you know, you haven't spoken a word since you came back!"
"That," said I, nodding wisely, "is the Voice of the City."

THE COMPLETE LIFE OF JOHN HOPKINS

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has
known poverty, love, and war. The justness of this reflection commends
it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace
about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem
that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds
a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest
lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any
millionaire can hope to cast.

It seems that the wise executive power that rules life has thought best
to drill man in these three conditions; and none may escape all three. In
rural places the terms do not mean so much. Poverty is less pinching; love
is temperate; war shrinks to contests about boundary lines and the neigh-
bors' hens. It is in the cities that our epigram gains in truth and vigor;
and it has remained for one John Hopkins to crowd the experience into a
rather small space of time.

The Hopkins flat was like a thousand others. There was a rubber plant
in one window; a flea-bitten terrier sat in the other, wondering when he
was to have his day.

John Hopkins was like a thousand others. He worked at $20 per week
in a nine-story, red-brick building at either Insurance, Buckle's Hoisting
Engines, Chiropody, Loans, Pulleys, Boas Renovated, Waltz Guaranteed
in Five Lessons, or Artificial Limbs. It is not for us to wring Mr. Hopkins's
avocation from these outward signs that be.

Mrs. Hopkins was like a thousand others. The auriferous tooth, the
sedentary disposition, the Sunday afternoon wanderlust, the draught upon
the delicatessen store for home-made comforts, the furor for department
store marked-down sales, the feeling of superiority to the lady in the

1258 BOOKXI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

third-floor front who wore genuine ostrich tips and had two names over
her bell, the mucilaginous hours during which she remained glued to the
window sill, the vigilant avoidance of the instalment man, the tireless
patronage of the acoustics of the dumb-waiter shaft — all the attributes
of the Gotham flat-dweller were hers.

One moment yet of sententiousness and the story moves.

In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a corner
and thrust the rib of your umbrella into the eye of your old friend from
Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet William in the park — and
lo! bandits attack you — you are ambulanced to the hospital — you marry
your nurse; are divorced — get squeezed while short on U. P. S. and D. O.
W. N. S. — stand in the bread line — marry an heiress, take out your laundry
and pay your club dues — seemingly all in the wink of an eye. You travel
the streets, and a finger beckons to you, a handkerchief is dropped for you,
a brick is dropped upon you, the elevator cable or your bank breaks, a
table d'hote or your wife disagrees with you, and Fate tosses you about
like cork crumbs hi wine opened by an un-feed waiter. The City is a
sprightly youngster, and you are red paint upon its toy, and you get licked
off.

John Hopkins sat, after a compressed dinner, in his glove-fitting
straight-front flat. He sat upon a hornblende couch and gazed, with
satiated eyes, at Art Brought Home to the People in the shape of "The
Storm" tacked against the wall. Mrs. Hopkins discoursed droningly of
the dinner smells from the flat across the hall. The flea-bitten terrier gave
Hopkins a look of disgust and showed a man-hating tooth.

Here was neither poverty, love, nor war; but upon such barren stems
may be grafted those essentials of a complete life.

John Hopkins sought to inject a few raisins of conversation into the
tasteless dough of existence. 'Tutting a new elevator in at the office," he
said, discarding the nominative noun, "and the boss has turned out his
whiskers."

"You don't mean it!" commented Mrs. Hopkins.

"Mr. Whipples," continued John, "wore his new spring suit down to-
day. I liked it fine. It's a gray with " He stopped, suddenly stricken

by a need that made itself known to him. "I believe I'll walk down to the
corner and get a five-cent cigar," he concluded.

John Hopkins took his hat and picked his way down the musty halls
and stairs of the flat-house.

The evening air was mild, and the streets shrill with the careless cries
of children playing games controlled by mysterious rhythms and phrases.
Their elders held the doorways and steps with leisurely pipe and gossip.
Paradoxically, the fire-escapes supported lovers in couples who made no
attempt to fly the mounting conflagration they were there to fan.

The corner cigar store aimed at by John Hopkins was kept by a man

THE COMPLETE LIFE OF JOHN HOPKINS 1259

named Freshmayer, who looked upon the earth as a sterile promontory.

Hopkins, unknown in the store, entered and called genially for his
"bunch of spinach, carfare grade." This imputation deepened the pessi-
mism of Freshmayer; but he set out a brand that came perilously near to
filling the order. Hopkins bit off the roots of his purchase, and lighted up
at the swinging gas jet. Feeling in his pockets to make payment, he
found not a penny there.

"Say, my friend," he explained, frankly, "I've come out without any
change. Hand you that nickel first time I pass."

Joy surged in Freshmayer's heart. Here was corroboration of his belief
that the world was rotten and man a peripatetic evil. Without a word
he rounded the end of his counter and made earnest onslaught upon his
customer. Hopkins was no man to serve as a punching-bag for a pessi-
mistic tobacconist. He quickly bestowed upon Freshmayer a colorado-
maduro eye in return for the ardent kick that he received from the dealer
in goods for cash only.

The impetus of the enemy's attack forced the Hopkins line back to
the sidewalk. There the conflict raged; the pacific wooden Indian, with
his carven smile, was overturned, and those of the street who delighted
in carnage pressed round to view the zealous joust.

But then came the inevitable cop and imminent inconvenience for both
the attacker and attacked. John Hopkins was a peaceful citizen, who
worked at rebuses of nights in a flat, but he was not without the funda-
mental spirit of resistance that comes with the battle-rage. He knocked the
policeman into a grocer's sidewalk display of goods and gave Freshmayer
a punch that caused him temporarily to regret that he had not made it a
rule to extend a five-cent line of credit to certain customers. Then
Hopkins took spiritedly to his heels down the sidewalk, closely followed
by the cigar-dealer and the policeman, whose uniform testified to the
reason in 'the grocer's sign that read: "Eggs cheaper than anywhere else
in the city."

As Hopkins ran he became aware of a big, low, red, racing automobile
that kept abreast of him in the street. This auto steered in to the side of
the sidewalk, and the man guiding it motioned to Hopkins to jump into
it. He did so without slackening his speed, and fell into the turkey-red up-
holstered seat beside the chauffeur. The big machine, with a diminuendo
cough, flew away like an albatross down the avenue into which the street
emptied.

The driver of the auto sped his machine without a word. He was
masked beyond guess in the goggles and diabolic garb of the chauffeur.

"Much obliged, old man," called Hopkins, gratefully. "I guess you've
got sporting blood in you, all right, and don't admire the sight of two
men trying to soak one. Little more and Fd have been pinched."

The chauffeur made no sign that he had heard. Hopkins shrugged a

1260 BOOKXI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

shoulder and chewed at his cigar, to which his teeth had clung grimly
throughout the melee.

Ten minutes and the atuo turned into the open carriage entrance of a
noble mansion of brown stone, and stood still The chauffeur leaped out,
and said:

"Come quick. The lady, she will explain. It is the great honor you will
have, monsieur. Ah, that milady could call upon Armand to do this thing!
But, no, I am only one chauffeur."

With vehement gestures the chauffeur conducted Hopkins into the
house. He was ushered into a small but luxurious reception chamber. A
lady, young, and possessing the beauty of visions, rose from a chair. In
her eyes smouldered a becoming anger. Her high-arched, thread-like
brows were ruffled into a delicious frown.

"Milady/' said the chauffeur, bowing low, "I have the honor to relate
to you that I went to the house of Monsieur Long and found him to be
not at home. As I came back I see this gentleman in combat against —
how you say — greatest odds. He is fighting with five — ten — thirty men
— gendarmes, aussi. Yes, milady, he what you call 'swat' one — three —
eight policemans. If that Monsieur Long is out I say to myself this
gentleman he will serve milady so well, and I bring him here."

"Very well, Armand," said the lady, "you may go." She turned to
Hopkins.

"I sent my chauffeur," she said, "to bring my cousin, Walter Long.
There is a man in this house who has treated me with insult and abuse. I
have complained to my aunt, and she laughs at me. Armand says you
are brave. In these prosaic days men who are both brave and chivalrous
are few. May I count upon your assistance?"

John Hopkins thrust the remains of his cigar into his coat pocket. He
looked upon this winning creature and felt his first thrill of romance. It
was a knightly love, and contained no disloyalty to the flat with the
flea-bitten terrier and the lady of his choice. He had married her after
a picnic of the Lady Label Stickers' Union, Lodge No. 2, on a dare and a
bet of new hats and chowder all around with his friend, Billy McManus.
This angel who was begging him to come to her rescue was something
too heavenly for chowder, and as for hats — golden, jewelled crowns for her!

"Say," said John Hopkins, "just show me the guy that you've got the
grouch at. I've neglected my talents as a scrapper heretofore, but this is
my busy night."

"He is in there," said the lady, pointing to a closed door. "Come. Are
you sure that you do not falter or fear?"

"Me?" said John Hopkins. "Just give me one of those roses in the
bunch you are wearing, will you?"

The lady gave him a red, red rose. John Hopkins kissed it, stuffed it
into his vest pocket, opened the door and walked into the room. It was a

A LICKPENNY LOVER I2,6l

handsome library, softly but brightly lighted. A young man was there,
reading.

"Books on etiquette is what you want to study/* said John Hopkins,
abruptly. "Get up here, and I'll give you some lessons. Be rude to a lady,
will you?"

The young man looked mildly surprised. Then he arose languidly,
dextrously caught the arms of John Hopkins and conducted him irre-
sistibly to the front door of the house.

"Beware, Ralph Branscombe," cried the lady, who had followed, "what
you do to the gallant man who has tried to protect me."

The young man shoved John Hopkins gently out the door and then
closed it.

"Bess," he said calmly, "I wish you would quit reading historical novels.
How in the world did that fellow get in here?"

"Armand brought him," said the young lady. "I think you are awfully
mean not to let me have that St. Bernard. I sent Armand for Walter. I
was so angry with you."

"Be sensible, Bess," said the young man, taking her arm. "That dog
isn't safe. He has bitten two or three people around the kennels. Come
now, let's go tell auntie we are in good humor again."

Arm in arm, they moved away.

John Hopkins walked to his flat. The janitor's five-year-old daughter
was playing on the steps. Hopkins gave her a nice, red rose and walked
upstairs.

Mrs. Hopkins was philandering with curl-papers.

"Get your cigar?" she asked, disinterestedly.

"Sure," said Hopkins, "and I knocked around a while outside. It's a
nice night."

He sat upon the hornblende sofa, took out the stump of his cigar,
lighted it, and gazed at the graceful figures in "The Storm" on the opposite
wall.

"I was telling you," said he, "about Mr. Whipple's suit. It's a gray, with
an invisible check, and it looks fine."

A LICKPENNY LOVER

There were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them. She
was eighteen and a saleslady in the gents* gloves. Here she became versed
in two varieties of human beings — the kind of gents who buy their gloves
in department stores and the kind of women who buy gloves for un-
fortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human species,
Masie had acquired other information. She had listened to the promulgated

1262 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

wisdom of the 2,999 otlier gifk an<^ hac* stored it in a brain that was as
secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Perhaps nature, foreseeing
that she would lack wise counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient
of shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox
of the priceless fur above the other animals with cunning.

For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm
poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her
counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your hand over the tape-
line for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked
again you wondered how she had come by Minerva's eyes.

When the floorwalker was not looking Masie chewed tutti frutti; when
he was looking she gazed up as if at the clouds and smiled wistfully.

That is the shopgirl smile, and I enjoin you to shun it unless you are
well fortified with callosity of the heart, caramels, and a congeniality
for the capers of Cupid, This smile belonged to Masie's recreation hours
and not to the store; but the floorwalker must have his own. He is the
Shylock of the stores. When he comes nosing around the bridge of his
nose is a toll-bridge. It is goo-goo eyes or "git" when he looks toward a
pretty girl Of course not all floorwalkers are thus. Only a few days ago
the papers printed news of one over eighty years of age.

One day Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, traveller, poet, auto-
mobilist, happened to enter the Biggest Store. It is due to him to add
that his visit was not voluntary. Filial duty took him by the collar and
dragged him inside, while his mother philandered among the bronze and
terra-cotta statuettes.

Carter strolled across to the glove counter in order to shoot a few
minutes on the wing. His need for gloves was genuine; he had forgotten
to bring a pair with him. But his action hardly calls for apology, because
he had never heard of glove-counter flirtations.

As he neared the vicinity of his fate he hesitated, suddenly conscious o£
this unknown phase of Cupid's less worthy profession.

Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over
the counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling
girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the strident string of
coquetry. Carter would have retreated, but he had gone too far. Masie
confronted him behind her counter with a questioning look in eyes as
coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint of summer sunshine on an
iceberg drifting in Southern seas.

And then Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, etc., felt a warm flush
rise to his aristocratically pale face. But not from diffidence. The blush
was intellectual in origin. He knew in a moment that he stood in the
ranks of the ready-made youths who wooed the giggling girls at other
counters. Himself leaned against the oaken trysting place of a cockney

A LICKPENNY LOVER 1263

Cupid with a desire in his heart for the favor of a glove salesgirl. He was
no more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. And then he felt a sudden
tolerance for them, and an elating, courageous contempt for the conventions
upon which he had fed, and an unhesitating determination to have this
perfect creature for his own.

When the gloves were paid for and wrapped Carter lingered for a
moment. The dimples at the corners of Masie's damask mouth deepened.
All gentlemen who bought gloves lingered in just that way. She curved
an arm, showing like Psyche's through her shirt-waist sleeve, and rested
an elbow upon the show-case edge.

Carter had never before encountered a situation of which he had not
been perfect master. But now he stood far more awkward than Bill or
Jack or Mickey. He had no chance of meeting this beautiful girl socially.
His mind struggled to recall the nature and habits of shop-girls as he
had read or heard of them. Somehow he had received the idea that they
sometimes did not insist too strictly upon the regular channels of intro-
duction. His heart beat loudly at the thought of proposing an uncon-
ventional meeting with this lovely and virginal being. But the tumult in
his heart gave him courage.

After a few friendly and well-received remarks on general subjects,
he laid his card by her hand on the counter.

"Will you please pardon me," he said, "if I seem too bold; but I
earnestly hope you will allow me the pleasure of seeing you again. There
is my name; I assure you that it is with the greatest respect that I ask

the favor of becoming one of your fr acquaintances. May I not hope

for the privilege?"

Masie knew men — especially men who buy gloves. Without hesitation
she looked him frankly and smilingly in the eyes, and said:

"Sure. I guess you're right. I don't usually go out with strange gentle-
men, though. It ain't quite ladylike. When should you want to see me
again?"

"As soon as I may," said Carter. "If you would allow me to call at
your home, I "

Masie laughed musically. "Oh, gee, no!" she said emphatically. "If
you could see our flat once! There's five of us in three rooms. I'd just like
to see ma's face if I was to bring a gentleman friend there!"

"Anywhere, then," said the enamored Carter, "that will be convenient
to you."

"Say," suggested Masie, with a bright-idea look in her peach-blow face;
"I guess Thursday night will about suit me. Suppose you come to the
corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street at 7:30. 1 live right near
the corner. But I've got to be back home by eleven. Ma never lets me
stay out after eleven."

1264 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THECITY

Carter promised gratefully to keep the tryst, and then hastened to his
mother, who was looking about for him to ratify her purchase of a bronze
Diana.

A salesgirl, with small eyes and an obtuse nose, strolled near Masie,
with a friendly leer.

"Did you make a hit with his nobs, Masie?" she asked, familiarly.

"The gentleman asked permission to call," answered Masie, with
the grand air, as she slipped Carter's card into the bosom of her waist.

"Permission to call!" echoed small eyes, with a snigger. "Did he say any-
thing about dinner in the Waldorf and a spin in his auto afterward?"

"Oh, cheese it!" said Masie, wearily. "You've been used to swell
things, I don't think. You've had a swelled head ever since that hose-
cart driver took you out to a chop suey joint. No, he never mentioned the
Waldorf; but there's a Fifth Avenue address on his card, and if he buys
the supper you can bet your life there won't be no pigtail on the waiter
what takes the order.*'

As Carter glided away from the Biggest Store with his mother in his
electric runabout, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his heart. He knew
that love had come to him for the first time in all the twenty-nine years
of his life. And that the object of it should make so readily an appoint-
ment with him at a street corner, though it was a step toward his desires,
tortured him with misgivings.

Carter did not know the shopgirl. He did not know that her home is
often either a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile filled to over-
flowing with kith and kin. The street corner is her parlor, the park is her
drawing room; the avenue is her garden walk; yet for the most part she
is as inviolate mistress of herself in them as is my lady inside her tapestried
chamber.

One evening at dusk, two weeks after their first meeting, Carter and
Masie strolled arm-in-arm into a -little, dimly-lit park. They found a bench,
tree-shadowed and secluded, and sat there.

For the first time his arm stole gently around her. Her golden-
bronze head slid restfully against his shoulder.

"Gee!" sighed Masie, thankfully. "Why didn't you ever think of that
before?"

"Masie," said Carter, earnestly, "you surely know that I love you. I
ask you sincerely to marry me. You know me well enough by this time
to have no doubts of me. I want you, and I must have you. I care nothing
for the difference in our stations/'

"What is the difference?" asked Masie, curiously.

"Well, there isn't any," said Carter, quickly, "except in the minds of
foolish people. It is in my power to give you a life of luxury. My social
position is beyond dispute, and my means are ample."

"They all say that," remarked Masie. "It's the kid they all give you.

A LICKPENNY LOVER 1265

I suppose you really work in a delicatessen or follow the races. I ain't as
green as I look."

"I can furnish you all the proofs you want/' said Carter, gently. "And
I want you, Masie. I loved you the first day I saw you."

"They all do/' said Masie, with an amused laugh, "to hear 'em talk.
If I could meet a man that got stuck on me the third time he'd seen me
I think I'd get mashed on him."

"Please don't say such things," pleaded Carter. "Listen to me, dear.
Ever since I first looked into your eyes you have been the only woman in
the world for me."

"Oh, ain't you the kidder!" smiled Masie. "How many other girls did
you ever tell that?"

But Carter persisted. And at length he reached the flimsy, fluttering
little soul of the shopgirl that existed somewhere deep down in her lovely
bosom. His words penetrated the heart whose very lightness was its safest
armor. She looked up at him with eyes that saw. And a warm glow
visited her cool cheeks. Tremblingly, awfully, her moth wings closed, and
she seemed about to settle upon the flower of love. Some faint glimmer of
life and its possibilities on the other side of her glove counter dawned
upon her. Carter felt the change and crowded the opportunity.

"Marry me, Masie," he whispered, softly, "and we will go away from
this ugly city to beautiful ones. We will forget work and business, and
life will be one long holiday. I know where I should take you — I have
been there often. Just think of a shore where summer is eternal, where the
waves are always rippling on the lovely beach and the people are happy
and free as children. We will sail to those shores and remain there as long
as you please. In one of those far-away cities there are grand and lovely
palaces and towers full of beautiful pictures and statues. The streets of
the city are water, and one travels about in "

"I know," said Masie, sitting up suddenly. "Gondolas."

"Yes," smiled Carter.

"I thought so," said Masie.

"And then," continued Carter, "we will travel on and see whatever
we wish in the world. After the European cities we will visit India and
the ancient cites there, and ride on elephants and see the wonderful
temples of the Hindoos and the Brahmins and 'the Japanese gardens
and the camel trains and chariot races in Persia, and all the queer sights of
foreign countries. Don't you think you would like it, Masie ?**

Masie rose to her feet.

"I think we had better be going home," she said, coolly. "It's getting
late."

Carter humored her. He had come to know her varying, thistle-down
moods, and that it was useless to combat them. But he felt a certain
happy triumph. He had held for a moment, though but by a silken thread.

1266 BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

the soul of his wild Psyche, and hope was stronger within him. Once
she had folded her wings and her cool hand had closed about his own.

At the Biggest Store the next day Masie's chum, Lulu, waylaid her in
an angle of the counter.

"How are you and your swell friend making it?" she asked.

"Oh, him?" said Masie, patting her side curls. "He ain't in it any more.
Say, Lu, what do you think that fellow wanted me to do?"

"Go on the stage?" guessed Lulu, breathlessly.

"Nit; he's too cheap a guy for that. He wanted me to marry him and
go down to Coney Island for a wedding tour!"

DOUGHERTYS EYE-OPENER

Big Jim Dougherty was a sport. He belonged to that race of men. In
Manhattan it is a distinct race. They are the Caribs of the North— strong,
artful, self-sufficient, clannish, honorable within the laws of their race,
holding in lenient contempt neighboring tribes who bow to the measure
of Society's tape-line. I refer, of course, to the titled nobility of sportdom.
There is a class which bears as a qualifying adjective the substantive be-
longing to a wind instrument made of a cheap and base metal. But the
tin mines of Cornwall never produced the material for manufacturing
descriptive nomenclature for "Big Jim" Dougherty.

The habitat of the sport is the lobby or the outside corner of certain
hotels and combination restaurants and cafes. They are mostly men of
different sizes, running from small to large; but they are unanimous in
the possession of a recently shaven, blue-black cheek and chin and dark
overcoats (in season) with black velvet collars.

Of the domestic life of the sport little is known. It has been said
that Cupid and Hymen sometimes take a hand in the game and copper
the queen of hearts to lose. Daring theorists have averred — not content
with simply saying— that a sport often contracts a spouse, and even incurs
descendants. Sometimes he sits in the game of politics; and then at
chowder picnics there is a revelation of a Mrs. Sport and little Sports in
glazed hats with tin pails.

But mostly the sport is Oriental. He believes his women-folk should not
be too patent. Somewhere behind grilles or flower-ornamented fire escapes
they await him. There, no doubt, they tread on rugs from Teheran and
are diverted by the bulbul and play upon the dulcimer and feed upon
sweetmeats. But away from his home the sport is an integer. He does not,
as men of other races in Manhattan do, become the convoy in his un-
occupied hours of fluttering laces and high heels that tick of? delectably
the happy seconds of the evening parade. He herds with his own race

DOUGHERTY'S EYE-OPENER 1267

at corners, and delivers a commentary in his Carib lingo upon the passing
show.

"Big Jim" Dougherty had a wife, but he did not wear a button portrait
of her upon his lapel, He had a home in one of those brown-stone, iron-
railed streets on the west side that look like a recently excavated bowling
alley of Pompeii.

To this home of his Mr. Dougherty repaired each night when the hour
was so late as to promise no further diversion in the arch domains of
sport. By that time the occupant of the monogamistic harem would be in
dreamland, the bulbul silenced and the hour propitious for slumber.

"Big Jim" always arose at twelve, meridian, for breakfast, and soon
afterward he would return to the rendezvous of his "crowd/*

He was always vaguely conscious that there was a Mrs. Dougherty.
He would have received without denial the charge that the quiet, neat,
comfortable little woman across the table at home was his wife. In fact,
he remembered pretty well that they had been married for nearly four
years. She would often tell him about the cute tricks of Spot, the canary,
and the light-haired lady that lived in the window of the flat across the
street.

"Big Jim" Dougherty even listened to this conversation of hers some-
times. He knew that she would have a nice dinner ready for him every
evening at seven when he came for it. She sometimes went to matinees,
and she had a talking machine with six dozen records. Once when her
Uncle Amos blew in on a wind from up-state she went with him to the
Eden Musee. Surely these things were diversions enough for any woman.

One afternoon Mr. Dougherty finished his breakfast, put on his hat
and got away fairly for the door. When his hand was on the knob he
heard his wife's voice.

"Jim," she said, firmly, "I wish you would take me out to dinner this
evening. It has been three years since you have been outside the door
with me."

"Big Jim" was astounded. She had never asked anything like this before.
It had the flavor of a totally new proposition. But he was a game sport.

"All right," he said. "You be ready when I come at seven. None of
this 'wait two minutes till I primp an hour or two' kind of business, now,
Dele."

"Fll be ready," said his wife, calmly.

At seven she descended the stone steps in the Pompeian bowling alley
at the side of "Big Jim" Dougherty. She wore a dinner gown made of a
stuff that the spiders must have woven, and of a color that a twilight sky
must have contributed. A light coat with many admirably unnecessary
capes and adorably inutile ribbons floated downward from her shoulders.
Fine feathers do make fine birds; and the only reproach in the saying is
for the man who refuses to give up his earnings for the ostrich-tip indus-
try.

1268 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"Big Jim" Dougherty was troubled. There was a being at his side whom
he did not know. He thought of the sober-hued plumage that this bird of
paradise was accustomed to wear in her cage, and this winged revelation
puzzled him. In some way she reminded him of the Delia Cullen that he
had married four years before. Shyly and rather awkwardly he stalked at
her right hand.

"After dinner I'll take you back home, Dele," said Mr. Dougherty,
"and then I'll drop back up to Seltzer's with the boys. You can have
swell chuck to-night if you want it. I made a winning on Anaconda yester-
day so you can go as far as you like."

Mr. Dougherty had intended to make the outing with his unwonted
wife an inconspicuous one. Uxoriousness was a weakness that the
precepts of the Caribs did not countenance. If any of his friends of the
track, the billiard cloth or the square circle had wives they had never
complained of the fact in public. There were a number of table d'hote
places on the cross streets near the broad and shining way; and to one
of these he had proposed to escort her, so that the bushel might not
be removed from the light of his domesticity.

But while on the way Mr. Dougherty altered those intentions. He had
been casting stealthy glances at his attractive companion and he was
seized with the conviction that she was no selling plater. He resolved to
parade with his wife past Seltzer's cafe, where at this time a number
of his tribe would be gathered to view the daily evening processions. Yes;
and he would take her to dine at Hoogley's, the swellest slow-lunch
warehouse on the line, he said to himself.

The congregation of smooth-faced tribal gentlemen were on watch at
Seltzer's. As Mr. Dougherty and his reorganized Delia passed they stared,
momentarily petrified, and then removed their hats — a performance as
unusual to them as was the astonishing innovation presented to their gaze
by "Big Jim." On the latter gentleman's impassive face there appeared a
slight flicker of triumph— a faint flicker, no more to be observed than the
expression called there by the draft of little casino to a four-card spade
flush.

Hoogley's was animated. Electric lights shone — as, indeed, they were
expected to do. And the napery, the glassware, and the flowers also
meritoriously performed the spectacular duties required of them. The
guests were numerous, well-dressed, and gay.

A waiter — not necessarily obsequious — conducted "Big Jim" Dougherty
and his wife to a table.

"Play that menu straight across for what you like, Dele," said "Big
Jim/* "It's you for a trough of the gilded oats to-night. It strikes me that
maybe weVe been sticking too fast to home fodder."

"Big Jim's" wife gave her order. He looked at her with respect. She
had mentioned truffles; and he had not known that she knew what truffles

DOUGHERTY'S EYE-OPENER 1269

were. From the wine list she designated an appropriate and desirable
brand. He looked at her with some admiration.

She was beaming with the innocent excitement that woman derives
from the exercise of her gregariousness. She was talking to him about a
hundred things with animation and delight. And as the meal progressed
her cheeks, colorless from a life indoors, took on a delicate flush. "Big
Jim" looked around the room and saw that none of the women there had
her charm. And then he thought of the three years she had suffered im-
murement, uncomplaining, and a flush of shame warmed him, for he
carried fair play as an item in his creed.

But when the Honorable Patrick Corrigan, leader in Dougherty's
district and a friend of his, saw them and came over to the table, matters
got to the three-quarter stretch. The Honorable Patrick was a gallant
man, both in deeds and words. As for the Blarney stone, his previous
actions toward it must have been pronounced. Heavy damages for breach
of promise could surely have been obtained had the Blarney stone seen
fit to sue the Honorable Patrick.

"Jimmy, old man!" he called; he clapped Dougherty on the back; he
shone like a midday sun upon Delia.

"Honorable Mr. Corrigan— Mrs. Dougherty," said "Big Jim.'*

The Honorable Patrick became a fountain of entertainment and ad-
miration. The waiter had to fetch a third chair for him; he made another
at the table, and the wineglasses were refilled.

"You selfish old rascal!" he exclaimed, shaking an arch finger at "Big
Jim," "to have kept Mrs. Dougherty a secret from us."

And then "Big Jim" Dougherty, who was no talker, sat dumb, and saw
the wife who had dined every evening for three years at home, blossom
like a fairy flower. Quick, witty, charming, full of light and ready talk,
she received the experienced attack of the Honorable Patrick on the field
of repartee and surprised, vanquished, delighted him. She unfolded her
long-closed petals and around her the room became a garden. They tried
to include "Big Jim" in the conversation, but he was without a vocabulary.

And then a stray bunch of politicians and good fellows who lived for
sport came into the room. They saw "Big Jim" and the leader, and over
they came and were made acquainted with Mrs. Dougherty. And in a
few minutes she was holding a salon. Half a dozen men surrounded her,
courtiers all, and six found her capable of charming. "Big Jim" sat, grim,
and kept saying to himself: "Three years, three years!"

The dinner came to an end. The Honorable Patrick reached for Mrs.
Dougherty's cloak; but that was a matter of action instead of words, and
Dougherty's big hand got it first by two seconds.

While the farewells were being said at the door the Honorable Patrick
smote Dougherty mightily between the shoulders.

1270 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"Jimmy, me boy," he declared, in a giant whisper, "the madam is a
jewel of the first water. Ye're a lucky dog."

"Big Jim" walked homeward with his wife. She seemed quite as pleased
with the lights and show windows in the streets as with the admiration of
the men in Hoogley's. As they passed Seltzer's they heard the sound of
many voices in the cafe. The boys would be starting the drinks around
now and discussing past performances.

At the door of their home Delia paused. The pleasure of the outing
radiated softly from her countenance. She could not hope for Jim of eve-
nings, but the glory of this one would lighten her lonely hours for a long
time.

"Thank you for taking me out, Jim," she said, gratefully. "You'll be
going back to Seltzer's now, of course."

. "To with Seltzer's," said "Big Jim," emphatically. "And d Pat

Corrigan! Does he think I haven't got any eyes?"

And the door closed behind both of them.

LITTLE SPECK IN GARNERED FRUIT

The honeymoon was at its full. There was a flat with the reddest of new
carpets, tasselled portieres and six steins with pewter lids arranged on a
ledge above the wainscoting of the dining-room. The wonder of it was
yet upon them. Neither of them had ever seen a yellow primrose by the
river's brim; but if such a sight had met their eyes at that time it would
have seemed like — well, whatever the poet expected the right kind of
people to see in it besides a primrose.

The bride sat in the rocker with her feet resting upon the world. She
was wrapt in rosy dreams and a kimono of the same hue. She wondered
what the people in Greenland and Tasmania and Beloochistan were say-
ing one to another about her marriage to Kid McGarry. Not that it made
any difference. There was no welter-weight from London to the Southern
Cross that could stand up four hours — no; four rounds — with her bride-
groom. And he had been hers for three weeks; and the crook of her little
finger could sway him more than the fist of any 142-pounder in the world.

Love, when it is ours, is the other name for self-abnegation and sacri-
fice. When it belongs to people across the airshaft it means arrogance and
self-conceit.

The bride crossed her oxfords and looked thoughtfully at the distemper
Cupids on the ceiling.

"Precious," said she, with the air of Cleopatra asking Antony for Rome
done up in tissue paper and delivered at residence, "I think I would like
a peach."

LITTLE SPECK IN GARNERED FRUIT" 1271

Kid McGarry arose and put on his coat and hat. He was serious,
shaven, sentimental, and spry.

"All right," said he, as coolly as though he were only agreeing to sign
articles to fight the champion of England. "Ill step down and cop one
out for you — see?"

"Don't be long," said the bride. "I'll be lonesome without my naughty
boy. Get a nice, ripe one/5

After a series of farewells that would have befitted an imminent voyage
to foreign parts, the Kid went down to the street.

Here he not unreasonably hesitated, for the season was yet early spring,
and there seemed small chance of wresting anywhere from those chill
streets and stores the coveted luscious guerdon of summer's golden prime.

At the Italian's fruit-stand on the comer he stopped and cast a contemp-
tuous eye over the display of papered oranges, highly polished apples, and
wan, sun-hungry bananas.

"Gotta da peach?" asked the Kid in the tongue of Dante, the lover of
lovers.

"Ah, no," sighed the vender. "Not for one mont-com-a da peach. Too
soon. Gotta da nice-a orange. Like-a da orange?"

Scornful, the Kid pursued his quest. He entered the all-night chop-
house, cafe, and bowling alley of his friend and admirer, Justus O'Calla-
han. The O'Callahan was about in his institution, looking for leaks.

"I want it straight," said the Kid to him. "The old woman has got a
hunch that she wants a peach. Now, if you've got a peach, Gal, get it out
quick. I want it and others like it if you've got 'em in plural quantities."

"The house is yours," said O'Callahan. "But there's no peach in it. It's
too soon. I don't suppose you could even find 'em at one of the Broadway
joints. That's too bad. When a lady fixes her mouth for a certain kind of
fruit nothing else won't do. It's too late now to find any of the first-class
fruiterers open. But if you think the missis would like some nice oranges
I've just got a box of fine ones in that she might "

"Much obliged, Cal. It's a peach proposition right from the ring of the
gong. I'll try farther."

The time was nearly midnight as the Kid walked down the West-Side
avenue. Few stores were open, and such as were practically hooted at the
idea of a peach.

But in her moated flat the bride confidently awaited her Persian fruit.
A champion welter-weight not find a peach? — not stride triumphantly
over the seasons and the zodiac and the almanac to fetch an Amsden's
June or a Georgia cling to his owny-own?

The Kid's eye caught sight of a window that was lighted and gorgeous
with nature's most entrancing colors. The light suddenly went out. The
Kid sprinted and caught the fruiterer locking his door.

"Peaches?" said he, with extreme deliberation.

1272 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

"Well, no, sir. Not for three or four weeks yet. I haven't any idea
where you might find some. There may be a few in town from under the
glass, but they'd be hard to locate. Maybe at one of the more expensive
hotels-— some place where there's plenty of money to waste. I've got
some very fine oranges, though— from a shipload that came in to-day."

The Kid lingered on the corner for a moment, and then set out briskly
toward a pair of green lights that flanked the steps of a building down a
dark side street.

"Captain around anywhere?" he asked of the desk sergeant of the
police station.

At that moment the captain came briskly forward from the rear. He
was in plain clothes and had a busy air.

"Hello, Kid/' he said to the pugilist. "Thought you were bridal-tour-
ing?"

"Got back yesterday. I'm a solid citizen now. Think I'll take an interest
in municipal doings. How would it suit you to get into Denver Dick's
place to-night, Cap?"

"Past performances," said the captain, twisting his moustache. "Den-
ver was closed up two months ago."

"Correct," said the Kid. "Raferty chased him out of the Forty-third.
He's running in your precinct now, and his game's bigger than ever. I'm
down on this gambling business. I can put you against his game."

"In my precinct?" growled the captain. "Are you sure, Kid? I'll take it
as a favor. Have you got the entree? How is it to be done?"

"Hammers," said the Kid. "They haven't got any steel on the doors
yet You'll need ten men. No; they won't let me in the place. Denver
has been trying to do me. He thought I tipped him off for the other raid.
I didn't, though. You want to hurry. I've got to get back home. The house
is only three blocks from here."

Before ten minutes had sped the captain with a dozen men stole with
their guide into the hall-way of a dark and virtuous-looking building in
which many businesses were conducted by day.

"Third floor, rear," said the Kid, softly. "Ill lead the way."

Two axemen faced the door that he pointed out to them.

"It seems all quiet," said the captain, doubtfully. "Are you sure your
tip is straight?"

"Cut away!" said the Kid. "It's on me if it ain't."

The axes crashed through the as yet unprotected door. A blaze of light
from within poured through the smashed panels. The door fell, and the
raiders sprang into the room with their guns handy.

The big room was furnished with the gaudy magnificence dear to Den-
ver Dick's western ideas. Various well-patronized games were in progress.
About fifty men who were in the room rushed upon the police in a grand

LITTLE SPECK IN GARNERED FRUIT** 1273

break for personal liberty. The plain-clothes men had to do a little club-
swinging. More than half the patrons escaped.

Denver Dick had graced his game with his own presence that night.
He led the rush that was intended to sweep away the smaller body of
raiders. But when he saw the Kid his manner became personal. Being in
the heavy-weight class he cast himself joyfully upon his slighter enemy,
and they rolled down a flight of stairs in each other 's arms. On the land-
ing they separated and arose, and then the Kid was able to use some of
his professional tactics, which had been useless to him while in the ex-
cited clutch of a 200-pound sporting gentleman who was about to lose
$20,000 worth of paraphernalia.

After vanquishing his adversary the Kid hurried upstairs and through
the gambling-room into a smaller apartment connecting by an arched
doorway.

Here was a long table set with choicest chinaware and silver, and lav-
ishly furnished with food of that expensive and spectacular sort of which
the devotees of sport are supposed to be fond. Here again was to be per-
ceived the liberal and florid taste of the gentleman with the urban cog-
nominal prefix.

A No. 10 patent leather shoe protruded a few of its inches outside the
tablecloth along the floor. The Kid seized this and plucked forth a black
man in a white tie and the garb of a servitor.

"Get up!" commanded the Kid. "Are you in charge of this free lunch?*'

"Yes, sah, I was. Has they done pinched us ag'in, boss?"

"Looks that way. Listen to me. Are there any peaches in this layout?
If there ain't 111 have to throw up the sponge."

"There were three dozen, sah, when the game opened this evenin'; but
I reckon the gendemen done eat 'em all up. If you'd lik to eat a fustrate
orange, sah, I kin find you some."

"Get busy," ordered the Kid sternly, "and move whatever peach crop
you've got quick or there'll be trouble. If anybody oranges me again to-
night, I'll knock his face off."

The raid on Denver Dick's high-priced and prodigal luncheon revealed
one lone, last peach that had escaped the epicurean jaws of the followers
of chance. Into the Kid's pocket it went, and that indefatigable forager
departed immediately with his prize. With scarcely a glance at the scene
on the sidewalk below, where the officers were loading their prisoners
into the patrol wagons, he moved homeward with long, swift strides.

His heart was light as he went. So rode the knights back to Camelot
after perils and high deeds done for their ladies fair. The Kid's lady had
commanded him and he had obeyed. True, it was but a peach that she
had craved; but it had been no small deed to glean a peach at midnight
from that wintry city where yet the February snows lay like iron. She had

1274 BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

asked for a peach; she was his bride; in his pocket the peach was warm-
ing in his hand that held it for fear that it might fall out and be lost.

On the way the Kid turned in at an all-night drug store and said to the
spectacled clerk :

"Say, sport, I wish you'd size up this rib of mine and see i£ it's broke. I
was in a little scrap and bumped down a flight or two of stairs."

The druggist made an examination.

"It isn't broken," was his diagnosis; "but you have a bruise there that
looks like you'd fallen off the Flatiron twice."

"That's all right," said the Kid. "Let's have your clothesbrush, please."

The bride waited in the rosy glow of the pink lamp shade. The miracles
were not all passed away. By breathing a desire for some slight thing — a
flower, a pomegranate, a — oh, yeh, a peach — she could send forth her man
into the night, into the world which could not withstand him, and he
would do her bidding.

And now he stood by her chair and laid the peach in her hand.

"Naughty boy!" she said fondly. "Did I say a peach? I think I would
much rather have had an orange."

Blest be the bride.

THE HARBINGER

Long before the springtide is felt in the dull bosom of the yokel does
the city man know that the grass-green goddess is upon her throne. He
sits at his breakfast eggs and toast, begirt by stone walls, opens his morn-
ing paper and sees journalism leave vernalism at the post.

For, whereas spring's couriers were once the evidence of our finer
senses, now the Associated Press does the trick.

The warble of the first robin in Hackensack, the stirring of the maple
sap in Bennington, the budding of the pussy willows along Main Street
in Syracuse, the first chirp of the bluebird, the swan song of the Blue
Point, the annual tornado in St. Louis, the plaint of the peach pessimist
from Pompton, N. J., the regular visit of the tame wild goose with a
broken leg to the pond near Bilgewater Junction, the base attempt of the
Drug Trust to boost the price of quinine foiled in the House by Con-
gressman Jinks, the first tall poplar struck by lightning and the usual
stunned picnickers who had taken refuge, the first crack of the ice jam
in the Allegheny River, the finding of a violet in its mossy bed by the
Correspondent at Round Corners— these are the advance signs of the
burgeoning season that are wired into the wise city, while the farmer
sees nothing but winter upon his dreary fields.

But these be mere externals. The true harbinger is the heart. When

THE HARBINGER 1275

Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is spring ar-
rived and the newspaper report of the five-foot rattler killed in Squire
Pettigrev/s pasture confirmed.

Ere the first violet blew, Mr. Peters, Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Kidd sat
together on a bench in Union Square and conspired. Mr, Peters was the
D'Artagnan of the loafers there. He was the dingiest, the laziest, the sor-
riest brown blot against the green background of any bench in the park.
But just then he was the most important of the trio.

Mr. Peters had a wife. This had not heretofore affected his standing
with Ragsy and Kidd. But to-day it invested him with a peculiar interest.
His friends, having escaped matrimony, had shown a disposition to de-
ride Mr. Peters for his venture on that troubled sea. But at last they had
been forced to acknowledge that either he had been gifted with a large
foresight or that he was one of Fortune's lucky sons.

For, Mrs. Peters had a dollar. A whole dollar bill, good and receivable
by the Government for customs, taxes, and all public dues. How to get
possession of that dollar was the question up for discussion by the three
musty musketeers.

"How do you know it was a dollar?" asked Ragsy, the immensity of
the sum inclining him to scepticism.

"The coalman seen her have it," said Mr. Peters. "She went out and
done some washing yesterday. And look what she give me for breakfast
— the heel of a loaf and a cup of coffee, and her with a dollar!"

"It's fierce," said Ragsy.

"Say we go up and punch 'er and stick a towel in *er mouth and cop
the coin," suggested Kidd, viciously. "Y' ain't afraid of a woman, are
you?"

"She might holler and have us pinched," demurred Ragsy. "I don't
believe in slugging no woman in a houseful of people."

"Gent'men," said Mr. Peters, severely, through his russet stubble, "re-
member that yoii are speaking of my wife. A man who would lift his
hand to a lady except in the way of "

"Maguire," said Ragsy, pointedly, "has got his bock beer sign out. If
we had a dollar we could "

"Hush up!" said Mr. Peters, licking his lips. "We got to get that case-
note somehow, boys. Ain't what's a man's wife's his? Leave it to me. I'll
go over to the 'house and get it. Wait here for me.*'

"I've seen 'em give up quick, and tell you where it's hid if you kick *em
in the ribs," said Kidd.

"No man would kick a woman," said Peters, virtuously. "A little chok-
ing—just a touch on the wind-pipe — that gets away with 'em — and no
marks left. Wait for me. Ill bring back that dollar, boys."

High up in a tenement-house between Second Avenue and the river
lived the Peterses in a back room so gloomy that the landlord blushed to

1276 BOOK. XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

take the rent for it. Mrs. Peters worked at sundry times, doing odd jobs
of scrubbing and washing. Mr. Peters had a pure, unbroken record of five
years without having earned a penny. And yet they clung together, shar-
ing each other's hatred and misery, being creatures of habit. Of habit, the
power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some
silly theory of gravitation.

Mrs. Peters reposed her 200 pounds on the safer of the two chairs and
gazed stolidly out the one window at the brick wall opposite. Her eyes
were red and damp. The furniture could have been carried away on a
pushcart, but no pushcart man would have removed it as a gift.

The door opened to admit Mr. Peters. His fox-terrier eyes expressed a
wish. His wife's diagnosis located correctly the seat of it, but misread it
hunger instead of thirst.

"You'll get nothing more to eat till night," she said, looking out of the
window again. "Take your hound-dog's face out of the room."

Mr. Peters' eye calculated the distance between them. By taking her by
surprise it might be possible to spring upon her, overthrow her, and
apply the throttling tactics of which he had boasted to his waiting com-
rades. True, it had been only a boast; never yet had he dared to lay vio-
lent hands upon her; but with the thoughts of the delicious, cool bock or
Culmbacher bracing his nerves, he was near to upsetting his own theories
of the treatment due by a gentleman to a lady. But, with his loafer's love
for the more artistic and less strenuous way, he chose diplomacy first, the
high card in the game — the assumed attitude of success already attained.

"You have a dollar," he said, loftily, but significantly in the tone that
goes with the lighting of a cigar — when the properties are at hand.

"I have," said Mrs. Peters, producing the bill from her bosom and
crackling it, teasingly.

"I am offered a position in a — in a tea store/' said Mr. Peters. "I am to
begin work tomorrow. But it will be necessary for me to buy a pair of "

"You are a liar," said Mrs. Peters, reinterring the note. "No tea store,
nor no A B C store, nor no junk shop would have you. I rubbed the skin
off both me hands washin' jumpers and overalls to make that dollar. Do
you think it come out of them suds to buy the kind you put into you?
Skiddoo! Get your mind off of money."

Evidently the poses of Talleyrand were not worth one hundred cents
on that dollar. But diplomacy is dexterous. The artistic temperament
of Mr. Peters lifted him by the straps of his congress gaiters and set
him on new ground. He called up a look of desperate melancholy to his
eyes.

"Clara," he said, hollowly, "to struggle further is useless. You have
always misunderstood me. Heaven knows I have striven with all my
might to keep my head above the waves of misfortune, but "

"Cut out the rainbow of hope and that stuff about walkin' one by one

THE HARBINGER 1277

through the narrow isles of Spain," said Mrs. Peters, with a sigh. "I've
heard it so often. There's an ounce bottle of carbolic on the shelf behind
the empty coffee can. Drink hearty."

Mr. Peters reflected. What next! The old expedients had failed. The
two musty musketeers were awaiting him hard by the ruined chateau—
that is to say, on a park bench with rickety cast-iron legs. His honor was a
stake. He had engaged to storm the castle singlehanded and bring back
the treasure that was to furnish them wassail and solace. And all that
stood between him and the coveted dollar was his wife, once a little girl
whom he could — aha! — why not again? Once with soft words he could, as
they say, twist her around his little finger. Why not again? Not for years
had he tried it. Grim poverty and mutual hatred had killed all that. But
Ragsy and Kidd were waiting for him to bring that dollar!

Mr. Peters took a surreptitiously keen look at his wife. Her formless
bulk overflowed the chair. She kept her eyes fixed out the window in a
strange kind of trance. Her eyes showed that she had been recently
weeping,

"I wonder," said Mr. Peters to himself, "if there'd be anything in it."

The window was open upon its outlook of brick walls and drab, barren
back yards. Except for the mildness of the air that entered it might have
been midwinter yet in the city that turns such a frowning face to besieg-
ing spring. But spring doesn't come with the thunder of cannon. She is a
sapper and a miner, and you must capitulate.

"I'll try it," said Mr. Peters to himself, making a wry face.

He went up to his wife and put his arm across her shoulders.

"Clara, darling," he said in tones that shouldn't have fooled a baby seal,
"why should we have hard words? Ain't you my own tootsum wootsum?"

A black mark against you, Mr. Peters, in the sacred ledger of Cupid.
Charges of attempted graft are filed against you, and of forgery and utter-
ance of two of Love's holiest of appellations.

But the miracle of spring was wrought. Into the back room over the
back alley between the black walls had crept the Harbinger. It was ridicu-
lous, and yet Well, it is a rat trap, and you, madam and sir and all of

us, are in it.

Red and fat and crying like Niobe or Niagara, Mrs. Peters threw her
arms around her lord and dissolved upon him. Mr. Peters would have
striven to extricate the dollar bill from its deposit vault, but his arms were
bound to his sides.

"Do you love me, James?" asked Mrs. Peters.

"Madly," said James, "but "

"You are ill!" exclaimed Mrs. Peters. "Why are you so pale and tired
looking?"

"I feel weak," said Mr. Peters. "I "

"Oh, wait; I know what it is. Wait, James. I'll be back in a minute."

1278 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

With a parting hug that revived in Mr. Peters recollections of the Ter-
rible Turk, his wife hurried out of the room and down the stairs.

Mr. Peters hitched his thumbs under his suspenders.

"All right," he confided to the ceiling. "I've got her going. I hadn't any
idea the old girl was soft any more under the foolish rib. Well, sir; ain't I
the Claude Melnotte of the lower East Side? What? It's a 100 to i shot
that I get the dollar. I wonder what she went out for. I guess she's gone
to tell Mrs. Muldoon on the second floor, that we're reconciled. I'll re-
member this. Soft soap! And Ragsy was talking about slugging her!"

Mrs. Peters came back with a bottle of sarsaparilla.

"I'm glad I happened to have that dollar," she said. "You're all run
down, honey."

Mr. Peters had a tablespoonf ul of the stuff inserted into him. Then Mrs.
Peters sat on his lap and murmured:

"Call me tootsum wootsums again, James."

He sat still, held there by his materialized goddess of spring.

Spring had come.

On the bench in Union Square Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Kidd squirmed,
tongue-parched, awaiting D'Artagnan and his dollar.

"I wish I had choked her at first," said Mr. Peters to himself.

WHILE THE AUTO WAITS

Promptly at the beginning of twilight, came again to that quiet corner of
that quiet, small park the girl in gray. She sat upon a bench and read a
book, for there was yet to come a half hour in which print could be ac-
complished.

To repeat: Her dress was gray, and plain enough to mask its impec-
cancy of style and fit. A large-meshed veil imprisoned her turban hat and
a face that shone through it with a calm and unconscious beauty. She had
come there at the same hour on the day previous, and on the day before
that; and there was one who knew it.

The young man who knew it hovered near, relying upon burnt sacri-
fices to the great joss, Luck. His piety was rewarded, for, in turning a
page, her book slipped from her fingers and bounded from the bench a
full yard away.

The young man pounced upon it with instant avidity, returning it to
its owner with that air that seems to flourish in parks and public places—
a compound of gallantry and hope, tempered with respect for the police-
man on the beat In a pleasant voice, he risked an inconsequent remark
upon the weather—that introductory topic responsible for so much of the
world's unhappiness — and stood poised for a moment, awaiting his fate.

WHILE THE AUTO WAITS 1279

The girl looked him over leisurely; at his ordinary, neat dress and his
features distinguished by nothing particular in the way of expression.

"You may sit down, if you like," she said, in a full, deliberate contralto.
"Really, I would like to have you do so. The light is too bad for reading.
I would prefer to talk.*'

The vassal of Luck slid upon the seat by her side with complaisance.

"Do you know," he said, speaking the formula with which park chair-
men open their meetings, "that you are quite the stunningest girl I have
seen in a long time? I had my eye on you yesterday. Didn't know some-
body was bowled over by those pretty lamps of yours, did you, honey-
suckle?"

"Whoever you are," said the girl, in icy tones, "you must remember
that I am a lady. I will excuse the remark you have just made because
the mistake was, doubtless, not an unnatural one — in your circle. I asked
you to sit down; if the invitation must constitute me your honeysuckle,
consider it withdrawn."

"I earnestly beg your pardon/' pleaded the young man. His expression
of satisfaction had changed to one of penitence and humility. "It was my
fault, you know — I mean, there are girls in parks, you know — that is, of
course, you don't know, but "

"Abandon the subject, if you please. Of course I know. Now, tell me
about these people passing and crowding, each way, along these paths.
Where are they going? Why do they hurry so? Are they happy?"

The young man had promptly abandoned his air of coquetry. His cue
was now for a waiting part; he could not guess the role he would be ex-
pected to play.

"It is interesting to watch them," he replied, postulating her mood. "It
is the wonderful drama of life. Some are going to supper and some to —
er — other places. One wonders what their histories are."

"I do not," said the girl; "I am not so inquisitive. I come here to sit
because here, only, can I be near the great, common, throbbing heart of
humanity. My part in life is cast where its beats are never felt. Can you
surmise why I spoke to you, Mr. ?"

"Parkenstacker," supplied the young man. Then he looked eager and
hopeful.

"No," said the girl, holding up a slender finger, and smiling slightly.
"You would recognize it immediately. It is impossible to keep one's name
out of print. Or even one's portrait. This veil and this hat of my maid
furnish me with an incog. You should have seen the chauffeur stare at it
when he thought I did not see. Candidly, there are five or six names that
belong in the holy of holies, and mine, by the accident of birth, is one of
them. I spoke to you, Mr. Stackenpot "

"Parkenstacker," corrected the young man, modestly.

" — Mr. Parkenstacker, because I wanted to talk, for once, with a natural

1280 BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

man — one unspoiled by the despicable gloss of wealth and supposed social
superiority. Oh! you do not know how weary I am of it— money, money,
money! And of the men who surround me, dancing like little marionettes
all cut by the same pattern. I am sick of pleasure, of jewels, of travel, of
society, of luxuries of all kinds."

"I always had an idea," ventured the young man, hesitatingly, "that
money must be a pretty good thing."

"A competence is to be desired. But when you have so many millions

that !" She concluded the sentence with a gesture of despair. "It is the

monotony of it," she continued, "that palls. Drives, dinners, theatres, balls,
suppers, with the gilding of superfluous wealth over it all. Sometimes the
very tinkle of the ice in my champagne glass nearly drives me mad."

Mr. Parkenstacker looked ingenuously interested.

"I have always liked," he said, "to read and hear about the ways of
wealthy and fashionable folks. I suppose I am a bit of a snob. But I like to
have my information accurate. Now, I had formed the opinion that cham-
pagne is cooled in the bottle and not by placing ice in the glass."

The girl gave a musical laugh of genuine amusement.

"You should know," she explained, in an indulgent tone, "that we of
the non-useful class depend for our amusement upon departure from
precedent. Just now it is a fad to put ice in champagne. The idea was
originated by a visiting Prince of Tartary while dining at the Waldorf. It
will soon give some other whim. Just as at a dinner party this week
on Madison Avenue a green kid glove was laid by the plate of each guest
to be put on and used while eating olives/'

"I see," admitted the young man, humbly. "These special diversions of
the inner circle do not become familiar to the common public."

"Sometimes," continued the girl, acknowledging his confession of error
by a slight bow, "I have thought that if I ever should love a man it would
be one of lowly station. One who is a worker and not a drone. But, doubt-
less, the claims of caste and wealth will prove stronger than my inclina-
tion. Just now I am besieged by two. One is a Grand Duke of a German
principality. I think he has, or has had, a wife, somewhere, driven mad
by his intemperance and cruelty. The other is an English Marquis, so cold
and mercenary that I even prefer the diabolism of the Duke. What is it
that impels me to tell you these things, Mr. Packenstacker ?"

"Parkenstacker," breathed the young man. "Indeed, you cannot know
how much I appreciate your confidences."

The girl contemplated him with a calm, impersonal regard that be-
fitted the difference in their stations.

"What is your line of business, Mr. Parkenstacker?" she asked.

"A very humble one. But I hope to rise in the world. Were you really
in earnest when you said that you could love a man of lowly position?"

"Indeed I was. But I said 'might.' There is the Grand Duke and the

WHILE THE AUTO WAITS I28l

Marquis, you know. Yes; no calling could be too humble were the man
what I would wish him to be/'

"I work," declared Mr. Parkenstacker, "in a restaurant."

The girl shrank slightly.

"Not as a waiter?" she said, a little imploringly. "Labor is noble, but-
personal attendance, you know — valets and "

"I am not a waiter. I am cashier in"— on the street they faced that
bounded the opposite side of the park was the brilliant electric sign
"RESTAURANT"— "I am cashier in that restaurant you see there."

The girl consulted a tiny watch set in a bracelet of rich design upon her
left wrist, and rose, hurriedly. She thrust her book into a glittering reticule
suspended from her waist, for which, however, the book was too large.

"Why are you not at work?" she asked.

"I am on the night turn," said the young man; "it is yet an hour before
my period begins. May I not hope to see you again?"

"I do not know. Perhaps — but the whim may not seize me again. I must
go quickly now. There is a dinner, and a box at the play — and, oh! the
same old round. Perhaps you noticed an automobile at the upper corner
of the park as you came. One with a white body."

"And red running gear?" asked the young man, knitting his brows
reflectively.

"Yes. I always come in that. Pierre waits for me there. He supposes me
to be shopping in the department store across the square. Conceive of the
bondage of the life wherein we must deceive even our chauffeurs. Good-
night."

"But it is dark now," said Mr. Parkenstacker, "and the park is full of
rude men. May I not walk ?"

"If you have the slightest regard for my wishes," said the girl, firmly,
"you will remain at this bench for ten minutes after I have left. I do not
mean to accuse you, but you are probably aware that autos generally bear
the monogram of their owner. Again, good-night."

Swift and stately she moved away through the dusk. The young man
watched her graceful form as she reached the pavement at the park's
edge, and turned up along it toward the corner where stood the automo-
bile. Then he treacherously and unhesitatingly began to dodge and skim
among the park trees and shrubbery in a course parallel to her route,
keeping her well in sight.

When she reached the corner she turned her head to glance at the mo-
tor car, and then passed it, continuing on across the street. Sheltered be-
hind a convenient standing cab, the young man followed her movements
closely with his eyes. Passing down the sidewalk of the street opposite the
park, she entered the restaurant with the blazing sign. The place was one
of those frankly glaring establishments, all white paint and glass, where
one may dine cheaply and conspicuously. The girl penetrated the res-

1282 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

taurant to some retreat at its rear, whence she quickly emerged without
her hat and veil.

The cashier's desk was well to the front. A red-haired girl on the stool
climbed down, glancing pointedly at the clock as she did so. The girl in
gray mounted in her place.

The young man thrust his hands into his pockets and walked slowly
back along the sidewalk. At the corner his foot struck a small, paper-
covered volume lying there, sending it sliding to the edge of the turf. By
its picturesque cover he recognized it as the book the girl had been read-
ing. He picked it up carelessly, and saw that its title was "New Arabian
Nights," the author being of the name of Stevenson. He dropped it again
upon the grass, and lounged, irresolute, for a minute. Then he stepped
into the automobile, reclined upon the cushions, and said two words to
the chauffeur:

"Club, Henri."

A COMEPY IN RUBBER

One may hope, in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid the breath of the
deadly upas tree; one may, by great good fortune, succeed in blacking the
eye of the basilisk; one might even dodge the attentions of Cerberus and
Argus, but no man, alive or dead, can escape the gaze of the Rubberer.

New York is the Caoutchouc City. There are many, of course, who go
their ways, making money, without turning to the right or the left, but
there is a tribe abroad wonderfully composed, like the Martians, solely
of eyes and means of locomotion.

These devotees of curiosity swarm, like flies, in a moment in a strug-
gling, breathless circle about the scene of an unusual occurrence. If a work-
man opens a manhole, if a street car runs over a man from North Tarry-
town, if a little boy drops an egg on his way home from the grocery, if a
casual house or two drops into the subway, if a lady loses a nickel through
a hole in the lisle thread, if the police drag a telephone and a racing chart
forth from an Ibsen Society reading-room, if Senator Depew or Mr. Chuck
Connors walks out to take the air— if any of these incidents or accidents
takes place, you will see the mad, irresistible rush of the "rubber" tribe to
the spot

The importance of the event does not count. They gaze with equal
interest and absorption at a chorus girl or a man painting a liver pill
sign. They will form as deep a cordon around a man with a clubfpot as
they will around a balked automobile. They have the furor rubberendi.
They are optical gluttons, feasting and fattening on the misfortunes of
their fellow beings. They gloat and pore and glare and squint and stare

A COMEDY IN RUBBER 1283

with their fishy eyes like goggle-eyed perch at the hook baited with
calamity.

It will seem that Cupid would find these ocular vampires too cold game
for his calorific shafts, but have we not yet to discover an immune even
among the Protozoa? Yes, beautiful Romance descended upon two of this
tribe, and love came into their hearts as they crowded about the prostrate
form of a man who had been run over by a brewery wagon.

William Pry was the first on the spot. He was an expert at such gather-
ings. With an expression of intense happiness on his features, he stood
over the victim of the accident, listening to his groans as if to the sweetest
music. When the crowd of spectators had swelled to a closely packed circle
William saw a violent commotion in the crowd opposite him. Men were
hurled aside like ninepins by the impact of some moving body that clove
them like the rush of a tornado. With elbows, umbrella, hat-pin, tongue,
and fingernails doing their duty, Violet Seymour forced her way through
the mob of onlookers to the first row. Strong men who even had been able
to secure a seat on the 5:30 Harlem express staggered back like children as
she bucked centre. Two large lady spectators who had seen the Duke of
Roxburgh married and had often blocked traffic on Twenty-third Street
fell back into the second row with ripped shirt-waists when Violet had
finished with them. William Pry loved her at first sight.

The ambulance removed the unconscious agent of Cupid. William and
Violet remained after the crowd had dispersed. They were true Rubber-
ers. People who leave the scene of an accident with the ambulance have
not genuine caoutchouc in the cosmogony of their necks. The delicate, fine
flavor of the affair is to be had only in the aftertaste— in gloating over the
spot, in gazing fixedly at the houses opposite, in hovering there in a dream
more exquisite than the opium-eater's ecstasy. William Pry and Violet
Seymour were connoisseurs in casualties. They knew how to extract full
enjoyment from every incident.

Presently they looked at each other. Violet had a brown birthmark on
her neck as large as a silver half-dollar. William fixed his eyes upon it.
William Pry had inordinately bowed legs. Violet allowed her gaze to
linger unswervingly upon them. Face to face they stood thus for mo-
ments, each staring at the other. Etiquette would not allow them to
speak; but in the Caoutchouc City it is permitted to gaze without stint at
the trees in the parks and at the physical blemishes of a fellow creature.

At length with a sigh they parted. But Cupid had been the driver of
the brewery wagon, and the wheel that broke a leg united two fond hearts.

The next meeting of the hero and heroine was in front of a board fence
near Broadway. The day had been a disappointing one. There had been
no fights on the street, children had kept from under the wheels of the
street cars, cripples and fat men in negligee shirts were scarce; nobody
seemed to be inclined to slip on banana peels or fall down with heart

1284 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

disease. Even the sport from Kokomo, IncL, who claims to be a cousin of
ex-Mayor Low and scatters nickels from a cab window, had not put
in his appearance. There was nothing to stare at, and William Pry had
premonitions of ennui.

But he saw a large crowd scrambling and pushing excitedly in front
of a billboard. Sprinting for it, he knocked down an old woman and a
child carrying a bottle of milk, and fought his way like a demon into the
mass of spectators. Already in the inner line stood Violet Seymour with
one sleeve and two gold fillings gone, a corset steel puncture and a
sprained wrist, but happy. She was looking at what there was to see. A
man was painting upon the fence: "Eat Bricklets — They Fill Your Face."

Violet blushed when she saw William Pry. William jabbed a lady in
a black silk raglan in the ribs, kicked a boy in the shin, hit an old gentle-
man on the left ear and managed to crowd nearer to Violet. They stood
for an hour looking at the man paint the letters. Then William's love
could be repressed no longer. He touched her on the arm.

"Come with me,'* he said. "I know where there is a bootblack without
an Adam's apple/*

She looked up at him shyly, yet with unmistakable love transfiguring
her countenance.

"And you have saved it for me?" she asked, trembling with the first
dim ecstasy of a woman beloved.

Together they hurried to the bootblack's stand. An hour they spent
there gazing at the malformed youth.

A window-cleaner fell from the fifth story to the sidewalk beside them.
As the ambulance came clanging up William pressed her hand joyously,
"Four ribs at least and a compound fracture," he whispered, swif dy. "You
are not sorry that you met me, are you, dearest?"

"Me?" said Violet, returning the pressure. "Sure not. I could stand all
day rubbering with you."

The climax of the romance occurred a few days later. Perhaps the
reader will remember the intense excitement into which the city was
thrown when Eliza Jane, a colored woman, was served with a subpoena.
The Rubber Tribe encamped on the spot. With his own hands William
Pry placed a board upon two beer kegs in the street opposite Eliza
Jane's residence. He and Violet sat there for three days and nights. Then
it occurred to a detective to open the door and serve the subpoena. He
sent for a kinetoscope and did so.

Two souls with such congenial tastes could not long remain apart. As a
policeman drove them away with his night stick that evening they
plighted their troth. The seeds of love had been well sown, and had
grown up, hardy and vigorous, into a— let us call it a rubber plant.

The wedding of William Pry and Violet Seymour was set for June 10.
The Big Church in the Middle of the Block was banked high with flowers.

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS I2&5

The populous tribe o£ Rubberers the world over is rampant over wed-
dings. They are the pessimists of the pews. They are the guyers of the
groom and the banterers of the bride. They come to laugh at your
marriage, and should you escape from Hymen's tower on the back of
death's pale steed they will come to the funeral and sit in the same pew
and cry over your luck. Rubber will stretch.

The church was lighted. A grosgrain carpet lay over the asphalt to
the edge of the sidewalk. Bridesmaids were patting one another's sashes
awry and speaking of the bride*s freckles. Coachmen tied white ribbons
on their whips and bewailed the space of time between drinks. The
minister was musing over his possible fee, essaying conjecture whether it
would suffice to purchase a new broadcloth suit for himself and a .photo-
graph of Laura Jane Libbey for his wife. Yea, Cupid was in the air.

And outside the church, oh, my brothers, surged and heaved the rank
and file of the tribe of Rubberers. In two bodies they were, with the gros-
grain carpet and cops with clubs between. They crowded like cattle, they
fought, they pressed and surged and swayed and trampled one another
to see a bit of a girl in a white veil acquire license to go through a man's
pockets while he sleeps.

But the hour for the wedding came and went, and the bride and bride-
groom came not. And impatience gave way to alarm and alarm brought
about search, and they were not found. And then two big policemen took
a hand and dragged out of the furious mob of onlookers a crushed and
trampled thing, with a wedding ring in its vest pocket and a shredded and
hysterical woman beating her way to the carpet's edge, ragged, bruised
and obstreperous.

William Pry and Violet Seymour, creatures of habit, had joined in the
seething game of the spectators, unable to resist the overwhelming desire
to gase upon themselves entering, as bride and bridegroom, the rose-
decked church.

Rubber will out.

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS

"One thousand dollars," repeated Lawyer Tolman, solemnly and
severely, "and here is the money."

Young Gillian gave a decidedly amused laugh as he fingered the thin
package of new fifty-dollar notes.

"It's such a confoundedly awkward amount," he explained, genially, to
the lawyer. "If it had been ten thousand a fellow might wind up with a
lot of fireworks and do himself credit. Even fifty dollars would have been
less trouble/'

1286 BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

"You heard the reading of your uncle's will," continued Lawyer
Tolman, professionally dry in his tones. "I do not know if you paid much
attention to its details. I must remind you of one. You are required to
render to us an account of the manner of expenditure of this $1,000 as
soon as you have disposed of it. The will stipulates that. I trust that you
will so far comply with the late Mr. Gillian's wishes."

"You may depend upon it," said the young man, politely, "in spite of
the extra expense it will entail. I may have to engage a secretary. I was
never good at accounts."

Gillian went to his club. There he hunted out one whom he called
Old Bryson.

Old Bryson was calm and forty and sequestered. He was in a corner
reading a book, and when he saw Gillian approaching he sighed, laid
down his book and took off his glasses.

"Old Bryson, wake up," said Gillian. "I've a funny story to tell you."

"I wish you would tell it to someone in the billiard room," said Old
Bryson. "You know how I hate your stories."

"This is a better one than usual," said Gillian, rolling a cigarette; "and
I'm glad to tell it to you. It's too sad and funny to go with the rattling of
billiard balls. Fve just come from my late uncle's firm of legal corsairs.
He leaves me an even thousand dollars. Now, what can a man possibly do
with a thousand dollars?"

"I thought," said Old Bryson, showing as much interest as a bee shows
in a vinegar cruet, "that the late Septimus Gillian was worth something
like half a million/*

"He was," assented Gillian, joyously, "and that's where the joke comes
in. He's left his whole cargo of doubloons to a microbe. That is, part of it
goes to the man who invents a new bacillus and the rest to establish a
hospital for doing away with it again. There are one or two trifling be-
quests on the side. The butler and the housekeeper get a seal ring and
$10 each. His nephew gets $1,000."

"You've always had plenty of money to spend," observed Old Bryson.

"Tons," said Gillian. "Uncle was the fairy godmother as far as an al-
lowance was concerned."

"Any other heirs?" asked Old Bryson.

"None." Gillian frowned at his cigarette and kicked the upholstered
leather of a divan uneasily. "There is a Miss Hayden, a ward of my uncle,
who lived in his house. She's a quiet thing — musical — the daughter of
somebody who was unlucky enough to be his friend I forgot to say that
she was in on the seal ring and $10 joke, too. I wish I had been. Then
I could have had two bottles of brut, tipped the waiter with the ring, and
had the whole business off my hands. Don't be superior and insulting,
Old Bryson — tell me what a fellow can do with a thousand dollars."

Old Bryson rubbed his glasses and smiled. And when Old Bryson

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS 1287

smiled, Gillian knew that he intended to be more offensive than ever.

"A thousand dollars," he said, "means much or little. One man may
buy a happy home with it and laugh at Rockefeller. Another could send
his wife South with it and save her life. A thousand dollars would buy
pure milk for one hundred babies during June, July, and August and save
fifty of their lives. You could count upon a half hour's diversion with it at
faro in one of the fortified art galleries. It would furnish an education to
am ambitious boy. I am told that a genuine Corot was secured for that
amount in an auction room yesterday. You could move to a New Hamp-
shire town and live respectably two years on it. You could rent Madison
Square Garden for one evening with it, and lecture your audience, if you
should have one, on the precariousness of the profession of heir presump-
tive.5*

"People might like you, Old Bryson," said Gillian, almost unruffled, "if
you wouldn't moralize. I asked you to tell me what I could do with a
thousand dollars."

"You?" said Bryson, with a gentle laugh. "Why, Bobby Gillian, there's
only one logical thing you could do. You can go buy Miss Lotta Lauriere
a diamond pendant with the money, and then take yourself off to Idaho
and inflict your presence upon a ranch. I advise a sheep ranch, as I have
a particular dislike for sheep."

"Thanks," said Gillian, rising. "I thought I could depend upon you,
Old Bryson. You hit on the very scheme. I wanted to chuck the money in
a lump, for Fve got to turn in an account for it, and I hate itemizing."

Gillian phoned for a cab and said to the driver:

"The stage entrance of the Columbine Theatre."

Miss Lotta Lauriere was assisting nature with a powder puff, almost
ready for her call at a crowded matinee, when her dresser mentioned
the name of Mr. Gillian.

"Let it in," said Miss Lauriere. "Now, what is it, Bobby? I'm going
on in two minutes."

"Rabbit-foot your right ear a little," suggested Gillian, critically. "That's
better. It won't take two minutes for me. What do you say to a little
thing in the pendant line? I can stand three ciphers with a figure one in
front of 'em."

"Oh, just as you say," carolled Miss Lauriere.

"My right glove, Adams. Say, Bobby, did you see that necklace Delia
Stacey had on the other night? Twenty-two hundred dollars it cost at
Tiffany's. But, of course— pull my sash a little to the left, Adams."

"Miss Lauriere for the opening chorus!" cried the call boy without

Gillian strolled out to where his cab was waiting.

"What would you do with a thousand dollars if you had it?" he asked
the driver.

"Open a sloon," said the cabby promptly and huskily. "I know a place

1288 BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

I could take money in with both hands. It's a four-story brick on a corner.
I've got it figured out. Second story— Chinks and chop suey; third floor
—manicures and foreign missions; fourth floor— poolroom. If you was
thinking of putting up the cap "

"Oh, no," said Gillian, "I merely asked from curiosity. I take you by
the hour. Drive till I tell you to stop."

Eight blocks down Broadway Gillian poked up the trap with his cane
and got out. A blind man sat upon a stool on the sidewalk selling pencils.
Gillian went out and stood before him.

"Excuse me," he said, "but would you mind telling me what you
would do if you had a thousand dollars?"

"You got out of that cab that just drove up, didn't you?" asked the
blind man.

"I did," said Gillian.

"I guess you are all right," said the pencil dealer, "to ride in a cab by
daylight. Take a look at that, if you like."

He drew a small book from his coat pocket and held it out. Gillian
opened it and saw that it was a bank deposit book. It showed a balance
of $1,785 to the blind man's credit.

Gillian returned the book and got into the cab.

"I forgot something," he said. "You may drive to the law offices of
Tolman & Sharp, at Broadway."

Lawyer Tolman looked at him hostilely and inquiringly through his
gold-rimmed glasses.

"I beg your pardon," said Gillian, cheerfully, "but may I ask you a
question? It is not an impertinent one, I hope. Was Miss Hayden left
anything by my uncle's will besides the ring and the $10?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Tolman.

"I thank you very much, sir," said Gillian, and out he went to his cab.
He gave the driver the address of his late uncle's home.

Miss Hayden was writing letters in the library. She was small and
slender and clothed in black. But you would have noticed her eyes.
Gillian drifted in with his air of regarding the world as inconsequent.

"I've just come from old Tolman V he explained. "They've been going
over the papers down there. They found a" — Gillian searched his mem-
ory for a legal term — "they found an amendment or a postscript or some-
thing to the will. It seemed that the old boy loosened up a little on second
thoughts and willed you a thousand dollars. I was driving up this way and
Tolman asked me to bring you the money. Here it is. You'd better count
it to see if it's right/' Gillian laid the money beside her hand on the desk.

Miss Hayden turned white. "Oh!" she said, and again "Oh!"

Gillian half turned and looked out of the window.

"I suppose, of course," he said, in a low voice, "that you know I love
you."

ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS 1289

"I am sorry/' said Miss Hayden, taking up her money.

"There is no use?" axked Gillian, almost light-heartedly.

"I am sorry," she said again.

"May I write a note?" asked Gillian, with a smile. He seated himself
at the big library table. She supplied him with paper and pen, and then
went back to her secretaire.

Gillian made out his account of his expenditure of the thousand dollars
in these words:

"Paid by the black sheep, Robert Gillian, $1,000 on account of the eter-
nal happiness, owed by Heaven to the best and dearest woman on earth."

Gillian slipped his writing into an envelope, bowed and went his way.

His cab stopped again at the offices of Tolman & Sharp.

"I have expended the thousand dollars," he said, cheerily, to Tolman
of the gold glasses, "and I have come to render account of it, as I agreed.
There is quite a feeling of summer in the air — do you not think so, Mr,
Tolman?" He tossed a white envelope on the lawyer's table. "You will
find there a memorandum, sir, of the modus operandi of the vanishing of
the dollars."

Without touching the envelope, Mr. Tolman went to a door and called
his partner, Sharp. Together they explored the caverns of an immense
safe. Forth they dragged as trophy of their search a big envelope sealed
with wax. This they forcibly invaded, and wagged their venerable heads
together over its contents. Then Tolman became spokesman.

"Mr. Gillian," he said, formally, "there was a codicil to your uncle's
will. It was intrusted to us privately, with instructions that it be not
opened until you had furnished us with a full account of your handling
of the $1,000 bequest in the will. As you have fulfilled the conditions, my
partner and I have read the codicil I do not wish to encumber your un-
derstanding with its legal phraseology, but I will acquaint you with the
spirit of its contents.

"In the event that your disposition of the $1,000 demonstrates that you
possess any of the qualifications that deserve reward, much benefit will
accrue to you. Mr. Sharp and I are named as the judges, and I assure you
that we will do our duty strictly according to justice — with liberality. We
are not at all unfavorably disposed toward you, Mr. Gillian. But let us
return to the letter of the codicil. If your disposal of the money in question
has been prudent, wise, or unselfish, it is in our power to hand you over
bonds to the value of $50,000 which have been placed in our hands for
that purpose. But if— as our client, the late Mr. Gillian, explicitly provides
— you have used this money as you have used money in the past— I quote
the late Mr. Gillian— in reprehensible dissipation among disreputable
associates — the $50,000 is to be paid to Miriam Hayden, ward of the late
Mr. Gillian, without delay. Now, Mr. Gillian, Mr. Sharp and I will ex-

!2Cp BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

amine your account in regard to the $1,000. You submit it in writing, I
believe. I hope you will repose confidence in our decision."

Mr, Tolman reached for the envelope. Gillian was a little the quicker in
taking it up. He tore the account and its cover leisurely into strips and
dropped them into his pocket.

"It's all right," he said, smilingly. "There isn't a bit of need to bother
you with this. I don't suppose you'd understand these itemized bets, any-
way. I lost the thousand dollars on the races. Good-day to you, gentlemen."

Tolman & Sharp shook their heads mournfully at each other when
Gillian left, for they heard him whistling gayly in the hallway as he
waited for the elevator.

THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY

Robert Walmsley's descent upon the city resulted in a Kilkenny struggle.
He came out of the fight victor by a fortune and a reputation. On the
other hand, he was swallowed up by the city. The city gave him what
he demanded and then branded him with its brand. It remodelled, cut,
trimmed, and stamped him to the pattern it approves. It opened its social
gates to him and shut him in on a close-cropped, formal lawn with the
select herd of ruminants. In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, rou-
tine, and narrowness he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating
completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that over-balanced poise that
makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in his greatness.

One of the up-state rural counties pointed with pride to the successful
young metropolitan lawyer as a product of its soil. Six years earlier this
county had removed the wheat straw from between its huckleberry-
stained teeth and emitted a derisive and bucolic laugh as old man
Walmsley's freckle-faced "Bob" abandoned the certain three-per-diem
meals of the one-horse farm for the discontinuous quick lunch counters of
the three-ringed metropolis. At the end of the six years no murder trial,
coaching party, automobile accident or cotillion was complete in which the
name of Robert Walmsley did not figure. Tailors waylaid him in the
street to get a new wrinkle from the cut of his unwrinkled trousers.
Hyphenated fellows in the clubs and members of the oldest subpoenaed
families were glad to clap him on the back and allow him three letters of
his name.

But the Matterhorn of Robert Walmsley's success was not scaled until
he married Alicia Van Eter Pool. I cite the Matterhorn, for just so high
and cool and white and inaccessible was this daughter of the old burghers.
The social Alps that ranged about her — over whose bleak passes a thou-
sand climbers struggled — reached only to her knees. She towered in her

THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY

own atmosphere, serene, chaste, prideful, wading in no fountains, dining
no monkeys, breeding no dogs for bench shows. She was a Van Der Pool
Fountains were made to play for her; monkeys were made for other
people's ancestors; dogs, she understood, were created to be companions
of blind persons and objectionable characters who smoked pipes.

This was the Matterhorn that Robert Walmsley accomplished. If he
found, with the good poet with the game foot and artificially curled hair,
that he who ascends to mountain tops will find the loftiest peaks most
wrapped in clouds and snow, he concealed his chilblains beneath a brave
and smiling exterior. He was a lucky man and knew it, even though he
were imitating the Spartan boy with an ice-cream freezer beneath his
doublet frappeeing the region of his heart.

After a brief wedding tour abroad, the couple returned to create a
decided ripple in the calm, cistern (so placid and cool and sunless it is) of
the best society. They entertained at their red brick mausoleum of ancient
greatness in an old square that is a cemetery of crumbled glory. And
Robert Walmsley was proud of his wife; although while one of his hands
shook his guests' the other held tightly to his alpenstock and thermometer.

One day Alicia found a letter written to Robert by his mother. It was a
unerudite letter, full of crops and motherly love and farm notes. It
chronicled the health of the pig and the recent red calf, and asked con-
cerning Robert's in return. It was a letter direct from the soil, straight
from home, full of biographies of bees, tales of turnips, paeans of new-
laid eggs, neglected parents and the slump in dried apples.

"Why have I not been shown your mother's letters?" asked Alicia.
There was always something in her voice that made you think of lor-
gnettes, of accounts at Tiffany's, of sledges smoothly gliding on the trail
from Dawson to Forty Mile, of the tinkling of pendent prisms on your
grandmothers' chandeliers, of snow lying on a convent roof; of a police
sergeant refusing bail. "Your mother," continued Alicia, "invites us to
make a visit to the farm. I have never seen a farm. We will go there for a
week or two, Robert."

"We will,** said Robert, with the grand air of an associate Supreme
Justice concurring in an opinion. "I did not lay the invitation before you
because I thought you would not care to go. I am much pleased at your
decision."

"I will write to her myself," answered Alicia, with a faint fore-
shadowing of enthusiasm. "Felice shall pack my trunks at once. Seven,
I think, will be enough. I do not suppose that your mother entertains a
great deal. Does she give many house parties?"

Robert arose, and as attorney for rural places filed a demurrer against
six of the seven trunks. He endeavored to define, picture, elucidate, set
forth and describe a farm. His own words sounded strange in his ears. He
had not realized how thoroughly urbsidized he had become.

1292 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

A week passed and found them landed at the little country station five
hours out from the city. A grinning, stentorian, sarcastic youth driving a
mule to a spring wagon hailed Robert savagely.

"Hallo, Mr. Walmsley, Found your way back at last, have you? Sorry
I couldn't bring in the automobile for you, but dad's bull-tonguing the
ten-acre clover patch with it to-day. Guess you'll excuse my not wearing
a dress suit over to meet you— it ain't six o'clock yet, you know."

"I'm glad to see you, Tom," said Robert, grasping his brother s hand.
"Yes, I've found my way at last. You've a right to say 'at last.' It's been
over two years since the last time. But it will be oftener after this, my
boy."

Alicia, cool in the summer heat as an Arctic wraith, white as a Norse
snow maiden in her flimsy muslin and fluttering lace parasol, came round
the corner of the station; and Tom was stripped of his assurance. He be-
came chiefly eyesight clothed in blue jeans, and on the homeward drive
to the mule alone did he confide in language the inwardness of his
thoughts.

They drove homeward. The low sun dropped a spendthrift flood of
gold upon the fortunate fields of wheat The cities were far away. The
road lay curling around wood and dale and hill like a ribbon lost from
the robe of careless summer. The wind followed like a whinnying colt
in the track of Phcebus's steeds.

By and by the farmhouse peeped gray out of its faithful grove; they saw
the long lane with its convoy of walnut trees running from the road to
the house; they smelled the wild rose and the breath of cool, damp wil-
lows in the creek's bed. And then in unison all the voices of the soil be-
gan a chant addressed to the soul of Robert Walmsley. Out of the tilted
aisles of the dim wood they came hollowly; they chirped and buzzed from
the parched grass; they trilled from the ripples of the creek ford; they
floated up in clear Pan's pipe notes from the dimming meadows; the
whippoor wills joined in as they pursued midges in the upper air; slow-
going cow-bells struck out a homely accompaniment — and this was what
each one said: "YouVe found your way back at last, have you?"

The old voices of the soil spoke to him. Leaf and bud and blossom
conversed with him in the old vocabulary of his careless youth— the
inanimate things, the familiar stones and rails, the gates and furrows and
roofs and turns of road had an eloquence, too, and a power in the trans-
formation. The country had smiled and he had felt the breath of it, and
his heart was drawn as if in a moment back to his old love. The city was
far away.

This rural atavism, then, seized Robert Walmsley and possessed him.
A queer thing he noticed in connection with it was that Alicia, sitting at
his side, suddenly seemed to him a stranger. She did not belong to this
recurrent phase. Never before had she seemed so remote, so colorless and

THE DEFEAT OF THE CITY 1293

high— so intangible and unreal. And yet he had never admired her more
than when she sat there by him in the rickety spring wagon, chiming no
more with his mood and with her environment than the Matterhorn
chimes with a peasant's cabbage garden.

That night when the greetings and the supper were over, the entire
family, including Buff, the yellow dog, bestrewed itself upon the front
porch. Alicia, not haughty but silent, sat in the shadow dressed in an
exquisite pale-gray tea gown. Robert's mother discoursed to her happily
concerning marmalade and lumbago. Tom sat on the top step; Sisters
Millie and Pam on the lowest step to catch the lightning bugs. Mother
had the willow rocker. Father sat in the big armchair with one of its
arms gone. Buff sprawled in the middle of the porch in everybody's way.
The twilight pixies and pucks stole forth unseen and plunged other
poignant shafts of memory into the heart of Robert. A rural madness
entered his soul. The city was far away.

Father sat without his pipe, writhing in his heavy boots, a sacrifice to
rigid courtesy. Robert shouted: "No, you don't!" He fetched the pipe and
lit it; he seized the old gendeman's boots and tore them off. The last one
slipped suddenly, and Mr. Robert Walmsley, of Washington Square,
tumbled off the porch backward with Buff on top of him, howling fear-
fully. Tom laughed sarcastically.

Robert tore off his coat and vest and hurled them into a lilac bush.

"Come out here, you landlubber/* he cried to Tom, "and 111 put grass
seed on your back. I think you called me a 'dude' a while ago. Come
along and cut your capers."

Tom understood the invitation and accepted it with delight. Three
times they wrestleo! on the grass, "side holds," even as the giants of the
mat. And twice was Tom forced to bite grass at the hands of the dis-
tinguished lawyer. Dishevelled, panting, each still boasting of his own
prowess, they stumbled back to the porch. Millie cast a pert reflection
upon the qualities of a city brother. In an instant Robert had secured a
horrid katydid in his fingers and bore down upon her. Screaming wildly,
she fled up the lane pursued by the avenging glass of form. A quarter of
a mile and they returned, she full of apology to the victorious "dude."
The rustic mania possessed him unabatedly.

"I can do up a cowpenful of you slow hayseeds," he proclaimed,
vaingloriously. "Bring on your bulldogs, your hired men, and your log-
rollers."

He turned handsprings on the grass that prodded Tom to envious
sarcasm. And then, with a whoop, he clattered to the rear and brought
back Uncle Ike, a battered colored retainer of the family, with his banjo,
and strewed sand on the porch and danced "Chicken in the Bread Tray"
and did buck-and-wing wonders for half an hour longer. Incredibly wild
and boisterous things he did. He sang, he told stories that set all but one

1294 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

shrieking, he played the yokel, the humorous clodhopper; he was mad,
mad with the revival of the old life in his blood.

He became so extravagant that once his mother sought gently to reprove
him. Then Alicia moved as though she were about to speak, but she did
not. Through it all she sat immovable, a slim, white spirit in the dusk that
no man might question or read.

By and by she asked permission to ascend to her room, saying that she
was tired. On her way she passed Robert. He was standing in the door, the
figure of vulgar comedy, with ruffled hair, reddened face and unpardon-
able confusion of attire — no trace there of the immaculate Robert Walms-
ley, the courted clubman and ornament of select circles. He was doing
a conjuring trick with some household utensils, and the family, now
won over to him without exception, was beholding him with worshipful
admiration.

As Alicia passed in Robert started suddenly. He had forgotten for the
moment that she was present. Without a glance at him she went on up-
stairs.

After that the fun grew quiet. An hour passed in talk, and then
Robert went up himself.

She was standing by the window when he entered their room. She
was still clothed as when they were on the porch. Outside and crowding
against the window was a giant apple tree, full blossomed.

Robert sighed and went near the window. He was ready to meet his
fate. A confessed vulgarian, he foresaw the verdict of justice in the shape
of that still, whiteclad form. He knew the rigid lines that a Van Der Pool
would draw. He was a peasant gamboling indecorously in the valley, and
the pure, cold, white, unthawed summit of the Matterhorn could not but
frown on him. He had been unmasked by his own actions. All the polish,
the poise, the form that the city had given him had fallen from him like
an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a country breeze. Dully he
awaited the approaching condemnation.

"Robert," said the calm, cool voice of his judge, "I thought I married a
gentleman."

Yes, it was coming. And yet, in the face of it, Robert Walmsley was
eagerly regarding a certain branch of the apple tree upon which he used
to climb out of that very window. He believed he could do it now. He
wondered how many blossoms there were on the tree — ten millions ? But
here was someone speaking again :

"I thought I married a gentleman," the voice went on, "but "

Why had she come and was standing so close by his side?

"But I find that I have married"— was this Alicia talking?— "some-
thing better—^ man — Bob, dear, kiss me, won't you?"

The city was far away.

THE SHOCKS OF DOOM 1295

THE SHOCKS OF DOOM

There is an aristocracy of the public parks and even of the vagabonds
who use them for their private apartments. Vallance felt rather than knew
this, but when he stepped down out of his world into chaos his feet
brought him directly to Madison Square.

Raw and astringent as a schoolgirl— of the old order— young May
breathed austerely among the budding trees. Vallance buttoned his coat,
lighted his last cigarette and took his seat upon a bench. For three min-
utes he mildly regretted the last hundred of his last thousand that it had
cost him when the bicycle cop put an end to his last automobile ride. Then
he felt in every pocket and found not a single penny. He had given up his
apartment that morning. His furniture had gone toward certain debts.
His clothes, save what were upon him, had descended to his man-servant
for back wages. As he sat, there was not in the whole city for him a bed
or a broiled lobster or a streetcar fare or a carnation for his buttonhole
unless he should obtain them by sponging on his friends or by false pre-
tenses. Therefore he had chosen the park.

And all this was because an uncle had disinherited him, and cut down
his allowance from liberality to nothing. And all that was because his
nephew had disobeyed him concerning a certain girl, who comes not
into the story—therefore, all readers who brush their hair towards its
roots may be warned to read no further. There was another nephew, of
a different branch, who had once been the prospective heir and favorite.
Being without grace or hope, he had long ago disappeared in the mire.
Now dragnets were out for him; he was to be rehabilitated and re-
stored. And so Vallance fell grandly as Lucifer to the lowest pit, joining
the tattered ghosts in the little park.

Sitting there he leaned far back on the hard bench and laughed a jet
of cigarette smoke up to the lowest tree branches. The sudden severing
of all his life's ties had brought him a free, thrilling, almost joyous ela-
tion. He felt precisely the sensation of the aeronaut when he cuts loose his
parachute and lets his balloon drift away.

The hour was nearly ten. Not many loungers were on the benches. The
park-dweller, though a stubborn fighter against autumnal coolness, is
slow to attack the advance line of spring's chilly cohorts.

Then arose one from a seat near the leaping fountain, and came and
sat himself at Vallance's side. He was either young or old; cheap lodging-
houses had flavored him mustily; razors and combs had passed him by;
in him drink had been botded and sealed in the devil's bond. He begged

1296 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

a match, which is the form of introduction among park benchers, and
then he began to talk.

"You're not one of the regulars," he said to Vallance. "I know tailored
clothes when I see 'em. You just stopped for a moment on your way
through the park. Don't mind my talking to you for a while? I've got to
be with somebody. I'm afraid—I'm afraid. I've told two or three of those
bummers over there about it. They think I'm crazy. Say — let me tell you
—all I've had to eat to-day was a couple of bretzels and an apple. To-
morrow I'll stand in line to inherit three millions; and that restaurant
you see over there with the autos around it will be too cheap for me to
eat in. Don't believe it, do you?*'

"Without the slightest trouble," said Vallance, with a laugh. "I lunched
there yesterday. To-night I couldn't buy a five-cent cup of coffee."

"You don't look like one of us. Well, I guess those things happen. I
used to be a high-flyer myself— some years ago. What knocked you out of
the game?"

"I— oh, I lost my job," said Vallance.

"It's undiluted Hades, this city," went on the other. "One day you're
eating from China; the next you are eating in China — a chop-suey joint.
I've had more than my share of hard luck. For five years I've been little
better than a panhandler. I was raised up to live expensively and do noth-
ing. Say — I don't rnind telling you — I've got to talk to somebody, you see,
because I'm afraid — I'm afraid. My name's Ide. You wouldn't think that
old Paulding, one of the millionaires on Riverside Drive, was my uncle,
would you ? Well, he is. I lived in his house once, and had all the money
I wanted. Say, haven't you got the price of a couple of drinks about you
— er — what's your name "

"Dawson," said Vallance. "No; I'm sorry to say that Tm all in finan-
cially."

"I've been living for a week in a coal cellar on Division Street," went
on Ide, "with a crook they call 'Blinky* Morris. I didn't have anywhere
else to go. While I was out to-day a chap with some papers in his pocket
was there, asking for me. I didn't know but what he was a fly cop, so I
didn't go around again till after dark. There was a letter there he had
left for me. Say — Dawson, it was from a big downtown lawyer, Mead. I've
seen his sign on Ann Street. Paulding wants me to play the prodigal
nephew — wants rne to come back and be his heir again and blow in his
money. I'm to call at the lawyer's office at ten to-morrow and step into
my old shoes again — heir to three million, Dawson, and $10,000 a year
pocket money. And— Fm afraid— I'm afraid."

The vagrant leaped to his feet and raised both trembling arms above
his head. He caught his breath and moaned hysterically.

Vallance seized his arm and forced him back to the bench.

"Be quiet!" he commanded with something like disgust in his tones.

THE SHOCKS OF DOOM 1297

"One would think you have lost a fortune, instead of being about to
acquire one. Of what are you afraid?"

Ide cowered and shivered on the bench. He clung to Vallance's sleeve,
and even in the dim glow of the Broadway lights the latest disinherited
one could see drops on the other's brow wrung out by some strange terror.

"Why, I'm afraid something will happen to me before morning. I don't
know what— something to keep me from coming into that money. I'm
afraid a tree will fall on me— I'm afraid a cab will run over me, or a
stone drop on me from a housetop, or something, I never was afraid
before. I've sat in this park a hundred nights as calm as a graven image
without knowing where my breakfast was to come from. But now it's
different. I love money, Dawson — Fm happy as a god when it's trickling
through my fingers, and people are bowing to me, with the music and the
flowers and fine clothes all around. As long as I knew I was out of the
game I didn't mind. I was even happy sitting here ragged and hungry,
listening to the fountain jump and watching the carriages go up the
avenue. But it's in reach of my hand again now— ^almost— -and I can't stand
it to wait twelve hours, Dawson — I can't stand it. There are fifty things
that could happen to me — I could go blind — I might be attacked with
heart disease — the world might come to an end before I could "

Ide sprang to his feet again, with a shriek. People stirred on the
benches and began to look. Vallance took his arm.

"Come and walk,*' he said, soothingly. "And try to calm yourself. There
is no need to become excited or alarmed. Nothing is going to happen to
you. One night is like another."

"That's right," said Ide. "Stay with me, Dawson — that's a good fellow.
Walk around with me awhile. I never went to pieces like this before, and
I've had a good many hard knocks. Do you think you could hustle some-
thing in the way of a little lunch, old man? I'm afraid my nerve's too
far gone to try any panhandling."

Vallance led his companion up almost deserted Fifth Avenue, and then
westward along the Thirties toward Broadway. "Wait here a few min-
utes," he said, leaving Ide in a quiet and shadowed spot. He entered
a familiar hotel, and strolled toward the bar quite in his old assured way.

"There's a poor devil outside, Jimmy," he said to the bartender, "who
says he's hungry and looks it. You know what they do when you give
them money. Fix up a sandwich or two for him; and I'll see that he
doesn't throw it away."

"Certainly, Mr. Vallance," said the bartender. "They ain't all fakes.
Don't like to see anybody go hungry."

He folded a liberal supply of the free lunch into a napkin. Vallance
went with it and joined his companion. Ide pounced upon the food raven-
ously. "I haven't had any free lunch as good as this in a year," he said.
"Aren't you going to eat any, Dawson?"

1298 BOOKXI THEVOICEOPTHECITY

"I'm not hungry— thanks," said Vallance.

"We'll go back to the Square/5 said Ide. "The cops won't bother us
there. I'll roll up the rest of this ham and stuff for our breakfast. I won't
eat any more; I'm afraid I'll get sick. Suppose I'd die of cramps or some*
thing to-night, and never get to touch that money again! It's eleven
hours yet till time to see that lawyer. You won't leave me, will you,
Dawson? I'm afraid something might happen. You haven't any place to
go, have you?**

"No," said Vallance, "nowhere to-night. I'll have a bench with you."

"You take it cool," said Ide, "if youVe told it to me straight. I should
think a man put on the bum from a good job just in one day would be
tearing his hair."

"I believe I've already remarked," said Vallance, laughing, "that I
would have thought that a man who was expecting to come into a fortune
on the next day would be feeling pretty easy and quiet/'

"It's funny business/' philosophized Ide, "about the way people take
things, anyhow. Here's your bench, Dawson, right next to mine. The
light don't shine in your eyes here. Say, Dawson, I'll get the old man to
give you a letter to somebody about a job when I get back home.
You've helped me a lot to-night I don't believe I could have gone through
the night if I hadn't struck you."

"Thank you," said Vallance. "Do you lie down or sit up on these
when you sleep?"

For hours Vallance gazed almost without winking at the stars through
the branches of the trees and listened to the sharp slapping of horses'
hoofs on the sea of asphalt to the south. His mind was active but his
feelings were dormant. Every emotion seemed to have been eradicated.
He felt no regrets, no fears, no pain or discomfort. Even when he thought
of the girl, it was as of an inhabitant of one of those remote stars at which
he gazed. He remembered the absurd antics of his companion and
laughed sofdy, yet without a feeling of mirth. Soon the daily army of milk
wagons made of the city a roaring drum to which they marched.
Vallance fell asleep on his comfortless bench.

At ten o'clock on the next day the two stood at the door of Lawyer
Mead's office in Ann Street.

Ide's nerves fluttered worse than ever when the hour approached; and
Vallance could not decide to leave him a possible prey to the dangers he
dreaded.

When they entered the office, Lawyer Mead looked at them wonder-
ingly. He and Vallance were old friends. After his greeting, he turned to
Ide, who stood with white face and trembling limbs before the ex-
pected crisis.

"I sent a second letter to your address last night, Mr. Ide/' he said. "I
learned this morning that you were not there to receive it. It will inform

THE PLUTONIAN FIRE 1299

you that Mr. Paulding has reconsidered his offer to take you back into
favor. He has decided not to do so, and desires you to understand that no
change will be made in the relations existing between you and him.*'

Ide's trembling suddenly ceased. The color came back to his face, and
he straightened his back. His jaw went forward half an inch, and a gleam
came into his eye. He pushed back his battered hat with one hand, and
extended the other, with levelled fingers, toward the lawyer. He took
a long breath and then laughed sardonically.

"Tell old Paulding he may go to the devil," he said, loudly and clearly,
and turned and walked out of the office with a firm and lively step.

Lawyer Mead turned on his heel to Vallance and smiled.

"I am glad you came in," he said, genially. "Your uncle wants you
to return home at once. He is reconciled to the situation that led to his
hasty action, and desires to say that all will be as "

"Hey, Adams!" cried Lawyer Mead, breaking his sentence, and calling
to his clerk. "Bring a glass of water— Mr. Vallance has fainted."

THE PLUTONIAN FIRE

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in con-
tact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with
me. There is a difference.

They tell me that with a large number of the manuscripts that are
submitted to them come advices (in the way of a boost) from the author
asseverating that the incidents in the story are true. The destination of
such contributions depends wholly upon the question of the inclosure
of stamps. Some are returned, the rest are thrown on the floor in a corner
on top of a pair of gum shoes, an overturned statuette of the Winged
Victory, and a pile of old magazines containing a picture of the editor in
the act of reading the latest copy of Le Petit Journal, right side up — you
can tell by the illustrations. It is only a legend that there are waste baskets
in editors' offices.

Thus the truth is held in disrepute. But in time truth and science and
nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and
the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board' of direc-
tors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact,
but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press dispatches.

This preamble is to warn you off the grade crossing of a true story.
Being that, it shall be told simply, with conjunctions substituted for
adjectives wherever possible, and whatever evidences of style may appear
in it shall be due to the linotype man. It is a story of the literary life
in a great city, and it should be of interest to every author within a 20-mile

1300 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

radius of Gosport, IncL, whose desk holds a MS. story beginning thus:
"While the cheers following his nomination were still ringing through
the old court-house, Harwood broke away from the congratulating hand-
clasps of his henchmen and hurried to Judge Creswell's house to find Ida,"

Pettit came up out of Alabama to write fiction. The Southern papers
had printed eight of his stories under an editorial caption identifying
the author as the son of "the gallant Major Pettingill Pettit, our former
County Attorney and hero of the battle of Lookout Mountain."

Pettit was a rugged fellow, with a kind of shame-faced culture, and my
good friend. His father kept a general store in a little town called
Hosea. Pettit had been raised in the pine-woods and broom-sedge fields
adjacent thereto. He had in his gripsack two manuscript novels of the
adventures in Picardy of one Gaston Laboulaye, Vicompte de Montrepos,
in the year 1329. That's nothing. We all do that. And some day when we
make a hit with the little sketch about a newsy and his lame dog, the
editor prints the other one for us — or "on us," as the saying is — and then
—and then we have to get a big valise and peddle those patent air-draft
gas burners. At $1.25 everybody should have 'em.

I took Pettit to the red-brick house which was to appear in an article
entitled "Literary Landmarks of Old New York," some day when we
got through with it. He engaged a room there, drawing on the general
store for his expenses. I showed New York to him, and he did not men-
tion how much narrower Broadway is than Lee Avenue in Hosea. This
seemed a good sign, so I put the final test

"Suppose you try your hand at a descriptive article," I suggested, "giv-
ing your impressions of New York as seen from the Brooklyn Bridge. The
fresh point of view, the "

"Don't be a fool," said Pettit, "Let's go have some beer. On the whole,
I rather like the city."

We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia. Every day and
night we repaired to one of those palaces of marble and glass and tile-
work, where goes on a tremendous and sound epic of life. Valhalla itself
could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which
we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white
scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing
staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned
grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent leit-motif
of the cash-register—it was gigantic, triumphant wedding of art and
sound, a deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and emblematic life.
And the beans were only ten cents. We wondered why our fellow-artists
cared to dine at sad little tables in their so-called Bohemian restaurants;
and we shuddered lest they should seek out our resorts and make them
conspicuous with their presence.

THE PLUTONIAN FIRE 130!

Pettit wrote many stories, which the editors returned to him. He wrote
love stories, a thing I have always kept free from, holding the belief that
the well-known and popular sentiment is not properly a matter for pub-
lication, but something to be privately handled by the alienists and
florists. But the editors had told him that they wanted love stories, be-
cause they said the women read them.

Now, the editors are wrong about that, of course. Women do not read
the love stories in the magazines. They read the poker-game stories and
the recipes for cucumber lotion. The love stories are read by fat cigar
drummers and little ten-year-old girls. I am not criticizing the judgment
of editors. They are mostly very fine men, but a man can be but one man,
with individual opinions and tastes. I knew two associate editors of a
magazine who were wonderfully alike in almost everything. And yet one
of them was very fond of Flaubert, while the other preferred gin.

Pettit brought me his returned manuscripts, and we looked them over
together to find out why they were not accepted. They seemed to me
pretty fair stories, written in a good style, and ended, as they should, at
the bottom of the last page.

They were well constructed and the events were marshalled in orderly
and logical sequence. But I thought I detected a lack of living substance
—it was much as if I gazed at a symmetrical array of presentable clam-
shells from which the succulent and vital inhabitants had been removed,
I intimated that the author might do well to get better acquainted with
his theme.

"You sold a story last week," said Pettit, "about a gun fight in an Ari-
zona mining town in which the hero drew his Colt's 45 and shot seven
bandits as fast as they came in the door. Now, if a six-shooter could "

"Oh, well," said I, "that's different. Arizona is a long way from New
York. I could have a man stabbed with a lariat or chased by a pair of
chaparreras if I wanted to, and it wouldn't be noticed until the usual er-
ror-sharp from around McAdams Junction isolates the erratum and writes
in to the papers about it. But you are up against another proposition. This
thing they call love is as common around New York as it is in Sheboygan
during the young onion season. It may be mixed here with a little com-
mercialism—they read Byron, but they look up Bradstreet's, too, while
they're among the Bs, and Brigham also if they have time— but it's pretty
much the same old internal disturbance everywhere. You can fool an edi-
tor with a fake picture of a cowboy mounting a pony with his left hand
on the saddle horn, but you can't put him up a tree with a love story. So,
you've got to fall in love and then write the real thing.'*

Pettit did. I never toew whether he was taking my advice or whether
he fell an accidental victim.

There was a girl he had met at one of these studio contrivances— a glo-

1302 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

rious, impudent, lucid, open-minded girl with hair the color of Culm-
bacher, and a good-natured way o£ despising you. She was a New York
girl.

Well (as the narrative style permits us to say infrequently), Pettit went
to pieces. All those pains, those lover's doubts, those heart-burnings and
tremors of which he had written so unconvincingly were his. Talk about
Shy lock's pound of flesh! Twenty-five pounds Cupid got from Pettit.
Which is the usurer?

One night Pettit came to my room exalted. Pale and haggard but ex-
alted. She had given him a jonquil

"Old Hoss," said he, with a new smile flickering around his mouth, "I
believe I could write that story to-night— the one, you know, that is to
win out. I can feel it. I don't know whether it will come out or not, but
I can feel it."

I pushed him out of my door. "Go to your room and write it," I or-
dered, "Else I can see your finish. I told you this must come first. Write
it to-night and put it under my door when it is done. Put it under my
door to-night when it is finished — don't keep it until tomorrow."

I was reading my bully old pal Montaigne at two o'clock when I heard
the sheets rustle under my door. I gathered them up and read the story.

The hissing of geese, the languishing cooing of doves, the braying of
donkeys, the chatter of irresponsible sparrows — these were in my mind's
ear as I read. "Suffering Sappho!" I exclaimed to myself. "Is this the
divine fire that is supposed to ignite genius and make it practical and
wage-earning?"

The story was sentimental drivel, full of whimpering soft-heartedness
and gushing egoism. All the art that Pettit had acquired was gone. A
perusal of its buttery phrases would have made a cynic of a sighing
chamber-maid.

In the morning Pettit came to my room. I read him his doom merci-
lessly. He laughed idiotically.

"All right, Old Hoss," he said, cheerily, "make cigar-lighters of it.
What's the difference? I'm going to take her to lunch at Claremont
today."

There was about a month of it And then Pettit came to me bearing an
invisible mitten, with the fortitude of a dish-rag. He talked of the grave
and South America and prussic acid; and I lost an afternoon getting him
straight. I took him out and saw that large and curative doses of whiskey
were administered to him. I warned you this was a true story — 'ware
your white ribbons if you follow this tale. For two weeks I fed him
whiskey and Omar, and read to him regularly every evening the column
in the evening paper that reveals the secrets of female beauty. I rec-
ommend the treatment.

After Pettit was cured he wrote more stories. He recovered his old-time

THE PLUTONIAN FIRE 1303

facility and did work just short of good enough. Then the curtain rose
on the third act.

A little, dark-eyed, silent girl from New Hampshire, who was
studying applied design, fell deeply in love with him. She was the intense
sort, but externally glacee, such as New England sometimes fools us
with. Pettit liked her mildly, and took her about a good deal. She wor-
shipped him, and now and then bored him.

There came a climax when she tried to jump out of a window, and he
had to save her by some perfunctory, unmeant wooing. Even I was
shaken by the depths of the absorbing affection she showed. Home,
friends, traditions, creeds went up like thistle-down in the scale against
her love. It was really discomposing.

One night again Pettit sauntered in, yawning. As he had told me be-
fore, he said he felt that he could do a great story, and as before I hunted
him to his room and saw him open his inkstand. At one o'clock the sheets
of paper slid under my door.

I read that story, and I jumped up, late as it was, with a whoop of joy.
Old Pettit had done it. Just as though it lay there, red and bleeding, a
woman's heart was written into the lines. You couldn't see the joining,
but art, exquisite art, and pulsing nature had been combined into a love
story that took you by the throat like the quinsy, I broke into Pettit's
room and beat him on the back and called him names — names high up in
the galaxy of the immortals that we admired. And Pettit yawned and
begged to be allowed to sleep.

On the morrow, I dragged him to an editor. The great man read, and
rising, gave Pettit his hand. That was a decoration, a wreath of bay, and
a guarantee of rent.

And then old Pettit smiled slowly. I call him Gentleman Pettit now to
myself. It's a miserable name to give a man, but it sounds better than it
looks in print.

"I see," said old Pettit, as he took up his story and began tearing it
into small strips. "I see the game now. You can't write with ink, and you
can't write with your own heart's blood, but you can write with the
heart's blood of someone else. You have to be a cad before you can be an
artist. Well, I am for old Alabam and the Major's store. Have you got
alight,OldHoss?"

I went with Pettit to the depot and died hard.

"Shakespeare's sonnets?" I blurted, making a last stand. "How about
him?"

"A cad," said Pettit. "They give it to you, and you sell it— love, you
know. I'd rather sell ploughs for father."

"But," I protested, "you are reversing the decision of the world's great-
est *

"Good-by, Old Hoss," said Pettit.

1304 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"Critics," I continued. "But— say if the Major can use a fairly good sales-
man and book-keeper down there in the store, let me know, will you?"

NEMESIS AND THE CANDY MAN

"We sail at eight in the morning on the Celtic," said Honoria, plucking
a loose thread from her lace sleeve.

"I heard so," said young Ives dropping his hat, and muffing it as he
tried to catch it, "and I came around to wish you a pleasant voyage."

"Of course you heard it," said Honoria, coldly sweet, "since we have
had no opportunity of informing you ourselves."

Ives looked at her pleadingly, but with little hope.

Outside in the street a high-pitched voice chanted, not unmusically, a
commercial gamut of "Cand-ee-ee-ee-s! Nice, fresh cand-ee-ee-ee-ees!"

"It's our old candy man," said Honoria, leaning out of the window
and beckoning, "I want some of his motto kisses. There's nothing in
the Broadway shops half so good."

The candy man stopped his pushcart in front of the old Madison Ave-
nue home. He had a holiday and festival air unusual to street peddlers.
His tie was new and bright red, and a horseshoe pin, almost life-size, glit-
tered speciously from its folds. His brown, thin face was crinkled into a
semi-foolish smile. Striped cuffs with dog-head buttons covered the tan
on his wrists.

"I do believe he's going to get married," said Honoria, pityingly. "I
never saw him taken that way before. And to-day is the first time in
months that he has cried his wares, I am sure."

Ives threw a coin to the sidewalk. The candy man knows his customers.
He filled a paper bag, climbed the old-fashioned stoop and handed it in.

"I remember " said Ives.

"Wait," said Honoria.

She took a small portfolio from the drawer of a writing desk and from
the portfolio a slip of flimsy paper one-quarter of an inch by two inches
in size.

"This," said Honoria, inflexibly, "was wrapped about the first one we
opened."

"It was a year ago," apologized Ives, as he held out his hand for it*

"As long as skies above are blue.
To you, my love, I will be true."

This he read from a slip of flimsy paper.

"We were to have sailed a fortnight ago," said Honoria, gossipingly.
"It has been such a warm summer. The town is quite deserted. There a

NEMESIS AND THE CANDY MAN 1305

nowhere to go. Yet I am told that one or two of the roof gardens are
amusing. The singing — and the dancing — on one or two seem to have
met with approval."

Ives did not wince. When you are in the ring you are not surprised
when your adversary taps you on the ribs.

"I followed the candy man that time," said Ives, irrelevantly, "and gave
him five dollars at the corner of Broadway."

He reached for the paper bag in Honoria's lap, took out one of the
square, wrapped confections and slowly unrolled it.

"Sara Chillingworth's father," said Honoria, "has given her an auto-
mobile."

"Read that," said Ives, handing over the slip that had been wrapped
around the square of candy.

"Life teaches us — how to live,
Love teaches us — to forgive."

Honoria's cheeks turned pink.

"Honoria!" cried Ives, starting up from his chair.

"Miss Clinton," corrected Honoria, rising like Venus from the bead
on the surf. "I warned you not to speak that name again."

"Honoria," repeated Ives, "you must hear me. I know I do not deserve
your forgiveness, but I must have it. There is a madness that possesses
one sometimes for which his better nature is not responsible. I throw ev-
erything else but you to the winds. I strike off the chains that have bound
me. I renounced the siren that lured me from you. Let the bought verse
of that street peddler plead for me. It is you only whom I can love. Let
your love forgive, and I swear to you that mine will be true 'as long as
skies above are blue/ "

On the west side, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, an alley cuts the
block in the middle. It perishes in a little court in the centre of the block.
The district is theatrical; the inhabitants, the bubbling froth of half a
dozen nations. The atmosphere is Bohemian, the language polyglot, the
locality precarious.

In the court at the rear of the alley lived the candy man. At seven
o'clock he pushed his cart into the narrow entrance, rested it upon the
irregular stone slats and sat upon one of the handles to cool himself. There
was a great draught of cool wind through the alley.

There was a window above the spot where he always stopped his push-
cart. In the cool of the afternoon, Mile. Adele, drawing card of the Aerial
Roof Garden, sat at the window and took the air. Generally her ponder-
ous mass of dark auburn hair was down, that the breeze might have the
felicity of aiding Sidonie, the maid, in drying and airing it. About her
shoulders — the point of her that the photographers always made the most

1306 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

of — was loosely draped a heliotrope scarf. Her arms to the elbow were
bare — there were no sculptors there to rave over them — but even the stolid
bricks in the walls of the alley should not have been so insensate as to dis-
approve. While she sat thus Felice, another maid, anointed and bathed
the small feet that twinkled and so charmed the nightly Aerial audiences.

Gradually Mademoiselle began to notice the candy man stopping to
mop his brow and cool himself beneath her window. In the hands of her
maids she was deprived for the time of her vocation — the charming and
binding to her chariot of man. To lose time was displeasing to Mademoi-
selle. Here was the candy man — no fit game for her darts, truly — but
of the sex upon which she had been born to make war.

After casting upon him looks of unseeing coldness for a dozen times,
one afternoon she suddenly thawed and poured down upon him a smile
that put to shame the sweets upon his cart.

"Candy man," she said, cooingly, while Sidonie followed her impulsive
dive, brushing the heavy auburn hair, "don't you think I am beautiful?"

The candy man laughed harshly, and looked up, with his thin jaw set,
while he wiped his forehead with a red-and-blue handkerchief.

"Yer'd make a dandy magazine cover," he said grudgingly. "Beautiful
or not is for them that cares. It's not my line. If yer lookin' for bouquets
apply elsewhere between nine and twelve. I think we'll have rain."

Truly, fascinating a candy man is like killing rabbits in a deep snow;
but the hunter's blood is widely diffused. Mademoiselle tugged a great
coil of hair from Sidonie's hands and let it fall out the window.

"Candy man, have you a sweetheart anywhere with hair as long and
soft as that? And with an arm so round?" She flexed an arm like Gala-
tea's after the miracle across the window-sill.

The candy man cackled shrilly as he arranged a stock of butterscotch
that had tumbled down.

"Smoke up!" said he, vulgarly. "Nothin' doin' in the complimentary
line, I'm too wise to be bamboozled by a switch of hair and a newly mas-
saged arm. Oh, I guess you'll make good in the calcium, all right, with
plenty of powder and paint on and the orchestra playing 'Under the Old
Apple Tree.* But don't put on your hat and chase downstairs to fly to the
Little Church Around the Corner with me. I've been up against peroxide
and make up boxes before. Say, all joking aside— don't you think we'll
have rain?n

"Candy man," said Mademoiselle, softly, with her lips curving and her
chin dimpling, "don't you think I'm pretty?"

The candy man grinned.

"Savin' money, ain't yer?" said he, "by bein' yer own press agent. I
smoke, but I haven't seen yer mug on any of the five-cent cigar boxes.
It'd take a new brand of woman to get me goin,' anyway. I know 'em
from sidecombs to shoelaces. Gimme a good day's sales and steak-and-

NEMESIS AND THE CANDY MAN 1307

onions at seven and a pipe and an evenin* paper back there in the court,
and I'll not trouble Lillian Russell herself to wink at me, if you please."

Mademoiselle pouted.

"Candy man/' she said, softly and deeply, "yet you shall say that I
am beautiful. All men say so and so shall you."

The candy man laughed and pulled out his pipe.

"Well," said he, "I must be goin' in. There is a story in the evening
paper that I am readin'. Men are divin' in the seas for a treasure, and
pirates are watchin' them from behind a reef. And there ain't a woman on
land or water or in the air. Good-eveninV And he trundled his pushcart
down the alley and back to the musty court where he lived.

Incredibly to him who has not learned woman, Mademoiselle sat at
the window each day and spread her nets for the ignominious game. Once
she kept a grand cavalier waiting in her reception chamber for half an
hour while she battered in vain the candy man's tough philosophy. His
rough laugh chafed her vanity to its core. Daily he sat on his cart in the
breeze of the alley while her hair was being ministered to, and daily the
shafts of her beauty rebounded from his dull bosom pointless and inef-
fectual. Unworthy pique brightened her eyes. Pride-hurt she glowed
upon him in a way that would have sent her higher adorers into an ego-
istic paradise. The candy man's hard eyes looked upon her with a half-
concealed derision that urged her to the use of the sharpest arrow in her
beauty's quiver.

One afternoon she leaned far over the sill, and she did not challenge
and torment him as usual.

"Candy man," said she, "stand up and look into my eyes."

He stood up and looked into her eyes, with his harsh laugh like
the sawing of wood. He took out his pipe, fumbled with it, and put it
back into his pocket with a trembling hand.

"That will do/' said Mademoiselle, with a slow smile. "I must go now
to my masseuse. Good-evening/'

The next evening at seven the candy man came and rested his cart un-
der the window. But was it the candy man? His clothes were a bright
new check. His necktie was a flaming red, adorned by a glittering horse-
shoe pin, almost lifesize. His shoes were polished; the tan of his cheeks
had paled—his hands had been washed. The window was empty, and he
waited under it with his nose upward, like a hound hoping for a bone.

Mademoiselle came, with Sidonie carrying her load of hair. She looked
at the candy man and smiled a slow smile that faded away into ennui.
Instantly she knew that the game was bagged; and so quickly she wea-
ried of the chase. She began to talk to Sidonie.

"Been a fine day," said the candy man, hollowly. "First time in a month
I've felt first-class. Hit it up down old Madison, hollering out like I use-
ten Think it'll rain to-morrow?"

1308 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

Mademoiselle laid two round arms on the cushion on the window-sill,
and a dimpled chin upon them.

"Candy man," said she, softly, "do you not love me?"

The candy man stood up and leaned against the brick wall.

"Lady," said he, chokingly, "I've got f8oo saved up. Did I say you
wasn't beautiful? Take it every bit and buy a collar for your dog with it."

A sound as of a hundred silvery bells tinkled in the room of Made-
moiselle. The laughter filled the alley and trickled back into the court, as
strange a thing to enter there as sunlight itself. Mademoiselle was amused.
Sidonie, a wise echo, added a sepulchral but faithful contralto. The laugh-
ter of the two seemed at last to penetrate the candy man. He fumbled
with his horseshoe pin. At length Mademoiselle, exhausted, turned her
flushed, beautiful face to the window.

"Candy man," said she, ugo away. When I laugh Sidonie pulls my
hair. I can but laugh while you remain there."

"Here is a note for Mademoiselle," said Felice, coming to the window
in the room.

"There is no justice," said the candy man, lifting the handle of his
cart and moving away.

Three yards he moved, and stopped. Loud shriek after shriek came
from the window of Mademoiselle. Quickly he ran back. He heard a body
thumping upon the floor and a sound as though heels beat alternately
upon it.

"What is it?" he called.

Sidonie's severe head came into the window.

"Mademoiselle is overcome by bad news," she said. "One whom she
loved with all her soul has gone — you may have heard of him — he is
Monsieur Ives. He sails across the ocean to-morrow. Oh, you men!"

SQUARING THE CIRCLE

At the hazard of wearying youth this tale of vehement emotions must be
prefaced by a discourse on geometry.

Nature moves in circles; Art in straight lines. The natural is rounded;
the artificial is made up of angles. A man lost in the snow wanders, in
spite of himself, in perfect circles; the city man's feet, denaturalized by
rectangular streets and floors, carry him ever away from himself.

The round eyes of childhood typify innocence; the narrow line of the
flirt's optic proves the invasion of art. The horizontal mouth is the mark
of Determined cunning; who has not read Nature's most spontaneous
lyric in lips rounded for the candid kiss?

Beauty is Nature in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold

SQUARING THE CIRCLE 1309

the full moon, the enchanting gold ball, the domes of splendid temples,
the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the
waiter, and the "round" of drinks.

On the other hand, straight lines show that Nature has been deflected.
Imagine Venus's girdle transformed into a "straight front!"

When we began to move in straight lines and turn sharp corners our
natures begin to change. The consequence is that Nature, being more
adaptive than Art, tries to conform to its sterner regulations. The result
is often a rather curious product — for instance: A prize chrysanthemum,
wood alcohol whiskey, a Republican Missouri, cauliflower au gratin, and
a New Yorker.

Nature is lost quickest in a big city. The cause is geometrical, not
moral. The straight lines of its streets and architecture, the rectangularity
of its laws and social customs, the undeviating pavements, the hard, se-
vere, depressing, uncompromising rules of all its ways — even of its recrea-
tion and sports— coldly exhibit a sneering defiance of the curved line of
Nature.

Wherefore, it may be said that the big city has demonstrated the prob-
lem of squaring the circle. And it may be added that this mathematical
introduction precedes an account of the fate of a Kentucky feud that
was imported to the city that has a habit of making its importations con-
form to its angles.

The feud began in the Cumberland Mountains between the Folwell
and the Harkness families. The first victim of the homespun vendetta
was a 'possum dog belonging to Bill Harkness. The Harkness family
evened up this dire loss by laying out the chief of the Folwell clan. The
Folwells were prompt at repartee. They oiled up their squirrel rifles and
made it feasible for Bill Harkness to follow his dog to a land where the
'possums come down when treed without the stroke of an ax.

The feud flourished for forty years. Harknesses were shot at the plough,
through their lamp-lit cabin windows, coming from camp-meetings,
asleep, in duello, sober and otherwise, singly and in family groups, pre-
pared and unprepared. Folwells had the branches of their family tree
lopped off in similar ways, as the traditions of their country prescribed
and authorized.

By and by the pruning left but a single member of each family. And
then Cal Harkness, probably reasoning that further pursuance of the con-
troversy would give a too decided personal flavor to the feud, suddenly
disappeared from the relieved Cumberlands, baulking the avenging hand
of Sam, the ultimate opposing Folwell.

A year afterward Sam Folwell learned that his hereditary, unsuppressed
enemy was living in New York City. Sam turned over the big iron wash-
pot in the yard, scraped off some of the soot, which he mixed with lard
and shined" his boots with the compound. He put on his store clothes of

BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

butternut dyed black, a white shirt and collar, and packed a carpet-sack
with Spartan lingerie. He took his squirrel rifle from its hooks, but put
it back again with a sigh. However ethical and plausible the habit
might be in the Cumberlands, perhaps New York would not swallow
his pose of hunting squirrels among the skyscrapers along Broadway. An
ancient but reliable Colt's revolver that he resurrected from a bureau
drawer seemed to proclaim itself the pink of weapons for metropolitan
adventure and vengeance. This and a hunting-knife in a leather sheath,
Sam packed in the carpet-sack. As he started, muleback, for the lowland
railroad station the last Fowell turned in his saddle and looked grimly at
the little cluster of white-pine slabs in the clump of cedars that marked
the Folwell burying-ground.

Sam Folwell arrived in New York in the night. Still moving and liv-
ing in the free circles of nature, he did not perceive the formidable, piti-
less, restless, fierce angles of the great city waiting in the dark to close
about the rotundity of his heart and brain and mould him to the form of
its millions of reshaped victims. A cabby picked him out of the whirl, as
Sam himself had often picked a nut from a bed of wind-tossed autumn
leaves, and whisked him away to a hotel commensurate to his boots
and carpet-sack.

On the next morning the last of the Folwells made his sortie into the
city that sheltered the last Harkness. The Colt was thrust beneath his
coat and secured by a narrow leather belt; the hunting-knife hung between
his shoulder-blades, with the haft an inch below his coat collar. He knew
this much— that Cal Harkness drove an express wagon somewhere in that
town, and that he, Sam Folwell, had come to kill him. And as he stepped
upon the sidewalk the red came into his eye and the feud-hate into his
heart.

The clamor of the central avenues drew him thitherward. He had half
expected to see Cal coming down the street in his shirt-sleeves with a jug
and a whip in his hand, just as he would have seen him in Frankfort or
Laurel City. But an hour went by and Cal did not appear. Perhaps he
was waiting in ambush, to shoot him a door or a window. Sam kept
a sharp eye on doors and windows for a while.

About noon the city tired of playing with its mouse and suddenly
squeezed him with its straight lines.

Sam Folwell stood where two great, - rectangular arteries of the city
cross. He looked four ways, and saw the world hurled from its orbit and
reduced by spirit level and tape to an edged and cornered plane. All life
moved on tracks, in grooves, according to system, within boundaries, by
rote. The root of life was the cube, root; the measure of existence was
square measure. People streamed by in straight rows; the horrible din
and crash stupefied him.

Sam leaned against the sharp corner of a stone building. Those faces

SQUARING THE CIRCLE

passed him by thousands, and one of them were turned toward him. A
sudden foolish fear that he had died and was a spirit, and that they could
not see him, seized him. And then the city smote him with loneliness.

A fat man dropped out of the stream and stood a few feet distant, wait-
ing for his car. Sam crept to his side and shouted above the tumult
into his ear:

"The Rankinses' hogs weighed more'n ourn a whole passel, but the
mast in thar neighborhood was a fine chance better than what it was
down "

The fat man moved away unostentatiously, and bought roasted chest-
nuts to cover his alarm.

Sam felt the need of a drop of mountain dew. Across the street men
passed in and out through swinging doors. Brief glimpses could be had
of a glistening bar and its bedeckings. The feudist crossed and essayed to
enter. Again had Art eliminated the, familiar circle. Sam's hand found
no door-knob — it slid, in vain, over a rectangular brass plate and polished
oak with nothing even so large as a pin's head upon which his fingers
might close.

Abashed, reddened, heartbroken, he walked away from the bootless
door and sat upon a step. A locust club tickled him in the ribs.

"Take a walk for yourself," said the policeman. "You've been loafing
around here long enough."

At the next corner a shrill whistle sounded in Sam's ear. He wheeled
around and saw a black-browed villain scowling at him over peanuts
heaped on a steaming machine. He started across the street. An immense
engine, running, without mules, with the voice of a bull and the smell
of a smoky lamp, whizzed past, grazing his knee. A cab-driver bumped
him with a hub and explained to him that kind words were invented to
be used on other occasions. A motorman clanged his bell wildly and, for
once in his life, corroborated a cab-driver. A large lady in a changeable
silk waist dug an elbow into his back, and a newsy pensively pelted him
with banana rinds, murmuring, "I hates to do it— but if anybody seen me
let it pass!"

Cal Harkness, his day's work over and his express wagon stabled,
turned the sharp edge of the building that, by the cheek of architects, is
modelled upon a safety razor. Out of the mass of hurrying people his eye
picked up, three yards away, the surviving bloody and implacable foe
of his kith and kin.

He stopped short and wavered for a moment, being unarmed and
sharply surprised. But the keen mountaineer's eye of Sam Folwell had
picked him out.

There was a sudden spring, a ripple in the steam of passers-by and
the sound of Sam's voice crying:

"Howdy, Cal! I'm durned glad to see ye."

1312 BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

And in the angles of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and Twenty-third Street
the Cumberland feudists shook hands.

ROSES, RUSES AND ROMANCE

Ravenel— Ravenel, the traveller, artist and poet, threw his magazine to
the floor. Sammy Brown, broker's clerk, who sat by the window, jumped.

"What is it, Ravvy?" he asked. "The critics been hammering your
stock down?"

"Romance is dead," said Ravenel, lightly. When Ravenel spoke lightly
he was generally serious. He picked up the magazine and fluttered its leaves.

"Even a Philistine, like you, Sammy," said Ravenel, seriously (a tone
that insured him to be speaking lightly), "ought to understand. Now,
here is a magazine that once printed Poe and Lowell and Whitman and
Bret Harte and Du Maurier and Lanier and — well, that gives you the
idea. The current number has this literary feast to set before you: an
article on the stokers and coal bunkers of battleships, an expose of the
methods employed in making liverwurst, a continued story of a Standard
Preferred International Baking Powder deal in Wall Street, a 'poem'
on the bear that the President missed, another 'story' by a young woman
who spent a week as a spy making overalls on the East Side, another
'fiction' story that reeks of the 'garage* and certain make of automobile. Of
course, the title contains the words 'Cupid' and 'Chauffeur' — an article on
naval strategy, illustrated with cuts of the Spanish Armada, and the new
Staten Island ferryboats; another story of a political boss who won the
love of a Fifth Avenue belle by blackening her eye and refusing to vote for
an iniquitous ordinance (it doesn't say whether it was in the Street Clean-
ing Department or Congress), and nineteen pages by the editors bragging
about the circulation. The whole thing, Sammy, is an obituary on
Romance."

Sammy Brown sat comfortably in the leather armchair by the open
window. His suit was a vehement brown with visible checks, beautifully
matched in shade by the ends of four cigars that his vest pocket poorly
concealed. Light tan were his shoes, gray his socks, sky-blue his apparent
linen, snowy and high and adamantine his collar, against which a black
butterfly had alighted and spread his wings. Sammy's face — least impor-
tant— was ipund and pleasant and pinkish, and in his eyes you saw no
haven for fleeing Romance.

That window of Ravenel's apartment opened upon an old garden full
of ancient trees and shrubbery. The apartment-house towered above
one side of it; a high brick wall fended it from the street; opposite
RaveneFs window an old, old mansion stood, half-hidden in the shade

ROSES, RUSES AND ROMANCE 1313

of the summer foliage. The house was a castle besieged. The city howled
and roared and shrieked and beat upon its double doors, and shook
white, fluttering checks above the wall, offering terms of surrender. The
gray dust settled upon the trees; the siege was pressed hotter, but the
drawbridge was not lowered. No further will the language of chivalry
serve. Inside lived an old gentleman who loved his home and did not wish
to sell it. That is all the romance of the besieged castle.

Three or four times every week came Sammy Brown to Ravenel's
apartment. He belonged to tie poet's club, for the former Browns had
been conspicuous, though Sammy had been vulgarized by Business. He
had no tears for departed Romance. The song of the ticker was the one
that reached his heart, and when it came to matters equine and batting
scores he was something of a pink edition. He loved to sit in the leather
armchair by Ravenel's window. And Ravenel didn't mind particularly.
Sammy seemed to enjoy his talk; and then the broker *s clerk was such a
perfect embodiment of modernity and the day's sordid practicality that
Ravenel rather liked to use him as a scapegoat.

"I'll tell you what's the matter with you," said Sammy, with the shrewd-
ness that business had taught him. "The magazine has turned down some
of your poetry stunts. That's why you are sore at it"

"That would be a good guess in Wall Street or in a campaign for the
presidency of a woman's club," said Ravenel, quietly. "Now, there is a
poem — if you will allow me to call it that — of my own in this number of
the magazine."

"Read it to me," said Sammy, watching a cloud of pipe-smoke he had
just blown out the window.

Ravenel was no greater than Achilles. No one is. There is bound to be
a spot. The Somebody-or-Other must take hold of us somewhere when
she dips us in the Something-or-Other that makes us invulnerable. He
read aloud this verse in the magazine:

THE FOUR ROSES

"One rose I twined within your hair —

(White rose, that spake of worth) ;
And one you placed upon your breast —

(Red rose, love's seal of birth) .
You plucked another from its stem —

(Tea rose, that means for aye) ;
And one you gave — that bore for me

The thorns of memory."

"That's a crackerjack," said Sammy, admiringly.
"There are five more verses," said Ravenel, patiently sardonic. "One
naturally pauses at the end of each. Of course "

1314 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"Oh, let's have the rest, old man," shouted Sammy, contritely, "I didn't
mean to cut you off. I'm not much of a poetry expert, you know. I never
saw a poem that didn't look like it ought to have terminal facilities at the
end of every verse. Reel off the rest of it."

Ravenel sighed, and laid the magazine down. "All right," said Sammy,
cheerfully, "well have it next time. I'll be off now. Got a date at five
o'clock."

He took a last look at the shaded green garden and left, whistling in a
off key an untuneful air from a roofless farce comedy.

The next afternoon Ravenel, while polishing a ragged line of a new
sonnet, reclined by the window overlooking the beseiged garden of the
unmercenary baron. Suddenly he sat up, spilling two rhymes and a
syllable or two.

Through the trees one window of the old mansion could be seen clearly.
In its window, draped in flowing white, leaned the angel of all his dreams
of romance and poesy. Young, fresh as a drop of dew, graceful as a spray
of clematis, conferring upon the garden hemmed in by the roaring traffic
the air of a princess's bower, beautiful as any flower sung by poet —
thus Ravenel saw her for the first time. She lingered for a while, and then
disappeared within, leaving a few notes of a birdlike ripple of song to
reach his entranced ears through the rattle of cabs and the snarling of
the electric cars.

Thus, as if to challenge the poet's flaunt at romance and to punish him
for his recreancy to the undying spirit of youth and beauty, this vision
had dawned upon him with a thrilling and accusive power. And so meta-
bolic was the power that in an instant the atoms of Ravenel's entire world
were redistributed. The laden drays that passed the house in which she
lived rumbled a deep double-bass to the tune of love. The newsboys'
shouts were the notes of singing birds; that garden was the pleasance of
the Capulets; the janitor was an ogre; himself a knight, ready with sword,
lance or lute.

Thus does Romance show herself amid forests of brick and stone when
she gets lost in the city, and there has to be sent out a general alarm to
find her again.

At four in the afternoon Ravenel looked out across the garden. In the
window of his hopes were set four small vases, each containing a great,
full-blown rose — red and white. And, as he gazed, she leaned above
them, shaming them with her loveliness and seeming to direct her eyes
pensively toward his own window. And then, as though she had caught
his respectful but ardent regard, she melted away, leaving the fragrant
emblems on the window-sill.

Yes, emblemsl—he would be unworthy if he had not understood. She
had read his poem, "The Four Roses"; it had reached her heart; and this
was its romantic answer. Of course she must know that Ravenel, the poet,

ROSES, RUSES AND ROMANCE 1315

lived there across her garden. His picture, too, she must have seen in
the magazines. The delicate, tender, modest, flattering message could
not be ignored.

Ravenel noticed beside the roses a small flower-pot containing a plant.
Without shame he brought his opera-glasses and employed them from the
cover of his window-curtain. A nutmeg geranium!

With the true poetic instinct he dragged a book of useless information
from his shelves, and tore open the leaves at "The Language of Flowers."

"Geranium, Nutmeg— I expect a meeting." So! Romance never does
things by halves. If she comes back to you she brings gifts and her knit-
ting, and will sit in your chimney-corner if you will let her.

And now Ravenel smiled. The lover smiles when he thinks he has
won. The woman who loves ceases to smile with victory. He ends a battle;
she begins hers. What a pretty idea to set the four roses in her window
for him to see! She must have a sweet, poetic soul. And now to contrive
the meeting.

A whistling and slamming of doors preluded the coming of Sammy
Brown.

Ravenel smiled again. Even Sammy Brown was shone upon by the
far-flung rays of the renaissance. Sammy, with his ultra clothes, his horse-
shoe pin, his plump face, his trite slang, his uncomprehending admiration
of Ravenel — the broker's clerk made an excellent foil to the new, bright
unseen visitor to the poet's sombre apartment.

Sammy went to his old seat by the window, and looked out over the
dusty green foliage in the garden. Then he looked at his watch, and
rose hastily.

"By grabs!" he exclaimed. "Twenty after four! I can't stay, old man;
I've got a date at 4:30."

"Why did you come, then," asked Ravenel, with sarcastic jocularity,
"if you had an engagement at that time? I thought you business men
kept better account of your minutes and seconds than that."

Sammy hesitated in the doorway and turned pinker.

"Fact is, Rawy," he explained, as to a customer whose margin is
exhausted, "I didn't know I had it until I came. I'll tell you, old man—
there's a dandy girl in that old house next door that I'm dead gone on.
I put it straight — we're engaged. The old man says cnit'— but that don't
go. He keeps her pretty close. I can see Edith's window from yours here.
She gives me a tip when she's going shopping, and I meet her. It's 4:30
to-day. Maybe I ought to have explained sooner, but I kaow it's all right
with you — so long."

"How do you get your 'tip,* as you call it?" asked Ravenel, losing a
little spontaneity from his smile.

"Roses," said Sammy, briefly. "Four of 'em to-day. Means four o'clock
at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-third."

1316 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"But the geranium?" persisted Ravenel, clutching at the end of flying
Romance's trailing robe. „

"Mean half-past," shouted Sammy from the hall. "See you to-morrow.

THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT

"During the recent warmed-over spell," said my friend Carney, driver
o£ express wagon No. 8,606, "a good many opportunities was had ot ob-
serving human nature through peekaboo waists.

"The Park Commissioner and the Commissioner of Polis and the For-
estry Commission gets together and agrees to let the people sleep in the
parks until the Weather Bureau gets the thermometer down again to
a living basis. So they draws up open-air resolutions and has them O.K. d
by the Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Comstock and the Village Improve-
ment Mosquito Exterminating Society of South Orange, N. J.

"When the proclamation was made opening up to the people by
special grant the public parks that belong to 'em, there was a general
exodus into Central Park by the communities existing along its borders.
In ten minutes after sundown you'd have thought that there was an un-
dress rehearsal of a potato famine in Ireland and a Kishineff massacre.
They come by families, gangs, clambake societies, clans, clubs and tribes
from all sides to enjoy a cool sleep on the grass. Them that didn't have
oil stoves brought along plenty of blankets, so as not to be upset with the
cold and discomforts of sleeping outdoors. By building fires of the shade
trees and huddling together in the bridle paths, and burrowing under
the grass where the ground was soft enough, the likes of 5,000 head of
people successfully battled against the night air in Central Park alone..

"Ye know I live in the elegant furnished apartment house called the
Beersheba Flats, over against the elevated portion of the New York Cen-
tral Railroad.

"When the order come to the flats that all hands must turn out and
sleep in the park, according to the instructions of the consulting commit-
tee of the City Club and the Murphy Draying, Returfing and Sodding
Company, there was a look of a couple of fires and an eviction all over
the place.

"The tenants began to pack up feather beds, rubber boots, strings of
garlic, hot-water bags, portable canoes and scuttles of coal to take along
for the sake of comfort The sidewalk looked like a Russian camp in
Oyarna's line of march* There was wailing and lamenting up and down
stairs from Danny Geoghegan's flat on the top floor to the apartments of
Missis Goldensteinupski on the first.

" Tor why, says Danny, coming down and raging in his blue yarn socks

THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT 1317

to the janitor, 'should I be turned out of me comfortable apartments to
lay in the dirty grass like a rabbit? Tis like Jerome to stir up trouble wid
small matters like this instead of '

"'What!' says Officer Reagan on the sidewalk, rapping with his club.
"Tis not Jerome. Tis by order of the Polis Commissioner. Turn out
every one of yez and hike yerselves to the park/

"Now, 'twas a peaceful and happy home that all of us had in them same
Beersheba Flats. The O'Dowds and the Steinowitzes and the Callahans
and the Cohens and the Spizzinellis and the McManuses and the Spiegel-
mayers and the Joneses — all the nations of us, we lived like one big family
together. And when the hot nights come along we kept a line of childher
reaching from the front door to Kelly's on the corner, passing along the
cans of beer from one to another without the trouble of running after it.
And with no more clothing on than is provided for in the statutes, sitting
in all the windies, with a cool growler in every one, and your feet out
in the air, and the Rosenstein girls singing on the fire escape of the sixth
floor, and Patsy Rourke's flute going in the eighth, and the ladies calling
each other synonyms out the windies, and now and then a breeze sailing
in over Mister Depew's Central— I tell you the Beersheba Flats was a
summer resort that made the Catskills look like a hole in the ground.
With his person full of beer and his feet out the windy and his old woman
frying pork chops over a charcoal furnace and the childher dancing in
cotton slips on the sidewalk around the organ-grinder and the rest paid
for a week — what does a man want better on a hot night than that? And
then comes this ruling of the polis driving people out o' their comfortable
homes to sleep in parks — 'twas for all the world like a ukase of them
Russians— 'twill be heard from again at next election time,

"Well, then, Officer Reagan drives the whole lot of us to the park and
turns us in by the nearest gate. 'Tis dark under the trees, and all the
childher sets up to howling that they want to go home.

" Te'll pass the night in this stretch of woods and scenery/ says Officer
Reagan. ' 'Twill be fine and imprisonment for insoolting the Park Com-
missioner and the Chief of the Weather Bureau if ye refuse. I'm in charge
of thirty acres between here and the Agyptian monument, and I advise
ye to give no trouble. Tis sleeping on the grass yez all have been con-
demned to by the authorities. Yez'll be permitted to leave in the morning,
but ye must retoorn be night. Me orders was silent on the subject of bail,
but 111 find out if 'tis required and there'll be bondsmen at the gate.'

"There being no lights except along the automobile drives, us 179
tenants o£ the Beersheba Flats prepared to spend the night as best we
could in the raging forest. Them that brought blankets and kindling
wood was best off. They got fires started and wrapped the blankets round
their heads and laid down, cursing, in the grass. There was nothing to
see, nothing to drink, nothing to do. In the dark we had no way of telling

1318 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

friend or foe, except by feeling the noses of 'em. I brought along me last
winter overcoat, me tooth-brush, some quinine pills and the red quilt off
the bed in me flat. Three times during the night somebody rolled on me
quilt and stuck his knees against the Adam's apple of me. And three
times I judged his character by running me hand over his face, and three
times I rose up and kicked the intruder down the hill to the gravelly
walk below. And then someone with a flavor of Kelly's whiskey snug-
gled up to me, and I found his nose turned up the right way, and I says:
'Is that you, then, Patsey?' and he says, 'It is, Carney. How long do you
think it'll last?'

" 'I'm no weather-prophet,' says I, 'but if they bring out a strong anti-
Tammany ticket next fall it ought to get us home in time to sleep on a
bed once or twice before they line us up at the polls/

" 'A-playing of my flute in the airshaft,' says Patsey Rourke, 'and a-per-
spiring in me own windy to the joyful noise of the passing trains and
the smell of liver and onions and a-reading of the latest murder in the
smoke of the cooking is well enough for me,' says he. 'What is this herd-
ing us in grass for, not to mention the crawling things with legs that
walk up the trousers of us, and the Jersey snipes that peck at us, mas-
querading under the name and denomination of mosquitoes. What is it
all for, Carney, and the rint going on just the same over at the flats?' •

" c Tis the great annual Municipal Free Night Outing Lawn Party/
says I, 'given by the polis, Hetty Green and the Drug Trust. During the
heated season they hold a week of it in the principal park. 'Tis a scheme
to reach that portion of the people that's not worth taking up to North
Beach for a fish fry.'

tetl can't sleep on the ground/ says Patsey, Vid any benefit. I have the
hay fever and the rheumatism, and me ear is full of ants/

"Well, the night goes on, and the ex-tenants of the Flats groans and
stumbles around in the dark, trying to find rest and recreation in the
forest. The childher is screaming with the coldness, and the janitor makes
hot tea for Jem and keeps the fires going with the signboards that point
to the Tavern and the Casino. The tenants try to lay down on the grass
by families in the dark, but you're lucky if you can sleep next to a man
from the same floor or believing in the same religion. Now and then a
Murphy, accidental, rolls over on the grass of a Rosenstein, or a Cohen
tries to crawl under the O'Grady bush, and then there's a feeling of noses
and somebody is rolled down the hill to the driveway and stays there.
There is some hair-pulling among the women folks and everybody spanks
the nearest howling kid to him by the sense of feeling only, regardless of
its parentage and ownership. Tis hard to keep up the social distinctions
in the dark that flourish by daylight in the Beersheba Flats. Mrs. Rafferty,
that despises the asphalt that a Dago treads on, wakes up in the morning
with her feet in the bosom of Antonio Spizzinelli. And Mike O'Dowd,

THE EASTER OF THE SOUL 1319

that always threw peddlers downstairs as fast as he came up 'em, has to
unwind old Isaacstein's whiskers from around his neck, and wake up the
the whole gang at daylight. But here and there some few got acquainted
and overlooked the discomforts of the elements. There was five engage-
ments to be married announced at the flats the next morning.

"About midnight I gets up and wrings the dew out of my hair, and
goes to the side of the driveway and sits down. At one side of the park
I could see the lights in the streets and houses; and I was thinking how
happy them folks was who could chase the duck and smoke their pipes
at their windows, and keep cool and pleasant like nature intended for
'em to.

"Just then an automobile stops by me, and a fine-looking, well-dressed
man steps out.

"'Me man,' says he, 'can you tell me why all these people are lying
around on the grass in the park? I thought it was against the rules.'

" ' 'Twas an ordinance/ says I, cjust passed by the Polis Department
and ratified by the Turf Cutters' Association, providing that all persons
not carrying a license number of their rear axles shall keep in the public
parks until further notice. Fortunately, the orders comes this year during
a spell of fine weather, and the mortality, except on the borders of the
lake and along the automobile drives, will not be any greater than usual,'

" 'Who are these people on the side of the hill?' asked the man.

"'Sure,' says I, 'none others than the tenants of the Beersheba
Flats — a fine home for any man, especially on hot nights. May daylight
come soon!'

" They come here by night,' says he, 'and breathe in the pure air and
the fragrance of the flowers and trees. They do that,' says he, 'coming
every night from the burning heat of dwellings of brick and stone/

" 'And wood/ says I. 'And marble and plaster and iron.'

" The matter will be attended to at once/ says the man, putting up his
book.

" 'Are ye the Park Commissioner?' I asks.

"'I own the Beersheba Flats/ says he. 'God bless the grass and the
trees that give extra benefits to a man's tenants. The rents shall be
raised fifteen per cent to-morrow. Good-night/ says he."

THE EASTER OF THE SOUL

It is hardly likely that a goddess may die. Then Eastre, the old Saxon
goddess of spring, must be laughing in her muslin sleeve at people who
believe that Easter, her namesake, exists only among certain strips of
Fifth Avenue pavement after church service.

1320 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

Aye! It belongs to the world. The ptarmigan in Chilkoot Pass discards
his winter white feathers for brown; the Patagonian Beau Brummell oils
his chignon and clubs him another sweetheart to drag to his skull-strewn
flat. And down in Chrystie Street

Mr. "Tiger" McQuirk arose with a feeling of disquiet that he did not
understand. With a practised foot he rolled three of his younger brothers
like logs out of his way as they lay sleeping on the floor. Before a foot-
square looking glass that hung by the window he stood and shaved him-
self. If that may seem to you a task too slight to be thus impressively
chronicled, I bear with you; you do not know of the areas to be accom-
plished in traversing the cheek and chin of Mr. McQuirk.

McQuirk, senior, had gone to work long before. The big son of the house
was idle. He was a marble-cutter, and the marble-cutters were out
on a strike.

"What ails ye?" asked his mother, looking at him curiously; "are ye
not feeling well the morning, maybe now?"

"He's thinking along of Annie Maria Doyle," impudently explained
younger brother Tim, ten years old.

"Tiger" reached over the hand of a champion and swept the small
McQuirk from his chair.

"I feel fine," said he, "beyond a touch of the I-don't-know-what-you-
call-its. I feel like there was going to be earthquakes or music or a trifle
of chills and fever or maybe a picnic. I don't know how I feel. I feel like
knocking the face off a policeman, or else maybe like playing Coney
Island straight across the board from pop-corn to the elephant houdahs."

"It's the spring in yer bones," said Mrs. McQuirk. "It's the sap risin'.
Time was when I couldn't keep me feet still nor me head cool when the
earthworms began to crawl out in the dew of the mornin'. 'Tis a bit of
tea will do ye good, made from pipsissewa and gentian bark at the
druggist's."

"Back up!" said Mr. McQuirk, impatiently. "There's no spring in sight.
There's snow yet on the shed in Donovan's backyard. And yesterday they
puts open cars on the Sixth Avenue lines, and the janitors have quit
ordering coal. And that means six weeks more of winter, by all the signs
that be."

After breakfast Mr. McQuirk spent fifteen minutes before the cor-
rugated mirror, subjugating his hair and arranging his green-and-purple
ascot with its amethyst tombstone pin — eloquent of his chosen calling.

Since the strike had been called it was this particular striker's habit
to hie himself each morning to the corner saloon of Flaherty Brothers,
and there establish himself upon the sidewalk, with one foot resting on
the bootblack's stand, observing the panorama of the street until the pace
of time brought twelve o'clock and the dinner hour. And Mr. "Tiger"
McQuirk, with his athletic seventy inches, well trained in sport and

THE EASTER OF THE SOUL 1321

battle; his smooth, pale, solid, amiable face — blue where the razor had
travelled; his carefully considered clothes and air of capability, was him-
self a spectacle not displeasing to the eye.

But on this morning Mr. McQuirk did not hasten immediately to his
post of leisure and observation. Something unusual that he could not
quite grasp was in the air. Something disturbed his thoughts, ruffled
his senses, made him at once languid, irritable, elated, dissatisfied and
sportive. He was no diagnostician, and he did not know that Lent was
breaking up physiologically in his system.

Mrs. McQuirk had spoken of spring. Sceptically "Tiger" looked about
him for signs. Few they were. The organ-grinders were at work; but
they were always precocious harbingers. It was near enough spring for
them to go penny-hunting when the skating ball dropped at the park.
In the milliners' windows Easter hats, grave, gay, and jubilant, blossomed.
There were green patches among the sidewalk debris of the grocers. On
a third-story window-sill the first elbow cushion of the season — old gold
stripes on a crimson ground — supported the kimonoed arms of a pensive
brunette. The wind blew cold from the East River, but the sparrows
were flying to the eaves with straws. A second-hand store, combining
foresight with faith, had set out an ice-chest and baseball goods.

And then "Tiger's" eye, discrediting these signs, fell upon one that
bore a bud of promise. From a bright, new lithograph the head of Capri-
cornus confronted him, betokening the forward and heady brew.

Mr. McQuirk entered the saloon and called for his glass of bock. He
threw his nickel on the bar, raised the glass, set it down without tasting
and strolled toward the door.

"What's the matter, Lord Bolinbroke?" inquired the sarcastic bar-
tender; "want a chiny vase or a gold-lined epergne to drink it out of —
hey?"

"Say," said Mr. McQuirk, wheeling and shooting out a horizontal hand
and a forty-five-degree chin, "you know your place only, when it comes
for givin' titles. I've changed me mind about drinkin' — see? You got
your money, ain't you? Wait till you get stung before you get the droop
to your lip, will you?"

Thus Mr. McQuirk added mutability of desires to the strange humors
that had taken possession of him.

Leaving the saloon, he walked away twenty steps and leaned in the
open doorway of Lutz, the barber. He and Lutz were friends, masking
their sentiments behind abuse and bludgeons of repartee.

"Irish loafer," roared Lutz, "how do you do? So, not yet haf der bolice-
mans or der catcher of dogs done deir duty!"

"Hello, Dutch," said Mr. McQuirk. "Can't get your mind off of frank-
furters, can you?"

"Bah!" exclaimed the German, coming and leaning in the door. "I

1322 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

haf a soul above frankfurters to-day. Dere is springtime in der air. I can
feel it coming in ofer der mud of der street and das ice in der river.
Soon will dere be bicnics in der islands, mit kegs of beer under der
trees"

"Say," said Mr. McQuirk, setting his hat on one side, "is everybody
kiddin* me about gentle Spring? There ain't any more spring in the air
than there is in a horsehair sofa in a Second Avenue furnished room.
For me the winter underwear yet and the buckwheat cakes."

"You haf no boetry," said Lutz. "True, it is yedt cold, und in der city
we haf not many of der signs; but dere are dree kinds of beoble dot
should always feel der approach of spring first— dey are boets, lovers, and
poor vidows."

Mr. McQuirk went on his way, still possessed by the strange perturba-
tion that he did not understand. Something was lacking to his comfort,
and it made him half angry because he did not know what it was.

Two blocks away he came upon a foe, one Conover, whom he was
bound in honor to engage in combat.

Mr, McQuirk made die attack with the characteristic suddenness and
fierceness that had gained for him the endearing sobriquet of "Tiger."
The defence of Mr. Conover was so prompt and admirable that the con-
flict was protracted until the onlookers unselfishly gave the warning cry
of "Cheese it — the cop!" The principals escaped easily by running through
the nearest open doors into the communicating backyards at the rear of
the houses.

Mr. McQuirk emerged into another street. He stood by a lamp-post
for a few minutes engaged in thought and then he turned and plunged
into a small notion and news shop. A red-haired young woman, eating
gum-drops, came and looked freezingly at him across the ice-bound
steppes of the counter.

"Say, lady," he said, "have you got a song book with this in it? Let's
see how it leads off—

"When the springtime comes we'll wander in the dale, love,
And whisper of those days of yore

Tm having a friend/' explained Mr. McQuirk, "laid up with a broken
leg, and he sent me after it. He's a devil for songs and poetry when he
can't get out to drink."

"We have not," replied the young woman, with unconcealed con-
tempt "But there is a new song out that begins this way:

"Let us sit together in the old arm-chair,
And while the firelight flickers we'll be comfortable there."

There will be no profit in following Mr. "Tiger" McQuirk through his
further vagaries of that day until he comes to stand knocking at the door

THE FOOL-KILLER 1323

of Annie Maria Doyle. The goddess Eastre, it seems, had guided his
footsteps aright at last.

"Is that you now, Jimmy McQuirk?" she cried, smiling through the
opened door (Annie Maria had never accepted the "Tiger"). "Well,
whatever!"

"Come out in the hall," said Mr. McQuirk. "I want to ask your opinion
of the weather — on the level."

"Are you crazy, sure?" said Annie Maria.

"I am," said the "Tiger." "They've been telling me all day there was
spring in the air. Were they liars? Or am I?"

"Dear me!" said Annie Maria — "haven't you noticed it? I can almost
smell the violets. And the green grass. Of course, there ain't any yet —
it's just a kind of feeling, you know."

"That's what I'm getting at," said Mr. McQuirk. "I've had it. I didn't
recognize it at first, I thought maybe it was en- wee, contracted the other
day when I stepped above Fourteenth Street. But the katzenjammer I've
got don't spell violets. It spells yer own name, Annie Maria, and it's you
I want. I go to work next Monday, and I make four dollars a day. Spiel
up, old girl — do we make a team?"

"Jimmy," sighed Annie Maria, suddenly disappearing in his overcoat,
"don't you see that spring is all over the world right this minute?"

But you yourself remember how that day ended. Beginning with so
fine a promise of vernal things, late in the afternoon the air chilled and
an inch of snow fell— even so late in March. On Fifth Avenue the ladies
drew their winter furs close about them. Only in the florists' windows
could be perceived any signs of the morning smile of the coming goddess
Eastre.

At six o'clock Herr Lutz began to close his shop. He heard a well-
known shout: "Hello, Dutch!"

"Tiger" McQuirk, in his shirt-sleeves, with his hat on the back of his
head, stood outside in the whirling snow, puffing at a black cigar.

"Donnerwetter!" shouted Lutz, "der vinter, he has come back again
yet!"

"Yer a liar, Dutch," called back Mr. McQuirk, with friendly geniality,
"it's spring-time, by the watch."

THE FOOL-KILLER

Down South whenever any one perpetrates some particularly monu-
mental piece of foolishness everybody says: "Send for Jesse Holmes."

Jesse Holmes is the FooHCiller. Of course he is a myth, like Santa
Glaus and Jack Frost and General Prosperity and all those concrete con-

1324 BOOKXI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

ceptions that are supposed to represent an idea that Nature had failed to
embody. The wisest of the Southrons cannot tell you whence comes the
Fool-Killer's name; but few and happy are the households from the
Roanoke to the Rio Grande in which the name of Jesse Holmes has not
been pronounced or invoked. Always with a smile, and often with a tear,
is he summoned to his official duty. A busy man is Jesse Holmes.

I remember the clear picture of him that hung on the walls of my
fancy during my barefoot days when I was dodging his oft-threatened
devoirs. To me he was a terrible old man, in gray clothes, with a long,
ragged, gray beard, and reddish, fierce eyes. I looked to see him come
stumping up the road in a cloud of dust, with a white oak staff in his
hand and his shoes tied with leather thongs. I may yet

But this is a story, not a sequel.

I have taken notice with regret that few stories worth reading have
been written that did not contain drink of some sort. Down go the
fluids, from Arizona Dick's three fingers of red pizen to the inefficacious
Oolong that nerves Lionel Monstresser to repartee in the "Dotty Dia-
logues." So, in such good company I may introduce an absinthe drip— one
absinthe drip, dripped through a silver dripper, orderly, opalescent, cool,
green~eyed~-deceptive.

Kerner was a fool. Besides that, he was an artist and my good friend.
Now, if there is one thing on earth utterly despicable to another, it is an
artist in the eyes of an author whose story he has illustrated. Just try it
once. Write a story about a mining camp in Idaho. Sell it. Spend the
money, and then, six months later, borrow a quarter (or a dime), and
buy the magazine containing it. You find a full-page wash drawing of
your hero, Black Bill, the cowboy. Somewhere in your story you em-
ployed the word "horse." Aha! the artist has grasped the idea. Black Bill
has on the regulation trousers of the M. F. H. of the Westchester County
Hunt. He carries a parlor rifle, and wears a monocle. In the distance is
a section of Forty-second Street during a search for a lost gas-pipe, and
the Taj Mahal, the famous mausoleum in India.

Enough! I hated Kerner, and one day I met him and we became
friends. He was young and gloriously melancholy because his spirits
were so high and life had so much in store for him. Yes, he was almost
riotously sad. That was his youth. When a man begins to be hilarious
in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.
Kerner's hair was plentiful and carefully matted as an artist's thatch
should be. He was a cigaretteur, and he audited his dinners with red
wine. But, most of all, he was a fool. And, wisely, I envied him, and
listened patiently while he knocked Velasquez and Tintoretto. Once he
told me that he liked a story of mine that he had come across in an
anthology. He described it to me, and I was sorry that Mr. Fitz Jarnes

THE FOOL-KILLER 1325

O'Brien was dead and could not learn of the eulogy of his work* But
mostly Kerner made few breaks and was a consistent fool.

I'd better explain what I mean by that. There was a girl. Now, a girl,
as far as I am concerned, is a thing that belongs in a seminary or an
album; but I conceded the existence of the animal in order to retain
Kerner 's friendship. He showed me her picture in a locket — she was a
blonde or a brunette — I have forgotten which. She worked in a factory
for eight dollars a week. Lest factories quote this wage by way of vindi-
cation, I will add that the girl had worked for five years to reach that
supreme elevation of remuneration, beginning at $1.50 per week.

Kerner 's father was worth a couple of millions. He was willing to
stand for art, but he drew the line at the factory girl. So Kerner dis-
inherited his father and walked out to a cheap studio and lived on
sausages for breakfast and on Farroni for dinner. Farroni had the artistic
soul and a line of credit for painters and poets, nicely adjusted. Some-
times Kerner sold a picture and bought some new tapestry, a ring and
a dozen silk cravats, and paid Farroni two dollars on account.

One evening Kerner had me to dinner with himself and the factory
girl. They were to be married as soon as Kerner could slosh paint
profitably. As for the ex-father's two millions — pouf !

She was a wonder. Small and halfway pretty, and as much at her ease
in that cheap cafe as though she were only in the Palmer House, Chicago,
with a souvenir spoon already safely hidden in her shirt waist. She was
natural. Two things I noticed about her especially. Her belt buckle was
exactly in the middle of her back, and she didn't tell us that a large man
with a ruby stick-pin had followed her up all the way from Fourteenth
Street. Was Kerner such a fool? I wondered. And then I thought of the
quantity of striped cuffs and blue glass beads that $2,000,000 can buy for
the heathen, and I said to myself that he was. And then Elise — certainly
that was her name — told us, merrily, that the brown spot on her waist
was caused by her landlady knocking at the door while she (the girl-
confound the English language) was heating an iron over the gas jet,
and she hid the iron under the bedclothes until the coast was clear, and
there was a piece of chewing gum stuck to it when she began to iron
the waist and — well, I wondered how in the world the chewing gum
came to be there — don't they ever stop chewing it?

A while after that — don't be impatient, the absinthe drip is coming
now — Kerner and I were dining at Farroni's. A mandolin and a guitar
were being attacked; the room was full of smoke in nice, long crinkly
layers just like the artists draw the steam from a plum pudding on
Christmas posters and a lady in a blue silk and gasolined gauntlets was
beginning to hum an air from the Catskills.

"Kerner," said I, "you are a fool."

"Of "course," said Kerner, "I wouldn't let her go on working. Not my

1326 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

wife. What's the use to wait? She's willing. I sold that water color of
the Palisades yesterday. We could cook on a two-burner gas stove. You
know the ragouts I can throw together, Yes, I think we will marry
next week."

"Kerner," said I, "you are a fool,"

"Have an absinthe drip?" said Kerner, grandly. "To-night you are a
guest of Art in paying quantities. I think we will get a flat with a bath."

"I never tried one—I mean an absinthe drip," said I.

The waiter brought it and poured the water slowly over the ice in the
dipper.

"It looks exactly like the Mississippi River water in the big bend below
Natchez," said I, fascinated, gazing at the be-muddled drip.

"There are such flats for eight dollars a week," said Kerner.

"You are a fool," said I, and began to sip the filtration. "What you
need," I continued, "is the official attention of one Jesse Holmes."

Kerner, not being a Southerner, did not comprehend, so he sat, senti-
mental, figuring on his flat in his sordid, artistic way, while I gazed into
the green eyes of the sophisticated Spirit of Wormwood.

Presently I noticed casually that a procession of bacchantes limned on
the wall immediately below the ceiling had begun to move, traversing
the room from right to left in a gay and spectacular pilgrimage. I did not
confide my discovery to Kerner. The artistic temperament is too high-
strung to view deviations from the natural laws of the art of kalsomin-
ing. I sipped my absinthe drip and sawed wormwood.

One absinthe drip is not much— but I said again to Kerner, kindly:
"You are a fool." And then, in the vernacular: "Jesse Holmes for
yours."

And then I looked around and saw the Fool-Killer, as he had always
appeared to my imagination, sitting at a nearby table, and regarding us
with his reddish, fatal, relentless eyes. He was Jesse Holmes from top to
toe; he had the long, gray, ragged beard, the gray clothes of ancient cut,
the executioner's look, and the dusty shoes of one who had been called
from afar. His eyes were turned fixedly upon Kerner. I shuddered to
think that I had invoked him from his assiduous southern duties. I
thought of flying, and then I kept my seat, reflecting that many men had
escaped his ministrations when it seemed that nothing short of an appoint-
ment as Ambassador to Spain could save them from him. I had called
my brother Kerner a fool and was in danger of hell fire. That was noth-
ing; but I would try to save him from Jesse Holmes,

The Fool-Killer got up from his table and came over to ours. He
rested his hands upon it, and turned his burning, vindictive eyes upon
Kerner, ignoring me.

"You are a hopeless fool/* he said to the artist. "Haven't you had
enough of starvation yet? I offer you one more opportunity. Give up

THE FOOL-KILLER 1327

this girl and come back to your home. Refuse, and you must take the
consequences."

The Fool-Killer's threatening face was within a foot of his victim's;
but to my horror, Kerner made not the slightest sign of being aware of
his presence.

"We will be married next week," he muttered absent-mindedly. "With
my studio furniture and some second-hand stuff we can make out."

"You have decided your own fate," said the Fool-Killer, in a low but
terrible voice. "You may consider yourself as one dead. You have had
your last chance."

"In the moonlight," went on Kerner, softly, "we will sit under the
skylight with our guitar and sing away the false delights of pride and
money."

"On your own head be it," hissed the Fool-Killer, and my scalp
prickled when I perceived that neither Kerner's eyes nor his ears took
the slightest cognizance of Jesse Holmes. And then I knew that for some
reason the veil had been lifted for me alone, and that I had been elected
to save my friend from destruction at the Fool-Killer's hand. Something
of the fear and wonder of it must have showed itself in my face.

"Excuse me/' said Kerner, with his wan, amiable smile; "was I talk-
ing to myself? I think it is getting to be a habit with me."

The Fool-Killer turned and walked out of Farroni's.

"Wait here for me," said I, rising; "I must speak to that man. Had
you no answer for him? Because you are a fool must you die like a mouse
under his foot? Could you not utter one squeak in your own defence?"

"You are drunk," said Kerner, heartlessly. "No one addressed me."

"The destroyer of your mind," said I, "stood above you just now and
marked you for his victim. You are not blind or deaf.'*

"I recognize no such person," said Kerner. "I have seen no one but
you at this table. Sit down. Hereafter you shall have no more absinthe
drips."

"Wait here," said I, furious; "if you don't care for your own Me, I
will save it for you."

I hurried out and overtook the man in gray halfway down the block.
He looked as I had seen him in my fancy a thousand times — truculent,
gray and awful. He walked with the white oak staff, and but for the
street-sprinkler the dust would have been flying under his tread.

I caught him by the sleeve and steered him to a dark angle of a build-
ing. I knew he was a myth, and I did not want a cop to see me conversing
with vacancy, for I might land in Bellevue minus my silver matchbox
and diamond ring.

"Jesse Holmes," said I, facing him with apparent bravery, "I know
you. I have heard of you all my life. I know now what a scourge you
have been to your country. Instead of killing fools you have been mur-

1328 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

dering the youth and genius that are necessary to make a people live and
grow great. You are a fool yourself, Holmes; you began killing off the
brightest and best of your countrymen three generations ago, when the
old and obsolete standards of society and honor and orthodoxy were
narrow and bigoted. You proved that when you put your murderous
mark upon my friend Kerner— the wisest chap I ever knew in my life."

The Fool-Killer looked at me grimly and closely.

"You're a queer jag," said he curiously. "Oh, yes; I see who you are
now. You were sitting with him at the table, Well, if I'm not mistaken,
I heard you call him a fool, too."

"I did," said I. "I delight in doing so. It is from envy. By all the stand-
ards that you know he is the most egregious and grandiloquent and
gorgeous fool in all the world. That's why you want to kill him."

"Would you mind telling me who or what you think I am?" asked
the old man.

I laughed boisterously and then stopped suddenly, for I remembered
that it would not do to be seen so hilarious in the company of nothing
but a brick wall.

"You are Jesse Holmes, the Fool-Killer," I said, solemnly, "and you
are going to kill my friend Kerner. I don't know who rang you up, but
if you do kill him I'll see that you get pinched for it. That is," I added,
despairingly, "if I can get a cop to see you. They have a poor eye for
mortals, and I think it would take the whole force to round up a myth
murderer."

"Well," said the Fool-Killer, briskly, "I must be going. You had better
go home and sleep it off. Good-night. "

At this I was moved at a sudden fear for Kerner to a softer and more
pleading mood. I leaned against the gray man's sleeve and besought him:

"Good Mr. Fool-Killer, please don't kill little Kerner. Why can't you
go back South and kill Congressmen and clay-eaters and let us alone?
Why don't you go up on Fifth Avenue and kill millionaries that keep
their money locked up and won't let young fools marry because one of
'em lives an the wrong street? Come and have a drink, Jesse. Will you
never get on to your job?"

"Do you know this girl that your friend has made himself a fool about?"
asked the Fool-Killer.

"I have the honor," said I, "and that's why I called Kerner a fool. He
is a fool because he has waited so long before marrying her. He is a fool
because he has been waiting in the hopes of getting the consent of some
absurd two-million-dollar-fool parent or something of the sort."

"Maybe/' said the Fool-Killer— "maybe I— I might have looked at it
differently. Would you mind going back to the restaurant and bringing
your friend Kerner here?"

"Oh, what's the use, Jesse," I yawned. "He can't see you. He didn't

TRANSIENTS IN ARCADIA 1329

know you were talking to him at the table. You are a fictitious character,
you know."

"Maybe he can this time. Will you go fetch him?"

"All right/' said I, "but I've a suspicion that you're not strictly sober,
Jesse. You seem to be wavering and losing your outlines. Don't vanish
before I get back."

I went back to Kerner and said:

"There's a man with an invisible homicidal mania waiting to see you
outside. I believe he wants to murder you. Come along. You won't see
him, so there's nothing to be frightened about."

Kerner looked anxious.

"Why," said he, "I had no idea one absinthe would do that. You'd
better stick to Wurzburger. I'll walk home with you."

I led him to Jesse Holmes's.

"Rudolph," said the Fool-Killer, "111 give in. Bring her up to the house.
Give me your hand, boy."

"Good for you, dad," said Kerner, shaking hands with the old
man. "You'll never regret it after you know her."

"So, you did see him when he was talking to you at the table?" I
asked Kerner.

"We hadn't spoken to each other in a year," said Kerner. "It's all right
now."

I walked away.

"Where are you going?" called Kerner.

"I am going to look for Jesse Holmes," I answered, with dignity and
reserve.

TRANSIENTS IN ARCADIA

There is a hotel on Broadway that has escaped discovery by the summer-
resort promoters. It is deep and wide and cool. Its rooms are finished in
dark oak of a low temperature. Home-made breezes and deep-green
shrubbery give it the delights without the inconveniences of the Adiron-
dacks. One can mount its broad staircases or glide dreamily upward in
its aerial elevators, attended by guides in brass buttons, with a serene joy
that Alpine climbers have never attained. There is a chef in its kitchen
who will prepare for you brook trout better than the White Mountains
ever served, sea food that would turn Old Point Comfort— "by Gad, sah!"
—green with envy, and Maine venison that would melt the official heart
of the game warden.

A few have found out this oasis in the July desert of Manhattan. Dur-
ing that month you will see the hotel's reduced array of guests scattered

I33° BOOK XI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

luxuriously about in the cool twilight of its lofty dining-room, gazing at
one another across the snowy waste of unoccupied tables, silently con-
gratulatory.

Superfluous, watchful, pneumatically moving waiters hover near, sup-
plying every want before it is expressed. The temperature is perpetual
April. The ceiling is painted in water colors to counterfeit a summer sky
across which delicate clouds drift and do not vanish as those of nature do
to our regret.

The pleasing, distant roar of Broadway is transformed in the imagina-
tion of the happy guests to the noise of a waterfall filling the woods with
its restful sound. At every strange footstep the guests turn an anxious
ear, fearful lest their retreat be discovered and invaded by the restless
pleasure-seekers who are forever hounding Nature to her deepest lairs.

Thus in the depopulated caravansary the little band of connoisseurs
jealously hide themselves during the heated season, enjoying to the utter-
most the delights of mountain and seashore that art and skill have
gathered and served to them.

In this July came to the hotel one whose card that she sent to the clerk
for her name to be registered read "Mme. Heloise D'Arcy Beaumont."

Madame Beaumont was a guest such as the Hotel Lotus loved. She
possessed the fine air of the elite, tempered and sweetened by a cordial
graciousness that made the hotel employes her slaves. Bell-boys fought
for the honor of answering her ring; the clerks, but for the question of
ownership, would have deeded to her the hotel and its contents; the
other guests regarded her as the final touch of feminine exclusiveness and
beauty that rendered the entourage perfect.

This super-excellent guest rarely left the hotel. Her habits were con-
sonant with the customs of the discriminating patrons of the Hotel Lotus.
To enjoy that delectable hostelry one must forego the city as though it
were leagues away. By night a brief excursion to the nearby roofs is in
order; but during the torrid day one remains in the umbrageous fast-
nesses of the Lotus as a trout hangs poised in the pellucid sanctuaries of
his favorite pool.

Though alone in the Hotel Lotus, Madame Beaumont preserved the
state of a queen whose loneliness was of position only. She breakfasted
at ten, a cool, sweet, leisurely, delicate being who glowed softly in the
dimness like a jasmine flower in the dusk.

But at dinner was Madame's glory at its height. She wore a gown as
beautiful and immaterial as the mist from an unseen cataract in a moun-
tain gorge. The nomenclature of this gown is beyond the guess of the
scribe. Always pale-red roses reposed against its lace-garnished front. It
was a gown that the head-waiter viewed with respect and met at the
door. You thought of Paris when you saw it, and maybe of mysterious
countesses, and certainly of Versailles and rapiers and Mrs, Fiske and

TRANSIENTS IN ARCADIA 133!

rouge-et-noir. There was an untraceable rumor in the Hotel Lotus that
Madame was a cosmopolite, and that she was pulling with her slender
white hands certain strings between the nations in the favor of Russia.
Being a citizeness of the world's smoothest roads it was small wonder
that she was quick to recognize in the refined purlieus of the Hotel Lotus
the most desirable spot in America for a restful sojourn during the heat
of midsummer.

On the third day of Madame Beaumont's residence in the hotel a
young man entered and registered himself as a guest. His clothing — to
speak of his points in approved order — was quietly in the mode; his
features good and regular; his expression that of a poised and sophis-
ticated man of the world. He informed the clerk that he would remain
three or four days, inquired concerning the sailing of European steam-
ships, and sank into the blissful inanition of the nonpareil hotel with the
contented air of a traveller in his favorite inn.

The young man — not to question the veracity of the register — was
Harold Farrington. He drifted into the exclusive and calm current of
life in the Lotus so tactfully and silently that not a ripply alarmed his
fellow-seekers after rest. He ate in the Lotus and of its patronym, and
was lulled into blissful peace with the other fortunate mariners. In one
day he acquired his table and his waiter and the fear lest the panting
chasers after repose that kept Broadway warm should pounce upon and
destroy this contiguous but covert haven.

After dinner on the next day after the arrival of Harold Farrington
Madame Beaumont dropped her handkerchief in passing out. Mr. Far-
rington recovered and returned it without the effusiveness of a seeker
after acquaintance.

Perhaps there was a mystic freemasonry between the discriminating
guests of the Lotus. Perhaps they were drawn one to another by the fact
of their common good fortune in discovering the acme of summer resorts
in a Broadway hotel. Words delicate in courtesy and tentative in departure
from formality passed between the two. And, as if in the expedient
atmosphere of a real summer resort, an acquaintance grew, flowered and
fructified on the spot as does the mystic plant of the conjuror. For a few
moments they stood on a balcony upon which the corridor ended, and
tossed the feathery ball of conversation.

"One tires of the old resorts," said Madame Beaumont, with a faint
but sweet smile. "What is the use to fly to the mountains or the seashore to
escape noise and dust when the very people that make both follow us
there?"

"Even on the ocean," remarked Farrington sadly, "the Philistines be
upon you. The most exclusive steamers are getting to be scarcely more
than ferry boats. Heaven help us when the summer resorter discovers

1332 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

that the Lotus is further away from Broadway than Thousand Islands or

"I hope our secret will be safe for a week, anyhow," said Madame,
with a sigh and a smile. "I do not know where I would go if they should
descend upon the dear Lotus. I know of but one place so delightful in
summer, and that is the castle of Count Polinski, in the Ural Mountains.5

"I hear that Baden-Baden and Cannes are almost deserted this sea-
son," said Farrington. "Year by year the old resorts fall in disrepute.
Perhaps many others, like ourselves, are seeking out the quiet nooks that
are overlooked by the majority." ^

"I promise myself three days more of this delicious rest, said Madame
Beaumont. "On Monday the Cedric sails."

Harold Farrington's eyes proclaimed his regret. "I too must leave on
Monday," he said, "but I do not go abroad."

Madame Beaumont shrugged one round shoulder in a foreign gesture.

"One cannot hide here forever, charming though it may be. The
chateau has been in preparation for me longer than a month. Those
house parties that one must give— what a nuisance! But I shall never
forget my week in the Hotel Lotus."

"Nor shall I," said Farrington in a low voice, "and I shall never forgive
the Cedric."

On Sunday evening, three days afterward, the two sat at a little table
on the same balcony. A discreet waiter brought ices and small glasses of
claret cup.

Madame Beaumont wore the same beautiful evening gown that she
had worn each day at dinner. She seemed thoughtful. Near her hand
on the table lay a small chatelaine purse. After she had eaten her ice
she opened the purse and took out a one-dollar bill.

uMr. Farrington," she said, with the smile that had won the Hotel
Lotus, "I want to tell you something. Ym going to leave before break-
fast in the morning, because I've got to go back to my work. I'm behind
the hosiery counter at Casey's Mammoth Store, and my vacation's up at
eight o'clock to-morrow. That paper dollar is the last cent I'll see till I
draw my eight dollars salary next Saturday night. You're a real gentle-
man, and you're been good to me, and I wanted to tell you before I went.

"I've been saving up out of my wages for a year just for this vacation.
I wanted to spend one week like a lady if I never do another one. I
wanted to get up when I please instead of having to crawl out at seven
every morning; and I wanted to live on the best and be waited on and
ring bells for things just like rich folks do. Now Fve done it, and I've had
the happiest time I ever expect to have in my life. I'm going back to my
work and my little hall bedroom satisfied for another year. I wanted to
tell you about it, Mr. Farrington, because I— I thought you kind of liked
me, and I— I liked you. But, oh, I couldn't help deceiving you up till now,

THE RATHSKELLER AND THE ROSE 1333

for it was all just like a fairy tale to me. So I talked about Europe and
the things Fve read about in other countries, and made you think I was
a great lady.

"This dress I've got on— it's the only one I have that's fit to wear— I
bought from O'Dowd & Levinsky on the instalment plan.

"Seventy-five dollars is the price, and it was made to measure. I paid
$10 down, and they're to collect $i a week till it's paid for. That'll be
about all I have to say, Mr. Farrington, except that my name is Mamie
Siviter instead of Madame Beaumont, and I thank you for your atten-
tions. This dollar will pay the instalment due on the dress to-morrow. I
guess I'll go up to my room now."

Harold Farrington listened to the recital of the Lotus's loveliest guest
with an impassive countenance. When she had concluded he drew a
small book like a checkbook from his coat pocket. He wrote upon a
blank form in this with a stub of pencil, tore out the leaf, tossed it over to
his companion and took up the paper dollar.

"I've got to go to work, too, in the morning," he said, "and I might as
well begin now. There's a receipt for the dollar instalment. I've been a
collector for O'Dowd & Levinsky for three years. Funny, ain't it, that
you and me both had the same idea about spending our vacation? I've
always wanted to put up at a swell hotel, and I saved up out of my twenty
per, and did it. Say, Mame, how about a trip to Coney Saturday night on
the boat— -what?"

The face of the pseudo Madame Heloise D'Arcy Beaumont beamed.

"Oh, you bet I'll go, Mr. Farrington. The store closes at twelve on
Saturdays. I guess Coney'll be all right even if we did spend a week with
the swells/'

Below the balcony the sweltering city growled and buzzed in the July
night. Inside the Hotel Lotus the tempered, cool shadows reigned, and
the solicitous waiter single-footed near the low windows, ready at a nod
to serve Madame and her escort.

At the door of the elevator Farrington took his leave, and Madame
Beaumont made her last ascent. But before they reached the noiseless
cage he said: "Just forget that 'Harold Farrington,' will you?— McManus
is the name— James McManus. Some call me Jimmy."

"Good-night, Jimmy," said Madame.

THE RATHSKELLER AND THE ROSE

Miss Posie Carrington had earned her success. She began life handi-
capped by the family name of "Boggs," in the small town known
as Cranberry Corners. At the age of eighteen she had acquired the name

1334 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

of "Carrington" and a position in the chorus of a metropolitan burlesque
company. Thence upward she had ascended by the legitimate and de-
lectable steps of "broiler," member of the famous "Dickey-bird" octette,
in the successful musical comedy, "Fudge and Fellows," leader of the
potato-bug dance in "Fol-de-Rol," and at length to the part of the maid
" Tointette" in "The King's Bath-Robe," which captured the critics and
gave her her chance. And when we come to consider Miss Carrington
she is in the heydey of flattery, fame and fizz; and that astute manager
Herr Timothy Goldstein has her signature to iron-clad papers that she will
star the coming season in Dyde Rich's new play, "Paresis by Gaslight."

Promptly there came to Herr Timothy a capable twentieth-century
young character actor by the name of Highsmith, who besought engage-
ment as "Sol Haytosser," the comic and chief male character part in
"Paresis by Gaslight."

"My boy," said Goldstein, "take the part if you can get it. Miss Car-
rington won't listen to any of my suggestions. She has turned down half
a dozen of the best imitators of the rural dub in the city. She declares she
won't set a foot on the stage unless 'Haytosser' is the best that can be
raked up. She was raised in a village, you know, and when a Broadway
orchid sticks a straw in his hair and tries to call himself a clover blossom
she's on, all right. I asked her, in a sarcastic vein, if she thought Denmaa
Thompson would make any kind of a show in the part. 'Oh, no,' says she.
'I don't want him or John Drew or Jim Corbett or any of these swell
actors that don't know a turnip from a turnstile. I want the real article.'
So, my boy, if you want to play 'Sol Haytosser' you will have to convince
Miss Carrington. Luck be with you."

Highsmith took the train the next day for Cranberry Corners. He
remained in that forsaken and inanimate village three days. He found
the Boggs family and corkscrewed their history unto the third and fourth
generation. He amassed the facts and the local color of Cranberry Cor-
ners. The village had not grown as rapidly as had Miss Carrington. The
actor estimated that it had suffered as few actual changes since the de-
parture of Its solitary follower of Thespis as had a stage upon which
"four years is supposed to have elapsed." He absorbed Cranberry Corners
and returned to the city of chameleon changes.

It was in the rathskeller that Highsmith made the hit of his histrionic
career. There is no need to name the place; there is but one rathskeller
where you could hope to find Miss Posie Carrington after a performance
of "The King's Bath-Robe."

There was a jolly small party at one of the tables that drew many
eyes. Miss Carrington, petite, marvellous, bubbling, electric, fame-drunken,
shall be named first. Herr Goldstein follows, sonorous, curly-haired,
heavy, a trifle anxious, as some bear that had caught, somehow, a butter-
fly in his claws. Next, a man condemned to a newspaper, sad, courted,

THE RATHSKELLER AND THE ROSE 1335

armed, analyzing for press agent's dross every sentence that was poured
over him, eating his a la Newburg in the silence of greatness. To con-
clude, a youth with parted hair, a name that is ochre to red journals and
gold on the back of a supper check. These sat at a table while the musi-
cians played, while waiters moved in the mazy performance of their
duties with their backs toward all who desired their service, and all was
bizarre and merry because it was nine feet below the level of the sidewalk.

At 11.45 a being entered the rathskeller. The first violin perceptibly
flatted a C that should have been natural; the clarinet blew a bubble
instead of a grace note; Miss Carrington giggled and the youth with
parted hair swallowed an olive seed.

Exquisitely and irreproachably rural was the new entry. A lank, dis-
concerted, hesitating young man it was, flaxen-haired, gaping of mouth,
awkward, stricken to misery by the lights and company. His clothing
was butternut, with bright blue tie, showing four inches of bony wrist
and white-socked ankle. He upset a chair, sat in another one, curled a
foot around a table leg and cringed at the approach of a waiter.

"You may fetch me a glass of lager beer," he said, in response to the
discreet questioning of the servitor.

The eyes of the rathskeller were upon him. He was as fresh as a collard
and as ingenuous as a hay rake. He let his eye rove about the place as one
who regards, big-eyed, hogs in the potato patch. His gaze rested at length
upon Miss Carrington. He rose and went to her table with a lateral,
shining smile and a blush of pleased trepidation.

"How're ye, Miss Posie?" he said in accents not to be doubted. "Don't
ye remember me — Bill Summers — the Summerses that lived back of the
blacksmith shop? I reckon I've growed up some since ye left Cranberry
Corners.

" 'Liza Perry 'lowed I might see ye in the city while I was here. You
know 'Liza married Benny Stanfield, and she says "

"Ah, say!" interrupted Miss Carrington, brightly, "Lize Perry is never
married — what! Oh, the freckles of her!"

"Married in June," grinned the gossip, "and livin' in the old Tatura
Place. Ham Riley perfessed religion; old Mrs. Blithers sold her place
to Cap'n Spooner; the youngest Waters girl run away with a music
teacher; the courthouse burned up last March; your' uncle Wiley was
elected constable; Matilda Hoskins died from runnin* a needle in her
hand, and Tom Beedle is courtin' Sallie Lathrop— they say he don't miss
a night but what he's settin* on their porch."

"The wall-eyed thing!" exclaimed Miss Carrington, with asperity.
"Why, Tom Beedle once— say, you folks, excuse me a while— this is an
old friend of mine— Mr.— what was it? Yes, Mr. Summers— Mr. Gold-
stein, Mr. Ricketts, Mr. Oh, what's yours? 'Johnny' '11 do— <:ome over

here and tell me some more."

1336 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

She swept him to an isolated table in a corner. Herr Goldstein shrugged
his fat shoulders and beckoned to the waiter. The newspaper man
brightened a little and mentioned absinthe. The youth with parted hair
was plunged into melancholy. The guests of the rathskeller laughed,
clinked glasses and enjoyed the comedy that Posie Carrington was treat-
ing them to after her regular performance. A few cynical ones whispered
"press agent" and smiled wisely.

Posie Carrington laid her dimpled and desirable chin upon her hands,
and forgot her audience — a faculty that had won her laurels for her.

"I don't seem to recollect any Bill Summers," she said thoughtfully,
gazing straight into the innocent blue eyes of the rustic young man,
"But I know the Summerses, all right. I guess there ain't many changes
in the old town. You see any of my folks lately ?"

And then Highsmith played his trump. The part of "Sol Haytosser"
called for pathos as well as comedy. Miss Carrington should see that he
could do that as well.

"Miss Posie," said "Bill Summers," "I was up to your folkses house jist
two or three days ago. No, there ain't many changes to speak of. The
lilac bush by the kitchen window is over a foot higher, and the elm in
the front yard died and had to be cut down. And yet it don't seem the
same place that it used to be,"

"How's ma?" asked Miss Carrington.

"She was settin' by the front door, crocheting a lamp-mat when I saw
her last," said "Bill." "She's older'n she was, Miss Posie. But everything
in the house looked jest the same. Your ma asked me to set down. 'Don't
touch that willow rocker, William/ says she. 'It ain't been moved since
Posie left; and that's the apron she was hemmin' layin' over the arm of
it, jist as she flung it. Fm in hopes/ she goes on, 'that Posie'll finish
runnin' out that hem some day/ "

Miss Carrington beckoned peremptorily to a waiter.

"A pint of extra dry," she ordered, briefly; "and give the check to
Goldstein."

"The sun was shinin' in the door," went on the chronicler from Cran-
berry, "and your ma was settin' right in it. I asked her if she hadn't better
move back a little. 'William/ says she, 'when I get sot down and lookin'
down the road, I can't bear to move. Never a day,' says she, 'but what I
set here every minute that I can spare and watch over them palin's for
Posie. She went away down that road in the night, for we seen her little
shoe tracks in the dust, and somethin' tells me she'll come back that way
ag'in when she's weary of the world and begins to think about her old
mother.1

"When I was comin' away," concluded "Bill," "I pulled this off'n the
bush by the front steps. I thought maybe I might see you in the city, and
I knowed you'd like somethin' from the old home."

THE CLARION CALL 1337

He took from his coat pocket a rose — a drooping, yellow, velvet, odor-
ous rose, that hung its head in the foul atmosphere of that tainted raths-
keller like a virgin bowing before the hot breath of the lions in a Roman
arena.

Miss Carrington's penetrating but musical laugh rose above the orches-
tra's rendering of "Bluebells."

"Oh, say!" she cried, with glee, "ain't those poky places the limit? I
just know that two hours at Cranberry Corners would give me the
horrors now. Well, I'm awful glad to have seen you, Mr. Summers. I
guess I'll hustle around to the hotel now and get my beauty sleep."

She thrust the yellow rose into the bosom of her wonderful, dainty,
silken garments, stood up and nodded imperiously at Herr Goldstein.

Her three companions and "Bill Summers" attended her to her cab.
When her flounces and streamers were all safely tucked inside she
dazzled them with au revoirs from her shining eyes and teeth.

"Come around to the hotel and see me, Bill, before you leave the city,5*
she called as the glittering cab rolled away.

Highsmith, still in his make-up, went with Herr Goldstein to a cafe
booth.

"Bright idea, eh?" asked the smiling actor. "Ought to land eSol Hay-
tosser' for me, don't you think? The little lady never once tumbled."

"I didn't hear your conversation," said Goldstein, "but your make-up
and acting was O. K. Here's to your success. You'd better call on Miss
Carrington early to-morrow and strike her for the part. I don't see how
she can keep from being satisfied with your exhibition of ability."

At 11.45 A.M. on the next day Highsmith, handsome, dressed in the
latest mode, confident, with a fuchsia in his buttonhole, sent up his card
to Miss Carrington in her select apartment hotel.

He was shown up and received by the actress's French maid.

"I am sorree," said Mile. Hortense, "but I am to say this to all. It is
with great regret. Mees Carrington have cancelled all engagements on
the stage and have returned to live in that— how you call that town?
Cranberry Cornaire!"

THE CLARION CALL

Half of this story can be found in the records of the Police Depart-
ment; the other half belongs behind the business counter of a news-
paper office.

One afternoon two weeks after Millionaire Norcorss was found in his
apartment murdered by a burglar, the murderer, while strolling serenely
down Broadway, ran plump against Detective Barney Woods.

1338 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"Is that you, Johnny Kernan?" asked Woods, who had been near-
sighted in public for five years.

"No less," cried Kernan, heartily. "If it isn't Barney Woods, late and
early of old Saint Jo! You'll have to show me! What are you doing East?
Do the green-goods circulars get out that far?"

"I've been in New York some years," said Woods. "I'm on the city
detective force/'

"Well, well!" said Kernan, breathing smiling joy and patting the de-
tective's arm.

"Come into Mullet's," said Woods, "and let's hunt a quiet table. I'd
like to talk to you awhile."

It lacked a few minutes to the hour of four. The tides of trade were
not yet loosed, and they found a quiet corner of the cafe. Kernan, well
dressed, slightly swaggering, self-confident, seated himself opposite the
little detective, with his pale, sandy mustache, squinting eyes, and ready-
made cheviot suit.

"What business are you in now?" asked Woods. "You know you
left Saint Jo a year before I did."

"I'm selling shares in a copper mine," said Kernan. "I may establish an
office here. Well, well! and so old Barney is a New York detective. You
always had a turn that way. You were on the police in Saint Jo after I
left there, weren't you?"

"Six months," said Woods, "And now there's one more question,
Johnny. I've followed your record pretty close ever since you did that
hotel job in Saratoga, and I never knew you to use your gun before. Why
did you kill Norcross?"

Kernan stared for a few moments with concentrated attention at the
slice of lemon in his high-ball; and then he looked at the detective with
a sudden crooked, brilliant smile.

"How did you guess it, Barney?" he asked, admiringly. "I swear I
thought the job was as clean and as smooth as a peeled onion. Did I
leave a string hanging out anywhere?"

Woods laid upon the table a small gold pencil intended for a watch-
charm.

"It's the one I gave you the last Christmas we were in Saint Jo. I've
got your shaving mug yet. I found this under a corner of the rug in Nor-
cross's room. I wara you to be careful what you say. I've got it put on to
you, Johnny. We were old friends once, but I must do my duty. You'll
have to go to the chair for Norcross."

Kernan laughed.

"My luck stays with me," said he. "Who'd have thought old Barney
was on my trail!" He slipped one hand inside his coat. In an instant
Woods had a revolver against his side.

"Put it away/' said Kernan, wrinkling his nose. "I'm only investigating.

THE CLARION CALL 1339

Aha! It takes nine tailors to make a man, but one can do a man up.
There's a hole in that vest pocket I took that pencil off my chain and
slipped it in there in case of a scrap. Put up your gun, Barney and I'll
tell you why I had to shoot Norcross. The old fool started down the hall
after me, popping at the buttons on the back of my coat with a peevish
litde .22 and I had to stop him. The old lady was a darling. She just lay
in bed and saw her $12,000 diamond necklace go without a chirp, while
she begged like a panhandler to have back a little thin gold ring with a
garnet worth about $3. I guess she married old Norcross for his money,
all right. Don't they hang onto the litde trinkets from the Man Who Lost
Out, though? There were six rings, two brooches and a chatelaine watch.
Fifteen thousand would cover the lot."

"I warned you not to talk," said Woods.

"Oh, that's all right," said Kernan. "The stuff is in my suit case at the
hotel. And now I'll tell you why I'm talking. Because it's safe. Fm talking
to a man I know. You owe me a thousand dollars, Barney Woods, and
even if you wanted to arrest me your hand wouldn't make the move."

"I haven't forgotten," said Woods. "You counted out twenty fifties with-
out a word. I'll pay it back some day. That thousand saved me and —
well, they were piling my furniture out on the sidewalk when I got back
to the house."

"And so," continued Kernan, "you being Barney Woods, born as true
as steel, and bound to play a white man's game, can't lift a finger to ar-
rest the man you're indebted to. Oh, I have to study men as well as Yale
locks and window fastenings in my business. Now, keep quiet while I
ring for the waiter. I've had a thirst for a year or two that worries me a
litde. If Fm ever caught the lucky sleuth will have to divide honors with
the old boy Booze. But I never drink during business hours. After a job
I can crook elbows with my old friend Barney with a clear conscience.
What are you taking?"

The waiter came with the little decanters and the siphon and left
them alone again.

"You've called the turn," said Woods, as he rolled the little gold
pencil about with a thoughtful forefinger. "I've got to pass you up. I can't
lay a hand on you. If I'd a-paid that money back — but I didn't, and that
settles it. It's a bad break Fm making, Johnny, but I can't dodge it You
helped me once, and it calls for the same."

"I knew it," said Kernan, raising his glass, with a flushed smile of
self-appreciation. "I can judge men. Here's to Barney, for— 'he's a jolly
good fellow/"

"I don't believe," went on Woods quietly, as if he were thinking aloud,
"that if accounts had been square between you and me, all the money
in all the banks in New York could have bought you out of my hands
to-night."

1340 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"I know it couldn't," said Kernan. "That's why I knew I was safe with

you." , .

"Most people," continued the detective, 'look sideways at my business.
They don't class it among the fine arts and the professions. But I've al-
ways taken a kind of fool pride in it. And here is where I go 'busted/ I
guess I'm a man first and a detective afterward. I've got to let you go,
and then I've got to resign from the force. I guess I can drive an express
wagon. Your thousand dollars is further off than ever, Johnny." ^

"Oh, you're welcome to it," said Kernan, with a lordly air. "I'd be will-
ing to call the debt off, but I know you wouldn't have it. It was a lucky
day for me when you borrowed it. And now, let's drop the subject. I'm
off to the West on a morning train. I know a place out there where I
can negotiate the Norcross sparks. Drink up, Barney, and forget your
troubles. We'll have a jolly time while the police are knocking their heads
together over the case. I've got one of my Sahara thirsts on to-night. But
I'm in the hands— the unofficial hands— of my old friend Barney, and I
won't even dream of a cop."

And then, as Kernan's ready finger kept the button and the waiter
working, his weak point— a tremendous vanity and arrogant egotism,
began to show itself. He recounted story after story of his successful
plunderings, ingenious plots and infamous transgressions until Woods,
with all his familiarity with evil-doers, felt growing within him a cold
abhorrence toward the utterly vicious man who had once been his bene-
factor.

"I'm disposed of, of course," said Woods, at length. "But I advise you
to keep under cover for a spell. The newspapers may take up this Nor-
cross affair. There has been an epidemic of burglaries and manslaughter
in town this summer."

The word sent Kernan into a high glow of sullen and vindictive rage.

"To h— 1 with the newspapers," he growled. "What do they spell but
brag and blow and boodle in box-car letters? Suppose they do take up
a case — what does it amount to? The police are easy enough to fool; but
what do the newspapers do? They send a lot of pin-head reporters
around to the scene; and they make for the nearest saloon and have
beer while they take photos of the bartender's oldest daughter in eve-
ning dress to print as the fiancee of the young man in the tenth story,
who thought he heard a noise below on the night of the murder. That's
about as near as the newspapers ever come to running down Mr.
Burglar."

"Well, I don't know," said Woods, reflecting. "Some of the papers have
done good work in that line. There's the Morning Mars, for instance. It
warmed up two or three trails, and got the man after the police had let
'em get cold/'

'Til show you," said Kernan, rising, and expanding his chest. "I'll show

THE CLARION CALL 1341

you what I think of newspapers in general, and your Morning Mars in
particular."

Three feet from their table was the telephone booth. Kernan went in-
side and sat at the instrument, leaving the door open. He found a number
in the book, took down the receiver and made his demand upon Central.
Woods sat still, looking at the sneering, cold, vigilant face waiting close
to the transmitter, and listened to the words that came from the thin,
truculent lips curved into a contemptuous smile.

"That the Morning Mars? ... I want to speak to the managing editor.
. . . Why, tell him it's someone who wants to talk to him about the
Norcross murder.

"You the editor? . . .All right. . . . I am the man who killed old Nor-
cross. . . . Wait! Hold the wire; Fm not the usual crank . . . Oh, there
isn't the slightest danger. I've just been discussing it with a detective
friend of mine. I killed the old man at 2.30 A.M. two weeks ago to-
morrow. . . . Have a drink with you? Now, hadn't you better leave
that kind of talk to your funny man? Can't you tell whether a man's guying
you or whether you're offered the biggest scoop your dull dishrag
of a paper ever had? . . . Well, that's so; it's a bobtail scoop— but you can
hardly expect me to 'phone in my name and address. . . . Why! Oh, be-
cause I heard you make a specialty of solving mysterious crimes that
stump the police. . . . No, that's not all. I want to tell you that your
rotten, lying penny sheet is of no more use in tracking an intelligent
murderer or highway man than a blind poodle would be. ... What?
. . . Oh, no, this isn't a rival newspaper office; you're getting it straight. I
did the Norcross job, and I've got the jewels in my suit case at — 'the name
of the hotel could not be learned' — you recognize that phrase, don't you?
I thought so. YouVe used it often enough. Kind of ratdes you, doesn't
it, to have the mysterious villain call up your great, big, all-powerful
organ of right and justice and good government and tell you what a help-
less old gas-bag you are? . . . Cut that out; you're not that big a fool —
no, you don't think Pm a fraud. I can tell it by your voice. . . . Now,
listen, and 111 give you a pointer that will prove it to you. Of course you've
had this murder case worked over by your staff of bright young blockheads.
Half of the second button on old Mrs. Norcross's nightgown is broken
off. I saw it when I took the garnet ring off her finger, I thought it was
a ruby. . . . Stop that! It won't work."

Kernan turned to Woods with a diabolic smile.

"I've got him going. He believes me now. He didn't quite cover the
transmitter with his hand when he told somebody to call up Central on
another 'phone and get our number. I'll give him just one more dig and
then well make a 'get-away.3

"Hello! . . . Yes. Pm here yet. You didn't think Pd run from such a
little subsidized, turncoat rag of a newspaper, did you? . . * Have me

1342 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

inside o£ forty-eight hours? Say, will you quit being funny? Now, you
let grown men alone and attend to your business of hunting up divorce
cases and street-car accidents and printing the filth and scandal that you
make your living by. Good-by, old boy — sorry I haven't time to call on
you. I'd feel perfectly safe in your sanctum asinorum. Tra-la!

"He's as mad as a cat that's lost a mouse," said Kernan, hanging up the
receiver and coming out. "And now, Barney, my boy, we'll go to a show
and enjoy ourselves until a reasonable bedtime. Four hours' sleep for me,
and then the west-bound."

The two dined in a Broadway restaurant. Kernan was pleased with
himself. He spent money like a prince of fiction. And then a weird
and gorgeous musical comedy engaged their attention. Afterward there
was a late supper in a grill-room, with champagne, and Kernan at the
height of his complacency.

Half -past three in the morning found them in a corner of an all-night
cafe, Kernan still boasting in a vapid and rambling way, Woods think-
ing moodily over the end that had come to his usefulness as an upholder
of the law.

But, as he pondered, his eye brightened with a speculative light.

"I wonder if it's possible," he said to himself, "I won-der if it's pos-
sible!"

And then outside the cafe the comparative stillness of the early morning
was punctured by faint, uncertain cries that seemed mere fireflies of
sound, some growing louder, some fainter, waxing and waning amid the
rumble of milk wagons and infrequent cars. Shrill cries they were when
near — well-known cries that conveyed many meanings to the ears of
those of the slumbering millions of the great city who waked to hear
them. Cries that bore upon their significant, small volume the weight
of a world's woe and laughter and delight and stress. To some, cowering
beneath the protection of a night's ephemeral cover, they brought news
of the hideous, bright day; to others, wrapped in happy sleep, they an-
nounced a morning that would dawn blacker than sable night. To many
of the rich they brought a besom to sweep away what had been theirs
while the stars shone; to the poor they brought — another day.

All over the city the cries were starting up, keen and sonorous, herald-
ing the chances that the slipping of one cogwheel in the machinery of
time had made; apportioning to the sleepers while they lay at the mercy
of fate, the vengeance, profit, grief, reward and doom that the new
figure in the calendar had brought them. Shrill and yet plaintive were
the cries, as if the young voices grieved that so much evil and so little
goods was in their irresponsible hands. Thus echoed in the streets of the
helpless city the transmission of the latest decrees of the gods, the cries
of the newsboys — the Clarion Call of the Press,
Woods flipped a dime to the waiter, and said:

EXTRADITED FROM BOHEMIA 1343

"Get me a Morning Mars!'

When the paper came he glanced at its first page, and then tore a leaf
out of his memorandum book and began to write on it with the little
gold pencil.

"What's the news?" yawned Kernan.

Woods flipped over to him the piece of writing:

The New York Morning Mars

Please pay to the order of John Kernan the one thousand dollars re-
ward coming to me for his arrest and conviction.

Barnard Woods

"I kind of thought they would do that," said Woods, "when you were
jollying 'em so hard. Now, Johnny, you'll come to the police station with

- '9

me.

EXTRADITED FROM BOHEMIA

From near the village of Harmony, at the foot of the Green Mountains,
came Miss Medora Martin to New York with her color-box and easel.

Miss Medora resembled the rose which the autumnal frosts had spared
the longest of all her sister blossoms. In Harmony, when she started
alone to the wicked city to study art, they said she was a mad, reckless,
headstrong girl. In New York, when she first took her seat at a West
Side boarding-house table, the boarders asked: "Who is the nice-looking
old maid?"

Medora took heart, a cheap hall bedroom, and two art lessons a week
from Professor Angelini, a retired barber who had studied his profes-
sion in a Harlem dancing academy. There was no one to set her right,
for here in the big city they do it unto all of us. How many of us are
badly shaved daily and taught the two-step imperfectly by ex-pupils of
Bastien Le Page and Gerome? The most pathetic sight in New York—-
except the manners of the rush-hour crowds — is the dreary march of the
hopeless army of Mediocrity. Here Art is no benignant goddess, but a
Circe who turns her wooers into mewing Toms and Tabbies who linger
about the doorsteps of her abode, unmindful of the flying brickbats and
boot-jacks of the critics. Some of us creep back to our native villages to
the skim-milk of "I told you so"; but most of us prefer to remain in the
cold courtyard of our mistress's temple, snatching the scraps that fall
from her divine table d'hote. But some of us grow weary at last of the
fruitless service. And then there are two fates open to us. We can get a
job driving a grocer's wagon, or we can get swallowed up in the Vortex

1344 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

of Bohemia. The latter sounds good; but the former really pans out
better. For, when the grocer pays us off we can rent a dress suit and-
the capitalized system of humor describes it best-Get Bohemia Un the

Run. r . , . u

Miss Medora chose the Vortex and thereby furnishes us with our

little story. , u

Professor Angelini praised her sketches excessively. Once, when she
had made a neat study of a horse-chestnut tree in the park, he declared
she would become a second Rosa Bonheur. Again— a great artist has his
moods— he would say cruel and cutting things. For example, Medora
had spent an afternoon patiently sketching the statue and the architecture
at Columbus Circle. Tossing it aside with a sneer, the professor informed
her that Giotto had once drawn a perfect circle with one sweep of his
hand.

One day it rained, the weekly remittance from Harmony was overdue,
Medora had a headache, the professor had tried to borrow two dollars
from her, her art dealer had sent back all her water-colors unsold and—
Mr. Binkley asked her out to dinner.

Mr. Binkley was the gay boy of the boarding-house. He was forty-
nine, and owned a fish-stall in a downtown market. But after six o'clock
he wore an evening suit and whooped things up connected with the
beaux arts. The young men said he was an "Indian." He was supposed
to be an accomplished habitue of the inner circles of Bohemia. It was no
secret that he had once loaned $10 to a young man who had had a draw-
ing prined in Puc{. Often has one thus obtained his entree into the
charmed circle, while the other obtained both his entree and roast.

The other boarders enviously regarded Medora as she left at Mr. Bink-
ley's side at nine o'clock. She was as sweet as a cluster of dried autumn
grasses in her pale blue — oh — er — that very thin stuff—in her pale blue
Comstockized silk waist and box-pleated voile skirt, in her soft pink
glow on her thin cheeks and the tiniest bit of rouge powder on her face,
with her handkerchief and room key in her brown walrus, pebble-grain
hand-bag.

And Mr. Binkley looked imposing and dashing with his red face and
gray mustache, and his tight dress coat, that made the back of his neck
roll up just like a successful novelist's.

They drove in a cab to the Cafe Terence, just off the most glittering
part of Broadway, which, as everyone knows, is one of the most popular
and widely patronized, jealously exclusive Bohemian resorts in the city.

Down between the rows of little tables tripped Medora, of the Green
Mountains, after her escort. Thrice in a lifetime may woman walk upon
clouds — once when she trippeth to the altar, once when she first enters
Bohemian halls, the last when she marches back across her first garden
with the dead hen of her neighbor in her hand.

EXTRADITED FROM BOHEMIA 1345

There was a table set, with three or four about it. A waiter buzzed
around it like a bee, and silver and glass shone upon it. And, preliminary
to the meal, as the prehistoric granite strata heralded the protozoa, the
bread of Gaul, compounded after the formula of the recipe for the eternal
hills, was there set forth to the hand and tooth of a long-suffering city,
while the gods lay beside their nectar and home-made biscuits and
smiled, and the dentists leaped for joy in their gold-leafy dens.

The eye of Binkley fixed a young man at his table with the Bohemian
gleam, which is a compound of the look of the Basilisk, the shine of a
bubble of Wiirzburger, the inspiration of genius and the pleading of a
panhandler.

The young man sprang to his feet. "Hello, Bink, old boy!" he shouted.
"Don't tell me you were going to pass our table. Join us — unless you've
another crowd on hand,"

"Don't mind, old chap," said Binkley, of the fish-stall. "You know
how I like to butt up against the fine arts. Mr. Vandyke — Mr. Madder —
er — Miss Martin, one of the elect also in art — er "

The introduction went around. There were also Miss Elise and Miss
'Toinette. Perhaps they were models, for they chattered of the St. Regis
decorations and Henry James — and they did it not badly.

Medora sat in transport. Music — wild, intoxicating music made by
troubadours direct from a rear basement room in Elysium — set her
thoughts to dancing. Here was a world never before penetrated by her
warmest imagination or any of the lines controlled by Harriman. With
the Green Mountains' external calm upon her she sat, her soul flaming
in her with the fire of Andalusia. The tables were filled with Bohemia.
The room was full of the fragrance of flowers — both mille and cauli.
Questions and corks popped; laughter and silver rang; champagne
flashed in the pail, wit flashed in the pan.

Vandyke ruffled his long, black locks, disarranged his careless tie and
leaned over to Madder.

"Say, Maddy," he whispered, feelingly, "sometimes I'm tempted to pay
this Philistine his ten dollars and get rid of him/'

Madder ruffled his long, sandy locks and disarranged his careless
tie.

"Don't think of it, Vandy," he replied. "We are short, and Art is long."

Medora ate strange viands and drank elderberry wine that they poured
in her glass. It was just the color of that in the Vermont home. The
waiter poured something in another glass that seemed to be boiling, but
when she tasted it it was not hot. She had never felt so lighthearted be-
fore. She thought lovingly of Green Mountain farm and its fauna. She
leaned, smiling, to Miss Elise.

"If I were at home," she said, beamingly, "I could show you the
cutest little calf!"

134^ BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"Nothing for you in the White Lane," said Miss Elise. "Why don't
you pad?"

The orchestra played a wailing waltz that Medora had learned from
the hand-organs. She followed the air with nodding head in a sweet
soprano hum. Madder looked across the table at her, and wondered in
what strange waters Binkley had caught her in his seine. She smiled
at him, and they raised glasses and drank of the wine that boiled when
it was cold.

Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the unusual spring
catch of shad. Miss Elise arranged the palette-and-maul-stick tie pin of
Mr. Vandyke. A Philistine at some distant table was maundering volubly
either about Jerome or Gerome. A famous actress was discoursing ex-
citably about monogrammed hosiery. A hose clerk from a department
store was loudly proclaiming his opinions of the drama. A writer was
abusing Dickens. A magazine editor and a photographer were drinking
a dry brand at a reserved table. A 36-25-42 young lady was saying to an
eminent sculptor: "Fudge for your Prax Italys! Bring one of your Venus
Anno Dominus down to Cohen's and see how quickly she'd be turned
down for a cloak model. Back to the quarries with your Greeks and
Dagos!"

Thus went Bohemia.

At eleven Mr. Binkley took Medora to the boarding-house and left
her, with a society bow, at the foot of the hall stairs. She went up to her
room and lit the gas.

And then, as suddenly as the dreadful genie arose in vapor from the
copper vase of the fisherman, arose in that room the formidable shape
of the New England Conscience. The terrible thing that Medora had
done was revealed to her in its full enormity. She had sat in the presence
of the ungodly and looked upon the wine both when it was red and
effervescent.

At midnight she wrote this letter:

Mr. Beriah Hoskins, Harmony, Vermont

Dear Sir: Henceforth, consider me as dead to you forever. I have
loved you too well to blight your career by bringing into it my guilty
and sin-stained life. I have succumbed to the insidious wiles of this
wicked world and have been drawn into the vortex of Bohemia. There
is scarcely any depth of glittering iniquity that I have not sounded. It is
hopeless to combat my decision. There is no rising from the depths to
which I have sunk. Endeavor to forget me. I am lost forever in the
fair but brutal maze of awful Bohemia. Farewell.

Once your Medora

On the next day Medora formed her resolutions. Beelzebub, flung
from heaven, was no more cast down. Between her and the apple bios-

EXTRADITED FROM BOHEMIA 1347

soms of Harmony there was a fixed gulf. Flaming cherubim warded her
from the gates of her lost paradise. In one evening, by the aid of Binkley
and Mumm, Bohemia had gathered her into its awful midst.

There remained to her but one thing— a life of brilliant but irremedi-
able error. Vermont was a shrine that she never would dare to approach
again. But she would not sink — there were great and compelling ones
in history upon whom she would model her meteoric career— Camilla,
Lola Montez, Royal Mary, Zaza — such a name as one of these would
that of Medora Martin be to future generations.

For two days Medora kept to her room. On the third she opened a
magazine at the portrait of the King of Belgium, and laughed sardoni-
cally. If that far-famed breaker of women's hearts should cross her path,
he would have to bow before her cold and imperious beauty. She would
not spare the old or the young. All America — all Europe should do hom-
age to her sinister but compelling charm.

As yet she could not bear to think of the life she had once desired—
a peaceful one in the shadow of the Green Mountains with Beriah at
her side, and orders for expensive oil paintings coming in by each mail
from New York. Her one fatal misstep had shattered that dream.

On the fourth day Medora powdered her face and roughed her lips.
Once she had seen Carter in "Zaza." She stood before the mirror in a
reckless attitude and cried: "Zut! zut!" She rhymed it with "nut," but
with the lawless word Harmony seemed to pass away forever. The
Vortex had her. She belonged to Bohemia for evermore. And never
would Beriah

The door opened and Beriah walked in.

" Dory," said he, "what's all that chalk and pink stuff on your face,
honey?"

Medora extended an arm.

"Too late," she said solemnly. "The die is cast. I belong to another
world. Curse me if you will — it is your right. Go, and leave me in the
path I have chosen. Bid them all at home never to mention my name
again. And sometimes, Beriah, pray for me when I am revelling in the
gaudy, but hollow, pleasures of Bohemia."

"Get a towel, 'Dory," said Beriah, "and wipe that paint off your face.
I came as soon as I got your letter. Them pictures of yours ain't amount-
ing to anything. IVe got tickets for both of us back on the evening train.
Hurry and get your things in your trunk."

"Fate was too strong for me, Beriah. Go while I am strong to bear
it."

"How do you fold this easel, 'Dory?— now begin to pack, so we have
time to eat before train time. The maples is all out in full-grown leaves,
'Dory— you just ought to see 'em!"

"Not this early, Beriah?"

1348 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

"You ought to see 'em, 'Dory; they're like an ocean of green in the
morning sunlight!"

"Oh,Beriah!"

On the train she said to him suddenly:

"I wonder why you came when you got my letter.'*

"Oh, shucks I" said Beriah. "Did you think you could fool me? How
could you be run away to that Bohemia country like you said when your
letter was postmarked New York as plain as day?"

A PHILISTINE IN BOHEMIA

George Washington, with his right arm upraised, sits his iron horse at
the lower corner of Union Square, forever signalling the Broadway cars
to stop as they round the curve into Fourteenth Street. But the cars buzz
on, heedless, as they do at the beck of a private citizen, and the great
General must feel, unless his nerves are iron, that rapid transit gloria
mundi.

Should the General raise his left hand as he has raised his right it
would point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the oppressed
and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national or personal
freedom they have found a refuge here, and the patriot who made it for
them sits his steed, overlooking their district, while he listens through
his left ear to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity of his proteges.
Italy, Poland, the former Spanish possessions and the polyglot tribes of
Austria-Hungary have spilled here a thick lather of their effervescent
sons. In the eccentric cafes and lodging-houses of the vicinity they hover
over their native wines and political secrets. The colony changes with
much frequency. Faces disappear from the haunts to be replaced by
others. Whither do these uneasy birds flit? For half of the answer ob-
serve carefully the suave foreign air and foreign courtesy of the next
waiter who serves you table d'hote. For the other hah0, perhaps if the
barber shops had tongues (and who will dispute it?) they could tell
their share.

Titles are as plentiful as finger rings among these transitory exiles.
For lack of proper exploitation a stock of title goods large enough to
supply the trade of upper Fifth Avenue is here condemned to a mere
pushcart traffic. The new-world landlords who entertain these off-shoots
of nobility are not dazzled by coronets and crests. They have doughnuts
to sell instead of daughters. With them it is a serious matter of trading
in flour and sugar instead of pearl powder and bonbons.

These assertions are deemed fitting as an introduction to the tale,
which is of plebeians and contains no one with even the ghost of a title.

A PHILISTINE IN BOHEMIA 1349

Katy Dempsey's mother kept a furnished-room house in this oasis of
the aliens. The business was not profitable. If the two scraped together
enough to meet the landlord's agent on rent day and negotiate for the
ingredients of a daily Irish stew they called it success. Often the stew
lacked both meat and potatoes. Sometimes it became as bad as con-
somme with music.

In this mouldy old house Katy waxed plump and pert and wholesome
and as beautiful and freckled as a tiger lily. She was the good fairy who
was guilty of placing the damp clean towels and cracked pitchers of
freshly laundered Croton in the lodgers' rooms.

You are informed (by virtue of the privileges of astronomical dis-
covery) that the star lodger's name was Mr. Brunelli. His wearing a
yellow tie and paying his rent promptly distinguished him from the
other lodgers. His raiment was splendid, his complexion olive, his mus-
tache fierce, his manners a prince's, his rings and pins as magnificent
as those of a travelling dentist.

He had breakfast served in his room, and he ate it in a red dressing
gown with green tassels. He left the house at noon and returned at mid-
night. Those were mysterious hours, but there was nothing mysterious
about Mrs. Dempsey 's lodgers except the things that were not mysteri-
ous. One of Mr. Kipling's poems is addressed to "Ye who hold the un-
written clue to all save all unwritten things." The same "readers" are
invited to tackle the foregoing assertion.

Mr. Brunelli, being impressionable and a Latin, fell to conjugating the
verb "amare," with Katy in the objective case, though not because of
antipathy. She talked it over with her mother.

"Sure, I like him," said Katy. "He's more politeness than twinty can-
didates for Alderman, and he makes me feel like a queen whin he walks
at me side. But what i$ he, I dinno? Fve me suspicions. The marninll
coom whin hell throt out the picture av his baronial halls and^ax to have
the week's rint hung up in the ice chist along wid all the rist of 'em."

" Tis thrue," admitted Mrs. Dempsey, "that he seems to be a sort iv
a Dago and too coolchured in his spache for a rale gintleman. But ye
may be misjudgin' him. Ye should niver suspect any wan of bein' of
noble descint that pays cash and pathronizes the laundry rig'lar."

"He's the same thricks of spakin' and blarneyin' wid his hands,"
sighed Katy, "as the Frinch noblemaji at Mrs. Toole's that ran away wid
Mr. Toole's Sunday pants and left the photograph of the Bastile, his
grandfather's chat-taw, as security for tin weeks' rint." ^

Mr. Brunelli continued his calorific wooing. Katy continued to hesi-
tate. One day he asked her out to dine and she felt that a denouement
was in the air. While they are on their way, with Katy in her best
muslin, you must take as an entr'acte a brief peep at New York s
Bohemia.

1350 BOOK: xr THE VOICE OF THE CITY

Tonic's restaurant is in Bohemia. The very location o£ it is secret. If
you wish to know where it is ask the first person you meet. He will tell
you in a whisper. Tonio discountenances custom; he keeps his house-
front black and forbidding; he gives you a pretty bad dinner; he locks
his door at the dining hour; but he knows spaghetti as the boarding-
house knows cold veal; and—he has deposited many dollars in a certain

Banco di something with many gold vowels in the name on its

windows.

To this restaurant Mr. Brunelli conducted Katy. The house was dark
and the shades were lowered; but Mr. Brunelli touched an electric
button by the basement door, and they were admitted.

Along a long, dark, narrow hallway they went and then through a
shining and spodess kitchen that opened directly upon a backyard.

The walls of houses hemmed three sides of the yard; a high board
fence, surrounded by cats, the other. A wash of clothes was suspended
high upon a line stretched from diagonal corners. Those were property
clothes, and were never taken in by Tonio. They were there that wits
with defective pronunciation might make puns in connection with the
ragout.

A dozen and a half little tables set upon the bare ground were crowded
with Bohemia-hunters, who flocked there because Tonio pretended not
to want them and pretended to give them a good dinner. There was a
sprinkling of real Bohemians present who came for a change because
they were tired of the real Bohemia, and a smart shower of the men who
originate the bright sayings of Congressmen and the little nephew of
the well-known general passenger agent of the Evansville and Terre
Haute Railroad Company.

Here is a bon mot that was manufactured at Tonio's:

"A dinner at Tonio s/5 said a Bohemian, "always amounts to twice
the price that is asked for it."

Let us assume that an accommodating voice inquires:

"How so?"

"The dinner costs you 40 cents; you give 10 cents to the waiter, and
it makes you feel like 30 cents."

Most of the diners were confirmed table d'hoters — gastronomic ad-
venturers, forever seeking the El Dorado of a good claret, and con-
sistently coming to grief in California,

Mr. Brunelli escorted Katy to a little table embowered with shrub-
bery in tubs, and asked her to excuse him for a while.

Katy sat, enchanted by a scene so brilliant to her. The grand ladies, in
splendid dresses and plumes and sparkling rings; the fine gendemen who
laughed so loudly, the cries of "Garsong" and "We, monseer," and
"Hello, Mame!" that distinguished Bohemia; the lively chatter, the ciga-
rette smoke, the interchange of bright smiles and eye-glances—all this

A PHILISTINE IN BOHEMIA 135!

display and magnificence overpowered the daughter of Mrs. Dempsey
and held her motionless.

Mr. Brunelli stepped into the yard and seemed to spread his smile
and bow over the entire company. And everywhere there was a great
clapping of hands and a few cries of "Bravo!" and "Tonio! Tonio!"
whatever those words might mean. Ladies waved their napkins at him,
gentlemen almost twisted their necks off, trying to catch his nod.

When the ovation was concluded Mr. Brunelli, with a final bow,
stepped nimbly into the kitchen and flung off his coat and waistcoat.

Flaherty, the nimblest "garsong" among the waiters, had been as-
signed to the special service of Katy. She was a little faint from hunger,
for the Irish stew on the Dempsey table had been particularly weak that
day. Delicious odors from unknown dishes tantalized her. And Flaherty
began to bring to her table course after course of ambrosial food that
the gods might have pronounced excellent.

But even in the midst of her Lucullian repast Katy laid down her
knife and fork. Her heart sank as lead, and a tear fell upon her filet
mignon. Her haunting suspicions of the star lodger rose again, fourfold.
Thus courted and admired and smiled upon by that fashionable and
gracious assembly, what else could Mr. Brunelli be but one of these
dazzling titled patricians, glorious of name but shy of rent money, con-
cerning whom experience had made her wise? With a sense of his in-
eligibility growing within her there was mingled a torturing conviction
that his personality was becoming more pleasing to her day by day. And
why had he left her to dine alone?

But here he was coming again, now coatless, his snowy shirt-sleeves
rolled high above his Jeffersonian elbows, a white yachting cap perched
upon his jetty curls.

"'Tonio! 'Tonio!" shouted many; and "The spaghetti!" shouted the
rest.

Never at 'Tonio's did a waiter dare to serve a dish of spaghetti until
'Tonio came to test it, to prove the sauce and add the needful dash of
seasoning that gave it perfection.

From table to table moved 'Tonio, like a prince in his palace, greeting
his guests. White, jewelled hands signalled him from every side.

A glass of wine with this one and that, smiles for all, a jest and
repartee for any that might challenge — truly few princes could be so
agreeable a host! And what artist could ask for further appreciation of
his handiwork? Katy did not know that the proudest consummation of
a New Yorker's ambition is to shake hands with a spaghetti chef or to
receive a nod from a Broadway head-waiter.

At last the company thinned, leaving but a few couples and quartettes
lingering over new wine and old stories. And then came Mr. Brunelli
to Katy's secluded table, and drew a chair close to hers.

BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

Katy smiled at him dreamily. She was eating the last spoonful of a
raspberry roll with Burgundy sauce.

"You have seen!" said Mr. Brunelli, laying one hand upon his collar
bone. "I am Antonio Brunelli! Yes; I am the great Tonio! You have not
suspect that! I loave you, Katy, and you shall marry with me. Is it not
so ? Call me 'Antonio,5 and say that you will be mine."

Katy's head dropped to the shoulder that was now freed from all
suspicion of having received the knightly accolade.

"Oh, Andy/' she sighed, "this is great! Sure, I'll marry wid ye. But
why didn't ye tell me ye was the cook? I was near turnin' ye down for
bein' one of thim foreign counts!"

FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY

Vuyning left his club, cursing it softly, without any particular anger.
From ten in the morning until eleven it had bored him immeasurably.
Kirk with his fish story, Brooks with his Porto Rico cigars, old Morrison
with his anecdote about the widow, Hepburn with his invariable luck at
billiards— all these afflictions had been repeated without change of bill
or scenery. Besides these morning evils Miss Allison had refused him
again on the night before. But that was a chronic trouble. Five times she
had laughed at his offer to make her Mrs. Vuyning. He intended to ask
her again the next Wednesday evening.

Vuyning walked along Forty-fourth Street to Broadway, and then
drifted down the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines
of Gotham. He wore a morning suit of light gray, low, dull kid shoes, a
plain, finely woven straw hat, and his visible linen was the most delicate
possible shade of heliotrope. His necktie was the blue-gray of a Novem-
ber sky, and its knot was plainly the outcome of a lordly carelessness com-
bined with an accurate conception of the most recent, dictum of fashion.

Now, to write of a man's haberdashery is a worse thing than to write
a historical novel "around" Paul Jones, or to pen a testimonial to a
hay-fever cure.

Therefore, let it be known that the description of Vuyning's apparel
is germane to the movements of the story, and not to make room for the
new fall stock of goods.

Even Broadway that morning was a discord in Vuyning's ears; and in
his eyes it paralleled for a few dreamy, dreary minutes a certain howling,
scorching, seething, malodorous slice of street that he remembered in
Morocco. He saw the struggling mass of dogs, beggars, fakirs, slave-
drivers and veiled women in carts without horses, the sun blazing brightly
among the bazaars, the piles of rubbish from ruined temples in the street

FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY 1353

— and then a lady passing jabbed the ferrule of a parasol in his side and
brought him back to Broadway.

Five minutes of his stroll brought him to a certain corner, where a
number of silent, pale-faced men are accustomed to stand, immovably,
for hours, busy with the file blades of their penknives, with their hat
brims on a level with their eyelids. Wall Street speculators, driving home
in their carriages, love to point out these men to their visiting friends and
tell them of this rather famous lounging-place of the "crooks." On Wall
Street the speculators never use the file blades of their knives.

Vuyning was delighted when one of this company stepped forth and
addressed him as he was passing. He was hungry for something out of
the ordinary, and to be accosted by this smooth-faced, keen-eyed, low-
voiced, athletic member of the under world, with his grim yet pleasant
smile, had all the taste of an adventure to the convention-weary Vuyning.

"Excuse me, friend,'* said he. "Could I have a few minutes' talk with
you— on the level?"

"Certainly," said Vuyning, with a smile. "But, suppose we step aside
to a quieter place. There is a divan — a cafe over here that will do.
Schrumm will give us a private corner."

Schrumm established them under a growing palm, with two seidls
between them. Vuyning made a pleasant reference to meteorological con-
ditions, thus forming a hinge upon which might be swung the door
leading from the thought repository of the other.

"In the first place," said his companion, with the air of one who pre-
sents his credentials, "I want you to understand that I am a crook. Out
West I am known as Rowdy the Dude. Pickpocket, supper man, second-
story man, yeggman, boxman, all-round burglar, card-sharp and slickest
con man west of the Twenty-third Street ferry landing— that's my history.
That's to show I'm on the square — with you. My name's Emerson."

"Confound old Kirk with his fish stories," said Vuyning to himself,
with silent glee as he went through his pockets for a card. "It's pro-
nounced *Vining,"* he said, as he tossed it over to the other. "And I'll
be as frank with you. I'm just a kind of a loafer, I guess, living on my
daddy's money. At the club they call me 'Left-at-the-Post.' I never did a
day's work in my life; and I haven't the heart to run over a chicken when
I'm motoring. It's a pretty shabby record, altogether."

"There's one thing you can do," said Emerson, admiringly; "you can
carry duds. I've watched you several times pass on Broadway. You look
the best-dressed man I've seen. And I'll bet you a gold mine I've got $50
worth more gent's furnishings on my frame than you have. That's what
I wanted to see you about. I can't do the trick. Take a look at me. What's
wrong?"

"Stand up," said Vuyning.

Emerson arose, and slowly revolved.

I354 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

"You've been 'outfitted/ " declared the clubman. "Some Broadway
window-dresser has misused you. That's an expensive suit, though,-
Emerson."

"A hundred dollars," said Emerson.

"Twenty too much," said Vuyning. "Six months old in cut, one inch
too long, and half an inch too much lapel. Your hat is plainly dated one
year ago, although there's only a sixteenth of an inch lacking in the brim
to tell the story. That English poke in your collar is too short by the
distance between Troy and London. A plain gold link cuff-button would
take all the shine out of those pearl ones with diamond settings. Those
tan shoes would be exactly the articles to work into the heart of a Brook-
lyn school-ma'am on a two weeks* visit to Lake Ronkonkoma. I think I
caught a glimpse of a blue silk sock embroidered with russet lilies of the
valley when you — improperly — drew up your trousers as you sat down.
There are always plain ones to be had in stores. Have I hurt your feelings,
Emerson?"

"Double the ante!" cried the criticized one, greedily. "Give me more
of it. There's a way to tote the haberdashery, and I want to get wise to it.
Say, you're the right kind of a swell. Anything else to the queer about
me?"

"Your tie," said Vuyning, "is tied with absolute precision and cor-
rectness."

"Thanks," gratefully— "I spent over half an hour at it before I "

"Thereby," interrupted Vuyning, "completing your resemblance to a
dummy in a Broadway store window."

"Yours truly," said Emerson, sitting down again. "It's bully of you to
put me wise. I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn't just put
my finger on it. I guess it comes by nature to know how to wear clothes."

"Oh, I suppose," said Vuyning, with a laugh, "that my ancestors picked
up the knack while they were peddling clothes from house to house a
couple of hundred years ago. Tm told they did that."

"And mine," said Emerson, cheerfully, "were making their visits at
night, I guess, and didn't have a chance to catch on to the correct styles."

"I tell you what," said Vuyning, whose ennui had taken wings, "111
take you to my tailor. Hell eliminate the mark of the beast from your
exterior. That is, if you care to go on further in the way of expense."

"Play Jem to the ceiling," said Emerson, with a boyish smile of joy.
"Fve got a roll as big around as a barrel of black-eyed peas and as loose
as the wrapper of a two-for-fiver. I don't mind telling you that I was not
touring among the Antipodes when the burglar-proof safe of the Farmers'
National Bank of Butterville, la., flew open some moonless nights ago to
the tune of $16,000."

"Aren't you afraid," asked Vuyning, "that 111 call a cop and hand you
over?"

FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITY 1355

"You tell me," said Emerson, coolly, "why I didn't keep them."

He laid Vuyning's pocketbook and watch — the Vuyning loo-year-old
family watch — on the table.

"Man," said Vuyning, revelling, "did you ever hear the tale Kirk tells
about the six-pound trout and the old fisherman?"

"Seems not," said Emerson, politely, "I'd like to."

"But you won't," said Vuyning. "I've heard it scores of times. That's
why I won't tell you. I was just thinking how much better this is than
a club. Now, shall we go to my tailor?"

"Boys, and elderly gents," said Vuyning, five days later at his club,
standing up against the window where his coterie was gathered, and
keeping out the breeze, "a friend of mind from the West will dine at
our table this evening."

"Will he ask if we have heard the latest from Denver?" said a member,
squirming in his chair.

"Will he mention the new twenty-three-story Masonic Temple, in
Quincy, 111.?" inquired another, dropping his nose-glasses.

"Will he spring one of those Western Mississippi River catfish stories,
in which they use yearling calves for bait?" demanded Kirk fiercely.

"Be comforted," said Vuyning. "He has none of the little vices. He is
a burglar and safe-blower, and a pal of mine."

"Oh, Mary Ann!" said they. "Must you always adorn every statement
with your alleged humor ? "

It came to pass that at eight in the evening a calm, smooth, brilliant,
affable man sat at Vuyning's right hand during dinner. And when the
ones who pass their lives in city streets spoke of skyscrapers or of the
little Czar on his far, frozen throne, or of insignificant fish from incon-
sequential streams, this big, deep-chested man, faultlessly clothed, and
eyed like an Emperor, disposed of their Lilliputian chatter with a wink
of his eyelash.

And then he painted for them with hard, broad strokes a marvellous
lingual panorama of the West. He stacked snow-topped mountains on
the table, freezing the hot dishes of the waiting diners. With a wave of
his hand he swept the clubhouse into a pine-crowned gorge, turning the
waiters into a grim posse, and each listener into a blood-stained fugitive,
climbing with torn fingers upon the ensanguined rocks. He touched the
table and spake, and the five panted as they gazed on barren lava beds,
and each man took his tongue between his teeth and felt his mouth bake
at the tale of a land empty of water and food. As simply as Homer sang,
while he dug a tine of his fork leisurely into the tablecloth, he opened a
new world to their view, as does one who tells a child of the Looking-
Glass Country,

As one of his listeners might have spoken of tea too strong at a Madi-

1356 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

son Square "afternoon," so he depicted the ravages of "redeye" in a
border town when the caballeros of the lariat and forty-hve reduced
ennui to a minimum. . ,

And then, with a sweep of his white, unringed hands, he dismissed
Melpomene, and forthwith Diana and Amaryllis footed it before the
mind's eye of the clubmen. -11

The savannas of the continent spread before them. The wind, hum-
ming through a hundred leagues of sage brush and mesquite, closed their
ears to the city's staccato noises. He told them of camps^ of ranches
marooned in a sea of fragrant prairie blossoms, of gallops in the stilly
night that Apollo would have forsaken his daytime steeds to enjoy; he
read them the great, rough epic of the cattle and the hills that had not
been spoiled by the hand of man, the mason. His words were a telescope
to the city men, whose eyes had looked upon Youngstown, O., and
whose tongues had called it "West."

In fact, Emerson had them "going/9

The next morning at ten he met Vuyning, by appointment, at a Forty-
second Street cafe.

Emerson was to leave for the West that day. He wore a suit of dark
cheviot that looked to have been draped upon him by an ancient Grecian
tailor who was a few thousand years ahead of the styles.

"Mr. Vuyning/' said he, with the clear, ingenuous smile of the success-
ful "crook," "it's up to me to go the limit for you any time I can do so.
You're the real thing; and if I can ever return the favor, you bet your
life 111 do it."

"What was the cow-puncher's name?" asked Vuyning, "who used to
catch a mustang by the nose and mane, and throw him till he put the
bridle on?"

"Bates," said Emerson.

"Thanks/' said Vuyning. sl thought it was Yates. Oh, about that tog-
gery business — I'd forgotten that."

"I've been looking for some guy to put me on the right track for years,"
said Emerson. <{You're the goods, duty free, and halfway to the ware-
house in a red wagon."

"Bacon, toasted on a green willow switch over red coals, ought to put
broiled lobsters out of business," said Vuyning. "And you say a horse at
the end of a thirty-foot rope can't pull a ten-inch stake out of wet prairie?
Well, good-bye, old man, if you must be ofT."

At one o'clock Vuyning had luncheon with Miss Allison by previous
arrangement.

For thirty minutes he babbled to her, unaccountably, of ranches,
horses, canons, cyclones, round-ups. Rocky Mountains, and beans and
bacon. She looked at him with wondering and half -terrified eyes.

THE MEMENTO 1357

"I was going to propose again to-day/5 said Vuyning, cheerily, "but
I won't. I've worried you often enough. You know dad has a ranch in
Colorado. What's the good of staying here? Jumping jonquils! but it's
great out there. I'm going to start next Tuesday."

"No, you won't," said Miss Allison.

"What?" said Vuyning.

"Not alone," said Miss Allison, dropping a tear upon her salad. "What
do you think?"

"Betty!" exclaimed Vuyning, "what do you mean?'*

"I'll go too," said Miss Allison, forcibly.

Vuyning filled her glass with Apollinaris.

"Here's to Rowdy the Dude!" he gave— a toast mysterious.

"Don't know him," said Miss Allison; "but if he's your friend.
Jimmy — here goes ! "

THE MEMENTO

Miss Lynnette D'Armande turned her back on Broadway. This was but tit
for tat, because Broadway had often done the same thing to Miss D'Ar-
mande. Still, the "tats" seemed to have it, for the ex-leading lady of the
"Reaping the Whirlwind" company had everything to ask of Broadway,
while there was no vice-versa.

So Miss Lynnette D'Armande turned the back of her chair to her
window that overlooked Broadway, and sat down to stitch in time the
lisle-thread heel of a black silk stocking. The tumult and glitter of the
roaring Broadway beneath her window had no charm for her; what she
greatly desired was the stifling air of a dressing-room on that fairyland
street and the roar of an audience gathered in that capricious quarter.
In the meantime, those stockings must not be neglected. Silk does wear
out so, but — after all, isn't it just the only goods there is ?

The Hotel Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathon looks on the sea. It
stands like a gloomy cliff above the whirlpool where the tides of two
great thoroughfares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the end of their
wanderings to loosen the buskin and dust the sock. Thick in the streets
around it are booking-offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster-
palaces to which those thorny paths lead.

Wandering through the eccentric halls of the dim and fusty Thalia, you
seem to have found yourself in some great ark or caravan about to sail,
or fly, or roll away on wheels. About the house lingers a sense of unrest,
of expectation, of transientness, even of anxiety and apprehension. The
halls are a labyrinth. Without a guide, you wander like a lost soul in a
Sam Lloyd puzzle.

1358 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

Turning any corner, a dressing-sack or a cul-de-sac may bring you up
short You meet alarming tragedians stalking in bath-robes in search of
rumored bathrooms. From hundreds of rooms come the buzz of talk,
scraps of new and old songs, and the ready laughter of the convened
players.

Summer has come; their companies have disbanded, and they take
their rest in their favorite caravansary, while they besiege the managers
for engagements for the coming season.

At this hour of the afternoon the day's work of tramping the rounds of
the agents' offices is over. Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the
mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, starry eyes, flying
tag-ends of things and a swish of silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an
odor of gaiety and a memory of frangipannL Serious young comedians,
with versatile Adam's apples, gather in doorways and talk of Booth.
Far-reaching from somewhere comes the smell of ham and red cabbage,
and the crash of dishes on the American plan.

The indeterminate hum of life in the Thalia is enlivened by the dis-
creet popping—at reasonable and salubrious intervals — of beer-bottle
corks. Thus punctuated, life in the genial hostel scans easily—the comma
being the favorite mark, semicolons frowned upon, and periods barred.

Miss D'Armande's room was a small one. There was room for her
rocker between the dresser and the wash-stand if it were placed longi-
tudinally. On the dresser were its usual accoutrements, plus the ^ex-
leading lady's collected souvenirs of road engagements and photographs
of her dearest and best professional friends.

At one of these photographs she looked twice or thrice as she darned,
and smiled friendlily.

"I'd like to know where Lee is just this minute," she said, half -aloud.

If you had been privileged to view the photograph thus flattered, you
would have thought at the first glance that you saw the picture of a many-
petalled white flower, blown through the air by a storm. But the floral
kingdom was not responsible for that swirl of petalous whiteness.

You saw the filmy, brief skirt of Miss Rosalie Ray as she made a com-
plete heels-over-head turn in her wistaria-entwined swing, far out from the
stage, high above the heads of the audience. You saw the camera's inade-
quate representation of the graceful, strong kick, with which she, at this
exciting moment, sent flying, high and far, the yellow silk garter that each
evening spun from her agile limb and descended upon the delighted
audience below.

You saw, too, amid the black-clothed, mainly masculine patrons of
select vaudeville a hundred hands raised with the hope of staying the
flight of the brilliant aerial token.

Forty weeks of the best circuits this act had brought Miss Rosalie Ray,
for each of two years. She did other things during her twelve minutes —

THE MEMENTO 1359

a song and dance, imitations of two or three actors who are but imita-
tions of themselves, and a balancing feat with a step-ladder and feather-
duster; but when the blossom-decked swing was let down from the flies,
and Miss Rosalie sprang smiling into the seat, with the golden circlet
conspicuous in the place whence it was soon to slide and become a soaring
and coveted guerdon — then it was that the audience rose in its seat as a
single man— or presumably so—and indorsed the specialty that made
Miss Ray's name a favorite in the booking-offices.

At the end of two years Miss Ray suddenly announced to her dear
friend, Miss D'Armande, that she was going to spend the summer at an
antediluvian village on the north shore of Long Island, and that the stage
would see her no more.

Seventeen minutes after Miss Lynnette D'Armande had expressed her
wish to know the whereabouts of her old chum, there were sharp raps
at her door.

Doubt not that it was Rosalie Ray. At the shrill command to enter she
did so, with something of a tired flutter, and dropped a heavy hand-bag
on the floor. Upon my word, it was Rosalie, in a loose, travel-stained
automobileless coat, closely tied brown veil with yard4ong flying ends,
gray walking suit, and tan oxfords with lavender over-gaiters.

When she threw off her veil and hat, you saw a pretty enough face,
now flushed and disturbed by some unusual emotion, and restless, large
eyes with discontent marring their brightness. A heavy pile of dull au-
burn hair, hastily put up, was escaping in crinkly, waving strands and
curling, small locks from the confining combs and pins.

The meeting of the two was not marked by the effusion vocal, gym-
nastical, osculatory, and catechetical that distinguishes the greetings of
their unprofessional sisters in society. There was a brief clinch, two
simultaneous labial dabs, and they stood on the same footing of the old
days. Very much like the short salutations of soldiers or of travellers in
foreign wilds are the welcomes between the strollers at the corners of
their criss-cross roads.

"I've got the hall-room two flights up above yours," said Rosalie, "but
I came straight to see you before going up. I didn't know you were here
till they told me,"

"I've been in since the last of April," said Lynnette. "And I'm going on
the road with a 'Fatal Inheritance' Company. We open next week in
Elizabeth. I thought you'd quit the stage, Lee. Tell me about yourself."

Rosalie settled herself with a skilful wriggle on the top of Miss D'Ar-
mande's wardrobe trunk, and leaned her head against the papered wall.
From long habit, thus can peripatetic leading ladies and their sisters
make themselves as comfortable as though the deepest armchairs em-
braced them.

"I'm going to tell you, Lynn," she said, with a strangely sardonic and

1360 BOOK XI THE VOICE OF THE CITY

yet carelessly resigned look on her youthful face. "And then to-morrow I'll
strike the old Broadway trail again, and wear some more paint off the
chairs in the agents' offices. If anybody had told me any time in the last
three months up to four o clock this afternoon that I'd ever listen ^ to that
'Leave-your-name-and-address' rot of the booking bunch again, I'd have
given 'em the real Mrs. Fiske laugh. Loan me a handkerchief, Lynn. Gee!
but those Long Island trains are fierce. I've got enough soft-coal cinders
on my face to go on and play Topsy without using the cork. And, speak-
ing of corks — got anything to drink, Lynn?"

Miss D'Armande opened a door of the washstand and took out a bottle.

"There's nearly a pint of Manhattan. There's a cluster of carnations in
the drinking glass, but "

"Oh, pass the bottle. Save the glass for company. Thanks! That hits
the spot. The same to you. My first drink in three months!

"Yes, Lynn, I quit the stage at the end of last season. I quit it because
I was sick of the life. And especially because my heart and soul were sick
of men—of the kind of men we stage people have to be up against. You
know what the game is to us—it's a fight against 'em all the way down
the line from the manager who wants us to try his new motor-car to the
bill-posters who want to call us by our front names.

"And the men we have to meet after the show are the worst of all. The
stage-door kind, and the manager's friends who take us to supper and
show their diamonds and talk about seeing 'Dan' and 'Dave' and
'Charlie' for us. They're beasts, and I hate 'em.

"I tell you, Lynn, it's the girls like us on the stage that ought to be
pitied. Its girls from good homes that are honestly ambitious and work
hard to rise in the profession, but never do get there. You hear a lot of
sympathy sloshed around on chorus girls and their fifteen dollars a week.
Piffle! There ain't a sorrow in the chorus that a lobster cannot heal.

"If there's any tears to shed, let *em fall for the actress, that gets a salary
of from thirty to forty-five dollars a week for taking a leading part in a
bum show. She knows she'll never do any better; but she hangs on for
years, hoping for the 'chance* that never comes.

"And the fool plays we have to work in! Having another girl roll you
around the stage by the hind legs in a 'Wheelbarrow Chorus* in a musical
comedy is dignified drama compared with the idiotic things I've had to
do in the thirty-centers.

"But what I hated most was the men — the men leering and blathering
at you across tables, trying to buy you with Wiirzburger or Extra Dry,
according to their estimate of your price. And the men in the audiences,
clapping, yelling, snarling, crowding, writhing, gloating— like a lot of
wild beasts, with their eyes fixed on you, ready to eat you up if you come
in reach of their claws. Oh how I hate 'em!

"Well, I'm not telling you much about myself, am I, Lynn?

THE MEMENTO 1361

"I had two hundred dollars saved up, and I cut the stage the first o£
the summer. I went over on Long Island and found the sweetest littje
village that ever was, called Soundport, right on the water. I was going
to spend the summer there, and study up on elocution, and try to get a
class in the fall. There was an old widow lady with a cottage near the
beach who sometimes rented a room or two just for company, and she
took me in. She had another boarder, too — the Reverend Arthur Lyle.

"Yes, he was the head-liner. You're on, Lynn. I'll tell you all of it in a
minute. It's only a one-act play.

"The first time he walked on, Lynn, I felt myself going; the first lines
he spoke, he had me. He was different from the men in audiences. He
was tall and slim, and you never heard him come in the room, but you
felt him. He had a face like a picture of a knight—like one of that Round
Table bunch— and a voice like a 'cello solo. And his manners!

"Lynn, if you'd take John Drew in his best drawing-room scene and
compare the two, you'd have John arrested for disturbing the peace.

"I'll spare you the particulars; but in less than a month Arthur and I
were engaged. He preached at a little one-night stand of a Methodist
church. There was to be a parsonage the size of a lunch-wagon, and hens
and honeysuckles when we were married. Arthur used to preach to me
a good deal about Heaven, but he never could get my mind quite off those
honeysuckles and hens.

"No; I didn't tell him I'd been on the stage. I hated the business and all
that went with it; I'd cut it out forever, and I didn't see any use of stir-
ring things up. I was a good girl, and I didn't have anything to confess,
except being an elocutionist, and that was about all the strain my con-
science would stand.

"Oh, I tell you, Lynn, I was happy. I sang in the choir and attended the
sewing society, and recited that 'Annie Laurie* thing with the whistling
stunt in it, *in a manner bordering upon the professional,' as the weekly
village paper reported it. And Arthur and I went rowing, and walking
in the woods, and clamming, and that poky little village seemed to me the
best place in the world. I'd have been happy to live there always, too,
if

"But one morning old Mrs. Gurley, the widow lady, got gossipy while
I was helping her string beans on the back porch, and began to gush
information, as folks who rent out their rooms usually do. Mr. Lyle was
her idea of a saint on her earth — as he was mine, too. She went over all
his virtues and graces, and wound up by telling me that Arthur had had
an extremely romantic love-affair, not long before, that had ended unhap-
pily. She didn't seem to be on to the details, but she knew that he had
been hit pretty hard. He was paler and thinner, she said, and he had
some kind of a remembrance or keepsake of the lady in a little rosewood
box that he kept locked in his desk drawer in his study.

1362 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

" 'Several times,' says she, 'I've seen him gloomerin' over that box o£
evenings, and he always locks it up right away if anybody comes into
the room.'

"Well, you can imagine how long it was before I got Arthur by the
wrist and led him down stage and hissed in his ear.

"That same afternoon we were lazying around in a boat among the
waterlilies at the edge of the bay.

" 'Arthur,' says I, 'you never told me you'd had another love-affair. But
Mrs. Gurley did/ I went on, to let him know I knew. I hate to hear a
man lie.

" 'Before you came,* says he, looking me frankly in the eye, £there was
a previous affection — a strong one. Since you know of it, I will be per-
fectly candid with you.'

" 'I am waiting,' says I.

" 'My dear Ida/ says Arthur— of course I went by my real name, while
I was in Soundport—'this former affection was a spiritual one, in fact.
Although the lady aroused my deepest sentiments, and was, as I thought,
my ideal woman, I never met her, and never spoke to her. It was an
ideal love. My love for you, while no less ideal, is different. You wouldn't
let that come between us.'

"'Was she pretty?' I asked.

" 'She was very beautiful/ said Arthur.

" 'Did you see her often?' I asked.

" 'Something like a dozen times/ says he.

" 'Always from a distance?' says I.

" 'Always from quite a distance/ says he.

" 'And you loved her?' I asked.

" 'She seemed my ideal of beauty and grace — and soul/ says Arthur.

" 'And this keepsake that you keep under lock and key, and moon over
at times, is that a remembrance from her?'

" 'A memento/ says Arthur, 'that I have treasured/

" 'Did she send it to you?'

" 'It came from her/ says he,

" 'In a roundabout way?' I asked.

" 'Somewhat roundabout/ says he, 'and yet rather direct.'

" 'Why didn't you ever meet her?' I asked. 'Were your positions in life
so different?'

" 'She was far above me/ says Arthur. 'Now, Ida/ he goes on, 'this is
all of the past You're not going to be jealous, are you?'

"'Jealous!' says I. 'Why, man, what are you talking about? It makes
me think ten times as much of you as I did before I knew about it.'

"And it did, Lynn— if you can understand it. That ideal love was a
new one on me, but it struck me as being the most beautiful and glorious

THE MEMENTO 1363

thing I'd ever heard of. Think of a man loving a woman he'd never even
spoken to, and being faithful just to what his mind and heart pictured
her! Oh, it sounded great to me. The men I'd always known come at- you
with either diamonds, knock-out drops, or a raise of salary— and their
ideals! — well, we'll say no more.

"Yes, it made me think more of Arthur than I did before. I couldn't be
jealous of that far-away divinity that he used to worship, for I was going
to have him myself. And I began to look upon him as a saint on earth,
just as old lady Gurley did.

"About four o'clock this afternoon a man came to the house for Arthur
to go and see somebody that was sick among his church bunch. Old lady
Gurley was taking her afternoon snore on the couch, so that left me pretty
much alone.

"In passing by Arthur's study I looked in, and saw his bunch of keys
hanging in the drawer of his desk, where he'd forgotten 'em. Well, I
guess we're all to the Mrs. Bluebeard now and then, ain't we, Lynn?
I made up my mind Fd have a olok at that memento he kept so secret.
Not that I cared what it was — it was just curiosity.

"While I was opening the drawer I imagined one or two things it
might be. I thought it might be a dried rosebud she'd dropped down to
him from a balcony, or maybe a picture of her he'd cut out of a magazine,
she being so high up in the world.

"I opened the drawer, and there was the rosewood casket about the
size of a gent's collar box. I found the little key in the bunch that fitted it,
and raised the lid.

"I took one look at that memento, and then I went to my room and
packed my trunk. I threw a few things into my grip, gave my hair a flirt
or two with a side-comb, put on my hat, and went in and gave the old
lady's foot a kick. I'd tried awfully hard to use proper and correct lan-
guage while I was there for Arthur's sake, and I had the habit down pat,
but it left me then.

" 'Stop sawing gourds/ says I, 'and sit up and take notice. The ghost's
about to walk. I'm going away from here, and I owe you eight dollars.
The expressman will call for my trunk.'

"I handed her the money.

"'Dear me, Miss Crosby!' said she. Is anything wrong? I thought you
were pleased here. Dear me, young women are so hard to understand,
and so different from what you expect 'em to be/

" Tou're damn right,' says I. 'Some of 'em are. But you can't say that
about men. When you 'know one man you 'know 'em all! That settles the
human race question.'

"And then I caught the four-thirty-eight, soft-coal unlimited; and here
lam."

1364 BOOKXI THEVOICEOFTHECITY

"You didn't tell me what was in that box. Lee/' said Miss D'Armande,
anxiously.

"One of those yellow silk garters that I used to kick off my leg into the
audience during that old vaudeville swing act of mine. Is there any of
the cocktail left, Lynn?"

BOOK

THE TRIMMED
JLAM1P

THE TRIMMED LAMP

Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other.
We often hear "shop-girls'* spoken of. No such persons exist There are
girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn
their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the
girls who live on Fifth Avenue as "marriage-girls."

Lou and Nancy were churns. They came to the big city to find work
because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. Nancy
was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active country girls
who had no ambition to go on the stage.

The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respect-
able boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners.
They remained chums. It is at the end of' six months that I would beg
you to , step forward and be irtfroduced to them. Maddlesome Reader :
My Lady Friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou. While you are, shaking
hands please take notice — cautiously — of their attire. Yes, cautiously; for

1366 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

they are as quick to resent a stare as a lady in a box at the horse show is.

Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a badly
fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too long; but her
ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts will be ticketed in the
windows at $7.98 before the season is over. Her cheeks are pink, and her
light blue eyes bright. Contentment radiates from her.

Nancy you would call a shop-girl— because you have the habit. There
is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so this is
what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour and the
exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the correct flare,
No furs protect her against the bitter spring air, but she wears her short
broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though it were Persian lamb! On her face
and in her eyes, remorseless type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression.
It is a look of silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood;
of sad prophecy of the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest
the look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian
peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's face when
he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither and abash man;
but he has been known to smirk at it and offer flowers— with a string tied
to them.

Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery "See
you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, somehow,
to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the housetops to
the stars.

The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou's steady com-
pany. Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire
a dozen subpoena servers to find her lamb.

"Ain't you cold, Nancy?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for
working in that old store for $8 a week! I made $18.50 last week. Of course
ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a counter, but it pays.
None of us ironers make less than $10. And I don't know that it's any less
respectful work, either."

"You can have it," said Nancy, with uplifted nose. "I'll take my eight a
week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and swell people.
And look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove girls married a
Pittsburg— a steel maker, or blacksmith or something — the other day
worth a million dollars. I'll catch a swell myself some time. I ain't brag-
ging on my looks or anything; but I'll take my chances where there's big
prizes offered. What show would a girl have in a laundry?"

"Why, that's where I met Dan," said Lou, triumphantly. "He came in
for his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board, ironing. We
all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis was sick that day,
and I had her place. He said he noticed my arms first, how round and
white they was. I had my sleeves rolled up. Some nice fellows come into

THE TRIMMED LAMP 1367

laundries. You can tell 'em by their bringing their clothes in suit cases,
and turning in the door sharp and sudden."

"How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?" said Nancy, gazing down
at the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. "It
shows fierce taste."

"This waist?" said Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. "Why, I paid $16
for this waist. It's worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be laundered,
and never called for it. The. boss sold it to me. It's got yards and yards of
hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that ugly, plain thing you've got
on."

"This ugly, plain thing," said Nancy, calmly, "was copied from one that
Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in the store
last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me $1.50. Ten feet
away you couldn't tell it from hers."

"Oh, well," said Lou, good-naturedly, "if you want to starve and put
on airs, go ahead. But I'll take my job and good wages; and after hours
give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able to buy."

But just then Dan came— a serious young man with a ready-made
necktie, who had escaped the city's brand of frivolity—an electrician earn-
ing $3° per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo, and
thought her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should delight to
be caught.

"My friend, Mr. Owens— shake hands with Miss Danforth," said Lou.

"I'm mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth," said Dan, with out-
stretched hand. "I've heard Lou speak of you so often."

"Thanks," said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool
ones, "I've heard her mention you— a few times."

Lou giggled.

"Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?"
she asked.

"If I did, you can feel safe in copying it," said Nancy.

"Oh, I couldn't use it at all. It's too stylish for me. It's intended to set ofi
diamond rings> that high shake is. Wait till I get a few and then I'll try it."

"Learn it first," said Nancy, wisely, "and you'll be more likely to get the
rings."

"Now, to settle this argument," said Dan, with his ready, cheerful
smile, "let me make a proposition. As I can't take both of you up to
Tiffany's and do the right thing, what do you say to a little vaudeville?
I've got the tickets. How about looking at stage diamonds since we can't
shake hands with the real sparklers?"

The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a little
peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the inside, slender,
and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the true Van Alstyne Fisher
walk — thus they set out for their evening's moderate diversion.

1368 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an
educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was some-
thing like that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things that
breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere of luxury,
luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's.

The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and
position in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them Nancy
began to take toll— the best from each according to her view.

From one she would copy and practise a gesture, from another an elo-
quent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of carry-
ing a purse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing "inferiors in
station." From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, she
made requisition for that excellent thing, a soft, low voice as clear as silver
and as perfect in articulation as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the
aura of this high social refinement and good breeding, it was impossible
for her to escape a deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better
than good principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good
habits. The teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New
England conscience; but if you sit on a straight-back chair and repeat thev
words "prisms and pilgrims" forty times the devil will flee from you. And
when Nancy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt the thrill of
noblesse oblige to her very bones.

There was another source of learning in the great departmental school.
Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch and jingle
their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently frivolous conver-
sation, do not think that they are there for the purpose of criticizing the
way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting may lack the dignity of the
deliberative bodies of man; but it has all the importance of the occasion
on which Eve and her -first daughter first put their heads together to
make Adam understand his proper place in the household. It is Woman's
Conference for Common Defense and Exchange of Strategical Theories
of Attack and Repulse upon and against the World, which is a Stage, and
Man, its Audience who Persists in Throwing Bouquets Thereupon.
Woman, the most helpless of the young of any animal — with the fawn's
grace but without its fleetness; with the bird's beauty but without its
power of flight; with the honey-bee's burden of sweetness but without its
Oh, let's drop that simile— some of us may have been stung.

During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and ex-
change stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the tactics
of life.

"I says to 'im," says Sadie, "ain't you the fresh thing! Who do you sup-
pose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what do you think
he says back to me?"

The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the

THE TRIMMED LAMP 1369

answer is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be used
by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, man.

Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful de-
fense means victory.

The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other
college could have fitted her as well for her life's ambition— the drawing
of a matrimonial prize.

Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near
enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the best
composers — at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for appreciation
in the social world in which she was vaguely trying to set a tentative and
aspiring foot. She absorbed the educating influence of art wares, of costly
and dainty fabrics, of adornments that are almost culture to women.

The other girls soon became aware of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes
your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man who
looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who
were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over
to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy's
imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted.
Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them
may have been millionaires; others were certainly no more than their
sedulous apes. Nancy learned to discriminate. There was a window at
the end of the handkerchief counter; and she could see the rows of
vehicles waiting for the shoppers in the street below. She looked and per-
ceived that automobiles differ as well as do their owners.

Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and
wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had
gone one of the girls said :

"What's wrong, Nance, that you didn't warm up to that fellow? He
looks the swell article, all right, to me."

"Him?" said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van
Alstyne Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12
H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of hand-
kerchiefs he bought — silk! And he's got dactylis on him. Give me the real
thing or nothing, if you please."

Two of the most "refined" women in the store — a forelady and a cashier
— had a few "swell gentlemen friends" with whom they now and then
dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner took place
in a spectacular cafe whose tables are engaged for New Year's Eve a year
in advance. There were two "gentlemen friends" — one without any hair
on his head — high living ungrew it; and we can prove it — the other a
ydurig man whose worth and sophistication he impressed upon you in two
convincing ways — he swore that all the wine was corked; and he wore
diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived irresistible excellencies

1370 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and here was one that added die
voice and manners of his high social world to the franker charms o£ her
own caste. So, on the following day, he appeared in the store and made
her a serious proposal of marriage over a box of hemstitched, grass-
bleached Irish linens. Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away
had been using her eyes and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she
heaped carboys of upbraidings and horror upon Nancy's head.

"What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow's a millionaire— he's a
nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level, too.
Have you gone crazy, Nance?"

"Have I?" said Nancy. "I didn't take him, did I? He isn't a millionaire
so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him
$20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him about it
the other night at supper,"

The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes.

"Say, what do you want?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of
chewing-gum. "Ain't that enough for you? Do you want to be a Mormon,
and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and
the whole bunch? Ain't $20,000 a year good enough for you?"

Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow eyes.

"It wasn't altogether the money, Carrie," she explained. "His friend
caught him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was about some girl
he said he hadn't been to the theater with. Well, I can't stand a liar. Put
everything together— I don't like him; and that settles it. When I sdl out
it's not going to be on any bargain day. I've got to have something that
sits up in a chair like a man, anyhow. Yes. Tm looking out for a catch;
but it's got to be able to do something more than make a noise like a toy
bank."

"The physiopathic ward for yours!" said the brown pompadour, walk-
ing away.

These high ideas, if not ideals— Nancy continued to cultivate on $8 per
week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown "catch" eating
her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her face was the
faint, soldierly, sweet, grim smile of the preordained man-hunter. The
store was her forest; and many times she raised her rifle at game that
seemed broad-antlered and big; but always some deep unerring instinct
—perhaps of the huntress, perhaps of the woman— made her hold her fire
and take up the trail again.

Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid $6
for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her oppor-
tunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared with
Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, work and
her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly and showy

THE TRIMMED LAMP 137!

fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her growing fondness
for dress was thus transmitted to her through the conducting metal.

When the day's work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful
shadow in whatever light she stood.

Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou's clothes that
increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no disloyalty;
he deprecated the attention they called to her in the streets.

And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy
should go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore
the extra burden heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that Lou
furnished the color, Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the distraction-
seeking trio. The escort, in his neat but obviously ready-made suit, his
ready-made tie and unfailing, genial, ready-made wit never startled or
clashed. He was of that good kind that you are likely to forget while they
are present, but remember distinctly after they are gone.

To Nancy's superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures was
sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a gourmand,
when it cannot be a gourmet.

"Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away," Lou told her
once. "But why should I ? I'm independent. I can do as I please with the
money I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on working
afterward. And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old store for,
and half starve and half dress yourself? I could get you a place in the
laundry right now if you'd come. It seems to me that you could afford to
be a little less stuck-up if you could make a good deal more money."

"I don't think I'm stuck-up, Lou," said Nancy, "but I'd rather live on
half rations and stay where I am. I suppose I've got the habit. It's the
chance that I want. I don't expect to be always behind a counter. I'm
learning something new every day. I'm right up against refined and rich
people all the time— even if I do only wait on them; and I'm not missing
any pointers that I see passing around,"

"Caught your millionaire yet?" asked Lou with her teasing laugh.

"I haven't selected one yet," answered Nancy. "I've been looking them
over."

"Goodness! the idea of picking over 'em! Don't you ever let one get by
you, Nance— even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're joking—
millionaires don't think about working girls like us."

"It might be better for them if they did," said Nancy, with a cool wis-
dom. "Some of us could teach them how to take care of their money."

"If one was to speak to me," laughed Lou, "I know I'd have a duck-fit."

"That's because you don't know any. The only difference between
swells and other people is you have to watch 'em closer. Don't you think
that red silk lining is just a little bit too bright for that coat, Lou?"

Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend.

1372 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"Well, no, I don't— but it may seem so beside that faded-looking thing
you've got on."

"This jacket," said Nancy, complacently, "has exactly the cut and fit of
one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day. The ma-
terial cost me $3.98. 1 suppose hers cost about ( 100 more."

"Oh, well/' said Lou, lightly, "it don't strike me as millionaire bait.
Shouldn't wonder if I catch one before you do, anyway."

Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values of
the theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain pride and
fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with girls working for the
barest living, thumped away gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling
laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the point of comfort; so
that her dress profited until sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of im-
patience at the neat but inelegant apparel of Dan — Dan the constant, the
immutable, the undeviating.

As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels
and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world of
good-breeding and taste— these were made for woman; they are her
equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life to her,
and if she will. She is no traitor to herself, as Esau was; for she keeps her
birthright and the pottage she earns is often very scant.

In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her
frugal meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined and
contented mind. She already knew woman; and she was studying man,
the animal, both as to his habits and eligibility. Some day she would bring
down the game that she wanted; but she promised herself it would be
what seemed to her the biggest and the best, and nothing smaller.

Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bride-
groom when he should come.

But another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard
of values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew
blurred in her mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled such
words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just "kindness." Let us
make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk in some mighty wood.
He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, where a rill trickles, babbling
to him of rest and comfort. At these times the spear of Nimrod himself
grows blunt.

So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at
its market value by the hearts that it covered.

One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth
Avenue westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and
Dan to a musical comedy.

Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was
a queer, strained look on his face.

THE TRIMMED LAMP 1373

"I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her," he
said.

"Heard from who?" asked Nancy. "Isn't Lou there ?"

"I thought you knew," said Dan. "She hasn't been here or at the house
where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from there. She
told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going to Europe."

"Hasn't anybody seen her anywhere?" asked Nancy.

Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in his
steady gray eyes.

"They told me in the laundry," he said, harshly, "that they saw her pass
yesterday— in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I suppose, that
you and Lou were forever busying your brains about."

For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand that
trembled slightly on Dan's sleeve.

"You've no right to say such a thing to me, Dan — as if I had any-
thing to do with it!"

"I didn't mean it that way," said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his vest
pocket.

"I've got the tickets for the show to-night," he said, with a gallant show
of lightness. "If you "

Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it.

"I'll go with you, Dan," she said.

Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again.

At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the
border of a little quiet park. She heard her name called, and wheeled
about in time to catch Lou rushing into her arms.

After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do, ready
to attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on their swift
tongues. And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had descended upon
Lou, manifesting itself in costly furs, flashing gems, and creations of the
tailor's art.

"You little fool!" cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. "I see you are
still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how about that big
catch you were going to make — nothing doing yet, I suppose?"

And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity
had descended upon Nancy — something that shone brighter than gems in
her eyes and redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced like elec-
tricity anxious to be loosed from the tip of her tongue,

"Yes, I'm still in the store," said Nancy, "but I'm going to leave it next
week. I've made my catch—the biggest catch in the world. You won't
mind now Lou, will you? — I'm going to be married to Dan — to Dan! —
he's my Dan now — why, Lou!"

Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, smooth-
faced young policemen that are making the force more endurable— at

1374 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur coat and diamond-
ringed hands crouching down against the iron fence of the park sobbing
turbulently, while a slender, plainly dressed working girl leaned close,
trying to console her. But the Gibsonian cop, being of the new order,
passed on, pretending not to notice, for he was wise enough to know that
these matters are beyond help so far as the power he represents is con-
cerned, though he rap the pavement with his nightstick till the sound
goes up to the furthermost stars.

A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT

To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips brought
the evening mail. Besides the routine correspondence there were two
items bearing the same foreign postmark.

One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The
other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, ab-
sorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and it
contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered with
innuendos concerning the photographed woman.

Chalmers tore his letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out his
expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal from
the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts when he is
housed in a jungle of doubt.

By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an en-
chanted one. For sixteen feet he could travel along it; three thousand
miles was beyond its power to aid.

Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a
well-oiled genie.

"Will you dine here, sir, or out?" he asked.

"Here," said Chalmers, "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to
the January blasts making an -5u>lian trombone of the empty street.

"Wait," he said to the disappearing genie. "As I came home across the
end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There was
one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in rows,
and why are they there?"

"They are homeless men, sir," said Phillips. "The man standing on the
box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come around to
listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the money will
pay for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in rows; they get
sent to bed in order as they come."

"By the time dinner is served," said Chalmers, "have one of those men
here. He will dine with me."

A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT 1375

"W-w-which " began Phillips, stammering for the first time during

his service.

"Choose one at random," said Chalmers. "You might see that he is
reasonably sober—and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be held
against him. That is all."

It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But on
that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to melancholy.
Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored and Arabian,
he must have to lighten his mood.

On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the lamp.
The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the delectable
dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily in the glow of the
pink-shaded candles.

And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal— or held in charge
a burglar — wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the
line of mendicant lodgers.

It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be
used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through fire.
Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting bulk. His
face and hands had been recently washed — a rite insisted upon by Phillips
as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In the candle-light he stood,
a flaw in the decorous fittings of the apartment. His face was a sickly
white, covered almost to the eyes with a stubble the shade of a red Irish
setter's coat. Phillips '$ comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long
matted and conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes
were full of hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that is cor-
nered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, but a quar-
ter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner was singularly
free from embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his chair across the
round dining table.

"If you will oblige me," said the host, "I will be glad to have your com-
pany at dinner."

"My name is Plumer," said the highway guest, in harsh and aggressive
tones. "If you're like me, you like to know the name of the party you're
dining with."

"I was going on to say," continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, "that
mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?"

Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide the
chair beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended boards before.
Phillips set out the anchovies and olives.

"Good!" barked Plumer; "going to be in courses, is it? All right, my
jovial ruler of Bagdad. I'm your Scheherezade all the way to the tooth-
picks. You're the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor I've struck
since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I finished counting,

1376 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me to the feast. I had about
as much chance of getting a bed to-night as I have of being the next Presi-
dent. How will you have the sad story of my life, Mr. Al Raschid— a
chapter with each course or the whole edition with the cigars and coffee?"

"The situation does not seem a novel one to you/' said Chalmers with
a smile.

"By the chin whiskers of the prophet— no!" answered the guest. "New
York's as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas. I've been
held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my head twenty times.
Catch anybody in New York giving you something for nothing! They
spell curiosity and charity with the same set of building blocks. Lots of
'em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; and a few of 'em will play
Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; but every one of 'em will stand over
you till they screw your autobiography out of you with foot notes, appen-
dix and unpublished fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see vict-
uals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the
asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my
supper. I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to
hand out vocal harmony for his pre-digested wheaterina and spoopju."

"I do not ask your story," said Chalmers. "I tell you frankly that it was
a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to dine with
me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity of mine."

"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his soup-j
"I don't mind it a bit. I'm a regular Oriental magazine with a red cover"
and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. In fact, we fellows in
the bed line have a sort of union rate for things of this sort. Somebody's
always stopping and wanting to know what brought us down so low in
the world. For a sandwich and a glass of beer I tell Jem that drink did it.
For corner beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give 'em the hard-
hearted-landlord— six-months-in-die-hospital-lost job story. A sirloin steak
and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street tragedy of the swept-away
fortune and the gradual descent. This is the first spread of this kind I've
stumbled against. I haven't got a story to fit it. Fll tell you what, Mr.
Chalmers, I'm going to tell you the truth for this, if you'll listen to it. It'll
be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones."

An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction
while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table.

"Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?" he asked, with a strange
smile.

"I remember the name," said Chalmers. "He was ,a painter, I think, of a
good deal of prominence a few years ago."

^ "Five years," said the guest. "Then I went down like a chunk of lead-
I'm Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for $2,000. After
that I couldn't have found a sitter for a gratis picture."

A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT 1377

"What was the trouble?" Chalmers could not resist asking.

"Funny thing," answered Plumer, grimly. "Never quite understood it
myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd and
got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a fashionable
painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever I finished a
picture people would come to see it, and whisper and look queerly at one
another.

"I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing out
in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. I don't
know how I did it — I painted what I saw— but I know it did me. Some
of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their pictures. I painted
the portrait of a very beautiful and popular society dame. When it was
finished her husband looked at it with a peculiar expression on his face,
and the next week he sued for divorce.

"I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I
had his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his came
in to look at it. 'Bless me/ says he, 'does he really look like that?' I told
him it was considered a faithful likeness. 'I never noticed that expression
about his eyes before,' said he; 'I think I'll drop downtown and change
my bank account.' He did drop down, but the bank account was gone and
so was Mr. Banker.

"It wasn't long till they put me out of business. People don't want their
secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile and twist their
own faces and deceive you, but the picture can't. I couldn't get an order
for another picture, and I had to give up. I worked as a newspaper artist
for a while, and then for a lithographer, but my work with them got me
into the same trouble. If I drew from a photograph my drawing showed
up characteristics and expressions that you couldn't find in the photo, but
I guess they were in the original, all right. The customers raised lively
rows, especially the women, and I never could hold a job long. So I began
to rest my weary head upon the breast of Old Booze for comfort. And
pretty soon I was in the free-bed line and doing oral fiction for hand-outs
among the food bazaars. Does the truthful statement weary thee, O
Caliph? I can turn on the Wall Street disaster stop if you prefer, but that
requires a tear, and I'm afraid I can't hustle one up after that good din-
ner."

"No, no," said Chalmers, earnestly, "you interest me very much. Did
all of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there some that
did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?"

"Some? Yes," said Plumer. "Children generally, a good many women
and a sufficient number of men. All people aren't bad, you know. When
they were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don't explain it,
but I'm telling you facts."

On Chalmer's writing-table lay the photograph that he had received

1378 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

that day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at work
making a sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the artist rose
and stretched wearily. "It's done," he yawned. "You'll excuse me for
being so long. I got interested in the job. Lordy! but I'm tired. No bed
last night, you know. Guess it'll have to be good-night now, O Com-
mander of the Faithful!"

Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills into
his hand.

"Oh! Ill take 'em," said Plumer. "All that's included in the fall.
Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I shall sleep on feathers to-night
and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won't turn out to be a dream in the
morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!"

Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as far
from the table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would permit.
Twice, thrice, he tried to approach it, but failed. He could see the dun
and gold and brown of the colors, but there was a wall about it built^by
his fears that kept him at a distance. He sat down and tried to calm him-
self. He sprang up and rang for Phillips.

"There is a young artist in this building," he said— "a Mr. Reineman
—do you know which is his apartment?"

"Top floor, front, sir," said Phillips.

"Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few min-
utes.*

Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself,
• "Mr. Reineman," said he, "there is a little pastel sketch on yonder
table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to its artis-
tic merits and as a picture."

The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch. Chal-
mers half turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair.

"How—do— you find it?" he asked, slowly.

"As a drawing," said the artist, "I can't praise it enough. It's the work
of a master— bold and fine and true. It puzzles me a little; I haven't seen
any pastel work near as good in years."

"The face, maa— the subject— the original— what would you say of
that?"

"The face," said Reineman, "is the face of one of God's own angels.
May I ask who "

"My wife!" shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the aston-
ished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. "She is traveling in
Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture of your life from it
and leave the price to me."

THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL 1379

THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL

This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance
lecture and the "Bartender's Guide." Relative to the latter, drink shall
swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to the former,
not an elbow shall be crooked.

Bob Babbitt was "off the stuff," Which means— as you will discover by
referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia—that he had "cut out
the booze," that he was "on the water wagon." The reason for Bob's sud-
den attitude of hostility toward the "demon rum" — as the white rib-
boners miscall whiskey (see the "Bartender's Guide"), should be of
interest to reformers and saloon-keepers.

There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or
acknowledge that he was ever dnink. But when a man will say (in the
apt words of the phrase-distiller), "I had a beautiful skate on last night,"
you will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for him.

One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar
that he liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there from the
downtown offices whom he knew. And then there would be highballs
and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little late but feeling
good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil Company. On this eve-
ning as he entered he heard some one say: "Babbitt was in last night as full
as a boiled owl."

Babbitt walked to the bar, and saw in the mirror that his face was as
white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the eyes. Others
had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was a drunkard,
and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a pleasant ex-
hilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit had been drivel,
his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a sot. But, never again;!

"A glass of seltzer/' he said to the bartender.

A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been expect-
ing him to join them.

"Going off the stuff, Bob?" one of them asked politely and with more
formality than the highballs ever called forth.

"Yes," said Babbitt.

Some one of the group took up the unwashed thread of a story he had
been telling; the bartender shoved over a dime and a nickel change from
the quarter, ungarnished with his customary smile; and Babbitt walked
out.

Now, Babbitt had a home and a wife— but that is another story. And I

1380 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

will tell you that story, which will show you a better habit and a worse
story than you could find in the man who invented the phrase.

It began away up in Sullivan County, where so many rivers and so
much trouble begins— or begin; how would you say that? It was July, and
Jessie was a summer boarder at the Mountain Squint Hotel, and Bob, who
was just out of college, saw her one day— and they were married in Sep-
tember. That's the tabloid novel-one swallow of water, and it's gone.

But those July days! .

Let the exclamation point expound it, for I shall not. For particulars
you might read up on "Romeo and Juliet," and Abraham Lincoln's thrill-
ing sonnet about "You can fool some of the people," &c., and Darwin's
works.

But one thing I must tell you about. Both of them were made over
Omar's Rubaiyat. They knew every verse of the old bluffer by heart— not
consecutively, but picking *em out here and there as you fork the mush-
rooms in a fifty-cent steak a la Bordelaise. Sullivan County is full of rocks
and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them, and— please be good— used to
sit on the rocks; and Bob had a way of standing behind her with his1
hands over her shoulders holding her hands, and his face close to hers, and
they would repeat over and over their favorite verses of the old tent-
maker. They saw only the poetry and philosophy of the lines then— in-
deed, they agreed that the Wine was only an image, and that what was
meant to be celebrated was some divinity, or maybe Love or Life. How-
ever, at that time neither of them had tasted the stuff that goes with a
sixty-cent table d'hdte.

Where was I? Oh, they married and came to New York. Bob showed
his college diploma, and accepted a position filling inkstands in a lawyer's
office at $15 a week. At the end of two years he had worked up to $50,
and gotten his first taste of Bohemia— the kind that won't stand the borax
and formaldehyde tests.

They had two furnished rooms and a little kitchen. To Jess, accustomed
to the mild but beautiful savor of a country town, the dreggy Bohemia
was sugar and spice. She hung fish seines on the walls of her rooms, and
bought a rakish-looking sideboard, and learned to play the banjo. Twice
or thrice a week they dined at French or Italian tables d'hdte in a cloud of
smoke, and brag and unshorn hair. Jess learned to drink a cocktail in
order to get the cherry. At home she smoked a cigarette after dinner. She
learned to pronounce Chianti, and leave her olive stones for the waiter
to pick up. Once she essayed to say la, la, la! in a crowd but got only as
far as the second one. They met one or two couples while dining out and
became friendly with them. The sideboard was stocked with Scotch and
rye and a liqueur. They had their new friends in to dinner and all were
laughing at nothing by i A.M. Some plastering fell in the room below
them, for which Bob had to pay $4.50. Thus they footed it merrily on the

THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL 1381

ragged frontiers of the country that has no boundary lines or government.

And soon Bob fell in with his cronies and learned to keep his foot on
the little rail six inches above the floor for an hour or so every afternoon
before he went home. Drink always rubbed him the right way, and he
would reach his rooms as jolly as a sandboy. Jessie would meet him at the
door, and generally they would dance some insane kind of a rigadoon
about the floor by way of greeting. Once when Bob's feet became con-
fused and he tumbled headlong over a foot-stool Jessie laughed so
heartily and long that he had to throw all the couch pillows at her to
make her hush.

In such wise life was speeding for them on the day when Bob Babbitt
first felt the power that the giftie gi'ed him.

But let us get back to our lamb and mint sauce.

When Bob gdt home that evening he found Jessie in a long apron
cutting up a lobster for the Newburg. Usually when Bob came in mellow
from his hour at the bar his welcome was hilarious, though somewhat
tinctured with Scotch smoke.

By screams and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of
domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot on
the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton into her
ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and flavor of these
spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false Bohemia gradually encom-
passed her she came to accept them as love's true and proper greeting.

Bob came in without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but noiselessly,
took up a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old maid held her
two plugs of cotton poised, filled with anxiety.

Jessie dropped lobster and knife and ran to him with frightened eyes.

"What's die matter, Bob, are you ill?"

"Not at all, dear."

"Then what's the matter with you?"

"Nothing."

Hearken, brethren. When She-who-ha^a-right-to-ask interrogates you
concerning a change she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her
that you, in a sudden rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her that
you have robbed orphans and that remorse has stricken you; tell her your
fortune is swept away; that you are beset by enemies, by bunions, by
any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, if peace and happiness are worth
as much as a grain of mustard seed to you— -do not answer her "Nothing."

Jessie went back to the lobster in silence. She cast looks of darkest
suspicion at Bob. He had never acted that way before.

When dinner was on the table she set out the bottle of Scotch and the
glasses. Bob declined. "Tell you the truth, Jess," he said. "I've cut out the
drink. Help yourself, of course. If you don't mind I'll try some of the
seltzer straight."

1382 BOOK XII THE TRIM MED LAMP

"You've stopped drinking?" she said, looking at him steadily and
unsmilingly. "What for?"

"It wasn't doing me any good," said Bob. "Don't you approve of the
idea?"

Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly.

"Entirely," she said with a sculptured smile. "I could not conscientiously
advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on Sunday."

The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk, but
his efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt miserable, and
once or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but each time the
scathing words of his bibulous friend sounded in his ear, and his mouth
set with determination.

Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemd to have
departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the unnatural ex-
citement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they lived had dropped away
in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole curious and forlorn
glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty look of at least a wife-
beater or a family tyrant.

After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such
chores cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable countenance,
brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and a bowl of cracked
ice and set them on the table.

"May I ask," she said, with some of the ice in her tones, "whetner I
am to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, 111 make one
for myself. It's rather chilly this evening, for some reason."

"Oh, come now, Jess," said Bob, good-naturedly, "don't be too rough
on me, Help yourself, by all means. There's no danger of your overdoing
it. But I thought there was with me; and that's why I quit. Have yours,
and then let's get out the banjo and try over that new quick-step."

"I've heard," said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, "that drinking alone
is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing this evening. If
we are going to reform we may as well abandon the evil habit of banjo-
playing, too."

She took up a book and sat in her litde willow rocker on the other side
of the table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour.

And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent
look on his face and went behind her chair and reached over her
shoulders, taking her hands in his, and laid his face close to hers.

In a moment to Jessie the walls of the seine-hung room vanished, and
she saw the Sullivan County hills and rills. Bob felt her hands quiver in
his as he began the verse from Old Omar:

"Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

THE PENDULUM 1383

The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly— and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!"

And then he walked to the table and poured a stiff drink of Scotch into
a glass.

But in that moment a mountain breeze had somehow found its way
in and blown away the mist of the false Bohemia.

Jessie leaped and with one fierce sweep of her hand sent the bottle
and glasses crashing to the floor. The same motion of her arm carried
it around Bob's neck, where it met its mate and fastened tight.

"Oh, my God, Bobbie— not that verse — I see now. I wasn't always
such a fool, was I? The other one, boy— the one that says: 'Remould it
to the Heart's Desire.' Say that one— 'to the Heart's Desire.' "

"I know that one," said Bob. "It goes:

"Ah! Love, could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Would not we "

"Let me finish it," said Jessie.

"Would not we shatter it to bits — and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's Desire!"

"It's shattered all right," said Bob, crunching some glass under his heel.

In some dungeon below the accurate ear of Mrs. Pickens, the land-
lady, located the smash.

"It's that wild Mr. Babbitt coming home soused again," she said. "And
he's got such a nice little wife, too!"

THE PENDULUM

"Eighty-first Street— let 'em out, please," yelled the shepherd in blue.

A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled
aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled
away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with
the released flock.

John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon of
his daily life there was no such word as "perhaps." There are no surprises
awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a flat. As he
walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and down-
trodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous day.

Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream
and butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized

1384 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaughtered
by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad
flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather,
stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the
certificate of chemical purity on its label After dinner Katy would show
him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for her
off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven they would spread
newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell
when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture
exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (un-
booked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of
delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that
Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week con-
tract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out his
flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways; the
dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor would drive Mrs. Zano-
witski's five children once more across the Yalu; the lady with the
champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip downstairs and paste her
Thursday name over her bell and letter-box— and the evening routine of
the Frogmore flats would be under way.

John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at
a quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat,
and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone:

"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?"

"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey V' he would answer, "and play
a game or two of pool with the fellows."

Of late such had been John Perkins's habit. At ten or eleven he would
return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, ready
to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating from the
wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid will have to
answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his victims from the
Frogmore flats.

To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the
commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her
affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in portentous
disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in the middle of
the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder box, jumbled to-
gether on dresser and chairs — this was not Katy's way. With a sinking
heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of her brown hair among
its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation must have possessed her,
for she always carefully placed these combings in the little blue vase on
the mantel to be some day formed into the coveted feminine "rat."

Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper.
John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus:

THE PENDULUM 1385

Dear John:

I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. I am going to
take the 4:30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the depot there.
There is cold mutton in the icebox. I hope it isn't her quinzy again.
Pay the milkman 50 cents. She had it bad last spring. Don't forget to
write to the company about the gas meter, and your good socks are in
the top drawer. I will write to-morrow.

Hastily,

Katy

Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been
separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a dumbfounded
way. Here was a break in a routine that had never varied, and it left him
dazed.

There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless,
the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the
meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her haste.
A little paper bag of her favorite butter-scotch lay with its string yet un-
wound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping rectangularly where a
railroad time-table had been clipped from it. Everything in the room
spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its soul and life departed* John
Perkins stood among the dead remains with a queer feeling of desolation
in his heart.

He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched
her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He had
never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had become so
thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed—
necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without warning, she was gone,
vanished, as completely absent as if she had never existed. Of course it
would be only for a few days, or at most a week or two, but it seemed
to him as if the very hand of death had pointed a finger at his secure and
uneventful home.

John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee, and sat
down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade's
shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings now
appeared to him the ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan polish
dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law had
knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal John sat
at a front window,

He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come join
in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might go forth
unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as anyway bachelor
there. He might carouse and wander and have his fling until dawn if he
liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy waiting for him, bearing

1386 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

the chalice that held the dregs of his joy. He might play pool at Me-
Closkey's with his roistering friends until Aurora dimmed the electric
bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings that had curbed him always when
the Frogmore flats had palled upon him were loosened. Katy was gone.

John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotoions. But as
he sat in his Katy-bereft 10 x 12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote
of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness.
His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of
domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it
not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and fable that we never
prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown— or in other no less
florid and true utterances ?

Tin a double-dyed dub," mused John Perkins, "the way I've been
treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the boys
instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone with noth-
ing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, you're the
worst kind of a shine. I'm going to make it up for the little girl. I'll take
her out and let her see some amusement. And I'll cut out the McCloskey
gang right from this minute."

Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come dance
in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were knocking the
balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the nightly game. But no
primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the remorseful soul of Perkins
the bereft. The thing that was his, lightly held and half scorned, had been
taken away from him, and he wanted it. Backward to a certain man
named Adam, whom the cherubim bounced from the orchard, could
Perkins, the remorseful, trace his descent.

Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of it
stood Katy's blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of her contour.
Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles made by the move-
ments of her arms in working for his comfort and pleasure. A delicate but
impelling odor of bluebells came from it. John took it and looked long and
soberly at the unresponsive grenadine. Katy had never been unrespon-
sive. Tears: — yes, tears — came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came
back things would be different. He would make up for all his neglect.
What was life without her?

The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John
stared at her stupidly.

"My! I'm glad to get back,'* said Katy. "Ma wasn't sick to amount to
anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little spell, and
got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the next train back.
I'm just dying for a cup of coffee."

Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cogwheels as the third-floor-
front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order of

TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN 1387

Things. A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted and
the wheels revolve in their old orbit.

John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his hat
and walked to the door.

"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" asked
Katy, in a querulous tone.

"Thought Td drop up to McCloskey's," said John, "and play a game or
two of pool with the fellows."

TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans
who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits
and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it
used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives it to us. We hear some
talk of the Puritans, but don't just remember who they were. Bet we can
lick 'em, anyhow, if they try to land again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that
sounds more familiar. Lots of us have had to come down to hens since
the Turkey Trust got its work in. But somebody in Washington is leaking
out advance information to 'em about these Thanksgiving proclamations.

The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an
institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the year
on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the ferries. It is the
one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of celebration, exclusively
American.

And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have traditions
on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a much rapider rate
than those of England are— thanks to our git-up and enterprise.

Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you enter
Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. Every
Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there promptly at
i o'clock. For every time he had done so things had happened to him—
Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat above his heart, and
equally on the other side.

But to-day Stuffy Pete's appearance at the annual trysting place seemed
to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly hunger which,
as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the poor at such extended
intervals. .

Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast that had
left him of his powers barely those of respiration and^ locomotion. His
eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded in a swollen and
gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came in short wheezes; a

1388 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a fashionable set to his upturned
coat collar. Buttons that had been sewed upon his clothes by kind Salva-
tion fingers a week before flew like pop-corn, strewing the earth around
him. Ragged he was, with a split shirt front open to the wishbone;
but the November breeze, carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a
grateful coolness. For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric
produced by a super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending
with plum' pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast
turkey and baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice
cream in the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world
with after-dinner contempt. m .

The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick
mansion near the beginning of Fifth Avenue, in which lived two old
ladies of ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even denied
the existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day was
declared solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional habits
was to station a servant at the postern gate with orders to admit the first
hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of noon had struck, and
banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to
the park, and the seneschals gathered him in and upheld the custom of
the castle.

After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he
was conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a tremen-
dous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his eyes
bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod ends of
his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel.

For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth Avenue toward his
bench.

Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come
there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the Old
Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving Day
for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a restaurant
and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in England un-
consciously. But this is a young country, and nine years is not so bad.
The Old Gentleman was a stanch American patriot, and considered him-
self a pioneer in American tradition. In order to become picturesque we
must keep on doing one thing for a long time without ever letting it
get away from us. Something like collecting the weekly dimes in in-
dustrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets.

The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the Institution
that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy Pete was nothing
national in its character, such as the Magna Charta or jam for breakfast
was in England. But it was a step. It was almost feudal. It showed, at
least, that a Custom was not impossible to New Y — ahem! — America.

TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN 1389

The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all
in black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won't stay
on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year,
and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with the
crooked handle.

As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered
like some woman's over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. He
would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not have
separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two old
ladies done their work.

"Good morning," said the Old Gentleman. "I am glad to perceive that
the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health about
the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of thanksgiving is
well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with me, my man, I will
provide you with a dinner that should make your physical being accord
with the mental."

That is what the Old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving
Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution.
Nothing could be compared with them except the Declaration of In-
dependence. Always before they had been music in Stuffy's ears. But now
he looked up at the Old Gentleman's face with tearful agony in his own.
The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell upon his perspiring brow. But
the Old Gentleman shivered a little and turned his back to the wind.

Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech
rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing every
time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come there
after he was gone — a son who would stand proud and strong before some
subsequent Stuffy, and say: "In memory of my father." Then it would be
an Institution.

But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in
one of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the quiet
streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in a little con-
servatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he walked in the
Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse in the New
Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of a butterfly, the
ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some day. In the autumn
he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old Gentleman's occupations.

Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless in
his own self-pity, The Old Gentleman's eyes were bright with the giving-
pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his little black
necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and his linen was beautiful and
white, and his gray mustache was curled gracefully at the ends. And then
Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas bubbling in a pot. Speech
was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had heard the sounds nine times

139° BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

before, he rightly construed them into Stuffy's old formula of acceptance,

"Thankee, sir. Ill go with ye, and much obliged. I'm very hungry,
sir/'

The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy's mind
the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution, His Thanksgiving
appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred rights of established
custom, if not by the actual Statute of Limitations, to this kind old gentle-
man who had preempted it. True, America is free; but in order to
establish tradition some one must be a repetend — a repeating decimal.
The heroes are not all heroes of steel and gold. See one here that wielded
only weapons of iron, badly silvered, and tin.

The Old Gentleman led his annual protege southward to the restau-
rant, and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were
recognized.

"Here comes de old guy," said a waiter, "dat blows dat same bum to a
meal every Thanksgiving.'*

The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl
at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped the
table with holiday food — and Stuffy, with a sigh that was mistaken for
hunger's expression, raised knife and fork and carved for himself a crown
of imperishable bay.

No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an
enemy. Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before him as >
fast as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost when he
entered the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused him to lose
his honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a true knight* He saw the
look of beneficent happiness on the Old Gentleman's face— a happier look
than even the fuchsias and the ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought
to it— and he had not the heart to see it wane.

In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won.

"Thankee kindly, sir," he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; "thankee
kindly for a hearty meal."

Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started toward the
kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and pointed him toward the
door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30 in silver change,
leaving three nickels for the waiter.

They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman
going south, Stuffy north.

Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. Then
he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his feathers, and fell to
the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse.

When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed
softly at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a transfer
to the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to the hospital

THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS 139!

There they stretched him on a bed and began to test him for strange
diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some problem with the bare
steel

And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman.
And they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he
looked good for the bill.

But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses
whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases.

"That nice old gentleman over there, now," he said, "you wouldn't
think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I guess. He
told me he hadn't eaten a thing for three days/'

THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS

Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a
pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They
were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven
faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining
their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks.

Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions
in my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park Com-
missioners (around the corner, if necessary) and arrange for benches in
all the parks of the world low enough for women to sit upon, and rest
their feet upon the ground. After that I might furnish libraries to towns
that would pay for 'em, or build sanitariums for crank professors, and
call 'em colleges, if I wanted to.

Women's rights societies have been laboring for many years after
equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they
must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their highest
French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom, ladies. Get
your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of mental equality.

Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That
was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It is denied
us to look further into a man's bosom than the starch on his shirt front;
so it is left to us only to recount his walks and conversation.

Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a
hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have
no more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter building
on the west side of the square. But Morley would have enough by then.
Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but sunrise had always seen
them lined.

First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison Avenue and

1392 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to issue
from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed up by a
realistic romance of a delayed remittance.

On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a pale-taced,
fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised red fist and the voice of a
bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score.

"Why, Bergman, man," sang Morley, dulcetly, "is this you? I was just
on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my aunt
arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come up to
the corner and I'll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a walk."

Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about
Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed
oS a call loan at Rothschilds'. When he was penniless his bluflf was
pitched half a tone lower, but few were competent to detect the difference
in the notes. y?

"You gum to mine blace and bay me tomorrow, Mr. Morley, said
Bergman. "Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen you
in dree mont5. Pros't!"

Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth fade.
The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to
avoid Twenty-ninth Street in the future. He had not been aware that
Bergman ever went home by that route.

At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley
knocked with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the length
of a six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of an African
guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was admitted.

In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung
for ten minutes above a roulette wheel Then downstairs he crept, and
was out-sped by the important Negro, jingling in his pocket the 40 cents
in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. At the corner
he lingered, undecided.

Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth gleams
from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and glasses. Along
came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, stepping high with
the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to which his advancing
age had earned him promotion. In his hand he clutched something
tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.

Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech.

"Me?" said the youngster. "I'm doin' to the drug 'tore for Mamma.
She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med'cin."

"Now, now, now!" said Morley. "Such a big man you are to be doing
errands for Mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the
cars don't run over him. And on the way we'll have some chocolates.
Or would he rather have lemon drops?"

THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS 1393

Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He pre-
sented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money.

On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound.

"Aqua pura, one pint," said he to the druggist. "Sodium chloride, ten
grains. Fiat solution. And don't try to skin me, because I know all about
the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and I always use
the other ingredient on my potatoes.*'

"Fifteen cents," said the druggist, with a wink, after he had com-
pounded the order. "I see you understand pharmacy, A dollar is the
regular price."

"To gulls," said Morley, smilingly.

He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child's arms and escorted
him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 cents accruing
to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge.

"Look out for the cars, sonny," he said, cheerfully, to his small victim.

Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the
youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile mes-
senger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner of his
street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky with vile,
cheap candy from the Italian's fruit stand.

Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of in-
expensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely that
the waiter ventured to premise that good news had come his way.

"Why, no," said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one.
"It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what
three diversions of people are easiest to over-reach in transactions of all
kinds?"

"Sure," said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by the
careful knot of Morley's tie; "there's the buyers from the dry goods stores
in the South during August, and honeymooners from Staten Island,
and "

"Wrong!" said Morley, chuckling happily. "The answer is just — men,
women, and children. The world — well, say New York and as far as
summer boarders can swim out from Long Island — is full of greenhorns.
Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this steak fit to be
eaten by a gentleman, Francois."

"If yez t'inks it's on de bum," said the waiter, "Oi'll "

Morley lifted his hand in protest — slightly martyred protest.

"It will do," he said, magnanimously. "And now, green Chartreuse,
frappe and a demitasse."

Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful
arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he stood on
the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people
that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw

1394 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had not the
half of his self-reliance and bait-lore.

A joyful party of four— two women and two men— fell upon him with
cries of delight. There was a dinner party on—where had he been for a
fortnight past?— what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded and
engulfed him — he must join them — tra la la — and the rest.

One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his sleeve,
and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: "See what I can do
with him?" and added her queen's command to the invitations.

"1 leave you to imagine," said Morley, pathetically, "how it desolates
me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York
Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at 8."

The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around
an arc light down the frolicsome way.

Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and laugh-
ingly gleefully to himself.

" Tront,' " he chanted under his breath; " 'front' does it. It is trumps
in the game. How they take it in! Men, women, and children— forgeries,
water-and-salt lies — how they all take it in!"

An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard, and a
corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street
cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side.

"Stranger," said he, "excuse me for troubling you, but do you know
anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son, and
I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what
I done with his street and number."

"I do not, sir," said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy in them.
"You had better apply to the police."

"The police!" said the old man. "I ain't done nothin' to call in the
police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story house,
he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could "

"I told you I did not," said Morley, coldly. "I know no one by the name
of Smithers, and I advise you to "

"Smothers not Smithers," interrupted the old man, hopefully. "A
heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth out,
above five-foot "

"Oh, 'Smothers!'" exclaimed Morley. "Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in
the next house to me. I thought you said 'Smithers." "

Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it
for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the ninety-
eight-cent one that the railroads— according to these watchmakers— are
run by.

"The Bishop of Long Island," said Morley, "was to meet me here
at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers' Club. But I can't leave the father

THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS 1395

of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, Mr.
Smothers, we Wall Street men have to work! Tired is no name for it!
I was about to step across to the other corner and have a glass of ginger ale
with a dash of sherry when you approached me. You must let me take
you to Sol's house, Mr. Smothers. But before we take the car I hope you
will join me in "

An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench in
Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips and $140
in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, light-hearted, ironical,
keenly philosophic, he watched the moon drifting in and out amidst a
maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged man with a low-bowed head sat at
the other end of the bench.

Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In
Morley's appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the
usual nightly occupants of the benches.

"Kind sir," he whined, "if you could spare a dime or even a few
pennies to one who "

Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar.

"God bless you!" said the old man. "I've been trying to find work
for—"

"Work!" echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. "You are a fool, my
friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an Aaron
and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will gush out
of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to me whatever I
want from it."

"God has blessed you," said the old man. "It is only work that I have
known. And now I can get no more."

"I must go home," said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. "I
stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work."

"May your kindness be rewarded this night," said the old man.

"Oh," said Morley, "you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I think
good luck fellows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel across the
square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting up the city to-night.
I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such little things as I do. Well,
a good-night to you."

Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He
blew slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman
passing saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was.

The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on
the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if home-
ward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she was
dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and neither to the
right nor the left.

Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench

1396 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

with her at school. There had been no sentiment between them-nothing
but the friendship of innocent days.

But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his suddenly
burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said dully:

"God! I wish I could die."

THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY

It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful vicinity
of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of Navarro & Platt,
situated there, is not to be sneezed at.

Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver com with
liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of this
semi-precious metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick building
covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You can buy of
them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile, or an eighty-five dollar,
latest style, lady's tan coat in twenty different shades. Navarro & Platt
first introduced pennies west of the Colorado River. They had been ranch-
men with business heads, who saw that the world did not necessarily
have to cease its revolutions after free grass went out.

Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half-Spanish, cos-
mopolitan, able, polished, had "gone on" to New York to buy goods.
This year he shied at taking up the long trail. He was undoubtedly grow-
ing older; and he looked at his watch several times a day before the hour
came for his siesta,

"John," he said, to his junior partner, "you shall go on this year to buy
the goods."

Platt looked tired.

"I'm told," said he, "that New York is a plumb dead town; but Til go.
I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and have
some fun."

Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit— black frock coat,
broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3-4 inch high, with
black, wrought-iron necktie — entered the wholesale cloak and suit es-
tablishment of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway.

Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant,
and a mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle
of the carpenter s rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar bear,
and shook Platt's hand.

"And how is the good Mr. Navarro in Texas?" he said. "The trip was
too long for him this year, so? We welcome Mr. Platt instead."

THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY

"A bull's eye," said Platt, "and I'd give forty acres o£ unirrigated Pecos
County land to know how you did it."

"I knew," grinned Zizzbaum, "just as I know that the rainfall in El
Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and that
therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits this spring in-
stead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be to-morrow. There is
first a cigar in my private office that will remove from your mouth the
taste of the ones you smuggled across the Rio Grande and like— because
they are smuggled."

It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended. Zizz-
baum left Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the private
office to Son, who was arranging his diamond scarfpin before a mirror,
ready to leave.

"Abey," he said, "y°u w^l have to take Mr. Platt around to-night and
show him things. They are customers for ten years. Mr. Navarro and
I we played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That is
good, but Mr. Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to New York.
He should amuse easily."

"All right." said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. "I'll take
him on. After he's seen the Flatiron and the head waiter at the Hotel
Astor and heard the phonograph play 'Under the Old Apple Tree' it'll be
half -past ten, and Mr. Texas will be ready to roll up in his blanket. I've
got a supper engagement at 11:30, but hell be all to the Mrs. Winslow
before then."

The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do business.
He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum himself
waited on him. Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never failed
to take their discount for cash.

"And what did you think of our little town?" asked Zizzbaum, with
the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite.

"I shouldn't care to live in it," said the Texan. "Your son and I knocked
around quite a little last night. You've got good water, but Cactus City
is better lit up."

"We've got a few lights on Broadway, don't you think, Mr. Platt?"

"And a good many shadows," said Platt. "I think I like your horses
best. I haven't seen a crowbait since I've been in town."

Zizzbaum led him upstairs to show the samples of suits.

"Ask Miss Asher to come," he said to a clerk.

Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first time
the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon him. He
stood still as a granite cliff above the canon of the Colorado, with his wide-
open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his look and flushed a little, which
was contrary to her custom.

1398 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the
blond type known as "medium/' and her measurements even went the
required 38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at Zizzbaum's two
years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but cool; and had she
chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the famed basilisk, that fab-
ulous monster's gaze would have wavered and softened first. Incidentally,
she knew buyers.

"Now, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum, "I want you to see these princess
gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. This
first, if you please, Miss Asher."

Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each
time wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every
change. She posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken
buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated
oilily of the styles. On the model's face was her faint, impersonal pro-
fessional smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or contempt.

When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a
little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try else-
where. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best building sites
in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to build a house for his
wife-to-be — who was just then in the dressing-room taking off an evening
gown of lavender and tulle.

"Take your time, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum. "Think it over to-night.
You won't find anybody else meet our prices on goods like these. I'm
afraid you're having a dull time in New York, Mr. Platt. A young man
like you — of course, you miss the society of the ladies. Wouldn't you like
a nice young lady to take out to dinner this evening? Miss Asher, now, is
a very nice young lady; she will make it agreeable for you."

"Why, she doesn't know me," said Platt, wonderingly. "She doesn't
know anything about me. Would she go? I'm not acquainted with her."

"Would she go?" repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. "Sure,
she would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go."

He called Miss Asher loudly.

She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist and
plain black skirt.

"Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this eve-
ning," said Zizzbaum, walking away.

"Sure," said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. "I'd be much pleased.
Nine-eleven West Twentieth Street. What time?"

"Say seven o'clock."

"All right, but please don't come ahead of time. I room with a school
teacher, and she doesn't allow any gentleman to call in the room. There
isn't any parlor, so you'll have to wait in the hall. I'll be ready."

At half-past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway

THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY 1399

restaurant. She was dressed in a plain, filmy black. Platt didn't know that
it was all a part of her day's work.

With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a re-
spectable dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries.

Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile.

"Mayn't I have something to drink?" she asked.

"Why, certainly," said Platt. "Anything you want."

"A dry Martini," she said to the waiter.

When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took
it away.

"What is this? "he asked.

"A cocktail, of course."

"I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You
can't drink this. What is your first name?"

"To my intimate friends," said Miss Asher, freezingly, "it is 'Helen.' "

"Listen, Helen," said Platt, leaning over the table. "For many years
every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to think-
ing of somebody that I'd never seen or heard of. I knew it was you the
minute I saw you yesterday. I'm going back home to-morrow, and you're
going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when you first looked
at me. You needn't kick, for youVe got to fall into line. Here's a little
trick I picked out for you on my way over."

He flicked a two-carat diamond solitaire ring across the table. Miss
Asher flipped it back to him with her fork.

"Don't get fresh," she said, severely.

"I'm worth a hundred thousand dollars," said Platt. "I'll build you the
finest house in west Texas."

"You can't buy me, Mr. Buyer," said Miss Asher, "if you had a hun-
dred million. I didn't think I'd have to call you down. You didn't look
like the others to me at first, but I see you're all alike."

"All who? "asked Platt.

"All you buyers. You think because we girls have to go out to dinner
with you or lose our jobs that you're privileged to say what you please.
Well, forget it. I thought you were different from the others, but I see I
was mistaken."

Platt struck his fingers on the table with a gesture of sudden, illuminat-
ing satisfaction.

"I've got it!" he exclaimed, almost hilariously— "the Nicholson place,
over on the north side. There's a big grove of live oaks and a natural lake.
The old house can be pulled down and the new one set further back."

"Put out your pipe," said Miss Asher. "I'm sorry to wake you up, but
you fellows might as well get wise, once for all, to where you stand. I'm
supposed to go to dinner with you and help jolly you along so you'll trade
with old Zizzy, but don't expect to find me in any of the suits you buy."

1400 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"Do you mean to tell me," said Platt, "that you go out this way with
customers, and they all—they all talk to you like I have?

"They all make plays," said Miss Asher. "But I must say that you ve
got >em beat in one respect. They generally talk diamonds, while you ve
actually dug one up."

"How long have you been working, Helen?"

"Got my name pat, haven't you? I've been supporting myself for eight
years. I was a cash girl and a wrapper and then a shop girl until I was
grown, and then I got to be a suit model Mr. Texas Man, dont you
think a little wine would make this dinner a little less dry?"

"You're not going to drink wine any more, dear. It's awful to think how

I'll come to the store to-morrow and get you. I want you to pick out

an automobile before we leave. That's all we need to buy here." ^

"Oh, cut that out. If you knew how sick I am of hearing such talk.

After the dinner they walked down Broadway and came upon Diana's
little wooded park. The trees caught Platt's eye at once, and he must turn
along under the winding walk beneath them. The lights shone upon two
bright tears in the model's eyes.

"I don't like that," said Platt. "What's the matter ?"

"Don't you mind," said Miss Asher. "Well, it's because—well^ I didn t
think you were that kind when I first saw you. But you are all alike. And
now will you take me home, or will I have to call a cop ?"

Platt took her to the door of her boarding-house. They stood for a min-
ute in the vestibule. She looked at him with such scorn in her eyes that
even his heart of oak began to waver. His arm was halfway around her
waist, when she struck him a stinging blow on the face with her open
hand.

As he stepped back a ring fell from somewhere and bounded on the
tiled floor. Platt groped for it and found it.

"Now, take your useless diamond and go, Mr. Buyer," she said.

"This was the other one— the wedding ring," said the Texan, holding
the smooth gold band on the palm of his hand.

Miss Asher's eyes blazed upon him in the half darkness.

"Was that what you mean? — did you *

Somebody opened the door from inside the house.

"Good-night," said Platt. "I'll see you at the store to-morrow."

Miss Asher ran up to her room and shook the school teacher until she
sat up in bed ready to scream "Fire!"

"Where is it?" she cried.

"That's what I want to know," said the model. "You've studied geog-
raphy, Emma, and you ought to know. Where is a town called Cac — Cac
—Carac— Caracas City, I think they called it?"

"How dare you wake me up for that?" said the school teacher. "Cara-,
cas is in Venezuela, of course."

THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O ' R 0 O N 140!

"What's it like ?"

"Why, it's principally earthquakes and Negroes and monkeys and ma-
larial fever and volcanoes."

"I don't care," said Miss Asher, blithely; "I'm going there tomorrow,"

THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN o'ROON

It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another
for the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky process,
this love at first sight, before she has seen him in Bradstreet or he has
seen her in curl papers. But these things do happen; and one instance
must form a theme for this story — though not, thank Heaven, to the over-
shadowing of more vital and important subjects, such as drink, police-
men, horses, and earldoms.

During a certain war a troop calling itself the Gentle Riders rode into
history and one or two ambuscades. The Gentle Riders were recruited
from the aristocracy of the wild men of the West and the wild men of
the aristocracy of the East. In khaki there is little telling them one from
another, so they became good friends and comrades all around.

Ellsworth Remsen, whose old Knickerbocker descent atoned for
his modest rating at only ten millions, ate his canned beef gayly by the
campfires of the Gentle Riders. The war was a great lark to him, so that
he scarcely regretted polo and planked shad.

One of the troopers was a well-set-up, affable, cool young man, who
called himself O'Roon. To this young man Remsen took an especial
liking. The two rode side by side during the famous mooted up-hill charge
that was disputed so hotly at the time by the Spaniards and afterward by
the Democrats.

After the war Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a
well-set-up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he
and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious
epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy and
out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that his content was
only apparent.

"Get me a job, Remsen," he said. "I've just handed a barber my last
shilling."

"No trouble at all," said Remsen. "I know a lot of men who have
banks and stores and things downtown. Any particular line you fancy?"

"Yes," said O'Roon, with a look of interest. "I took a walk in your
Central Park this morning. I'd like to be one of those bobbies on horse-
back. That would be about the ticket. Besides, it's the only thing I could

1402 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

do. I can ride a little and the fresh air suits me. Think you could land
that for me?"

Remsen was sure that he could. And in a very short time he did. And
they who were not above looking at mounted policemen might have seen
a well-set-up, affable, cool young man on a prancing chestnut steed at-
tending to his duties along the driveways of the park.

And now at the extreme risk of wearying old gentlemen who carry
leather fob chains, and elderly ladies who— but no! grandmother herself
yet thrills at foolish, immortal Romeo — there must be a hint of love at
first sight.

It came just as Remsen was strolling into Fifth Avenue from his club
a few doors away.

A motor car was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet of
vehicles that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and an old gen-
tleman with snowy side whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could not
be worn while automobiling except by a personage. Not even a wine
agent would dare do it. But these two were of no consequence— except,
perhaps, for the guiding of the machine and the paying for it. At the old
gentleman's side sat a young lady more beautiful than pomegranate blos-
soms, more exquisite than the first quarter moon viewed at twilight
through the tops of oleanders. Remsen saw her and knew his fate. He
could have flung himself under the very wheels that conveyed her, but
he knew that would be the last means of attracting the attention of those
who ride in motor cars. Slowly the auto passed, and, if we place the poets
above the autoists, carried the heart of Remsen with it. Here was a large
city of millions, and many women who at a certain distance appear to
resemble pomegranate blossoms. Yet he hoped to see her again; for each
one fancies that his romance has its own tutelary guardian and divinity.

Luckily for Remsen's peace of mind there came a diversion in the guise
of a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were not many of
them— perhaps a score^-and there was wassail and things to eat, and
speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in recapitulation. And
when daylight threatened them the survivors prepared to depart. But
some remained upon the battlefield. One of these was Trooper O'Roon,
who was not seasoned to potent liquids. His legs declined to fulfil the
obligations they had sworn to the police department.

Tm stewed, Remsen,'* said O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they build
hotels that go round and round like Catherine wheels? They 11 take away
my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec-sec-secu-
tively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on duty in three
hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is up, I tell you."

"Look at me," said Remsen, who was his smiling self, pointing to his
own face; "whom do you see here?"

"Goo5 fellow," said O'Roon, dizzily. "Goo' old Remsen."

THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O*ROON 1403

"Not so," said Remsen. "You see Mounted Policeman O'Roon. Look at
your face— no; you can't do that without a glass— but look at mine, and
think of yours. How much alike are we? As two French table d'hdte
dinners. With your badge, on your horse, in your uniform, will I charm
nurse-maids and prevent the grass from growing under people's feet in
the Park this day. I will have your badge and your honor, besides having
the j oiliest lark I've been blessed with since we licked Spain."

Promptly on time the counterfeit presentment of Mounted Policeman
O'Roon single-footed into the Park on his chestnut steed. In a uniform
two men who are unlike will look alike; two who somewhat resemble
each other in feature and figure will appear as twin brothers. So Rem-
sen trotted down the bridle paths, enjoying himself hugely, so few real
pleasures do ten-millionaires have.

Along the driveway in the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a
pair of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, for the
Park is rarely used in the morning, except by unimportant people who
love to be healthy, poor, and wise. In the vehicle sat an old gentleman
with snowy side-whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could not be
worn while driving except by a personage. At his side sat the lady of
Remsen's heart — the lady who looked like pomegranate blossoms and the
gibbous moon.

Remsen met them coming. At the instant of their passing her eyes
looked into his, and but for the ever coward's heart of a true lover he
could have sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for twenty
yards, and then wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway hoofs. The
bays had bolted.

Remsen sent his chestnut after the victoria like a shot. There was work
cut out for the impersonator of Policeman O'Roon. The chestnut ranged
alongside the off bay thirty seconds after the chase began, rolled his eye
back at Remsen, and said in the only manner open to policemen's horses :

"Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not O'Roon,
but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could reach the reins
of that foolish slow-running bay — ah! you're all right; O'Roon couldn't
have done it more neatly!"

The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen's tough
muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped reins, jumped
from his seat and stood at the heads of the team. The chestnut, approving
his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling equinely the subdued bays.
Remsen, lingering, was dimly conscious of a vague, impossible, unneces-
sary old gentleman in a Scotch cap who talked incessantly about some-
thing. And he was acutely conscious of a pair of violet eyes that would
have drawn Saint Pyrites from his iron pillar—or whatever the allusion
is— and of the lady's smile and look— a little frightened, but a look that,
with the ever coward heart of a true lover, he could not yet construe.

1404 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

They were asking his name and bestowing upon him well-bred thanks
for his heroic deed, and the Scotch cap was especially babbling and in-
sistent. But the eloquent appeal was in the eyes of the lady.

A little thrill of satisfaction ran through Remsen, because he had a
name to give which, without undue pride, was worthy of being spoken
in high places, and a small fortune which, with due pride, he could leave
at his end without disgrace.

He opened his lips to speak and closed them again.

Who was he? Mounted Policeman O'Roon. The badge and the^ honor
of his comrade were in his hands. If Ellsworth Reinsert, ten-millionaire
and Knickerbocker, had just rescued pomegranate blossoms and ^ Scotch
cap from possible death, where was Policeman O'Roon? Off his beat,
exposed, disgraced, discharged. Love had come, but before that there had
been something that demanded precedence— the fellowship of men on
battlefields fighting an alien foe.

Remsen touched his cap, looked between the chestnut's ears, and took
refuge in vernacularity.

"Don't mention it," he said, stolidly. "We policemen are paid to do
these things. It's our duty."

And he rode away— rode away cursing noblesse oblige, but knowing
he could never have done anything else.

At the end of the day Remsen sent the chestnut to his stable and went
to O'Roon's room. The policeman was again a well-set-up, affable, cool
young man who sat by the window smoking cigars.

"I wish you and the rest of the police force and all badges, horses, brass
buttons, and men who can't drink two glasses of brut without getting up-
set were at the devil," said Remsen, feelingly,

O'Roon smiled with evident satisfaction.

"Good old Remsen," he said, affably, "I know all about it. They trailed
me down and cornered me here two hours ago. There was a little row
at home, you know, and I cut sticks just to show them. I don't believe
I told you that my Governor was the Earl of Ardsley. Funny you should
bob against them in the Park. If you damaged that horse of mine I'll never
forgive you. I'm going to buy him and take him back with me. Oh, yes,
and I think my sister— Lady Angela, you know— wants particularly for
you to come up to the hotel with me this evening. Didn't lose my badge,
did you, Remsen? I've got to turn that in at Headquarters when I resign."

BRICKDUST ROW

Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would
have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman —

BRICKDUST ROW 1405

a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bored and sar-
donic while he rode in a hansom to the centre of disturbance, which was
the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who was agent for the Blinker
estate.

"I don't see," said Blinker, "why I should be always signing confounded
papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North Woods this morn-
ing. Now I must wait until to-morrow morning. I hate night trains. My
best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some unidentifiable trunk. It is
a plot to drive me to bay rum and a monologuing, thumb-handed barber.
Give me a pen that doesn't scratch. I hate pens that scratch."

"Sit down," said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. "The worst
has not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not
yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you to-morrow at eleven. You
will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless nose of
a Blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a haircut."

,"If," said Blinker, rising, "the act did not involve more signing of pa-
pers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a cigar,
please."

"If," said Layer Oldport, "I had cared to see an old friend's son
gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered you to
take it away long ago. Now, let's quit fooling, Alexander. Besides the
grinding task of signing your name some thirty times to-morrow, I must
impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business — of business,
and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about this five years ago,
but you would not listen — you were in a hurry for a coaching trip, I
think. The subject has come up again. The property "

"Oh, property!" interrupted Blinker. "Dear Mr. Oldport, I think you
mentioned to-morrow. Let's have it all at one dose to-morrow — signatures
and property and snappy rubber bands and that smelly sealing-wax and
all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I'll try to remember to drop in at
eleven to-morrow. Morning."

The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements, and hereditaments, as
the legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his
little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and rows
of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was sole heir. They
had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so incapable of pro-
ducing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport kept piling up in
banks for him to spend.

In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine. No-
body was there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to him
with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. Every-
body was out of town. But here he was kept in like a schoolboy to write
his name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were deep.

Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward who

1406 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

had come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe:

"Symons, I'm going to Coney Island." He said it as one might say:
"All's off, I'm going to jump into the river."

The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of
the audibility permitted by the laws governing employees.

"Certainly, sir," he Uttered. "Of course, sir, I think I can see you at
Coney, Mr. Blinker."

Blinker got a paper and looked up the movements of Sunday steam-
boats. Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a North River
pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and bought a ticket, and
was trampled upon and shoved forward until, at last, he found himself
on the upper deck of the boat staring brazenly at a girl who sat alone
upon a camp stool. But Blinker did not intend to be brazen; the girl was
so wonderfully good looking that he forgot for one minute that he was
the prince incog, and behaved just as he did in society.

She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind threat-
ened Blinker's straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it again. The
movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and smiled, and
in another instant he was seated at her side. She was dressed all in white,
she was paler than Blinker imagined milkmaids and girls of humble sta-
tions to be, but she was as tidy as a cherry blossom, and her steady, su-
premely frank gray eyes looked out from the intrepid depths of an un-
shadowed and untroubled soul.

"How dare you raise your hat to me?" she asked, with a smile-re-
deemed severity.

"I didn't," Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by extend-
ing it to "I didn't know how to keep from it after I saw you."

tcl do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been in-
troduced," she said with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. He
rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down to his
chair again.

"I guess you weren't going far," she declared, with beauty's magnifi-
cent self-confidence.

"Are you going to Coney Island?" asked Blinker,

"Me?" She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering surprise.
"Why, what a question! Can't you see that I'm riding a bicycle in the
park?" Her drollery took the form of impertinence.

"And I'm laying bricks on a tall factory chimney," said Blinker. "Mayn't
we see Coney together? I'm all alone and I've never been there before."

"It depends," said the girl "on how nicely you behave. I'll consider
your application until we get there."

Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his application.
He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his nonsensical phrase, he
laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of his devoirs until, at length,

BRICKDUSTROW 1407

the structure was stable and complete. The manners of the best society
come around finally to simplicity; and as the girl's way was that naturally,
they were on a mutual plane of communication from the beginning.

He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she
trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room with
her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that a glass of
milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that boils itself while
you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good enough for any one. Flor-
ence laughed when she heard "Blinker."

"Well," she said. "It certainly shows that you have imagination. It gives
the 'Smiths' a chance for a little rest, anyhow."

They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human
wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland
gone into vaudeville.

With a curious eye, a critical mind, and a fairly withheld judgment
Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized de-
lights. Hoi' 'polloi trampled, hustled, and crowded him. Basket parties
bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his feet, candying
his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the booths with hard-won
canes under one arm and easily won girls on the other, blew defiant
smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The publicity gentlemen with
megaphones, each before his own stupendous attraction, roared like
Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that could be tortured from brass,
reed, hide, or string, fought in the air to gain space for its vibrations
against its competitors. But what held Blinker in awful fascination was
the mob, the multitude, the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying,
panting, hurling itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon,
into the ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures. The
vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of repression and
taste that were held by his caste, repelled him strongly.

In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence by
his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy eyes,
as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were saying that
they had the right to be shining and happy, for was their owner not with
her (for the present) Man, her gentleman Friend and holder of the keys
to the enchanted city of fun.

Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he sud-
denly saw Coney aright.

He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now
looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their offenses
were wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish joys of these
spangled temples were, he perceived that deep under the gilt surface they
offered saving and apposite balm and 'satisfaction to the restless human
heart. Here, at least, *w£s the husk of Romance, the empty but shining

1408 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

casque of Chivalry, the breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight
of Adventure, the magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairy-
land, though its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no
longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no
magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination
turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphone into the silver
trumpets of joy's heralds.

Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and
Joined the idealists.

"You are the lady doctor/' he said to Florence. "How shall we go
about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?"

"We will begin there," said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda on
the edge of the sea, "and we will take them all in, one by one/' -

They caught the eight o'clock returning boat and sat, filled with pleas-
ant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the Italians' fiddle and
harp. Blinker, had thrown, off all care. The North Woods seemed to him
an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss he had made over signing his
name — pooh! he could sign it a hundred times. And her narne was as
pretty as she was — "Florence/* he said it to himself a great many times.

As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled,
drab, foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the,
bay. The boat turned its nose in towards its slip. The steamer veered as if
to seek mid-stream, and then yawed, seemed to increase its speed and
struck the Coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting into it with a
terrifying shock and crash.

While the si^ hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling
about the decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the
steamer that it, should not back off and leave the rent exposed for the
water to enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage sawfish and
cleaved its heartless way, full speed ahead.

The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the slip.
The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold.

Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. She
made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped off the
slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life preservers. He
began to buckle one around Florence. The rotten canvas split and the
fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in a stream. Florence caught
a handful of it and laughed gleefully.

"It looks like breakfast food," she said. "Take it off. They're no good."

She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down
and sat by his side and put her hand in his. "What'll, you het we don't
reach the pier all right?" she said, and began to hum a song.

And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled
order. The boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and, ordered .

BRICKDUST ROW 1409

the women and children to the bow, where they could land first. The boat,
very low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make his promise
good.

"Florence," said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, "I
love you."

"That's what they all say," she replied, lightly.

"I am not one of 'they all,' " he persisted. "I never knew any one I
could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every day.
I am rich. I can make things all right for you."

"That's what they all say," said the girl again, weaving the words
into her little, reckless song.

"Don't say that again," said Blinker in a tone that made her look at
him in frank surprise.

"Why shouldn't I say it?" she asked, calmly. "They all do."

"Who are 'they'?" he asked, jealous for the first time in his existence.

"Why, the fellows I know."

"Do you know so many?"

"Oh, well, I'm not a wall flower," she answered with modest com-
placency.

"Where do you see these—these men? At your home?"

"Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the boat,
sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I'm a pretty good judge
of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who is likely to get
fresh."

"What do you mean by 'fresh'?"

"Who try to kiss you— me, I mean."

"Do any of them try that?" asked Blinker, clenching his teeth.

"Sure. All men do. You know that."

"Do you allow them ? "

"Some. Not many. They won't take you out anywhere unless you do."

She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes were
as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look in them, as though
she did not understand him.

"What's wrong about my meeting fellows?" she asked, wonderingly.

"Everything," he answered, almost savagely. "Why don't you entertain
your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up
Tom, Dick, and Harry on the streets?"

She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his.

"If you could see the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live
in Brickdust Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the
bricks crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four
years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody
come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet the
men, hasn't she?"

I4IO BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "A girl has got to meet a — has got to meet
the men."

"The first time one spoke to me on the street," she continued, "I ran
home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good many nice
fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the vestibule until
one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a parlor, so I could ask
you to call, Mr. Blinker — are you really sure it isn't 'Smith,' now?"

The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking
with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a corner
and held out her hand.

"I live just one more block over," she said. "Thank you for a very
pleasant afternoon."

Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a
cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook his fist
at it through the window.

"I gave you a thousand dollars last week," he cried under his breath,
"and she meets them in your very doors. There is something wrong;
there is something wrong."

At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a new
pen provided by Lawyer Oldport.

"Now let me get to the woods," he said, surlily.

"You are not looking well," said Lawyer Oldport. "The trip will do
you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business of which
I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There are some buildings,
fifteen in number, of which there are new five-year leases to be signed.
Your father contemplated a change in the lease provisions, but never
made it. He intended that the parlors of these houses should not be sub-
let, but that the tenants should be allowed to use them for reception
rooms. These houses are in the shopping districts, and are mainly
tenanted by young working girls. As it is they are forced to seek com-
panionship outside. This row of red brick "

Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh.
"Brickdust Row for an even hundred," he cried. "And I own it. Have
I guessed right?"

"The tenants have some such name for it," said Lawyer Oldport.
Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes.
"Do what you please with it," he said, harshly. "Remodel it, burn it,
raze it to the ground. But, man, it's too late, I tell you. It's too late. It's
too late. It's too late.

THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER

Besides many things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but
that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an
artist, a traveller, a naturalist, and a discoverer. But most of all he was a
poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of verse; he lived his poetry. His
Odyssey would have been a Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger
with the primary proposition, Raggles was a poet.

Raggles's specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would have
been sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their reflec-
tions in mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of a dislocated
doll; as the men who write about wild animals study the cages in the zoo.
A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricks and mortar, peopled by
a certain number of inhabitants; it was a thing with soul characteristic
and distinct; an individual conglomeration of life, with its own peculiar
essence, flavor, and feeling. Two thousand miles to the north and south,
east and west, Raggles wandered in poetic fervor, taking the cities to his
breast. He footed it on dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars,
counting time as of no account. And when he had found the heart of a
city and listened to its secret confession, he strayed on, restless, to another.
Fickle Raggles! — but perhaps he had not met the civic corporation that
could engage and hold his critical fancy.

Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are feminine.
So they were to poet Raggles; and his mind carried a concrete and clear
conception of the figure that symbolized and typified each one that he
had wooed.

Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of
Mrs. Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with a
soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would awake
to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of ideals lost in
a depressing aura of potato salad and fish.

Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness and inaccuracy
in the description; but that is Raggles's fault. He should have recorded
his sensations in magazine poems.

Pittsburg impressed him as the play of "Othello" performed in the
Russian language in a railroad station by Dodcstader's minstrels. A royal
and generous lady this Pittsburg, though— homely, hearty, with flushed
face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid slippers, and bid-
ding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and drink champagne with
his pigs' -feet and fried potatoes.

New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He

1412 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

could see her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, and
that was all. Only once he came face to face with her. It was at dawn,
when she was flushing the red bricks of the banquette with a pail of
water. She laughed and hummed a chansonette and filled Raggles's
shoes with ice-cold water. Allons!

Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic and singu-
lar way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that the city
was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around his brow to
spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. And, after
all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the cloth, becoming wet,
tightened its knots and could not be removed.

Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you will say; but your disapprobation
should be tempered with gratitude, for these are poets* fancies—and sup-
pose you had come upon them in verse!

One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city of
Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learn her note
in the scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solve and label her and
arrange her with the other cities that had given him up the secret of their
individuality. And here we cease to be Raggles's translator and become
his chronicler.

Raggles landed from a ferry-boat one morning and walked into the
core of the town with the blase air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed with
care to play the role of an "unidentified man." No country, race, class,
clique, union, party clan, or bowling association could have claimed him-
His clothing, which had been donated to him piece-meal by citizens of
different height, but same number of inches around the heart, was aot
yet as uncomfortable to his figure as those specimens of raiment, self-
measured, that are railroaded to you by transcontinental tailors with a
suit case, suspenders, silk handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. With-
out money — as a poet should be — but with the ardor of an astronomer
discovering a new star in the chorus of the milky way, or a man who
has seen ink suddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles wandered into
the great city.

Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a
look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, dis-
comfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to read;
as country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-
answer rebuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one
as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window
to a lover outside fingering damply in his pocket his ribbon-counter
salary.

The greetings of the other cities he had known — their homespun kind-
liness., their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, garrulous
curiosity, and easily estimated credulity or indifference. Tnis city of

THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER 1413

Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him. Like a river of
adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an eye was turned upon
him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned for the clap of Pittsburgh
sooty hand on his shoulder; for Chicago's menacing but social yawp in
his ear; for the pale and eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eye-
glass—even for the precipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or
St. Louis.

On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood, bashful,
like any country swain. For the first time he experienced the poignant
humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried to reduce this brilliant,
swiftly Changing, ice-cold city to a formula he failed- utterly. Poet though
he was, it offered him no color similes, no points of comparison, no flaw
in its polished facets, no handle by which he could hold it up and view
its shape and structure, as he familiarly and often contemptuously had
done with other towns. The houses were interminable ramparts loop-
holed for defence; the people were bright but bloodless spectres passing
in sinister and selfish array.

The thing that weighed heaviest on Raggles's soul and clogged his
poet's fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to saturate
the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one that he considered
appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit. Humanity was
gone from them; they were toddling idols of stone and varnish, worship-
ping themselves and greedy for though oblivious of worship from their
fellow graven images. Frozen, cruel, implacable, impervious, cut to an
identical pattern, they hurried on their ways like statues brought by some
miracle to motion, while soul and feeling lay unaroused in the reluctant
marble.

Gradually Raggles became conscious of certain types. One was an
elderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled
face, and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded youth,
who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness and frigid uncon-
cern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, clear as a steel engraving,
goddess-like, calm, clothed like the princesses of old, with eyes as coldly
blue as the reflection of sunlight on a glacier. And another was a by-
product of this town of marionettes — a broad, swaggering, grim, threaten-
ingly sedate fellow, with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field, the
complexion of a baptized infant, and the knuckles of a prize-fighter.
This type leaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frapped
contumely.

A poet is a sensitive creature, arid Raggles soon shriveled in the bleak
embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, ironical, illegible,
unnatural, ruthless expression of the city left him downcast and bewil-
dered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, the scolding of vinegar-
faced housewives at back doors, the kindly spleen of bartenders behind

1414 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

provincial free-lunch counters, the amiable truculence of rural constables,
the kicks, arrests, and happy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud,
crude cities than this freezing heartlessness.

Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace.
Unheeding, regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelash to
testify that they were conscious of his existence. And then he said to
himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul;
that its inhabitants were mannikins moved by wires and springs, and that
he was alone in a great wilderness.

Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, a hissing
and a crash as something struck him and hurled him over and over six
yards from where he had been. As he was coming down like the stick of
a rocket the earth and all the cities thereof turned to a fractured dream.

Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him-ran
odor of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a hand soft as
a falling petal touched his brow. Bending over him was the woman
clothed like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and humid with
human sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silks and furs.
With Raggles's hat in his hand and with his face pinker than ever from a
vehement outburst of oratory against reckless driving, stood the elderly
gentleman who personified the city's wealth and ripeness. From a near-by
cafe hurried the by-product with the vast jowl and baby complexion, bear-
ing a glass full of crimson fluid that suggested delightful possibilities.

"Drink dis, sport," said the by-product, holding the glass to Raggles's
lips.

Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearing
the deepest concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got iato the
circle and pressed back the overplus of Samaritans. An old lady in a
black shawl spoke loudly of camphor; a newsboy slipped one of his
papers beneath Raggles's elbow, where it lay on the muddy pavement.
A brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names.

A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned- a lane through
the crowd. A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs.

"How do you feel, old man?" asked the surgeon, stooping easily to his
task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red drop or two from Rag-
gles's brow with a fragrant cobweb.

"Me?" said Raggles, with a seraphic smile. "I feel fine."

He had found the heart of his new city.

In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward in the
hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendants heard sounds
of conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggles had assaulted and
damaged a brother, convalescent — a glowering transient whom a freight
train collision had sent in to be patched up. ' k ,

"What's all this about?" inquired the head ntirse. , , •

VANITY AND SOME SABLES 1415

"He was runnin' down me town/' said Raggles.
"What town?" asked the nurse.
"Noo York," said Raggles.

VANITY AND SOME SABLES

When "Kid" Brady was sent to the ropes by Molly McKeever's blue-black
eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of
a colleen's blanderin* tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you are
a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 o'clock
to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you this
morning with a cold nose — a sign of doghealth and your happiness.

The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city
called the "Stovepipe," which is a narrow and natural extension of the
familiar district known as "Hell's Kitchen." The "Stovepipe" strip of
town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues on the river, and bends
a hard and sooty elbow around little, lost homeless De Witt Clinton park.
Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in any kitchen and the
situation is analyzed. The chefs in "Hell's Kitchen" are many, and the
"Stovepipe" gang wears the cordon blue.

The members of this unchartered but widely known brotherhood ap-
peared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the lilies of the
conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. Thus displayed as
a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an innocuous conversation in
a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual observer as innocent and immaterial
as that heard in the clubs Seven blocks to the east.

But off exhibition the "Stovepipes" were not mere street corner orna-
ments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was
the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this
was done by weird and singular tricks without noise or bloodshed; but
whenever the citizen honored by their attentions refused to impoverish
himself gracefully, his objections came to be spread finally upon some
police station blotter or hospital register.

The police held the "Stovepipe" gang in perpetual suspicion and
respect. As the nightingale's liquid note is heard in the deepest shadows,
so along the "Stovepipe's" dark and narrow confines the whistle for
reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there was smoke in
the "Stovepipe" the tasselled men in blue knew there was a fire in
"Hell's Kitchen,"

"Kid" Brady promised Molly to be good. "Kid" was the vainest, the
strongest, the wariest, and the most successful plotter in the gang. There-
fore, the boys were sorry to give him up.

1416 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. For, in the
Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for a guy to do as
his girl advises. ,. , ,

Black her eyes for love's sake, if you will; but it is all-to-the-good
business to do a thing when she wants you to do it.

"Turn off the hydrant," said the Kid, one night when Molly, tearful,

-- — • • • - - ••- •<-• — — •- —

work;
________ year well get married. I'll do it ror you. w c 11 &<^ a ^ and a

flute, and a sewing machine and a rubber plant and live as honest as we
can."

"Oh, Kid," sighed Molly,- wiping the powder off his shoulder with her
handkerchief, "I'd rather hear you say that than to own all of New York.
And we can be happy on so little!" ^

The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent* leathers
with a suspicion of melancholy.

"It'll hurt hardest in the rags department," said he. "I've kind ' of
always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap
things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing
apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the misfit parlors for it, for
mine. If I work I won't have so much coin to hand over to the little man
with the big shears."

"Never mind, Kid. I'll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I
would in a red automobile."

Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he
had been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now back to this
honorable and useful profession he returned, But it was as an assistant
that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and not the
assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and looks con-
temptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark's mansion,

Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had
"elapsed" on a theatre program. The Kid worked away at his pipes
and solder with no symptoms of backsliding. ThetStovepipe gang continued
its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policeman's heads, held up late
travellers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied Fifth
Avenue's cut of clothes and neckwear fancies, and comported itself ac-
cording to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and faithful to his
Molly, even though the polish was gone from his fingernails and it
took him 15 minutes to tie his purple silk ascot so that the worn places
would not show.

One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly's
house.

"Open that, Moll!" he said in his large, quiet way. "It's for you."

Molly's eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, and

VANITY AND SOME SABLES 1417

in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, dishwashy,
but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve.

Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew
and enveloped her neck like an anaconda.

"Russian sables," said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of Molly's
round cheek against the clinging fur. "The real thing. They don't grow
anything in Russia too good for you, Moll"

Molly plunged her hands into the muff, over-turned a row of the
family infants, and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. To
make bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and a bewitching smile; Recipe— one set
Russian sables. Apply.

When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice
of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness.

"You're a bird, all right, Kid," she admitted, gratefully. "I never had
any furs on before in my life. But ain't Russian sables awful expensive?
Seems to me I've heard they were."

"Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?" asked the
Kid, with calm dignity. "Did you ever notice me leaning on the remnant
counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten ? Call that scarf
$250 and the muff $175 and you won't make any mistake about the price
of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they look fine on you,
Moll."

Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile
went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the eye
sadly and steadily.

He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint
flush upon his face.

"Cut it out," he said, with affectionate roughness. "I told you I was
done with that. I bought 'em and paid for 'em, all right, with my own
money."

"Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?"

"Sure. I been saving up."

"Let's see — saved $425 in eight months, Kid?"

"Ah, let up," said the Kid, with some heat. "I had some money when
I went to work. Do you think I've been holding 'em up again? I told
you I'd quit. They're paid for on the square. Put 'em on and come out
for -a walk."

Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she
went forth in the streets at the Kid's side. In all that region of low-
lying streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The word sped,
and the doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see the swell
furs Kid Brady had given his girl. All down the street there were "Oh's"
and "Ah's" and the reported fabulous sum paid for the sables was passed
from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her right elbow sauntered the

1418 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

Kid with the air of a prince. Work had not diminished his love of pomp
and show and his passion for the costly and genuine. On a corner they
saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang loafing, immaculate. They raised their
hats to the Kid's girl and went on with their calm, unaccented palaver.

Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom,
of the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who
could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair
dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the in-
habitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then would tip
off to him something that he was looking for.

"What's the excitement down the street?" asked Ransom of a pale
youth in a red sweater.

"Dey're out rubberin' at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady staked his
girl to," answered the youth. "Some say he paid $900 for de skins. Dey're
swell all right enough."

"I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year,"
said the detective. "He doesn't travel with the gang any more, does he?"

"He's workin', all right/' said the red sweater, "but— say, sport, are
you trailin* anything in the fur line? A job in a plumbin' shop don't
match wid dem skins de Kid's girl's got on."

Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the
river bank. He touched the Kid's arm from behind.

"Let me see you a moment, Brady," he said, quietly. His eye rested
for a second on the long fur scarf thrown stylishly back over Molly's
left shoulder. The Kid, with his old-time police-hating frown on his face,
stepped a yard or two aside with the detective.

"Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote's on West 7— th Street yesterday to fix
a leaky water pipe ?" asked Ransom.

"I did," said the Kid. "What of it?"

"The lady's f 1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house about
the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has on."

"To h — Harlem with you," cried the Kid, angrily. "You know I've
cut out that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables yesterday at "

The Kid stopped short.

"I know you've been working straight lately," said Ransom. "I'll give
you every chance. I'll go with you where you say you bought the furs
and investigate. The lady can wear 'em along with us and nobody'll be
on. That's fair, Brady."

"Come on," agreed the Kid, hody. And then he stopped suddenly in his
tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly's distressed and anxious face.

"No use," he said, grimly.' "They're the Hethcote sables, all right.
Youll have to turn 'em over, Moll, but they ain't too good for you if they
cost a million."

Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid's arm.

THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE 1419

"Oh, Kiddy, you've broke my heart," she said. "I was so proud of you
now they'll do you — and where's our happiness gone?"

"Go home," said the Kid, wildly. "Come on, Ransom— take the furs.

Let's get away from here. Wait a minute—I've a good mind to No,

I'll be d— if I can do it—run along, Moll— I'm ready, Ransom."

Around the corner of a lumber-yard came Policeman Kohen on his
way to his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for assistance.
Kohen joined the group. Ransom explained. ,

"Sure," said Kohen. "I hear about those saples dat vas stole. You say
you have dem here?"

Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly's late scarf in his hands and
looked at it closely.

"Once," he said, "I sold furs in Sixth Avenue. Yes, dese are saples.

Dey came from Alaska. Dis scarf is vort $12 and dis muff "

, "Biff!" came the palm of the Kid's powerful hand upon the police-
man's mouth. Kohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The detec-
tive threw himself upon Brady and with Kohen's aid got the nippers on
his wrist.

"The scarf is vort $12 and the muff is vort $9," persisted the policeman.
"Vot is dis talk about $1,000 saples?"

The Kid sat upon a pile of lumber and his face turned dark red.

"Correct, Solomonski!" he declared, viciously. "I paid $21.50 for the
set. I'd rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, the swell
guy that wouldn't look at anything cheap! I'm a plain bluffer. Moll—
my salary couldn't spell sables in Russian."

Molly cast herself upon his neck.

"What do I care for all the sables and money in the world," she cried.
"It's my Kiddy I want Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy blockhead!"

"You can take dose nippers off," said Kohen to the detective. "Before
I leaf de station de report come in dat de lady vind her saples— hanging
in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you dat punch in my vace — dis
von time."

Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the Kid.
She wound the scarf and threw the end over her left shoulder with a
duchess's grace.

"A gouple of young vools," said Policeman Kohen to Ransom; "come
on away."

THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE

)

At the stroke of sixrJkey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was a
tailor's apprentice. Are there tailors' apprentices nowadays?

1420 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and -basted and pressed and
patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. But
when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his firma-
ment let shine.

It was Saturday night, and the boss laid twelve begrimed and be-
grudged dollars in his hand. Ikey dabbled discreetly in water, donned
coat, hat and collar with its frazzled tie, and chalcedony pin, and set
forth in pursuit of his ideals.

For each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal,
whether it be love or pinochle or lobster a la Newburg,. or the sweet
silence of the musty bookshelves.

Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring "El"
between the rows of reeking sweatshops. Pallid, stooping, insignificant,
squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body and mind, yet, as he
swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome inhalations from^ his
cigarette you perceive that he nurtures in his narrow bosom the bacillus
of society.

Ikey's legs carried him to and into that famous place of entertainment
known as the Cafe Maginnis— famous because it was the rendezvous of
Billy McMahan, the greatest man, the most wonderful man, Ikey thought,
that the world had ever produced.

Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger puirred,
and his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered, McMahan
stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing
concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had been an
election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been swept back
into line by ,a resistless besom of ballots.

Ikey slunk along the bar and gazed, breath-quickened, at his idol.

How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great, smooth, laugh-
ing face; his gray eye, shrewd as a chicken hawk's; his diamond ring,
his voice like a bugle call, his prince's air, his plump and active roll of
money, his clarion call to friend and comrade — oh, what a king of men
he was! How he obscured his lieutenants, though they themselves loomed
large and serious, blue of chin and important of mien, with hands buried
deep in the pockets of their short overcoats! But Billy — oh, what small
avail are words to paint for you his glory as seen by Ikey Snigglefritz!

The Cafe Maginnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated bar-
tenders threw themselves featfully upon bottle, cork and glass. From a
score of clear Havanas the air received its paradox of clouds. The leal
and the hopeful shook Billy McMahan's hand. And there was born sud-
denly in the worshipful soul of Ikey Snigglefritz an audacious, thrilling
impulse.

He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which majesty
moved, and held out his hand.

THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE 142!

Billy McMahan grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled.

Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey
threw away his scabbard and charged upon Olympus.

"Have a drink with me, Billy/' he said familiarly, "you and your
friends?"

"Don't mind if I do, old man," said the great leader, "just to keep the
ball rolling."

The last spark of Ikey's reason fled.
, "Wine," he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand.

The corks of three bottles were drawn; the champagne bubbled in the
long row of glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahan took his and nodded,
with his beaming smile at Ikey. The lieutenants and satellites took theirs
and growled "Here's to you." Ikey took his nectar in delirium. All drank.

Ikey threw his week's wages in a crumpled roll upon the bar.

"C'rect," said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar notes.
The crowd surged around Billy McMahan again. Some one was telling
how Brannigan fixed 'em over in the Eleventh. Ikey leaned against the
bar a while, and then went out.

He went down Hester Street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to
where he lived. And there his women folk, a bibulous mother and three
dingy sisters, pounced upon him for his wages. And at his confession
they shrieked and objurgated him in the pithy rhetoric of the locality.

But even as they plucked at him and struck him Ikey remained in his
ecstatic trance of joy. His head was in the clouds; the star was drawing
his wagon. Compared with what he had achieved the loss of wages and
the bray of women's tongues were slight affairs.

He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahan.

Billy McMahan had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved
the name "Mrs. William Darragh McMahan." And there was a certain
vexation attendant upon these cards; for, small as they were, there were
houses in which they could not be inserted. Billy McMahan was a dic-
tator in politics, a four-walled tower in business, a mogul, dread, loved
and obeyed among his own people. He was growing rich; the daily
papers had a dozen men on his trail to chronicle his every word of wis-
dom; he had been honored in caricature holding the Tiger cringing in
leash.

But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a
race of men from which he stood apart but that he viewed with the eye
of Moses looking over into the promised land. He, too, had ideals, even
as had Ikey Snigglefrjtz; and sometimes, hopeless of attaining them, his
own solid success was as dust and ashes in his mouth. And Mrs. William
Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent upon her plump but pretty
face, and the very rustle of her silks seemed a sigh.

1422 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

There was a brave and conspicuous assemblage in the dining saloon
of a noted hostelry where Fashion loves to display her charms. At one
table sat Billy McMahan and his wife. Mostly silent they were, but the
accessories they enjoyed little needed the indorsement of speech. Mrs.
McMahan's diamonds were outshone by few in the room. The waiter
bore the costliest brands of wine to their table. In evening dress, with
an expression of gloom upon his smooth and massive countenance, you
would look in vain for a more striking figure than Billy's.

Four tables away sat alone a tall, slender man, about thirty, with
thoughtful, melancholy eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly white,
thin hands. He was dining on filet mignon, dry toast and apollinaris.
That man was Cortlandt Van Duyckink, a man worth eighty millions,
who inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive inner circle of
society.

Billy McMahan spoke to no one around him, because he knew no one.
Van Duyckink kept his* eyes on his plate because he knew that every one
present was hungry to catch his. He could bestow knighthood and pres-
tige by a nod, and he was chary of creating a too extensive nobility.

And then Billy McMahan conceived and accomplished the most
startling and audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked
over to Cortlandt Van Duyckink's table and held out his hand.

"Say, Mr. Van Duyckink," he said, "I've heard you was talking about
starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. Fm
McMahan, you know. Say, now, if that's straight I'll do all I can to help
you. And what I says goes in that neck of the woods, don't it? Oh, say,
I rather guess it does."

Van Duyckink's rather somber eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank
height and grasped Billy McMahan's hand.

"Thank you, Mr. McMahan," he said, in his, deep, serious tones. "I
have been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad of
your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with you."

Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the
accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon
him in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan
trembled with ecstasy, so that her diamonds smote the eye almost with
pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were those
who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahan's acquaint-
ance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became enveloped in the
aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him.

"Wine for that gang!" he commanded the waiter, pointing with his
finger. "Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green bush.
Tell 'em it's on me. D n it! Wine for everybody!"

The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to

THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE 1423

carry out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house and its
custom.

"All right," said Billy, "if it's against the rules. I wonder if 'twould
do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, it'll flow all
right at the caffy to-night, just the same. It'll be rubber boots for any-
body who comes in there any time up to 2 A.M."

Billy McMahan was happy.

He had shaken the hand of Cortlandt Van Duyckink.

The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out of place
moving slowly among the push carts and trash-heaps on the lower east
side. So did Cortlandt Van Duyckink, with his aristocratic face and white,
thin hands, as he steered carefully between the groups of ragged, scurry-
ing- youngsters in the streets. And so did Miss Constance Schuyler, with
her dim, "ascetic beauty, seated at his side.

"Oh, Cortlandt," she breathed, "isn't it sad that human beings have
to live in such wretchedness and poverty? And you — how noble it is of
you to think of them, to give your time and money to improve their con-
dition!"

Van Duyckink turned his solemn eyes upon her.

"It is little," he said, sadly, "that I can do. The question is a large one,
and belongs to society. But even individual effort is not thrown away.
Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to build soup kitchens,
where no one who is hungry will be turned away. And down this other
street are the old buildings that I shall cause to be torn down and there
erect others in place of those death-traps of fire and disease."

Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it toddled
coveys of wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children. It
stopped before a crazy brick structure, foul and awry.

Van Duyckink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the
leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who
seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity — a narrow-
chested, pale, unsavory young man, puffing at a cigarette.

Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly
grasped the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke.

"I want to know you people," he said, sincerely. "I am going to help
you as much as I can. We shall be friends."

As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an un-
accustomed glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man.

He had shaken the hand of Ikey Snigglefritz.

1424 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

THE PURPLE DRESS

We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly in
repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it for
their especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their noses
to the genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and blue. We
say of princes that they are born to the purple; and no doubt they are,
for the colic tinges their faces with the royal tint equally with the snub-
nosed countenance of a woodchopper's brat. All women love it— when it
is the fashion.

And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course
other colors are quite stylish as well— in fact, I saw a lovely thing the
other day in olive-green albatross, with a triple-lapped flounce skirt
trimmed with insert squares of silk, and a draped fichu of lace opening
over a shirred vest and double puff sleeves with a lace band holding two
gathered frills— but you see lots of purple too. Oh, yes, you do; just take
a walk down Twenty-third Street any afternoon.

Therefore Maida — the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon-
colored hair in the Bee-Hive Store— said to Grace— the girl with the
rhinestone brooch and peppermint-pepsin flavor to her speech — "I'm
going to have a purple dress — a tailor-made purple dress — for Thanks-
giving."

"Oh, are you," said Grace, putting away some 7% gloves into the 6%
box. "Well, it's me for red. You see more red on Fifth Avenue. And the
men all seem to like it."

"I like purple best," said Maida. "And old Schlegel has promised to
make it for $8. It's going to be lovely. I'm going to have a plaited skirt
and a blouse coat trimmed with a band of gallooa under a white cloth
collar with two rows of "

"Sly boots!" said Grace with an educated wink.

"—soutache braid over a surpliced white vest; and a plaited basque
and "

"Sly boots — sly boots!" repeated Grace.

" — plaited gigot sleeves with a drawn velvet ribbon over an inside cuff.
What do you mean by saying that?"

"You think Mr. Ramsay likes purple. I heard him say yesterday he
thought some of the dark shades of red were stunning,"

"I don't care/* said Maida, "I prefer purple, and them that don't like
it can just take the other side of the street."

Which suggests the thought that after all, the followers of purple may
be subject to slight delusions. Danger is near when a maiden thinks she

THE PURPLE DRESS 1425

can wear purple regardless of complexions and opinions; and when
emperors think their purple robes will wear forever.

Maida had saved $18 after eight months of economy; and this had
bought the goods for the purple dress and paid Schlegel $4 on the
making of it. On the day before Thanksgiving she would have just
enough to pay the remaining $4. And then for a holiday in a new
dress — can earth offer anything more enchanting?

Old Bachman, the proprietor of the Bee-Hive Store, always gave a
Thanksgiving dinner to his employees. On every one of the subsequent
364 days, excusing Sundays, he would remind them of the joys of the
past banquet and the hopes of the coming ones, thus inciting them to
increased enthusiasm in work. The dinner was given in the store on one
of the long tables in the middle of the room. Th.ey tacked wrapping
paper over the front windows; and the turkeys and other good things
were brought in the back way from the restaurant on the corner. You
will perceive that the Bee-Hive was not a fashionable department store,
with escalators and pompadours. It was almost small enough to be called
an emporium; and you could actually go in there and get waited on and
walk out again. And always at the Thanksgiving dinners Mr. Ramsay

Oh, bother! I should have mentioned Mr. Ramsay first of all. He is
more important than purple or green, or even the red cranberry sauce.
Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for
him. He never pinched the girls' arms when he passed them, in dark
corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business was
dull and the girls giggled and said: "Oh, pshaw!" it wasn't G. Bernard
they meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay was queer
and original in other ways. He was a health crank, and believed that people
should never eat anything that was good for them. He was violently
opposed to anybody being comfortable, and coming in out of snow
storms, or wearing overshoes, or taking medicine, or coddling themselves
in any way. Every one of the ten girls in the store had little pork-chop-
and-fried-onion dreams every night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay. For, next
year old Bachman was going to take him in for a partner. And each one
of them knew that if she should catch him she would knock those cranky
health notions of his sky high before the wedding cake indigestion was,
over.

Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had
two Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in the
store.

And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsay — one
purple and the other red. Of course, the other eight girls were going to
have dresses too, but they didn't count. Very likely they'd wear some
shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs — nothing as resplendent as purple or red.

Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress ready-

1426 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

made. Oh, what's the use of bothering with a tailor— when you've got a
figger it's easy to get a fit— the ready-made are intended for a perfect
figger— -except I have to have 'em all taken in at the waist—the average
figger is so large waisted.

The night before Thanksgiving came, Maida hurried home, keen and
bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of
purple, but they were white themselves—the joyous enthusiasm of the
young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She -knew purple
would become her, and— for the thousandth time she tried to assure
herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsay said he liked and not red. She
was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of tissue paper in
the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was going to pay Schlegel
and take the dress home herself.

Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above
Maida's.

At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landlady's tongue
clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in buttermilk:
And then Grace came down to her room crying with eyes as red as any
dress.

"She says I've got to get out," said Grace. "The old beast. Because I
owe her $4. She's put my trunk in the hall and locked the door. I can't
go anywhere else. I haven't got a cent of money."

"You had some yesterday," said Maida.

"I paid it on my dress," said Grace. "I thought she'd wait till next week
for the rent."

Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle.

Out came — out it had to come — Maida's $4.

"You blessed darling," cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset.
"I'll pay the mean old thing and then I'm going to try on my dress. I
think it's heavenly. Come up and look at it. I'll pay the money back, a
dollar a week— honest I will."

Thanksgiving.

The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched
into Maida's room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. Maida
sat by the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist darning a
st . Oh, doing fancy work.

"Why, goodness me! ain't you dressed yet?" shrilled the red one. "How
does it fit in the back? Don't you think these velvet tabs look awful
swell? Why ain't you dressed, Maida?"

"My dress didn't get finished in time," said Maida. "I'm not going to
the dinner."

"That's too bad. Why, I'm awfully sorry, Maida. Why don't you put
on anything and come along— it's just the store folks, you know, and
they won't mind."

THE PURPLE DRESS 1427

"I was set on my purple," said Maida. "If I can't have it I won't go at
all. Don't bother about me. Run along or you'll be late. You look awful
nice in red."

At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the
time of the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls
shrieking over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachman's roar over his own
deeply-concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. Bachman,
who came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see Mr. Ramsay
moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of all.

At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless air
she slowly made her way to Schlegel's shop and told him she could not
pay the $4 due on the dress.

"Gott!" cried Schlegel, angrily. "For what do you look so glum? Take
him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass mine
shop every day in two years? If I make ctothes is it that I do not know
how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when you can.
Take him away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in him all right.
So. Pay me when you can."

Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and hurried
away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of rain struck upon
her face. She smiled and did not feel it.

Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose
wardrobes are charged to the old man's account, you cannot begin to
comprehend— you could not understand why Maida did not feel the
cold dash of the Thanksgiving rain.

At five o'clock she went out upon the street wearing her purple dress.
The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her a steady, wind-blown
pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with close-held umbrellas
and tight buttoned raincoats. Many of them turned their heads to marvel
at this beautiful, serene happy-eyed girl in the purple dress walking
through the storm as though she were strolling in a garden under summer

S K1CS

I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied
wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual longing
for pretty things—to starve eight months in order to bring a purple dress
and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed,
cy cloned?

Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and
she walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart
must have one crumb during a year. The rain ran down and dripped
from her fingers,

Some one turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into
Mr. Ramsay's eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest.

"Why, Miss Maida," said he, "you look simply magnificent in your

1428 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

new dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. And
of all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and intelligence.
There is nothing more healthful and invigorating than braving the
weather as you are doing. May I walk with you?"
And Maida blushed and sneezed.

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99

John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted
with what his comrades called Japanitis.

Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second
story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour of
the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions of both
the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of pins stuck in
the map which represented the opposing forces, and these he moved
about from day to day in conformity with the war news in the daily
papers.

Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, and
then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen
would hear him yell: "Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, huclfleberry-
eyed, monkey-faced hot tarnales! Eat 'em up, you little sleight-o'-hand,
bow-legged bull terriers—give 'em another of them Yalu looloos, and
you'll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your Russians— say, wouldn't
they give you painsky when it comes to a scrapovitch ? "

Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic
champion of the Mikado's men. Supporters of the Russian cause did
well to keep clear of Engine House No. 99.

Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes's head. That was
when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his driver's
seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the finest team in the
whole department — according to the crew of 99.

Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his
fellow-mortals, the greatest are these — the code of King Arthur's Knights
of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United States and the un-
written rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table
methods are no longer practicable since the invention of street cars and
breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more and
more unconstitutional every day, so the code of our firemen must be
considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffries's new punch
trying for place and show.

The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the
Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 1429

law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes
perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention
of the S. P.O. A.

One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of
protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A
steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes
like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled ashore
and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty— perhaps, theoretically,
thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of its own virus. This
hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered happily into the veins
of the city with the broad grin of a pleased child. It was not burdened
with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body was lithely built and clothed
in a sort of foreign fustian; its face was brightly vacant, with a small,
flat nose, and was mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like
the coat of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few
coins — denarii — scudi— kopecks— pfennings— pilasters — whatever the fi-
nancial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been.

Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar and
movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates had
shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he hated, as far
as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99. Light as a cork, he
was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the crudest atom in all the
silt of the stream that emptied into the reservoir of Liberty.

While crossing Third Avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the
thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the
wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful chord in
the uproar— the musical clanging of a gong and a great shining jugger-
naut belching fire and smoke, that people were hurrying to see.

This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the proto-
plasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, enrap-
tured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the path
of No. 99's flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms of
steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe.

The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions
or amendments. It is a simple thing— as simple as the rule of three.
There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the hose-
cart, and the iron pillar of the elevated railroad.

John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The
team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the
pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's strap
burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car
track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus— beautiful,
raven-black, best-loved Erebus— lay whickering in his harness with a
broken leg.

1430 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the de-
tails will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded
of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and
while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of No. 99
heard the crack of the S. P. C. A. agent's pistol, and turned their heads
away, not daring to look toward Erebus again.

When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one
of them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and
grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly about
it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered effervescently
and waved its hands.

"Sounds like a seidlitz powder/' said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, "and
it makes m'e sicker than one, Call that a man! — that hoss was worth a
steamer full of such two-legged animals. It's a immigrant — that's what
it is."

"Look at the doctor's chalk mark on its coat," said Reilly, the desk
man. "It's just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one of
them Finns, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads onto
us."

"Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up in
hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city," groaned another
fireman. "It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned." *

"Somebody go around and get Sloviski," suggested the engine driver,
"and let's see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of hair
and head noises."

Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third Avenue,
and was reputed to be a linguist.

One of the men fetched him — a fat, cringing man, with a discursive
eye and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him.

"Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski/'
requested Mike Dowling. "We can't quite figure out whether he's from
the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong-on-the-Ganges."

Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects, that ranged in
rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsillitis gargle
to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immi-
grant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger
ale.

"I have you his name," reported Sloviski. "You shall not pronounce it.
Writing of it in paper is better." They gave him paper, and he wrote,
"Demetre Svangvsk."

"Looks like short hand," said the desk man.

"He speaks some language," continued the interpreter, wiping his
forehead, "of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he
have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the Rouma-

THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 143!

nian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not quite under-
stand."

"Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?" asked Mike,
frowning at the polyglot description.

"He is a"— answered Sloviski— "he is a— I dink he come from— I dink
he is a fool," he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, "and if
you pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen."

"Whatever he is, he's a bird," said Mike Dowling; "and you want to
watch him fly,"

Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of
Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and bestowed
upon him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus of Com-
pany 09. Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, turning
once to show his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen.

In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital.
With great gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. "My
money on the Japs every time," he declared. "Why, look at them Rus-
sians— they're nothing but wolves. Wipe }em out, I say — and the little
old jiu-jitsu gang are just the cherry blossoms to do the trick, and don't
you forget it!"

The second day after Byrnes's reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk,
the unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than ever. He
managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose-cart
driver on his recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident.
This he accomplished by so many extravagant gestures and explosive
noises that the company was diverted for half an hour. Then they kicked
him out again, and on the next day he came back grinning. How or
where he lived no one knew. And then John Byrnes's nine-year-old son,
Chris, who brought him convalescent delicacies from horiie to eat, took
a fancy to Svangvsk, and they allowed him to loaf about the door of the
engine-house occasionally.

One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire Commis-
sioner buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped inside
for an informal inspection. Then men kicked Svangvsk out a little harder
than usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, in which every-
thing shone like my lady's mirror.

The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss
of Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that
would do him credit. So they let Joe out of his stall and showed the
Deputy how deserving he was of the finest mate that could be in h6rse-
dom.

While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into
the Deputy's auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a mon-
ster puffing and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. The

1432 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

big auto shot away, luckily taking a straight course down the street. The
boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the cushions and
howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped that auto except
a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to gain by such a stoppage.

Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another
kick when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others sprang
for the door Demetre sprang for Joe. He glided upon the horse's bare
back like a snake and shouted something at him like the crack of a
dozen whips. One of the firemen afterward swore that Joe answered
him back in the same language. Ten seconds after the auto started the
big horse was eating up the asphalt behind it like a strip of macaroni.

Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said
that the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the
middle of it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on its
back cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over and picked
the black speck out of the noise.

Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk's last kicking at the hands— or
rather the feet— of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through
the door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he was
going to receive. ^

Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe's and made
a noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his
nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of the delicatessen.

John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be
kicked. Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that
Demetre grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of punishment.

"The heathen rides like a Cossack," remarked a fireman who had seen
a Wild West show — "they're the greatest riders in the world."

The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever,

"Yas— yas— me Cossack/' he spluttered, striking his chest.

"Cossack!" repeated Jolin Byrnes, thoughtfully, "ain't that a kind of a
Russian?"

"They're one of the Russian tribes, sure," said the desk man, who read
books between fire alarms.

Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and, did not
know of the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called
to Byrnes.

"Hello there, Jimmy, me boy— how's the war coming along? Japs still
got the bear on the trot, have they ?"

"Oh, I don't know," said John Byrnes, argumentatively, "them Japs
haven't got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets a good whack
at 'em and they won't be knee-high to a puddle-dusksky."

THE LOST BLEND 1433

THE LOST BLEND

Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the
dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need not
listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, where a dime
dropped into the cold bouillon aperture will bring forth a dry Martini.

Con Lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Kenealy's cafe. You
and I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side and went into volun-
tary liquidation with our week's wages. Opposite danced Con, clean,
temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, punctual, trustworthy,
young, responsible, and took our money.

The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little
"places" which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited by
laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have
nothing to do with either.

Over the cafe lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter Katherine
had eyes of dark Irish— but why should you be told? Be content with
your Geraldine or your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; and when
she called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the pitcher of beer for
dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk punch in the shaker.
Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; and if you hurl the last shilling
of your fortune upon the bar for whiskey, the bartender shall take it,
and marry his boss's daughter, and good will grow out of it.

But not so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied
and scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom
the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the
obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle
coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before a woman he was
voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bash-
fulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler,
with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest
lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence of his divinity.

There came to Kenealy's two sunburned men, Riley and McQuirk.
They had conference with Kenealy; and then they took possession of a
back room which they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and
druggist's measuring glasses. All the appurtenances and liquids of a sa-
loon were there, but they dispensed no drinks. All day long the two
sweltered in there, pouring and mixing unknown brews and decoctions
from the liquors in their store. Riley had -the education, and he figured
on reams of paper, reducing gallons to ounces and quarts to fluid drams.
McQuirk, a morose man with a red eye, dashed each unsuccessful com-

1434 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

pleted mixture into the waste pipe with curses gentle, husky and deep.
They labored heavily and untiringly to achieve some mysterious solu-
tion like two alchemists striving to resolve gold from the elements.

Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered
Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bar-
tenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy s
store of liquors to follow their consuming and fruitless experiments.

Down the back stairs came Katherine with her smile like sunrise on
Gweebarra Bay.

"Good evening, Mr. Lantry," says she. "And what is the news to-day,

if you please?"

"It looks like r-rain," stammered the shy one, backing to the wall

"It couldn't do better," said Katherine. "I'm thinking there's nothing
the worse off for a little water." In the back room Riley and McQuirk
toiled like bearded witches over their strange compounds. From fifty
bottles they drew liquids carefully measured after Riley's figures, and
shook the whole together in a great glass vessel. Then McQuirk would
dash it out, with gloomy profanity, and they would begin again.

"Sit down," said Riley to Con, "and I'll tell you.

"Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this
nation of Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where
there's nothing to eat but quinine and nothing to drink but rum. The
natives and foreigners lay down with chills and get up with fevers; and a
good mixed drink is nature's remedy for all such tropical inconveniences.

"So we lays in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar fixtures
and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on a lime steamer.
On the way me and Tim sees flying fish and play seven-up with the cap-
tain and steward, and already begins to feel like the high-ball kings of
the tropics of Capricorn.

"When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to in-
troduce to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over to the
starboard binnacle and recollects a few things.

" ll forgot to tell you, boys,' says he, 'that Nicaragua slapped an import
duty of 48 per cent, ad valorem on all bottled goods last month. The
President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by mistake for tabasco
sauce, and he's getting even. Barrelled goods is free/

"'Sorry you didn't mention it sooner,' says we. And we bought two
forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we had
and dumped the stuff altogether in the casks. That 48 per cent, would
have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1,200 cocktail
rather than throw the stuff away,

"Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture
was something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea
soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt makes

THE LOST BLEND 1435

you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We gave a nig-
ger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a cocoanut tree three days
beating the sand with his heels and refused to sign a testimonial.

"But the other barrel! Say, bartender, did you ever put on a straw hat
with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a pretty girl
with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? That's what thirty
drops pf it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you
you would bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn't
anything more worth while around for you to lick than little Jim Jeffries.
Yes, sir, that stuff in that second barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money
and high life. It was the color of gold and as 'clear as glass, and it shone
after dark like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now
youll get a drink like that across the bar.

"Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it was
enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a hive of bees.
If that barrel had lasted that country would have become the greatest
on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a line of generals
and colonels and ex-presidents and revolutionists a block long waiting to
be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a drink. The last ten gallons
went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful stuff. It gave a man courage and
ambition and nerve to do anything; at the same time he didn't care
whether his money was tainted or fresh from the Ice Trust. When that
barrel was half gone Nicaragua had repudiated the National debt, re-
moved the duty on cigarettes and was about to declare war on the United
States and England.

" 'Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and 'twill be by
good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we've been trying. Small
lots at a time, we've mixed barrels of all the harmful ingredients known
to the profession of drinking. Ye could have stocked ten bars with the
whiskies, brandies, cordials, bitters, gins and wines me and Tim have
wasted. A glorious drink like that to be denied the world! 'Tis a sorrow
and a loss of money. The United States as a nation would welcome a
drink of that sort, and pay for it."

All the while McQuirk had been carefully measuring and pouring to-
gether small quantities of various spirits, as Eiley called them, from his
latest pencilled prescription. The completed mixture was of a vile, mottled
chocolate color. McQuirk tasted it, and hurled it, with appropriate epi-
thets, into the waste sink.

" 'Tis a strange story, even if true," said Con. "I'll be going now along
to my supper."

"Take a drink," said Riley. "We've all kinds except the lost blend."

"I never drink/' said Con, "anything stronger than water. I am just
after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word, There's
not anything,* says she, 'but is better off for a little water.' "

1436 BOOK XII THE TRIM MED LAMP

When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on
the back.

"Did ye hear that?" he shouted. "Two fools are we. The six dozen
bottles of 'pollinaris we had on the ship—ye opened them yourself—
which barrel did ye pour them in— which barrel, ye mudhead ? "

"I mind," said McQuirk, slowly, "'twas in the second barrel we
opened. I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it"

"We've got it now," cried Riley. " 'Twas that we lacked. Tis the
water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man,
and get two bottles of 'pollinaris from the bar, while I figure out the
proportionments with me pencil."

An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy's cafe.
Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the vicinity
where they labor, drawn by some mysterious attraction.

A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were
half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The
eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and as-
siduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon
the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness.

"Began fighting each other in the back room," explained Kenealy to
Con. "And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much
up. But they're good men. They'll pay for everything. Trying to invent
some new kind of cocktail, they was. Ill see they come out all right in
the morning."

Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went
through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs. ,

"Good evening again, Mr. Lantry," said she. "And is there no news
from the weather yet?"

"Still threatens r-rain," said Con, slipping past with red in his smooth,
pale cheek.

Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle.
Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of al-
cohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles.

On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom
of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid — a bright golden liquid that
seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths.

Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it.

As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the
stairs.

"No news yet, Mr. Lantry ?" she asked with her teasing laugh.

Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there.

"The news is," he said, "that we're to be married."

"Put me down, sir!" she cried indignantly, "or I will Oh, Con,

oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?"

A HARLEM TRAGEDY 1437

A HARLEM TRAGEDY

Harlem.

Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy's flat one flight below.

"Ain't it a beaut?" said Mrs* Cassidy.

She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye
was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. Her
lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red finger-marks on each
side of her neck.

"My husband wouldn't ever think of doing that to me/' said Mrs. Fink,
concealing her envy.

"I wouldn't have a man," declared Mrs. Cassidy, "that didn't beat me
up at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you. Say! but
that last dose Jack gave me wasn't no homeopathic one. I can see stars
yet. But he'll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the week to
make up for it. This eye is good for theater tickets and a silk shirt waist
at the very least."

"I should hope," said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, "that Mr.
Fink is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me."

"Oh, go on, Maggie!" said Mrs. Cassidy, laughing and applying witch
hazel, "you're only jealous. Your old man is too frappeed and slow to
ever give you a punch. He just sits down and practises physical culture
with a newspaper when he comes home — now ain't that the truth?"

"Mr. Fink certainly peruses of the papers when he comes home,"
acknowledged Mrs. Fink, with a toss of her head; "but he certainly don't
ever make no Steve O'Donnell out of me just to amuse himself— that's
a sure thing."

Mrs. Cassidy laughed the contented laugh of the guarded and happy
matron. With the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew down
the collar of her kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, maroon-
colored, edged with olive and orange— a bruise now nearly well, but still
to memory dear.

Mrs. Fink capitulated. The formal light in her eye softened to envious
admiration. She and Mrs, Cassidy had been chums in the downtown
paper-box factory before they had married, one year before. Now she and
her man occupied the flat above Mame and her man. Therefore she
could not put on airs with Mame.

"Don't it hurt when he soaks you?" asked Mrs. Fink, curiously.

"Hurt!"— Mrs. Cassidy gave a soprano scream of delight "Well, say
—did you ever have a brick house fall on you?— well, that's just the way
it feels— just like when they're digging you out of die ruins. Jack's got

1438 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

a left that spells two matinees and a new pair of Oxfords— and his right!
— well, it takes a trip to Coney and six pairs of openwork silk lisle threads
to make that good."

"But what does he beat you for?" inquired Mrs. Fink, with wide-open
eyes.

"Silly!" said Mrs. Cassidy, indulgently. "Why, because he's full. It's
generally on Saturday nights."

"But what cause do you give him?" persisted the seeker after knowl-
edge.

"Why, didn't I marry him? Jack comes in tanked up; and Tm here,
ain't I? Who else has he got a right to beat? I'd just like to catch him
once beating anybody else! Sometimes it's because supper ain't ready;
and sometimes it's because it is. Jack ain't particular about causes. He
just lushes till he remembers he's married, and then he makes for home
and does me up. Saturday nights I just move the furniture with sharp
corners out of the way, so I won't cut my head when he gets his work in.
He's got a left swing that jars you! Sometimes I take the count in the
first round; but when I feel like having a good time during the week
or want some new rags I come up again for more punishment. That's
what I done last night. Jack knows I've been wanting a black silk waist
for a month, and I didn't think just one black eye would bring it. Tell
you what, Mag, I'll bet you the ice cream he brings it to-night."

Mrs. Fink was thinking deeply.

"My Mart," she said, "never hit me a lick in his life. It's just like you
said, Mame; he comes in grouchy and ain't got a word to say. He never
takes me out anywhere. He's a chair-warmer at home for fair. He buys
me things, but he looks so glum about it that I never appreciate 'em."

Mrs. Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum.

"You poor thing!" she said. "But everybody can't have a husband like
Jack. Marriage wouldn't be no failure if they was all like him. These dis-
contented wives you hear about — what they need is a man to come home
and kick their slats in once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and
chocolate creams. That'd give 'em some interest in life. What I want is
a masterful man that slugs you when he's jagged and hugs you when he
ain't jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain't got the sand to do
neither!"

Mrs. Fink sighed.

The hallways were suddenly filled with sound, The door flew open at
the kick of Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame
flew and hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the iove
light that shines in the eye _of the Maori maid when she recovers con-
sciousness in the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged her
there.

"Hello, old girl!" shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and lifted

A HARLEM TRAGEDY 1439

her off her feet in a mighty hug. "I got tickets for Barnum & Bailey's,
and if you'll bust the string of one of them bundles I guess you'll find
that silk waist— why, good evening, Mrs. Fink— I didn't see you at first.
How's old Mart coming along?"

"He's very well, Mr. Cassidy— thanks," said Mrs. Fink, "I must be
going along up now. Mart'll be home for supper soon, I'll bring you
down the pattern you want to-morrow, Mame."

Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a meaningless
cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a cry from no par-
ticular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most transient and the most
hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why had Martin never thrashed
her? He was as big and strong as Jack Cassidy. Did he not care for her at
all? He never quarrelled; he came home and lounged about silent, glum,
idle. He was a fairly good provider, but he ignored the spices of life.

Mrs. Fink's ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between
plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or
stamp his foot on the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought
to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But now, to
vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired out, without
a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her sparring partner.
For one moment she almost hated Mame — Mame, with her cuts and
bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy voyage with her
fighting, brutal, loving mate.

Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of do-
mesticity. Beyond 'the portals of his cozy home he cared not to roam,
to roam. He was the man who had caught the street car, the anaconda
that had swallowed its prey, the tree that lay as it had fallen.

"Like the supper, Mart?" asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it.

"M-m-m-yep," grunted Mr. Fink.

After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his
stocking feet.

Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition
for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters in
Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, yarn, cot-
ton, lisle thread or woollen — does not the new canto belong?

The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr, Cassidy and
Mr. Fink ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would
parade and otherwise disport itself.

Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy*s pattern down early. Mame had on her
new silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday
gleam. Jack was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious scheme
for the day afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it.

A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her
flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following

1440 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin
Fink was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always un-
belabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant breathless idea came to
Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as able to
use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any Jack.

The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink
had the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two-weeks' wash
that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged feet
reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed.

Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink's heart and higher still surged an
audacious resolve. If her man woyld not strike her — if he would not so
far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in conjugal af-
fairs, he must be prompted to do his duty.

Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a stock-
inged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of unblended
suet in a pudding. This was his, level Elysium — to sit at ease vicariously
girdling the world in print amid the wifely splashing of suds and the
agreeable smells of breakfast dishes departed and dinner ones to come.
Many ideas were far from his mind; but the furthest one was the thought
of beating his wife.

Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the suds.
Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It sounded
like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face of the unslugged
bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink's time.

Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading.

"You lazy loafer!" she cried, "must I work my arms off washing and
toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a kitchen,
hound?"

Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared
that he would not strike— that the provocation had been insufficient. She
leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face with her clenched
hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love for him such as she had not
felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin Fink, and come .into your kingdom!
Oh, she must feel the weight of his hand now— just to show that he cared
—just to show that he cared!

Mr. Fink sprang to his feet— Maggie caught him again on the jaw
with a wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fear-
ful, blissful moment before his blow should come— she whispered his
name to herself— she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it.

In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face, was
powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat
above came the sound of a woman's voice, high-raised, a bumping, a
stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned— unmistakable sounds of
domestic conflict >.

THE GUILTY PARTY 144!

"Mart and Mag scrapping?" postulated Mr. Cassidy. "Didn't know
they ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?"

One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other
twinkled at least like paste.

"Oh, oh," she said, softly and without apparent meaning in the
feminine ejaculatory manner. "I wonder if — wonder if! Wait, Jack, till
I go up and see."

Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out from
the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink.

"Oh, Maggie," cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; "did he?
Oh, did he?"

Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed
hopelessly.

Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it gently.
Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, pink-and-white,
becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, unbruised, unmarred by
the recreant fist of Mr. Fink.

"Tell me, Maggie," pleaded Mame, "or I'll go in there and find out.
What was it? Did he hurt you — what did he do?"

Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her
friend.

"For God's sake don't open that door, Mame," she sobbed. "And
don't ever tell nobody — keep it under your hat. He— -he never touched
me, and — he's — oh, Gawd — he's washin' the clothes— he's washin* the
clothes!"

THE GUILTY PARTY

A red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window.
He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great satis-
faction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of blue, faded
carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed daily news
drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening paper,
eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be followed as a
chaser by the milder details of the smaller type.

, In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from
strong bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes
from the vespertine pipe.

Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which,
as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty host of
children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in rags, some in
clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks,

1442 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words,
some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to embrace — here were
the children playing in the corridors of the House of Sin. Above the
playground forever hovered a great bird. The bird was known to humor-
ists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie Street were better ornitholo-
gists. They called it a vulture.

A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and resting
by the window, and said:

"Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too
tired?"

The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window
answered, with a frown.

"Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have a
little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play with
the other kids on the sidewalk?"

The woman who was cooking came to the door.

"John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street. They
learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in the house
all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your time
to amuse her when you come home."

"Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be
amused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don't bother
me."

"You're on," said Kid Mullaly. "Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to
the dance. Put up."

The Kad's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and
challenged. He drew out his "roll" and slapped five tens upon the bar.
The three or four young fellows who were thus "taken" more slowly
produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder, took the
money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an inch-long pencil
and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash register.

"And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty," said a bettor, with
anticipatory glee.

"That's my lookout," said the "Bad," sternly. "Fill 'em up all around,
Mike."

After the round Burke, the Kid's sponge, sponge-holder, pal, mentor
and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon
corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours
Social Club were setded. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the
club's President and Secretary for -the fifth time that day, Burke spake
words of wisdom to his chief.

"Cut that blonde out, Kid," was his advice, "or there'll be trouble. What

THE GUILTY PARTY 1443

do you want to throw down that girl of yours for? You'll never find one
that'll freeze to you like Liz has. She's worth a hallful of Annies/'

"I'm no Annie admirer!" said the Kid, dropping a cigarette ash on
his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony's shoulder. "But I want to
teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She's been bragging that
I daren't speak to another girl. Liz is all right — in some ways. She's
drinking a little too much lately. And she uses language that a lady
oughtn't."

"You're engaged, ain't you?" asked Burke.

"Sure. We'll get married next year, maybe."

"I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer/* said Burke. "That
was two years ago, when she used to come down to the corner of Chrys-
tie bareheaded to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort of a kid
then, and couldn't speak without blushing."

"She's a little spitfire, sometimes, now," said the Kid. "I hate jealousy.
That's why I'm going to the dance with Annie. It'll teach her some
sense."

"Well, you better look a little out," were Burke's last words. "If Liz
was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an Annie,
I'd want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all right."

Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes
searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she
hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her small,
white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east side has added
to language.

Liz's skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink plaid,
well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster, ring of huge -imi-
tation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the bottom of a silver
chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high heels, and were
strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have passed into a flour bar-
rel.

The "Family Entrance" of the Blue Jay Cafe received her. At a table
she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her
carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner
of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied
wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited
upon. It was all that her world offered her of the prerogative of woman.

"Whiskey, Tommy," she said as her sisters further- uptown murmur,
"Champagne, James."

"Sure, Miss Lizzie. What'll the chaser be?"
1 "Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?"

"Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven't saw him to-day."

Fluently came the "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one
who required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee.

1444 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

Tm lookin* for W said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under
her nose. "It's got to me that he says hell take Annie Karlson to the
dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I'm lookin' for 'm. You know
me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid's been engaged. Look at that
ring. Five hundred, he said it cost Let him take her to the dance. What'll
I do? I'll cut his heart out. Another whiskey, Tommy."

"I wouldn't listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie," said the waiter
smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. "Kid Mullaly's not
the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?"

"Two years," repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under the
magic of the distiller's art. "I always used to play out on the street of
evening 'cause there was nothin' doin' for me at home. For a long time
I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights and the people goin' by.
And then the Kid came along one evenin' and sized me up, and I was
mashed on the spot for fair. The first drink he made me take, I cried all
night at home, and got a lickin' for makin' a noise. And now — say,
Tommy, you ever see this Annie Karlson? If it wasn't for peroxide the
chloroform limit would have put her out long ago. Oh, I'm lookin' for
'm. You tell the Kid if he comes in. Me? I'll cut his heart out. Leave it
to me. Another whiskey, Tommy,"

A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz walked up
the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a curly-haired child
sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled string. Liz flopped down
beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile on her flushed face. But her
eyes had grown clear and artless of a sudden.

"Let me show you how to make a catVcradle, kid," she said, tucking
her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes.

And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the
dance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was a bi-monthly
dance, a dress affair in which the members took great pride and be-
stirred themselves huskily to further and adorn.

At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced the floor with a- lady
on his arm. As the Loreley's was her hair golden. Her "yes" was
softened to a "yah/* but its quality of assent was patent to the most
Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, and — she
smiled into the eyes of 'Kid Mullaly.

And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the thing
happened to prevent which many lamps are -burning nightly in many
studies and libraries.

Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green
silk skirt, under the nom de guerre of "Liz." Her eyes were hard and
blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly, she
cried out one oath— the Kid's own favorite oath — and in his own deep
voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went frantically to

M45

pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the waiter — made good as
far as the length of her knife blade and the strength of her arm per-
mitted.

And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation — or was it self-
annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the natural branch?

Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying
through a grove of saplings at dusk.

And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient and
rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight and perver-
sion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved and cherished,
handed down from a long-ago century of the basest barbarity — the Hue
and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it survive, and here most
of all, where the ultimate perfection of culture, citizenship and alleged
superiority joins, bawling, in the chase.

They pursued — a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and
maidens — howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. Well
may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may his heart,
the gentler, falter at the siege. Knowing her way, and hungry for her
surcease, she darted down the familiar ways until at last her feet struck
the dull solidity of the rotting pier. And then it was but a few more
panting steps — and good mother East River took Liz to her bosom,
smoothed her muddily but quickly, and settled in five minutes the prob-
lem that keeps lights burning oj nights in thousands of pastorates and
colleges.

It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets
call them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed
the rest of this story.

I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; I
suppose I had been riding on the Ninth Avenue elevated or taking
patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing some such
little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there was a great
crowd of us outside the court-room where the judgments were going on.
And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing court-officer
angel would come outside the door and call another case.

While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether
there would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming that
I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and sang out:

"Case No. 99,852,743."

Up stepped a plain-clothes man — there were lots of Jem there, dressed
exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just like cops do on
earth— and by the arm he dragged — whom, do you think? Why, Liz!

The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to
Mr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case.

1446 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"A very sad one," says he, laying the points of his manicured fingers
together. "An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special Terrestrial Officer the
Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to me. The girl murdered her
fiance and committed suicide. She had no defense. My report to the
court relates the facts in detail, all of which are substantiated by reliable
witnesses. The wages of sin is death. Praise the Lord."

The court officer opened the door and stepped out.

"Poor girl," said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, with
a tear in his eye. "It was one of the saddest cases that I ever met with.
Of course she was "

"Discharged," said the court officer. "Come here, Jonesy. First thing
you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How would you like
to be on the missionary force in the South Sea Islands— hey? Now, you
quit making these false arrests, or you'll be transferred— see? The guilty
party you've got to look for in this case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy
man, sitting by the window reading, in his stocking feet, while his
children play in the streets. Get a move on you."

Now, wasn't that a silly dream?

ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS

Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are
forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met
and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their for-
tunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respecta-
bility and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous
and peculiar social curriculum of their over-weening and bumptious
civic alma mater.

The Captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral
cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high
and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his badge
and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the solid pieces
of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to accumulate. The pass-
ing of the flood left him low and dry. One month after his dishabilitation
a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck from his free-lunch counter as
a tabby plucks a strange kitten from her nest, and cast him asphaltward.
This seems low enough. But after that he acquired a pair of cloth-top,
button Congress gaiters and wrote complaining letters to the newspapers.
And then he fought the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who
tried to give him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the
hand of an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex Street,
and quoting the words of a song book ballad.

ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS 1447

Murray's fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All the
pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The mega-
phone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on a grand
and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about something,
and the prince had been escorted to the door by the butler, which, in
said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the avuncular shoe. A weak
Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he drifted downward to meet
his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the crusts of the streets with him.

One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great
bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase — drawing
irony instead of pity to his petitions for aid — was heaped against the arm
of the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by tufts of ver-
milion, week-old whiskers and topped by a sagging white straw hat,
looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that you may observe
in a dark Third Avenue window, challenging your imagination to say
whether it be something recent in the way of ladies' hats or a strawberry
shortcake. A tight-drawn belt — last relic of his official spruceness — made a
deep furrow in his circumference. The Captain's shoes were buttonless.
In a smothered bass he cursed his star of ill-luck.

Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of blue
serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little indistinct, like
some ghost that had been dispossessed.

"I'm hungry," growled the Captain — "by the top sirloin of the Bull
of Bashan, I'm starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery restau-
rant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't you think of
nothing, Murray ? You sit there with your shoulders scrunched up, giving
an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving his coach — what good are
them airs doing you now? Think of some place we can get something
to chew."

"You forget, my dear captain," said Murray, without moving, "that
our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion."

"You bet it was," groaned the Captain, "you bet your life it was. Have
you got any more like that to make — hey?"

"I admit we failed," sighed Murray. "I was sure Malone would be
good for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me
the last time I spent a nickel in his establishment."

"I had this hand," said the Captain, extending the unfortunate mem-
ber— "I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two sardine
sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us."

"I was within two inches of the olives," said Murray. "Stuffed olives.
I haven't tasted one in a year."

"What'll we do?" grumbled the Captain. "We can't starve."

"Can't we?" said, Murray, quietly. "I'm glad to hear that. I was afraid
we could."

1448 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"You wait here/5 said the Captain, rising heavily and puffily to his
feet. "I'm going to try to make one more turn. You stay here till I come
back, Murray. I won't be over half an hour. If I turn the trick 1 11 come

back flush."

He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance.
He gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a
pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by tighten-
ing his belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo rhinoceros, across
the south end of the park.

When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly
eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two
green lights. et

"A police captain named Maroney," he said to the desk sergeant, was
dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years ago.
I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the
police?"

"Why are ye asking?" inquired the sergeant, with a frown.

"I thought there might be a reward standing," explained Murray, easily,
"I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty shady at
present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there should be a
reward "

"There's no reward," interrupted the sergeant, shortly. "The man's
not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um, and
ye would be selling urn. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a start."

Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity.

"I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman," he
said, severely, "if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of its of-
fenders."

Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms
and shrank within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment.

Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy
and thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn away;
his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with oxblood
stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he was drenched with
some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly proclaimed to the nose its
component leaven of garlic and kitchen stuff.

"For Heaven's sake, Captain," sniffed Murray, "I doubt that I would
have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to resort
to swill barrels. I "

"Cheese it," said the Captain, harshly. "I'm not hogging it yet. It's all
on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed marriage to that
Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now,, that business could be built
up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be. I thought I had that seno-

ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS 1449

reena mashed sure last week. But look what she done to me! I guess I
got too fresh. Well there's another scheme queered."

"You don't mean to say," said Murray, with infinite contempt, "that
you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your dis-
graceful troubles!"

"Me?" said the Captain. "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl
of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal a
wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder."

"I think," said Murray, resting his head on his hands, "that I would
play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces of
silver I would "

"Oh, come now!" exclaimed the Captain in dismay. "You wouldn't do
that, Murray ? I always thought that Kike's squeal on his boss was about
the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his friend
away is worse than a pirate."

Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where
the electric light fell.

"Is that you, Mac?" he said, halting before the derelicts. His diamond
stick-pin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. He was big
and smooth and well fed. "Yes, I see it's you," he continued. "They told
me at Mike's that I might find you over here. Let me see you a few
minutes, Mac."

The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie Fin-
negan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must be
something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of shadow.

"You know, Mac," he said, "they're trying Inspector Pickering on
graft charges."

"He was my inspector," said the Captain.

"O'Shea wants the job," went on Finnegan. "He must have it. It's for
the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony
will do it. He was your 'man higher up' when you were on the force. His
share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the
stand and testify against him."

"He was" — began the Captain.

"Wait a minute," said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out
of his inside pocket. "Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty on
the spot, and the rest "

"He was my friend, I say," finished the Captain. "I'll see you and the
gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before I'll take
the stand against Dan Pickering. I'm down and out; but I'm no traitor
to a man that's been my friend." The Captain's voice rose and boomed
like a split trombone. "Get out of this park, Charlie Finnegan, where
us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; and take your dirty
money with you."

I45<> BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his
seat.

"I couldn't avoid hearing," said Murray, drearily. "I think you are the
biggest fool I ever saw."

"What would you have done?" asked the Captain.

"Nailed Pickering to the cross," said Murray.

"Sonny," said the Captain, huskily and without heat. "You and me
are different. New York is divided into two parts— above Forty-second
Street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both
act according to our lights."

An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that it
lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and
moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the park,
struck through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway, at this
hour as dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii.

Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their un-
kempt and slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he
would have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every street
in that part of the city other unkempt and slinking figures were shuffling
and hurrying toward a converging point— a point that is marked by no
monument save that groove on the pavement worn by tens of thousands
of waiting feet.

At Ninth Street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a
Broadway car and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray, pounced
upon him and dragged him under a street light. The Captain lumbered
slowly to the corner, like a wounded bear, and waited, growling.

" Jerry !" cried the hatted one. "How fortunate! I was to begin a search
for you to-morrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You're to be re-
stored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the 'office in the morning and
get all 'the money you want. I've liberal instructions in that respect."

"And the little matrimonial arrangement?" said Murray, with his
head turned sidewise.

"Why — er — well, of course, your uncle understands — expects that the
engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be "

"Good night," said Murray, moving away.

"You madman!" cried the other, catching his arm. "Would you give
up two millions on account of "

"Did you ever see her nose, old man?" asked Murray, solemnly.

"But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress, and "

"Did you ever see it?"

'Yes, I admit that her nose isn't- — "

"Good night!" said Murray. "My friend is waiting for me. I arri quoting
him when I authorize you to report that there is 'nothing doing.' Good
night."

A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT S DREAM 145!

A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth
Street far up Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain
and Murray fell in at the tail of the quivering millipede.

"Twenty feet longer than it was last night/' said Murray, looking up
at his measuring angle of Grace Church.

"Half an hour," growled the Captain, "before we get our punk."

The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward
slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a hissing
serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights closed up in
the rear.

A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT S DREAM

"The \nights are dead;
Their swords are rust.
Except a jew who have to hust-
Le all the time
To raise the dust!'

Dear Reader: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city
with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious and exhibit
compunction simultaneously. The heat was — oh, bother thermometers!

— who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so hot that

The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to
get your gin fizz now — as soon as all the other people got theirs. The
hospitals were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when little woolly
dogs loll their tongues out and say "woof, woof!" at the fleas that bite
'em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies screech "Mad dog!" and
policemen begin to shoot, somebody is going to get hurt. The man from
Pompton, N, J., who always wears an overcoat in July, had turned up in a
Broadway hotel drinking hot Scotches and enjoying his annual ray from
the calcium. Philanthropists were petitioning the Legislature to pass a
bill requiring builders to make tenement fire-escapes more commodious,
so that families might die all together of the heat instead of one or two
at a time. So many men were telling you about the number of baths
they took each day that you wondered how they got along after the real
lessee of the apartment came back to town and thanked 'em for taking
such good care of it. The young man who called loudly for cold beef
and beer in the restaurant, protesting that roast pullet and Burgundy
was really too heavy for such weather, blushed when he met your eye, for
you had heard him all winter calling, in modest tones, for the same ascetic

1452 BOOK. XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt waists, actors, and baseball excuses grew
thinner. Yes, it was summertime.

A man stood at Thirty-fourth Street waiting for a downtown car. A
man of forty, gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly dressed,
with a harassed look around die eyes. He wiped his forehead and laughed
loudly when a fat man with an outing look stopped and spoke with him.

"No, siree," he shouted with defiance and scorn. "None of your old
mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators
for me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do it.
New York, sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep in the
shade and watch your diet, and don't get too far away from an electric
fan. Talk about your Adirondacks and your Catskills! There's more solid
comfort in the borough of Manhattan than in all the rest of the country
together. No, siree! No tramping up perpendicular cliffs and being
waked up at 4 in the morning by a million flies, and eating canned goods
straight from the city for me. Little old New York will take a few select
summer boarders; comforts and conveniences of home — that's the ad.
that I answer every time/*

"You need a vacation,'* said the fat man, looking closely at the other.
"You haven't been away from town in years. Better come with me for
two weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at anything
now that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed a three-
pound brown last week."

"Nonsense!" cried the other man. "Go ahead, if you like, and boggle
around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish. When
I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at you fellows
whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat in the country think-
ing you are having a good time. For me Father Knickerbocker's little
improved farm with the big shady lane running through the middle
of it."

The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who
thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country boarded
a car and went buzzing down to his office. On the way he threw away
his newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky above the
housetops.

"Three pounds!** he muttered, absently. "And Harding isn't a liar. I
believe, if I could— but it's impossible— they've got to have another month
—another month at least.*'

In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, head fore-
most, into the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk, came and
added a spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams.

At 5 o'clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office
chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud:

"I wonder what kind of bait Harding used."

A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT S DREAM 1453

She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to
Gaines. Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew
that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire's son, and
that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure thing. But
white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with twenty-five's
lordly air.

The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that year.
There were two or three young college men and a couple of artists and
a young naval officer on one side. On the other there were enough
beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of a society paper
to refer to them as a "bevy." But the moon among the stars was Mary
Sewell. Each one of the young men greatly desired to arrange matters so
that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix the furnace, and have her
do away with the "Sewell" part of her name forever. Those who could
stay only a week or two went away hinting at pistols and blighted hearts.
But Compton stayed like the mountains themselves, for he could afford it.
And Gaines stayed because he was a fighter and wasn't afraid of mil-
lionaires' sons, and — well, he adored the country.

"What do you think, Miss Mary?" he said once. "I knew a duffer in
New York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could
keep cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn't he an awful silly?
I don't think I could breathe on Broadway after the ist of June."

"Mamma was thinking of going back week after next," said Miss Mary
with a lovely frown.

"But when you think of it," said Gaines, "there are lots of jolly places
in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and the— er— the
roof gardens."

Deepest blue was the lake that day—the day when they had the
mock tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in
a glade in the woods and caught curtain rings on the end of a lance.
Such fun!

Cool and dry as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed forest.
The valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A white mist
from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand's breadth of tree tops
halfway down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand with young
summer. Nothing on Broadway like that.

The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad drollery.
The woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and sprites.
Gaines caught most of the rings. His was the privilege to crown the
queen of the tournament. He was the conquering knight— as far as the
rings went. On his arm he wore a white scarf. Compton wore light blue.
She had declared her preference for blue, but she wore white that day.

Gaines looked about for the queen to crown her. He heard her merry
laugh, as if from the clouds. She had slipped away and climbed Chimney

1454 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

Rock, a little granite bluff, and stood there, a white fairy among the
laurels, fifty feet above their heads.

Instantly he and Compton accepted the implied challenge. The bluff
was easily mounted at the rear, but the front offered small hold to hand
or foot. Each man quickly selected his route and began to climb. A
crevice, a bush, a slight projection, a vine or tree branch— all of these were
aids that counted in the race. It was all foolery— there was no stake; but
there was youth in it, cross reader, and light hearts, and something else
that Miss Clay writes so charmingly about.

Gaines gave a great tug at the root of a laurel and pulled himself to
Miss Mary's feet. On his arm he carried the wreath of roses; and while
the villagers and summer boarders screamed and applauded below he
placed it on the queen's brow.

"You are a gallant knight," said Miss Mary.

"If I could be your true knight always," began Gaines, but Miss Mary
laughed him dumb, for Compton scrambled over the edge of the rock
one minute behind time.

What a twilight that was when they drove back to the hotel! The opal
of the valley turned slowly to purple, the dark woods framed the lake as
a mirror, the tonic air stirred the very soul in one. The first pale stars
came out over the mountain tops where yet a faint glow of

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gaines," said Adkins.

The man who believed New York to be the finest summer resort in
the world opened his eyes and kicked over the mucilage bottle on his desk.

"I — I believe I was asleep," he said.

"It's the heat," said Adkins. "It's something awful in the city these "

"Nonsense!" said the other. "The city beats the country ten to one in
summer. Fools go out tramping in muddy brooks and wear themselves
out trying to catch little fish as long as your finger. Stay in town and keep
comfortable — that's my idea."

"Some letters just came," said Adkins. "I thought you might like to
glance at them before you go."

Let us look over his shoulder and read just a few lines of one of them:

My dear, dear Husband: Just received your letter ordering us to stay
another month. . . . Rita's cough is almost gone. . . . Johnny has simply
gone wild like a little Indian. . . . Will be the making of both children
. . , work so hard, and I know that your business can hardly afford to
keep us here so long . . . best man that ever , . . you always preter^d
that you like the city in summer . . . trout fishing that you used to be
so fond of ... and all to keep us well and happy . . . come to you if
it were not doing the babies so much good. ... I stood last evening on
Chimney Rock in exactly the same spot where I was when you put the

THE LAST LEAF 1455

wreath of roses on my head . . . through all the world . , . when you
said you would be my true knight . . . fifteen years ago, dear, just think!
. . . have always been that to me ... ever and ever,

Mary

The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in
the country dropped into a cafe on his way home and had a glass of beer
under an electric fan.

"Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used," he said to himself.

THE LAST LEAF

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy
and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places"
make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two.
Aa artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a
collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this
route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been
paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling,
hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch
attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a
chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their
studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other
from California. They had met at the table d'hote of an Eighth Street
"Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop
sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted,

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the
doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here
and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode
boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the
maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman.
A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was
hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy
he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead,
looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the
next brick house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a
shaggy, gray eyebrow.

"She has one chance in— let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the

1456 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And that chance is for her to want
to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of the undertaker
makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up
her mind that she's not going to get well Has she anything on her
mind?"

"She— she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue.

"Paint? — bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about
twice — a man, for instance?"

"A man?" said Sue, with a jewVharp twang in her voice. "Is a man
worth — but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." :

"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that sci-
ence, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But when-
ever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I
subtract 50 per cent, from the curative power of medicines. If you will
get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I
will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."

After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a
Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy 's room with
her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy, lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her
face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate
a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing
pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way
to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and
a monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low
sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy s eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and
counting — counting backward.

"Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven"; and then "ten/' and
"nine"; and then "eight" and "seven," almost together.

Sue looked solicitously out of the window. What was there to count?
There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the
brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed
at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of
autumn had stricken its, leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches
clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now.
Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to
count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only
five left now."

"Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."

THE LAST LEAF 1457

"Leaves. On- the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've
known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"

"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnifi-
cent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well?
And you used to* love that vine, so, you naughty girl Don't be a goosey.
Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well
real soon were — let's see exactly what he said — he said the chances were
ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York
when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take
some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell
the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork
chops for her greedy self."

"You needn't get any more wine,'* said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed
out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That
leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then
I'll go, too."

"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to
keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done
working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light,
or I would draw the shade down."

"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.

"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Besides, I don't want you to keep
looking at those silly ivy leaves."

"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes,
and lying white and still as a fallen statue, "because I want to see the
last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn
loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one
of those poor, tired leaves."

"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for
the old hermit miner. Ill not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I
come back."

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath
them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling
down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. Behrman was
a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting
near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always
about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several
years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line
of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to
those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a pro-
fessional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming master-
piece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at
softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-
waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

1458 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly o£ juniper berries in his dimly
lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had
been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the
masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy 's fancy, and how she feared she
would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her
slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his con-
tempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

"Vassl" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die
because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of
such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunder-
head. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her?
Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."

"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind
morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do
not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old —
old flibbertigibbet."

"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not
bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say
dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot
at Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve
shall all go away. Gott! yes."

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade
down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room.
In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they
looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold
rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took
his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found
Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed.

But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had
endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick
wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its
stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution
and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the
ground.

"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during
the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the
same time."

"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow,
"think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"

But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is

THE LAST LEAF 1459

a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The
fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that
bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the
lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the
coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still
beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the
shade be raised.

The ivy leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue,
who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.

"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that
last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to
die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with a little
port in it, and — no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some
pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."

An hour later she said:

"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into
the hallway as he left.

"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his.
"With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case I have
downstairs. Behrman, his name is — some kind of an artist, I believe.
Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There
is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more
comfortable."

The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You've won.
Nutrition and care now — that's all."

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly
knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one
arm around her, pillows and all.

"I have something to tell you, .white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman
died of pneumonia torday in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The
janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs
helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold.
They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And
then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been
dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with
green and yellow colors mixed on it, and — look out the window, dear,
at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered
or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece-
he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."

1460 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST

One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue
boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young
lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore
a plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed
languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one
perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured his name,
and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the grace and
beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, business and
political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one from the tablets
of his consideration. t .

Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps enjoying his cigar.
There was a soft rustle behind and above him and Andy turned his
head— and had his head turned.

Just coming out of the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black
dress of crepe de— crepe de— oh, this thin black goods. Her hat was^ black,
and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a spider's web.
She stood on the top step and drew on black silk gloves. Not a speck of
white or a spot of color about her dress anywhere. Her rich golden hair
was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, into a shining, smooth knot low on her
neck. Her face was plain rather than pretty, but it was now illuminated
and made almost beautiful by her large gray eyes that gazed above the
houses across the street into the sky with an expression of the most
appealing sadness and melancholy.

Gather the idea, girls— all black, you know, with the preference for
crepe de—oh, crepe de Chine— that's it. All black, and that sad, faraway
look, and the hair shining under the black veil (you have to be a blonde,
of course), and try to look as if, although your young life had been
blighted just as it was about to give a hop-skip-and-a-jump over the
threshold of life, a walk in the park might do you good, and be sure to
happen out the door at the right moment, and— -oh, it'll fetch 'em every
time. But it's fierce, now, how cynical I am, ain't it? — to talk about mourn-
ing costumes this way.

Mr. Donovan suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of
his consideration. He threw away the remaining inch and a quarter of
his cigar, that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly
shifted his center of gravity to his low-cut patent leathers.

"It's a fine, clear evening, Miss Conway," he said; and if the Weather
Bureau could have heard the confident emphasis of his tones it would
have hoisted the square white signal, and nailed it to the mast.

THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST 1461

"To them that has the heart to enjoy it, it is, Mr. Donovan/' said Miss
Conway, with a sigh.

Mr. Donovan, in his heart, cursed fair weather. Heartless weather! It
should hail and blow and snow to be consonant with the mood of Miss
Conway.

"I hope none of your relatives— I hope you haven't sustained a loss?"
ventured Mr. Donovan.

"Death has claimed," said Miss Conway, hesitating — "not a relative,
but one who — but I will not intrude my grief upon you, Mr. Donovan."

"Intrude?" protested Mr. Donovan. "Why, say, Miss Conway, I'd be
delighted, that is, I'd be sorry — I mean I'm sure nobody could sympa-
thize with you truer than I would."

Miss Conway smiled a little smile. And oh, it was sadder than her
expression in repose.

"' Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and they give you
the laugh,' " she quoted. "I have learned that, Mr. Donovan. I have no
friends or acquaintances in this city. But you have been kind to me. I
appreciate it highly."

He had passed her the pepper twice at the table.

"It's tough to be alone in New York — that's a cinch," said Mr. Dono-
van. "But, say — whenever this little old town does loosen up and get
friendly it goes the limit. Say you took a little stroll in the park, Miss
Conway — don't you think it might chase away some of your mully grubs ?
And if you'd allow me "

"Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I'd be pleased to accept of your escort if you
think the company of one whose heart is filled with gloom could be
anyways agreeable to you."

Through the open gates of the iron-railed, old, downtown park, where
the elect once took the air, they strolled, and found a quiet bench.

There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old
age; youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares;. old
age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.

"He was my fiance," confided Miss Conway, at the end of an hour.
"We were going to be married next spring. I don't want you to think
that I am stringing you, Mr. Donovan, but he was a real Count. He had
an estate and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name.
I never saw the beat of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, and
once we eloped, but Papa overtook us, and took us back, I thought sure
Papa and Fernando would fight a duel. Papa has a livery business— in
P'kipse'e, you know.

"Finally, Papa came 'round, all right, and said we might be married
next spring. Fernando showed him proofs of his tide and wealth, and
then went over to Italy to get the castle fixed up for us. Papa's very proud
and, when Fernando wanted to give me several thousand dollars for my

1462 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

trousseau he called him down something awful. He wouldn't even let
me take a ring or any presents from him. And when Fernando sailed I
came to the city and got a position as cashier in a candy store.

"Three days ago I got a letter from Italy, forwarded from P'kipsee,
saying that Fernando had been killed in a gondola accident.

"That is why I am in mourning. My heart, Mr. Donovan, will remain
forever in his grave. I guess I am poor company, Mr. Donovan, but I
cannot take any interest in no one. I should not care to keep you from
gayety and your friends who can smile and entertain you. Perhaps you
would prefer to walk back to the house?"

Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick
and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave.
Young men are grave-robbers by nature. Ask any widow. Something
must be done to restore that missing organ to weeping angels in crepe de
Chine. Dead men certainly get the worst of it from all sides.

"I'm awful sorry," said Mr. Donovan, gently. "No, we won't walk back
to the house just yet. And don't say you haven't no friends in this city,
Miss Conway. I'm awful sorry, and I want you to believe I'm your friend,
and that I'm awful sorry."

"I've got his picture here in my locket," said Miss Conway, after wiping
her eyes with her handkerchief. "I never showed it to anybody; but I will
to you, Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be a true friend."

Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph
in the locket that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count Maz-
zini was one to command interest. It was a smooth, intelligent, bright,
almost a handsome face — the face of a strong, cheerful man who might
well be a leader among his fellows.

"I have a larger one, framed, in my room," said Miss Conway, "When
we return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of
Fernando. But he ever will be present in my heart, that's a sure thing."

A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan — that of supplanting the unfor-
tunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration for her
determined him to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking did not
seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful friend was
the role he essayed; and he played it so successfully that the next half-
hour found them conversing pensively across two plates of ice-cream,
though yet there was no diminution of the sadness in Miss Conway's
large gray eyes.

Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and brought
down the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk scarf.
Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes.

"He gave me this the night he left for Italy," said Miss Conway. "I had
the one for the locket made from this."

"A fine-looking man," said Mr. Donovan, heartily. "How would it

THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST 1463

suit you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure o£ your company to
Coney next Sunday afternoon?"

A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and
the other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black.

A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the
downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim kine-
toscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn a look
of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that love's lips
could not keep back any longer the question that love's heart propounded.

"What's the matter, Andy? you are so solemn and grouchy to-night?"

"Nothing, Maggie."

"I know better. Can't I tell? You never acted this way before. What
is it?"

"It's nothing much, Maggie."

"Yes it is; and I want to know. I'll bet it's some other girl you are
thinking about. All right. Why don't you go get her if you want her?
Take your arm away, if you please."

"I'll tell you then," said Andy, wisely, "but I guess you won't under-
stand it exactly. You've heard of Mike Sullivan, haven't you? 'Big Mike'
Sullivan, everybody calls him."

"No, I haven't," said Maggie. "And I don't want to, if he makes you
act like this. Who is he?"

"He's the biggest man in New York," said Andy, almost reverently.
"He can about do anything he wants to with Tammany or any other old
thing in the political line. He's a mile high and as broad as East River.
You say anything against Big Mike, and you'll, have a million men on
your collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit over to the
old country awhile back, and the kings took to their holes like rabbits.

"Well, Big Mike's a friend of mine. I ain't more than deuce-high in
the district as far as influence goes, but Mike's as good a friend to a little
man, or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him to-day on the Bowery,
and what do you think he does? Comes up and shakes hands. 'Andy,*
says he, Tve been keeping cases on you. You've been putting in some
good licks over on your side of the street, and I'm proud of you. Whatll
you take to drink?' He takes a cigar and I take a highball. I told him I
was going to get married in two weeks. eAndy,' says he, 'send me an in-
vitation, so I'll keep in mind of it, and I'll come to the wedding.' That's
what Big Mike says to me; and he always does what he says.

"You don't understand it, Maggie, but I'd have one of my hands cut
off to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would be the proudest
day of my life. When he goes to a man's wedding, there's a guy being
married that's made for life. Now, that's why" I'm maybe looking sore
to-night."

1464 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"Why don't you invite him, then, if he's so much to the mustard?" said
M[3.2rffic lishtlv

"The're's a reason why I can't," said Andy, sadly. "There's a reason why
he mustn't be there. Don't ask me what it is, for I can't tell you." ^

"Oh, I don't care," said Maggie. "It's something about politics, of
course. But it's no reason why you can't smile at me."

"Maggie," said Andy, presently, "do you think as much of me as you
did of your— as you did of the Count Mazzini?"

He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply. And then, suddenly
she leaned against his shoulder and began to cry— to cry and shake with
sobs, holding his arm tightly, and wetting the crepe de Chine with tears.

"There, there, there!" soothed Andy, putting aside his own trouble.
"And what is it, now?"

"Andy," sobbed Maggie, 'Tve lied to you, and youll never marry me,
or love me any more. But I feel that I've got to tell Andy, there never
was so much as the little finger of a count. I never had a beau in my life.
But all the other girls had; and they talked about 'em; and that seemed
to make the fellows like 'em more. And, Andy, I look swell in black—
you know I do. So I went out to a photograph store and bought that
picture, and had a little one made for my locket, and made up all that
story about the Count and about his being killed, so I could wear black.
And nobody can love a liar, and you'll shake me, Andy, and I'll die for
shame. Oh, there never was anybody I liked but you— and that's all."

But instead of being pushed away, she found Andy's arm folding her
closer. She looked up and saw his face cleared and smiling.

"Could you — could you forgive me, Andy?"

"Sure," said Andy. "It's all right about that. Back to the cemetery for
the Count. You've straightened everything out, Maggie. I was in hopes
you would before the wedding-day, Bully girl!"

"Andy," said Maggie, with a somewhat shy smile, after she had been
thoroughly assured of forgiveness, "did you believe all that story about
the Count?"

"Well, not to any large extent," said Andy, reaching for his cigar case;
"because it's Big Mike Sullivan's picture you've got in that locket of
yours."

THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION

The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject; for he can then
set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of
what it is not — and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow -.the
prolix and unmapable trail into that mooted country, Bohemia.

THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION 1465

Grainger, sub-editor of Doc's Magazine, closed his roll-top desk, put
on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the "down" button, and waited
for the elevator.

Grainger Js day had been trying. The chief had tried to ruin the maga-
zine a dozen times by going against Grainger's ideas for running it. A
lady whose grandfather had fought with McClellan had brought a port-
folio of poems in person.

Grainger was curator of the Lion's House of the magazine. That day
he had "lunched" an Arctic explorer, a short-story writer, and the famous
conductor of a slaughter-house expose. Consequently his mind was in a
whirl of icebergs, Maupassant, and trichinosis.

But there was a surcease and a recourse; there was Bohemia. He would
seek distraction there; and, let's see — he would call by for Mary Adrian,

Half an hour later he threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid-hunter
through the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the "Idealia" apart-
ment-house. One day the christeners of apartment-houses and the cog-
nominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there will be some jealous and
sanguinary knifing.

The clerk breathed Grainger's name so languidly into the house tele-
phone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, down to
the janitor's regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily up to Miss Adrian's
ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to come up immediately.

A colored maid with an Eliza-crossing-the-ice expression opened the
door of the apartment for him. Grainger walked sideways down the nar-
row hall. A bunch of burnt-umber hair and a sea-green eye appeared in
the crack of a door. A long, white, undraped arm came out, barring the
way.

"So glad you came, Ricky, instead of any of the others," said the eye.
"Light a cigarette and give it to me. Going to take me to dinner? Fine.
Go into the front room till I finish dressing. But don't sit in your usual
chair. There's pie in it — meringue. Kappelman threw it at Reeves last
evening while he was reciting. Sophy has just come to straighten up.
Is it lit? Thanks. There's Scotch on the mantel— oh, no, it isn't— that's
chartreuse. Ask Sophy to find you some. I won't be long.'*

Grainger escaped the meringue. As he waited his spirits sank still
lower. The atmosphere of the room was as vapid as a zephyr wandering
over a Vesuvian lava-bed. Relics of some feast lay about the room, scat-
tered in places where even a prowling cat would have been surprised to
find them. A straggling cluster of deep red roses in a marmalade jar
bowed their heads over tobacco ashes and unwashed goblets. A chafing-
dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet music supported a stack of sand-
wiches in a chair.

Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black
fabric whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to sum-

1466 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

mon visions ranging between the extremes of man's experiences. Spelled
with an "e" it belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous dreams: with
an "a" it drapes lamentation and woe.

That evening they went to the Cafe Andre. And, as people would con-
fide to you in a whisper that Andre's was the only truly Bohemian
restaurant in townr it may be well to follow them.

Andre began his professional career as a waiter in a Bowery ten-cent
eating-house. Had you seen him there you would have called him
tough— to yourself. Not aloud, for he would have "soaked" you as quickly
as he would have soaked his thumb in your coffee. He saved money
and started a basement table d'hote in Eighth (or Ninth) Street. One
afternoon Andre drank too much absinthe. He announced to his startled
family that he was the Grand Lama of Thibet, therefore requiring an
empty audience hall in which to be worshiped. He moved all the tables
and chairs from the restaurant into the back yard, wrapped a red table-
cloth around himself, and sat on a step-ladder for a throne. When the
diners began to arrive, Madame, in a flurry of despair, laid cloths -and
ushered them, trembling, outside. Between the tables clothes-lines-were
stretched, bearing the family wash. A party of Bohemia hunters greeted
the artistic innovation with shrieks and acclamations of delight. That
week's washing was not taken in for two years. When Andre came to his
senses he had the menu printed on stiffly starched cuffs, and served the
ices in little wooden tubs. Next he took down his sign and darkened the
front of the house. When you went there to dine you fumbled for an
electric button and pressed it. A lookout slid open a panel in the door,
looked at you suspiciously, and asked if you were acquainted with Senator
Herodotus Q. McMilligan, of the Chickasaw Nation. If you were you
were admitted and allowed to dine. If you were not, you were ad-
mitted and allowed to dine. There you have one of the abiding prin-
ciples of Bohemia. When Andre had accumulated $20,000 he moved
uptown, near Broadway, in the fierce light that beats upon the thrown-
down. There we find him and leave him, with customers in pearls and
automobile veils, striving to catch his excellently graduated nod of recog-
nition.

There is a large round table in the northeast corner of Andre's at which
six can sit. To this table Grainger and Mary Adrian made their way.
Kappelman and Reeves were already there. And Miss Tooker, who
designed the May cover for the Ladies' Notathome Magazine. And Mrs.
Pothunter, who never drank anything but black-and-white highballs,
being in mourning for her husband, who— oh, I've forgotten what he did
— died, like as not.

Spaghetti-weary reader, wouldst take one penny-in-the-slot peep into
the fair land of Bohemia? Then look; and when you think you have seen
it you have not. And it is neither thimbleriggery nor astigmatism.

THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION 1467

The walls of the Cafe Andre were covered with original sketches by
the artists who furnished much of the color and sound of the place. Fair
woman furnished the theme for the bulk of the drawings. When you
say "sirens and siphons" you come near to estimating the alliterative
atmosphere of Andre's.

First, I want you to meet my friend, Miss Adrian. Miss Tooker and
Mrs. Pothunter you already know. While she tucks in the fingers of her
elbow gloves you shall have her daguerreotype. So faint and uncertain
shall the portrait be:

Age, somewhere between twenty-seven and high-neck evening dresses.
Camaraderie in large bunches — whatever the fearful word may mean.
Habitat — anywhere from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego. Temperament
uncharted — she let Reeves squeeze her hand after he recited one of his
poems; but she counted the change after sending him out with a dollar
to buy some pickled pigs' feet. Deportment 75 out of a possible 100.
Morals loo.

Mary was one of the princesses of Bohemia. In the first place, it was a
royal and a daring thing to have been named Mary. There are twenty
Fifines and Heloi'ses to one Mary in the Country of Elusion.
, Now her gloves are tucked in. Miss Tooker has assumed a June poster
pose; Mrs. Pothunter has bitten her lips to make the red show; Reeves
has several times felt his coat to make sure that his latest poem is in the
pocket. (It had been neatly typewritten; but he had copied it on the back
of letters with a pencil.) Kappelman is underhandedly watching the
clock. It is ten minutes to nine. When the hour comes it is to remind him
of a story. Synopsis: A French girl says to her suitor: "Did you ask my
father for my hand at nine o'clock this morning, as you said you would?"
"I did not," he replies. "At nine o'clock I was fighting a duel with swords
in the Bois de Boulogne." "Coward!" she hisses.

The dinner was ordered. You know how long the Bohemian feast of
reason keeps up with the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with
the soup; repartee with the entree; brag with the roast; knocks for
Whistler and Kipling with the salad; songs with the coffee, the slap-
sticks with the cordials.

Between Miss Adrian's eyebrows was the pucker that shows the intense
strain it requires to be at ease in Bohemia. Pat must come each sally, mot,
and epigram. Every second of deliberation upon a reply costs you a bay
leaf. Fine as a hair, a line began to curve from her nostrils to her mouth.
To hold her own not a chance must be missed. A sentence addressed to
her must be as a piccolo, each word of it a stop, which she must be pre-
pared to seize upon and play. And she must always be quicker than a
Micmac Indian to paddle the light canoe of conversation away from the
rocks in the rapids that flow from the Pierian spring. For, plodding
reader, the handwriting on the wall in the banquet hall of Bohemia is

1468 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"kisser faire" The gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings
of smoke is that of slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that
holds them in slavery.

As the dinner waned, hands reached for the pepper cruet rather than
for the shaker of Attic salt. Miss looker, with an elbow to business,
leaned across the table toward Grainger, upsetting her glass of wine.

"Now, while you are fed and in good humor/' she said, "I want to
make a suggestion to you about a new cover."

"A good idea," said Grainger, mopping the tablecloth with his napkin.
Til speak to the waiter about it."

Kappelman, the painter, was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate Athenian
wit he got up from -his chair and waltzed down the room with a waiter.
The dependent, no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, worthy, tax-paying,
art-despising biped, released himself from the unequal encounter, carried
his professional smile back to the dumbwaiter and dropped it down the
shaft to eternal oblivion. Reeves began to make Keats turn in his grave.
Mrs. Pothunter told the story of the men who met the widow on the
train. Miss Adrian hummed what is still called a chanson in the cafes, of
Bridgeport. Grainger edited each individual effort with his assistant
editor's smile, which meant: "Great! but you'll have to send them in
through the regular channels. If I were the chief now— but you know
how it is.**

And soon the head waiter bowed before them, desolated to relate that
the closing hour had already become chronologically historical; so out
all trooped into the starry midnight, filling the street with gay laughter,
to be barked at by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed by the dull in-
habitants of an uninspired world.

Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of the
Idealia. After he had gone she came down again carrying a small hand-
bag, 'phoned for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, boarded a
12.55 commuter's train, rode four hours with her burnt-umber head bob-
bing against the red-plush back of the seat, and landed during a fresh,
stinging, glorious sunrise at a deserted station, the size of a peach crate,
called Crocusville.

She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown
cottage stood twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, Cal-
vmistic face and clothes dyed blacker than a raven in a coal-mine was
washing his hands in a tin basin on the front porch.

"How are you, Father?" said Mary timidly.

"I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your
mother in the kitchen."

In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the fore-
head, and pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for

THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION 1469

breakfast* Mary sat in a wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a
thrill in her heart.

For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and tea.

"You are pursuing the same avocation in the city concerning which
you have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust," said her father.

"Yes," said Mary. "I am still reviewing books for the same publica-
tion."

After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat in
straight-back chairs in the barefloored parlor.

"It is my custom," said the old man, "on the Sabbath day to read aloud
from the great work entitled the 'Apology for Authorized and Set Forms
of Liturgy,' by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered theologian
Jeremy Taylor."

"I know it," said Mary blissfully, folding her hands.

For two hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the
notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the
new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair
brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the mar-
tyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of tom-tom. "Why,
oh why," she said to herself, "does some one not write words to it?"

At eleven they went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine
bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would have
brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The preacher
singled her out, and thundered *pon her vicarious head the damnation
of the world. At each side of her an adamant parent held her rigidly to the
bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her neck, but she dared not move.
She lowered her eyes before the congregation — a hundred-eyed Cerberus
that watched the gates through which her sins were fast thrusting her.
Her soul was filled with a delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out
of the clutch of the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned her
with beneficent cruelty, as steel braces bind the feet of a crippled child.
She was hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, strait-jacketed, silenced,
ordered. When they came out the minister stopped to greet them. Mary
could only hang her head and answer "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to his
questions. When she saw that the other women carried their hymn-
books at their waists with their left hands, she blushed and moved hers
there, too, from her right.

She took the three-o'clock train back to the city. At nine she sat at the
round table for dinner in the Cafe Andre. Nearly the same crowd was
there.

"Where have you been to-day?" asked Mrs. Pothunter. "I 'phoned to
you at twelve."

"I have been away in Bohemia," answered Mary, with a mystic smile.

There! Mary has given it away. She has spoiled my climax. For I was

1470 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

to have told you that Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in
which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the
court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away
beyond the hills. It is a hillside that you turn your head to peer at from
the windows of the Through Express.

At exactly half-past eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness and
slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. Instantly
she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that he shrank
down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across his leering
features. And all sounds ceased, as when the shadows of great wings
come upon a flock of chattering sparrows. One had broken the paramount
law of sham-Bohemia— the law of "Laisser faire." The shock came not
from the blow delivered, but from the blow received. With the effect of
a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his pupils was that blow admin-
istered. Women pulled down their sleeves and laid prim hands against
their ruffled side locks. Men looked at their watches. There was nothing
of the effect of a brawl about it; it was purely the still panic produced
by the sound of the ax of the fly cop, Conscience, hammering at the
gambling-house doors of the Heart.

With their punctilious putting on of cloaks, with their exaggerated
pretense of not having seen or heard, with their stammering exchange
of unaccustomed formalities, with their false show of a light-hearted exit
I must take leave of my Bohemian party. Mary has robbed me of my
climax; and she may go.

But I am not defeated. Somewhere there exists a great vault miles
broad and miles long— more capacious than the champagne caves of
France. In that vault are stored the anti-climaxes that should have been
tagged to all the stories that have been told in the world. I shall cheat
that vault of one deposit,

Minnie Brown, with her aunt, came from Crocusville down to the city
to see the sights. And because she had escorted me to fishless trout streams
and exhibited to me open-plumbed waterfalls and broken my camera
while I Julyed in her village, I must escort her to the hives containing the
synthetic clover honey of town.

Especially did the custom-made Bohemia charm her. The spaghetti
wound its tendrils about her heart; the free red wine drowned her belief
in the existence of commercialism in the world; she was dazed and en-
chanted by the rugose wit that can be churned out of California claret.

But one evening I got her away from the smell of halibut and linoleum
long enough to read to her the manuscript of this story, which then ended
before her entrance into it. I read it to her because I knew that all the
printing-presses in the world were running to try to please her and some
others. And I asked her about it. "I didn't quite catch the trains," said
she. "How long was Mary in Crocusville?"

THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT 147!

"Ten hours and five minutes," I replied.

"Well, then the story may do," said Minnie. "But if she had stayed
there a week Kappelman would have got his kiss.'*

THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT

At the street corner, as solid as granite in the "rush-hour" tide of human-
ity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had stained
him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the glaciers.

He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as broad-
gauged as the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara of sound —
the crash of the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding of rubberless
tires and the antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers indulging in scarify-
ing repartee. And so, with his gold dust cashed in to the merry air of a
hundred thousand, and with the cakes and ale of one week in Gotham
turning bitter on his tongue, the Man from Nome sighed to set foot
again in Chilkoot, the exit from the land of street noises and Dead Sea
apple pies.

Up Sixth Avenue, with the tripping, scurrying, chattering, bright-eyed,
homing tide came the Girl from Sieber-Mason's. The Man from Nome
looked and saw, first, that she was supremely beautiful after his own
conception of beauty; and next, that she moved with exactly the steady
grace of a dog sled on a level crust of snow. His third sensation was an
instantaneous conviction that he desired her greatly for his own. Thus
quickly do men from Nome make up their minds. Besides, he was going
back to the North in a short time and to act quickly was no less necessary.

A thousand girls from the great department store of Sieber-Mason
flowed along the side-walk, making navigation dangerous to men whose
feminine field of vision for three years has been chiefly limited to Siwash
and Chilkat squaws. But the Man from Nome, loyal to her who had
resurrected his long-cached heart, plunged into the stream of pulchritude
and followed her.

Down Twenty-third Street she glided swiftly, looking to neither side;
no more flirtatious than the bronze Diana above the Garden. Her fine
brown hair was neatly braided; her neat waist and un wrinkled black
skirt were eloquent of the double virtues — taste and economy. Ten yards
behind followed the smitten Man from Nome.

Miss Claribel Colby, the Girl from Sieber-Mason's, belonged to that
sad company of mariners known as Jersey commuters. She walked into
the waiting-room of the ferry, and up the stairs, and by a marvellous
swift, little run, caught the ferry-boat that was just going out. The Man

1472 BOOK. XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

from Nome closed up his ten yards in three jumps and gained the deck
close beside her.

Miss Colby chose a rather lonely seat on the outside of the upper cabin.
The night was not cold, and she desired to be away from the curious eyes
and tedious voices of the passengers. Besides, she was extremely weary
and drooping from lack of sleep. On the previous night she had graced
the annual ball and oyster fry of the West Side Wholesale Fish Dealers'
Assistants* Social Club No. 2, thus reducing her usual time of sleep to
only three hours.

And the day had been uncommonly troublous. Customers had been
inordinately trying; the buyer in her department had scolded her roundly
for letting her stock run down; her best friend, Mamie Tuthill, had
snubbed her by going to lunch with that Dockery girl.

The Girl from Sieber-Mason's was in that relaxed, softened mood that
often comes to the independent feminine wage-earner. It is a mood most
propitious for the man who would woo her. Then she has yearnings to
be set in some home and heart; to be comforted, and to hide behind some
strong arm and rest, rest. But Miss Claribel Colby was also very sleepy.

There came to her side a strong man, browned and dressed carelessly
in the best of clothes with his hat in his hand*

"Lady," said the Man from Nome, respectfully, "excuse me for speak-
ing to you, but I — I — saw you on the street, and — and "

"Oh, gee!" remarked the girl from Sieber-Mason's, glancing up with
the most capable coolness. "Ain't there any way to ever get rid of you
mashers? I've tried everything from eating onions to using hatpins. Be
on your way, Freddie."

"I'm not one of that kind, lady," said the Man from Nome — "honest,
I'm not. As I say, I saw you on the street, and I wanted to know you so
bad I couldn't help followin* after you. I was afraid I wouldn't ever see
you again in this big town unless I spoke; and that's why I done so."

Miss Colby looked once shrewdly at him in the dim fight on the ferry-
boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen swagger of
the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his boreal tan. It
seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little of what he had to say.

ccYou may sit down,'* she said, laying her hand over a yawn with
ostentatious politeness; "and— mind— don't get fresh or 111 call the
steward."

The Man from Nome sat by her side. He admired her greatly. He
more than admired her. She had exactly the looks he had tried so long
in vain to find in a woman. Could she ever come to like him? Well, that
was to be seen. He must do all in his power to stake his claim, anyhow.

"My name's Blayden,"- said he— "Henry Blayden."

"Are you real sure it ain't Jones?" asked the girl, leaning toward him,
with delicious, knowing raillery.

THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT 1473

"I'm down from Nome," he went on with anxious seriousness, "I
scraped together a pretty good lot of dust up there, and brought it down
with me.

"Oh, say!" she rippled, pursuing persiflage with engaging lightness,
"then you must be on the White Wings force. I thought I'd seen you
somewhere."

"You didn't see me on the street to-day when I saw you.**

"I never look at fellows on the street."

"Well, I looked at you; and I never looked at anything before that I
thought was half as pretty."

"Shall I keep the change?"

"Yes, I reckon so. I reckon you could keep anything I've got. I reckon
I'm what you would call a rough man, but I could be awful good to any-
body I liked. I've had a rough time of it up yonder, but I beat the game.
Nearly 5,000 ounces of dust was what I cleaned up while I was there."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Miss Colby, obligingly sympathetic. "It must
be an awful dirty place, wherever it is."

And then her eyes closed. The voice of the Man from Nome had a
monotony in its very earnestness. Besides, what dull talk was this of
brooms and sweeping and dust? She leaned her head against the wall.

"Miss," said the Man from Nome, with deeper earnestness and
monotony, "I never saw anybody I liked as well as I do you. I know
you can't think that way of me right yet; but can't you give me a
chance? Won't you let me know you, and see if I can't make you like
me?"

The head of th,e Girl from Sieber-Mason's slid over gently and rested
upon his shoulder. Sweet sleep had won her, and she was dreaming
rapturously of the Wholesale Fish Dealers' Assistants' ball.

The gentleman from Nome kept his arms to himself. He did not sus-
pect sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to sur-
render. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding
the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, merely ad-
vanced as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken advantage of.

One small speck of alloy discounted the gold of his satisfaction. Had
he spoken too freely of his wealth? He wanted to be liked for himself.

"I want to say, Miss," he said, "that you can count on me. They know
me in the Klondike from Juneau to Circle City and down the whole
length of the Yukon. Many a night I've laid in the snow up there where
I worked like a slave for three years, and wondered if I'd ever have any-
body to like me. I didn't want all that dust just myself. I thought I'd meet
just the right one some time, and I done it to-day. Money's a mighty
good thing to have, but to have the love of the one you like best is better
still. If you was ever to marry a man, Miss, which would you rather he'd
have?"

1474 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"Cash!"

The word came sharply and loudly from Miss Colby's lips, giving evi-
dence that in her dreams she was now behind her counter in the great
department store of Sieber-Mason.

Her head suddenly bobbed over sideways. She awoke, sat straight, and
rubbed her eyes. The Man from Nome was gone.

"Gee! I believe I've been asleep," said Miss Colby. "Wonder what be-
came of the White Wings!"

THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER

Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old ten-
dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. Oh,
very well! Pass up this sotto voce autobiography of an X if you like. If
you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John D's checkbook
roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all right. But don't
forget that small change can say a word to the point now and then. The
next time you tip your grocer's clerk a silver quarter to give you extra
weight of his boss's goods read the four words above the lady's head.
How are they for repartee?

I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen one
in a friend's hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture of the bison
Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions of Americans.
The heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn the ends. On my back
is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres or Maxine Elliott standing in
the centre of the stage on a conservatory plant. My references is — or are —
Section 3,588, Revised Statutes. Ten cold, hard dollars— I don't say
whether silver, gold, lead or iron— Uncle Sam will hand you over his
counter if you want to cash me in,

I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make — thanks,
I knew you would — got that sneaking little respect and agreeable feeling
toward even an X, haven't you? You see, a tainted bill doesn't have much
chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I never knew a really
cultured and educated person that could afford to hold a ten-spot any
longer than it would take to do an Arthur Duffy to the nearest That's
All! sign or delicatessen store.

For a six-year-old, I've had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I guess
I've paid as many debts as the man who dies. I've been owned by a good
many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingy five-dollar
silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to it in the fat and
bad-smelling purse of a butcher.

"Hey, you Sitting Bull," says I, "don't scrouge so. Anyhow, don't you

THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER 1475

think it's about time you went in on a customs payment and got reissued ?
For a series of 1899 you're a sight."

"Oh, don't get crackly just because you're a Buffalo bill," says the fiver.
"You'd be limp, too, if you'd been stuffed down in a thick cotton-and-
lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and the thermometer not a degree
under 85 in the store,"

"I never heard of a pocketbook like that/* says I. "Who carried you?"

"A shopgirl," says the five-spot.

"What's that?" I had to ask.

"You'll never know till their millennium comes/' says the fiver.

Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head,
spoke up to the fiver:

"Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain't lisle thread good enough for yer ? If you
was under all cotton like I'd been to-day, and choked up with factory
dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a dozen times,
you'd have some reason to complain."

That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500
package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania corre-
spondents— and I haven't made the acquaintance of any of the five and
two spot's friends' pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, every time.

I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands
twenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for my
owner's every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never missed
being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, while
ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got in the habit
of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little straight or some
spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. Once I got tied up in a
great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart peddler's jeans, I thought I never
would get in circulation again, for the future department store owner
lived on eight cents* worth of dog rneat and onions a day. But this peddler
got into trouble one day on account of having his cart too near a crossing,
and I was rescued. I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me. He
changed me at a cigar store near the Bowery that was running a crap
game in the back room. So it was the Captain of the precinct, after all,
that did me the best turn, when he got his. He blew me for wine and
the next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as glad to
get back agaia as an Astor does when he sees the lights of Charing Cross.

A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony
once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes. They
were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossining whenever
three girls got hold of one of them during the ice cream season. But it's
Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for the little Bok tips when
you think of the way we bison plasters refuse to stick to anything during
the rush lobster hour.

1476 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good
thing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to
buy a stack of blues.

About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk's
and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot of other
notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among the money
tainters.

"Ticket me for five hundred," said he to the banker, "and look out
for everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the glen before the
moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody finds the roof in
their way there's $60,000 wrapped in a comic supplement in the upper
left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold; everywhere be bold, but be not
bowled over. 'Night/'

I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of 'em says to
me:

"Well, old shorthorn, you're in luck to-night. You'll see something of
life. Old Jack's going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg steak."

"Explain," says I. "Pm used to joints, but I don't care for filet mignon
with the kind of sauce you serve."

"'Xcuse me," said the twenty. "Old Jack is the proprietor of this
gambling house. He's going on a whiz to-night because he offered
$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said his money
was tainted."

"What is a church?" I asked.

"Oh, I forgot," says the twenty, "that I was talking to a tenner. Of
course, you don't know. You're too much to put into the contribution
basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is — a large
building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each."

I don't care much about chinning with gold certificates. There's a streak
of yellow in 'em. All is not gold that quitters.

Old Jack certainly was a gilt-edged sport. When it came his time to
loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary.

By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the wilder-
ness; and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hot gullets fell
in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there waiting for some-
body to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may have had a taint to it,
but all the same he had orders for his Camembert piling up on him
every minute. First his friends rallied round him; and then the fellows
that his friends knew by sight; and then a few of his enemies buried
the hatchet; and finally he was buying souvenirs for so many Neapolitan
fisher maidens and butterfly octettes that the head waiters were 'phoning
all over town for Julian Mitchell to please come around and get them
into some kind of order.

At last we floated into an uptown cafe that I knew by heart. When

THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER 1477

the hod-carriers' union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief
goal kicker called out: "Six — eleven — forty-two — nineteen — twelve" to his
men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we meant
Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But Old Jack wasn't working for the furni-
ture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang "Ramble"
in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the twenty told me,
because his offer to the church had been refused.

But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered
the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the stuff
that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin.

Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the
outside of his roll He laid the roll on the table and sent for the proprietor.

"Mike," says he, "here's money that the good people have refused.
Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it's tainted."

"It will," says Mike, "and 111 put it in the drawer next to the bills that
was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the church fair to build a
new parsonage for the parson's daughter to live in/'

At i o'clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up the
front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of the restau-
rant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the kind — black shawl,
creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a cross between Gabriel's and
a sick kitten's — the kind of woman that's always on the lookout for an
automobile or the mendicancy squad — and she stands there without a
word and looks at the money.

Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a bow.

"Madam," says he, just like actors I've heard, "here is a tainted bill.
I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a gentleman's son.
Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me the favor to accept it,
it is yours."

The woman took me with a trembling hand.

"Sir," said she, "I counted thousands of this issue of bills into packages
when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in the Treasury
Department. There was an official to whom I owed my position. You
say they are tainted now. If you only knew— but I won't say any more.
Thank you with all my heart, sir — thank you — thank you."

Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To
a bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery.
And I got changed, and she does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away with a
dozen rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbine water-wheel.
Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed up in the bakery,
wondering whether I'd get changed at the drug store the next day in
an alum deal or paid over to the cement works,

A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills the
baker had given the woman for change.

1478 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

"Hello, £35039669," says I, "weren't you in the change for me in a
bakery last Saturday night?"

"Yep," says the solitaire in his free and easy style.
. "How did the deal turn out?" I asked.

"She blew £17051431 for milk and round steak," says the one-spot.
"She kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sick
kid in it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and tincture
of formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed some. Don't
get stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers, where you^ hear
one. She said something about 'who giveth to the poor.' Oh, let's cut
out the slum talk. I'm certainly tired of the company that keeps me. I
wish I was big enough to move in society with you tainted bills."

"Shut up," says I, "there's no such thing. I know the rest of it. There's
a 'lendeth to the Lord' somewhere in it. Now look on my back and read
what you see there."

"This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public and
private."

"This talk about tainted money makes me tired," says I.

ELSIE IN NEW YORK

No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie series.
But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there might have
been a chapter in her books not very different from this.

Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan
beset "with pitfall and with gin." But the civic guardians of the young
have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, and
most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who seek to
turn straying ones away from the peril that menaces them. And this will
tell you how they guided my Elsie safely through all peril to the goal that
she was seeking.

Elsie's father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, on
lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, so
a pot-hunter of a newly .licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when
livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he lay on
his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and a letter from
Mr, Otter offering to do anything he could to help his faithful old em-
ployee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a valuable legacy to his
daughter, and he put it into her hands with pride as the shears of the
dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off his thread of life.

That was the landlord's cue; and forth he came and did his part in
the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to steal

ELSIE IN NEW YORK 1479

out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her shoulders, but
she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for the red shawl—back
to Blaney with it! Elsie's fall tan coat was cheap, but it had the style and
fit of the best at Fox & Otter's. And her lucky stars had given her good
looks, and eyes as blue and innocent as the new shade of note paper, and
she had Ji left of the $2.50. And the letter from Mr. Otter. Keep your eye
on the letter from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything
be made plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they
do not sell.

And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to seek
her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was that it did
not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved about a month
before. Bu Elsie thought she could find it. She had heard that policemen,
when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an investigation commit-
tee, will give up information and addresses. So she boarded a downtown
car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh Street and rode south to Forty-
second, which she thought must surely be the end of the island. There
she stood against the wall undecided, for the city's roar and dash was
new to her. Up where she lived was rural New York, so far out that the
milkmen awaken you in the morning by the squeaking of pumps instead
of the rattling of cans.

A kind-faced, sunburned, young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past
Elsie into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the Sun-
flower Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East. Hank's
heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome place, lacking
the presence of a woman. He had hoped to find one during his visit who
would congenially share his prosperity and home, but the girls of Gotham
had not pleased his fancy. But, as he passed in, he noted, with a jumping
of his pulses, the sweet, ingenuous face of Elsie and her pose of doubt
and loneliness. With true and honest Western impulse he said to him-
self that here was his mate. He could love her, he knew; and he would
surround her with so much comfort, and cherish her so carefully that she
would be happy, and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where
there grew but one before.

Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never-before-ques-
tioned honesty of purpose, he approached the girl and removed his soft-
brimmed hat. Elsie had but time to sum up his handsome frank face
with one shy look of modest admiration when a burly cop hurled himself
upon the ranchman, seized him by the collar and backed him against the
wall. Two blocks away a burglar was coming out of an apartment-house
with a bag of silverware on his shoulder; but that is neither here nor there.

"Carry on yez mashin' tricks right before me eyes will yez?'* shouted
the cop. "I'll teach yez to speak to ladies on me beat that ye're not
acquainted with. Come along."

1480 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. She
had liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned complexion.
She walked southward, thinking herself already in the district where her
father used to work, and hoping to find some one who could direct her to
the firm of Fox & Otter.

But did she want to find Mr. Otter? She had inherited much of the
old cutter's independence. How much better it would be if she could
find work and support herself without calling on him for aid!

Elsie saw a sign "Employment Agency" and went in. Many girls were
sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were looking
them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling black silk
hurried up to Elsie.

"My dear/' she said in a sweet, gentle voice, "are you looking for a
position? I like your face and appearance so much. I want a young
woman who will be half maid and half companion to me. You will have
a good home and I will pay you $30 a month."

Before Elsie could stammer forth her gratified acceptance, a young
woman with gold glasses on her bony nose and her hands in her jacket
pockets seized her arm and drew her aside.

"I am Miss Ticklebaum," said she, "of the Association for the Pre-
vention of Jobs Being Put Up on Working Girls Looking for Jobs. We
prevented forty-seven girls from securing positions last week. I am here
to protect you. Beware of any one who offers you a job. How do you
know that this woman does not want to make you work as a breaker-boy
in a coal mine or murder you to get your teeth? If you accept work of
any kind without permission of our association you will be arrested by
one of our agents."

"But what am I to do ? " asked Elsie. "I have no home or money. I must
do something. Why am I not allowed to accept this kind lady's offer?"

"I do not know," said Miss Ticklebaum. "That is the affair of our
Committee on the Abolishment of Employers. It is my duty simply to
see that you do not get work. You will give me your name and address
and report to our secretary every Thursday. We have 600 girls on the
waiting list who will in time be allowed to accept positions as vacancies
occur on our roll of Qualified Employers, which now comprise twenty-
seven names. There is prayer, music and lemonade in our chapel the
third Sunday of every month."

Elsie hurried away after thanking Miss Ticklebaum for her timely
warning and advice. After all, it seemed that she must try to find Mr.
Otter.

But after walking a few blocks she saw a sign, "Cashier wanted/' in
the window of a confectionery store. In she went and applied for the
place, after casting a quick glance over her shoulder , to assure herself
that the job-preventer was not on her trail.

ELSIE IN NEW YORK 1481

The proprietor of the confectionery was a benevolent old man with a
peppermint flavor, who decided, after questioning Elsie pretty closely,
that she was the very girl he wanted. Her services were needed at once,
so Elsie, with a thankful heart, drew off her tan coat and prepared to
mount the cashier's stool.

But before she could do so a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and
black mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing, and ex-
claimed: "Young woman, hesitate!"

Elsie hesitated.

"Do you know," said the black-and-steel lady, "that in accepting this
position you may this day cause the loss of a hundred lives in agonizing
physical torture and the sending as many souls to perdition?"

"Why, no," said Elsie, in frightened tones. "How could I do that?"

"Rum," said the lady — "the demon rum. Do you know why so many
lives are lost when a theatre catches fire? Brandy balls. The demon rum
lurking in brandy balls. Our society women while in theatres sit grossly
intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. When die fire
fiend sweeps down upon them they are unable to escape. The candy
stores are the devil's distilleries. If you assist in the distribution of these
insidious confections you assist in the destruction of the bodies and souls
of your fellow-beings, and in the filling of our jails, asylums and alms-
houses. Think, girl, ere you touch the money for which brandy balls are
sold."

"Dear me," said Elsie, bewildered. "I didn't know there was rum in
brandy balls. But I must live by some means. What shall I do?"

"Decline the position," said the lady, "and come with me. I will tell
you what to do."

After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind
about the cashiership she put on her coat and followed the lady to the
sidewalk, where awaited an elegant victoria.

"Seek some other work," said the black-and-steel lady, "and assist in
crushing the hydra-headed demon rum." And she got into the victoria
and drove away.

*1 guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again," said Elsie, ruefully, turn-
ing down the street. "And I'm sorry, too, for I'd much rather make my
way without help."

Near Fourteenth Street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a
doorway that read: "Fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on
theatrical costumes. Good pay."

She was about to enter, when a solemn man, dressed all in black, laid
his hand on her arm.

"My dear girl," he said, "I entreat you not to enter that dressing-room
of the devil."

"Goodness me!" exclaimed Elsie, with some impatience. "The devil

1482 BOOK XII THE TRIMMED LAMP

seems to have a cinch on all the business in New York. What's wrong
about the place?" . ,

"It is here," said the solemn man, "that the regalia of Satan— in other
words, the costumes worn on the stage-are manufactured. The stage is
the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil your soul by lending
the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, my dear girl, what
the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors and actresses ^go after the
curtain of the playhouse has fallen upon them for the last time ?"

"Sure," said Elsie. "Into vaudeville. But do you think it would be
wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must
get something to do pretty soon."

"The flesh-pots of Egypt," exclaimed the reverend gentleman, upliit-
ing his hands. "I beseech you, my child, to turn away from this place of
sin and iniquity."

"But what will I do for a living?" asked Elsie. "I don't care to sew for
this musical comedy, if it's as rank as you say it is; but I've got to have

"The Lord will provide," said the solemn man. "There is a free Bible
class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next to
the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell."

Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where
factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, "Posey &
Trimmer, Artificial Flowers." Below it was hung a newly stretched
canvas bearing the words, "Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade.
Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up."

Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups
some twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat tipped
down over her eyes stepped in front of her.

"Say, you'se," said the girl, "are you'se goin' in there after a job?"

"Yes," said Elsie; "I must have work."

"Now don't do it," said the girl. "I'm chairman of our Scab Com-
mittee. There's 400 of us girls locked out just because we demanded
50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the foreman to
shave off his mustache. You're too nice a looking girl to be a scab.
Wouldn't you please help us along by trying to find a job somewhere
else, or would you'se rather have your face pushed in?"

'Til try somewhere else," said Elsie.

She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart
leaped to see the sign, "Fox & Otter," stretching entirely across the front
of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it
through the byways of her fruitless search for work.

She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her name
and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly into his
private office.

ELSIE IN NEW YORK 1483

Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands
with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of
nearly middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well dressed,
radiating.

"Well, well, and so this is Beatty's little daughter! Your father was one
of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? Well, well.
I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I am sure there is a
vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy work — nothing easier."

Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nose clerk thrust a portion of himself
inside the door.

"Send Miss Hawkins in," said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came.

"Miss Hawkins," said Mr. Otter, "ring for Miss Beatty to try on one
of those Russian sable coats and — let's see — one of those latest model
black tulle hats with white tips."

Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick
breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! she was
beautiful.

I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it's got to
run it out. I didn't make it up. I'm just repeating it.

I'd like to throw bouquets at the wise cop and the lady who rescues
Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush brandy
balls, and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage people (there
are others), and all the thousands of good people who are at work pro-
tecting young people from the pitfalls of a great city; and then wind up
by pointing out how they were the means of Elsie reaching her father's
benefactor and her kind friend and rescuer from poverty. This would
make a fine Elsie story of the old sort. Yd like to do this; but there's just
a word or two to follow.

While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to the
telephone booth and called up some number. Don't ask me what it was.

"Oscar," said he, "I want you to reserve the same table for me this
evening. . . . What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left of
the shrubbery. . . . Yes; two. . . . Yes, the usual brand; and the '85
Johannisburger with the roast. If it isn't the right temperature I'll break
your neck. . . . No; not her . . . No, indeed ... A new one — a peach-
erino, Oscar, a peacherino!"

Tired and tiresomer reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a para-
phrase of a few words that you will remember were written by him — by
him of Gad's Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, you shall stand
with a covered pumpkin — aye, sir, a pumpkin.

Lost, Your Excellency. Lost, Associations, and Societies. Lost, Right
Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and
Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with the
reverence of money in your souls. And lost thus around us every day.

BOOK

BUSINESS

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

STRICTLY BUSINESS 1485

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 baccha-
nalians 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 charoit wheels of the gas,
rent, coal, ice, and wardmen.

Whether tie 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 handle of the stage-entrance door of Kee-
tor'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 glance1 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 matinee 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 Thes-
pian 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

1486 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 bits 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 deliriously 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, hand-
boxes, 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 of 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. "Ive written a sketch that I've
been saving up. It's for two; and I think you can do the other part. I
thought Fd see you about it." !

STRICTLY BUSINESS 1487

"Come in the parlor/' said Miss Cherry. "I've been wishing for some-
thing 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 dia-
logue 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 stric-
tures 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 hand-
less 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 levd, 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 inanila envelope with nicotine stains on it, where the
cashier has licked the flap. It's kind of a hobby of mine to want to

1488 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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." ^ ^ f

"Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, you re m
on your own terms. I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat and sten-
ciled 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.5 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, any-
how. 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 success-
ful 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, reworte 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 boarding-house 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 un-
loaded 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 ridiag

STRICTLY BUSINESS 1489

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 "Blue-
beard, 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 clubman 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 prices 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 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 but-
toned 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 Amagansett once?), and the
denouement 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-

1490 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 Valen-
tine: "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 pull-
ing 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 waS— • 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 tryout 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 oflf 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 to 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. YouVe got your scheme for
banking yours; and I dream every night of that bungalow with the Jap

STRICTLY BUSINESS 149!

cook and nobody around to raise trouble. Anything to enlarge the net
receipts will engage my attention.5*

"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 to work out your own future and help me to 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 work-
ers, 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 nut-shell, 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 instal-
ment 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 new
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
here, 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

1492 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 ex-
amined 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 girls5 Valenciennes and go home and get it dressed by the parlor-
floor practitioner on your block, and youll 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 come Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a sol-
emn 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, Tm 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.

THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED 1493

"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 im-
possible. 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 stands 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 had huddled for a little tropical
warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is "El
Refugio," a cafe 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 senores, 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. Atruism must halt the story
thus long. Oh, 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,

1494 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 Physical Re-
search 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 congress-
man, 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 Espanol." In the window was a card in Spanish, "Aqui se
habla Espanol." The General entered, sure of a congenial port.

In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress. She had blonde
— oh, unimpeachably blonde 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, youVe been speaking it, ain't you?" said the madam. "I'm sure
I can't."

At the Hotel Espanol 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 wonder-
ful 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
senoras in the world. I have not in my Colombia viewed among our
beauties one so fair. 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

THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED 1495

scrambled to the sidewalk and skipped again in terror when the whistle
of a peanut-roaster puffed a hot scream into his ear. "Valgame 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, be-
wildered and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his de-
liverer 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! senor, there is a loudness and rapidness o£
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 Espanol 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 shout-
ing their political secrets to their fellow-plotters; but none was as loud
as the General. He pounded the table; he halloed 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 en-
thusiasm. 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,

1496 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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. Ill 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,'9 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 him-
self can't do it."

They parted at the door of the Hotel Espanol. 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, Sefior Kelley— the senoras 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
cafe, 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. Ill be up on the next car."

Jimmy Dunn was an A. M. of Crookdom. He was an artist in the confi-
dence line. He never saw a bludgeon in his life; and he scorned knock-
out 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 gum shoe. 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."

THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED 1497

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 Espanol for the General. He
found that wily warrior engaged in delectable conversation with Mrs.
O'Brien.

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

The General tore himself a\yay with an effort.

"Ay, seiior," he said, with a sigh, "duty makes a call. But, sefior, the
senoras 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 ad-
mitted 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 man-
ufactured 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 olige 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
a 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.

1498 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 Min-
ister 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 Espanol, Mrs. O'Brien went up to him, plucked a thread trom
his lapel, and said:,

"Say, sefior, 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, Senor 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 herpes 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
Espanol 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, senor," 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 Espanol. 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."

BABES IN THE JUNGLE 1499

"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 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 afterwards 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 asked 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.

"Ive 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

1500 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 hay-
seeds," 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

BABES IN THE JUNGLE 1501

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 cultivated enough to tackle this
game."

"Don't worry/' says Silver. "Fve got this Jayville-near-Tarrytown cor-
rectly 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 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 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 Fve 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 hammered on the floor with his

1502 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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. 1 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."

"Fm 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 the 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

THE DAY RESURGENT 1503

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 gentle-
man. 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 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 th^ most vague and shifting in our conception. It
belongs to all religions, although the pagans invented it. Going back still

1504 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

further to the first spring, we can see Eve choosing with pride a new
green leaf from the tree ficus carica.

Now, the object o£ 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 per-
mission. 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 paper unless you could see the color 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-rim 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 break-
fast 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 wished 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?"

THE DAY RESURGENT 1505

"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 yerself 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 of 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 churchs came
the blithe music of anthems from the living flowers — so it seemed when
your eye looked upon the Easter girl.

Gendemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the back-
ground of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. The win-
dows 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 Government 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 simul-
taneously 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.

1506 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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

sadlv

The family entrance of Dugan's cafe was feasible; so Danny yielded
to the vernal season as for as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark Imoleumed,
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. "No-
body 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 Jot about something.
All right. Will I see you at any time specially, Mr. McCree?"

THE DAY RESURGENT 1507

"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 1" he stouted 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 out-
side, 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 die place where we left off, and not hip-
popotamus/' said Danny. "The war began there. It kept something doing

1508 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

for thirty years. The headlines say 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. Mc-
Cree was slicing cold meat. She looked up. Tears were running from old
man McCree's eyes.

"Do ye 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 king-
dom, 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, 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 loom-
ing 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 as-
sumed 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 FIFTH WHEEL 1509

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 monu-
ment. 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, accusive 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 whiskey"

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, ex-
pecting 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 i,5oo-pound, 100 to i-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 ari empty commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic
of any Cupid-worshipper. 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 whiskey 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
free-masonic familiarity of the damned — "Booze? That's mine. You don't

I5IO BOOK XIII STRICTtY BUSINESS

look like a pan-handler. Neither am I. A month ago I was pushing the
lines over the backs o£ the finest team of Percheron buffaloes that ever
madeTeir 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-

C° < 'NoTsaid he, "mine isn't exactly a case of drink. Unless we allow that
Cupid is a bartender. I married unwisely, according to die opinion of my
unforgiving relatives. I've been out of work for a year because dont
know how to work; and I've been sick in Bellevue and other hospitals for
four months. My wife and kid had to go back to her mother I wa .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 puUjhrough all right
But I hate to see the woman 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 are. . ,

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 mag-
nificent 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 fan-
cied that the Chaldean Chiroscope has availed. Could it be ppssible?" .

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

THE FIFTH WHEEL 151!

"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 hi 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. Any-
how, 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, him-
self, 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 east-
ward a half block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, brown-
stone-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 dark-
ness. Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone faintly in the
centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas more splendidly ap-
pointed than any he had ever seen on the stage or read of in fairy stories.

The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings embroidered with
fantastic gold figures. At the rear end of the room were draped portieres
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 snow-drifts. 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 illu-
minated globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his eyes a
brilliant electric glow.

With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette

1512 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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
portieres 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 side-
board."

"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 flash-
light 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

THE FIFTH WHEEL 1513

servant brought some tender cold fowl and tea biscuits and a glass of
miraculous wine; and Thomas felt the glamor 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
portieres. 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, ap-
parently 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 at-
tendant 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."

"Madame," said the professor, with his princeliest smile, "the true Art
cannot fail. To find the true psychic and potential branch sometimes re-
quires time. We have not succeeded, I admit, with the cards, the crystal,
the stars, the magic formulae 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. Madame, 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."

1514 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"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.5*

Thomas was contentedly munching the last crumbs o£ 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. 'Tm on the job. That team of dropsical drome-
daries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class coachman like myself;
but 111 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, dis-
illusionizing, 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 kidding I guess. He might have dug up a dol-
lar, 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
the 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."

THE FIFTH WHEEL 1515

"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 tonight"

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

And now 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 clearvoyant, 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 Thomas 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 h^d moved but a little way up the street when Thomas stopped.

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

1516 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

Annie looked at him sharply.

"Oh, I know what that look means/5 said Thomas. "You re wrong. Not
another drop. But there's a guy that was standing next to me m the bed
line over there that's in a 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 weakly.

"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 law-
yers and advertising and detectives and rewards and everything. And
then she took up clearvoyants. You*!! 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 111 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 hun-
dred and forty-nine years. I'm the coachman. Just got my re-appointment
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 die 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 great-
est 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 elbows.

THE POET AND THE PEASANT 1517

"Say, Annie," said he, confidentially, "maybe it's one of the last
dreams of the booze, but I've a kind of a recollection of riding in an auto-
mobile 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 Duchess County chianti, and swal-
lowed indignation with slippery forkfuls.

And 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 boot-
leg 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 va-
lise— 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

1518 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

his hair, was a wisp of hay— the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of in-
nocence, 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 country-
man, 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 on 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 pumpkins; but this here town is five times as
big."

"Oh, well," said "Bunco Harry,55 raising his eyebrows, "I didn't mean
to butt in. You don't have to tell. I thought you ought to tone down a lit-
tle, 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 cafe frequented by men with smooth faces and shifty
eyes, and sat at their drinks.

Tm 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. 1 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

THE POET AND THE PEASANT 1519

$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 de-
parted.

"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. Several sin-
ister fellows hung upon one end of the bar. At first sight of him their
eyes brightened; but when his insistent and exaggerated rusticity be-
came 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 Hay-
locks 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, cull-
ing 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
barnyards, the hayfield, and the vaudeville stage, that he excited only

1520 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 of? 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 youll 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?
Fm 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
fore-finger 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. Trie recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has got you beat a cross-
town 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 get a patrol wagon on the ace."

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

"It's my clothes," said he; "durned if it ain't. They think Fm 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 forsworn. Bright tan were his shoes; his hat the lat-

THE ROBE OF PEACE 1521

est block. His light gray trousers were deeply creased; a gay blue silk
handkerchief flapped from the breast pocket of his elegant English walk-
ing 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 boule-
vardier 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 juicest 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-sev-
enth Street Police Station with the story of his wrongs.

"Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, "all my share of grand-
mother'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 edi-
tor, "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 Thurs-
day, 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 par-
ticular 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

1522 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

who were in close touch with Bellchambers will give it full credence.

Johnny Bellchambers, as is well known, belonged to the intrinsically
inner circle o£ the fiite. 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 priv-
ilege 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 be noticed. 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 van-
ished 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 monas-
tery in the Swiss Alps that promised something outside of the ordinary
tourist-beguiling attractions. The monastery was almost inaccessible to
the average sight-seer, 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 monas-
tery of St. Gondrau. It stood upon a frozen, wind-swept crag with the

THE ROBE OF PEACE 1523

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 re-
viving. 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 Gotham-
ites 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 proces-
sion 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 Bell-
chambers 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 be-
fore 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, doubdess, 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 look-
ing 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 Bell-
chambers, 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

1524 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 111 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?"

£Teel 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 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 con-
tented. 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 de-
votions, for Brother Ambrose bowed his head, turned and left the cham-
ber 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 1525

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 West-
ern Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything from speculating in
town lots on the Great Staked Plains to selling wooden toys in Connecti-
cut, 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 slid-
ing 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 bookshop 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 cham-
bermaid with a room-cleaning air fluttered near by 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. Besides 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 pro-
fession 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 Asso-
ciation and the pineapple chewing gum don't fall out when he pulls the

1526 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 a 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 to 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 call-
ing up Police Headquarters and ordering out the reserves and a vaude-
ville 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!5 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 Ind
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 on the low grounds during &
wet summer; her eyes were as big and startling as bunions, and green w^s
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, sar-
castic. '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 frangi-
pani, 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

THE GIRL AND THE GRAFT 1527

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 hurt-
ing the waiter's feelings.

" 'Mr. Pogue,' he explains to me, 1 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 automo-
biles; 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, sup-
posed 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 re-
porters was $124.80.'

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

"'That reminds me/ says he; 'add $8.50 for pepsin. Yes, I got indiges-
tion.'

"'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. Tnend,
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 incrimi-
nated. 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 cotillion/

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

1528 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"We closed the deal an hour later in the rococo rouge en 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 Presby-
terian Church in the morning, and got some transportation and $80. She
stopped in Topeka long enough to trade a flashlight interior and a valen-
tine 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 decollete
and dressed up, for me and Vaucross to take her to dinneMn 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; an
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 litde 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 "Mamma's Own Big Bad Puggy
Wuggy Boy" if you want any limelight to concentrate upon your sparse
gray hairs. Get snappy.'

"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

THE CALL OF THE TAME 1529

or the Brooklyn Bridge or cheese-on-salad ever enjoyed. He seemed
mighty pleased at the prospects.

"They agred 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 suc-
cess 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 won-
derful 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 alto-
gether 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 delegation 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 im-

1530 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

pulse 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, pat-
tern 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 straddle 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 metropoli-
tan 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 considera-
tion 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 wel-
coming 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

THE CALL OF THE TAME 153!

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 re-
proach 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 cafe, 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 on the walls of the same hotel in Canon
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 cafe. Merritt dextrously diverted his friend's choice, that hov-
ered over ham and eggs, to a puree 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 i 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 frappe
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 Fm 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. Well 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 re-
moving 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 49%. If you was to see one now you'd write to the Police Com-

1532 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

missioner 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 man-
hood. I hate to see you this way."

"Well, 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 Jong 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 dis-
kivered. Requiescat in hoc signo. You make me thirsty."

"A green chartreuse here/' said Merritt to the waiter.

"Whiskey straight,'1 sighed Greenbrier, "and they're on you, you rene-
gade of the round-ups."

"Guilty, with an application for mercy," said Merritt. "You don't know
how it is, Greenbrier. Its 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 con-
tempt.

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 orches-
tra 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 the 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

THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY 1533

with the heaves? I pass. But look along! Here's truck for twenty round-
ups all spelled out in different sections. 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 tie 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 ad-

1534 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

dition— 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, pur-
sued, 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-oif.

Mr* Kinsolving's son Dan was at college when the mathematical ex-
periment 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 Vil-
lage 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 rag-pickers. 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 ac-
cumulations 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, hur-
ried down to the old jewelry store across Sixth Avenue.

THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY 1535

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 collection, 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 the little bakeries around the corner. You've studied economics, Ken,
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 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 Roque-
fort. 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."

1536 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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
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 racket-wheel.

He conducted Kinsolving southward out of the square and into ragged,
poverty-haunted Varick Street. Up the narrow stairway of a squalid

THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY 1537

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 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 Ken-
witz 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 moun-
tain 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 were inconvenienced by that act."

The smile left the young woman's face. She rose and pointed her fore-
finger 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 into 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 eye-glasses 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 comprehen-
sion on her wonderful fur boa and the carriage waiting outside,

"Why, Miss Boyne!" he began.

1538 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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

ago;

THE THING STHEPLAY

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 re-
porter. "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 de-r
tails; 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. Ill give you the
details."

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

"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 merely men and women. 'The Sling'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 Abiiigdon Square. On the ground floor
there has been for twenty-five years a litde 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,

THE THING'S THE PLAY 1539

you seized your magnifying glass and read beneath the portrait her de-
scription 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 or-
chestra seats and fiction expects this. That is the first funny idea that has
turned up in the story yet. Boh 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 reprehensive love to his lost one, en-
treating her to flee or fly with him to the Riviera, or the Bronx, or any old
place where there are Italian skies and doles far niente.

It would have carried Blaney of? 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 pos-
sessed him departed. He bowed low, and said something about "irresist-
ible 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 vouch-
safed 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 for-
ever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart? To know your power, and to
feel the sweet security of yqur 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 mani-
cured—say, girls, it's galluptious— don't ever let it get by you.

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

1540 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 clari-
net 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 mar-
ried another man twenty years ago. He was more 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 oldtime 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, beau-
tiful and admired; and all that she seemed to have got from her lovers
were reproaches 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.

THE THING'S THE PLAY 1541

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
4o'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 dis-
tant 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 led her to an instinctive belief that he had been a factor in that ro-
mance. And then with a woman's reasoning (oh, yes, they do, some-
times) 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 slip-
pers 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 a 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

1542 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

in the street with a wound on my head and was brought there in an am-
bulance. 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 fac-
tor in her life, and she hadn't been aware of it.

"Mr. Ramonti/' she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage, re-
member; it was in the old home near Abingdon Square), "I'm awfully
sorry, but Fm 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 who-
ever wears his heart upon his typanum gets it not far from the neck.

A RAMBLE IN APHASIA 1543

The 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
the 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 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 mal-
practice, 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

1544 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case of aphasia— o£
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 ttavel. For recrea-
tion you— read law books. Better take warning in time."

"On Thursday nights," I said, defensively, "my wife and I play crib-
bage. 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 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, bespectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odor of cinna-
mon 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."

A RAMBLE IN APHASIA 1545

"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 phar-
mashootists 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 com-
pare 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. Well
make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream pro-
fessors that think they're the only lozenges in the market look like
hypodermic tablets."

"If I can be of any aid," I said, wanning, "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 pulverized 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 mysteri-
ously 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

1546 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law prac-
tice. 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 happi-
ness 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 hyp-
notized 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 learn-
ing and experience.

I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no
baggage.

"The Druggists' Convention," I said. "My trunk has somehow failed to
arrive." I drew out a roll of money.

"Ah!" said he, showing an auriferous tooth, "we have quite a number
of the Western delegates stopping here." He struck a bell for the boy.

I endeavored to give color to my role.

^ "There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners," I
said, "in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the bottles
:ontaining the tartrate of antimony and potash, and the tartrate of sodium
md potash be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf."

A RAMBLE IN APHASIA 1547

"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 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 en-
tranced 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'hote
to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild shouts of mercurial art-
ists 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, unob-
trusive, yet like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you must obey
these unwritten laws and then you will be freest of the free. If you de-
cline 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 re-
straint, 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 greeted me with offensive familiarity.

"Hallo, 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?"

1548 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"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 an-
noyed 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
did 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 philan-
dering with an orange ice. I ordered a creme de rnenthe. 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
slightIy—"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 for-
gotten for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you never could."

I poked my straw anxiously in the creme de menthe.

"I'm sure I beg your pardon," I said, a little uneasy at her gaze. "But
iat is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten everything."

A RAMBLE IN APHASIA 1549

She flouted my denial. She laughed deliriously 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 die 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 curi-
osity, 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 cr£me 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 com-
pletely 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 and 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 Pink-
hammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the — the roses and other
things."

"Good-bye, 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.

1550

BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"Mr. Pinkhammer," he said, casually, 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 enter-
tain 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.

"Madame," 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 this allu-
sion," I concluded airily, "it may be necessary for you to keep an eye on
the proceedings of the Druggists5 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
nanicuring himself in a thoughtful way. I think he waited in the hall.

A RAMBLE IN APHASIA 155!

"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 near by.

"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 Pink-
hammer."

"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."

1552 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"Of course," said Doctor Volney.

I got up from the couch. Someone had set a vase of white roses on the
centre table— a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and fragrant.
I threw them far out of the window, and then I laid myself upon the
couch again.

"It will be best, Bobby," I said, "to have this cure happen suddenly.
I'm rather tired of it all, anyway. You may go now and bring Marian in.
But, oh, Doc," I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him on the shin— "good old
Doc— it was glorious!"

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, of Nashville, Tennes-
see! 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. Cali-
fornians 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 edu-.
cational centre in the South.

A MUNICIPAL REPORT 1553

I stepped off the train at 8 p. M. Having searched thesaurus in vain
for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the form
of a recipe.

Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; dew-
drops 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 cuspi-
dors 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 manage-
ment 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 elec-
tricity 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 any-
where 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

1554 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"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 bust 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 "do-
ing." 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 marks-
manship 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 heredi-
tary 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 of dog that
had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acre-
age, 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.

A MUNICIPAL REPORT 1555

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 Catlings instead of squirrel rifles, so I
sidestepped so promptly that the major seized the opportunity to apolo-
gize 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 Wurzburger
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 pro-
fanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations in the
land of Nod.

By this time I began 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 with-
out 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 assert-
ing that I do not care for his company. Your town," I continued, "seems
to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or excite-
ment, 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— 111 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,

1556 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 Jshoe struck the ceiling of
the occupant of the room beneath mine. "Nothing of the life here that
gives color and good variety to the cities in the East and West. Just a
good, ordinary, hum-drum, 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 magazinfe 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 commis-
sioned 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 rum At the first corner I came upon Uncle
Caesar. He was a stalwart Negro, older than the pyramids, with gray wool
and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second afterwards of the
late King Cettiwayo. He wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had
seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles and had once been a Con-
federate 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 tassels 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

A MUNICIPAL REPORT 1557

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
Negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine face a look of sudden
suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly return-
ing conviction, he asked, blandishingly : "What are you gwine there for,
boss?"

"What is that to you?" I asked, a little sharply.

"No thin', 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 blos-
soms. All I could see through the streaming windows were two rows of
dim houses.

The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets, of which
137 miles are paved; a system of waterworks that cost $2,000,000 with 77
miles of mains.

Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards
back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees and
untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid
the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose
that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate. But when
you got inside you say 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

1558 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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. "1 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'1'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 knows
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 \new; 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 in 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 the 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

A MUNICIPAL REPORT 1559

in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves,
a cracked marble-topped 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 pine-cone 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 shel-
tered 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, Chau-
cer, 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 busi-
ness 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 hat 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 every-

1560 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

where; 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 hum-
drum town. Just a few miles of red brick houses and mud and stores and
lumber yards."

Some one had 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 those bills I had given the piratical Negro — there was no doubt of 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.

Imply 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 some-
thing like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly to her
chair.

"This is a roomy house/5 she said, "and I have a tenant for part of it.

A MUNICIPAL REPORT 1561

I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It is 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 genTman 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, sun," 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 Cetti-
wayo, 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

1562 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

a pocket and dashed one of them upon the ban 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
again. It could have been no other.

I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary,
evendess Southern town had made me tired and listless, I remember
that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar
bill (which might have formed the clue to a tremendously fine detective
story of San Francisco) by saying to myself sleepily: "Seems as if a lot
of people here own stock in the Hack-Drivers' Trust. Pays dividends
prompdy, too. Wonder if " Then I fell asleep.

King Cettiwayo was at his post the next day, and ratded 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 suspected in him, he
abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value
of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, gray-haired, and
capable man of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight
cents each) I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of
mystery. He bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the old
Negro.

"Uncle Caesar," he said, calmly, "run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy
to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a s tumbler of port
wine. And hurry back. Don't drive— run. I want you to get back some-
time this week."

It occurred to me that Mr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the speed-
ing powers of the land-pirate's steeds. After Uncle Caesar was gone, lum-
beringly, 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 Cassar, 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

A MUNICIPAL REPORT 1563

that he robs her even of the small sums that her old servant contributes
toward hex support."

When the milk and wine had been brought the doctor soon revived
Azalea Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves
that were then in season and their height of color. She referred lightly
to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the heart.
Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere,
and I followed him to the door. I told him that it was within my power
and intentions to make a reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair
on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased.

"By the way/' he said, "perhaps you would like to know that you have
had royalty for a coachman. Old Caesar's grandfather was a king in
Congo. Caesar himself has royal ways, as you may have observed."

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

"Yes, Caesar," I heard Azalea Adair answer, weakly. And then I
went in and concluded business negotiations with our contributor. I
assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting it as a neces-
sary formality in binding our bargain. And then Uncle Caesar drove me
back to the hotel.

Here ends all of the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The rest
must be only bare statements of facts.

At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Caesar was at his
corner. He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his duster, and
began his depressing formula: "Step right in, suh. Fifty cents to anywhere
in the city — hack's puffickly clean, suh — jus' got back from a funeral "

And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His
coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine strings
were more frayed and ragged, the last remaining button — the button of
yellow horn — was gone. A motley descendant of kings was Uncle Caesar!

About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front
of the 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 mortal 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 known him stood about and
searched their vocabularies to find some good words, if it were possible,

1564 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 the 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 Gas well.
I heard one man say to a group of listeners:

"In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by some of these
no-account niggars 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.

/ wonder what's doing in Buffalol

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 sum-
mer 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 ain 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 creep-
ing, contemptible beetle. Brokers, poets, millionaires, bootblacks, beau-
ties, 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 unintelli-
gible 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 in 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

PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER 1565

thought that some day his kind shall traverse those mysterious aerial roads
between planet and planet. The tiny would 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 package 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

1566 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 oflf the reflection of her brown pompa-
dour 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 phi-
losopher. Though young, attainments stood out upon him like conti-
nental labels on a Passaic (N. J.) suit-case. Knowledge he had kidnapped
from cyclopedias and handbooks of useful information; but as for wis-
dom, when she passed he was left sniffing in the road without so much as
the number of her motor car. He could and would tell you the propor-
tions of water and muscle-making properties of peas and veal, the short-
est 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, 111., 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 forelegs of a cat.

This 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 boarding-house. Firing at
you a volley of figures concerning the weight of a lineal foot of bar-iron
5x2% 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-diree-in-the-afternoori 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

PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER 1567

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 awful 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! Fm all lined," said Daisy, smiling shyly 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 propor-
tionate 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 fig-
ures, 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

1568 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 never
more 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, Jimmy! 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 farther 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 inter-
rupted 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

A BIRD OF BAGDAD 1569

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 arith-
metic!"

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
home-like in here! I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want me."

A BIRD OF BAGDAD

Without 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 moun-
tains— 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 medi-
aeval solitude. On each side are the 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 iron gauntlets. Hauberks and
helms, blunderbusses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, creeses, and

1570 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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, homebound citizens,
nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown that
eldritch avenue lined with the blood-stained weapons of die 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-mache 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 tide 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 restau-
rant. He was a man full of thought and reading. The business gave him
a living, though he gave it little attention. One si.de of his house be-
queathed to him a poetic and romantic nature. The other gave him the
resdess 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 pockets 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 bearers to one, two, three, or more days of full meals;

A BIRD OF BAGDAD

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 Man-
hattan.

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 a low but commanding voice that his waiters had
learned to fear.

"Pinched," remarked the young man, looking up at him with expres-
sionless 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 had 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—

1572 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 adven-
ture in city streets— not in ruined casdes 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 popula-
tion. 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 powers
to alleviate and advise. Will you not trust me?"

"Gee, how you talk!" exclaimed the young man, a gleam of admira-
tion 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 oflf every Anheuser bush And then

there's Laura.

"What? The old man's daughter. Corries 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 blackings-think
of thatl

A BIRD OF BAGDAD 1573

"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 road-bed 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 Hildebrant 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 — 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 its 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 Duch-
man 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 incu-
bators. 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 time and
manner of laying, their many varieties and crossbreedings, 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 f o* yours, and what-you-may-call-its of Allah."

The Margrave, 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

1574 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

longest?5 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 might
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.

"Veil," said Hildebrant, shaking all over with- the vile conceit of the
joke-maker, "haf you guessed him? 'Vat kind of a hen lays der long-
est?'"

"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 Nights*- fiasco — pale, melan-
choly, hopeless.

"Veil," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him.? 'Vat kind of a hen lays
der longest?5"

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 bpld, 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 1575

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 jour-
nalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic view
of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced to two very
questionable sources — facts and philosophy. We will begin with — which-
ever 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 sor-
rows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' ends. 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 come 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 Hud-
son, 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 dia-
mond-studded automobiles and pony phaetons.

The Child grieved sorely and truly, a thing inexplicable to the Mil-
lionaire, 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 cory-kilverty 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 foolish-
ness. 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

1576 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

coming from Santa Glaus saying that he would soon be here and en-
joining us to show a true Christian spirit and let up on the poolrooms
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 pawnbrokers 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 out 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 of 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 inter-
vene.

The Millionaire's palace occupied a lordly space. In front of it was a
lawn close-mowed as a South Island 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-attachmdnt, the petty pickings and ignobly garnered lar-
gesse 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 mal-
treated 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

COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON 1577

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 never 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 shoe-string
district that blackened the left bank of the river. They passed a news-
paper back and forth among themselves. The item that each solid and
blunt forefinger pointed out was an advertisement headed "One Hun-
dred 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 else-
where.

"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?"

1578 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 qual-
ity of his bone and muscle. His small, blue eyes, bathed in the moisture
of altruism and wooziness, looked upon you kindly, yet without abash-
ment. 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
cafes to conquer.

Thought 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 the real artist is quenched with difficulty.

The boys carefully pointed out to him that advertisements were soul-

COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON 1579

less, 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
slug. 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 prog-
ress ever appealed to none of yez? Sprinkle a little gasoline on 'em, 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 pass-
port, 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

1580 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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

resions- ,. .1 L.

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— 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
thought 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 gentle-
man 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 gentle-

COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON 1581

man calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the season, with
the lady o£ the house. You und'stand? I shall not move shtep till I pass
complements 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 to 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'
dosho."

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, ilknanneredly. "I can't remember. Drink
hearty."

1582 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the
smile of her caste. James enveloped Fuzzy 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 dis-
guises, seeking diversion and victims for their unbridled generosity. You
can scarcely find a poor beggar whom they are willing to let enjoy the
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 his-
tories of those who have escaped the largesse of the army of Com-
manders 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.

A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA 1583

But now, there being ten sultans to one Scheherazade, she is held too
valuable to be in fear of the bowstring. In consequence the art of narra-
tive 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 im-
bibition, 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 in-
terest, the action of the story will now be suspended, leaving you
grumpily to consider a sort of doll biography beginning fifteen years
before.

When old Jacob was young Jacob he was a breaker boy in a Penn-
sylvania coal mine. I don't know what a breaker boy is; but his occupa-
tion 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 fun, ^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 art, first, humble origin;
second, deserved promotion; third, stockholder; fourth, capitalist; fifth,
trust magnate; sixth, rich malefactor; seventh, caliph; eight, 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, manu-
factories, 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

1584 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 Mesopo-
tamian 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 salva-
tion. 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 tremen-
dous 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 cal-
culated their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future
divorce. 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 the needle 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 Associa-
tion 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 not there. The Association acknowledged receipt of
his favor of the 24 th 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 lava-
tory instead, which was no diversion of funds so far as Jacob ever
discovered.

The faculty met and invited Jacob to come oyer and take his A B C
degree. Before sending the invitations they smiled, cut out the C, added
the proper punctuation marks, and all was well.

A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA 1585

While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned,
Jacob saw two professors strolling near by. 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 conscientice" 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 im-
mense 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 postoffice 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 somethingll 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 sodawater 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 Glaus belt in his district?"

Clearly, that spot in the moral vineyard was preempted. So Caliph

1586 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East Side.
To keep down ids growing surplus he doubled his donations to organ-
ized charity, presented the Y. M. C. A. of his native town with a $10,000
collection of butterflies, and send a check to the famine sufierers 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 fio 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 cumber-
some 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 optifos 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 etudes 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 pepper-
mint-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.

A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA 1587

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 Ai 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 Gelia
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 de-
serves a paragraph herself. Annette Fletcherized large numbers of ro-
mantic novels which she obtained at a free public library branch (donated
by one of the biggest caliphs in the business) . She was Celia's sidekicker
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' situa-
tion? 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 suspectible like the common
run of grocers' assistants. He never pays no attention to me."

"He will to me/' said Celia.

"Riches " began Annette, unsheathing the not unjustifiable femi-
nine sting.

* "Oh, you're not so beatitiful," said Celia, with her wide, disarming
smile. "Neither am I; but he shan't know that there's any money mixed
up with my looks, such as they are. That's fair. Now, I want you to lend
me one of your caps and an apron, Annette."

"Oh, marshmallows!" cried Annette. "I see. Ain't it lovely? It's just
like 'Lurline, the Left-Handed; or, A Buttonhole Maker's Wrongs.' I'll
bet he'll turn out to be a count."

There was a long hallway (or "passageway," as they call it in the land
of the Colonels) with one side latticed, running along the rear of the
house. The grocer's young man went through this to deliver his goods.
One morning he passed a girl in there with shining eyes, sallow com-
plexion, 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 sit bottles of the most ex-
pensive Queen olives, he saw no more than that she was one of the maids.

1588 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 m 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. m .

"My name is Celia, if you please," said the whistler, dazzling him with
a three-inch smile. ,

"That's all right, I'm Thomas McCleod. What part of the house do

you work in?"

"I'm the — the second parlor maid."

"Do you know the Tailing Waters'?"

"No," said Celia, "we don't know anybody. We got rich too quick—,
that is, Mr. Spraggins did."

"Ill make you acquainted/' said Thomas McCleod. "It's a strathspey
—a first cousin to a hornpipe."

If Celia's whistling put the piccolos out of commission, Thomas Mc-
Cleod's surely made the biggest flutes hunt their holes. He could actually
whistle bass.

When he stopped Celia was ready to jump into his delivery wagon and
ride with him clear to the end of the pier and on to the ferryboat of the
Charon line.

"I'll be around 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
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 de-
scription of certain stages of its progress without intruding upon the
province of the X-ray or of park policemen.

A day came when Thomas McCleod and Celia lingered at the end o£
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. "Pll 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."

A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA 1589

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 Colos-
sus of cash, and she understood that if she chose Thomas she and her
grocer's young man might go whistle for their 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 *post-
poner,' " 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. McCleod. "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 re-
flection 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

1590 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 so5 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 thou-
sand 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 con-
fession 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 con-
sider that the act, to be perfect, should include confession. So he repre-
sented himself to be the agent of the purchaser of the land who had sent
him to refund the sale price for the ease of his conscience.

"Well, sir," said Thomas, "this sounds to me like an illustrated postcard
from South Boston with 'We're having a good time here' written on it. I
doa'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 thought-
fully 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 cadi on her."

A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA 159!

"I'm obliged," said Thomas. "I'm not much at making calls. It's gen-
erally 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 onions
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 wait-
ing 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 un-
subsidized fiction; had it been a street car I could have told you its voltage
and the number of flat 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.

BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"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 de-
layed 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 Fm 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 scrub-woman about
waste. Fve 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 the secretary, "controls
the market at present."

"Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches."

Suddenly Jacob Spraggin's plump red face relaxed into a pulpy grin.

THE GIRL AND THE HABIT 1593

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 is 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. Ill 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 be-
headed 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 trademan'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 mas-
ters 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 o£
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 down-
town restaurants. It is in what the papers call the "financial district."
Each day from 10 o'clock to 2 Hinkle's was full of hungry customers —
messenger boys, stenographers, brokers, owners of mining stock, pro-
moters, 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.

1594 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

Miss Merriam sat at a stool at her desk inclosed on three sides by a
strong, high fencing o£ 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 do 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 beats1
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 curb-
stone 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, in-
vitations 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 settle 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

THE GIRL AND THE HABIT 1595

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 re-
fined 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 Fri-
day—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 beau-
•tiful vision bending over him. with a pitiful, tender smile, bathing his
forehead with beef tea and chafing his hands with something frappe
out of a .chafing-dish. Mr, McRamsey sighed, lost a vest button, gazed
with deep gratitude upon his fair preserveress, and then recovered con-
sciousness. ,

To the Seaside Library all who are anticipating a romance! Banker

1596 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 in-
vited 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, nee McRamsey, 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 Mer-
riam, she stood before Hinkle one afternoon and resigned her cashier-
ship.

"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 a 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. Ill 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 Fan-
nie 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.

PROOF OF THE PUDDING 1597

At the Bazaar the McRamseys were prominent. Miss Mer— er — Mo
Ramsey 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 pro-
ceeds o£ the bazaar were to be used for giving to 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 pas-
torale, 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

1598 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above
was of that pale aquamarine tint that hall-room 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 con-
course 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 num-
ber 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 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 morn-
ing 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 for the improvement in her voice she had fairly hugged
him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic medican^ea4|)f
the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wards of the f con-
valescent 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 West-
brook'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

PROOF OF THE PUDDING 1599

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 school-
boy 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 ap-
pearance.

"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 ec-h-e-q-u-e' before I'm done with
you."

Editor Westbrook gazed through his noseglasses with a sweetly sor-
rowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression— the copyrighted
expression of the editor beleaguered 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

I600 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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." • i «•

"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 the "

"Same old thing/1 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, Shack, 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 denouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes
of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise ra-
the literary pinnacle of your dramatic scenes, and paint them in the high
colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-ad-
dressed envelopes at your door."

"Oh, fiddles and footlights!" cried Dawe, derisively. "You've got that
old sawmill drama king 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 a mother'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. Til 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 die same

PROOF OF THE PUDDING l6oi

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
opposite, concordant, conformable, and proportionate expression of feel-
ing. 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 uncon-
sciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts them to
express those emotions in language befitting their importance and his-
trionic 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 near by 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. "Wat'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 SouP caused you to throw it down?"

"When Gabriel Murray," said Westbrqok, "goes to his telephone and is

1602 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

told that his financee 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 con-
fronted 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?"

*Tm 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"wwnt 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 im-
portant 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."

PROOF OF THE PUDDING

"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 well 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 home 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 portieres. 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 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

1604 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 east-
ward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow flat-
house burdened with a floridly over-decorated facade. 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 meagrely 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 practicing the songs
and dances for two months on the quiet. I hope you will be successful,
and get along all rightl 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 drin\? 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, Shac\f ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that \nocJ^ you off
your perch, ShacJtf Aint it hell, now, Shac\ — 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

PAST ONE AT ROONEY*S 1605

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 an 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 mir-
ror 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 old 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 over-
stepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate.
Buck Malone, of the Mulbdrry 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 Hills
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 np 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 his name. I'll settle with urn meself. Wow— ouch! Easy,
boys! Yes, I'll attend to his case meself. I'm not making any complaint."

l6o6 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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. Hell
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. Its
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 11
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, strange 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 look-
ing up at the name "Rooney V picked out by incandescent lights against
a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place as a
tough "hangout"; 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 cafe.

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 un-
precision. 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,

PAST ONE AT ROONEY*S 1607

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 lieuten-
ant 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 than respectable by
daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and bundles and un-
pedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a chat. Even by gas-
light 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 kin-
dred 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 a 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 hec-
tic 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 p eau d'Espagne—z\\ these were manna to Cork McManus, hungry
from his week in the desert of the Capulet's high rear room.

A girl, alone, entered Rooney's, glanced around with leisurely swift-
ness, 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^ 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

1608 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 un-
sophisticated 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 con-
ventional words carefully. "I — merely dropped in for — a slight refresh-
ment." The cigarette between her fingers seemed to require explanation.
"My aunt is a Russian lady," she concluded, "and we often had 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, pend-
ent 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 let 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

PAST ONE AT RODNEY'S 1609

saw anything wrong here. This is twice I've been in. I work in a book-
bindery 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 of 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 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. Downstairs there was a sound of closing and lock-
ing 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 who-
ever 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.

l6lO BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 reno-
vated 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 com-
pany 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. Jt
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 book-
bindery and livin5 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; be-
cause "

"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 want a straight story about— about yourself, you
know. When a fellow has 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 111 give
up cigarettes if you say so, Eddie — Fll 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? Be-
cause it's bein* a lady that helps her to 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.

PAST ONE AT RODNEY'S l6ll

"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 downstairs repeated heavy blows were de-
livered. The loud crashes resounded in the room abpve. 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 as-
saulted door. A little, rustling, murmuring panic moved among the
besieged guests. Frank, cool, smopth, 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! Ev-
erything 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 case 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. And just when he had met Ruby, too!
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 him-
self 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.

l6l2 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"Down and out, everybody!" he commanded. "Ladies first! Less talk-
ing, 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 hap-
pens, tell me again, Eddie, do you 1— 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. Halfway across the yard
they bore the ladder stumbling, giggling, hurrying to place it against an
adjoining low building over the roof of which lay 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 regime— 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.

<cWhat 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 I" ordered the cop. Then, "Sit down!" he counter-
manded.

He took off Cork's hat roughly and scutinized 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 bpth arms

PAST ONE AT ROONEY's 1613

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. "Be-
cause 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 Til "

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 upoii the world with defiance, suspicion, and
sullen wonder.

"I guess I might as well say good-by 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 every-
body 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

1614 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 dif-
ference 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 dif-
ference."

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 name-
plate 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 mustn'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! — come 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'etre" for one moment. It is for no longer than to consider a
brief essay on the subject— let us call it: "What's Around tie Corner."

THE VENTURERS 1615

Omne mundus in duas fanes 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 synonyms in the dic-
tionaries. 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 flushed and heroic. The face of Chance is
the beautiful coutenance — 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 way-
side 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 every 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 check-room 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 from 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

l6l6 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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, al-
though the world was made round, the circle had been squared, and
that its true interest is to be found 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 dragomans. 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 deli-
cately 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; be-
cause 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 care-
fully and found not a penny. His bank book showed a balance o£ five
figures to his credit in the Old Ironsides Trust Company, but

Forster became aware of a man near by 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 "

THE VENTURERS 1617

"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 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 coun-
try of Chance — anyhow, it promised something better than the stale in-
festivity of a table d'hote.

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
adventurerer 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 foot-path 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 \nowl' 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

l6l8 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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?"

"Go on," said Forster eagerly. - -

"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."

, THE VENTURERS 1619

"IVe 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 test-
ing 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, war-
ranted to keep any genie boiling or frozen for forty-eight hours. Life
moves by rote. Science has killed adventure. There are no more op-
portunities 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 seem? 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 youVe 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 hpld 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.

l620 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 up
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 o£ a dinner."

"All right," said Forster, calmly. "You are entitled to see a Christian
die in the arena as your pousse-caf e."

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 cgame sport,' which means the same as a
"soldier of Fortune/ I'll have to make 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 know 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 do
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 break-
fast; you go to the office; you come back home and dress for dinner —

THE VENTURERS l62I

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 con-
tentment, 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 Tittle 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 paint-
ings 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 were 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 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 conver-
sation. 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.

l622 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

"Yes. You know you were always queer. Even as a boy you wouldn't
play marbles or baseball or any games 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 doc-
trine of predestination to the rule of three, gravitation, taxes, and every-
thing 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 suc-
ceeding 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
the 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

THE DUEL 1623

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 Ives'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 ev-
erything— told her plainly why I was leaving— that the monotony of mat-
rimony 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 your-
self 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 par-
ticularity 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 smok-

1624 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

ing with his Sabbath-slippered feet on another chair, and to the woman
who snatches the paper for a moment while boiling greens or a narco-
tized 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 dress-makers' 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 adver-
sary 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 con-
quered 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 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 re-
buke. You may become a civic pillar in any other town but Knicker-
bocker'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 uppercut 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 am-
bitious; so they countered and clinched. I think they were from Nebraska

THE DUEL 1625

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 a 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 Noisy ville-
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 flat-
tened at the poles whenever Bryan ran. I used to yell myself hoarse about
the free expanse 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 re-
member, 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 my
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 some-
body 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 eve-
ning. 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

1626 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 haughtiest beggars, the
plainest beauties, 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 air 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 auto-
matic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy O'Keefe's saloon, in Sac-
ramento, where I sell twenty here. And have you seen Sarah 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 Ron-
konkoma 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 ir-
regular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep gulches
and winding streams. Some were mountainous; some lay in long, monot-
onous rows like the basalt precipices hanging over desert canons. 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 col-
lored 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, all of 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 to him and went into his blood.

"WHAT YOU WANT" 1627

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 home and the answer will be yes.

Dolly

He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply : "Im-
possible 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 be-
longs 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 that H. A. saw in the 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 ev-
erything 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

1628 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 gov-
ernment jobs. Now, Fd 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 con-
taining 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.

Allans!

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 inconven-
ience. 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
motorcars 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 com-
mon 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 burn-
ing 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

"WHAT YOU WANT" 1629

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 vol-
ume 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 instandy the poor and
discerning scholar, a worthy object of his caliphanous mood. He de-
scended the two shallow stone steps that led from the sidewalk, and ad-
dressed 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 fin-
est things in the world. I never had any of it worth mentioning, but I ad-
mire 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. Now, I'd like to make you a proposition. 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 of the finest college in the world. Ill 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 sus-
pended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of challenge,
curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and strange as you may think it of a child-
like yearning for friendliness and fellowship that must be hidden when

1630 BOOK XIII STRICTLY BUSINESS

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 miss-
ing 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. 1 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 vol-
umes 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 cop 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, asserveratingly
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, "$40,000,000, 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

"WHAT YOU WANT" 1631

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-cov-
ered 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.1*

"Tell him I ain't in," said James Turner.

BOOK

STRAYS

THE RED ROSES OF TONIA

A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The southbound
from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train
was Tonia Weaver's Easter hat.

Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard
from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder
and hands empty except for a cigarette. At the small station, Nopal, he
had learned of the delayed train and, having no commands to wait,
turned his ponies toward the ranch again.

Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any
more for the after-church parade on Fifth Avenue than she does for her
loyal outfit of subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cactus, Tex.,
a mistake has been made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of

THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 1633

the Frio country put forth Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as
faithfully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for one day, a min-
gling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise. And now it was Good Friday,
and Tonia Weaver's Easter hat blushed unseen in the desert air of an
impotent express car, beyond the burned trestle. On Saturday noon the
Rogers girls, from the Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, from the An-
chor-O, and Mrs. Bennett and Ida, from Green Valley, would convene
at the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. With their Easter hats and frocks
carefully wrapped and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation
would then merrily jog the ten miles to Cactus, where on the morrow
they would array themselves, subjugate man, do homage to Easter, and
cause jealous agitation among the lilies of the field.

Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house flicking gloomily
with a quirt at a tuft of curly mesquite. She displayed a frown and a con-
tumelious lip, and endeavored to radiate an aura of disagreeableness and
tragedy.

"I hate railroads," she announced positively. "And men. Men pretend
to run them. Can you give any excuse why a trestle should burn? Ida
Bennett's hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall not go one step toward
Cactus without a new hat. If I were a man I would get one."

Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement of their kind. One
was Wells Pearson, foreman of the Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other
was Thompson Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from the Quintana
Valley. Both thought Tonia Weaver adorable, especially when she railed
at railroads and menaced men. Either would have given up his epidermis
to make for her an Easter hat more cheerfully than the ostrich gives up
his tip or the aigrette lays down its life. Neither possessed the ingenuity
to conceive a means of supplying the sad deficiency against the coming
Sabbath. Pearson's deep brown face and sunburned light hair gave him
the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth's profound and in-
solvable melancholies. Tonia's plight grieved him through and through.
Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and pliable. He hailed from
somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties and shoes, and
was not made dumb by woman's presence.

"The big water-hole on Sandy Creek," said Pearson, scarcely hoping
to make a hit, "was filled up by that last rain."

"Oh! Was it?" said Tonia sharply. "Thank you for the information.
I suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you think
a woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as
you do. If your old water-hole could have put out the fire on that trestle
you might have some reason to talk about it."

"I am deeply sorry," said Burrows, warned by Pearson's fate, "that you
failed to receive your hat, Miss Weaver — deeply sorry, indeed. If there
was anything I could do "

1634 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

"Don't bother/5 interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. "If there was
anything you could do, you'd be doing it, of course. There isn't"

Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her
frown smoothed away. She had an inspiration.

"There's a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Neuces," she said,
"that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers there. She said it was the latest
style. They might have some left. But it's twenty-eight miles to Lone
Elm."

The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost
smiled. The Knights, then, were not all turned to dust; nor were their
rowels rust.

"Of course," said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at a white gulf cloud
sailing across the cerulean dome, "nobody could ride to Lone Elm and
back by the time the girls call by for me to-morrow. So, I reckon I'll
have to stay at home this Easter Sunday."

And then she smiled.

"Well, Miss Tonia," said Pearson, reaching for his hat, as guileful as
a sleeping babe, "I reckon I'll be trotting along back to Mucho Calor.
There's some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first thing in the
morning; and me and Road Runner has got to be on hand. It's too bad
your hat got sidetracked. Maybe they'll get that trestle mended yet in
time for Easter."

"I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia," announced Burrows, looking at
his watch. <CI declare, it's nearly five o'clock! I must be out at my lambing
camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes/'

Tonia's suitors seemed to have been smitten with a need for haste.
They bade her a ceremonious farewell, and then shook each other's hands
with the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the South westerner.

"Hope I'll see you again soon, Mr. Pearson,'* said Burrows.

"Same here," said the cowman, with the serious face of one whose
friend goes upon a whaling voyage. "Be gratified to see you ride over to
Mucho Calor any time you strike that section of the range."

Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cow-pony on the Frio,
and let him pitch for a minute, as he always did on being mounted, even
at the end of a hard day's travel.

"What kind of a hat was that, Miss Tonia," he called, "that you ordered
from San Antone? I can't help but be sorry about that hat."

"A straw," said Tonia; "the latest shape, of course; trimmed with red
roses. That's what I like— red roses."

"There's no color more becoming to your complexion and hair," said
Burrows, admiringly.

"It s what I like," said Tonia. "And of all the flowers give me red roses.
Keep all the pinks and blues for yourself. But what's the use, when trestles
burn and leave you without anything? It'll be a dry old Easter for me!"

THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 1635

Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Runner at a gallop into the
chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch house.

As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows's long-legged sorrel
struck out down the narrow stretch of open prairie to the southwest

Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting-room.

"I'm mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn't get your hat," said her
mother.

"Oh, don't worry, mother," said Tonia coolly. "I'll have a new hat, all
right, in time to-morrow."

When Burrows reached the end of the strip of prairie he pulled his
sorrel to the right and let him pick his way daintily across a sacuista flat
through which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a gravelly
hill, matted with bush, the horse scrambled, and at length emerged, with
a snort of satisfaction, into a stretch of high, level prairie, grassy and
dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in their fresh spring foliage.
Always to the right Burrows bore, until in a little while he struck the old
Indian trail that followed the Nueces southward, and that passed, twenty-
eight miles to the southeast, through Lone Elm.

Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled himself
in the saddle for a long ride he heard the drumming of hoofs, the hollow
"thwack" of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of a Comanche;
and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of the trail like a
precocious yellow chick from a dark green Easter egg.

Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place
in Pearson's bosom. In Tonia's presence his voice was as soft as a summer
bullfrog's in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits, a mile
away, ducked their ears, and sensitive plants closed their fearful fronds.

"Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven't you,
neighbor?" asked Pearson, as Road Runner fell in at the sorrel's side.

"Twenty-eight miles," said Burrows, looking a little grim. Pearson's
laugh woke an owl one hour too early in his water-elm on the river bank,
half a mile away.

"All right for you, sheepman. I like an open game, myself. We're two
locoed he-milliners hat-hunting in the wilderness. I notify you, Burr, to
mind your corrals. We've got an even start; and the one that gets the
headgear will stand some higher at the Espinosa."

"You've got a good pony," said Burrows, eyeing Road Runner's barrel-
like body and tapering legs that moved as regularly as the piston-rod of an
engine. "It's a race, of course; but you're too much of a horseman to
whoop it up this soon. Say we travel together till we get to the home
stretch."

"I'm your company," agreed Pearson, "and I admire your sense. If
there's hats at Lone Elm, one of 'em shall set on Miss Tonia's brow to-

1636 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

morrow, and you won't be at the crowning. I ain't bragging, Burr, but
that sorrel o£ yours is weak in the fore-legs."

"My horse against yours/' offered Burrows, "that Miss Tonia wears the
hat I take her to Cactus to-morrow."

"I'll take you up/' shouted Pearson. "But oh, it's just like horse-stealing
for me! I can use that sorrel for a lady's animal when— when somebody
comes over to Mucho Calor, and "

Burrows's dark face glowered so suddenly that the cowman broke of!
his sentence. But Pearson could never feel any pressure for long.

"What's all this Easter business about, Burr?" he asked, cheerfully.
"Why do the women folks have to have new hats by the almanac or bust
all cinches trying to get 'em?"

"It's a seasonable statute out of the testaments," explained Burrows. "It's
ordered by the Pope or somebody. And it has something to do with the
Zodiac. I don't know exactly, but I think it was invented by the Egyp-
tians."

"It's an all-right jubilee if the heathens did put their brand on it/* said
Pearson; "or else Tonia wouldn't have anything to do with it. And they
pull it off at church, too. Suppose there ain't but one hat in the Lone Elm
store, Burr."

"Then," said Burrows, darkly, "the best man of us 11 take it back to the
Espinosa."

"Oh, man!" cried Pearson, throwing his hat high and catching it again,
"there's nothing like you come off the sheep ranges before. You talk good
and collateral to the occasion. And if there's more than one?"

"Then" said Burrows, "we'll pick our choice and one of usll get back
first with his and the other won't,"

"There never was two souls," proclaimed Pearson to the stars, "that
beat more like one heart than yourn and mine. Me and you might be
riding on a unicorn and thinking out of the same piece of mind."

At a little past midnight the riders loped into Lone Elm. The half a
hundred houses of the big village were dark. On its only street the big
wooden store stood barred and shuttered.

In a few moments the horses were fastened and Pearson was pounding
cheerfully on the door of old Sutton, the storekeeper.

The barrel of a Winchester came through a cranny of a solid window
shutter, followed by a short inquiry.

"Wells Pearson, of the Mucho Calor, and Burrows, of Green Valley,"
was the response. "We want to buy some goods in the store. Sorry to wake
you up, but we must have 'em. Come on out, Uncle Tommy, and get a
move on you."

Uncle Tommy was slow, but at length they got him behind his counter
with a kerosene lamp lit, and told him of their dire need.

"Easter hats?" said Uncle Tommy, sleepily. "Why, yes, I believe I have

THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 1637

got just a couple left. I only ordered a dozen this spring. I'll show 'em to
you."

Now, Uncle Tommy Sutton was a merchant, half asleep or awake. In
dusty pasteboard boxes under the counter he had two left-over spring
hats. But, alas! for his commercial probity on that early Saturday morn —
they were hats of two springs ago, and a woman's eye would have detected
the fraud at half a glance. But to the unintelligent gaze of the cowpuncher
and the sheepman they seemed fresh from the mint of contemporaneous
April.

The hats were of a variety once known as "cart-wheels." They were of
stiff straw, colored red, and flat brimmed. Both were exactly alike, and
trimmed lavishly around their crowns with full blown, immaculate, arti-
ficial white roses.

"That all you got, Uncle Tommy?** said Pearson. "All right. Not much
choice here, Burr. Take your pick."

"They're the latest styles," lied Uncle Tommy. "You'd see 'em on Fifth
Avenue, if you was in New York."

Uncle Tommy wrapped and tied each hat in two yards of dark calico
for a protection. One Burrows tied carefully to his calfskin saddle-thongs;
and the other became part of Road Runner's burden. They shouted thanks
and farewells to Uncle Tommy, and cantered back into the night on the
home stretch.

The horsemen jockeyed with all their skill. They rode more slowly on
their way back. The few words they spoke were not unfriendly. Burrows
had a Winchester under his left leg slung over his saddle horn. Pearson
had a six-shooter belted around him. Thus men rode in the Frio country.

At half-past seven in the morning they rode to the top of a hill and saw
the Espinosa Ranch, a white spot under a dark patch of live-oaks, five
miles away.

The sight roused Pearson from his drooping pose in the saddle. He
knew what Road Runner could do. The sorrel was lathered, and stum-
bling frequently; Road Runner was pegging away like a donkey engine.

Pearson turned toward the sheepman and laughed. "Goood-bye, Burr,"
he cried, with a wave of his hand. "It's a race now. We're on the home
stretch."

He pressed Road Runner with his knees and leaned toward the Espi-
nosa. Road Runner struck into a gallop, with tossing head and snorting
nostrils, as if he were fresh from a month in pasture.

Pearson rode twenty yards and heard the umistakable sound of a Win-
chester lever throwing a cartridge into the barrel. He dropped flat along
his horse's back before the crack of the rifle reached his ears.

It is possible that Burrows intended only to disable the horse — he was a
good enough shot to do that without endangering his rider. But as Pear-
son stooped the ball went through his shoulder and then through Road

1638 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

Runner's neck. The horse fell and the cowman pitched over his head into
the hard road, and neither o£ them tried to move.

Burrows rode on without stopping.

In two hours Pearson opened his eyes and took inventory. He managed
to get to his feet and staggered back to where Road Runner was lying.

Road Runner was lying there, but he appeared to be comfortable. Pear-
son examined him and found that the bullet had "creased" him. He had
been knocked out temporarily, but not seriously hurt. But he was tired,
and he lay there on Miss Tonia's hat and ate leaves from a mesquite
branch that obligingly hung over the road.

Pearson made the horse get up. The Easter hat, loosed from the saddle-
thongs, lay there in its calico wrappings, a shapeless thing from its so-
journ beneath the solid carcass of Road Runner. Then Pearson fainted
and fell headlong upon the poor hat again, crumpling it under his
wounded shoulder.

It is hard to kill a cowpuncher. In half an hour he revived— long enough
for a woman to have fainted twice and tried ice-cream for a restorer. He
got up carefully and found Road Runner who was busy with the near-by
grass. He tied the unfortunate hat to the saddle again, and managed to
get himself there, too, after many failures.

At noon a gay and fluttering company waited in front of the Espinosa
Ranch. The Rogers girls were there in their new buckboard, and the
Anchor-O outfit, and the Green Valley folks — mostly women. And each
and every one wore her new Easter hat, even upon the lonely prairies,
for they greatly desired to shine forth and do honor to the coming festival.

At the gate stood Tonia, with undisguised tears upon her cheeks. In
her hand she held Burrows's Lone Elm hat, and it was at its white roses,
hated by her, that she wept. For her friends were telling her, with the
ecstatic joy of true friends, that cart-wheels could not be worn, being
three seasons passed into oblivion.

"Put on your old hat and come, Tonia," they urged.

"For Easter Sunday?" she answered. "Ill die first." And wept again.

The hats of the fortunate ones were curved and twisted into the style of
spring's latest proclamation.

A strange being rode out of the brush among them, and there sat his
horse languidly. He was stained and disfigured with the green of the grass
and the limestone of rocky roads.

"Hallo, Pearson/' said Daddy Weaver. "Look like you've been break-
ing a mustang. What's that you've got tied to your saddle — a pig in a poke ? "

"Oh, come on, Tonia, if you're going," said Betty Rogers. "We mustn't
wait any longer. We've saved a seat in the buckboard for you. Never mind
the hat. That lovely muslin you've got on looks sweet enough with any
old hat."

Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on his saddle. Tonia

ROUND THE CIRCLE 1639

looked at him with a sudden hope. Pearson was a man who created hope.
He got the thing loose and handed it to her. Her quick fingers tore at the
strings.

"Best I could do/' said Pearson slowly. "What Road Runner and me
done to it will be about all it needs."

"Oh, oh! it's just the right shape," shrieked Tonia. "And red roses!
Wait till I try it on!"

She flew in to the glass, and out again, beaming, radiating, blossomed.

"Oh, don't red become her?" chanted the girls in recitative. "Hurry up,
Tonia!"

Tonia stopped for a moment by the side of Road Runner.

"Thank you, thank you, Wells," she said, happily. "It's just what I
wanted. Won't you come over to Cactus to-morrow and go to church
with me?"

"If I can," said Pearson. He was looking curiously at her hat, and then
he grinned weakly.

Tonia flew into the buckboard like a bird. The vehicle sped away for
Cactus.

"What have you been doing, Pearson?" asked Daddy Weaver. "You
ain't looking so well as common."

"Me?" said Pearson. "I've been painting flowers. Them roses was white
when I left Lone Elm. Help me down, Daddy Weaver, for I haven't got
any more paint to spare."

ROUND THE CIRCLE1

"Find yo* shirt all right, Sam?" asked Mrs. Webber, from her chair
under the live-oak, where she was comfortably seated with a paper-back
volume for company.

"It balances perfeckly, Marthy," answered Sam, with a suspicious pleas-
antness in his tone. "At first I was about ter be a little reckless and kick
'cause ther buttons was all off, but since I diskiver that the button holes is
all busted out, why, I wouldn't go so fur as to say the buttons is any
loss to speak of."

"Oh, well," said his wife, carelessly, "put on your necktie— that'll
keep it together."

Sam Webber's sheep ranch was situated in the loneliest part of the
country between the Nueces and the Frio. The ranch house — a two-room
box structure — was on the rise of a gently swelling hill in the midst of a
wilderness of high chaparral. In front of it was a small clearing where

1 This story is especially interesting as an early treatment (1902) of the theme afterward
developed with a surer hand in the Pendulum.

1640 BOOKXIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

stood the sheep pens, shearing shed, and wool house. Only a few feet
back of it began the thorny jungle.

Sam was going to ride over to the Chapman ranch to see about buying
some more improved merino rams. At length he came out, ready for his
ride. This being a business trip of some importance, and the Chapman
ranch being almost a small town in population and size, Sam had
decided to "dress up" accordingly. The result was that he had transformed
himself from a graceful, picturesque frontiersman into something much
less pleasing to the sight. The tight white collar awkwardly constricted
his muscular, mahogany-colored neck. The buttonless shirt bulged in stiff
waves beneath his unbuttoned vest. The suit of "ready-made" effectually
concealed the fine lines of his straight, athletic figure. His berry-brown
face was set to the melancholy dignity befitting a prisoner of state. He
gave Randy, his three-year-old son, a pat on the head, and hurried out to
where Mexico, his favorite saddle horse, was standing.

Marthy, leisurely rocking in her chair, fixed her place in the book with
her finger, and turned her head, smiling mischievously as she noted the
havoc Sam had wrought with his appearance in trying to "fix up."

"Well, ef I must say it, Sam," she drawled, "you l°ok Jest 1&C one of
them hayseeds in the picture papers, 'stead of a free and independent
sheepman of the State o' Texas."

Sam climbed awkwardly into the saddle.

"You're the one ought to be 'shamed to say so," he replied hotly. " 'Stead
of 'tendin' to a man's clothes you're aPays settin' around a-readin' them
billy-by-dam yaller-back novils."

"Oh, shet up and ride along," said Mrs, Webber, with a little jerk at
the handles of her chair; "you al'ays fussin' 'bout my readin'. I do a-plenty;
and Til read when I wanter. I live in the bresh here like a varmint, never
seein' nor hearin' nothing and what other 'musement kin I have? Not in
listenin' to you talk, for it's complain, complain, one day after another.
Oh, go on, Sam, and leave me in peace."

Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and "shoved" down the
wagon trail that connected his ranch with the old open Government road.
It was eight o'clock, and already beginning to be very warm. He should
have started three hours earlier. Chapman ranch was only eighteen miles
away, but there was a road for only three miles of the distance. He had
ridden over there once with one of the Half -Moon cowpunchers, and he
had the direction well-defined in his mind.

Sam turned off the old Government road at the split mesquite, and
struck down the arroyo of the Quintanilla. Here was a narrow stretch of
smiling valley, upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly mesquite
grass; and Mexico consumed those few miles quickly with his long, easy
lope. Again, upon reaching Wild Duck Waterhole, must he abandon well-
defined ways. He turned now to his right up a little hill, pebble-covered,

ROUND THE CIRCLE 164!

upon which grew only the tenacious and thorny prickly pear and chapar-
ral. At the summit of this he paused to take his last general view of the
landscape for, from now on, he must wind through brakes and thickets
of chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part seeing scarcely farther
than twenty yards in any direction, choosing his way by the prairie-
dweller's instinct, guided only by an occasional glimpse of a far distant
hilltop, a peculiarly shaped knot of trees, or the position of the sun.

Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat that
lies between the Quintanilla and the Piedra.

In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the
usual confusion of mind and the hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was
anxious to redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the tortuous
labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment his master's sureness of the route
had failed, his horse had divined the fact. There was no hills now that
they could climb to obtain a view of the country. They came upon a
few, but so dense and interlaced was the brush that scarcely could a rabbit
penetrate the mass. They were in the great, lonely thicket of the Frio
bottoms.

It was a mere nothing for a cattleman or a sheepman to be lost for a
day or a night. The thing often happened. It was merely a matter of miss-
ing a meal or two and sleeping comfortably on your saddle blankets on a
soft mattress of mesquite grass. But in Sam's case it was different. He
had never been away from his ranch at night. Mar thy was afraid of the
country — afraid of Mexicans, of snakes, of panthers, even of sheep. So
he had never left her alone.

It must have been about four in the afternoon when Sam's conscience
awoke. He was limp and drenched, rather from anxiety than the heat or
fatigue. Until now he had been hoping to strike the trail that led to the
Frio crossing and the Chapman ranch. He must have crossed it at some
dim part of it and ridden beyond. If so he was now something like fifty
miles from home. If he could strike a ranch — a camp — any place where he
could get a fresh horse and inquire the road, he would ride all night to
get back to Marthy and the kid.

So, I have hinted, Sam was seized by remorse. There was a big lump in
his throat as he thought of the cross words he had spoken to his wife.
Surely it was hard enough for her to live in that horrible country without
having to bear the burden of his abuse. He cursed himself grimly, and
felt a sudden flush of shame that over-glowed the summer heat as he re-
membered the many times he had flouted and railed at her because she
had a liking for reading fiction.

"Ther only so'ce ov amusement trier po' gal's got," said Sam aloud, with
a sob, which unaccustomed sound caused Mexico to shy a bit. "A-livin'
with a sore-headed kiote like me — a low-down skunk that ought to be
licked to death with a saddle cinch — a-cookin' and a-washin' and a-livin'

1642 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

on mutton and beans and me abusin' her fur takin' a squint or two in
a little book!"

He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in Dog-
town — smart, pretty, and saucy — before the sun had turned the roses in her
cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her ambitions.

"Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther litde gal," muttered Sam,
"or fails in the love and affection that's comin' to her in the deal, I hopes
a wildcat'll t'ar me to pieces."

He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia & Jones, his
San Antonio merchants where he bought his supplies and sold his wool,
and have them send down a big box of novels and reading matter for
Marthy. Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a
little piano could be placed in one of the rooms of the ranch house without
the family having to move out of doors.

In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that
Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their
bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the
country, and rest her head upon Sam's strong arm with a sigh of peaceful
content and dependence. And were her fears so groundless ? Sam thought
of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that sometimes in-
vaded the ranches, of rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen possible dan-
gers. Marthy would be frantic with fear. Randy would cry, and call for
"dada" to come.

Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and mes-
quite. Hollow after hollow, slope after slope — all exactly alike — all fa-
miliar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If he could only
arrive somewhere.

The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward
man is more an artificial product than a diplomatist is. Men lost in the
snow travel in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their footprints
have attested. Also, travellers in philosophy and other mental processes
frequently wind up at their starting-point.

It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition and good resolves
that Mexico, with a heavy sigh, subsided from his regular, brisk trot into
a slow, complacent walk. They were winding up an easy slope covered
with brush ten or twelve feet high.

"I say now, Mex," demurred Sam, "this here won't do. I know you're
plumb tired- out, but we got ter git along. Oh, Lordy, ain't there no mo'
houses in the world!" He gave Mexico a smart kick with his heels.

Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: "What's the use of that,
now we're so near?" He quickened his gait into a languid trot. Rounding
a great clump of black chaparral he stopped short. Sam dropped the
bridle reins and sat, looking into the back door of his own house, not ten
yards away.

THE RUBBER PLANT*S STORY 1643

Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rocking-chair before the
door in the shade of the house, with her feet resting luxuriously upon the
steps. Randy, who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground, looked
up for a moment at his father and went on spinning the rowels and sing-
ing a little song. Marthy turned her head lazily against the back of the
chair and considered the arrivals with emotionless eyes. She held a book
in her lap with her finger holding the place.

Sam shook himself queerly, like a man coming out of a dream, and
slowly dismounted. He moistened his dry lips.

"I see you are still a-settinV he said, "a-readin' of them billy-by-dam
yaller-back novils."

Sam had travelled round the circle and was himself again.

THE RUBBER PLANT S STORY

We rubber plants form the connecting link between the vegetable king-
dom and the decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a Third Avenue
theatre. I haven't looked up our family tree, but I believe we were raised
by grafting a gum overshoe on to a 30-cent table d'hote stalk of asparagus.
You take a white bulldog with a Bourke Cockran air of independence
about him and a rubber plant and there you have the fauna and flora of
a flat. What the shamrock is to Ireland the rubber plant is to the dweller
in flats and furnished rooms. We get moved from one place to another so
quickly that the only way we can get our picture taken is with a kineto-
scope. We are the vagrant vine and the flitting fig tree. You know the
proverb: "Where the rubber plant sits in the window the moving van
draws up to the door."

We are the city equivalent to the woodbine and the honeysuckle. No
other vegetable except the Pittsburgh stogie can withstand as much
handling as we can. When the family to which we belong moves into a
flat they set us in the front window and we become lares and penates, fly-
paper and the peripatetic emblem of "Home Sweet Home." We aren't as
green as we look. I guess we are about what you would call the soubrettes
of the conservatory. You try sitting in the front window of a $40 flat in
Manhattan and looking out into the street all day, and back into the flat
at night, and see whether you get wise or not— hey? Talk about the tree
of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden— say! suppose there
had been a rubber plant there when Eve— but I was going to tell you a

story.

The first thing I can remember I had only three leaves and belonged
to a member of the pony ballet. I was kept in a sunny window, and was
generally watered with seltzer and lemon. I had plenty of fun in those

1644 BOOK. XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

days. I got cross-eyed trying to watch the numbers of the automobiles in
the street and the dates on the labels inside at the same time.

Well, then the angel that was molting for the musical comedy lost his
last feather and the company broke up. The ponies trotted away and I
was left in the window ownerless. The janitor gave me to a refined
comedy team on the eighth floor, and in six weeks I had been set in the
window of five different flats. I took on experience and put out two more
leaves.

Miss Carruthers, of the refined comedy team— did you ever see her cross
both feet back of her neck? — gave me to a friend of hers who had made
an unfortunate marriage with a man in a store. Consequently I was placed
in the window of a furnished room, rent in advance, water two flights up,
gas extra after ten o'clock at night. Two of my leaves withered off here.
Also, I was moved from one room to another so many times that I got to
liking the odor of the pipes the express-men smoked.

I don't think I ever had so dull a time as I did with this lady. There was
never anything amusing going on inside — she was devoted to her hus-
band, and, besides leaning out the window and flirting with the iceman,
she never did a thing toward breaking the monotony.

When the couple broke up they left me with the rest of their goods at
a second-hand store. I was put out in front for sale along with the jobbiest
lot you ever heard of being lumped into one bargain. Think of this little
cornucopia of wonders, all for $1.89: Henry James's works, six talking
machine records, one pair of tennis shoes, two bottles of horse radish, and
a rubber plant — that was me!

One afternoon a girl came along and stopped to look at me. She had
dark hair and eyes, and she looked slim, and sad around the mouth.

"Oh, oh!" she says to herself. "I never thought to see one up here."

She pulls out a little purse about as thick as one of my leaves and fin-
gers over some small silver in it. Old Koen, always on the lookout, is
ready, rubbing his hands. This girl proceeds to turn down Mr. James and
the other commodities. Rubber plants or nothing is the burden of her
song. And at last Koen and she come together at 39 cents, and away she
goes with me in her arms.

She was a nice girl, but not my style. Too quiet and sober looking.
Thinks I to myself: "111 just about land on the fire-escape of a tenement,
six stories up. And I'll spend the next six months looking at clothes on
the line."

But she carried me to a nice little room only three flights up in quite a
decent street. And she put me in the window, of course. And then she
went to work and cooked dinner for herself. And what do you suppose
she had? Bread and tea and a little dab of jam! Nothing else. Not a single
lobster, nor so much as one bottle of champagne. The Carruthers comedy

THE RUBBER PLANT*S STORY 1645

team had both every evening, except now and then when they took a
notion for pig's knuckle and kraut

After she had finished her dinner my new owner came to the window
and leaned down close to my leaves and cried softly to herself for a while.
It made me feel funny. I never knew anybody to cry that way over a rubber
plant before. Of course, I've seen a few of 'em turn on the tears for what
they could get out of it, but she seemed to be crying just for the pure
enjoyment of it. She touched my leaves like she loved 'em, and she bent
down her head and kissed each one of 'em. I guess I'm about the tough-
est specimen of a peripatetic orchid on earth, but I tell you it made me
feel sort of queer. Home never was like that to me before. Generally I
used to get chewed by poodles and have shirtwaists hung on me to dry,
and get watered with coffee grounds and peroxide of hydrogen.

This girl had a piano in tie room, and she used to disturb it with both
hands while she made noises with her mouth for hours at a time. I sup-
pose she was practising vocal music.

One day she seemed very much excited and kept looking at the clock.
At eleven somebody knocked and she let in a stout, dark man with
tousled black hair. He sat down at once at the piano and played while she
sang for him. When she finished she laid one hand on her bosom and
looked at him. He shook his head, and she leaned against the piano.^

"Two years already," she said, speaking slowly— "do you think in two
more — or even longer?"

The man shook his head again. "You waste your time," he said, roughly
I though. "The voice is not there." And then he looked at her in a pe-
culiar way. "But the voice is not everything," he went on. "You have
looks. I can place you, as I told you if "

The girl pointed to the door without saying anything, and the dark
man left the room. And then she came over and cried around me again.
It's a good thing I had enough rubber in me to be water-proof.

About that time somebody else knocked at the door. "Thank goodness,"
I said to myself. "Here's a chance to get the water-works turned off. I
hope it's somebody that's game enough to stand a bird and a bottle to
liven things up a little." Tell you the truth, this little girl made me tired.
A rubber plant likes to see a little sport now and then. I don't suppose
there's another green thing in New York that sees as much of gay life
unless it's the chartreuse or the sprigs of parsley around the dish.

When the girl opens the door in steps a young chap in a traveling cap
and picks her up in his arms, and she sings out "Oh, Dick!" and stays
there long enough to— well, you've been a rubber plant too, sometimes, I
suppose.

"Good thing!" says I to myself. "This is livelier than scales and weep-
ing. Now there'll be something doing."

"You've got to go back with me," says the young man. "I've come two

1646 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

thousand miles for you. Aren't you tired of it yet, Bess? You've kept all
of us waiting so long. Haven't you found out yet what is best?"

"The bubble burst only to-day," says the girl. "Come here, Dick, and
see what I found the other day on the sidewalk for sale." She brings him
by the hand and exhibits yours truly. "How one ever got away up here
who can tell? I bought it with almost the last money I had."

He looked at me, but he couldn't keep his eyes off her for more than a
second.

"Do you remember the night, Bess," he said, "when we stood under
one of those on the bank of the bayou and what you told me then?"

"Geewillikins!" I said to myself. "Both of them stand under a rubber
plant! Seems to me they are stretching matters somewhat!"

"Do I not," says she, looking up at him and sneaking close to his vest,
"and now I say it again, and it is to last forever. Look, Dick, at its leaves,
how wet they are. Those are my tears, and it was thinking of you that
made them fall."

"The dear old magnolias!" says the young man, pinching one of my
leaves. "I love them all."

Magnolia! Well, wouldn't that — say! those innocents thought I fvas a
magnolia! What the — well, wasn't that tough on a genuine little old New,
York rubber plant? *

OUT OF NAZARETH

Okochee, in Georgia, had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it
with a "wad." Okochee came out of it with a half-million-dollar debt, a
two and a half per cent, city property tax, and a city council that showed
a propensity for traveling the back streets of the town. These things came
about through a fatal resemblance of the river Cooloosa to the Hudson,
as set forth and expounded by a Northern tourist. Okochee felt that New
York should not be allowed to consider itself the only alligator in the
swamp, so to speak. And then that harmless, but persistent, individual so
numerous in the South — the man who is always clamoring for more cot-
ton mills, and is ready to take a dollar's worth of stock, provided he can
borrow the dollar — that man added his deadly work to the tourist's inno-
cent praise, and Okochee fell.

The Cooloosa River winds through a range of small mountains, passes
Okochee, and then blends its waters trippingly, as fall the mellifluous
Indian syllables, with the Chattahoochee.

Okochee rose, as it were, from its sunny seat on the post-office stoop,
hitched up its suspender, and threw a granite dam two hundred and
forty feet long and sixty feet high across the Cooloosa one mile above the

OUT OF NAZARETH 1647

town. Thereupon, a dimpling, sparkling lake backed up twenty miles
among the little mountains. Thus in the great game of municipal rivalry
did Okochee match that famous drawing card, the Hudson. It was con-
ceded that nowhere could the Palisades be judged superior in the way of
scenery and grandeur. Following the picture card was played the ace of
commercial importance. Fourteen thousand horsepower would this dam
furnish. Cotton mills, factories, and manufacturing plants would rise up
as the green corn after a shower. The spindle and die flywheel and tur-
bine would sing the shrewd glory of Okochee. Along the picturesque
heights above the lake would rise in beauty the costly villas and the splen-
did summer residences of capital. The naphtha launch of the millionaire
would spit among the romantic coves; the verdured hills would take
formal shapes of terrace, lawn, and park. Money would be spent like
water in Okochee, and water would be turned into money.

The fate of the good town is quickly told. Capital decided not to invest.
Of all the great things promised, the scenery alone came to fulfilment.
The wooded peaks, the impressive promontories of solemn granite, the
beautiful green slants of bank and ravine did all they could to reconcile
Okochee to the delinquency of miserly gold. The sunsets gilded the
dreamy draws and coves with a minting that should charm away heart-
burning. Okochee, true to the instinct of its blood and clime, was lulled
by the spell. It climbed out of the arena, loosed its suspender, sat down
again on the post-office stoop, and took a chew. It consoled itself by drawl-
ing sarcasms at the city council which was not to blame, causing the
fathers, as has beeji said, to seek back streets and figure perspiringly on
the sinking fund and the appropriation for interest due.

The youth of Okochee— they^ who were to carry into the rosy future the
burden of the debt— accepted failure with youth's uncalculating joy. For,
here was sport, aquatic and nautical, added to the meagre round of life's
pleasures. In yachting caps and flowing neckties they pervaded the lake
to its limits. Girls wore silk waists embroidered with anchors in blue and
pink. The trousers of the young men widened at the bottom, and their
hands were proudly calloused by the oft-plied oar. Fishermen were under
the spell of a deep and tolerant joy. Sailboats and rowboats furrowed the
lenient waves, popcorn and ice-cream booths sprang up about the litde
wooden pier. Two small excursion steamboats were built, and plied the
delectable waters. Okochee philosophically gave up the hope of eating
turtle soup with a gold spoon, and settled back, not ill content, to its regu-
lar diet of lotus and fried hominy. And out of this slow wreck of great
expectations rose up J. Pinkney Bloom with his "wad" and his prosperous,
cheery smile.

Needless to say J. Pinkney was no product of Georgia soil. He came out
of that flushed and capable region known as the "North." He called him-
self a "promoter"; his enemies had spoken of him as a "grafter"; Okochee

1648 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

tool a middle course, and held him to be no better nor no worse than a
"Yank."

Far up the lake — eighteen miles above the town — the eye of this cheer-
ful camp-follower of booms had spied out a graft. He purchased there a
precipitous tract of five hundred acres at forty-five cents per acre; and this
he laid out and subdivided as the city of Skyland— the Queen City of the
Switzerland of the South. Streets and avenues were surveyed; parks de-
signed; corners of central squares reserved for the "proposed" opera
house, board of trade, lyceum, market, public schools, and "Exposition
Hall" The price of lots ranged from five to five hundred dollars. Posi-
tively, no lot would be priced higher than five hundred dollars.

While the boom was growing in Okochee, J, Pinkney's circulars, maps,
and prospectuses were flying through the mails to every part of the coun-
try. Investors sent in their money by post, and the Skyland Real Estate
Company (J. Pinkney Bloom) returned to each a deed, duly placed on
record, to the best lot, at the price, on hand that day. All this time the
catamount screeched upon the reserved lot of the Skyland Board of Trade,
the opossum swung by his tail over the site of the exposition hall, and the
owl hooted a melancholy recitative to his audience of young squirrels in
opera house square. Later, when the money was coming in fast, J. Pink-
ney caused to be erected in the coming city half a dozen cheap box houses,
and persuaded a contingent of indigent natives to occupy them, thereby
assuming the role of "population" in subsequent prospectuses, which be-
came, accordingly, more seductive and remunerative.

So, when the dream faded and Okochee dropped back to digging bait
and nursing its two and a half per cent tax, J. Pinkney Bloom (unloving
of checks and drafts and the cold interrogatories of bankers) strapped
about his fifty-two-inch waist a soft leather belt containing eight thousand
dollars in big bills, and said that all was very good.

One last trip he was making to Skyland before departing to other salad
fields. Skyland was a regular post-office, and the steamboat, Dixie Belle,
under contract, delivered the mail bag (generally empty) twice a week.
There was a little business there to be settled — the postmaster was to be
paid off for his light but lonely services, and the "inhabitants" had to be
furnished with another month's homely rations, as per agreement. And
then Skyland would know }. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of
these precipitous, barren, useless lots might come and view the scene of
their invested credulity, or they might leave them to their fit tenants, the
wild hog and the browsing deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate
Company was finished.

The little steamboat Dixie Belle was about to shove off on her regular
up-the-lake trip, when a rickety hired carriage rattled up to the pier, and
a tall, elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out, signaling courteously but
vivaciously for the boat to wait. Time was of the least importance in the

OUT OF NAZARETH 1649

schedule of the Dixie Belle; Captain MacFarland gave the order, and the
boat received its ultimate two passengers. For, upon the arm of the tall,
elderly gentleman, as he crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady,
with a gray curl depending quaindy forward of her left ear.

Captain MacFarland was at the wheel; therefore it seemed to J. Pink-
ney Bloom, who was the only other passenger, that it should be his to
play the part of host to the boat's new guests, who were, doubtless, on a
scenery-viewing expedition. He stepped forward, with that translucent,
child-candid smile upon his fresh, pink countenance, with that air of
unaffected sincerity that was redeemed from bluffness only by its ex-
quisite calculation, with that promptitude and masterly decision of man-
ner that so well suited his calling— with all his stock in trade well to the
front, he stepped forward to receive Colonel and Mrs. Peyton BlaylocL
With the grace of a grand marshal or a wedding usher, he escorted the
two passengers to the side of the upper deck, from which the scenery
was supposed to present itself to the observer in increased quantity and
quality. There, in comfortable steamer chairs, they sat and began to piece
together the random lines that were to form an intelligent paragraph in
the big history of little events.

"Our home, sir," said Colonel Blaylock, removing his wide-brimmed,
rather shapeless black felt hat, "is in Holly Springs — Holly Springs,
Georgia. I am very proud to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bloom. Mrs.
Blaylock and myself have just arrived in Okochee this morning, sir, on
business — business of importance in connection with the recent rapid
march of progress in this section of our state."

The Colonel smoothed back, with a sweeping gesture, his long, smooth,
gray locks. His dark eyes, still fiery under the heavy black brows, seemed
inappropriate to the face of a business man. He looked rather to be an old
courtier handed down from the reign of Charles, and re-attired in a
modern suit of fine, but raveling and seam-worn, broadcloth.

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Bloom, in his heartiest prospectus voice "things
have been whizzing around Okochee. Biggest industrial revival and
waking up to natural resources Georgia ever had. Did you happen to
squeeze in on the ground floor in any of the gilt-edged grafts, Colonel?"

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, hesitating in courteous doubt, "if I under-
stand your question, I may say that I took the opportunity to make an
investment that I believe will prove quite advantageous — yes, sir, I believe
it will result in both pecuniary profit and agreeable occupation,"

"Colonel Blaylock," said the little elderly lady, shaking her gray curl
and smiling indulgent explanation at J. Pinkney Bloom, "is so devoted to
business. He has such a talent for financiering and markets and invest-
ments and those kind of things. I think myself extremely fortunate in
having secured him tot a partner on life's journey — I am so unversed in
those formidable but very useful branches of learning."

1650 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

Colonel Blaylock rose and made a bow— a bow that belonged with
silk stockings and lace ruffles and velvet.

"Practical affairs," he said, with a wave of his hand toward the pro-
moter, "are, if I may use the comparison, the garden walks upon which
we tread through life, viewing upon either side of us the flowers which
brighten that journey. It is my pleasure to be able to lay out a walk or
two. Mrs. Blaylock, sir, is one of those fortunate higher spirits whose mis-
sion it is to make the flowers grow. Perhaps, Mr. Bloom, you have perused
the lines of Lorella, the Southern poetess. That is the name above which
Mrs. Blaylock has contributed to the press of the South for many years."

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Bloom, with a sense of the loss clearly writ-
ten upon his frank face, "I'm like the Colonel — in the walk-making
business myself — and I haven't had time to even take a sniff at the flowers.
Poetry is a line I never dealt in. It must be nice, though — quite nice."

"It is the region," smiled Mrs. Blaylock, "in which my soul dwells.
My shawl, Peyton, if you please — the breeze comes a little chilly from
yon verdured hills/'

The Colonel drew from the tail pocket of his coat a small shawl of
knitted silk and laid it solicitously about the shoulders of the lady. Mrs.
Blaylock sighed contentedly, and turned her expressive eyes — still as clear
and unworldly as a child's— upon the steep slopes that were slowly slip-
ping past. Very fair and stately they looked in the clear morning air. They
seemed to speak in familiar terms to the responsive spirit of Lorella. "My
native hills!" she murmured, dreamily. "See how the foliage drinks the
sunlight from the hollows and dells."

"Mrs. Blaylock's maiden days," said the Colonel, interpreting her mood
to J. Pinkney Bloom, "were spent among the mountains of northern
Georgia. Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her those days.
Holly Springs, where we have lived for twenty years, is low and flat. I fear
that she may have suffered in health and spirits by so long a residence
there. That is one potent reason for the change we are making. My dear,
can you not recall those lines you wrote— entitled, I think, 'The Georgia
Hills' — the poem that was so extensively copied by the Southern press
and praised so highly by the Atlanta critics?"

Mrs. Blaylock turned a glance of speaking tenderness upon the Colonel,
fingered for a moment the silvery curl that drooped upon her bosom, then
looked again toward the mountains. Without preliminary or affectation or
demurral she began, in rather thrilling and more deeply pitched tones, to
recite these lines:

"The Georgia hills, die Georgia hills!— Ah! as the slow-paced river here

Oh, heart, why dost thou pine? Broods on its natal rills

Are not these sheltered lowlands fair My spirit drifts, in longing sweet,
With mead and bloom and vine? Back to the Georgia hills.

OUT OF NAZARETH 1651

"And through the close-drawn, cur- "The grass upon their orchard sides

tained night Is a fine couch to me;

I steal on sleep's slow wings The common note of each small bird

Back to my heart's ease — slopes of Passes all minstrelsy.

pine — It would not seem so dread a thing

Where end my wanderings. If, when the Reaper wills,

Oh, heaven seems nearer from their He might come there and take my

tops — hand

And farther earthly ills — Up in the Georgia hills."
Even in dreams, if I may but
Dream of my Georgia hills.

"That's great stuff, ma'am,'* said J. Pinkney Bloom, enthusiastically,
when the poetess had concluded. "I wish I had looked up poetry more
than I have. I was raised in the pine hills myself."

"The mountains ever call to their children," murmured Mrs. Blaylock.
"I feel that life will take on the rosy hue of hope again in among these
beautiful hills. Peyton — a little taste of the currant wine, if you will be so
good. The journey, though delightful in the extreme, slightly fatigues
me."

Colonel Blaylock again visited the depths of his prolific coat, and pro-
duced a tightly corked, rough, black bottle. Mr. Bloom was on his feet
in an instant. "Let me bring a glass, ma'am. You come along, Colonel —
there's a little table we can bring, too. Maybe we can scare up some fruit
or a cup of tea on board. I'll ask Mac."

Mrs. Blaylock reclined at ease. Few royal ladies have held their royal
prerogative with the serene grace of the petted Southern woman. The
Colonel, with an air as gallant and assiduous as in the days of his court-
ship, and J. Pinkney Bloom, with a ponderous agility half professional
and hah: directed by some resurrected, unnamed, long-forgotten senti-
ment, formed a diversified but attentive court. The currant wine— wine
home made from the Holly Springs fruit— went round; and then J.
Pinkney began to hear something of Holly Springs life.

It seemed (from the conversation of the Blaylocks) that the Springs
was decadent. A third of the population had moved away. Business—
and the Colonel was an authority on business — had dwindled to nothing.
After carefully studying the field of opportunities open to capital he had
sold his little property there for eight hundred dollars and invested it in
one of the enterprises opened up by the book in Okochee.

"Might I inquire, sir,J> said Mr. Bloom, "in what particular line of busi-
ness you inserted your coin? I know that town as well as I know the
regulations for illegal use of the mails. I might give you a hunch as to
whether you can make the game go or not."

J. Pinkney, somehow, had a kindly feeling toward these unsophisticated

1652 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

representatives of by-gone days. They were so simple, impractical, and
unsuspecting. He was glad that he happened not to have a gold brick or
a block of that western Bad Boy Silver Mine stock along with him. He
would have disliked to unload on people he liked so well as he did these;
but there are some temptations too enticing to be resisted.

"No, sir," said Colonel Blaylock, pausing to arrange the queen's wrap.
"I did not invest in Okochee. I have made an exhaustive study of busi-
ness conditions, and I regard old settled towns as unfavorable fields in
which to place capital that is limited in amount. Some months ago,
through the kindness of a friend, there came into my hands a map and
description of this new town of Skyland that has been built upon the
lake. The description was so pleasing, the future of the town set forth in
such convincing arguments, and its increasing prosperity portrayed in
such an attractive style that I decided to take advantage of the opportunity
it offered. I carefully selected a lot in the centre of the business district,
although its price was the highest in the schedule—five hundred dollars
— and made the purchase at once/'

"Are you the man — I mean, did you pay five hundred dollars for a lot
in Skyland?" asked J. Pinkney Bloom.

"I did, sir," answered the Colonel, with the air of a modest millionaire
explaining his success; "a lot most excellently situated on the same square
with the opera house, and only two squares from the board of trade. I
consider the purchase a most fortuitous one. It is my intention to erect
a small building upon it at once, and open a modest book and stationery
store. During past years I have met with many pecuniary reverses, and
I now find it necessary to engage in some commercial occupation that will
furnish me with a livelihood. The book and stationery business, though
an humble one, seems to me not inapt nor altogether uncongenial. I am
a graduate of the University of Virginia; and Mrs. Blaylock's really
wonderful acquaintance with belles-lettres and poetic literature should go
far toward insuring success. Of course, Mrs. Blaylock would not personally
serve behind the counter. With the nearly three hundred dollars I have
remaining I can manage the building of a house, by giving a lien on the
lot. I have an old friend in Atlanta who is a partner in a large book store,
and he has agreed to furnish me with a stock of goods on credit, on ex-
tremely easy terms. I am pleased to hope, sir, that Mrs. Blaylock's health
and happiness will be increased by the change of locality. Already I fancy
I can perceive the return of those roses that were once the hope and
despair of Georgia cavaliers."

Again followed that wonderful bow, as the Colonel lightly touched
the pale cheek of the poetess. Mrs. Blaylock, blushing like a girl, shook her
curl and gave the Colonel an arch, reproving tap. Secret of eternal youth
—where art thou? Every second the answer comes— "Here, here, here."

OUT OF NAZARETH 1653

Listen to thine own heartbeats, O weary seeker after external miracles.

"Those years," said Mrs. Blaylock, "in Holly Springs were long, long,
long. But now is the promised land in sight. Skyland! — a lovely name."

"Doubtless," said the Colonel, "we shall be able to secure comfortable
accommodations at some modest hotel at reasonable rates. Our trunks are
in Okochee, to be forwarded when we shall have made permanent ar-
rangements."

J. Pinkney Bloom excused himself, went forward, and stood by the
captain at the wheel.

"Mac," said he, "do you remember my telling you once that I sold one
of those five-hundred-dollar lots in Skyland?"

"Seems I do," grinned Captain MacFarland.

"I'm not a coward, as a general rule," went on the promoter, "but I
always said that if I ever met the sucker that bought that lot I'd run like
a turkey. Now, you see that old babe-in-the-wood over there? Well, he's
the boy that drew the prize. That was the only five-hundred-dollar lot that
went. The rest ranged from ten dollars to two hundred. His wife writes
poetry. She's invented one about the high grounds of Georgia, that's way
up in G. They're going to Skyland to open a book store."

'Well," said MacFarland, with another grin, "it's a good thing you
are along, J. P.; you can show 'em around town until they begin to feel at
home."

"He's got three hundred dollars left to build a house and store with,"
went on J, Pinkney, as if he were talking to himself. "And he thinks
there's an opera house up there."

Captain MacFarland released the wheel long enough to give his leg
a roguish slap.

"You old fat rascal!" he chuckled, with a wink.

"Mac, you're a fool," said J. Pinkney Bloom,, coldly. He went back and
joined the Blaylocks, where he sat, less talkative, with that straight furrow
between his brows that always stood as a signal of schemes being shaped
within.

"There's a good many swindles connected with these booms," he said
presently. "What if this Skyland should turn out to be one— that is, sup-
pose business should be sort of dull there, and no special sale for books?"

"My dear sir," said Colonel Blaylock, resting his hand upon the back
of his wife's chair, "three times I have been reduced to almost penury
by the duplicity of others, but I have not yet lost faith in humanity. If I
have been deceived again, still we may glean health and content, if not
worldly profit. I am aware that there are dishonest schemers in the world
who set traps for the unwary, but even they are not altogether bad. My
dear, can you recall those verses entitled, 'He Giveth the Increase,' that
you composed for the choir of our church in Holly Springs?"

1654 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

"That was four years ago/' said Mrs. Blaylock; "perhaps I can repeat
a verse or two.

"The lily springs from the rotting "To the hardest heart the softening

mould; grace

Pearls from the deep sea slime; Cometh, at last, to bless;

Good will come out of Nazareth Guiding it right to help and cheer

All in God's own time. And succor in distress.

"I cannot remember the rest. The lines were not ambitious. They
were written to the music composed by a dear friend."

"It's a fine rhyme, just the same," declared Mr. Bloom. "It seems to
ring the bell, all right. I guess I gather the sense of it. It means that the
rankest kind of a phony will give you the best end of it once in a while."

Mr. Bloom strayed thoughtfully back to the captain, and stood medi-
tating.

"Ought to be in sight of the spires and gilded domes of Skyland now in
a few minutes," chirruped MacFarland, shaking with enjoyment.

"Go to the devil," said Mr. Bloom, still pensive.

And now, upon the left bank, they caught a glimpse of a white village,
high up on the hills, smothered among green trees. That was Cold Branch
—no boom town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold Branch lay
on the edge of the grape and corn lands. The big country road ran just
back of the heights. Cold Branch had nothing in common with the
frisky ambition of Okochee with its impertinent lake.

"Mac," said J. Pinkney suddenly, "I want you to stop at Cold Branch.
There's a landing there that they made to use sometimes when the river
was up."

"Can't," said the captain, grinning more broadly. "I've got the United
States mails on board. Right to-day this boat's in the government service.
Do you want to have the poor old captain keelhauled by Uncle Sam ? And
the great city of Skyland all disconsolate, waiting for its mail? I'm
ashamed of your extravagance, J. P."

"Mac," almost whispered J. Pinkney, in his danger-line voice, "I looked
into the engine room of the Dixie Belle a while ago. Don't you know of
somebody that needs a new boiler? Cement and black japan can't hide
flaws from me. And then, those shares of building and loan that you
traded for repairs — they were all yours, of course. I hate to mention these
things, but "

"Oh, come now, }. P.," said the captain. "You know I was just fooling.
I'll put you off at Cold Branch, if you say so."

"The other passengers get off there, too," said Mr. Bloom.

Further conversation was held, and in ten minutes the Dixie Belle
turned her nose toward a little, cranky wooden pier on the left bank, and
the captain, relinquishing the wheel to a roustabout, came to the passenger

OUT OF NAZARETH 1655

deck and made the remarkable announcement: "All out for Skyland."

The Blay locks and J. Pinkney Bloom disembarked, and the Dixie Belle
proceeded on her way up the lake. Guided by the indefatigable promoter,
they slowly climbed the steep hillside, pausing often to rest and admire
the view. Finally they entered the village of Cold Branch. Warmly both
the Colonel and his wife praised it for its homelike and peaceful beauty.
Mr. Bloom conducted them to a two-story building on a shady street that
bore the legend, "Pinetop Inn." Here he took his leave, receiving the
cordial thanks of the two for his attentions, the Colonel remarking that
he thought they would spend the remainder of the day in rest, and take a
look at his purchase on the morrow.

J. Pinkney Bloom walked down Cold Branch's main street. He did
not know this town, but he knew towns, and his feet did not falter.
Presently he saw a sign over a door: "Frank E. Cooly, Attorney-at-Law
and Notary Public." A young man was Mr. Cooly, and awaiting business.

"Get your hat, son," said Mr. Bloom, in his breezy way, "and a blank
deed and come along. It's a job for you.

"Now/' he continued, when Mr. Cooly had responded with alacrity,
"is there a bookstore in town?"

"One," said the lawyer. "Henry Williams V

"Get there," said Mr. Bloom. "We're going to buy it."

Henry Williams was behind his counter. His store was a small one, con-
taining a mixture of books, stationery, and fancy rubbish. Adjoining it
was Henry's home — a decent cottage, vine-embowered and cosy. Henry
was lank and soporific, and not inclined to rush his business.

"I want to buy your house and store," said Mr. Bloom. "I haven't got
time to dicker— name your price."

"It's worth eight hundred," said Henry, too much dazed to ask more
than its value.

"Shut that door," said Mr. Bloom to the lawyer. Then he tore off his
coat and vest, and began to unbutton his shirt,

"Wanter fight about it, do yer?" said Henry Williams, jumping up
and cracking his heels together twice. "All right, hunky— sail in and cut
yer capers."

"Keep your clothes on," said Mr. Bloom. "I'm only going down to the
bank."

He drew eight one-hundred-dollar bills from his money belt and
planked them down on the counter. Mr. Cooly showed signs of future
promise, for he already had the deed spread out, and was reaching across
the counter for the ink bottle. Never before or since was such quick
action had in Cold Branch.

"Your name, please?" asked the lawyer.

"Make it out to Peyton Blaylock," said Mr. Bloom. "God knows how
to spell it/*

1656 BOOK. XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

Within thirty minutes Henry Williams was out of business, and Mr.
Bloom stood on the brick sidewalk with Mr. Cooly, who held in his hand
the signed and attested deed.

"You'll find the party at the Pinetop Inn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Get
it recorded, and take it down and give it to him. Hell ask you a hell's
mint of questions; so here's ten dollars for the trouble you'll have in not
being able to answer 'em. Never run much to poetry, did you, young
man?"

"Well/' said the really talented Cooly, who even yet retained his right
mind, "now and then."

"Dig into it," said Mr. Bloom, "it'll pay you. Never heard a poem, now,
that run something like this did you? —

"A good thing out of Nazareth

Comes up sometimes, I guess,
On hand, all right, to help and cheer
A sucker in distress."

"I believe not," said Mr. Cooly.

"It's a hymn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Now, show me the way to a
livery stable, son, for I'm going to hit the dirt road back to Okochee."

CONFESSION OF A HUMORIST

There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years and
then it broke out on me, and people said I was It.

But they called it humor instead of measles.

The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior
partner on his fiftieth birthday. We crowded into his private office to
present it.

I had been selected for spokesman, and I made a little speech that I had
been preparing for a week.

It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams and funny twists that
brought down the house — which was a very solid one in the wholesale
hardware line. Old Marlowe himself actually grinned, and the em-
ployees took their cue and roared.

My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past nine o'clock on that
morning.

For weeks afterward my fellow clerks fanned the flame of my self-
esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever
speech that was, old man, and carefully explained to me the point of
each one of my jokes.

Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. Others might

CONFESSIONS OF A HUMORIST 1657

speak sanely on business matters and the day's topics, but from me
something gamesome and airy was required.

I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery and lighten up the
granite ware with persiflage. I was second bookkeeper, and if I failed to
show up a balance sheet without something comic about the footings or
could find no cause for laughter in an invoice of plows, the other clerks
were disappointed.

By degrees my fame spread, and I became a local "character." Our town
was small enough to make this possible. The daily newspaper quoted me.
At social gatherings I was indispensable.

I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for quick and
spontaneous repartee. This gift I cultivated and improved by practice. And
the nature of it was kindly and genial, not running to sarcasm or offend-
ing others. People began to smile when they saw me coming, and by
the time we had met I generally had the word ready to broaden the
smile into a laugh.

I had married early. We had a charming boy of three and a girl of
five. Naturally, we lived in a vine-covered cottage, and were happy. My
salary as bookkeeper in the hardware concern kept at a distance those ills
attendant upon superfluous wealth.

At sundry times I had written out a few jokes and conceits that I con-
sidered peculiarly happy, and had sent them to certain periodicals that
print such things. All of them had been instantly accepted. Several of the
editors had written to request further contributions.

One day I received a letter from the editor of a famous weekly pub-
lication. He suggested that I submit to him a humorous composition to
fill a column of space; hinting that he would make it a regular feature
of each issue if the work proved satisfactory, I did so, and at the end of
two weeks he offered to make a contract with me for a year at a figure
that was considerably higher than the amount paid me by the hardware
firm.

I was filled with delight. My wife already crowned me in her mind
with the imperishable evergreens of literary success. We had lobster
croquettes and a bottle of blackberry wine for supper that night. Here
was the chance to liberate myself from drudgery. I talked over the matter
very seriously with Louisa. We agreed that I must resign my place at the
store and devote myself to humor.

I resigned. My fellow clerks gave me a farewell banquet. The speech
I made there coruscated. I was printed in full by the Gazette. The next
morning I awoke and looked at the clock.

"Late, by George!" I exclaimed, and grabbed for my clothes. Lousia
reminded me that I was no longer a slave to hardware and contractors'
supplies. I was now a professional humorist.

After breakfast she proudly led me to the little room off the kitchen.

1658 BOOK. XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

Dear girl! There was my table and chair, writing pad, ink, and pipe tray.
And all the author's trappings — the celery stand full of fresh roses and
honeysuckle, last year's calendar on the wall, the dictionary, and a little
bag of chocolates to nibble between inspirations. Dear girl!

I sat me to work. The wall paper is patterned with arabesques or
odalisks or— perhaps — it is trapezoids. Upon one of the figures I fixed my
eyes. I bethought me of humor.

A voice startled me—Louisa's voice.

"If you aren't too busy, dear," it said, "come to dinner."

I looked at my watch. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the grim
scythe-man. I went to dinner.

"You mustn't work too hard at first," said Louisa. "Goethe^-or was it
Napoleon?— said five hours a day is enough for mental labor. Couldn't
you take me and the children to the woods this afternoon?"

"I am a little tired," I admitted. So we went to the woods.

But I soon got the swing of it. Within a month I was turning out copy
as regular as shipments of hardware.

And I had success. My column in the weekly made some stir, and I
was referred to in a gossipy way by the critics as something fresh in the
line of humorists. I augmented my income considerably by contributing
to other publications.

I picked up the tricks of the trade. I could take a funny idea amd make
a two-line joke of it, earning a dollar. With false whiskers on, it would
serve up cold as a quatrain, doubling its producing value. By turning the
skirt and adding a ruffle of rhyme you would hardly recognize it as
vers de societe with neatly shod feet and a fashion-plate illustration.

I began to save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ.
My townspeople began to look upon me as a citizen of some consequence
instead of the merry trifler I had been when I clerked in the hardware
store.

After five or six months the spontaneity seemed to depart from my
humor. Quips and droll sayings no longer fell carelessly from my lips. I
was sometimes hard run for material. I found myself listening to catch
available ideas from the conversation of my friends. Sometimes I chewed
my pencil and gazed at the wall paper for hours trying to build up some
gay little bubble of unstudied fun.

And then I became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, a vampire, to my
acquaintances. Anxious, haggard, greedy, I stood among them like a
veritable killjoy. Let a bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant phrase
fall from their lips and I was after it like a hound springing upon a bone.
I dared not trust my memory; but, turning aside guiltily and meanly, I
would make a note of it in my ever-present memorandum book or upon
my cuff for my own future use.

My friends regarded me in sorrow and wonder. I was not the same

CONFESSIONS OF A HUMORIST 1659

man. Where once I had furnished them entertainment and jollity, I now
preyed upon them. No jests from me ever bid for their smiles now. They
were too precious. I could not afford to dispense gratuitously the means of
my livelihood.

I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crows,
that they might drop from their beaks the morsels of wit that I coveted.

Nearly every one began to avoid me. I even forgot how to smile, not
even paying that much for the sayings I appropriated.

No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt from my plunder-
ing in search of material. Even in church my demoralized fancy went
hunting among the solemn aisles and pillars for spoil.

Did the minister give out the long-meter doxology, at once I began:
"Doxology — sockdology — sockdolager — meter — meet her."

The sermon ran through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering un-
heeded, could I but glean a suggestion of a pun or a bon mot. The sol-
emnest anthems of the choir were but ah accompaniment to my thoughts
as I conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient comicalities con-
cerning the jealousies of soprano, tenor, and basso.

My own home became a hunting ground. My wife is a singularly
feminine creature, candid, sympathetic, and impulsive. Once her con-
versation was my delight, and her ideas a source of unfailing pleasure.
Now I worked her. She was a gold mine of those amusing but lovable
inconsistencies that distinguish the female mind.

I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should
have enriched only the sacred precincts of home. With devilish cunning
I encouraged her to talk. Unsuspecting, she laid her heart bare. Upon the
cold, conspicuous, common, printed page I offered it to the public gaze.

A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her. For pieces of silver I
dressed her sweet confidences in the pantalettes and frills of folly and
made them dance in the market place. •

Dear Louisa! Of nights I have bent over her cruel as a wolf above a
tender lamb, hearkening even to her soft words murmured in sleep,
hoping to catch an idea for my next day's grind. There is worse to come.

God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of the
fugitive sayings of my little children.

Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts
and speeches. I found a ready sale for this kind of humor, and was furnish-
ing a regular department in a magazine with "Funny Fancies of Child-
hood." I began to stalk them as an Indian stalks the antelope. I would hide
behind sofas and doors, or crawl on my hands and knees among the bushes
in the yard to eavesdrop while they were at play. I had all the qualities
of a harpy except remorse.

Once, when I was barren of ideas, and my copy must leave in the next
mail, I covered myself in a pile of autumn leaves in the yard, where I

1660 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

knew they intended to come to play. I cannot bring myself to believe
that Guy was aware of my hiding place, but even if he was, I would be
loath to blame him for his setting fire to the leaves, causing the destruction
of my new suit of clothes, and nearly cremating a parent.

Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest. Often, when I was
creeping upon them like a melancholy ghoul, I would hear them say to
each other: "Here comes papa," and they would gather their toys and
scurry away to some safer hiding place. Miserable wretch that I was!

And yet I was doing well financially. Before the first year had passed I
had saved a thousand dollars, and we had lived in comfort.

But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to what a pariah is, but
I was everything that it sounds like. I had no friends, no amusements, no
enjoyment of life. The happiness of my family had been sacrificed. I
was a bee, sucking sordid honey from life's fairest flowers, dreaded and
shunned on account of my sting.

One day a man spoke to me, with a pleasant and friendly smile. Not
in months had the thing happened. I was passing the undertaking
establishment of Peter Heffelbower. Peter stood in the door and saluted
me. I stopped, strangely wrung in my heart by his greeting. He asked
me inside.

The day was chill and rainy. We went into the back room, where a fire
burned in a little stove. A customer came, and Peter left me alone for a
while. Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me— a sense of beautiful
calm and content, I looked around the place. There were rows of shining
rosewood caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes, mourning streamers,
and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was peace, order,
silence, the abode of grave and dignified reflections. Here, on the brink of
life, was a little niche pervaded by the spirit of eternal rest.

When I entered it, the follies of the world abandond me at the door.
I felt no inclination to wrest a humorous idea from those sombre and
stately trappings. My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful repose
upon a couch draped with gentle thoughts.

A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a
philosopher, full of serenity and ease. I had found a refuge from humor,
from the hot chase of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit of the
panting joke, from the restless reach after the nimble repartee.

I had not known Heffelbower well. When he came back, I let him talk,
fearful that he might prove to be a jarring note in the sweet, dirgelike
harmony of his establishment.

But, no. He chimed truly. I gave a long sigh of happiness. Never have
I know a man's talk to be as magnificently dull as Peter's was. Com-
pared with it the Dead Sea is a geyser. Never a sparkle or a glimmer of
wit marred his words. Commonplaces as trite and as plentiful as black-
berries flowed from his lips no more stirring in quality than a last week's

CONFESSIONS OF A HUMORIST l66l

tape running from a ticker. Quaking a little, I tried upon him one of my
best pointed jokes. It fell back ineffectual, with the point broken. I loved
that man from then on.

Two or three evenings each week I would steal down to Heffelbower's
and revel in his back room. That was my only joy. I began to rise early
and hurry through my work, that I might spend more time in my haven.
In no other place could I throw off my habit of extracting humorous
ideas from my surroundings* Peter's talk left me no opening had I be-
sieged it ever so hard.

Under this influence I began to improve in spirits. It was the recreation
from one's labor which every man needs. I surprised one or two of my
former friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word as I passed
them on the streets. Several times I dumfounded my family by relaxing
long enough to make a jocose remark in their presence.

I had so long been ridden by the incubus of humor that I seized my
hours of holiday with a schoolboy's zest.

My work began to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that
it had been. I often whisded at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency
than before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off
to my helpful retreat as a drunkard is to get to his tavern.

My wife had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my
afternoons. I thought it best not to tell her; women do not understand
these things. Poor girl! — she had one shock out of it.

One day I brought home a silver coffin handle for a paper weight and
a fine, fluffy hearse plume to dust my papers with.

I loved to see them on my desk, and think of the beloved back room
down at Heffelbower's. But Louisa found them, and she shrieked with
horror. I had to console her with some lame excuse for having them, but
I saw in her eyes that the prejudice was not removed. I had to remove the
articles, though, at double-quick time.

One day Peter Heffelbower laid before me a temptation that swept me
off my feet. In his sensible, uninspired way he showed me his books, and
explained that his profits and his business were increasing rapidly. He
had thought of taking in a partner with some cash. He would rather have
me than any one he knew. When I left his place that afternoon Peter had
my check for the thousand dollars I had in the bank, and I was a partner
in his undertaking business.

I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain
amount of doubt. I was dreading to tell my wife about it. But I walked
on air. To give up the writing of humorous stuff, once more to enjoy
the apples of life, instead of squeezing them to a pulp for a few drops
of hard cider to make the public feel funny — what a boon that would be!

At the supper table Louisa handed me some letters that had come
during my absence. Several of them contained rejected manuscript. Ever

l662 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

since I first began going to Hefielbower's my stuff had been coming back
with alarming frequency. Lately I had been dashing off my jokes and
articles with the greatest fluency. Previously I had labored like a brick-
layer, slowly and with agony.

Presently I opened a letter from the editor of the weekly with which
I had a regular contract. The checks for that weekly article were still our
main dependence. The letter ran thus:

Dear Sir:

As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the present
month. While regretting the necessity for so doing, we must say that
we do not care to renew same for the coming year. We were quite
pleased with your style of humor, which seems to have delighted quite
a large proportion of our readers. But for the past two months we have
noticed a decided falling off in its quality.

Your earlier work showed a spontaneous, easy, natural flow of fun
and wit. Of late it is labored, studied, and unconvincing, giving painful
evidence of hard toil and drudging mechanism.

Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions avail-
able any longer, we are, yours sincerely,

The Editor

I handed this letter to my wife. After she had read it her face grew
extremely long, and there were tears in her eyes.

"The mean old thing!" she exclaimed indignantly. "I'm sure your
pieces are just as good as they ever were. And it doesn't take you half
as long to write them as it did." And then, I suppose, Louisa thought of
the checks that would cease coming. "Oh, John," she wailed, "what will
you do now?"

For an answer I got up and began to do a polka step around the supper
table. I am sure Louisa thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I
think the children hoped it had, for they tore after me, yelling with glee
and emulating my steps. I was now something like their old playmate
as of yore.

"The theatre for us to-night!" I shouted; "nothing less. And a late,
wild, disreputable supper for all of us at the Palace Restaurant. Lumpty-
diddle-de-dee-de-dum ! "

And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner
in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might
go hide their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me.

With the editor's letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my
wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the
feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room
of Peter Hef no, of Heffelbower & Co.'s undertaking establishment.

In conclusion, I will say that to-day you will find no man in our town

THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE 1663

as well liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are
again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife's
confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola
play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the
ghastly tormentor who used to dog their steps, notebook in hand.

Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the
shop, while Peter attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and
high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a regular Irish wake.

THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE

The young man in straitened circumstances who comes to New York
City to enter literature has but one thing to do, provided he has studied
carefully his field in advance. He must go straight to Madison Square,
write an article about the sparrows there, and sell it to the Sun for $15.

I cannot recall either a novel or a story dealing with the popular theme
of the young writer from the provinces who comes to the metropolis
to win fame and fortune with his pen in which the hero does not get his
start that way. It does seem strange that some author, in casting about
for startlingly original plots, has not hit upon the idea of having his hero
write about the bluebirds in Union Square and sell it to the Herald. But
a search through the files of metropolitan fiction counts up overwhelm-
ingly for the sparrows and the old Garden Square, and the Sun always
writes the check.

Of course it is easy to understand why this first city venture of the
budding author is always successful. He is primed by necessity to a
superlative effort; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring city
he has found this spot of singing birds and green grass and trees; every
tender sentiment in his nature is battling with the sweet pain of home-
sickness; his genius is aroused as it never may be again; the birds chirp,
the tree branches sway, the noise of wheels is forgotten; he writes with
his soul in his pen — and he sells it to the Sun for $15.

I had read of this custom during many years before I came to New
York. When my friends were using their strongest arguments to dis-
suade me from coming, I only smiled serenely. They did not know of
that sparrow graft I had up my sleeve.

When I arrived in New York, and the car took me straight from the
ferry up Twenty-third Street to Madison Square, I could hear that $15
check rustling in my inside pocket.

I obtained lodging at an unhyphenated hostelry, and the next morning
I was on a bench in Madison Square almost by the time the sparrows were
awake. Their melodious chirping, the benignant spring foliage of the

1664 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

noble trees and the clean, fragrant grass reminded me so potently of the
old farm I had left that tears almost came into my eyes.

Then, all in a moment, I felt my inspiration. The brave, piercing notes
of those cheerful small birds formed a keynote to a wonderful, light, fanci-
ful song of hope and joy and altruism. Like myself, they were creatures
with hearts pitched to the tune of woods and fields; as I was, so were
they captives by circumstance in the discordant, dull city— yet with how
much grace and glee they bore the restraint!

And then the early morning people began to pass through the square to
their work— sullen people, with sidelong glances and glum faces, hurrying,
hurrying, hurrying. And I got my theme cut out clear from the bird
notes, and wrought it into a lesson, and a poem, and a carnival dance, and
a lullaby; and then translated it all into prose and began to write.

For two hours my pencil traveled over my pad with scarcely a rest.
Then I went to the Uttle room I had rented for two days, and there I cut
it to half, and then mailed it, white-hot, to the Sun.

The next morning I was up by daylight and spent two cents of my
capital for a paper. If the word "sparrow" was in it I was unable to find it.

I took it up to my room and spread it out on the bed and went over
it, column by column. Something was wrong.

Three hours afterward the postman brought me a large envelope con-
taining my MS. and a piece of inexpensive paper, about 3 inches^ by 4— I
suppose some of you have seen them — upon which was written in violet
ink, "With the Sun's thanks."

I went over to the square and sat upon a bench. No; I did not think it
necessary to eat any breakfast that morning. The confounded pests of
sparrows were making the square hideous with their idiotic "cheep,
cheep." I never saw birds so persistently noisy, impudent, and disagreeable
in all my life.

By this time, according to all traditions, I should have been standing
in the office of the editor of the Sun. That personage— a tall, grave, white-
haired man— would strike a silver bell as he grasped my hand and wiped
a suspicious moisture from his glasses*

"Mr. McChesney" he would be saying when a subordinate appeared,
"this is Mr. Henry, the young man who sent in that exquisite gem about
the sparrows in Madison Square. You may give him a desk at once. Your
salary, sir, will be $80 a week, to begin with."

This was what I had been led to expect by all writers who have evolved
romances of literary New York.

Something was decidedly wrong with tradition. I could not assume
the blame; so I fixed it upon the sparrows. I began to hate them with
intensity and heat.

At that moment an individual wearing an excess of whiskers, two
hats, and a pestilential air slid into the seat beside me.

THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE 1665

"Say, Willie/' he muttered cajolingly, "could you cough up a dime
out of your coffers for a cup of coffee this morning?"

"I'm lung-weary, my friend," said I. "The best I can do is three cents."

"And you look like a gentleman, too," said he. "What brung you
down — booze?"

"Birds," I said fiercely. "The brown-throated songsters carolling songs
of hope and cheer to weary man toiling amid the city's dust and din. The
little feathered couriers from the meadows and woods chirping sweetly
to us of blue skies and flowering fields. The confounded little squint-
eyed nuisances yawping like a flock of steam pianos, and stuffing diem-
selves like aldermen with grass seeds and bugs, while a man sits on a
bench and goes without his breakfast. Yes, sir, birds! look at them!"

As I spoke I picked up a dead tree branch that lay by the bench, and
hurled it with all my force into a close congregation of the sparrows on
the grass. The flock flew to the trees with a babel of shrill cries; but two
of them remained prostrate upon the turf.

In a moment my unsavory friend had leaped over the row of benches
and secured the fluttering victims, which he thrust hurriedly into his
pockets. Then he beckoned me with a dirty forefinger.

"Come on, cully," he said hoarsely. "You're in on the feed."

Weakly I followed my dingy acquaintance. He led me away from the
park down a side street and through a crack in a fence into a vacant lot
where some excavating had been going on. Behind a pile of old stones
and lumber he paused, and took out his birds.

"I got matches," said he. "You got any paper to start a fire with?'*

I drew forth my manuscript story of the sparrows, and offered it for
burnt sacrifice. There were old planks, splinters, and chips for our fire.
My frowsy friend produced from some interior of his frayed clothing half
a loaf of bread, pepper, and salt.

In ten minutes each of us was holding a sparrow spitted upon a stick
over the leaping flames.

"Say," said my fellow bivouacker, "this ain't so bad when a fellow's
hungry. It reminds me of when I struck New York first— about fifteen
years ago. I come in from the West to see if I could get a job on a news-
paper. I hit the Madison Square Park the first mornin' after, and was sit-
ting around on the benches. I noticed the sparrows chirpin', and the grass
and trees so nice and green that I thought I was back in the country again.
Then I got some papers out of my pocket, and "

"I know," I interrupted. "You sent it to the Sun and got $15.

"Say," said my friend, suspiciously, "you seem to know a good deal.
Where was you? I went to sleep on the bench there, in the sun, and
somebody touched me for every cent I had — $15."

l666 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

HEARTS AND HANDS

At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the
eastbound B. & M. express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young
woman dressed in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious com-
forts of an experienced traveler. Among the newcomers were two young
men, one of handsome presence with a bold, frank countenance and
manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly
dressed. The two were handcuffed together.

As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only vacant seat offered
was a reversed one facing the attractive young woman. Here the linked
couple seated themselves. The young woman's glance fell upon them
with a distant, swift disinterest; then with a lovely smile brightening her
countenance and a tender pink tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held
out a little gray-gloved hand. When she spoke her voice, full, sweet, and
deliberate, proclaimed that its owner was accustomed to speak and be
heard.

"Well, Mr. Easton, if you will make me speak first, I suppose I must.
Don't you ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the West?"

The younger man roused himself sharply at the sound of her voice,
seemed to struggle with a slight embarrassment which he threw off in-
stantly, and then clasped her fingers with his left hand.

"It's Miss Fairchild," he said, with a smile. "Ill ask you to excuse the
other hand; it's otherwise engaged just at present."

He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining
"bracelet" to the left one of his companion. The glad look in the girl's
eyes slowly changed to a bewildered horror. The glow faded from her
cheeks. Her lips parted in a vague, relaxing distress. Easton, with a little
laugh, as if amused, was about to speak again when the other forestalled
him. The glum-faced man had been watching the girl's countenance with
veiled glances from his keen, shrewd eyes.

"You'll excuse me for speaking, miss, but, I see you're acquainted with
the marshal here. If you'll ask him to speak a word for me when we get
to the pen he'll do it, and it'll make things easier for me there. He's tak-
ing me to Leavenworth prison. It's seven years for counterfeiting."

"Oh!" said the girl, with a deep breath and returning color. "So that
is what you are doing out here? A marshal!"

"My dear Miss Fairchild," said Easton, calmly, "I had to do something.
Money has a way of taking wings unto itself, and you know it takes
money to keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this opening in

HEARTS AND HANDS 1667

the West, and — well, a marshalship isn't quite as high a position as that
of ambassador, but "

"The ambassador," said the girl, warmly, "doesn't call any more. He
needn't ever have done so. You ought to know that. And so now you
are one of these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot and go
into all kinds of dangers. That's different from the Washington life. You
have been missed from the old crowd."

The girl's eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a little, to rest upon
the glittering handcuffs.

"Don't you worry about them, miss," said the other man. "All mar-
shals handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from getting
away. Mr. Easton knows his business."

"Will we see you again soon in Washington?" asked the girl.

"Not soon, I think," said Easton. "My butterfly days are over, I fear."

"I love the West," said the girl, irrelevantly. Her eyes were shining
softly. She looked away out the car window. She began to speak truly
and simply, without the gloss of style and manner: "Mamma and I spent
the summer in Denver. She went home a week ago because father was
slightly ill. I could live and be happy in the West, I think the air here
agrees with me. Money isn't everything. But people always misunder-
stand things and remain stupid "

"Say, Mr. Marshal," growled the glum-faced man. "This isn't quite
fair. I'm needin' a drink, and haven't had a smoke all day. Haven't you
talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, won't you? I'm half
dead for a pipe."

The bound travelers rose to then- feet, Easton with the same slow
smile on his face.

"I can't deny a petition for tobacco," he said, lightly. 'It's the one friend
of the unfortunate. Good-bye, Miss Fairchild. Duty calls, you know." He
held out his hand for a farewell.

"It's too bad you are not going East," she said, reclothing herself with
manner and style. "But you must go on to Leavenworth, I suppose?"

"Yes," said Easton, "I must go on to Leavenworth."

The two men sidled down the aisle into the smoker.

The two passengers in a seat near by had heard most of the conversa-
tion. Said one of them : "That marshal's a good sort of chap. Some of these
Western fellows are all right."

"Pretty young to hold an office like that, isn't he?" asked the other.

"Young!" exclaimed the first speaker, "why Oh! didn't you catch

on ? Say — did you ever know an officer to handcuff a prisoner to his right
hand?"

l668 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

THE CACTUS

The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large
amount o£ reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning
man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship
while removing one's gloves.

That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table in his bachelor
apartments. On the table stood a singular-looking green plant in a^ red
earthen jar. The plant was one o£ the species of cacti, and was provided
with long, tentacular leaves that perpetually swayed with the slightest
breeze with a peculiar beckoning motion.

Trysdale's friend, the brother of the bride, stood at a sideboard com-
plaining at being allowed to drink alone. Both men were in evening dress.
White favors like stars upon their coats shone through the gloom of the
apartment.

As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale's
mind a swift, scarifying retrospect of the last few hours. It seemed that
in his nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been banked in
odorous masses about the church, and in his ears the lowpitched hum of a
thousand well-bred voices, the rustle of crisp garments, and, most in-
sistently recurring, the drawling words of the minister irrevocably bind-
ing her to another.

From this last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had become
a habit of his mind, to reach some conjecture as to why and how he had
lost her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he had suddenly
found himself confronted by a thing he had never before faced— his own
innermost, unmitigated, and unbedecked self. He saw all the garbs of
pretence and egoism that he had worn now turn to rags of folly. He
shuddered at the thought that to others, before now, the garments of his
soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare. Vanity and conceit? These
were the joints in his armor. And how free from either she had always
been But why

As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the altar he had felt an
unworthy, sullen exultation that had served to support him, He had
told himself that her paleness was from thoughts of another than the man
to whom she was about to give herself. But even that poor consolation
had been wrenched from him. For, when he saw that swift, limpid,
upward look that she gave the man when he took her hand, he knew
himself to be forgotten. Once that same look had been raised to him, and
he had gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; its last

THE CACTUS 1669

prop was gone. Why had it ended thus? There had been no quarrel
between them, nothing

For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of
those last few days before the tide had so suddenly turned.

She had always insisted upon placing him upon a pedestal, and he had
accepted her homage with royal grandeur. It had been a very sweet
incense that she had burned before him; so modest (he told himself) ;
so childlike and worshipful, and (he would once have sworn) so sincere.
She had invested him with an almost supernatural number of high
attributes and excellencies and talents, and he had absorbed the oblation
as a desert drinks the rain that can coax from it no promise of blossom or
fruit.

As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the
crowning instance of his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism came
vividly back to him.

The scene was the night when he had asked her to come up on his
pedestal with him and share his greatness. He could not, now, for the
pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon the memory of her convincing
beauty that night — the careless wave of her hair, the tenderness and
virginal charm of her looks and words. But they had been enough, and
they had brought him to speak. During their conversation she had said:

"And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak the Spanish language
like a native. Why have you hidden this accomplishment from me? Is
there anything you do not know?"

Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he (Trysdale) had been guilty
(he sometimes did such things) of airing at the club some old, canting
Castilian proverb dug from the hotchpotch at the back of dictionaries.
Carruthers, who was one of his incontinent admirers, was the very man
to have magnified this exhibition of doubtful erudition.

But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been so sweet and flat-
tering. He allowed the imputation to pass without denial. Without pro-
test, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish
scholarship. He let it grace his conquering head, and, among its soft con-
volutions, he did not feel the prick of the thorn that was to pierce him
later.

How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered like
a snared bird when he laid his mightiness at her feet! He could have
sworn, and he could swear now, that unmistakable consent was in her
eyes, but, coyly, she would give him no direct answer. "I will send you
my answer to-morrow," she said; and he the indulgent, confident victor,
smilingly granted the delay.

The next day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for the word. At noon
her groom came to the door and left the strange cactus in the red earthen
jar. There was no note, no message, merely a tag upon the plant bearing

1670 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

a barbarous foreign or botanical name. He waited until night, but her
answer did not come. His large pride and hurt vanity kept him from
seeking her. Two evenings later they met at a dinner. Their greetings
were conventional, but she looked at him, breathless, wondering, eager.
He was courteous, adamant, waiting her explanation. With womanly
swiftness she took her cue from his manner, and turned to snow and ice.
Thus, and wider from this on, they had drifted apart. Where was his
fault? Who had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought the answer
amid the ruins of his self -conceit If

The voice of the other man in the room, querulously intruding upon
his thoughts, aroused him.

"I say, Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look
unhappy as if you yourself had been married instead of having acted
merely as an accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two thou-
sand miles on a garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way from
South America to connive at the sacrifice— please to observe how lightly
my guilt rests upon my shoulders. Only little sister I had, too^and now
she's gone. Come now! take something to ease your conscience."

"I don't drink just now, thanks," said Trysdale.

"Your brandy," resumed the other, coming over and joining him, "is
abominable. Run down to see me some time at Punta Redonda and try
some of our stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It's worth the trip. Hallo!
here's an old acquaintance. Wherever did you rake up this cactus, Trys-
dale?"

"A present," said Trysdale, "from a friend. Know the species?"

"Very well. It's a tropical concern. See hundreds of 'em around Punta
every day. Here's the name on this tag tied to it. Know any Spanish,
Trysdale?"

"No," said Trysdale, with the bitter wraith of a smile— "Is it Spanish?"

"Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reaching out and beckoning
to you. They call it by this name— Ventomarme. Name means in English,
'Come and take me.' "

THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR

I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York
burglar., highwayman, and murderer.

"But, my dear Knight," said I, "it sounds incredible. You have un-
doubtedly performed some of the most wonderful feats in your profession
known to modern crime. You have committed some marvellous deeds
under the very noses of the police — you have boldly entered the homes
of millionaires and held them up with an empty gun while you made

THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR 1671

free with their silver and jewels; you have sandbagged citizens in the
glare of Broadway's electric lights; you have killed and robbed with
superb openness and absolute impunity— but when you boast that within
forty-eight hours after committing a murder you can run down and actu-
ally bring me face to face with lie detective assigned to apprehend you,
I must beg leave to express my doubts — remember, you are in New
York."

Avery Knight smiled indulgently.

"You pique my professional pride, doctor," he said in a nettled tone.
"I will convince you."

About twelve yards in advance of us a prosperous-looking citizen was
rounding a clump of bushes where the walk curved. Knight suddenly
drew a revolver and shot the man in the back. His victim fell and lay
without moving.

The great murderer went up to him leisurely and took from his clothes
his money, watch, and a valuable ring and cravat pin. He then rejoined
me smiling calmly, and we continued our walk.

Ten steps and we met a policeman running toward the spot where the
shot had been fired. Avery Knight stopped him.

"I have just killed a man," he announced, seriously, "and robbed him
of his possessions."

"G'wan," said the policeman, angrily, "or I'll run yez in! Want yer
name in the papers, don't yez? I never knew the cranks to come around
so quick after a shootin' before. Out of th* park, now, for yours, or I'll
fan yez."

"What you have done," I said, argumentatively, as Knight and I walked
on, "was easy. But when you come to the task of hunting down the
detective that they send upon your trail you will find that you have
undertaken a difficult feat."

"Perhaps so," said Knight, lightly. "I will admit that my success de-
pends in a degree upon the sort of man they start after me. If it should be
an ordinary plain-clothes man I might fail to gain a sight of him. If they
honor me by giving the case to some one of their celebrated sleuths I do
not fear to match my cunning and powers of induction against his."

On the next afternoon Knight entered my office with a satisfied look
on his keen countenance.

"How goes the mysterious murder?" I asked.

"As usual," said Knight, smilingly. "I have put in the morning at the
police station and at the inquest. It seems that a card case of mine con-
taining cards with my name and address was found near the body. They
have three witnesses who saw the shooting and gave a description of me.
The case has been placed in the hands -of Shamrock Jolnes, the famous
detective. He left Headquarters at 11:30 on the assignment. I waited at
my address until two, thinking he might call there."

1672 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

I laughed, tauntingly.

"You will never see Jolnes," I continued, "until this murder has been
forgotten, two or three weeks from now. I had a better opinion of your
shrewdness, Knight. During the three hours and a half that you waited
he has got out of your ken. He is after you on true induction theories
now, and no wrongdoer has yet been known to come upon him while
thus engaged. I advise you to give it up."

"Doctor," said Knight, with a sudden glint in his keen gray eye and
a squaring of his chin, "in spite of the record your city holds of some-
thing like a dozen homicides without a subsequent meeting of the per-
petrator and the sleuth in charge of the case, I will undertake to break
that record. To-morrow I will take you to Shamrock Jolnes— -I will un-
mask him before you and prove to you that it is not an impossibility for
an officer of the law and a manslayer to stand face to face in your city."

"Do it," said I, "and you'll have the sincere thanks of the Police De-
partment."

On the next day Knight called for me in a cab.

"I've been on one or two false scents, doctor," he admitted. "I know
something of detectives' methods, and I followed out a few of them,
expecting to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a ^-caliber,
I thought surely I would find him at work on the clue in Forty-fifth
Street. Then, again, I looked for the detective at the Columbia University,
as the man's being shot in the back naturally suggested hazing. But I
could not find a trace of him."

"Nor will you," I said, emphatically.

"Not by ordinary methods," said Knight. "I might walk up and down
Broadway for a month without success. But you have aroused my pride,
doctor; and if I fail to show you Shamrock Jolnes this day, I promise you
I will never kill or rob in your city again."

"Nonsense, man," I replied. "When our burglars walk into our houses
and politely demand thousands of dollars* worth of jewels, and then dine
and bang the piano an hour or two before leaving, how do you, a mere
murderer, expect to come in contact with the detective that is looking
for you?"

Avery Knight sat lost in thought for a while. At length he looked up
brightly.

"Doc," said he, "I have it. Put on your hat, and come with me. In
half an hour I guarantee that you shall stand in the presence of Shamrock
Jolnes."

I entered a cab with Avery Knight. I did not hear his instructions to
the driver, but the vehicle set out at a smart pace up Broadway, turning
presently into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding northward again. It was
with a rapidly beating heart that I accompanied this wonderful and
gifted assassin, whose analytical genius and superb self-confidence had

THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR 1673

prompted him to make me the tremendous promise of bringing me into
the presence of a murderer and the New York detective in pursuit of
him simultaneously. Even yet I could not believe it possible.

"Are you sure that you are not being led into some trap?" I asked.
"Suppose that your clue, whatever it is, should bring us only into the
presence of the Commissioner of Police and a couple of dozen cops!"

"My dear doctor," said Knight, a little stiffly, "I would remind you that
I am no gambler."

"I beg your pardon," said I. "But I do not think you will find Jolnes."

The cab stopped before one of the handsomest residences on the
avenue. Walking up and down in front of the house was a man with
long red whiskers, with a detective's badge showing on the lapel of his
coat. Now and then the man would remove his whiskers to wipe his
face, and then I would recognize at once the well-known features of the
great New York detective. Jolnes was keeping a sharp watch upon the
doors and windows of the house.

"Well, doctor," said Knight, unable to repress a note of triumph in
his voice, "have you seen?"

"It is wonderful — wonderful!" I could not help exclaiming as our cab
started on its return trip. "But how did you do it? By what process of
induction "

"My dear doctor," interrupted the great murderer, "the inductive theory
is what the detectives use. My process is more modern. I call it the salta-
torial theory. Without bothering with the tedious mental phenomena
necessary to the solution of a mystery from slight clues, I jump at once
to a conclusion. I will explain to you the method I employed in this case.

"In the first place, I argued that as the crime was committed in New
York City in broad daylight, in a public place and under peculiarly atro-
cious circumstances, and that as the most skilful sleuth available was let
loose upon the case, the perpetrator would never be discovered. Do you
not think my postulation justified by precedent?"

"Perhaps so," I replied, doggedly. "But if Big Bill Dev "

"Stop that," interrupted Knight, with a smile, "I've heard that several
times. It's too late now. I will proceed.

"If homicides in New York went undiscovered, I reasoned, although
the best detective talent was employed to ferret them out, it must be true
that the detectives went about their work in the wrong way. And not only
in the wrong way, but exactly opposite from the right way. That was my
clue.

"I slew the man in Central Park. Now, let me describe myself to you,

"I am tall, with a black beard, and I hate publicity. I have no money
to speak of; I do not like oatmeal, and it is the one ambition of my life
to die rich. I am of a cold and heartless disposition. I do not care for my
f ellowmen and I never give a cent to beggars or charity.

1674 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

"Now, my dear doctor, that is the true description of myself, the man
whom that shrewd detective was to hunt down. You who are familiar
with the history of crime in New York of late should be able to foretell
the result. When I promised you to exhibit to your incredulous gaze the
sleuth who was set upon me, you laughed at me because you said that
detectives and murderers never met in New York. I have demonstrated
to you that the theory is possible."

"But how did you do it?" I asked again.

"It was very simple," replied the distinguished murderer. "I assumed
that the detective would go exactly opposite to the clues he had. I have
given you a description of myself. Therefore, he must necessarily set to
work and trail a short man with a white beard who likes to be in the
papers, who is very wealthy, is fond of oatmeal, wants to die poor, and
is of an extremely generous and philanthropic disposition. When thus
far is reached the mind hesitates no longer. I conveyed you at once to
the spot where Shamrock Jolnes was piping off Andrew Carnegie's
residence."

"Knight," said I, "you're a wonder. If there was no danger of your
reforming, what a rounds man you'd make for the Nineteenth Precinct!"

THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET1

Usually it is a cold day in July when you can stroll up Broadway in that
month and get a story out of the drama. I found one a few breathless,
parboiling days ago, and it seems to decide a serious question in art.

There was not a soul left in the city except Hollis and me — and two
or three million sunworshippers who remained at desks and counters.
The elect had fled to seashore, lake, and mountain, and had already begun
to draw for additional funds. Every evening Hollis and I prowled about
the deserted town searching for coolness in empty cafes, dining-rooms,
and roofgardens. We knew to the tenth part of a revolution the speed
of every electric fan in Gotham, and we followed the swiftest as they
varied. Hollis 's fiancee, Miss Loris Sherman, had been in the Adiron-
dacks, at Lower Saranac Lake, for a month. In another week he would
join her party there. In the meantime, he cursed the city cheerfully and
optimistically, and sought my society because I suffered him to show me
her photograph during the black coffee every time we dined together.

My revenge was to read to him my one-act play.

It was one insufferable evening when the overplus of the day's heat was
being hurled quiveringly back to the heavens by every suncharged brick

1 This story has been rewritten and published in "Strictly Business*' under the title, The
Proof of the Pudding.

THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET 1675

and stone and inch of iron in the panting town. But with the cunning of
the two-legged beasts we had found an oasis where the hoofs of Apollo's
steed had not been allowed to strike. Our seats were on an ocean of cool,
polished oak; the white linen of fifty deserted tables flapped like seagulls
in the artificial breeze; a mile away a waiter lingered for a heliographic
signal— we might have roared songs there or fought a duel without
molestation.

Out came Miss Loris's photo with the coffee, and I once more praised
the elegant poise of the neck, the extremely low-coiled mass of heavy
hair, and the eyes that followed one, like those in an oil painting.

"She's the greatest ever," said Hollis, with enthusiasm. "Good as Great
Northern Preferred, and a disposition built like a watch. One week more
and I'll be happy Johnny-on-the-spot. Old Tom Tolliver, my best college
chum, went up there two weeks ago. He writes me that Loris doesn't
talk about anything but me. Oh, I guess Rip Van Winkle didn't have
all the good luck!"

"Yes, yes," said I, hurriedly, pulling out my typewritten play. "She's
no doubt a charming girl. Now here's that little curtain-raiser you prom-
ised to listen to."

"Ever been tried on the stage?" asked Hollis.

"Not exactly," I answered. "I read half of it the other day to a fellow
whose brother knows Robert Edeson; but he had to catch a train before
I finished."

"Go on," said Hollis, sliding back in his chair like a good fellow. "Pm
no stage carpenter, but I'll tell you what I think of it from a first-row
balcony standpoint. I'm a theatre bug during the season, and I can size
up a fake play almost as quick as the gallery can. Flag the waiter once
more, and then go ahead as hard as you like with it. I'll be the dog."

I read my little play lovingly, and, I fear, not without some elocution.
There was one scene in it that I believed in greatly. The comedy swiftly
rises into thrilling and unexpectedly developed drama. Capt. Marchmont
suddenly becomes cognizant that his wife is an unscrupulous adventuress,
who has deceived him from the day of their first meeting. The rapid and
mortal duel between them from that moment — she with her magnificent
lies and siren charm, winding about him like a serpent, trying to recover
her lost ground; he with his man's agony and scorn and lost faith, trying
to tear her from his heart. That scene I always thought was a cracker] ack.
When Capt. Marchmont discovers her duplicity by reading on a blotter
in a mirror the impression of a note that she has written to the Count, he
raises his hand to heaven and exclaims: "O God, who created woman
while Adam slept, and gave her to him for a companion, take back Thy
gift and return instead the sleep, though it last forever!"

"Rot!" said Hollis, rudely, when I had given those lines with proper
emphasis.

1676 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

"I beg your pardon!" I said as sweetly as I could.

"Come now," went on Hollis, "don't be an idiot. You know very well
that nobody spouts any stufl like that these days. That sketch went along
all right until you rang in the skyrockets. Cut out that right-arm exercise
and the Adam and Eve stunt, and make your captain talk as you or I or
Bill Jones would."

"I'll admit," said I, earnestly (for my theory was being touched upon),
"that on all ordinary occasions all of us use commonplace language to
convey our thoughts. You will remember that up to the moment when
the captain makes this terrible discovery all the characters on the stage
talk pretty much as they would in real life. But I believe that I am right
in allowing him lines suitable to the strong and tragic situation into which
he falls."

"Tragic, my eye!" said my friend, irreverently. "In Shakespeare's day
he might have sputtered out some high-cockalorum nonsense of that sort,
because in those days they ordered ham and eggs in blank verse and dis-
charged the cook with an epic. But not for B'way in the summer of 1905!"

"It is my opinion," said I, "that great human emotions shake up our
vocabulary and leave the words best suited to express them on top. A
sudden violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring expressions out
of an ordinary man as strong and solemn and dramatic as those used in
fiction or on the stage to portray those emotions."

"That's where you fellows are wrong," said Hollis. "Plain, everyday
talk is what goes. Your captain would very likely have kicked the cat, lit
a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer, instead of get-
ting off those Robert Mantell pyrotechnics."

"Possibly, a little later," I continued. "But just at the time— just as the
blow is delivered, if something Scriptural or theatrical and deep-tongued
isn't wrung from a man in spite of his modern and practical way of
speaking, then I'm wrong."

"Of course," said Hollis, kindly, "you've got to whoop her up some
degrees for the stage. The audience expects it. When the villain kidnaps
little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out of the
atmosphere, and scream: 'Me chee-ild, me chee-ild!' What she would
actually do would be to call up the police by 'phone, ring for some strong
tea, and get the little darling's photo out, ready for the reporters. When
you get your villain in a corner — a stage corner — it's all right for him to
clap his hand to his forehead and hiss: 'All is lost!' Off the stage he would
remark : 'This is a conspiracy against me — I refer you to my lawyers/ "

"I get no consolation," said I, gloomily, "from your concession of an
accentuated stage treatment. In my play I fondly hoped that I was follow-
ing life. If people in real life meet great crises in a commonplace way,
they should do the same on the stage."

And then we drifted, like two trout, out of our cool pool in the great

A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS 1677

hotel and began to nibble languidly at the gay flies in the swift current
of Broadway. And our question of dramatic art was unsettled.

We nibbled at the flies, and avoided the hooks, as wise trout do; but
soon the weariness of Manhattan in summer overcame us. Nine stories
up, facing the south, was Hollis's apartment, and we soon stepped into
an elevator bound for that cooler haven.

I was familiar in those quarters, and quickly my play was forgotten, and
I stood at a sideboard mixing things, with cracked ice and glasses all
about me. A breeze from the bay came in the windows not altogether
blighted by the asphalt furnace over which it had passed. Hollis, whistling
softly, turned over a late-arrived letter or two on his table, and drew
around the coolest wicker armchairs.

I was just measuring the Vermouth carefully when I heard a sound.
Some man's voice groaned hoarsely: "False, oh, God!— false, and Love is
a lie and friendship but the byword of devils!"

I looked around quickly. Hollis lay across the table with his head down
upon his outstretched arms. And then he looked up at me and laughed in
his ordinary manner.

I knew him — he was poking fun at me about my theory. And it did
seem so unnatural, those swelling words during our quiet gossip, that I
half began to believe I had been mistaken — that my theory was wrong.

Hollis raised himself slowly from the table.

"You were right about that theatrical business, old man," he said,
quietly, as he tossed a note to me.

I read it.

Loris had run away with Tom Tolliver.

A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS

"I see," remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black slouch
hat, "that another street car motorman in your city has narrowly escaped
lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting a cigar and walk-
ing a couple of blocks down the street."

"Do you think they would have lynched him?" asked the New Yorker,
in the next seat of the ferry station, who was also waiting for the boat.

"Not until after the election," said the tall man, cutting a corner off his
plug of tobacco. "I've been in your city long enough to know something
about your mobs. The motorman's mob is about the least dangerous of
them all, except the National Guard and the Dressmakers' Convention.

"You see, when little Willie Goldstein is sent by his mother for pigs'
knuckles, with a nickel tightly grasped in his chubby fist, he always
crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and then

1678 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

suddenly turns back to ask his mother whether it was pale ale or a spool
of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The motorman yells and throws
himself on the brakes like a football player. There is a horrible grinding
and then a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, and Willie is sitting, with
part of his trousers torn away by the fender, screaming for his lost nickel.

"In ten seconds the car is surrounded by 600 infuriated citizens, crying,
'Lynch the motorman! Lynch the motorman!' at the top of their voices.
Some of them run to the nearest cigar store to get a rope; but they find
the last one has just been cut up and labelled. Hundreds of the excited
mob press close to the cowering motorman, whose hand is observed to
tremble perceptibly as he transfers a stick of pepsin gum from his pocket
to his mouth.

"When the bloodthirsty mob of maddened citizens has closed in on
the motorman, some bringing camp stools and sitting quite close to him,
and all shouting, 'Lynch him!' Policeman Fogarty forces his way through
them to the side of their prospective victim.

" 'Hello, Mike/ says the motorman in a low voice, 'nice day. Shall I
sneak off a block or so, or would you like to rescue me?'

" 'Well, Jerry, if you don't mind,' says the policeman, Td like to dis-
perse the infuriated mob singlehanded. I haven't defeated a lynching
mob since last Tuesday; and that was a small one of only 300, that wanted
to string up a Dago boy for selling wormy pears. It would boost me some
down at the station.'

"'All right, Mike,' says the motorman, 'anything to oblige. I'll turn
pale and tremble.'

"And he does so; and Policeman Fogarty draws his club and says,
'G'wan wid yez!' and in eight seconds the desperate mob has scattered
and gone about its business, except about a hundred who remain to
search for Willie's nickel."

"I never heard of a mob in our city doing violence to a motorman
because of an accident," said the New Yorker.

"You are not liable to," said the tall man. "They know the motorman's
all right, and that he wouldn't even run over a stray dog if he could
help it. And they know that not a man among 'em would tie the knot to
hang even a Thomas cat that had been tried and condemned and sen-
tenced according to law."

"Then why do they become infuriated and make threats of lynching?"
asked the New Yorker.

"To assure the motorman," answered the tall man, "that he is safe. If
they really wanted to do him up they would go into the houses and drop
bricks on him from the third-story windows."

"New Yorkers are not cowards," said the other man, a little stiffly.

"Not one at a time," agreed the tall man, promptly. "You've got a fine
ot of singlehanded scrappers in your town. I'd rather fight three of you

A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS 1679

than one; and I'd go up against all the Gas Trust's victims in a bunch
before Fd pass two citizens on a dark corner, with my watch chain show-
ing. When you get rounded up in a bunch you lose your nerve. Get you
in crowds and you're easy. Ask the 'L' road guards and George B. Cortel-
you and the tintype booths at Coney Island. Divided you stand, united
you fall. E pluribus nihiL Whenever one of your mobs surrounds a man
and begins to holler, 'Lynch him!* he says to himself, *Oh, dear, I suppose
I must look pale to please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my life
insurance premium lapse to-morrow. This is a sure tip for me to play
Methuselah straight across the board in the next handicap.'

"I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of New
York policemen when an infuriated mob demands that he be turned over
to them for lynching. Tor God's sake, officers,' cries the distracted wretch,
'have ye hearts of stone, that ye will not let them wrest me from ye?'

"'Sorry, Jimmy,* says one of the policemen, 'but it won't do. There's
three of us — me and Darrel and the plain-clothes man; and there's only
sivin thousand of the mob. How'd we explain it at the office if they took
ye? Jist chase the infuriated aggregation around the corner, Darrel, and
we'll be moving along to the station.' "

"Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so harmless,"
said the New Yorker, with a faint note of civic pride.

"I'll admit that," said the tall man. "A cousin of mine who was on a
visit here once had an arm broken and lost an ear in one of them."

"That must have been during the Cooper Union riots," remarked the
New Yorker.

"Not the Cooper Union," explained the tall man — "but it was a union
riot — at the Vanastor wedding."

"You seem to be in favor of lynch law," said the New Yorker, severely.

"No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are certain
cases when people rise in their just majesty and take a righteous venge-
ance for crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am an advocate of law
and order, but I will say to you that less than six months ago I myself
assisted at the lynching of one of that race that is creating a wide chasm
between your section of country and mine, sir."

"It is a deplorable condition," said the New Yorker, "that exists in the
South, but "

"I am from Indiana, sir," said the tall man, taking another chew; "and
I don't think you will condemn my course when I tell you that the
colored man in question had stolen $9.60 in cash, sir, from my own
brother."

l68o BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

THE SNOW MAN

Editorial Note Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter (known
through his literary work as "O. Henry") this American master of short-
story writing had begun for Hampton's Magazine the story printed be-
low. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled to give up writ-
ing about at the point where the girl enters the story.

When he realized that he could do no more (it was his lifelong habit to
write with a pencil, never dictating to a stenographer), O. Henry told in
detail the remainder of The Snow Man to Harris Merton Lyon, whom he
had often spoken of as one of the most effective short-story writers of the
present time. Mr. Porter had delineated all of the characters, leaving
only the rounding out of the plot in the final pages to Mr. Lyon.

Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children
is the snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in which their world
melts into a white star ten million miles away. The man who can stand
the test is a Snow Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Reaumur,
or Moses's carven tablets of stone.

Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the canon of Big Lost River,
and I urged my horse toward the Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was
deepening. The flakes were as large as an hour's circular tatting by Miss
Wilkins's ablest spinster, betokening a heavy snowfall and less entertain-
ment and more adventure than the completion of the tatting could
promise. I knew Ross Curtis of the Bay Horse, and that I would be wel-
come as a snow-bound pilgrim, both for hospitality's sake and because
Ross had few chances to confide in living creatures who did not neigh,
bellow, bleat, yelp, or howl during his discourse.

The ranch house was just within the jaws of the canon where its builder
may have fatuously fancied that the timbered and rocky walls on both
sides would have protected it from the wintry Colorado winds; but I
feared the drift. Even now through the endless, bottomless rift in the hills
—the speaking tube of the four winds — came roaring the voice of the
proprietor to the little room on the top floor.

At my "hello/' a ranch hand came from an outer building and received
my thankful horse. In another minute, Ross and I sat by a stove in the
dining-room of the four-room ranch house, while the big, simple wel-
come of the household lay at my disposal. Fanned by the whizzing
norther, the fine, dry snow was sifted and bolted through the cracks and
knotholes of the logs. The cook room, without a separating door,
appended.

THE SNOW MAN l68l

In there I could see a short, sturdy, leisurely and weather-beaten man
moving with professional sureness about his red-hot stove. His face was
stolid and unreadable — something like that of a great thinker, or of one
who had no thoughts to conceal. I thought his eye seemed unwarrantably
superior to the elements and to the man, but quickly attributed that to
the characteristic self-importance of a petty chef. "Camp cook" was the
niche that I gave him in the Hall of Types; and he fitted it as an apple
fits a dumpling.

Cold it was in spite of the glowing stove; and Ross and I sat and talked,
shuddering frequently, half from nerves and half from the freezing
draughts. So he brought the bottle and the cook brought boiling water,
and we made prodigious hot toddies against the attacks of Boreas. We
clinked glasses often. They sounded like icicles dropping from the eaves,
or like the tinkle of a thousand prisms of a Louis XIV chandelier that I
once heard at a boarders' dance in the parlor of a ten-a-week boarding-
house in Gramercy Square. Sic transit.

Silence in the terrible beauty of the snow and of the Sphinx and of the
stars; but they who believe that all things, from a without- wine table
d'hote to the crucifixion, may be interpreted through music, might have
found a nocturne or a symphony to express the isolation of that blotted-
out world. The clink of glass and bottle, the seolian chorus of the wind
in the house crannies, its deeper trombone through the canon below, and
the Wagnerian crash of the cook's pots and pans, united in a fit, dis-
cordant melody, I thought. No less welcome an accompaniment was the
sizzling of broiling ham and venison cutlets, indorsed by the solvent
fumes of true Java, bringing rich promises of comfort to our yearning
souls.

The cook brought the smoking supper to the table. He nodded to me
democratically as he cast the heavy plates around as though he were
pitching quoits or hurling the discus. I looked at him with some ap-
praisement and curiosity and much conciliation. There was no prophet to
tell us when that drifting evil outside might cease to fall; and it is well,
when snow-bound, to stand somewhere within the radius of the cook's
favorable consideration. But I could read neither favor nor disapproval in
the face and manner of our pot-wrestler.

He was about five feet nine inches, and two hundred pounds of com-
monplace, bull-necked, pink-faced, callous calm. He wore brown duck
trousers too tight and too short, and a blue flannel shirt with sleeves rolled
above his elbows. There was a sort of grim, steady scowl on his features
that looked to me as though he had fixed it there purposely as a protec-
tion against the weakness of an inherent amiability that, he fancied, were
better concealed. And then I let supper usurp his brief occupancy of my
thoughts.

"Draw up, George," said Ross. "Let's all eat while the grub's hot."

l682 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

"You fellows go on and chew/' answered the cook. "I ate mine in the
kitchen before sun-down.'*

"Think it'll be a big snow, George?" asked the ranchman.

George had turned to reenter the cook room. He moved slowly around
and, looking at his face, it seemed to me that he was turning over the
wisdom and knowledge of centuries in his head.

"It might," was his delayed reply.

At the door of the kitchen lie stopped and looked back at us. Both Ross
and I held our knives and forks poised and gave him our regard. Some
men have the power of drawing die attention of others without speaking
a word. Their attitude is more effective than a shout.

"And again it mightn't," said George, and went back to his stove.

After we had eaten, he came in and gathered the emptied dishes. He
stood for a moment, while his spurious frown deepened.

"It might stop any minute," he said, "or it might keep up for days." ^

At the farther end of the cook room I saw George pour hot water into
his dishpan, light his pipe, and put the tableware through its required
lavation. He then carefully unwrapped from a piece of old saddle blanket
a paper-back book, and settled himself to read by his dim oil lamp.

And then the ranchman threw tobacco on the cleared table and set
forth again the bottles and glasses; and I saw that I stood in a deep
channel through which the long dammed flood of his discourse would
soon be booming. But I was half content, comparing my fate with that
of the late Thomas Tucker, who had to sing for his supper, thus doubling
the burdens of both himself and his host.

"Snow is a hell of a thing," said Ross, by way of a foreword. "It ain't,
somehow, it seems to me, salubrious. I can stand water and mud and two
inches below zero and a hundred and ten in the shade and medium-
sized cyclones, but this here fuzzy white stuff naturally gets me all
locoed. I reckon the reason it rattles you is because it changes the look
of things so much. It's like you had a wife and left her in the morning
with the same old blue cotton wrapper on, and rides in of a night and
runs across her all outfitted in a white silk evening frock, waving an
ostrich-feather fan, and monkeying with a posy of lily flowers. Wouldn't
it make you look for your pocket compass? You'd be liable to kiss her
before you collected your presence of mind."

By and by, the flood of Ross's talk was drawn up into the clouds (so
it pleased me to fancy) and there condensed into the finer snowflakes
of thought; and we sat silent about the stove, as good friends and bitter
enemies will do. I thought of Ross's preamble about the mysterious influ-
ence upon man exerted by that ermine-lined monster that now covered
our litde world, and knew he was right.

Of all the curious knickknacks, mysteries, puzzles, Indian gifts, rat-
traps and well-disguised blessings that the gods chuck down to us from

THE SNOW MAN 1683

the Olympian peaks, the most disquieting and evil-bringing is the snow.
By scientific analysis it is absolute beauty and purity — so, at the beginning
we look doubtfully at chemistry.

It falls upon the world, and lo! we live in another. It hides in a night
the old scars and familiar places with which we have grown heart-sick
or enamored. So, as quietly as we can, we hustle on our embroidered
robes and hie us on Prince Camaralzaman's horse or in the reindeer
sleigh into the white country where the seven colors converge. This is
when our fancy can overcome the bane of it.

But in certain spots of the earth comes the snow-madness, made
known by people turned wild and distracted by the bewildering veil that
has obscured the only world they know. In the cities, the white fairy who
sets the brains of her dupes whirling by a wave of her wand is cast for
the comedy role. Her diamond shoe buckles glitter like frost; with a
pirouette she invites the spotless carnival.

But in the waste places the snow is sardonic. Sponging out the world of
the outliers, it gives no foothold on another sphere in return. It makes of
the earth a firmament under foot; it leaves us clawing and stumbling in
space in an inimical fifth element whose evil outdoes its strangeness and
beauty. There Nature, low comedienne, plays her tricks on man. Though
she has put him forth as her highest product, it appears that she has
fashioned him with what seems almost incredible carelessness and index-
terity. One-sided and without balance, with his two halves unequally
fashioned and joined, must he ever jog his eccentric way. The snow falls,
the darkness caps it, and the ridiculous man-biped strays in accurate
circles until he succumbs in the ruins of his defective architecture.

In the throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol. In appearance as plausi-
ble as the breakfast food of the angels, it is as hot in the mouth as ginger,
increasing the pangs of the water-famished. It is a derivative from water,
air, and some cold, uncanny fire from which the caloric has been ex-
tracted. Good has been said of it; even the poets, crazed by its spell and
shivering in their attics under its touch, have indited permanent melodies
commemorative of its beauty.

Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a plague — a corroding
plague that Pharaoh successfully side-stepped. It beneficently covers the
wheat fields, swelling the crop — and the Flour Trust gets us by the
throat like a sudden quinsy. It spreads the tail of its white kirtle over the
red seams of the rugged north — and the Alaska short story is born. Etio-
lated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveler burrowing from the icy
air — and, melting to-morrow, drowns his brother in the valley below.

At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe.
When it corrals man in lonely ranches, mountain cabins, and forest huts,
the snow makes apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the bosoms of
weaker ones to glass, their tongues to infants' rattles, their hearts to law-

1684 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

lessness and spleen. It is not all from the isolation; the snow is not merely
a blockader; it is a Chemical Test, It is a good man who can show a reac-
tion that is not chiefly composed of a drachm or two of potash and mag-
nesia, with traces of Adam, Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful
porcupine.

This is no story, you say; well let it begin.

There was a knock at the door (is the opening not full of context and
reminiscence oh, best buyers of best sellers?).

We drew the latch, and in stumbled fitienne Girod (as he afterward
named himself). But just then he was no more than a worm struggling
for life, enveloped in a killing white chrysalis.

We dug down through snow, overcoats, mufflers, and waterproofs, and
dragged forth a living thing with a Van Dyck beard and marvelous dia-
mond rings. We put it through the approved curriculum of snow-rub-
bing, hot milk, and teaspoonful doses of whiskey, working him up to a
graduating class entitled to a diploma of three fingers of rye in half a
glassful of hot water. One of the ranch boys had already come from the
quarters at Ross's bugle-like yell and kicked the stranger's staggering
pony to some sheltered corral where beasts were entertained.

Let a paragraphic biography of Girod intervene.

fitienne was an opera singer originally, we gathered; but adversity and
the snow had made him non compos vocis* The adversity consisted of the
stranded San Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second-story
work, and then a career as a professional palmist, jumping from town to
town. For, like other professional palmists, every time he worked the
Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved along the Line of Least
Resistance. Though Etienne did not confide this to us, we surmised that
he had moved out into the dusk about twenty minutes ahead of a con-
stable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his most sacred blue lan-
guage he dilated upon the subject of snow; for fitienne was Paris-born
and loved the snow with the same passion that an orchid does.

"Mee-ser-rhable!" commented fitienne, and took another three fingers.

"Complete, cast-iron, pussy-footed, blank . . . blank!" said Ross, and
followed suit.

"Rotten," said I.

The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst;
and insistently from behind that frozen visage I got two messages (via
the M. A. M. wireless). One was that George considered our vituperation
against the snow childish; the other was that George did not love Dagoes.
Inasmuch as fitienne was a Frenchman, I concluded I had the message
wrong. So I queried the other: "Bright eyes, you don't really mean
Dagoes, do you?" and over the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps:
*Tes." Then I reflected that to George all foreigners were probably
"Dagoes." I had once known another camp cook who had thought Mons.,

THE SNOW MAN 1685

Sig., and Millie (Trans-Mississippi for Mile,) were Italian given names;
this cook used to marvel therefore at the paucity of Neo-Roman precog-
nomens, and therefore why not

I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days, fitienne
stood at the window, Fletcherizing his finger nails and shrieking and
moaning at the monotony. To me, fitienne was just about as unbearable
as the snow; and so, seeking relief, I went out on the second day to look
at my horse, slipped on a stone, broke my collarbone, and thereafter
underwent not the snow test, but the test of flat-on-the-back. A test that
comes once too often for any man to stand.

However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from
my couch in the big room I could lie and watch the human interplay with
that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tell us
is so valuable to the litterateur, and American writers to the faro-dealer.

"I shall go crazy in this abominable, mee-ser-rhable place!" was
feienne's constant prediction.

"Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before," said Ross, over and
over. He sat by the other window, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburgh
stogies of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburgh graft scandal
deposited on one side of him, and "Roughing It," "The Jumping Frog,"
and "Life on the Mississippi" on the other. For every chapter he lit a new
stogy, puffing furiously. This, in time, gave him a recurrent premonition
of cramps, gastritis, smoker's colic, or whatever it is they have in Pitts-
burgh after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals. To fend off the colic,
Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor Still's Amber-Colored U. S. A.
Colic Cure. Result, after forty-eight hours — nerves.

"Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make me tired before.
Positive fact." Ross slammed "Roughing It" on the floor. "When you're
snowbound this-away you want tragedy, I guess. Humor just seems to
bring out all your cussedness. You read a man's poor, pitiful attempts to
be funny and it makes you so nervous you want to tear the book up, get
out your bandana, and have a good, long cry."

At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took his finger nails out
of his mouth long enough to exclaim: "Humor! Humor at such a time
as thees! My God, I shall go crazy in thees abominable "

"Supper," announced George.

These meals were not the meals of Rabelais who said, "the great God
makes the planets and we make the platters neat." By that time, the
ranch-house meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental distraction,
not bodily provender. What they were to be later shall never be forgotten
by Ross or me or fitienne.

After supper, the stogies and finger nails began again. My shoulder
ached wretchedly, and with half-closed eyes I tried to forget it by watch-
ing the deft movements of the stolid cook.

l686 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

Suddenly I saw him cock his ear, like a dog. Then, with a swift step,
he moved to the door, threw it open, and stood there.

The rest of us had heard nothing.

"What is it, George?" asked Ross,

The cook reached out his hand into the darkness alongside the jamb.
With careful precision he prodded something. Then he made one care-
ful step into the snow. His back muscles bulged a little under the arms
as he stooped and lightly lifted a burden. Another step inside the door,
which he shut methodically behind him, and he dumped the burden at
a safe distance from the fire.

He stood up and fixed us with a solemn eye. None of us moved under
that Orphic suspense until,

"A woman," remarked George.

Miss Willie Adams was her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present
avocation, getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for
twenty) . Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams. A willow
for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her slrfn;
her eyes, the blue sky seen through treetops; the silk in cocoons for her
hair; her voice, the murmur of the evening June wind in the leaves; her
mouth, the berries of the wintergreen; fingers as light as ferns; her toe
as small as a deer track. General impression upon the dazed beholder —
you could not see the forest for the trees.

Psychology, with a capital P and the foot of a lynx, at this juncture
stalks into the ranch house. Three men, a cook, a pretty young woman —
all snowbound. Count me out of it, as I did not count, anyway. I never
did, with women. Count the cook out, if you like. But note the effect
upon Ross and fitienne Girod.

Ross dumped Mark Twain in a trunk and locked the trunk. Also, he
discarded the Pittsburgh scandals. Also, he shaved off a three days' beard.

Etienne, being French, began on the beard first. He pomaded it, from
a little tube of grease Hongroise in his vest pocket. He combed it with
a little aluminum comb from the same vest pocket. He trimmed it with
manicure scissors from the same vest pocket. His light and Gallic spirits
underwent a sudden, miraculous change. He hummed a blithe San Sal-
vador Opera Company tune; he grinned, smirked, bowed, pirouetted,
twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious trou-
badour, could not have equalled fitienne.

Ross's method of advance was brusque, domineering. "Little woman,"
he said, "you're welcome here!" — and with what he thought subtle double
meaning— "welcome to stay here as long as you like, snow or no snow."

Miss Adams thanked him a little wildly, some of the wintergreen
berries creeping into the birch bark. She looked around hurriedly as if
seeking escape. But there was none, save the kitchen and the room

THE SNOW MAN 1687

allotted her. She made an excuse and disappeared into her own room.

Later I, feigning sleep, heard the following:

"Mees Adams, I was almos' to perish-die-of-monotony w'en your fair
and beautiful face appear in thees mee-ser-rhable house." I opened my
starboard eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a ringer, the
Svengali eye was rolling, the chair was being hunched closer to the
school-teacher 's. "I am French — you see — temperamental — nervous! I
cannot endure thees dull hours in thees ranch house; but — a woman
comes! Ah!" The shoulders gave nine srahs and a tiger. "What a differ-
ence! All is light and gay; ever'ting smile w'en you smile. You have
'eart, beautv, grace. My 'eart comes back to me w'en I feel your 'eart*
So!" He laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this vantage point he
suddenly snatched at the school-teacher's own hand. "Ah! Mees Adams,
if I could only tell you how I ad "

"Dinner," remarked George. He was standing just behind the French-
man's ear. His eyes looked straight into the school-teacher's eyes. After
thirty seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the flinty, frozen mael-
strom of his face: "Dinner," he concluded, "will be ready in two minutes."

Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. "I must get ready for din-
ner," she said brightly, and went into her room.

Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes had been cleaned
away, I waited until a propitious time when the room was temporarily
ours alone, and told him what had happened.

He became so excited that he lit a stogy without thinking. "Yeller-
hided, unwashed, palm-readin' skunk," he said under his breath. "I'll
shoot him full o' holes if he don't watch out — talkin' that way to my
wife!"

I gave a jump that set my collarbone back another week. "Your wife!"
I gasped.

"Well, I mean to make her that," he announced.

The air in the ranch house the rest of that day was tense with pent-up
emotions, oh, best buyers of best sellers.

Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched fitienne
as a hawk does a scarecrow, fitienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel
does a henhouse. He paid no attention to Ross.

The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of sought-after, was feverish.
Lately escaped from the agony and long torture of the white cold, where
for hours Nature had kept the little school-teacher's vision locked in and
turned upon herself, nobody knows through what profound feminine
introspections she had gone. Now, suddenly cast among men, instead of
finding relief and security, she beheld herself plunged anew into other
discomforts. Even in her own room she could hear the loud voices of her
imposed suitors. "I'll blow you full o' holes!" shouted Ross. "Witnesses,"
shrieked fitienne, waving his hand at the cook and me. She could not

l688 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

have known the previous harassed condition of the men, fretting under
indoor conditions. All she knew was, that where she had expected the
frank freemasonry of the West, she found the subde tangle of two men's
minds, bent upon exacting whatever romance there might be in her
situation.

She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by spells of nursing me.
They also came over to help nurse. This combination aroused such a
natural state of invalid cussedness on my part that they were all forced to
retire. Once she did manage to whisper: "I am so worried here. I don't
know what to do."

To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, that I was a
hunch-savant and that the Eighth House under this sign, the Moon being
in Virgo, showed that everything would turn out all right.

But twenty minutes later I saw fitienne reading her palm and felt that
perhaps I might have to recast her horoscope, and try for a dark man
coming with a bundle.

Toward sunset, fitienne left the house for a few moments and Ross,
who had been sitting taciturn and morose, having unlocked Mark Twain,
made another dash. It was typical Ross talk.

He stood in front of her and looked down majestically at that cool and
perfect spot where Miss Adams' forehead met the neat part in her ^ fra-
grant hair. First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I was in a
profound slumber.

"Little woman," he began, "it's certainly tough for a man like me to
see you bothered this way. You" — gulp — "you have been alone in this
world too long. You need a protector. I might say that at a time like this
you need a protector the worst kind— a protector who would take a three-
ring delight in smashing the saffron-colored kisser off of any yeller-
skinned skunk that made himself obnoxious to you. Hem. Hem. I am a
lonely man, Miss Adams. I have so far had to carry on my life without
the"— gulp — "sweet radiance"— gulp — "of a woman around the house. I
feel especially doggoned lonely at a time like this, when I am pretty near
locoed from havin' to stall indoors, and hence it was with delight I wel-
comed your first appearance in this here shack. Since then I have been
packed jam full of more different kinds of feelings, ornery, mean, dizzy,
and superb, than has fallen my way in years." Miss Adams made a useless
movement toward escape. The Ross chin stuck firm. "I don't want to
annoy you, Miss Adams, but, by heck, if it comes to that you'll have to be
annoyed. And I'll have to have my say. This palm-ticklin* slob of a
Frenchman ought to be kicked off the place and if you'll say the word, off
he goes. But I don't want to do the wrong thing. You've got to show a pref-
erence. I'm gettin' around to the point, Miss — Miss Willie, in my own
brick fashion. I've stood about all I can stand these last two days and
something got to happen. The suspense hereabouts is enough to hang a

THE SNOW MAN 1689

sheepherder. Miss Willie"— he lassooed her hand by main force — "just
say the word. You need somebody to take your part all your life long.
Will you mar "

"Supper," remarked George, tersely, from the kitchen door.

Miss Adams hurried away.

Ross turned angrily. "You "

"I have been revolving it in my head/' said George.

He brought the coffee pot forward heavily. Then bravely the big
platter of pork and beans. Then somberly the potatoes. Then profoundly
the biscuits. "I have been revolving it in my mind. There ain't no use
waitin' any longer for Swengalley. Might as well eat now."

From my excellent vantage-point on the couch I watched the progress
of that meal. Ross, muddled, glowering, disappointed; fitienne, eternally
blandishing, attentive, ogling; Miss Adams, nervous, picking at her food,
hesitant about answering questions, almost hysterical; now and then the
solid, flitting shadow of the cook, passing behind their backs like a
Dreadnaught in a fog.

I used to own a clock which gurgled in its throat three minutes before
it struck the hour. I know, therefore, the slow freight of Anticipation.
For I have awakened at three in the morning, heard the clock gurgle,
and waited those three minutes for the three strokes I knew were to
come, Alors. In Ross's ranch house that night the slow freight of Climax
whistled in the distance.

fitienne began it after supper. Miss Adams had suddenly displayed a
lively interest in the kitchen layout and I could see her in there, chatting
brightly at George — not with him — the while he ducked his head and
rattled his pans.

"My fren'," said fitienne, exhaling a large cloud from his cigarette and
patting Ross lightly on the shoulder with a bediamonded hand which
hung limp from a yard or more of bony arm, "I see I mus' be frank with
you. Firs', because we are rivals; second, because you take these matters
so serious. I — I am Frenchman. I love the women" — he threw back his
curls, bared his yellow teeth, and blew an unsavory kiss toward the
kitchen. "It is, I suppose, a trait of my nation. All Frenchmen love the
women — pretty women. Now, look: Here I am!" He spread out his arms.
"Cold outside! I detes* the col-l-P! Snow! I abominate the mees-ser-rhable
snow! Two men! This" — pointing to me — "an* this!" Pointing to Ross.
"I am distracted! For two whole days I stan' at the window an' tear my
'air! I am nervous, upset, pr-r-ro-foun'ly distress inside my 'ead! An'
suddenly — be'old! A woman, a nice, pretty, charming, innocen' young
woman! I, naturally, rejoice. I become myself again — gay, light-'earted,
'appy. I address myself to mademoiselle; it passes the time. That, m'sieu',
is wot the women are for — pass the time! Entertainment — like the music,
like the wine!

1690 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

"They appeal to the mood, the caprice, the temperamen'. To play with
thees woman, follow her through her humor, pursue her — ah! that is the
mos* delightful way to sen* the hours about their business/'

Ross banged the table. "Shut up, you miserable yeller pup!" he roared.
"I object to your pursuin' anything or anybody in my house. Now, you

listen to me, you " He picked up the box of stogies and used it on the

table as an emphasizer. The noise of it awoke the attention of the girl
in the kitchen. Unheeded, she crept into the room. "I don't know any-
thing about your French ways of lovemakin' an' I don't care. In my sec-
tion of the country, it's the best man wins. And I'm the best man here,
and don't you forget it! This girl's goin' to be mine. There ain't going to
be any playing, or philandering, or palm reading about it. I've made up
my mind Til have this girl, and that settles it. My word is the law in this
neck o' the woods. She's mine, and as soon as she says she's mine, you
pull out." The box made one final, tremendous punctuation point.

fitienne's bravado was unruffled. "Ah! that is no way to win a woman,"
he smiled, easily. "I make prophecy you will never win 'er that way. No.
Not thees woman. She mus' be played along an' then keessed, this charm-
ing, delicious little creature. One kees! An' then you 'ave her." Again he
displayed his unpleasant teeth. "I make you a bet I will kees her "

As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys me to relate that
the hand which fell upon fitienne's amorous lips was not his own. There
was one sudden sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and then-
through the swinging doors of oblivion for fitienne.

I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, unstudied, almost
absent-minded affair. I had thought the cook was rehearsing the proper
method of turning a flapjack.

Silently, lost in thought, he stood there scratching his head. Then he
began rolling down his sleeves.

"You'd better get your things on, Miss, and well get out of here," he
decided. "Wrap up warm."

I heard her heave a little sigh of relief as she went to get her cloak,
sweater, and hat.

Ross jumped to his feet, and said: "George, what are you goin' to do?"

George, who had been headed in my direction, slowly swivelled around
and faced his employer, "Bein* a camp cook, I ain't over-burdened with
bosses," George enlightened us. "Therefore, I am going to try to borrow
this feller's here."

For the first time in four days my soul gave a genuine cheer. "If it's
for Lochinvar purposes, go as far as you like," I said, grandly.

The cook studied me a moment, as if trying to find an insult in my
words. "No," he replied. "It's for mine and the young lady's purposes,
and we'll go only three miles — to Hicksville. Now let me tell you some-
thin', Ross." Suddenly I was confronted with the cook's chunky back

THE SNOW MAN 169!

and I heard a low, curt, carrying voice shoot through the room at my
host. George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak. "You're nutty.
That's what's the matter with you. You can't stand the snow. You're
gettin' nervouser, and nuttier every day. That and this Dago" — he jerked
a thumb at the half-dead Frenchman in the corner — "has got you to the
point where I thought I better horn in. I got to revolvin' it around in my
mind and I seen if somethin' wasn't done, and done soon, there'd be
murder around here and maybe" — his head gave an imperceptible list
toward the girl's room — "worse."

He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep any one else from
speaking. Then he plowed slowly through the drift of his ideas. "About
this here woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you reely think
about women. If she hadn't happened in here durin' this here snow,
you'd never have given two thoughts to the whole woman question. Like-
wise, when the storm clears, and you and the boys go hustlin' out, this
here whole business '11 clear out of your head and you won't think of a
skirt again until Kingdom Come. Just because o* this snow here, don't
forget you're livin' in the selfsame world you was in four days ago. And
you're the same man, too. Now, what's the use o' gettin' all snarled up
over four days of stickin' in the house ? That there's what I been revolvin'
in my mind and this here's the decision I've come to."

He plodded to the door and shouted to one of the ranch hands to saddle
my horse.

Ross lit a stogy and stood thoughtful in the middle of the room. Then
he began: "I've a durn good notion, George, to knock your confounded
head off and throw you into that snowbank, if "

"You're wrong, mister. That ain't a durned good notion you've got.
It's durned bad. Look here!" He pointed steadily out of doors until we
were both forced to follow his finger. "You're in here for more'n a week
yet." After allowing this fact to sink in, he barked out at Ross: "Can you
cook?" Then at me: "Can you cook?" Then he looked at the wreck of
fitienne and sniffed.

There was an embarrassing silence as Ross and I thought solemnly of
a foodless week.

"If you just use hoss sense," concluded George, "and don't go for to
hurt my feelin's, all I want to do is to take this young gal down to Hicks-
ville; and then I'll head back here and cook fer you."

The horse and Miss Adams arrived simultaneously, both of them very
serious and quiet. The horse because he knew what he had before him in
that weather; the girl because of what she had left behind.

Then all at once I awoke to a realization of what the cook was doing.
"My God, man!" I cried, "aren't you afraid to go out in that snow?"

Behind my back I heard Ross mutter, "Not him."

1692 BOOK XIV WAIFS AND STRAYS

George lifted the girl daintily up behind the saddle, drew on his gloves,
put his foot in the stirrup, and turned to inspect me leisurely.

As I passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind's eye the algebraic
equation of Snow, the equals sign, and the answer in the man before me.

"Snow is my last name," said George. He swung into the saddle and
they started cautiously out into the darkening swirl of fresh new currency
just issuing from the Snowdrop Mint. The girl, to keep her place, clung
happily to the sturdy figure of the camp cook.

I brought three things away from Ross Curtis's ranch house— yea, four.
One was the appreciation of snow, which I have so humbly tried here to
render; (2) was a collarbone, of which I am extra careful; (3) was a
memory of what it is to eat very extremely terribly bad food for a week;
and (4) was the cause of (3) a little note delivered at the end of the
week and hand-painted in blue pencil on a sheet of meat paper.

"I cannot come back there to that there job. Mrs. Snow say no, George.
I been revolvin* it in my mind; considerin' circumstances she's right."

R46

34410

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