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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry, Illustrated
+by H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Gentle Grafter
+       The Octopus Marooned -- Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet -- Modern Rural Sports -- The Chair of Philanthromathematics -- The Hand That Riles the World -- The Exact Science of Matrimony -- 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
+
+
+Author: O. Henry
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 1, 1999  [eBook #1805]
+[Last updated: October 21, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLE GRAFTER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by John Bickers and Dagny and revised by Joseph E.
+Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 1805-h.htm or 1805-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/1805/1805-h/1805-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/1805/1805-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLE GRAFTER
+
+by
+
+O. HENRY
+
+Illustrated by H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "They began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars."
+(Frontispiece)]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   I. The Octopus Marooned
+  II. Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
+ III. Modern Rural Sports
+  IV. The Chair of Philanthromathematics
+   V. The Hand That Riles the World
+  VI. The Exact Science of Matrimony
+ VII. A Midsummer Masquerade
+VIII. Shearing the Wolf
+  IX. Innocents of Broadway
+   X. Conscience in Art
+  XI. The Man Higher Up
+ XII. A Tempered Wind
+XIII. Hostages to Momus
+ XIV. The Ethics of Pig
+
+
+
+
+
+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 chirping 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."
+
+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 word "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 hands 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
+interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all
+right. The other half interest must have been worth two or three
+thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.
+
+"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes
+against a little 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 between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. 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
+procession 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 third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so
+me and Andy walked out to the edge of 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
+Mexican 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 pin feathers and
+strolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe's place was
+closed and likewise the other little 'dobe life saving station. So,
+naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and
+ports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it find there?
+
+"Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with a
+sixshooter 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: '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
+promised 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 had 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
+beautiful 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
+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
+calculated 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
+dormitory 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
+rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and
+premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the
+house.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem."]
+
+
+"'Jeff,' says he, 'I don't suppose that anywhere in the world you
+could find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treading
+the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker,
+incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in
+the sole apoplectic region. No?'
+
+"'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
+monopolists, 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
+riotousness 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?'
+
+"'I'm the crater of a volcano,' says he. 'I'm 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 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, 'why
+not go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems to me
+there was an old spell-binder named Cantharides that used to go 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. Southworth.'
+
+"'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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "And he leads 'em down the main street of Bird City."]
+
+
+"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
+deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There
+was only a light drizzle falling then.
+
+"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to
+scrape the mud off his boots.
+
+"'Pardner,' 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.'
+
+"'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's wool
+warehouse 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 he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says I, 'for
+trade languishes.'
+
+"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock two
+Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro.
+We put him in 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
+liniments 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 a 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 in the last town, so I only had five
+dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for
+half a 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Life began to look rosy again..."]
+
+
+"Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars' worth of fluid extract of
+cinchona 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
+hypothetical pneumocardiac 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I commenced selling the bitters on Main Street."]
+
+
+"'Constable,' says I, 'it's a fine night.'
+
+"'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.'
+
+"'I'll 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
+landlord 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 doctor to practice in town.'
+
+"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've 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 Vernon--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
+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 in 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 canvass the whole 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.
+
+"'I'm no doctor,' says I. 'Why don't you go and get the doctor?'
+
+"'Boss,' says he. 'Doc Hoskins am done gone twenty miles in de 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, 'I'll 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 Mayor 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, 'I'm awful sick. I'm about to die. Can't you
+do nothing for me?'
+
+"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I'm 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 assistance.'
+
+"'I'm 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!'
+
+"'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
+sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness except
+what is produced when we ain't feeling well. Declare yourself in
+arrears. Demonstrate.'
+
+"'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 personal magnetism.'
+
+"'Can you work it, doc?' asks the Mayor.
+
+"'I'm 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 late president of the Vinegar Bitters Company could revisit
+the earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling
+medicine on the street,' 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. 'I'll pay it. I guess my life's worth
+that much.'
+
+"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?'
+
+"'I do feel some little better, doc,' says the Mayor, 'darned if I
+don't. Now state a few lies 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,' says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of the
+perihelion 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 wonders of modern science.'
+
+"'Biddle,' says he, 'When will you give uncle the rest of the
+treatment, Dr. Pooh-pooh?'
+
+"'Waugh-hoo,' says I. 'I'll 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 was 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.'
+
+"'I've 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.
+
+"'You're under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters,' says he, 'for
+practising medicine without authority under the State law.'
+
+"'Who are you?' I asks.
+
+"'I'll tell you who he is,' says Mr. 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?' the mayor
+laughs, 'compound--well, it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess,
+anyway.'
+
+"'A detective,' says I.
+
+"'Correct,' says Biddle. 'I'll 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 window, 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "And I grabs Biddle by the throat."]
+
+
+"'I witness,' says he, 'that they're the same bank 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 rattles 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," said 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 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 pre-digested hoe-cake 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 Kentucky 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. We'll 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 questions. 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 down stairs 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 wide-spread agricultural
+agglomeration 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 horticultural 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 one-sided 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 rebates from the rutabag raisers. What bait are you going
+to use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.
+
+"'Oh,' I says, '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 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's 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 use. I've had to take rolls from 'em that looked like bundles
+of microbe cultures 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.
+
+"'I'd 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
+rollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man 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
+ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my
+handkerchief 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
+starting. I got a $5,000 one last week for $2.10.'
+
+"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 this 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.'
+
+"'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
+Indianapolis, 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. Goodbye.'
+
+"'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 himself knows better than to try to catch an up-to-date
+agriculturalist 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 casualities.
+
+"'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 that herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and to sow the 900-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.
+
+"'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,' says 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 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
+outwardly 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.'
+
+"'I'll 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.'
+
+"'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I come
+back. I won't be long.'
+
+"Two hours afterwards Andy steps into the room and lays a wad of money
+on the table.
+
+"'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' said 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, gentlemen,' 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 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
+agriculturalist. 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 PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS
+
+
+"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 before we recovered our presence of intellect.
+Twenty-five thousand dollars doesn'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 out 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
+Floresville, 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 you'll 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, 'I'll 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.
+
+"'I dinna ken,' says B. 'I offered ye libraries; and there they are. I
+suppose if I'd 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 I'd 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 from
+selling self-igniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke
+Smith presidential 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.'
+
+"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 phonograph 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 car load of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders,
+dictionaries, 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 chalk-plate cuts of me and Andy
+we wired an employment agency in Chicago to express us f.o.b., six
+professors immediately--one English literature, one up-to-date
+dead languages, 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
+Proprietors. And when September the first got a cross-mark on the
+calendar, the come-ons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the
+tri-weekly express 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--ultra-marine 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
+pictures 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 I. '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,
+       Done, done, done,
+     Peters, Tucker,
+       Lots of fun,
+     Bow-wow-wow,
+       Haw-hee-haw,
+     World University,
+       Hip, hurrah!'
+
+
+"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 comes 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, silk-socked little sons of sap-suckers have got more
+money than you and me ever had. Look at the rolls they're pulling out
+of their pistol pockets?'
+
+"'Yes,' 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 business 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.'
+
+"'We'll be leaving on the morning train,' says Andy. 'You'd better get
+your collars and cuffs and press clippings together.'
+
+"'Great!' says I. 'I'll be ready. But, Andy,' says I, 'I wish I could
+have met that Professor James Darnley McCorkle before we 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 best cooks, milliners, nurses, housekeepers, stenographers,
+clerks, hairdressers 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 Jeff, 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 the 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 Marshall.
+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 annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me
+about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshall
+might help along the firm of Peters & Tucker.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Selling walking canes."]
+
+
+"'Jeff,' says Bill to me, 'you are a man of learning and education,
+besides 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 and
+philanthropy,' 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 impunity in boot-legging whiskey for
+twelve months. Are you patriotic to the West enough to help me put this
+thing through the Whitewashed Wigwam of the Great Father of the most
+eastern flag station of the Pennsylvania Railroad?' says Bill.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I'm a plain citizen and I need the job."]
+
+
+"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 commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and
+strikes out for Washington.
+
+"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 malpractice like this it seems to me that the
+straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,' 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
+magazine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.
+
+"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and
+diamond 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?'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Well boys, 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 the
+Territorial 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 my private menu card.' She takes some papers out of a
+pigeon-hole 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, Tolstoi, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third
+bottle of wine." Yes,' she goes on, 'I am sure I can have your friend,
+Mr. Bummer, appointed 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
+sometimes 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 the left end of his mustache.
+
+"'A woman of high intellect and perfect beauty is a 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.
+
+"'A 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 Swinburne 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 overshoes and three months supply of bird seed
+into the canary's cage. "Sioux Falls?" he asks with a kind of hopeful
+light 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
+indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet
+when she 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
+evening 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-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 postcards 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
+Marshalship 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.
+
+"'You 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: 'Job
+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. 'I'll 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, and a genuine document, but it
+appointed him postmaster of Dade City, Fla.
+
+"Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill's
+appointment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward Lake
+Superior.
+
+"I never saw Bill Humble after that."
+
+
+
+
+THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY
+
+
+"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much
+confidence 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 I. "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 owning 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 judgment. Address, with
+   particulars.
+
+   Lonely,
+   Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, Ill.
+
+
+"'So far, so pernicious,' says I, when we had finished the literary
+concoction. '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 rule, Andy, that in all my
+illegitimate 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 ordinances and train schedules I have kept out
+of all trouble with the police 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,' 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
+dyspepsia 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 sunflowers 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,' she asks me
+when I tell her what we want.
+
+"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'Andy Tucker and me have computed the
+calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and unfair 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,' 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 Millennial 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,' says I, 'some of the more ardent and impetuous suitors
+who can raise the railroad fare may come to Cairo to personally press
+their suit or whatever fraction 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,
+suppose 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "About 100 a day was what came in."]
+
+
+"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
+interesting letter and requesting them to write again; stating more
+particulars; and enclosing photograph if convenient. Peters & Tucker
+also informed 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 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 eye 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, Mrs. 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 the
+$2,000.
+
+"When I got 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. 'I'll 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.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Mr. Peters, I'm in love.'"]
+
+
+"'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 the 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
+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
+financially. 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
+emotions 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 heart and 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 up 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 up 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. 'I 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "'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. 'I've been calling on her three
+evenings a week for more than a month.'
+
+"'Then are you William Wilkinson?' says I.
+
+"'I was,' says Andy."
+
+
+
+
+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 somebody for idle hands to do.'
+
+"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker, tried to
+take a layoff from our professional and business duties; but it seems
+that our work followed us wherever we went.
+
+"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his
+responsibilities and enjoy himself. On the 31st of May he wraps
+mosquito netting and tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his niblick,
+breviary and fishing pole and hikes for Lake Como or Atlantic City
+according to the size of the loudness with which he has been called by
+his congregation. And, sir, for three months he don't have to think
+about business except to hunt around in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and
+Timothy to find texts to cover and exculpate such little midsummer
+penances as dropping a couple of looey door on rouge or teaching a
+Presbyterian widow to swim.
+
+"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer vacation
+that wasn't one.
+
+"We was tired of finance and all the branches of unsanctified
+ingenuity. Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever stopped working, began
+to make noises like a tennis cabinet.
+
+"'Heigh ho!' says Andy. 'I'm tired. I've got that steam up the yacht
+Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf and indict my
+soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del
+Val or give a knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do
+a monologue at a Chautauqua picnic in kilts or something summery and
+outside the line of routine and sand-bagging.'
+
+"'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the profession
+before you can taste the laurels that crown the footprints of the
+great captains of industry. Now, what I'd like, Andy,' says I, 'would
+be a summer sojourn in a mountain village far from scenes of larceny,
+labor and overcapitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or so of
+sinlessness ought to leave us in good shape to begin again to take
+away the white man's burdens in the fall.'
+
+"Andy fell in with the rest cure at once, so we struck the general
+passenger agents of all the railroads for summer resort literature,
+and took a week to study out where we should go. I reckon the first
+passenger agent in the world was that man Genesis. But there wasn't
+much competition in his day, and when he said: 'The Lord made the
+earth in six days, and all very good,' he hadn't any idea to what
+extent the press agents of the summer hotels would plagiarize from
+him later on.
+
+"When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United
+States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El Paso, and from Skagway to Key
+West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new
+laid eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open
+plumbing and tennis; and all within two hours' ride.
+
+"So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our
+trunk and takes the 6 o'clock Tortoise Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of
+a dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North
+Carolina.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Dumps the books out of the back window."]
+
+
+"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn, and
+thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the rocks
+and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees,
+and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white
+dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office
+and some scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.
+
+"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down
+the walk to greet us? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the
+best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the
+Southwest.
+
+"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air
+of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by
+telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I
+introduces Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will
+go around at meetings of boards of directors and old associates like
+us three were. Old Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of summer house
+in the yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on
+all the chords with his mighty right.
+
+"'Gents,' says he, 'I'm glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out
+of a scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street work, so I leased this
+dogdays emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before
+the season opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from
+the Duke of Marlborough, each wanting to engage board for part of the
+summer.
+
+"'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery
+it would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose names are famous
+from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a
+lot of handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these
+distinguished boarders during the summer, except in places where it
+leaked, and I sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and
+Charlotte and Fish Dam and Bowling Green.
+
+"'And now look up there on the porch, gents,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'at
+them disconsolate specimens of their fair sex waiting for the arrival
+of the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to
+cellar with hero worshippers.
+
+"'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there's three
+high school graduates between 37 and 42; there's two literary old
+maids and one that can write; there's a couple of society women and
+a lady from Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corn
+crib, and I've put cots in the hay loft for the cook and the society
+editress of the Chattanooga _Opera Glass_. You see how names draw,
+gents.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'how is it that you seem to be biting your thumbs at
+good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'
+
+"'I ain't through,' says Smoke-'em-out. 'Yesterday was the day for
+the advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down to the depot to
+welcome 'em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train,
+both carrying bags full of croquet mallets and these magic lanterns
+with pushbuttons.
+
+"I compares these integers with the original signatures to the letters
+--and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my poor eyesight.
+Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena
+explorer was none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from
+Asheville. And the Duke of Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of
+Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked
+'em both back on the train and watched 'em depart for the lowlands,
+the low.
+
+
+[Illustration: Instead of the Lieut. and the Duke.]
+
+
+"'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 æsophagus, '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?'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Can ye do it, gents?' he asks."]
+
+
+"I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral
+and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about
+10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband
+sophistries and parables when they came out.
+
+"'Listen,' says Andy to old Smoke-'em-out. 'Can we do it? You behold
+before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest equipped men on earth for
+inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand
+or swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost,
+but me and Jeff Peters,' says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If
+you say so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And
+you'll find,' says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of
+the title rôles from the aurora borealis to the ducal portcullis.'
+
+"Old Smoke-'em-out is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn by
+an arm apiece, telling us on the way that the finest fruits of the can
+and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long
+as we would stay.
+
+"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says: 'Ladies, I have the honor to
+introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and the famous
+inventor of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary.'
+
+"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy
+bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to register. And then
+we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the
+rooms he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina
+real mountain dew.
+
+"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic
+metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on
+airships when stimulated.
+
+"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the porch,
+where the ladies are to begin to earn our keep. We sit in two special
+chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their
+rockers close around us.
+
+"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn out,
+sir?'
+
+"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I
+was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't tell from
+her question whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial
+expeditions. So I gave an answer that would cover both cases.
+
+"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out--right smart of a freeze
+out, ma'am.'
+
+"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew
+which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I
+wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that
+he was trying to be the mouthpiece of the whole British nobility and
+of Arctic exploration from Sir John Franklin down. It was the union
+of corn whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D.
+Howletts admires so much.
+
+"'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, 'I am truly glad to
+visit America. I do not consider the magna charta,' says he, 'or gas
+balloons or 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,' says Andy, 'that I go after the North Pole
+all the Vanderbilts in Greenland won't be able to turn me out in the
+cold--I mean make it hot for me.'
+
+"'Tell us about one of your trips, Lieutenant,' says one of the
+normals.
+
+"'Sure,' says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was in
+the spring of last year that I sailed the Castle of Blenheim up to
+latitude 87 degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record. Ladies,' says
+Andy, 'it was a sad sight to see a Duke allied by a civil and
+liturgical chattel mortgage to one of your first families lost in a
+region of semiannual days.' And then he goes on, 'At four bells we
+sighted Westminster Abbey, but there was not a drop to eat. At noon we
+threw out five sandbags, and the ship rose fifteen knots higher. At
+midnight,' continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake
+of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was snow and ice. Six
+times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar,
+so we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy, with a
+lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down the
+hatchway, into the cabin. And then--'
+
+"'What then, Lieutenant?' says a schoolma'am, excitedly.
+
+"Andy gives a loud sob.
+
+"'The Duchess shook me,' he cries out, and slides out of the chair and
+weeps on the porch.
+
+"Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left
+the next morning. The landlord wouldn't speak to us for two days, but
+when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.
+
+"So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away
+from Crow Knob with $1,100, that we enticed out of old Smoke-'em-out
+playing seven up."
+
+
+
+
+SHEARING THE WOLF
+
+
+Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was
+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.
+One word led on to another till he said I reminded him of Rockefeller.
+
+"'I don't 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
+cessation 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Pitching quoits in the afternoon in the court house
+yard."]
+
+
+"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?' says he, laughing--'a letter like
+that to ME!'
+
+"Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to read it
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Think of 'em sending a letter like that to ME!'"]
+
+
+"'Lot's of good men get 'em,' 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 all 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 him 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 waiting. They show
+you brand new real money and sell you all you want at five for 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.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Of course, it's brown paper.'"]
+
+
+"'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, 'I've 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 $1, 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 1 shot on J. Smith. I guess
+the water'll 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.
+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, 'I 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 his 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 insists 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 of 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 1 shot. Yes, I'd
+really take it as a pastime 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. I'll show
+'em whether the water's fine. Five dollars for one--that's what J.
+Smith offers, and he'll 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
+inoculate 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 'em along," he'll 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, I'll tell you what I say,' says I. '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 of 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.
+
+"'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 handbill 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, 'when 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 foot-notes of that conscience of yours. I'd
+like to have it to refer to occasionally.'"
+
+
+
+
+INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY
+
+
+"I hope some day 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 managed 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 railroad
+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
+dynamiting a Texas lake for bass. All you have to do anywhere between
+the North 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 without firing a shot.
+
+"One day in the papier mâché 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, traveling 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 Beekman
+street, and he hadn't been above Fourteenth street in ten years.
+Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time had 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 beer.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'I want you to take care of my money for me.'"]
+
+
+"'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
+farm-hand from the Kaw River bottoms strolls in here and sells you
+a copper mine.'
+
+"'Oh, I don't know,' says Whiskers. 'I 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 comes in.'
+
+"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.
+I'll ask you fer 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 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, 'I don't blame you for not
+wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine points of the game, I guess,
+it's been so 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 cousin, he says, is in the artificial
+limb and lead casket business, and hasn't crossed the bridge in eight
+years. 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.
+
+"'I'll use what I've 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 up 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.
+We've 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 Goldfields.
+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
+introduction. 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 out 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,' 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 skyscraper. 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
+back-water if you don't get out of the way.
+
+"'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 of 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,' says I, 'and with blind and beautiful idiocy
+laid the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when he
+wants it.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'We can't take it, Andy.'"]
+
+
+"'Your 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, 'I'll 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, I'll take that
+five thousand. I met a man last night that's got a sure winner at
+the racetrack to-morrow. Excuse me for being so impolite as to go to
+sleep, Mr. Peters.'
+
+"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes
+himself 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 comes 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 that.'
+
+"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
+Amalgamated 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,' says Andy, 'expected to reach a par value of $1. 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "We put the certificate of stock in the cigarman's
+hand."]
+
+
+"On the ferryboat Andy says to me: 'Is your conscience easy about
+taking 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, stock 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
+financiering.
+
+"'Jeff,' says he, 'I've been thinking that we ought to drop these
+rutabaga fanciers and give our attention to something more nourishing
+and prolific. 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 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 00
+   Cab fare to and from hotel . . . . . .      2 00
+   Hotel bill @ $5 per day  . . . . . . .     50 00
+   Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5,750 00
+                                         ----------
+      Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $5,823 00
+
+
+"'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 confidence 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 transfer 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 cinderpath
+they call Smithfield street, 'had you figured out how we are going to
+get acquainted with these coke kings and pig iron squeezers? Not that
+I would decry my own worth or system of 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 impoliteness 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 consumers. 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 glassblower before he made his money.
+
+"One evening Andy failed to come to the hotel for dinner. About 11
+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 in education--art and literature and haberdashery and such
+things.
+
+"'When I saw him he'd just won a bet of $10,000 with a Steel
+Corporation 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 a 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.'
+
+"'All 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 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 anybody
+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 a 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
+$35. 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.
+
+"'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,
+Pennsylvania?'
+
+"'I am,' says he. 'Come out and have a drink.'
+
+"'I've 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. 'I 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
+his 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
+on.'"
+
+
+
+
+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, uncapitalized, 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 graft," 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
+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 drugstore 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 of 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
+interjections. 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.
+
+"'Fall 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
+shoulder--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
+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
+professional 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.'
+
+"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 sometimes 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 a swag in it and a pretty
+parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and
+sold, and me spilling 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 memories 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 until some of those 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 I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady, and open the Farmers and
+Drovers Marine Bank with it.'
+
+"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 railroads 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
+corruption. He always gives something for the money he gets. I'm 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, swindling, and financiering all represented. Please
+examine Mr. Rick's 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
+intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of
+the State 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 degrees 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
+Alfred 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 come 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 westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen
+15-and-a-half 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
+spareribs 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 than I am. Now, what could either of you have done in
+the present emergency to set us on our feet again? Could you do it,
+Ricksy?'
+
+"'I 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--'
+
+"'I 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 contracts. 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 left-over victuals.'
+
+"'That was only getting the pumpkin ready,' says Bassett, braggy
+and cheerful. 'The coach and six'll 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, 'I'm fifteen years older than you are, and young
+enough 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 wagon.
+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
+handkerchief 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 I'll 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
+out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and
+begins to cackle over the nest-egg like a hen.
+
+"'I'll 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
+getting some better. I had a talk on these liliputian 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 morning 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--'
+
+"Basset unpins a package of the currency and throws five twenties to
+Ricks.
+
+"'Trade, how much?' he says to me.
+
+"'Put 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, I 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 a kind of Industrial
+Christian Science. She pays 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 contaminating 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 his money in his pocket. I never
+had the respect for burglary that some people have. I always gave
+something for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle
+for 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
+disgrace to 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 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 would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing
+'round 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
+slungshot 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, 'I'm 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 bazar.'
+
+"'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
+furniture 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.
+
+"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, 'I have no business being in business. I
+was preordained to labor. When a No. 1 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. 'Peace 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 some 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. Non-assessable.
+The Blue Gopher mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better get in
+yourself 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 out 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 sight of
+Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when
+I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of
+a business block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would in
+endeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.
+
+I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman,
+having his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched to
+posts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner,
+and runs to the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at
+the imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitious
+team of chimerical quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to the
+third-story room again, and I see that the lettering on the window is
+"The Farmers' Friend Loan Company."
+
+By and by Straw-top comes down again, and I crossed the street to meet
+him, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir, when I got close I could see where
+he overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans and
+cowhide boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the rye
+straw stuck over his ear looked like it belonged to the property man
+of the Old Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got the
+best of me.
+
+"Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite.
+"I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I couldn't. I guess they're half
+way 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 loathsome apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas
+Stubblefield--a name impossible to improve upon. I repair noisily
+to the office of some loan company conveniently located in the
+third-floor, front. There I lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floor
+and ask to mortgage my farm for $2,000 to pay for my sister's musical
+education in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan companies.
+It's ten to one that when the note falls due the foreclosure will be
+leading the semiquavers by a couple of lengths.
+
+"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but I
+suddenly hear my team running away. I run to the window and emit the
+word--or exclamation, which-ever 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 doubletree and
+two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money
+along. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'
+
+"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits for
+the manna to drop.
+
+"'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobster-colored party in the
+specs and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by accepting this ten-dollar
+bill until to-morrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten.
+We'll be pleased to accommodate you in the matter of this loan.'
+
+"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as I
+said, only for temporary loose change."
+
+"It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for his
+mortification; "in case of an emergency. Of course, it's small
+compared to organizing a trust or bridge whist, but even the Chicago
+University had to be started in a small way."
+
+"What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.
+
+"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. Oleum
+Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss Warbler's Bird Call,
+a small lot of the new queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget,
+consisting of a rolled-gold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian
+lily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fifty
+engraved visiting cards--no two names alike--all for the sum of 38
+cents."
+
+"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down in
+Texas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler, made of compressed
+wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they like
+to burn niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. And
+just when I was doing the best they strikes oil down there and puts me
+out of business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tells
+me. 'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum before
+your old flint-and-tinder truck can get him warm enough to perfess
+religion.' And so I gives up the kindler and drifts up here to K.C.
+This little curtain-raiser you seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with the
+simulated farm and the hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all,
+and I'm ashamed you found me working it."
+
+"No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunk
+on a loan corporation for even so small a sum as ten dollars, when he
+is financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It's
+too much like borrowing money without paying it back."
+
+I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as ever
+stood over the axles and breathed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we
+gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some
+time, and offers to go partners.
+
+"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find
+me willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of your
+proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw
+in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars.
+Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the Great
+Occidental All-Star One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."
+
+This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I
+am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying
+elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and
+sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human
+works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and
+poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the
+prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous
+beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful harmony
+there is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme;
+it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.
+
+We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and
+I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.
+
+"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her
+pompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayon
+portrait canvassers for this."
+
+Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to see
+Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to be
+the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her--no peroxide,
+patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant
+ways--the kind of a lady for the place.
+
+"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.
+
+"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and
+romantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' look
+like second-story work."
+
+We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business
+partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her place
+as stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into
+something respectable.
+
+This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kind
+of a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copy-book
+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. Any one can see that she is a peach and
+of the cling variety. They claim they are eloping for to be married
+on account of cruel parents. They ask where they can find a preacher.
+Farmer says, "B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend
+Abels, four miles over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on
+her apron and rubbers through her specs.
+
+
+[Illustration: She is a peach and of the cling variety.]
+
+
+Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs Parleyvoo
+Pickens in a gig, dressed in black, white necktie, long face, sniffing
+his nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling the long meter
+doxology.
+
+"B'jinks!" says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now!"
+
+It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to Little
+Bethel 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 hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmer
+grins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a
+bit and pats the bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo Pickens, the
+wrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer and
+farmeress sign it as witnesses. And the parties of the first, second
+and third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an
+idyllic graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on
+the red barns--it certainly had all other impostures I know about beat
+to a batter.
+
+
+[So the Reverend Green, after hesitations, marries 'em in the
+farmer's parlor.]
+
+
+I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Malloy at
+about twenty farm-houses. I hated to think how the romance was going
+to fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned up in
+banks where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notes
+of hand they'd signed, running from $300 to $500.
+
+On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss Malloy
+nearly cried with joy. You don't often see a tenderhearted girl or one
+that is bent on doing right.
+
+
+[Illustration: On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000.]
+
+
+"Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "this
+stake comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's ball. It gives
+me a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estate
+business when you fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in on
+this neat little proposition for removing the cuticle of the rutabaga
+propagators I'm afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was about
+to accept a place in one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, where
+they build a parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a
+cream-puff for seventy-five cents and calling it a Business Man's Lunch.
+
+"Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all them queer
+jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a palm reading and
+clairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the Egyptian Sorceress, I
+shall give everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication.
+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
+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 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
+tonsilitis on the street corners every evening.
+
+So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices down
+in the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda Gold Bond and
+Investment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in his
+private room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr.
+Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, with
+his high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside
+of an instantaneous reach for his hat.
+
+And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G.
+Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main office
+room dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a
+pompadour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.
+
+
+[Illustration: Busy in the main office room dictating letters
+to a shorthand countess.]
+
+
+There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere of
+varnish and culpability.
+
+At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of an ordinary man,
+attired with unscrupulous plainness, sitting with his feet up, eating
+apples, with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That man
+is no other than Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, the
+vice-president of the company.
+
+"No recherché rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when we was
+organizing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a plain man,"
+says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or military 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.
+You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative,
+homely, rough, shrewd, saving--that's your pose. It's a winner in New
+York. Keep your feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody
+comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawer
+of your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."
+
+I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain
+capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited apple
+peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made
+Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to
+victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our
+vice-president, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments
+. . . delightfully plain manners, but . . . could sign his check for
+half a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderful head . . .
+conservative and careful almost to a fault."
+
+
+[Illustration: "That's our vice-president, Colonel Pickens."]
+
+
+Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood all
+of it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company was
+a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in
+the profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest--we
+had to have that--of the shares at 50 cents a hundred--just what the
+printer charged us--and the rest went to the public at a dollar each.
+The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten 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 a bowknot, and he looked at me like his
+feelings was hurt.
+
+"My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Think
+of a thousand homes made happy by possessing one of these beautiful
+gems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the household
+where one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the 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 per cent. of it; it's plain enough
+that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., less
+expenses, as long as the fish bite.
+
+Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an
+eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call it
+good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
+Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine
+die, and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and
+Pickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned
+increment as it incremates."
+
+It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture;
+$1,500 more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew his
+business. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day
+longer than that and we'll have to either go under or go under an
+alias. By that time we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a money
+belt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and the
+furniture men can pick the bones."
+
+Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-press
+dailies, of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.
+
+"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause a
+Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot summer.
+The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and the
+Harlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the 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
+President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel
+Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes
+so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany
+garbage chest that he calls his desk.
+
+Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being
+troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept the
+money in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought
+much of banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the
+stock we'd sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. We
+had nearly $50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high
+as prize fighters out of training.
+
+One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat and
+flippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with a
+bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury
+looking like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.
+
+"Know that man?" he asked us.
+
+We said we didn't.
+
+"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll bet
+enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaper
+reporter."
+
+"What did he want?" asks Buck.
+
+"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying
+some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one
+of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper.
+You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like
+a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and
+knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together--if that
+ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind
+detectives and post-office inspectors--I talk to 'em eight minutes and
+then sell 'em stock--but them reporters take the starch out of my
+collar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away.
+The signs point that way."
+
+Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand
+still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always
+pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've
+heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and
+nervous all day.
+
+The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty.
+On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column
+on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way
+that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late
+George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a
+rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except
+a stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad
+treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president
+of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real
+sudden and quick that their days might be longer upon the land.
+
+Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and in
+the hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which is
+already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got
+Golconda stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged
+they'd been reading the papers, too.
+
+We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn't
+quite the kind of a gang we supposed had been investing. They all
+looked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots of
+young girls that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was old
+men that looked like war veterans, and some was crippled, and a good
+many was just kids--bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was
+working-men in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one of the
+gang looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was a peanut
+stand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as you
+please.
+
+
+[Illustration: But they all had Golconda stock and looked as
+sick as you please.]
+
+
+I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when he sized up
+the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking woman and says: "Madam,
+do you own any of this stock?"
+
+"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was all
+I had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at home now and I
+haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some.
+The circulars said you could draw it at any time. But they say now I
+will lose it all."
+
+There was a smart kind of kid in the gang--I guess he was a newsboy.
+"I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's silk
+hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a man
+tells me dey can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do you
+guess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"
+
+Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb
+distracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for the
+time they lost coming to see about it.
+
+There was one girl--a pretty one--in a red shawl, crying in a corner
+like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.
+
+"It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking all
+over, "though I've been two years saving it up; but Jakey won't marry
+me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know J--J--Jakey. She's got $400
+in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai--" she sings out.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Jakey won't marry me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld."]
+
+
+Buck looks all around with that same funny look on his face. And then
+we see leaning against the wall, puffing at his pipe, with his eye
+shining at us, this newspaper reporter. Buck and me walks over to him.
+
+"You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do you mean to
+carry it? Anything more up your sleeve?"
+
+"Oh, I'm just waiting around," says the reporter, smoking away, "in
+case any news turns up. It's up to your stockholders now. Some of
+them might complain, you know. Isn't that the patrol wagon now?" he
+says, listening to a sound outside. "No," he goes on, "that's Doc.
+Whittleford's old cadaver coupé from the Roosevelt. I ought to know
+that gong. Yes, I suppose I've written some interesting stuff at
+times."
+
+"You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news in your
+way."
+
+Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meant
+before he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer--I knew what he meant. They
+don't make them any better than Buck.
+
+"Pick," says he, looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out of
+our line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa Steinfeld?"
+
+"You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." And
+I starts for the safe deposit vaults.
+
+I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck and
+me takes the journalist reporter around to another door and we let
+ourselves into one of the office rooms.
+
+"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still,
+and I'll give you an interview. You see before you two grafters from
+Graftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brass
+jewelry, hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines,
+Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and albums in every town
+from Old Point Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar
+whenever we saw one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went
+after the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the
+corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard
+--'fussily decency averni'--which means it's an easy slide from the
+street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that
+slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now,
+you ought to be wise, but you ain't. You've got New York wiseness,
+which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes.
+That ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and the
+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 put in brains, and if he gets his capital out he's
+lucky. But what do you say, Pick?"
+
+"Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know who was
+buying the stock."
+
+"All right," says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door into
+the main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through the
+railing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes 'em a short
+speech.
+
+"All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool back. Don't
+shove so. Get in a line--a _line_--not in a pile. Lady, will you
+please stop bleating? Your money's waiting for you. Here, sonny,
+don't climb over that railing; your dimes are safe. Don't cry, sis;
+you ain't out a cent. Get in _line_, I say. Here, Pick, come and
+straighten 'em out and let 'em through and out by the other door."
+
+Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head,
+and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with the boodle
+before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders
+strung out and marches 'em, single file, through from the main room;
+and the reporter man passes 'em out of the side door into the hall
+again. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds,
+paying 'em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in. The
+shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can't
+hardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck's hands.
+Some of the women keep on crying, for it's a custom of the sex to cry
+when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears
+whenever they find themselves without either.
+
+
+[Illustration: The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and
+Investment Company can't hardly believe it.]
+
+
+The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom
+of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flap
+their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as the
+currency goes down in the ladies' department of the "Old Domestic
+Lisle-Thread Bank."
+
+Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the
+loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leave
+the money invested. "Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, and
+skip along," says Buck. "What business have you got investing in
+bonds? The 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 Company.
+And say--if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectful
+distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby
+authorized to knock a couple of inches of it off."
+
+When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporter
+and shoves the rest of the money over to him.
+
+"You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books,
+showing every share and bond issued. Here's the money to cover, except
+what we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guess
+you'll do the square thing on account of your paper. This is the best
+way we know how to settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-weary
+vice-president are going to follow the example of our revered
+president, and skip. Now, have you got enough news for 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. What'll the managing editor
+say? He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come back
+when I get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea serpent wiggling
+up Broadway, but I haven't got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe like
+this. A get-rich-quick scheme--excuse me--gang giving back the boodle!
+Oh, no. I'm not on the comic supplement."
+
+"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on the
+door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you know 'em. We
+never allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and take
+nickels off of kids. In the lines of graft we've worked we took money
+from the people the Lord made to be buncoed--sports and rounders and
+smart Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars to
+throw away, and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters
+didn't come around and play with 'em when they sold their crops. We
+never cared to fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir.
+We got too much respect for the profession and for ourselves. 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."
+
+And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the Golconda
+Company went into involuntary liquefaction.
+
+If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to a
+little bum hotel over near the West Side ferry landings. We was in a
+little back room, and I was filling up a gross of six-ounce bottles
+with hydrant water colored red with aniline and flavored with
+cinnamon. Buck was smoking, contented, and he wore a decent brown
+derby in place of his silk hat.
+
+"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that we
+got Brady to lend us his horse and wagon for a week. We'll rustle up
+the stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey.
+Bald heads ain't popular over there on account of the mosquitoes."
+
+Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for labels.
+
+"Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on hand."
+
+"Buy some more," says Buck.
+
+We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money to
+settle our hotel bill in the morning and pay our passage over the
+ferry.
+
+"Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I, after
+looking.
+
+"What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season is
+just opening up in the Hackensack low grounds. What's hair, anyway, if
+you have to shake it off?"
+
+We pasted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and Buck says:
+
+"Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain't
+it, Pick?"
+
+"You bet," says I.
+
+
+
+
+HOSTAGES TO MOMUS
+
+
+I
+
+I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. 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 to our case.
+
+_Rurales_? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental
+crayon portraits of the worthy constables 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 _rurales_ started for us we started for the States. They
+chased 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 emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans,
+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 named McCarty--wait a minute;
+Adolph McCarty--was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back
+trading-stamps due on the 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
+except 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 down-stairs. The landlord was shelling
+peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and
+Hongkong in complexion 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, gentlemen," says the landlord, "I 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
+yellowish 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 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 cutlets 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 traveled, 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
+Norfolk 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
+ramifications 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 streetcars, with a hand-organ
+playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest
+suicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that's
+all, except a _demi-tasse_."
+
+"Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a
+conniseer; and when you go around with the _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
+polish 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 mighty poor. As
+far as we could see was red hills all washed down with gullies and
+scattered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all
+that 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-barrels
+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 Jackson
+T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad,
+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
+morning. 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 worth 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 dish-towels. 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."
+
+"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
+gunboats 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 magazines;
+and then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside the 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
+administration 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 thousand 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 little mountains,
+and stick up his 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."
+
+
+
+III
+
+Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch
+of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T.
+Rockingham. 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 out 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-fifty-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
+comfortable; 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! 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 inculcate the occasion with a few well-timed
+trivialities in the way of 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 _à la
+creole_, and handle the oil and tobasco 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
+appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real _vive bonjour_.
+
+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
+beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator
+who--"
+
+"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attend 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
+   a cross 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 take on a
+postscript about how 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 signalling 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
+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 he'll 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 dimension 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
+disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our general
+passenger agent, is now negotiating a peachcrate 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 Pendergast, 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.
+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," I 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 entrées and _pièces
+de resistance_, and stirred up little savory _chef de cuisines_ and
+organized a mass of grub such as has been 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
+agglomeration 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 Pendergast 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
+gathers 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 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
+going 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 _Puck_. 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 remember
+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
+himself 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
+Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use
+his cerebrum, 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
+reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential 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
+upright, 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 yet entered, and see if I can find a
+partner 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 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
+neighborhood, 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 women 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:
+
+
+   'Ill 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 ever. 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 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.'
+
+"I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the
+constable 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
+Pitfall & 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.
+
+"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 at the Vacation in 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
+manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished in the way of
+indirect brigandage or nonactionable 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
+accents, '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 atterwards.
+Some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler 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, Mr. Tatum, it would be
+considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State
+Gas. However, 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 atmosphere 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 had idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was
+feeling 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
+direction. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley
+Brothers' circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into
+town and pounding the Belgian blocks with their hand-pegged sabots as
+artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I
+never pass a circus without 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 I knew he would, after he was rigged up
+in the ready-made rutabaga regalia. 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
+capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed the game with only
+forty-two dollars 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 honest 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. 'You flimflammed in your part of the
+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've really got kleptopigia. And maybe when
+we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind to higher and more
+remunerative 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,' 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 whenever
+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. He'll 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 I'll do, Rufe,'
+I says. 'I'll give you ten dollars for that pig.'
+
+"'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
+fireside 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 for?'
+
+"'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'you wouldn't
+think that I've got an artistic side to my temper. But I have. I'm a
+collector 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 Merino to a Poland China. This looks like a blooded pig to me,
+Rufe,' says I. 'I 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 better 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
+matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is
+philanthropy. 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 collection. 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 I.
+
+"'Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, 'and I'll 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.
+
+"'I'll just take him into my own room,' says I, 'and lock him up till
+after 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
+under 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
+Misfitzky's 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
+morning. I'll take the five thousand dollars 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 to 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
+1 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.
+
+"'Fake,' 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.
+
+"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the
+newspaper 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.'
+
+"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 endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs--what's the
+difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook,<br />
+    The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry,<br />
+    Illustrated by H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p class="noindent">Title: The Gentle Grafter</p>
+<p class="noindent">       The Octopus Marooned -- Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet -- Modern Rural Sports -- The Chair of Philanthromathematics -- The Hand That Riles the World -- The Exact Science of Matrimony -- 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</p>
+<p class="noindent">Author: O. Henry</p>
+<p class="noindent">Release Date: July 1, 1999  [eBook #1805]<br />
+[Last updated: October 21, 2021]</p>
+<p class="noindent">Language: English</p>
+<p class="noindent">Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p class="noindent">***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLE GRAFTER***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by John Bickers and Dagny<br />
+    and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.<br />
+    <br />
+    HTML version prepared by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL1"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/frontis.jpg">
+<img src="images/frontis_t.jpg"
+alt="They began to cuss, amiable, and
+throw down dollars [Frontispiece]" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"They began to cuss, amiable,
+and throw down dollars."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>THE GENTLE GRAFTER</h1>
+
+<h4>by</h4>
+
+<h2>O. Henry</h2>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3><i>Author of "The Four Million," "The Voice of the City,"<br />
+       "The Trimmed Lamp," "Strictly Business,"<br />
+       "Whirligigs," Etc.</i></h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>Illustrated by</h4>
+<h3>H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>1919</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<table cellpadding="2">
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#1"><span class="smallcaps">The Octopus Marooned</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#2"><span class="smallcaps">Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#3"><span class="smallcaps">Modern Rural Sports</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#4"><span class="smallcaps">The Chair of Philanthromathematics</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#5"><span class="smallcaps">The Hand That Riles the World</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#6"><span class="smallcaps">The Exact Science of Matrimony</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#7"><span class="smallcaps">A Midsummer Masquerade</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#8"><span class="smallcaps">Shearing the Wolf</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#9"><span class="smallcaps">Innocents of Broadway</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#10"><span class="smallcaps">Conscience in Art</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#11"><span class="smallcaps">The Man Higher Up</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#12"><span class="smallcaps">A Tempered Wind</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#13"><span class="smallcaps">Hostages to Momus</span></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#14"><span class="smallcaps">The Ethics of Pig</span></a></td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="narrow" />
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="1"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>THE OCTOPUS MAROONED</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"A trust is its weakest point," said Jeff Peters.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said I, "sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks
+such as, 'Why is a policeman?'"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not," said Jeff. "There are no relations between a trust
+and a policeman. My remark was an epitogram&mdash;an axis&mdash;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
+chirping 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."</p>
+
+<p>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 word "trust" had been
+applied. Somewhat to my surprise he acknowledged the
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 hands 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh,
+yes, the mine was all right. The other half interest must have
+been worth two or three thousand. I often wondered who
+owned that mine.</p>
+
+<p>"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our
+toes against a little 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
+between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, there were three saloons in Bird City, though neither
+Andy nor me drank. But we could see the townspeople making
+a triangular procession from one to another all day and half the
+night. Everybody seemed to know what to do with as much
+money as they had.</p>
+
+<p>"The third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the
+afternoon, so me and Andy walked out to the edge of 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Mexican Joe's place, referred to the rain, and
+bought him out for $500. The other one came easy at $400.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Bird City hopped out of its nest, waggled its pin feathers and
+strolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe's place was
+closed and likewise the other little 'dobe life saving station.
+So, naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of
+surprise and ports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it
+find there?</p>
+
+<p>"Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with
+a sixshooter 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: '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 promised
+free drinks by the trust.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"There was about 1,500 grown-up adults in Bird City that had
+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 beautiful and
+simple as all truly great swindles are.</p>
+
+<p>"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 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 calculated 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 dormitory of padded
+cells for the faculty, and present every worthy poor man in
+Texas with a farm, provided he furnished the site for it.</p>
+
+<p>"Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem at our success, the
+rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises
+and premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar
+in the house.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL2"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p10.jpg">
+<img src="images/p10_t.jpg"
+alt="Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"Andy was especial inroaded by
+self-esteem."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'Jeff,' says he, 'I don't suppose that anywhere in the world
+you could find three cormorants with brighter ideas about
+down-treading the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan
+and Tucker, incorporated. We have sure handed the small
+consumer a giant blow in the sole apoplectic region. No?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'By way of liberation,' says he, 'to the gods.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's all right, Andy,' says I, 'to drink the health of our
+brother monopolists, but don't overdo the wassail. You know
+our most eminent and loathed multi-corruptionists live on
+weak tea and dog biscuits.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 riotousness 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jeff,' says he, 'do you know that I'm a crater&mdash;a living
+crater?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm the crater of a volcano,' says he. 'I'm 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It could do no worse,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 two hours longer than Billy himself
+could on the silver question. Finally, they persuaded me to
+take the gold cure.'</p>
+
+<p>"'If you've got to get rid of your excess verbiage,' says I,
+'why not go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems
+to me there was an old spell-binder named Cantharides that
+used to go and disincorporate himself of his windy numbers
+along the seashore.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.
+Southworth.'</p>
+
+<p>"'On what special subject of the theorems and topics does your
+desire for vocality seem to be connected with?' I asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL3"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p15.jpg">
+<img src="images/p15_t.jpg"
+alt="And he leads 'em down the main street of Bird City." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"And he leads 'em down the main street
+of Bird City."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"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 deserted except for some ducks and ladies going
+to the stores. There was only a light drizzle falling then.</p>
+
+<p>"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue
+Snake to scrape the mud off his boots.</p>
+
+<p>"'Pardner,' 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's
+wool warehouse 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I hope he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says
+I, 'for trade languishes.'</p>
+
+<p>"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock
+two Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the
+back of a burro. We put him in bed while he still muttered and
+gesticulated with his hands and feet.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'What was it about?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Temperance,' says he. 'And when he got through, every
+man in Bird City signed the pledge for a year.'"</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="2"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>Jeff Peters has been engaged in as many schemes for making
+money as there are recipes for cooking rice in Charleston,
+S.C.</p>
+
+<p>Best of all I like to hear him tell of his earlier days when he
+sold liniments 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I struck Fisher Hill, Arkansaw," said he, "in a 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Business hadn't been good in the last town, so I only had five
+dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me
+for half a 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL4"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p19.jpg">
+<img src="images/p19_t.jpg"
+alt="Life began to look rosy again..." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"Life began to look rosy again&#8230;"</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars' worth of fluid extract
+of cinchona 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I hired a wagon that night and commenced selling the bitters
+on Main Street. Fisher Hill was a low, malarial town; and a
+compound hypothetical pneumocardiac 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL5"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p21.jpg">
+<img src="images/p21_t.jpg"
+alt="I ... commenced selling the bitters on Main Street." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"I &#8230; commenced selling the bitters
+on Main Street."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'Constable,' says I, 'it's a fine night.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Have you got a city license,' he asks, 'to sell this illegitimate
+essence of spooju that you flatter by the name of medicine?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll have to close you up till you do,' says the constable.</p>
+
+<p>"I quit selling and went back to the hotel. I was talking to the
+landlord about it.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 doctor to practice in
+town.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've got a State peddler's
+license, and I take out a city one wherever they demand it.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"By and by a young man in a blue necktie slips into the chair
+next to me and asks the time.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 Vernon&mdash;all
+for fifty cents.'</p>
+
+<p>"Andy was pleased to hear that I remembered him. He was a
+good street man; and he was more than that&mdash;he respected his
+profession, and he was satisfied with 300 per cent. profit. He
+had plenty of offers to go into the illegitimate drug and garden
+seed business; but he was never to be tempted off of the
+straight path.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted a partner, so Andy and me agreed to go out
+together. I told him about the situation in 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 canvass the whole
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm no doctor,' says I. 'Why don't you go and get the
+doctor?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Boss,' says he. 'Doc Hoskins am done gone twenty miles in
+de 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'As man to man,' says I, 'I'll 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.</p>
+
+<p>"This Mayor 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Doc,' says the Mayor, 'I'm awful sick. I'm about to die.
+Can't you do nothing for me?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I'm 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
+assistance.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I nods at Mr. Biddle and sets down by the bed and feels the
+mayor's pulse. 'Let me see your liver&mdash;your tongue, I mean,'
+says I. Then I turns up the lids of his eyes and looks close at
+the pupils of 'em.</p>
+
+<p>"'How long have you been sick?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was taken down&mdash;ow-ouch&mdash;last night,' says the Mayor.
+'Gimme something for it, doc, won't you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Fiddle,' says I, 'raise the window shade a bit, will
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Biddle,' says the young man. 'Do you feel like you could eat
+some ham and eggs, Uncle James?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Good Lord!' says he, with a groan, 'Can't you rub
+something on it, or set it or anything?'</p>
+
+<p>"I picks up my hat and starts for the door.</p>
+
+<p>"'You ain't going, doc?' says the Mayor with a howl. 'You
+ain't going away and leave me to die with this&mdash;superfluity of
+the clapboards, are you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Common humanity, Dr. Whoa-ha,' says Mr. Biddle, 'ought
+to prevent your deserting a fellow-human in distress.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Dr. Waugh-hoo, when you get through plowing,' says I.
+And then I walks back to the bed and throws back my long
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'And what is that?' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'Scientific demonstrations,' says I. 'The triumph of mind
+over sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness
+except what is produced when we ain't feeling well. Declare
+yourself in arrears. Demonstrate.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What is this paraphernalia you speak of, Doc?' says the
+Mayor. 'You ain't a Socialist, are you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I am speaking,' says I, 'of the great doctrine of psychic
+financiering&mdash;of the enlightened school of long-distance,
+sub-conscientious treatment of fallacies and meningitis&mdash;of that
+wonderful in-door sport known as personal magnetism.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Can you work it, doc?' asks the Mayor.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm 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
+late president of the Vinegar Bitters Company could revisit the
+earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me
+peddling medicine on the street,' 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Will you treat my case?' asks the Mayor.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course I will,' says he. 'And now get to work, doc, for
+them pains are coming on again.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My fee will be $250.00, cure guaranteed in two treatments,'
+says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' says the Mayor. 'I'll pay it. I guess my life's
+worth that much.'</p>
+
+<p>"I sat down by the bed and looked him straight in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I do feel some little better, doc,' says the Mayor, 'darned if I
+don't. Now state a few lies 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"I made a few passes with my hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now,' says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of
+the perihelion 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Mayor shut his eyes slowly and began to snore.</p>
+
+<p>"'You observe, Mr. Tiddle,' says I, 'the wonders of modern
+science.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Biddle,' says he, 'When will you give uncle the rest of the
+treatment, Dr. Pooh-pooh?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Waugh-hoo,' says I. 'I'll come back at eleven to-morrow.
+When he wakes up give him eight drops of turpentine and
+three pounds of steak. Good morning.'</p>
+
+<p>"The next morning I was back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,'
+says I, when he opened the bedroom door, 'and how is uncle
+this morning?'</p>
+
+<p>"'He seems much better,' says the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"The mayor's color and pulse was fine. I gave him another
+treatment, and he said the last of the pain left him.</p>
+
+<p>"'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&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've got the cash here,' says the mayor, pulling a pocket
+book from under his pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"He counts out five fifty-dollar notes and holds 'em in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bring the receipt,' he says to Biddle.</p>
+
+<p>"I signed the receipt and the mayor handed me the money. I
+put it in my inside pocket careful.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now do your duty, officer,' says the mayor, grinning much
+unlike a sick man.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Biddle lays his hand on my arm.</p>
+
+<p>"'You're under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters,' says he,
+'for practising medicine without authority under the State law.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Who are you?' I asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll tell you who he is,' says Mr. 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?' the mayor laughs,
+'compound&mdash;well, it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess,
+anyway.'</p>
+
+<p>"'A detective,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'Correct,' says Biddle. 'I'll have to turn you over to the
+sheriff.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's see you do it,' says I, and I grabs Biddle by the throat
+and half throws him out the window, 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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL6"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p30.jpg">
+<img src="images/p30_t.jpg"
+alt="And I grabs Biddle by the throat." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"And I grabs Biddle by the throat."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'I witness,' says he, 'that they're the same bank 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Come on, officer,' says I, dignified. 'I may as well make the
+best of it.' And then I turns to old Banks and rattles my
+chains.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I guess it did.</p>
+
+<p>"When we got nearly to the gate, I says: 'We might meet
+somebody now, Andy. I reckon you better take 'em off, and&mdash;'
+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."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="3"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>MODERN RURAL SPORTS</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I notice," said I, "that the Western farmers, in spite of their
+prosperity, are running after their old populistic idols again."</p>
+
+<p>"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 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"One morning me and Andy wakes up with sixty-eight cents
+between us in a yellow pine hotel on the edge of the
+pre-digested hoe-cake 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 Kentucky line.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cheer up, Andy,' says I. 'We're in a rural community.
+Somebody has just tested a gold brick downstairs. We'll go
+out and get what's coming to us from a farmer; and then
+yoicks! and away.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 questions.
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"When we went down stairs 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
+wide-spread agricultural agglomeration of fields and barns and
+pastures and out-houses.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whose house is that?' we asked the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>"'That,' says he, 'is the domicile and the arboreal, terrestrial
+and horticultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett, one of
+our county's most progressive citizens.'</p>
+
+<p>"After breakfast me and Andy, with eight cents capital left,
+casts the horoscope of the rural potentate.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me go alone,' says I. 'Two of us against one farmer
+would look as one-sided as Roosevelt using both hands to kill
+a grizzly.'</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' says Andy. 'I like to be a true sport even when
+I'm only collecting rebates from the rutabag raisers. What bait
+are you going to use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' I says, '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 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's
+reapers; and the pearl necklace found on the train; and a
+pocket-size goldbrick; and a&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 use. I've had to take rolls
+from 'em that looked like bundles of microbe cultures captured
+out of a Red Cross ambulance.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd like to see Farmer Ezra Plunkett,' says I to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'You see him,' says he. 'What seems to be on your mind?'</p>
+
+<p>"I never answered a word. I stood still, repeating to myself the
+rollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"I had a kind of cerebral sensation of foolishness in my ideas
+of ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped
+my handkerchief off it.</p>
+
+<p>"'One dollar and eighty cents,' says the farmer hefting it in his
+hand. 'Is it a trade?'</p>
+
+<p>"'The lead in it is worth more than that,' says I, dignified. I
+put it back in my pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' says he. 'But I sort of wanted it for the collection
+I'm starting. I got a $5,000 one last week for $2.10.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then a telephone bell rings in the house.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"We went inside. The room looked like a Broadway
+stockbroker's&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, hello!' says this funny farmer. 'Is that the Regent
+Theatre? Yes; this is Plunkett, of Woodbine Centre. Reserve
+four orchestra seats for Friday evening&mdash;my usual ones. Yes;
+Friday&mdash;good-bye.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 Indianapolis, 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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I seem to perceive,' says I, 'a kind of hiatus in the agrarian
+traditions in which heretofore, I have reposed confidence.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then the telephone calls him again.</p>
+
+<p>"'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&mdash;faster yet. &#8230; 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. Goodbye.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 himself knows better than to try to catch
+an up-to-date agriculturalist 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 casualities.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"I picks up one sheet and sees that it's headed: 'Special
+Advance Proofs. In July, 1909, the <i>Century</i> will say'&mdash;and
+so forth.</p>
+
+<p>"The farmer rings up somebody&mdash;his manager, I reckon&mdash;and
+tells him to let that herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and
+to sow the 900-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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Consolidated Gas up two points,' says he. 'Oh, very well.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ever monkey with copper?' I asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Stand back!' says he, raising his hand, 'or I'll call the dog. I
+told you not to waste your time.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't understand it,' says I, humming a sad and foolish
+little song to cover my humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 outwardly developed that they would
+show on a white handkerchief if you rubbed 'em with it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll try,' said Andy. 'There are certain Laws of Nature that
+Free Rural Delivery can't overcome.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Great Barnums?' says I. 'You're a ringer for a circus
+thimblerig man.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I
+come back. I won't be long.'</p>
+
+<p>"Two hours afterwards Andy steps into the room and lays a
+wad of money on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' said 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Step up lively, gentlemen,' 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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."</p>
+
+<p>"'After that,' goes on Andy, 'there is nothing new to relate.
+He only had $860 cash in the house. When I left he followed
+me to the gate. There was tears in his eyes when he shook
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'"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 agriculturalist. God bless you."'"</p>
+
+<p>Here Jeff Peters ceased, and I inferred that his story was done.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think"&mdash;I began.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="4"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>THE CHAIR OF PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"I see that the cause of Education has received the princely gift
+of more than fifty millions of dollars," said I.</p>
+
+<p>I was gleaning the stray items from the evening papers while
+Jeff Peters packed his briar pipe with plug cut.</p>
+
+<p>"Which same," said Jeff, "calls for a new deck, and a
+recitation by the entire class in philanthromathematics."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that an allusion?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;a thousand dollars in a sack. We
+loaded it in our wagon and drove east a hundred miles before
+we recovered our presence of intellect. Twenty-five thousand
+dollars doesn'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.</p>
+
+<p>"The third day out 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 Floresville, and
+Nature had not contaminated it with many railroads, fleas or
+Eastern tourists.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 you'll
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?</p>
+
+<p>"'Aha!' says B, 'I'll 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."'</p>
+
+<p>"So he puts up eighty million dollars' worth of libraries; and
+the boys with the dinner pail that builds 'em gets the benefit.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where's the books?' asks the reading public.</p>
+
+<p>"'I dinna ken,' says B. 'I offered ye libraries; and there they
+are. I suppose if I'd given ye preferred steel trust stock instead
+ye'd have wanted the water in it set out in cut glass decanters.
+Hoot, for ye!'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Andy,' says I, 'we're wealthy&mdash;not beyond the dreams of
+average; but in our humble way we are comparatively as rich
+as Greasers. I feel as if I'd like to do something for as well as
+to humanity.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 from selling self-igniting celluloid collars to flooding
+Georgia with Hoke Smith presidential 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'What'll we do?' says Andy. 'Give free grub to the poor or
+send a couple of thousand to George Cortelyou?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 phonograph
+and pineapple sherbet.</p>
+
+<p>"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 car load of desks,
+footballs, arithmetics, penholders, dictionaries, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"While the weekly papers was having chalk-plate cuts of me
+and Andy we wired an employment agency in Chicago to
+express us f.o.b., six professors immediately&mdash;one English
+literature, one up-to-date dead languages, one chemistry, one
+political economy&mdash;democrat preferred&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, we finally got in shape. Over the front door was
+carved the words: 'The World's University; Peters &amp; Tucker,
+Patrons and Proprietors. And when September the first got a
+cross-mark on the calendar, the come-ons begun to roll in.
+First the faculty got off the tri-weekly express 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"They marched up and down the streets waving flags with the
+World's University colors&mdash;ultra-marine and blue&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 pictures with Abe Lincoln on one side and Marshall P.
+Wilder on the other.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Andy,' says I to him one day, 'there's something we
+overlooked. The boys ought to have dromedaries.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What's that?' Andy asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, something to sleep in, of course,' says I. 'All colleges
+have 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, you mean pajamas,' says Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not,' says I. '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.</p>
+
+<p>"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:<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table class="med"><tr><td>
+<p class="noindent">"'Raw, raw, raw,<br />
+  <span class="ind2">Done, done, done,</span><br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Peters, Tucker,<br />
+  <span class="ind2">Lots of fun,</span><br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bow-wow-wow,<br />
+  <span class="ind2">Haw-hee-haw,</span><br />
+  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;World University,<br />
+  <span class="ind2">Hip, hurrah!'</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"But one day about the last of October Andy comes 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No less,' says Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Then, to Helvetia with philanthropy,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"The next week I am looking over the payroll of our faculty
+when I run across a new name&mdash;Professor James Darnley
+McCorkle, chair of mathematics; salary $100 per week. I yells
+so loud that Andy runs in quick.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wired to Frisco for him a week ago,' says Andy. 'In
+ordering the faculty we seemed to have overlooked the chair of
+mathematics.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, dang it, Andy,' says I, 'these free-school-hunting,
+gander-headed, silk-socked little sons of sap-suckers have got
+more money than you and me ever had. Look at the rolls
+they're pulling out of their pistol pockets?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"There sat Andy and the faro dealer at a table dividing a
+two-foot high stack of currency in thousand-dollar packages.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 business way is an art
+that blesses him who gives as well as him who receives?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Great!' says I, feeling fine. 'I'll admit you are the doctor this
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We'll be leaving on the morning train,' says Andy. 'You'd
+better get your collars and cuffs and press clippings together.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Great!' says I. 'I'll be ready. But, Andy,' says I, 'I wish I
+could have met that Professor James Darnley McCorkle before
+we went. I had a curiosity to know that man.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That'll be easy,' says Andy, turning around to the faro
+dealer.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jim,' says Andy, 'shake hands with Mr. Peters.'"</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="5"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>THE HAND THAT RILES THE WORLD</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?&mdash;men make the best cooks, milliners,
+nurses, housekeepers, stenographers, clerks, hairdressers and
+launderers. About the only job left that a woman can beat a
+man in is female impersonator in vaudeville."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;er&mdash;business."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, wouldn't you," said Jeff, with an emphatic
+nod&mdash;"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
+the most. I tried 'em once.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Humble, an old friend of mine in the Territories,
+conceived the illusion that he wanted to be appointed United
+States Marshall. 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 annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me
+about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as
+Marshall might help along the firm of Peters &amp; Tucker.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL7"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p59.jpg">
+<img src="images/p59_t.jpg"
+alt="Selling walking canes." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"Selling walking canes."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'Jeff,' says Bill to me, 'you are a man of learning and
+education, besides having knowledge and information
+concerning not only rudiments but facts and attainments.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why&mdash;er&mdash;, playing the po&mdash;I mean, of course, the poets and
+the great writers have got the call, of course,' says Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"'Exactly,' says I. 'Then why do the master minds of finance
+and philanthropy,' 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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 impunity in boot-legging whiskey for twelve
+months. Are you patriotic to the West enough to help me put
+this thing through the Whitewashed Wigwam of the Great
+Father of the most eastern flag station of the Pennsylvania
+Railroad?' says Bill.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL8"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p61.jpg">
+<img src="images/p61_t.jpg"
+alt="I'm a plain citizen and I need the job." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"I'm a plain citizen and I need the
+job."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"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 commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer,
+and strikes out for Washington.</p>
+
+<p>"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 malpractice like this it seems to me that the
+straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,'
+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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"The next morning at 10 o'clock me and Andy called at her
+hotel, and was shown up to her reception room.</p>
+
+<p>"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 magazine look like a cook on a
+Monongahela coal barge.</p>
+
+<p>"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles,
+and diamond rings and ear bobs. Her arms was bare; and she
+was using a desk telephone with one hand, and drinking tea
+with the other.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, boys,' says she after a bit, 'what is it?'</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL9"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p65.jpg">
+<img src="images/p65_t.jpg"
+alt="'Well boys, what is it?'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'Well boys, what is it?'"</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"I told her in as few words as possible what we wanted for
+Bill, and the price we could pay.</p>
+
+<p>"'Those western appointments,' says she, 'are easy. Le'me
+see, now,' says she, 'who could put that through for us. No
+use fooling with the Territorial 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 my
+private menu card.' She takes some papers out of a
+pigeon-hole with the letter 'S' over it.</p>
+
+<p>"'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, Tolstoi, poker and stewed
+terrapin; sentimental at third bottle of wine." Yes,' she goes
+on, 'I am sure I can have your friend, Mr. Bummer, appointed
+Minister to Brazil.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Humble,' says I. 'And United States Marshal was the berth.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes,' says Mrs. Avery. 'I have so many deals of this
+sort I sometimes 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"So me and Andy goes back to our hotel and waits. Andy
+walks up and down and chews the left end of his mustache.</p>
+
+<p>"'A woman of high intellect and perfect beauty is a rare thing,
+Jeff,' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'As rare,' says I, 'as an omelet made from the eggs of the
+fabulous bird known as the epidermis,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'A woman like that,' says Andy, 'ought to lead a man to the
+highest positions of opulence and fame.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 Swinburne 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 overshoes and
+three months supply of bird seed into the canary's cage.
+"Sioux Falls?" he asks with a kind of hopeful light 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."</p>
+
+<p>"'Then this lady,' I says to Andy, 'moves against the
+authorities at Washington with her baggage and munitions,
+consisting of five dozen indiscriminating letters written to her
+by a member of the Cabinet when she was 15; a letter of
+introduction from King Leopold to the Smithsonian Institution,
+and a pink silk costume with canary colored spats.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well and then what?' I goes. 'She has the letters printed in
+the evening papers that match her costume, she lectures at an
+informal tea given in the palm room of the B. &amp; O. Depot and
+then calls on the President. The ninth Assistant Secretary of
+Commerce and Labor, the first aide-de-camp of the Blue
+Room and an unidentified colored man are waiting there to
+grasp her by the hands&mdash;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 postcards to the
+Chinese Minister asking him to get Arthur a job in a tea store.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then,' says Andy, 'you don't think Mrs. Avery will land the
+Marshalship for Bill?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'You 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"We started back for the Territory the same day. We wired
+Bill: 'Job landed; get the tall glasses ready,' and we felt pretty
+good.</p>
+
+<p>"Andy joshed me all the way about how little I knew about
+women.</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' says I. 'I'll 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"The paper was for Bill, all right, and a genuine document,
+but it appointed him postmaster of Dade City, Fla.</p>
+
+<p>"Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill's
+appointment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward
+Lake Superior.</p>
+
+<p>"I never saw Bill Humble after that."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="6"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had
+much confidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners
+or coeducators in the most innocent line of graft they are not
+trustworthy."</p>
+
+<p>"They deserve the compliment," said I. "I think they are
+entitled to be called the honest sex."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"When you've got enough advertising capital&mdash;say a roll as big
+as the little end of a wagon tongue&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"We fixed up an advertisement that read about like
+this:<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote class="med">
+<p>"Charming widow, beautiful, home loving, 32 years,
+possessing $3,000 cash and owning 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 judgment. Address, with particulars.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="ind10">Lonely,</span><br />
+<span class="ind10">Care of Peters &amp; Tucker, agents, Cairo,
+Ill.</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"'So far, so pernicious,' says I, when we had finished the
+literary concoction. 'And now,' says I, 'where is the lady.'</p>
+
+<p>"Andy gives me one of his looks of calm irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Now listen,' says I. 'You know my rule, Andy, that in all
+my illegitimate 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 ordinances and train schedules I
+have kept out of all trouble with the police 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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,' he says, 'could you
+hope to find a widow who would waste time on a matrimonial
+scheme that had no matrimony in it?'</p>
+
+<p>"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 dyspepsia 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 sunflowers 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is this an honest deal you are putting on, Mr. Peters,' she
+asks me when I tell her what we want.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'Andy Tucker and me have computed
+the calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and unfair 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Me and Andy,' 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 Millennial Malevolent Matrimonial
+Agency. Does that satisfy you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course,' says I, 'some of the more ardent and impetuous
+suitors who can raise the railroad fare may come to Cairo to
+personally press their suit or whatever fraction 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Great,' says Andy. 'And now that your conscience is
+appeased as to the tangibility and proximity of the bait, and
+leaving mutton aside, suppose we revenoo a noo fish.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"With that one ad Andy and me put in twelve hours a day
+answering letters.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL10"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p77.jpg">
+<img src="images/p77_t.jpg"
+alt="About 100 a day was what came in." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"About 100 a day was what came
+in."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Every applicant got a reply from Peters &amp; Tucker informing
+him that the widow had been deeply impressed by his
+straightforward and interesting letter and requesting them to
+write again; stating more particulars; and enclosing
+photograph if convenient. Peters &amp; Tucker also informed the
+applicant that their fee for handing over the second letter to
+their fair client would be $2, enclosed therewith.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 carfare. After the letters began to get in
+from the r.f.d. districts Andy and me were taking in about
+$200 a day.</p>
+
+<p>"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 eye 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'I see you have quite a large mail to-day,' says the man.</p>
+
+<p>"I reached and got my hat.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come on,' says I. 'We've been expecting you. I'll show you
+the goods. How was Teddy when you left Washington?'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'It seems to be all right,' says the Secret Service.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Thanks,' says he. 'If I wasn't, I might. Good day, Mrs.
+Peters.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 the $2,000.</p>
+
+<p>"When I got there I found her crying like a kid that don't want
+to go to school.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, now,' says I, 'what's it all about? Somebody sassed
+you or you getting homesick?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, Mr. Peters,' says she. 'I'll 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.'</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL11"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p80.jpg">
+<img src="images/p80_t.jpg"
+alt="'Mr. Peters, I'm in love.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'Mr. Peters, I'm in love.'"</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'there's no man more sympathizing
+with a woman's affections than I am. Besides, you was once
+the 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'We could afford to do that, because we have cleaned up over
+$5,000 from these suckers that wanted to marry you. But,'
+says I, 'Andy Tucker is to be consulted.</p>
+
+<p>"'He is a good man, but keen in business. He is my equal
+partner financially. I will talk to Andy,' says I, 'and see what
+can be done.'</p>
+
+<p>"I goes back to our hotel and lays the case before Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 emotions and preferences.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's a sad thing, Andy,' says I, 'to think that we've been the
+cause of the breaking of a woman's heart.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 heart and
+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.'</p>
+
+<p>"I jumps up 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Two days afterward me and Andy packed up to go.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, I guess not,' says Andy. 'I guess we'd better hurry
+and catch that train.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's this?' says I.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL12"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p83.jpg">
+<img src="images/p83_t.jpg"
+alt="'What's this?' says I." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'What's this?' says I."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'It's Mrs. Trotter's two thousand,' says Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"'How do you come to have it?' I asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'She gave it to me,' says Andy. 'I've been calling on her
+three evenings a week for more than a month.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then are you William Wilkinson?' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was,' says Andy."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="7"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>A MIDSUMMER MASQUERADE</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"Satan," said Jeff Peters, "is a hard boss to work for. When
+other people are having their vacation is when he keeps you
+the busiest. As old Dr. Watts or St. Paul or some other
+diagnostician says: 'He always finds somebody for idle hands
+to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy
+Tucker, tried to take a layoff from our professional and
+business duties; but it seems that our work followed us
+wherever we went.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his
+responsibilities and enjoy himself. On the 31st of May he
+wraps mosquito netting and tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his
+niblick, breviary and fishing pole and hikes for Lake Como or
+Atlantic City according to the size of the loudness with which
+he has been called by his congregation. And, sir, for three
+months he don't have to think about business except to hunt
+around in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and Timothy to find
+texts to cover and exculpate such little midsummer penances as
+dropping a couple of looey door on rouge or teaching a
+Presbyterian widow to swim.</p>
+
+<p>"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer
+vacation that wasn't one.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Heigh ho!' says Andy. 'I'm tired. I've got that steam up the
+yacht Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf
+and indict my soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play
+pinochle with Merry del Val or give a knouting to the tenants
+on my Tarrytown estates or do a monologue at a Chautauqua
+picnic in kilts or something summery and outside the line of
+routine and sand-bagging.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the
+profession before you can taste the laurels that crown the
+footprints of the great captains of industry. Now, what I'd
+like, Andy,' says I, 'would be a summer sojourn in a mountain
+village far from scenes of larceny, labor and
+overcapitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or so of
+sinlessness ought to leave us in good shape to begin again to
+take away the white man's burdens in the fall.'</p>
+
+<p>"Andy fell in with the rest cure at once, so we struck the
+general passenger agents of all the railroads for summer resort
+literature, and took a week to study out where we should go. I
+reckon the first passenger agent in the world was that man
+Genesis. But there wasn't much competition in his day, and
+when he said: 'The Lord made the earth in six days, and all
+very good,' he hadn't any idea to what extent the press agents
+of the summer hotels would plagiarize from him later on.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL13"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p88.jpg">
+<img src="images/p88_t.jpg"
+alt="'Dumps the books out of the back window.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"Dumps the books out of the back window."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck
+Inn, and thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our
+footsteps over the rocks and stumps. The Inn set back from the
+road in a big grove of trees, and it looked fine with its broad
+porches and a lot of women in white dresses rocking in the
+shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office and some
+scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the
+mingled air of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he
+corroborates by telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of
+Woodchuck Inn. I introduces Andy, and we talk about a few
+volatile topics, such as will go around at meetings of boards of
+directors and old associates like us three were. Old
+Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of summer house in the
+yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on all
+the chords with his mighty right.</p>
+
+<p>"'Gents,' says he, 'I'm glad to see you. Maybe you can help
+me out of a scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street work, so I
+leased this dogdays emporium so the good things would come
+to me. Two weeks before the season opened I gets a letter
+signed Lieut. Peary and one from the Duke of Marlborough,
+each wanting to engage board for part of the summer.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure
+hustlery it would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose
+names are famous from long association with icebergs and the
+Coburgs. So I prints a lot of handbills announcing that
+Woodchuck Inn would shelter these distinguished boarders
+during the summer, except in places where it leaked, and I
+sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and
+Charlotte and Fish Dam and Bowling Green.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal;
+there's three high school graduates between 37 and 42; there's
+two literary old maids and one that can write; there's a couple
+of society women and a lady from Haw River. Two
+elocutionists are bunking in the corn crib, and I've put cots in
+the hay loft for the cook and the society editress of the
+Chattanooga <i>Opera Glass</i>. You see how names draw, gents.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, 'how is it that you seem to be biting your
+thumbs at good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't through,' says Smoke-'em-out. 'Yesterday was the
+day for the advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down
+to the depot to welcome 'em. Two apparently animate
+substances gets off the train, both carrying bags full of croquet
+mallets and these magic lanterns with pushbuttons.</p>
+
+<p>"I compares these integers with the original signatures to the
+letters&mdash;and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my
+poor eyesight. Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain
+and wild verbena explorer was none other than Levi T. Peevy,
+a soda water clerk from Asheville. And the Duke of
+Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of
+Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I
+kicked 'em both back on the train and watched 'em depart for
+the lowlands, the low.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL14"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p92.jpg">
+<img src="images/p92_t.jpg"
+alt="Instead of the Lieut. and the Duke." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">Instead of the Lieut. and the Duke.</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Friend,' says Andy, touching the old man on the
+&aelig;sophagus, '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.'</p>
+
+<p>"A light breaks out on Smoke-'em-out's face.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL15"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p94.jpg">
+<img src="images/p94_t.jpg"
+alt="'Can ye do it, gents?' he asks." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'Can ye do it, gents?' he asks."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Listen,' says Andy to old Smoke-'em-out. 'Can we do it?
+You behold before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest
+equipped men on earth for inveigling the proletariat, whether
+by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand or swiftness of foot. Dukes
+come and go, explorers go and get lost, but me and Jeff
+Peters,' says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If you say
+so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And
+you'll find,' says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local
+color of the title r&ocirc;les from the aurora borealis to the
+ducal portcullis.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says: 'Ladies, I have the honor
+to introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and
+the famous inventor of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary.'</p>
+
+<p>"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and
+Andy bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to
+register. And then we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the
+landlord took us to the rooms he'd been saving for us and got
+out a demijohn of North Carolina real mountain dew.</p>
+
+<p>"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the
+artistic metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and
+looks down on airships when stimulated.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn
+out, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy
+which I was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't
+tell from her question whether she was referring to Arctic or
+matrimonial expeditions. So I gave an answer that would cover
+both cases.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out&mdash;right smart of a
+freeze out, ma'am.'</p>
+
+<p>"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened
+and I knew which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was
+supposed to be. I wasn't either. Andy was both. And still
+furthermore it seemed that he was trying to be the mouthpiece
+of the whole British nobility and of Arctic exploration from Sir
+John Franklin down. It was the union of corn whiskey and the
+conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D. Howletts admires
+so much.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, 'I am truly glad
+to visit America. I do not consider the magna charta,' says he,
+'or gas balloons or 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,' says Andy,
+'that I go after the North Pole all the Vanderbilts in Greenland
+won't be able to turn me out in the cold&mdash;I mean make it hot
+for me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell us about one of your trips, Lieutenant,' says one of the
+normals.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sure,' says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was
+in the spring of last year that I sailed the Castle of Blenheim
+up to latitude 87 degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record.
+Ladies,' says Andy, 'it was a sad sight to see a Duke allied by
+a civil and liturgical chattel mortgage to one of your first
+families lost in a region of semiannual days.' And then he goes
+on, 'At four bells we sighted Westminster Abbey, but there
+was not a drop to eat. At noon we threw out five sandbags,
+and the ship rose fifteen knots higher. At midnight,' continues
+Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake of ice we ate
+seven hot dogs. All around us was snow and ice. Six times a
+night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar, so
+we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy,
+with a lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears
+sprang down the hatchway, into the cabin. And then&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'What then, Lieutenant?' says a schoolma'am, excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Andy gives a loud sob.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Duchess shook me,' he cries out, and slides out of the
+chair and weeps on the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="8"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>SHEARING THE WOLF</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his
+profession was under discussion.</p>
+
+<p>"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. One word led on to
+another till he said I reminded him of Rockefeller.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't 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 subp&oelig;na server.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 cessation of hostilities, never
+so much as floating the fly leaf of a rubber concession
+prospectus or flashing a Brazilian diamond while we was
+there.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL16"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p101.jpg">
+<img src="images/p101_t.jpg"
+alt="Pitching quoits in the afternoon in the court house
+yard." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"Pitching quoits in the afternoon
+in the court house yard."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"After we talk on all the notorious themes of the day, this
+Murkison&mdash;for such was his entitlements&mdash;takes a letter out of
+his coat pocket in a careful, careless way and hands it to us to
+read.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, what do you think of that?' says he, laughing&mdash;'a letter
+like that to ME!'</p>
+
+<p>"Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to
+read it 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Think of 'em sending a letter like that to ME!' says
+Murkison again.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL17"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p103.jpg">
+<img src="images/p103_t.jpg"
+alt="'Think of 'em sending a letter like that to ME!'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'Think of 'em sending a letter like
+that to ME!'"</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'Lot's of good men get 'em,' 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But think of 'em writing to ME!' says Murkison.</p>
+
+<p>"A few days later he drops around again.</p>
+
+<p>"'Boys,' says he, 'I know you are all 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 him how the water is, and he knows it's me and I know
+it's him.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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
+waiting. They show you brand new real money and sell you all
+you want at five for 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.'</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL18"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p105.jpg">
+<img src="images/p105_t.jpg"
+alt="'Of course, it's brown paper.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'Of course, it's brown paper.'"</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've always&mdash;I see by the papers that it always is,' says
+Andy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Boys,' says Murkison, 'I've 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 $1, 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 1 shot on J. Smith. I guess the water'll be
+fine enough.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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. 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?'</p>
+
+<p>"I got up and shook Andy Tucker's hand hard and long.</p>
+
+<p>"'Andy,' says I, 'I 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Andy agreed with me; and I was glad to see that he was in
+earnest about breaking up this green goods scheme.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 his business by his own efforts and brains and risk be
+robbed by an unscrupulous trickster who is a menace to the
+public good.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Right, Jeff,' says Andy. 'We'll stick right along with
+Murkison if he insists on going and block this funny business.
+I'd hate to see any money dropped in it as bad as you would.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we went to see Murkison.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 of 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 1 shot. Yes, I'd really take it as a pastime
+and regalement if you boys would go along too.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"On the way Murkison amuses himself with premonitions and
+advance pleasant recollections.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes Murkison was serious and tried to talk himself out
+of his cogitations, whatever they was.</p>
+
+<p>"'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. I'll show 'em whether the water's fine. Five dollars
+for one&mdash;that's what J. Smith offers, and he'll have to keep his
+contract if he does business with Bill Murkison.'</p>
+
+<p>"We got into Chicago about 7 <span class="smallcaps">p.m.</span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, boys,' says Murkison, 'let's get our gumption together
+and inoculate 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'"Bring 'em along," he'll say, of course, "if they care to
+invest." Now, how does that scheme strike you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'What do you say, Jeff?' says Andy, looking at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, I'll tell you what I say,' says I. '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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 of
+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.'</p>
+
+<p>"I put the two thousand, which was all in $20 bills, in my
+inside pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 handbill you all over
+Grassdale. I guess your high position there is worth more than
+$2,000 to you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then me and Andy left.</p>
+
+<p>"On the train Andy was a long time silent. Then he says: 'Jeff,
+do you mind my asking you a question?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Two,' says I, 'or forty.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Was that the idea you had,' says he, 'when we started out
+with Murkison?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, certainly,' says I. 'What else could it have been?
+Wasn't it yours, too?'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jeff,' says he, 'some time when you have the leisure I wish
+you'd draw off a diagram and foot-notes of that conscience of
+yours. I'd like to have it to refer to occasionally.'"</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="9"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"I hope some day 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 managed 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 railroad 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 dynamiting a Texas lake for bass. All you have to
+do anywhere between the North 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 without firing
+a shot.</p>
+
+<p>"One day in the papier m&acirc;ch&eacute; 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, traveling 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.</p>
+
+<p>"This New Yorker had made his money keeping a cigar store
+in Beekman street, and he hadn't been above Fourteenth street
+in ten years. Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time had
+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&mdash;I'd bet the man hadn't been
+out of sight of a skyscraper in twenty-five years.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 beer.'</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL19"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p115.jpg">
+<img src="images/p115_t.jpg"
+alt="'I want you to take care of my money for me.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'I want you to take care of my money
+for me.'"</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'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 farm-hand from the Kaw River bottoms
+strolls in here and sells you a copper mine.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I don't know,' says Whiskers. 'I 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 comes
+in.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Keep that little roll for me, Mr. Peters,' says he, 'and
+oblige. I'll ask you fer 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 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&mdash;enough to start
+the game with, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"The first round that was dealt, this boulevardier slaps down
+his hand, claims low and jack and big casino and rakes in the
+pot.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, gentlemen,' says the cigar man, 'I don't blame you for
+not wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine points of the game,
+I guess, it's been so long since I indulged. Now, how long are
+you gentlemen going to be in the city?'</p>
+
+<p>"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 cousin, he
+says, is in the artificial limb and lead casket business, and
+hasn't crossed the bridge in eight years. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll use what I've 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"After Whiskers had gone Andy looked at me curious and
+doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"I put my feet up on the table and my hands in my pockets,
+which is an attitude unfavorable to frivolous thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"'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. We've 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 Goldfields. But there's
+little sport in New York city for rod, reel or gun. They hunt
+here with either one of two things&mdash;a slungshot or a letter of
+introduction. 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&mdash;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 out 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, this cigar man,' 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 skyscraper. 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
+back-water if you don't get out of the way.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 of 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&mdash;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,' says I, 'and with blind and beautiful idiocy laid
+the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when
+he wants it.'</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL20"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p122.jpg">
+<img src="images/p122_t.jpg"
+alt="'We can't take it, Andy.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"'We can't take it, Andy.'"</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"'Your arguments,' says Andy, 'are past criticism or
+comprehension. No, we can't walk off with the money&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, about 5 the next afternoon in trips the cigar man,
+with his eyes half open.</p>
+
+<p>"'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, 'I'll 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, I'll take that five thousand. I met a man last night
+that's got a sure winner at the racetrack to-morrow. Excuse me
+for being so impolite as to go to sleep, Mr. Peters.'</p>
+
+<p>"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes
+himself 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.</p>
+
+<p>"At half-past 5 Andy comes in and sees the sleeping form.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 that.'</p>
+
+<p>"I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter
+issued by the State of New Jersey to 'The Peters &amp; Tucker
+Consolidated and Amalgamated Aerial Franchise Development
+Company, Limited.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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,' says Andy, 'expected to
+reach a par value of $1. I had one blank certificate of stock
+printed.'</p>
+
+<p>"Andy takes out the blank and begins to fill it in with a
+fountain pen.</p>
+
+<p>"'The whole bunch,' says he, 'goes to our friend in dreamland
+for $5,000. Did you learn his name?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Make it out to bearer,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"We put the certificate of stock in the cigar man's hand and
+went out to pack our suit cases.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL21"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p124.jpg">
+<img src="images/p124_t.jpg"
+alt="'We put the certificate of stock in the cigarman's hand.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"We put the certificate of stock
+in the cigarman's hand."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"On the ferryboat Andy says to me: 'Is your conscience easy
+about taking the money now, Jeff?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why shouldn't it be?' says I. 'Are we any better than any
+other Holding Corporation?'"</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="10"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>CONSCIENCE IN ART</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"I never could hold my partner, Andy Tucker, down to
+legitimate ethics of pure swindling," said Jeff Peters to me one
+day.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Myself, I never believed in taking any man's dollars unless I
+gave him something for it&mdash;something in the way of rolled gold
+jewelry, garden seeds, lumbago lotion, stock 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 financiering.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jeff,' says he, 'I've been thinking that we ought to drop
+these rutabaga fanciers and give our attention to something
+more nourishing and prolific. 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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'In New York?' I asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'A Pittsburg millionaire in New York is like a fly in a cup of
+hot coffee&mdash;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 $15,000,000 once. Here's the
+way he set it down:<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table class="med">
+<tr>
+  <td>R. R. fare to and from</td>
+  <td align="right">$&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 21 00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>Cab fare to and from hotel&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+  <td align="right">2 00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>Hotel bill @ $5 per day</td>
+  <td align="right">50 00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>Tips</td>
+  <td align="right">5,750 00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td align="right">________</td>
+</tr>
+  <tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Total</td>
+  <td align="right">$5,823 00<br />&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 confidence that his immoral
+nature would rise to any occasion that presented itself.</p>
+
+<p>"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 transfer 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Andy,' says I, as we strayed through the smoke along the
+cinderpath they call Smithfield street, 'had you figured out
+how we are going to get acquainted with these coke kings and
+pig iron squeezers? Not that I would decry my own worth or
+system of 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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 impoliteness 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 consumers. 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well Andy and me drifted about town three or four days
+getting our bearings. We got to knowing several millionaires
+by sight.</p>
+
+<p>"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 glassblower before he
+made his money.</p>
+
+<p>"One evening Andy failed to come to the hotel for dinner.
+About 11 o'clock he came into my room.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 in education&mdash;art and literature
+and haberdashery and such things.</p>
+
+<p>"'When I saw him he'd just won a bet of $10,000 with a Steel
+Corporation 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 a sparkling Moselle and clam
+chowder and apple fritters.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' says I. 'Preliminary canter satisfactory. But, kay
+vooly, voo? What good is the art junk to us? And the oil?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'And then he showed me a little carving,' went on Andy,
+'that anybody 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 a solid piece of ivory.</p>
+
+<p>"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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Be patient,' says Andy, kindly. 'Maybe we will see a rift in
+the smoke ere long.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 $35. I finally got it for $25.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why not, indeed?' says I. 'And how shall we go about
+compelling him to make a voluntary purchase of it?'</p>
+
+<p>"Andy had his plan all ready, and I'll tell you how we carried
+it out.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, Profess!' he shouts. 'How's your conduct?'</p>
+
+<p>"I rumpled my hair some more and gave him a blue glass
+stare.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sir,' says I, 'are you Cornelius T. Scudder? Of Pittsburg,
+Pennsylvania?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I am,' says he. 'Come out and have a drink.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've 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&mdash;on a matter of art.</p>
+
+<p>"'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&mdash;in an obscure
+museum in Vienna. I wish to purchase yours. Name your
+price.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"I shows it to Scudder. He examines it careful all over.</p>
+
+<p>"'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. 'I won't sell,
+but I'll buy. Give you $2,500 for yours.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Scudder sends a check down and the hotel cashes it. He goes
+off with his piece of antiquity and I hurry back to Andy's
+hotel, according to arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>"Andy is walking up and down the room looking at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twenty-five hundred,' says I. 'Cash.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We've got just eleven minutes,' says Andy, 'to catch the B.
+&amp; O. westbound. Grab your baggage.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then,' says I, 'why was that story about finding another one
+in the pawn&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' says Andy, 'out of respect for that conscience of yours.
+Come on.'"</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="11"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>THE MAN HIGHER UP</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>Across our two dishes of spaghetti, in a corner of
+Provenzano's restaurant, Jeff Peters was explaining to me the
+three kinds of graft.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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,
+uncapitalized, unlimited asylum for the reception of the
+restless and unwise dollars of his fellow men.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"There are two kinds of graft," said Jeff, "that ought to be
+wiped out by law. I mean Wall Street speculation, and
+burglary."</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly everybody will agree with you as to one of them,"
+said I, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, burglary ought to be wiped out, too," said Jeff; and I
+wondered whether the laugh had been redundant.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>sine qua grata</i> with a
+member of the housebreakers' union and one of the John D.
+Napoleons of finance at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"As I said, three months ago I got into bad company. There
+are two times in a man's life when he does this&mdash;when he's
+dead broke, and when he's rich.</p>
+
+<p>"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 disfigured Peavine the spring of the year
+before. I had sold $600 worth of young fruit trees
+there&mdash;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 drugstore before I realized I had committed ambush
+upon myself and my white horse Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"When I regained intellectualness I found myself walking into
+an unidentified town on the A., T. &amp; S. F. railroad. The
+Peaviners hadn't left anything in my pockets except a plug of
+chewing&mdash;they wasn't after my life&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"And then along comes a fast freight which slows up a little at
+the town; and off of 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 interjections. 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
+Ph&oelig;be Snow's job look like a chimney-sweep's.</p>
+
+<p>"'Fall off?' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nunk,' says he. 'Got off. Arrived at my destination. What
+town is this?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Hard,' says he, twisting one of his arms around. 'I believe
+that shoulder&mdash;no, it's all right.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Brother,' says he, 'greetings. Didn't I see you in Southern
+Missouri last summer selling colored sand at half-a-dollar a
+teaspoonful to put into lamps to keep the oil from exploding?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oil,' says I, 'never explodes. It's the gas that forms that
+explodes.' But I shakes hands with him, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>"'My name's Bill Bassett,' says he to me, 'and if you'll call it
+professional 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 sometimes 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 a swag in it
+and a pretty parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver
+melted down and sold, and me spilling 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Bill Bassett, when we had exchanged memories
+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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 until some of those 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Very well,' says Bassett, 'we'll do the best we can. Maybe
+after dark I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady, and open the
+Farmers and Drovers Marine Bank with it.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 railroads bonds in it. He passes by us and keeps on
+down the track, not appearing to notice the town.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come on,' says Bill Bassett to me, starting after him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where?' I asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'What does this mean, sir?' says the man.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Bassett felt in all of them, and looked disgusted.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 corruption. He
+always gives something for the money he gets. I'm glad to
+meet you, Mr. Ricks&mdash;you and Mr. Peters. This is the first
+time I ever attended a full gathering of the National Synod of
+Sharks&mdash;housebreaking, swindling, and financiering all
+represented. Please examine Mr. Rick's credentials, Mr.
+Peters.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off
+all that portion of the State 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 degrees 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally, the man goes back to Chicago and makes it as hot
+for Alfred 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 come 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 westward
+ho! with only feetwear and a dozen 15-and-a-half 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 spareribs and pies.</p>
+
+<p>"'Panhandled 'em at a farmhouse on Washita Avenue,' says
+he. 'Eat, drink and be leary.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 than I am. Now, what could either
+of you have done in the present emergency to set us on our
+feet again? Could you do it, Ricksy?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I 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&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'I 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 contracts. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 left-over victuals.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That was only getting the pumpkin ready,' says Bassett,
+braggy and cheerful. 'The coach and six'll 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Son,' says I, 'I'm fifteen years older than you are, and
+young enough 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 wagon. 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&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Where's your two dollars?' snickered Bill Bassett into my
+discourse. There was no use arguing with that burglar.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"This Alfred E. Ricks pulls off his shoes and his coat, lays a
+silk handkerchief over his hat, and lays down on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"'I think I will endeavor to secure a little slumber,' he
+squeaks. 'The day has been fatiguing. Good-night, my dear
+Mr. Peters.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My regards to Morpheus,' says I. 'I think I'll sit up a
+while.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 out five packages of one thousand
+dollars each on the floor, and begins to cackle over the
+nest-egg like a hen.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll 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 getting some better. I had a talk
+on these liliputian 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 morning with $18,000&mdash;all
+silver&mdash;that's the reason I didn't bring more. There you are,
+trade and capital. Now, will you be bad?'</p>
+
+<p>"'My young friend,' says Alfred E. Ricks, holding up his
+hands, 'have you robbed this bank? Dear me, dear me!'</p>
+
+<p>"'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&mdash;"right to 45; left twice
+to 80; right once to 60; left to 15"&mdash;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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Basset unpins a package of the currency and throws five
+twenties to Ricks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Trade, how much?' he says to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Put 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, I 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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 a kind of
+Industrial Christian Science. She pays 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Alfred E. Ricks all but licks the dust off of Bill Bassett's
+shoes.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 contaminating 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"I told Bill Bassett once more to put his money in his pocket. I
+never had the respect for burglary that some people have. I
+always gave something for the money I took, even if it was
+only some little trifle for a souvenir to remind 'em not to get
+caught again.</p>
+
+<p>"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 disgrace to 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 turtle on its back. He
+couldn't have worked a scheme to beat a little girl out of a
+penny slate-pencil.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Bassett agreed to that, and we hiked westward as soon as
+we could catch a safe train.</p>
+
+<p>"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 would stake me to web
+money if I could show him a fly buzzing 'round 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I had an elegant little sure thing in the way of a commercial
+slungshot 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought you might want to turn your money over,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'I do,' says he, 'frequently. I can't sleep on one side all
+night. I'll tell you, Brother Peters,' says he, 'I'm 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 bazar.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then,' says I, 'Mr. Bassett, you don't care to talk over my
+little business proposition?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"So, Bassett rents a room over a saloon and looks around for
+some furniture 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Brother Peters,' says he, 'I have no business being in
+business. I was preordained to labor. When a No. 1 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. 'Peace go with you.' And I never
+afterward sees Bill Bassett again."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;that is a considerable
+working capital if you should choose some day to settle down
+to some sort of regular business."</p>
+
+<p>"Me?" said Jeff, virtuously. "You can bet I've taken care of
+that five thousand."</p>
+
+<p>He tapped his coat over the region of his chest exultantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Gold mining stock," he explained, "every cent of it. Shares
+par value one dollar. Bound to go up 500 per cent. within a
+year. Non-assessable. The Blue Gopher mine. Just discovered
+a month ago. Better get in yourself if you've any spare dollars
+on hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," said I, "these mines are not&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>He drew out a long envelope from his pocket and cast it on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"Always carry it with me," said he. "So the burglar can't
+corrupt or the capitalist break in and water it."</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the beautifully engraved certificate of stock.</p>
+
+<p>"In Colorado, I see," said I. "And, by the way, Jeff, what was
+the name of the little man who went to Denver&mdash;the one you
+and Bill met at the station?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alfred E. Ricks," said Jeff, "was the toad's designation."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," said I, "the president of this mining company signs
+himself A. L. Fredericks. I was wondering&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see that stock," said Jeff quickly, almost snatching it
+from me.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="12"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>A TEMPERED WIND</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of
+Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a
+corner when I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a
+third-story window of a business block and holler, "Whoa,
+there! Whoa!" like you would in endeavoring to assuage a
+team of runaway mules.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 half way back to the farm by now."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>I let him shake hands with me.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Buckingham Skinner blushed.</p>
+
+<p>"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 loathsome apparel of
+the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas Stubblefield&mdash;a name
+impossible to improve upon. I repair noisily to the office of
+some loan company conveniently located in the third-floor,
+front. There I lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floor and ask
+to mortgage my farm for $2,000 to pay for my sister's musical
+education in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan
+companies. It's ten to one that when the note falls due the
+foreclosure will be leading the semiquavers by a couple of
+lengths.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but I
+suddenly hear my team running away. I run to the window and
+emit the word&mdash;or exclamation, which-ever it may be&mdash;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 doubletree and two traces. Now
+I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money along.
+Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits
+for the manna to drop.</p>
+
+<p>"'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. We'll be pleased to accommodate you in the
+matter of this loan.'</p>
+
+<p>"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but,
+as I said, only for temporary loose change."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.</p>
+
+<p>"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr.
+Oleum Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss
+Warbler's Bird Call, a small lot of the new queer ones and
+twos, and the Bonanza Budget, consisting of a rolled-gold
+wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian lily bulbs, a
+combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fifty engraved
+visiting cards&mdash;no two names alike&mdash;all for the sum of 38
+cents."</p>
+
+<p>"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing
+well down in Texas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler,
+made of compressed wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of
+'em in towns where they like to burn niggers quick, without
+having to ask somebody for a light. And just when I was doing
+the best they strikes oil down there and puts me out of
+business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tells
+me. 'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum
+before your old flint-and-tinder truck can get him warm
+enough to perfess religion.' And so I gives up the kindler and
+drifts up here to K.C. This little curtain-raiser you seen me
+doing, Mr. Pickens, with the simulated farm and the
+hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all, and I'm ashamed
+you found me working it."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find
+me willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of
+your proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear
+property straw in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the
+small sum of ten dollars. Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me
+feel like the Ophelia of the Great Occidental All-Star
+One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."</p>
+
+<p>This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By
+nature I am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle
+toward the mollifying elements of existence. I am disposed to
+be lenient with the arts and sciences; and I find time to
+instigate a cordiality for the more human works of nature,
+such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and poetry and
+the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the
+prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous
+beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful
+harmony there is between gold and green. And that's why I
+liked this scheme; it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes
+and easy money.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;no peroxide, patchouli, nor peau de soie;
+about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant ways&mdash;the kind of a
+lady for the place.</p>
+
+<p>"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a
+business partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give
+up her place as stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot
+company, and go into something respectable.</p>
+
+<p>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 copy-book 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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that
+she is a peach and of the cling variety. They claim they are
+eloping for to be married on account of cruel parents. They
+ask where they can find a preacher. Farmer says, "B'gum
+there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend Abels, four
+miles over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on her
+apron and rubbers through her specs.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL22"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p167.jpg">
+<img src="images/p167_t.jpg"
+alt="She is a peach and of the cling variety." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">She is a peach and of the cling
+variety.</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs
+Parleyvoo Pickens in a gig, dressed in black, white necktie,
+long face, sniffing his nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise
+resembling the long meter doxology.</p>
+
+<p>"B'jinks!" says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now!"</p>
+
+<p>It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to
+Little Bethel school-house for to preach next Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>The young folks will have it they must be married, for pa is
+pursuing them with the plow mules and the buckboard. So the
+Reverend Green, after hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's
+parlor. And farmer grins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!"
+and farmeress sniffles a bit and pats the bride on the shoulder.
+And Parleyvoo Pickens, the wrong reverend, writes out a
+marriage certificate, and farmer and farmeress sign it as
+witnesses. And the parties of the first, second and third part
+gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an idyllic
+graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on the
+red barns&mdash;it certainly had all other impostures I know about
+beat to a batter.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL23"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p169.jpg">
+<img src="images/p169_t.jpg"
+alt="So the Reverend Green, after hesitations,
+marries 'em in the farmer's parlor." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">So the Reverend Green, after
+hesitations, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor.</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss
+Malloy at about twenty farm-houses. I hated to think how the
+romance was going to fade later on when all them marriage
+certificates turned up in banks where we'd discounted 'em,
+and the farmers had to pay them notes of hand they'd signed,
+running from $300 to $500.</p>
+
+<p>On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss
+Malloy nearly cried with joy. You don't often see a
+tenderhearted girl or one that is bent on doing right.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL24"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p171.jpg">
+<img src="images/p171_t.jpg"
+alt="On the 15th day of May us three
+divided about $6,000." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">On the 15th day of May us three
+divided about $6,000.</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>"Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief,
+"this stake comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's
+ball. It gives me a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of
+the real estate business when you fellows came along. But if
+you hadn't taken me in on this neat little proposition for
+removing the cuticle of the rutabaga propagators I'm afraid I'd
+have got into something worse. I was about to accept a place
+in one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, where they build a
+parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a
+cream-puff for seventy-five cents and calling it a Business
+Man's Lunch.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all
+them queer jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a
+palm reading and clairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the
+Egyptian Sorceress, I shall give everybody a dollar's worth of
+good honest prognostication. 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."</p>
+
+<p>So then we all shook hands, and Miss Malloy left us. Me and
+Buck also rose up and sauntered off a few hundred miles; for
+we didn't care to be around when them marriage certificates
+fell due.</p>
+
+<p>With about $4,000 between us we hit that bumptious little
+town off the New Jersey coast they call New York.</p>
+
+<p>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"&mdash;that's what they
+sing.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Atterbury got to liking me and Buck and he begun to throw on
+the canvas for us some of the schemes that had caused his hair
+to evacuate. He had one scheme for starting a National bank
+on $45 that made the Mississippi Bubble look as solid as a
+glass marble. He talked this to us for three days, and when his
+throat was good and sore we told him about the roll we had.
+Atterbury borrowed a quarter from us and went out and got a
+box of throat lozenges and started all over again. This time he
+talked bigger things, and he got us to see 'em as he did. The
+scheme he laid out looked like a sure winner, and he talked me
+and Buck into putting our capital against his burnished dome
+of thought. It looked all right for a kid-gloved graft. It seemed
+to be just about an inch and a half outside of the reach of the
+police, and as money-making as a mint. It was just what me
+and Buck wanted&mdash;a regular business at a permanent stand,
+with an open air spieling with tonsilitis on the street corners
+every evening.</p>
+
+<p>So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices
+down in the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda
+Gold Bond and Investment Company" in gilt letters on the
+door. And you see in his private room, with the door open, the
+secretary and treasurer, Mr. Buckingham Skinner, costumed
+like the lilies of the conservatory, with his high silk hat close
+to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside of an
+instantaneous reach for his hat.</p>
+
+<p>And you might perceive the president and general manager,
+Mr. R. G. Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in
+the main office room dictating letters to a shorthand countess,
+who has got pomp and a pompadour that is no less than a
+guarantee to investors.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL25"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p176.jpg">
+<img src="images/p176_t.jpg"
+alt="Busy in the main office room dictating
+letters to a shorthand countess." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">Busy in the main office room dictating
+letters to a shorthand countess.</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general
+atmosphere of varnish and culpability.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"No recherch&eacute; rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when
+we was organizing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a
+plain man," says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or
+military 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Dress you up?" says Atterbury; "I should say not! Just as you
+are you're worth more to the business than a whole roomful of
+the things they pin chrysanthemums on. You're to play the
+part of the solid but disheveled capitalist from the Far West.
+You despise the conventions. You've got so many stocks you
+can afford to shake socks. Conservative, homely, rough,
+shrewd, saving&mdash;that's your pose. It's a winner in New York.
+Keep your feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody
+comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a
+drawer of your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged
+as you can."</p>
+
+<p>I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky
+Mountain capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I
+deposited apple peelings to my credit in a drawer when any
+customers came in made Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I
+could hear Atterbury saying to victims, as he smiled at me,
+indulgent and venerating, "That's our vice-president, Colonel
+Pickens &#8230; fortune in Western investments &#8230;
+delightfully plain manners, but &#8230; could sign his check
+for half a million &#8230; simple as a child &#8230;
+wonderful head &#8230; conservative and careful almost to a
+fault."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL26"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p178.jpg">
+<img src="images/p178_t.jpg"
+alt="'That's our vice-president, Colonel Pickens.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"That's our vice-president,
+Colonel Pickens."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>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&mdash;we had to have
+that&mdash;of the shares at 50 cents a hundred&mdash;just what the printer
+charged us&mdash;and the rest went to the public at a dollar each.
+The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten per
+cent. each month, payable on the last day thereof.</p>
+
+<p>When any stockholder had paid in as much as $100, the
+company issued him a Gold Bond and he became a
+bondholder. I asked Atterbury one day what benefits and
+appurtenances these Gold Bonds was to an investor more so
+than the immunities and privileges enjoyed by the common
+sucker who only owned stock. Atterbury picked up one of
+them Gold Bonds, all gilt and lettered up with flourishes and a
+big red seal tied with a blue ribbon in a bowknot, and he
+looked at me like his feelings was hurt.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I have touched you, have I not?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Atterbury attended to the details of the concern. As I
+understand it, they was simple. The investors in stock paid in
+their money, and&mdash;well, I guess that's all they had to do. The
+company received it, and&mdash;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 per cent. of it; it's plain enough
+that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., less
+expenses, as long as the fish bite.</p>
+
+<p>Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck
+winks an eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains.
+Do you call it good brain work when you propose to take in
+money at the door, too? Think again. I hereby nominate
+myself treasurer ad valorem, sine die, 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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington
+hand-press dailies, of course," says I when we was ready to
+make contracts.</p>
+
+<p>"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would
+cause a Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered
+during a hot summer. The game we're after is right here in
+New York and Brooklyn and the Harlem reading-rooms.
+They're the people that the 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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the shares went in small amounts&mdash;$10 and $25 and
+$50, and a good many $2 and $3 lots. And the bald and
+inviolate cranium of President Atterbury shines with
+enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel Tecumseh Pickens, the
+rude but reputable Cr&oelig;sus of the West, consumes so many
+apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany
+garbage chest that he calls his desk.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat
+and flippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking
+fellow, with a bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out.
+We found Atterbury looking like he'd been caught a mile from
+home in a wet shower.</p>
+
+<p>"Know that man?" he asked us.</p>
+
+<p>We said we didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll
+bet enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a
+newspaper reporter."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he want?" asks Buck.</p>
+
+<p>"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of
+buying some stock. He asked me about nine hundred
+questions, and every one of 'em hit some sore place in the
+business. I know he's on a paper. You can't fool me. You see
+a man about half shabby, with an eye like a gimlet, smoking
+cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and knowing more
+than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together&mdash;if that ain't a
+reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind
+detectives and post-office inspectors&mdash;I talk to 'em eight
+minutes and then sell 'em stock&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating
+and stand still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us.
+Reporters always pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell
+you a story you've heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But
+Atterbury was shaky and nervous all day.</p>
+
+<p>The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about
+ten-thirty. On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing
+we see is a column on the front page about our little
+imposition. It was a shame the way that reporter intimated that
+we were no blood relatives of the late George W. Childs. He
+tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a rich, racy kind of a
+guying style that might amuse most anybody except a
+stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily
+clad treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged
+vice-president of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment
+Company to go away real sudden and quick that their days
+might be longer upon the land.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It
+wasn't quite the kind of a gang we supposed had been
+investing. They all looked like poor people; there was plenty
+of old women and lots of young girls that you'd say worked in
+factories and mills. Some was old men that looked like war
+veterans, and some was crippled, and a good many was just
+kids&mdash;bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was
+working-men in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one
+of the gang looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was
+a peanut stand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as
+sick as you please.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL27"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p186.jpg">
+<img src="images/p186_t.jpg"
+alt="But they all had Golconda stock
+and looked as sick as you please." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">But they all had Golconda stock
+and looked as sick as you please.</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when
+he sized up the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking
+woman and says: "Madam, do you own any of this stock?"</p>
+
+<p>"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It
+was all I had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at
+home now and I haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I
+could draw out some. The circulars said you could draw it at
+any time. But they say now I will lose it all."</p>
+
+<p>There was a smart kind of kid in the gang&mdash;I guess he was a
+newsboy. "I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking
+hopeful at Buck's silk hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty
+a mont' on it. Say, a man tells me dey can't do dat and be on
+de square. Is dat straight? Do you guess I can get out my
+twenty-fi'?"</p>
+
+<p>Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was
+plumb distracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be
+docked for the time they lost coming to see about it.</p>
+
+<p>There was one girl&mdash;a pretty one&mdash;in a red shawl, crying in a
+corner like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks
+her about it.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;J&mdash;Jakey. She's got $400 in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai&mdash;"
+she sings out.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL28"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p188.jpg">
+<img src="images/p188_t.jpg"
+alt="'Jakey won't marry me now.
+He'll take Rosa Steinfeld.'" /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">"Jakey won't marry me now. He'll
+take Rosa Steinfeld."</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do
+you mean to carry it? Anything more up your sleeve?"</p>
+
+<p>"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
+coup&eacute; from the Roosevelt. I ought to know that gong.
+Yes, I suppose I've written some interesting stuff at
+times."</p>
+
+<p>"You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news
+in your way."</p>
+
+<p>Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what
+he meant before he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer&mdash;I knew
+what he meant. They don't make them any better than Buck.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten
+minutes." And I starts for the safe deposit vaults.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep
+still, and I'll give you an interview. You see before you two
+grafters from Graftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and
+Pick have sold brass jewelry, hair tonic, song books, marked
+cards, patent medicines, Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture
+polish, and albums in every town from Old Point Comfort to
+the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar whenever we saw one
+that had a surplus look to it. But we never went after the
+simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the
+corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may
+have heard&mdash;'fussily decency averni'&mdash;which means it's an
+easy slide from the street faker's dry goods box to a desk in
+Wall Street. We've took that slide, but we didn't know exactly
+what was at the bottom of it. Now, you ought to be wise, but
+you ain't. You've got New York wiseness, which means that
+you judge a man by the outside of his clothes. That ain't right.
+You ought to look at the lining and seams and the
+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."</p>
+
+<p>And then Buck turns to me and says: "I don't care what
+Atterbury thinks. He only put in brains, and if he gets his
+capital out he's lucky. But what do you say, Pick?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know
+who was buying the stock."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool
+back. Don't shove so. Get in a line&mdash;a <i>line</i>&mdash;not in a pile.
+Lady, will you please stop bleating? Your money's waiting for
+you. Here, sonny, don't climb over that railing; your dimes
+are safe. Don't cry, sis; you ain't out a cent. Get in <i>line</i>, I
+say. Here, Pick, come and straighten 'em out and let 'em
+through and out by the other door."</p>
+
+<p>Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his
+head, and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with
+the boodle before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the
+stockholders strung out and marches 'em, single file, through
+from the main room; and the reporter man passes 'em out of
+the side door into the hall again. As they go by, Buck takes up
+the stock and the Gold Bonds, paying 'em cash, dollar for
+dollar, the same as they paid in. The shareholders of the
+Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can't hardly
+believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck's hands.
+Some of the women keep on crying, for it's a custom of the
+sex to cry when they have sorrow, to weep when they have
+joy, and to shed tears whenever they find themselves without
+either.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;<a name="IL29"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="center">
+<a href="images/p192.jpg">
+<img src="images/p192_t.jpg"
+alt="The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and
+Investment Company can't hardly believe it." /></a><br />
+<span class="caption">The shareholders of the Golconda Gold
+Bond<br />
+and Investment Company can't hardly believe it.</span>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in
+the bosom of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop
+over and flap their dry goods a second, and you hear the
+elastic go "pop" as the currency goes down in the ladies'
+department of the "Old Domestic Lisle-Thread Bank."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act
+the loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and
+wanted to leave the money invested. "Salt away that chicken
+feed in your duds, and skip along," says Buck. "What business
+have you got investing in bonds? The tea-pot or the crack in
+the wall behind the clock for your hoard of pennies."</p>
+
+<p>When the pretty girl in the red shawl cashes in Buck hands her
+an extra twenty.</p>
+
+<p>"A wedding present," says our treasurer, "from the Golconda
+Company. And say&mdash;if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a
+respectful distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld
+lives, you are hereby authorized to knock a couple of inches of
+it off."</p>
+
+<p>When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the
+newspaper reporter and shoves the rest of the money over to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are
+the books, showing every share and bond issued. Here's the
+money to cover, except what we've spent to live on. You'll
+have to act as receiver. I guess you'll do the square thing on
+account of your paper. This is the best way we know how to
+settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-weary vice-president
+are going to follow the example of our revered president, and
+skip. Now, have you got enough news for to-day, or do you
+want to interview us on etiquette and the best way to make
+over an old taffeta skirt?"</p>
+
+<p>"News!" says the newspaper man, taking his pipe out; "do you
+think I could use this? I don't want to lose my job. Suppose I
+go around to the office and tell 'em this happened. What'll the
+managing editor say? He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue
+and tell me to come back when I get cured. I might turn in a
+story about a sea serpent wiggling up Broadway, but I haven't
+got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe like this. A get-rich-quick
+scheme&mdash;excuse me&mdash;gang giving back the boodle! Oh, no. I'm
+not on the comic supplement."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand
+on the door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you
+know 'em. We never allowed to swindle sick old women and
+working girls and take nickels off of kids. In the lines of graft
+we've worked we took money from the people the Lord made
+to be buncoed&mdash;sports and rounders and smart Alecks and
+street crowds, that always have a few dollars to throw away,
+and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters didn't
+come around and play with 'em when they sold their crops.
+We never cared to fish for the kind of suckers that bite here.
+No, sir. We got too much respect for the profession and for
+ourselves. Good-by to you, Mr. Receiver."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the
+Golconda Company went into involuntary liquefaction.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks,
+"that we got Brady to lend us his horse and wagon for a week.
+We'll rustle up the stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right
+along over in Jersey. Bald heads ain't popular over there on
+account of the mosquitoes."</p>
+
+<p>Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for
+labels.</p>
+
+<p>"Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on
+hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Buy some more," says Buck.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I,
+after looking.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>We pasted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and
+Buck says:</p>
+
+<p>"Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street,
+anyhow; ain't it, Pick?"</p>
+
+<p>"You bet," says I.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="13"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>HOSTAGES TO MOMUS</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<h4>I<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+<p>I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>rurales</i> to attend to our case.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rurales</i>? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw
+any mental crayon portraits of the worthy constables with a tin
+star and a gray goatee. The <i>rurales</i>&mdash;well, if we'd mount our
+Supreme Court on broncos, arm 'em with Winchesters, and
+start 'em out after John Doe <i>et al</i>. we'd have about the
+same thing.</p>
+
+<p>When the <i>rurales</i> started for us we started for the States.
+They chased 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.</p>
+
+<p>From there we emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New
+Orleans, 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 named McCarty&mdash;wait a minute;
+Adolph McCarty&mdash;was trying to make the French Quarter pay
+up the back trading-stamps due on the 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 except 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 down-stairs. The landlord was
+shelling peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and
+fever, and Hongkong in complexion though in other respects
+he seemed amenable in the exercise of his sentiments and
+features.</p>
+
+<p>Caligula, who is a spokesman by birth, and a small man,
+though red-haired and impatient of painfulness of any kind,
+speaks up.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, gentlemen," says the landlord, "I 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."</p>
+
+<p>"On top of that," says Caligula, "don't say that we can't have
+anything to eat."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, gentlemen," says the landlord, "and in twenty
+minutes I'll call you to the best breakfast you can get
+anywhere in town."</p>
+
+<p>That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a
+yellowish 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 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hog and hominy," I explains, "is the staple food of this
+section."</p>
+
+<p>"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 cutlets with <i>chili con carne</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Too lavish," says I. "I've traveled, 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 Norfolk 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been infatuated from time to time," I answers, "with
+fancy ramifications 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 streetcars, with a hand-organ playing down below,
+and the boys hollering extras about the latest suicide. For the
+wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that's all, except
+a <i>demi-tasse</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a
+conniseer; and when you go around with the <i>demi-tasse</i> you
+are naturally bound to buy 'em stylish grub."</p>
+
+<p>"It's a great town for epicures," says I. "You'd soon fall into
+their ways if you was there."</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard it was," says Caligula. "But I reckon I wouldn't. I
+can polish my fingernails all they need myself."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>II<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>After breakfast we went out on the front porch, lighted up two
+of the landlord's <i>flor de upas</i> perfectos, and took a look at
+Georgia.</p>
+
+<p>The installment of scenery visible to the eye looked mighty
+poor. As far as we could see was red hills all washed down
+with gullies and scattered over with patches of piny woods.
+Blackberry bushes was all that kept the rail fences from falling
+down. About fifteen miles over to the north was a little range
+of well-timbered mountains.</p>
+
+<p>That town of Mountain Valley wasn't going. About a dozen
+people permeated along the sidewalks; but what you saw
+mostly was rain-barrels and roosters, and boys poking around
+with sticks in piles of ashes made by burning the scenery of
+Uncle Tom shows.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"And is that Alexander, pa?" says Caligula to the landlord;
+"and why is he called great?"</p>
+
+<p>"That, gentlemen," says the landlord, "is no less than Colonel
+Jackson T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise &amp;
+Edenville Tap Railroad, mayor of Mountain Valley, and
+chairman of the Perry County board of immigration and public
+improvements."</p>
+
+<p>"Been away a good many years, hasn't he?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the post-office
+for his mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him
+thus every morning. The colonel is our most prominent
+citizen. Besides the height of the stock of the Sunrise &amp;
+Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns a thousand acres of that land
+across the creek. Mountain Valley delights, sir, to honor a
+citizen of such worth and public spirit."</p>
+
+<p>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
+dish-towels. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it now?" I asks. "Just so it ain't floating mining
+stocks or raising Pennsylvania pinks, we'll talk it over."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Caligula's words in business was always few and bitter.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Illegality," says I, shaking my head.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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 gunboats to the State of Tangiers and makes
+the King of Morocco give up seventy thousand dollars to
+Raisuli."</p>
+
+<p>"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?'"</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas press despatches from Constantinople," says Caligula.
+"You'll see, six months from now. They'll be confirmed by
+the monthly magazines; and then it won't be long till you'll
+notice 'em alongside the 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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 administration just now. But if Harris was a
+Greek, on what system of international protocols did Hay
+interfere?"</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>persona grata</i>. '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 thousand 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 little mountains, and
+stick up his heirs and assigns for ten thousand dollars."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>III<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the
+bunch of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel
+Jackson T. Rockingham. 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 out 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.</p>
+
+<p>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-fifty-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 &amp;
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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 comfortable; 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" says Colonel Rockingham. "Bandits in Perry County,
+Georgia! I shall see that the board of immigration and public
+improvements hears of this!"</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>sine qua non</i>."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I give you my word," says the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," says I; "and now it's eleven o'clock, and me and
+Mr. Polk will proceed to inculcate the occasion with a few
+well-timed trivialities in the way of grub."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," says the colonel; "I believe I could relish a slice
+of bacon and a plate of hominy."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>While the colonel read his paper, me and Caligula took off our
+coats and went in for a little luncheon <i>de luxe</i> 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 <i>en casserole</i> and
+<i>&agrave; la creole</i>, and handle the oil and tobasco as
+gently and nicely as a French <i>chef</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>I never saw a man eat with so much earnestness and
+application&mdash;not hastily, like a grammarian, or one of the
+canal, but slow and appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real
+<i>vive bonjour</i>.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," says he, blowing out the smoke and trying to
+breathe it back again, "when we view the eternal hills and the
+smiling and beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the
+goodness of the Creator who&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to
+attend 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon," says he, after thinking a bit, "to the vice-president
+of our railroad, at the general offices of the Company in
+Edenville."</p>
+
+<p>"How far is it to Edenville from here?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"About ten miles," says he.</p>
+
+<p>Then I dictated these lines, and Colonel Rockingham wrote
+them out:<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote><blockquote class="med">
+
+<p>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 a cross 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.<br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>After the colonel had finished this, he asked permission to take
+on a postscript about how 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>IV<br />&nbsp;</h4>
+
+
+<p>About four o'clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting
+as lookout, calls to me:</p>
+
+<p>"I have to report a white shirt signalling on the starboard bow,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>I went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in
+an alpaca coat and no collar.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," says Colonel Rockingham, "allow me to
+introduce my brother, Captain Duval C. Rockingham,
+vice-president of the Sunrise &amp; Edenville Tap Railroad."</p>
+
+<p>"Otherwise the King of Morocco," says I. "I reckon you don't
+mind my counting the ransom, just as a business formality."</p>
+
+<p>"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 he'll be
+along right soon. What does that lobster salad you mentioned
+taste like, Brother Jackson?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>In half an hour Caligula sings out again:</p>
+
+<p>"Sail ho! Looks like an apron on a broomstick."</p>
+
+<p>I perambulated down the cliff again, and escorted up a man six
+foot three, with a sandy beard and no other dimension 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Patterson G. Coble, our second vice-president,"
+announces the colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad to know you, gentlemen," says this Coble. "I came up
+to disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our
+general passenger agent, is now negotiating a peachcrate 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Another white wings on the rocks!" hollers Caligula. "If I see
+any more I'll fire on 'em and swear they was torpedo-boats!"</p>
+
+<p>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
+Pendergast, the railroad's attorney, is in the process of
+mortgaging Colonel Rockingham's farming lands to make up
+the ransom.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!" howls Caligula.
+"Suppose it's the firing line of the freight conductors and
+brakeman."</p>
+
+<p>"My last trip down," says I, wiping off my face. "If the S.
+&amp; E. T. 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.'"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he
+had raised the ransom.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir," says he, "I succeeded in negotiating a loan on
+thirty thousand dollars' worth of the bonds of our railroad,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"He says," I answered, "that he succeeded in negotiating the
+loan."</p>
+
+<p>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 entr&eacute;es and <i>pi&egrave;ces de
+resistance</i>, and stirred up
+little savory <i>chef de cuisines</i> and organized a mass of grub
+such as has been seldom instigated out of canned and bottled
+goods. The railroad gathered around it, and the wassail and
+diversions was intense.</p>
+
+<p>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 agglomeration of currency about the size of the price of
+a town lot in the suburbs of Rabbitville, Arizona, and makes
+this outcry.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," says he, "the stock of the Sunrise &amp; 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 Pendergast 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."</p>
+
+<p>"A railroad president," said I, looking this Tucker in the eye,
+"and the owner of a thousand acres of land; and yet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"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 gathers 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
+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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pick," interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, "what are
+you going to do with that chicken-feed?"</p>
+
+<p>I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over
+to Colonel Rockingham and slaps him on the back.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>Puck</i>. 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."</p>
+
+<p>What's the use to go into details? One or two will be enough. I
+remember 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 himself never made half the hit with Burdick
+Harris that we did with the Sunrise &amp; Edenville Tap Railroad.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><a name="14"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>THE ETHICS OF PIG</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<p>On an east-bound train I went into the smoker and found
+Jefferson Peters, the only man with a brain west of the
+Wabash River who can use his cerebrum, cerebellum, and
+medulla oblongata at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>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 reckless investor may shy a few
+inconsequential 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.</p>
+
+<p>"In my line of business," said Jeff, "the hardest thing is to find
+an upright, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"So, last summer, I thinks I will go over into this section of
+country where I hear the serpent has not yet entered, and see if
+I can find a partner naturally gifted with a talent for crime, but
+not yet contaminated by success.</p>
+
+<p>"I found a village that seemed to show the right kind of a
+layout. The inhabitants hadn't found 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
+neighborhood, anyway.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 women 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:<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote><blockquote class="med">
+  <p class="noindent">'Ill fares the land, to hastening
+  ills a prey,<br />
+  <span class="ind2">What art can drive its charms
+  away?</span><br />
+  The judge rode slowly down the lane, mother.<br />
+  <span class="ind2">For I'm to be Queen of the
+  May.'</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, no,' says the town constable, 'he can't hardly have
+ever. 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 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Shucks, now,' says I, in the mountain idiom, 'don't tell me
+there's a man in Mount Nebo as bad as that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Worse,' says the storekeeper. 'He steals hogs.'</p>
+
+<p>"I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after
+the constable 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 Pitfall &amp; 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 <i>Eliza</i> from
+sinking into the river.</p>
+
+<p>"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 at the
+Vacation in 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.</p>
+
+<p>"I told him what I wanted, and found him ready to jump at the
+job.</p>
+
+<p>"'Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of
+manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished in the
+way of indirect brigandage or nonactionable thriftiness that
+you could point to, with or without pride, as an evidence of
+your qualifications for the position?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' says he, in his kind of Southern system of
+procrastinated accents, '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 atterwards. Some day,'
+goes on this gentle despoiler of pig-pens, 'I hope to become
+reckernized as the champion shoat-stealer of the world.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's proper to be ambitious,' says I; 'and hog-stealing will do
+very well for Mount Nebo; but in the outside world, Mr.
+Tatum, it would be considered as crude a piece of business as
+a bear raid on Bay State Gas. However, 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
+atmosphere of yours we ought to be able to win out a few
+shares of Soon Parted, preferred, in the money market.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 had idled away two months on the
+Florida coast, and was feeling all to the Ponce de Leon,
+besides having so many new schemes up my sleeve that I had
+to wear kimonos to hold 'em.</p>
+
+<p>"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 direction. But when we got as far as Lexington
+we found Binkley Brothers' circus there, and the blue-grass
+peasantry romping into town and pounding the Belgian blocks
+with their hand-pegged sabots as artless and arbitrary as an
+extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I never pass a circus
+without 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 I knew he
+would, after he was rigged up in the ready-made rutabaga
+regalia. 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"The crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without
+a capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed the game with
+only forty-two dollars 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 honest people
+can get their rest?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'How is this, Rufe?' says I. 'You flimflammed in your part of
+the work to-night and put the game on crutches. And how do
+you explain the pig? It looks like back-sliding to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, 'maybe you've really got kleptopigia. And
+maybe when we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind
+to higher and more remunerative misconduct. Why you should
+want to stain your soul with such a distasteful, feeble-minded,
+perverted, roaring beast as that I can't understand.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Jeff,' 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He was hungry,' says Rufe. 'He'll go to sleep and keep quiet
+now.'</p>
+
+<p>"I always get up before breakfast and read the morning paper
+whenever 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:<br />&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<blockquote><blockquote class="med">
+<div class="center">
+<p class="noindent">FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS
+REWARD</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>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.<br />
+<span class="ind10">Geo. B. Tapley, Business Manager.</span><br />
+<span class="ind15">At the circus grounds.</span><br />&nbsp;</p>
+</blockquote></blockquote>
+
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm going to crate him up,' says Rufe, 'and express him to
+ma in Mount Nebo. He'll be company for her while I am
+away.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He's a mighty fine pig,' says I, scratching him on the back.</p>
+
+<p>"'You called him a lot of names last night,' says Rufe.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 I'll do, Rufe,' I says. 'I'll give you ten dollars for
+that pig.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I reckon I wouldn't sell this shoat,' says he. 'If it was any
+other one I might.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why not this one?' I asked, fearful that he might know
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"'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 fireside 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"Rufe looked at me astonished.</p>
+
+<p>"'The shoat can't be worth anything like that to you,' he says.
+'What do you want him for?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'you
+wouldn't think that I've got an artistic side to my temper. But I
+have. I'm a collector 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 Merino to a Poland
+China. This looks like a blooded pig to me, Rufe,' says I. 'I
+believe it's a genuine Berkshire. That's why I'd like to have
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'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 better 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, listen,' says I, wiping off my forehead. 'It's not so
+much a matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much
+art as it is philanthropy. 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 collection. Not
+intrinsically, but according to the ethics of pigs as friends and
+coadjutors of mankind, I offer you five hundred dollars for the
+animal.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Jeff,' says this pork esthete, 'it ain't money; it's sentiment
+with me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Seven hundred,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, 'and I'll crush the
+sentiment out of my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>"I went under my clothes for my money-belt, and counted him
+out forty twenty-dollar gold certificates.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll just take him into my own room,' says I, 'and lock him
+up till after breakfast.'</p>
+
+<p>"I took the pig by the hind leg. He turned on a squeal like the
+steam calliope at the circus.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me tote him in for you,' says Rufe; and he picks up the
+beast under one arm, holding his snout with the other hand,
+and packs him into my room like a sleeping baby.</p>
+
+<p>"After breakfast Rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery
+ever since I got his trousseau, says he believes he will amble
+down to Misfitzky's 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"'Are you George B. Tapley?' I asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'I swear it,' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I've got it,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'Designate,' says he. 'Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic
+python or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Neither,' says I. 'I've got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack
+in that wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front
+yard this morning. I'll take the five thousand dollars in large
+bills, if it's handy.'</p>
+
+<p>"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 to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hey, Mac,' calls G. B. 'Nothing wrong with the world-wide
+this morning, is there?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Him? No,' says the man. 'He's got an appetite like a chorus
+girl at 1 <span class="smallcaps">a.m.</span>'</p>
+
+<p>"'How'd you get this pipe?' says Tapley to me. 'Eating too
+many pork chops last night?'</p>
+
+<p>"I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.</p>
+
+<p>"'Fake,' 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.'</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to
+the newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I
+got the advertising man to his window.</p>
+
+<p>"'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?'</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"At dinner time I went back to Mrs. Peevy's.</p>
+
+<p>"'Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes
+back?' she asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'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.'</p>
+
+<p>"So there, you see," said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, "how
+hard it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest
+business-partner."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Jeff's look of dignified reproach stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;don't Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and
+pigs&mdash;what's the difference? Why not bristles as well as horns
+and fur?" </p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr />
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@@ -0,0 +1,5532 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry, Illustrated
+by H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Gentle Grafter
+       The Octopus Marooned -- Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet -- Modern Rural Sports -- The Chair of Philanthromathematics -- The Hand That Riles the World -- The Exact Science of Matrimony -- 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
+
+
+Author: O. Henry
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 1, 1999  [eBook #1805]
+[Most recently revised: December 18, 2005]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLE GRAFTER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by John Bickers and Dagny and revised by Joseph E.
+Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 1805-h.htm or 1805-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/1805/1805-h/1805-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/1805/1805-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLE GRAFTER
+
+by
+
+O. HENRY
+
+Illustrated by H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "They began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars."
+(Frontispiece)]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   I. The Octopus Marooned
+  II. Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
+ III. Modern Rural Sports
+  IV. The Chair of Philanthromathematics
+   V. The Hand That Riles the World
+  VI. The Exact Science of Matrimony
+ VII. A Midsummer Masquerade
+VIII. Shearing the Wolf
+  IX. Innocents of Broadway
+   X. Conscience in Art
+  XI. The Man Higher Up
+ XII. A Tempered Wind
+XIII. Hostages to Momus
+ XIV. The Ethics of Pig
+
+
+
+
+
+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 chirping 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."
+
+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 word "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 hands 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
+interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all
+right. The other half interest must have been worth two or three
+thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.
+
+"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes
+against a little 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 between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. 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
+procession 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 third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so
+me and Andy walked out to the edge of 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
+Mexican 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 pin feathers and
+strolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe's place was
+closed and likewise the other little 'dobe life saving station. So,
+naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and
+ports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it find there?
+
+"Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with a
+sixshooter 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: '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
+promised 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 had 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
+beautiful 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
+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
+calculated 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
+dormitory 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
+rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and
+premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the
+house.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem."]
+
+
+"'Jeff,' says he, 'I don't suppose that anywhere in the world you
+could find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treading
+the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker,
+incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in
+the sole apoplectic region. No?'
+
+"'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
+monopolists, 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
+riotousness 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?'
+
+"'I'm the crater of a volcano,' says he. 'I'm 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 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, 'why
+not go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems to me
+there was an old spell-binder named Cantharides that used to go 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. Southworth.'
+
+"'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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "And he leads 'em down the main street of Bird City."]
+
+
+"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
+deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There
+was only a light drizzle falling then.
+
+"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to
+scrape the mud off his boots.
+
+"'Pardner,' 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.'
+
+"'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's wool
+warehouse 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 he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says I, 'for
+trade languishes.'
+
+"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock two
+Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro.
+We put him in 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
+liniments 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 a 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 in the last town, so I only had five
+dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for
+half a 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Life began to look rosy again..."]
+
+
+"Fake? No, sir. There was two dollars' worth of fluid extract of
+cinchona 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
+hypothetical pneumocardiac 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I commenced selling the bitters on Main Street."]
+
+
+"'Constable,' says I, 'it's a fine night.'
+
+"'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.'
+
+"'I'll 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
+landlord 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 doctor to practice in town.'
+
+"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've 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 Vernon--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
+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 in 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 canvass the whole 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.
+
+"'I'm no doctor,' says I. 'Why don't you go and get the doctor?'
+
+"'Boss,' says he. 'Doc Hoskins am done gone twenty miles in de 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, 'I'll 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 Mayor 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, 'I'm awful sick. I'm about to die. Can't you
+do nothing for me?'
+
+"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I'm 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 off assistance.'
+
+"'I'm 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 that 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!'
+
+"'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
+sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness except
+what is produced when we ain't feeling well. Declare yourself in
+arrears. Demonstrate.'
+
+"'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 personal magnetism.'
+
+"'Can you work it, doc?' asks the Mayor.
+
+"'I'm 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 late president of the Vinegar Bitters Company could revisit
+the earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling
+medicine on the street,' 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. 'I'll pay it. I guess my life's worth
+that much.'
+
+"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?'
+
+"'I do feel some little better, doc,' says the Mayor, 'darned if I
+don't. Now state a few lies 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,' says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of the
+perihelion 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 wonders of modern science.'
+
+"'Biddle,' says he, 'When will you give uncle the rest of the
+treatment, Dr. Pooh-pooh?'
+
+"'Waugh-hoo,' says I. 'I'll 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 was 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.'
+
+"'I've 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.
+
+"'You're under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters,' says he, 'for
+practising medicine without authority under the State law.'
+
+"'Who are you?' I asks.
+
+"'I'll tell you who he is,' says Mr. 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?' the mayor
+laughs, 'compound--well, it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess,
+anyway.'
+
+"'A detective,' says I.
+
+"'Correct,' says Biddle. 'I'll 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 window, 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "And I grabs Biddle by the throat."]
+
+
+"'I witness,' says he, 'that they're the same bank 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 rattles 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," said 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 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 pre-digested hoe-cake 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 Kentucky 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. We'll 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 questions. 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 down stairs 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 wide-spread agricultural
+agglomeration 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 horticultural 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 one-sided 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 rebates from the rutabag raisers. What bait are you going
+to use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.
+
+"'Oh,' I says, '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 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's 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 use. I've had to take rolls from 'em that looked like bundles
+of microbe cultures 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.
+
+"'I'd 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
+rollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man 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
+ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my
+handkerchief 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
+starting. I got a $5,000 one last week for $2.10.'
+
+"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 this 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.'
+
+"'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
+Indianapolis, 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. Goodbye.'
+
+"'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 himself knows better than to try to catch an up-to-date
+agriculturalist 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 casualities.
+
+"'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 that herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and to sow the 900-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.
+
+"'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,' says 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 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
+outwardly 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.'
+
+"'I'll 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.'
+
+"'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I come
+back. I won't be long.'
+
+"Two hours afterwards Andy steps into the room and lays a wad of money
+on the table.
+
+"'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' said 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, gentlemen,' 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 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
+agriculturalist. 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 PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS
+
+
+"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 before we recovered our presence of intellect.
+Twenty-five thousand dollars doesn'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 out 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
+Floresville, 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 you'll 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, 'I'll 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.
+
+"'I dinna ken,' says B. 'I offered ye libraries; and there they are. I
+suppose if I'd 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 I'd 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 from
+selling self-igniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke
+Smith presidential 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.'
+
+"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 phonograph 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 car load of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders,
+dictionaries, 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 chalk-plate cuts of me and Andy
+we wired an employment agency in Chicago to express us f.o.b., six
+professors immediately--one English literature, one up-to-date
+dead languages, 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
+Proprietors. And when September the first got a cross-mark on the
+calendar, the come-ons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the
+tri-weekly express 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--ultra-marine 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
+pictures 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 I. '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,
+       Done, done, done,
+     Peters, Tucker,
+       Lots of fun,
+     Bow-wow-wow,
+       Haw-hee-haw,
+     World University,
+       Hip, hurrah!'
+
+
+"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 comes 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, silk-socked little sons of sap-suckers have got more
+money than you and me ever had. Look at the rolls they're pulling out
+of their pistol pockets?'
+
+"'Yes,' 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 business 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.'
+
+"'We'll be leaving on the morning train,' says Andy. 'You'd better get
+your collars and cuffs and press clippings together.'
+
+"'Great!' says I. 'I'll be ready. But, Andy,' says I, 'I wish I could
+have met that Professor James Darnley McCorkle before we 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 best cooks, milliners, nurses, housekeepers, stenographers,
+clerks, hairdressers 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 Jeff, 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 the 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 Marshall.
+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 annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me
+about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshall
+might help along the firm of Peters & Tucker.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Selling walking canes."]
+
+
+"'Jeff,' says Bill to me, 'you are a man of learning and education,
+besides 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 and
+philanthropy,' 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 impunity in boot-legging whiskey for
+twelve months. Are you patriotic to the West enough to help me put this
+thing through the Whitewashed Wigwam of the Great Father of the most
+eastern flag station of the Pennsylvania Railroad?' says Bill.
+
+
+[Illustration: "I'm a plain citizen and I need the job."]
+
+
+"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 commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and
+strikes out for Washington.
+
+"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 malpractice like this it seems to me that the
+straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,' 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
+magazine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.
+
+"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and
+diamond 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?'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Well boys, 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 the
+Territorial 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 my private menu card.' She takes some papers out of a
+pigeon-hole 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, Tolstoi, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third
+bottle of wine." Yes,' she goes on, 'I am sure I can have your friend,
+Mr. Bummer, appointed 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
+sometimes 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 the left end of his mustache.
+
+"'A woman of high intellect and perfect beauty is a 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.
+
+"'A 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 Swinburne 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 overshoes and three months supply of bird seed
+into the canary's cage. "Sioux Falls?" he asks with a kind of hopeful
+light 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
+indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet
+when she 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
+evening 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-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 postcards 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
+Marshalship 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.
+
+"'You 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: 'Job
+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. 'I'll 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, and a genuine document, but it
+appointed him postmaster of Dade City, Fla.
+
+"Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill's
+appointment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward Lake
+Superior.
+
+"I never saw Bill Humble after that."
+
+
+
+
+THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY
+
+
+"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much
+confidence 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 I. "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 owning 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 judgment. Address, with
+   particulars.
+
+   Lonely,
+   Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, Ill.
+
+
+"'So far, so pernicious,' says I, when we had finished the literary
+concoction. '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 rule, Andy, that in all my
+illegitimate 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 ordinances and train schedules I have kept out
+of all trouble with the police 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,' 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
+dyspepsia 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 sunflowers 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,' she asks me
+when I tell her what we want.
+
+"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'Andy Tucker and me have computed the
+calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and unfair 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,' 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 Millennial 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,' says I, 'some of the more ardent and impetuous suitors
+who can raise the railroad fare may come to Cairo to personally press
+their suit or whatever fraction 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,
+suppose 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "About 100 a day was what came in."]
+
+
+"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
+interesting letter and requesting them to write again; stating more
+particulars; and enclosing photograph if convenient. Peters & Tucker
+also informed 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 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 eye 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, Mrs. 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 the
+$2,000.
+
+"When I got 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. 'I'll 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.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Mr. Peters, I'm in love.'"]
+
+
+"'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 the 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
+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
+financially. 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
+emotions 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 heart and 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 up 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 up 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. 'I 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "'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. 'I've been calling on her three
+evenings a week for more than a month.'
+
+"'Then are you William Wilkinson?' says I.
+
+"'I was,' says Andy."
+
+
+
+
+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 somebody for idle hands to do.'
+
+"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker, tried to
+take a layoff from our professional and business duties; but it seems
+that our work followed us wherever we went.
+
+"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his
+responsibilities and enjoy himself. On the 31st of May he wraps
+mosquito netting and tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his niblick,
+breviary and fishing pole and hikes for Lake Como or Atlantic City
+according to the size of the loudness with which he has been called by
+his congregation. And, sir, for three months he don't have to think
+about business except to hunt around in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and
+Timothy to find texts to cover and exculpate such little midsummer
+penances as dropping a couple of looey door on rouge or teaching a
+Presbyterian widow to swim.
+
+"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer vacation
+that wasn't one.
+
+"We was tired of finance and all the branches of unsanctified
+ingenuity. Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever stopped working, began
+to make noises like a tennis cabinet.
+
+"'Heigh ho!' says Andy. 'I'm tired. I've got that steam up the yacht
+Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf and indict my
+soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del
+Val or give a knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do
+a monologue at a Chautauqua picnic in kilts or something summery and
+outside the line of routine and sand-bagging.'
+
+"'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the profession
+before you can taste the laurels that crown the footprints of the
+great captains of industry. Now, what I'd like, Andy,' says I, 'would
+be a summer sojourn in a mountain village far from scenes of larceny,
+labor and overcapitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or so of
+sinlessness ought to leave us in good shape to begin again to take
+away the white man's burdens in the fall.'
+
+"Andy fell in with the rest cure at once, so we struck the general
+passenger agents of all the railroads for summer resort literature,
+and took a week to study out where we should go. I reckon the first
+passenger agent in the world was that man Genesis. But there wasn't
+much competition in his day, and when he said: 'The Lord made the
+earth in six days, and all very good,' he hadn't any idea to what
+extent the press agents of the summer hotels would plagiarize from
+him later on.
+
+"When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United
+States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El Paso, and from Skagway to Key
+West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new
+laid eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open
+plumbing and tennis; and all within two hours' ride.
+
+"So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our
+trunk and takes the 6 o'clock Tortoise Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of
+a dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North
+Carolina.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Dumps the books out of the back window."]
+
+
+"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn, and
+thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the rocks
+and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees,
+and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white
+dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office
+and some scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.
+
+"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down
+the walk to greet us? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the
+best open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the
+Southwest.
+
+"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air
+of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by
+telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I
+introduces Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will
+go around at meetings of boards of directors and old associates like
+us three were. Old Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of summer house
+in the yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on
+all the chords with his mighty right.
+
+"'Gents,' says he, 'I'm glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out
+of a scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street work, so I leased this
+dogdays emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before
+the season opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from
+the Duke of Marlborough, each wanting to engage board for part of the
+summer.
+
+"'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery
+it would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose names are famous
+from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a
+lot of handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these
+distinguished boarders during the summer, except in places where it
+leaked, and I sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and
+Charlotte and Fish Dam and Bowling Green.
+
+"'And now look up there on the porch, gents,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'at
+them disconsolate specimens of their fair sex waiting for the arrival
+of the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to
+cellar with hero worshippers.
+
+"'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there's three
+high school graduates between 37 and 42; there's two literary old
+maids and one that can write; there's a couple of society women and
+a lady from Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corn
+crib, and I've put cots in the hay loft for the cook and the society
+editress of the Chattanooga _Opera Glass_. You see how names draw,
+gents.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'how is it that you seem to be biting your thumbs at
+good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'
+
+"'I ain't through,' says Smoke-'em-out. 'Yesterday was the day for
+the advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down to the depot to
+welcome 'em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train,
+both carrying bags full of croquet mallets and these magic lanterns
+with pushbuttons.
+
+"I compares these integers with the original signatures to the letters
+--and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my poor eyesight.
+Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena
+explorer was none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from
+Asheville. And the Duke of Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of
+Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked
+'em both back on the train and watched 'em depart for the lowlands,
+the low.
+
+
+[Illustration: Instead of the Lieut. and the Duke.]
+
+
+"'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?'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Can ye do it, gents?' he asks."]
+
+
+"I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral
+and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about
+10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband
+sophistries and parables when they came out.
+
+"'Listen,' says Andy to old Smoke-'em-out. 'Can we do it? You behold
+before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest equipped men on earth for
+inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand
+or swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost,
+but me and Jeff Peters,' says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If
+you say so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And
+you'll find,' says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of
+the title roles from the aurora borealis to the ducal portcullis.'
+
+"Old Smoke-'em-out is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn by
+an arm apiece, telling us on the way that the finest fruits of the can
+and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long
+as we would stay.
+
+"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says: 'Ladies, I have the honor to
+introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and the famous
+inventor of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary.'
+
+"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy
+bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to register. And then
+we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the
+rooms he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina
+real mountain dew.
+
+"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic
+metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on
+airships when stimulated.
+
+"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the porch,
+where the ladies are to begin to earn our keep. We sit in two special
+chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their
+rockers close around us.
+
+"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn out,
+sir?'
+
+"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I
+was to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't tell from
+her question whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial
+expeditions. So I gave an answer that would cover both cases.
+
+"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out--right smart of a freeze
+out, ma'am.'
+
+"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew
+which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I
+wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that
+he was trying to be the mouthpiece of the whole British nobility and
+of Arctic exploration from Sir John Franklin down. It was the union
+of corn whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D.
+Howletts admires so much.
+
+"'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, 'I am truly glad to
+visit America. I do not consider the magna charta,' says he, 'or gas
+balloons or 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,' says Andy, 'that I go after the North Pole
+all the Vanderbilts in Greenland won't be able to turn me out in the
+cold--I mean make it hot for me.'
+
+"'Tell us about one of your trips, Lieutenant,' says one of the
+normals.
+
+"'Sure,' says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was in
+the spring of last year that I sailed the Castle of Blenheim up to
+latitude 87 degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record. Ladies,' says
+Andy, 'it was a sad sight to see a Duke allied by a civil and
+liturgical chattel mortgage to one of your first families lost in a
+region of semiannual days.' And then he goes on, 'At four bells we
+sighted Westminster Abbey, but there was not a drop to eat. At noon we
+threw out five sandbags, and the ship rose fifteen knots higher. At
+midnight,' continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake
+of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was snow and ice. Six
+times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar,
+so we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy, with a
+lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down the
+hatchway, into the cabin. And then--'
+
+"'What then, Lieutenant?' says a schoolma'am, excitedly.
+
+"Andy gives a loud sob.
+
+"'The Duchess shook me,' he cries out, and slides out of the chair and
+weeps on the porch.
+
+"Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left
+the next morning. The landlord wouldn't speak to us for two days, but
+when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.
+
+"So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away
+from Crow Knob with $1,100, that we enticed out of old Smoke-'em-out
+playing seven up."
+
+
+
+
+SHEARING THE WOLF
+
+
+Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was
+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.
+One word led on to another till he said I reminded him of Rockefeller.
+
+"'I don't 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
+cessation 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Pitching quoits in the afternoon in the court house
+yard."]
+
+
+"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?' says he, laughing--'a letter like
+that to ME!'
+
+"Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to read it
+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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Think of 'em sending a letter like that to ME!'"]
+
+
+"'Lot's of good men get 'em,' 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 all 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 him 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 waiting. They show
+you brand new real money and sell you all you want at five for 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.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Of course, it's brown paper.'"]
+
+
+"'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, 'I've 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 $1, 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 1 shot on J. Smith. I guess
+the water'll 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.
+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, 'I 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 his 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 insists 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 of 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 1 shot. Yes, I'd
+really take it as a pastime 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. I'll show
+'em whether the water's fine. Five dollars for one--that's what J.
+Smith offers, and he'll 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
+inoculate 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 'em along," he'll 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, I'll tell you what I say,' says I. '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 of 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.
+
+"'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 handbill 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, 'when 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 foot-notes of that conscience of yours. I'd
+like to have it to refer to occasionally.'"
+
+
+
+
+INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY
+
+
+"I hope some day 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 managed 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 railroad
+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
+dynamiting a Texas lake for bass. All you have to do anywhere between
+the North 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 without 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, traveling 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 Beekman
+street, and he hadn't been above Fourteenth street in ten years.
+Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time had 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 beer.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'I want you to take care of my money for me.'"]
+
+
+"'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
+farm-hand from the Kaw River bottoms strolls in here and sells you
+a copper mine.'
+
+"'Oh, I don't know,' says Whiskers. 'I 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 comes in.'
+
+"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.
+I'll ask you fer 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 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, 'I don't blame you for not
+wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine points of the game, I guess,
+it's been so 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 cousin, he says, is in the artificial
+limb and lead casket business, and hasn't crossed the bridge in eight
+years. 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.
+
+"'I'll use what I've 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 up 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.
+We've 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 Goldfields.
+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
+introduction. 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 out 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,' 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 skyscraper. 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
+back-water if you don't get out of the way.
+
+"'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 of 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,' says I, 'and with blind and beautiful idiocy
+laid the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when he
+wants it.'
+
+
+[Illustration: "'We can't take it, Andy.'"]
+
+
+"'Your 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, 'I'll 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, I'll take that
+five thousand. I met a man last night that's got a sure winner at
+the racetrack to-morrow. Excuse me for being so impolite as to go to
+sleep, Mr. Peters.'
+
+"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes
+himself 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 comes 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 that.'
+
+"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
+Amalgamated 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,' says Andy, 'expected to reach a par value of $1. 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.
+
+
+[Illustration: "We put the certificate of stock in the cigarman's
+hand."]
+
+
+"On the ferryboat Andy says to me: 'Is your conscience easy about
+taking 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, stock 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
+financiering.
+
+"'Jeff,' says he, 'I've been thinking that we ought to drop these
+rutabaga fanciers and give our attention to something more nourishing
+and prolific. 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 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 00
+   Cab fare to and from hotel . . . . . .      2 00
+   Hotel bill @ $5 per day  . . . . . . .     50 00
+   Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5,750 00
+                                         ----------
+      Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $5,823 00
+
+
+"'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 confidence 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 transfer 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 cinderpath
+they call Smithfield street, 'had you figured out how we are going to
+get acquainted with these coke kings and pig iron squeezers? Not that
+I would decry my own worth or system of 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 impoliteness 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 consumers. 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 glassblower before he made his money.
+
+"One evening Andy failed to come to the hotel for dinner. About 11
+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 in education--art and literature and haberdashery and such
+things.
+
+"'When I saw him he'd just won a bet of $10,000 with a Steel
+Corporation 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 a 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.'
+
+"'All 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 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 anybody
+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 a 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
+$35. 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.
+
+"'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,
+Pennsylvania?'
+
+"'I am,' says he. 'Come out and have a drink.'
+
+"'I've 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. 'I 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
+his 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
+on.'"
+
+
+
+
+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, uncapitalized, unlimited asylum for the reception of
+the restless and unwise dollars of his fellowmen.
+
+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 graft," 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
+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 drugstore 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 of 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
+interjections. 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.
+
+"'Fall 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
+shoulder--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
+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
+professional 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.'
+
+"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 sometimes 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 a swag in it and a pretty
+parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and
+sold, and me spilling 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 memories 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 until some of those 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 I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady, and open the Farmers and
+Drovers Marine Bank with it.'
+
+"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 railroads 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
+corruption. He always gives something for the money he gets. I'm 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, swindling, and financiering all represented. Please
+examine Mr. Rick's 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
+intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of
+the State 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 degrees 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
+Alfred 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 come 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 westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen
+15-and-a-half 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
+spareribs 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 than I am. Now, what could either of you have done in
+the present emergency to set us on our feet again? Could you do it,
+Ricksy?'
+
+"'I 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--'
+
+"'I 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 contracts. 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 left-over victuals.'
+
+"'That was only getting the pumpkin ready,' says Bassett, braggy
+and cheerful. 'The coach and six'll 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, 'I'm fifteen years older than you are, and young
+enough 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 wagon.
+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
+handkerchief 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 I'll 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
+out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and
+begins to cackle over the nest-egg like a hen.
+
+"'I'll 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
+getting some better. I had a talk on these liliputian 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 morning 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--'
+
+"Basset unpins a package of the currency and throws five twenties to
+Ricks.
+
+"'Trade, how much?' he says to me.
+
+"'Put 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, I 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 a kind of Industrial
+Christian Science. She pays 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 contaminating 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 his money in his pocket. I never
+had the respect for burglary that some people have. I always gave
+something for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle
+for 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
+disgrace to 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 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 would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing
+'round 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
+slungshot 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, 'I'm 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 bazar.'
+
+"'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
+furniture 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.
+
+"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, 'I have no business being in business. I
+was preordained to labor. When a No. 1 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. 'Peace 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 some 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. Non-assessable.
+The Blue Gopher mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better get in
+yourself 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 out 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 sight of
+Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when
+I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of
+a business block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would in
+endeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.
+
+I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman,
+having his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched to
+posts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner,
+and runs to the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at
+the imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitious
+team of chimerical quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to the
+third-story room again, and I see that the lettering on the window is
+"The Farmers' Friend Loan Company."
+
+By and by Straw-top comes down again, and I crossed the street to meet
+him, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir, when I got close I could see where
+he overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans and
+cowhide boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the rye
+straw stuck over his ear looked like it belonged to the property man
+of the Old Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got the
+best of me.
+
+"Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite.
+"I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I couldn't. I guess they're half
+way 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 loathsome apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas
+Stubblefield--a name impossible to improve upon. I repair noisily
+to the office of some loan company conveniently located in the
+third-floor, front. There I lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floor
+and ask to mortgage my farm for $2,000 to pay for my sister's musical
+education in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan companies.
+It's ten to one that when the note falls due the foreclosure will be
+leading the semiquavers by a couple of lengths.
+
+"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but I
+suddenly hear my team running away. I run to the window and emit the
+word--or exclamation, which-ever 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 doubletree and
+two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money
+along. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'
+
+"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits for
+the manna to drop.
+
+"'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobster-colored party in the
+specs and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by accepting this ten-dollar
+bill until to-morrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten.
+We'll be pleased to accommodate you in the matter of this loan.'
+
+"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as I
+said, only for temporary loose change."
+
+"It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for his
+mortification; "in case of an emergency. Of course, it's small
+compared to organizing a trust or bridge whist, but even the Chicago
+University had to be started in a small way."
+
+"What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.
+
+"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. Oleum
+Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss Warbler's Bird Call,
+a small lot of the new queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget,
+consisting of a rolled-gold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian
+lily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fifty
+engraved visiting cards--no two names alike--all for the sum of 38
+cents."
+
+"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down in
+Texas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler, made of compressed
+wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they like
+to burn niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. And
+just when I was doing the best they strikes oil down there and puts me
+out of business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tells
+me. 'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum before
+your old flint-and-tinder truck can get him warm enough to perfess
+religion.' And so I gives up the kindler and drifts up here to K.C.
+This little curtain-raiser you seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with the
+simulated farm and the hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all,
+and I'm ashamed you found me working it."
+
+"No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunk
+on a loan corporation for even so small a sum as ten dollars, when he
+is financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It's
+too much like borrowing money without paying it back."
+
+I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as ever
+stood over the axles and breathed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we
+gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some
+time, and offers to go partners.
+
+"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find
+me willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of your
+proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw
+in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars.
+Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the Great
+Occidental All-Star One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."
+
+This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I
+am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying
+elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and
+sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human
+works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and
+poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the
+prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous
+beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful harmony
+there is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme;
+it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.
+
+We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and
+I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.
+
+"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her
+pompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayon
+portrait canvassers for this."
+
+Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to see
+Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to be
+the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her--no peroxide,
+patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant
+ways--the kind of a lady for the place.
+
+"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.
+
+"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and
+romantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' look
+like second-story work."
+
+We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business
+partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her place
+as stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into
+something respectable.
+
+This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a kind
+of a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copy-book
+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. Any one can see that she is a peach and
+of the cling variety. They claim they are eloping for to be married
+on account of cruel parents. They ask where they can find a preacher.
+Farmer says, "B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend
+Abels, four miles over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on
+her apron and rubbers through her specs.
+
+
+[Illustration: She is a peach and of the cling variety.]
+
+
+Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs Parleyvoo
+Pickens in a gig, dressed in black, white necktie, long face, sniffing
+his nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling the long meter
+doxology.
+
+"B'jinks!" says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now!"
+
+It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to Little
+Bethel 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 hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmer
+grins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a
+bit and pats the bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo Pickens, the
+wrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer and
+farmeress sign it as witnesses. And the parties of the first, second
+and third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an
+idyllic graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on
+the red barns--it certainly had all other impostures I know about beat
+to a batter.
+
+
+[So the Reverend Green, after hesitations, marries 'em in the
+farmer's parlor.]
+
+
+I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Malloy at
+about twenty farm-houses. I hated to think how the romance was going
+to fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned up in
+banks where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notes
+of hand they'd signed, running from $300 to $500.
+
+On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss Malloy
+nearly cried with joy. You don't often see a tenderhearted girl or one
+that is bent on doing right.
+
+
+[Illustration: On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000.]
+
+
+"Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "this
+stake comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's ball. It gives
+me a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estate
+business when you fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in on
+this neat little proposition for removing the cuticle of the rutabaga
+propagators I'm afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was about
+to accept a place in one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, where
+they build a parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a
+cream-puff for seventy-five cents and calling it a Business Man's Lunch.
+
+"Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all them queer
+jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a palm reading and
+clairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the Egyptian Sorceress, I
+shall give everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication.
+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
+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 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
+tonsilitis on the street corners every evening.
+
+So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices down
+in the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda Gold Bond and
+Investment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in his
+private room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr.
+Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, with
+his high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside
+of an instantaneous reach for his hat.
+
+And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G.
+Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main office
+room dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a
+pompadour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.
+
+
+[Illustration: Busy in the main office room dictating letters
+to a shorthand countess.]
+
+
+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
+organizing 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.
+You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative,
+homely, rough, shrewd, saving--that's your pose. It's a winner in New
+York. Keep your feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody
+comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawer
+of your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."
+
+I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain
+capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited apple
+peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made
+Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to
+victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our
+vice-president, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments
+. . . delightfully plain manners, but . . . could sign his check for
+half a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderful head . . .
+conservative and careful almost to a fault."
+
+
+[Illustration: "That's our vice-president, Colonel Pickens."]
+
+
+Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood all
+of it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company was
+a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in
+the profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest--we
+had to have that--of the shares at 50 cents a hundred--just what the
+printer charged us--and the rest went to the public at a dollar each.
+The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten 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 a bowknot, and he looked at me like his
+feelings was hurt.
+
+"My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Think
+of a thousand homes made happy by possessing one of these beautiful
+gems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the household
+where one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the 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 per cent. of it; it's plain enough
+that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., less
+expenses, as long as the fish bite.
+
+Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an
+eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call it
+good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
+Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine
+die, and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and
+Pickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned
+increment as it incremates."
+
+It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture;
+$1,500 more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew his
+business. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day
+longer than that and we'll have to either go under or go under an
+alias. By that time we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a money
+belt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and the
+furniture men can pick the bones."
+
+Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-press
+dailies, of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.
+
+"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause a
+Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot summer.
+The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and the
+Harlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the 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
+President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel
+Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes
+so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany
+garbage chest that he calls his desk.
+
+Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being
+troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept the
+money in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought
+much of banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the
+stock we'd sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. We
+had nearly $50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high
+as prize fighters out of training.
+
+One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat and
+flippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with a
+bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury
+looking like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.
+
+"Know that man?" he asked us.
+
+We said we didn't.
+
+"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll bet
+enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaper
+reporter."
+
+"What did he want?" asks Buck.
+
+"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying
+some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one
+of 'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper.
+You can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like
+a gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and
+knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together--if that
+ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind
+detectives and post-office inspectors--I talk to 'em eight minutes and
+then sell 'em stock--but them reporters take the starch out of my
+collar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away.
+The signs point that way."
+
+Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand
+still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always
+pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've
+heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and
+nervous all day.
+
+The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty.
+On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column
+on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way
+that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late
+George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a
+rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except
+a stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad
+treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president
+of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real
+sudden and quick that their days might be longer upon the land.
+
+Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and in
+the hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which is
+already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got
+Golconda stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged
+they'd been reading the papers, too.
+
+We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn't
+quite the kind of a gang we supposed had been investing. They all
+looked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots of
+young girls that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was old
+men that looked like war veterans, and some was crippled, and a good
+many was just kids--bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was
+working-men in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one of the
+gang looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was a peanut
+stand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as you
+please.
+
+
+[Illustration: But they all had Golconda stock and looked as
+sick as you please.]
+
+
+I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when he sized up
+the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking woman and says: "Madam,
+do you own any of this stock?"
+
+"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was all
+I had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at home now and I
+haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some.
+The circulars said you could draw it at any time. But they say now I
+will lose it all."
+
+There was a smart kind of kid in the gang--I guess he was a newsboy.
+"I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's silk
+hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a man
+tells me dey can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do you
+guess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"
+
+Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb
+distracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for the
+time they lost coming to see about it.
+
+There was one girl--a pretty one--in a red shawl, crying in a corner
+like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.
+
+"It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking all
+over, "though I've been two years saving it up; but Jakey won't marry
+me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know J--J--Jakey. She's got $400
+in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai--" she sings out.
+
+
+[Illustration: "Jakey won't marry me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld."]
+
+
+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 stuff at
+times."
+
+"You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news in your
+way."
+
+Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meant
+before he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer--I knew what he meant. They
+don't make them any better than Buck.
+
+"Pick," says he, looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out of
+our line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa Steinfeld?"
+
+"You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." And
+I starts for the safe deposit vaults.
+
+I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck and
+me takes the journalist reporter around to another door and we let
+ourselves into one of the office rooms.
+
+"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still,
+and I'll give you an interview. You see before you two grafters from
+Graftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brass
+jewelry, hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines,
+Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and albums in every town
+from Old Point Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar
+whenever we saw one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went
+after the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the
+corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard
+--'fussily decency averni'--which means it's an easy slide from the
+street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that
+slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now,
+you ought to be wise, but you ain't. You've got New York wiseness,
+which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes.
+That ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and the
+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 put in brains, and if he gets his capital out he's
+lucky. But what do you say, Pick?"
+
+"Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know who was
+buying the stock."
+
+"All right," says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door into
+the main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through the
+railing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes 'em a short
+speech.
+
+"All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool back. Don't
+shove so. Get in a line--a _line_--not in a pile. Lady, will you
+please stop bleating? Your money's waiting for you. Here, sonny,
+don't climb over that railing; your dimes are safe. Don't cry, sis;
+you ain't out a cent. Get in _line_, I say. Here, Pick, come and
+straighten 'em out and let 'em through and out by the other door."
+
+Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head,
+and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with the boodle
+before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders
+strung out and marches 'em, single file, through from the main room;
+and the reporter man passes 'em out of the side door into the hall
+again. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds,
+paying 'em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in. The
+shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can't
+hardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck's hands.
+Some of the women keep on crying, for it's a custom of the sex to cry
+when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears
+whenever they find themselves without either.
+
+
+[Illustration: The shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and
+Investment Company can't hardly believe it.]
+
+
+The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom
+of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flap
+their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as the
+currency goes down in the ladies' department of the "Old Domestic
+Lisle-Thread Bank."
+
+Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the
+loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leave
+the money invested. "Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, and
+skip along," says Buck. "What business have you got investing in
+bonds? The 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 Company.
+And say--if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectful
+distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby
+authorized to knock a couple of inches of it off."
+
+When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporter
+and shoves the rest of the money over to him.
+
+"You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books,
+showing every share and bond issued. Here's the money to cover, except
+what we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guess
+you'll do the square thing on account of your paper. This is the best
+way we know how to settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-weary
+vice-president are going to follow the example of our revered
+president, and skip. Now, have you got enough news for 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. What'll the managing editor
+say? He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come back
+when I get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea serpent wiggling
+up Broadway, but I haven't got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe like
+this. A get-rich-quick scheme--excuse me--gang giving back the boodle!
+Oh, no. I'm not on the comic supplement."
+
+"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on the
+door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you know 'em. We
+never allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and take
+nickels off of kids. In the lines of graft we've worked we took money
+from the people the Lord made to be buncoed--sports and rounders and
+smart Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars to
+throw away, and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters
+didn't come around and play with 'em when they sold their crops. We
+never cared to fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir.
+We got too much respect for the profession and for ourselves. 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."
+
+And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the Golconda
+Company went into involuntary liquefaction.
+
+If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to a
+little bum hotel over near the West Side ferry landings. We was in a
+little back room, and I was filling up a gross of six-ounce bottles
+with hydrant water colored red with aniline and flavored with
+cinnamon. Buck was smoking, contented, and he wore a decent brown
+derby in place of his silk hat.
+
+"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that we
+got Brady to lend us his horse and wagon for a week. We'll rustle up
+the stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey.
+Bald heads ain't popular over there on account of the mosquitoes."
+
+Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for labels.
+
+"Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on hand."
+
+"Buy some more," says Buck.
+
+We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money to
+settle our hotel bill in the morning and pay our passage over the
+ferry.
+
+"Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I, after
+looking.
+
+"What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season is
+just opening up in the Hackensack low grounds. What's hair, anyway, if
+you have to shake it off?"
+
+We pasted on the Chill Cure labels about half an hour and Buck says:
+
+"Making an honest livin's better than that Wall Street, anyhow; ain't
+it, Pick?"
+
+"You bet," says I.
+
+
+
+
+HOSTAGES TO MOMUS
+
+
+I
+
+I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. 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 to our case.
+
+_Rurales_? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental
+crayon portraits of the worthy constables 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 _rurales_ started for us we started for the States. They
+chased 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 emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans,
+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 named McCarty--wait a minute;
+Adolph McCarty--was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back
+trading-stamps due on the 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
+except 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 down-stairs. The landlord was shelling
+peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and
+Hongkong in complexion 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, gentlemen," says the landlord, "I 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
+yellowish 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 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 cutlets 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 traveled, 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
+Norfolk 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
+ramifications 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 streetcars, with a hand-organ
+playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest
+suicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that's
+all, except a _demi-tasse_."
+
+"Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a
+conniseer; and when you go around with the _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
+polish 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 mighty poor. As
+far as we could see was red hills all washed down with gullies and
+scattered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all
+that 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-barrels
+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 Jackson
+T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad,
+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
+morning. 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 worth 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 dish-towels. 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."
+
+"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
+gunboats 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 magazines;
+and then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside the 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
+administration 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 thousand 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 little mountains,
+and stick up his 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."
+
+
+
+III
+
+Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch
+of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T.
+Rockingham. 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 out 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-fifty-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
+comfortable; 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! 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 mean time 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 inculcate the occasion with a few well-timed
+trivialities in the way of 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 tobasco 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
+appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real _vive bonjour_.
+
+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
+beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator
+who--"
+
+"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attend 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
+   a cross 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 take on a
+postscript about how 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 signalling 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
+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 he'll 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 dimension 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
+disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our general
+passenger agent, is now negotiating a peachcrate 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 Pendergast, 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.
+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," I 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 been 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
+agglomeration 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 Pendergast 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
+gathers 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 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
+going 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 _Puck_. 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 remember
+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
+himself 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
+Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use
+his cerebrum, 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
+reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential 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
+upright, 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 yet entered, and see if I can find a
+partner 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 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
+neighborhood, 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 women 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:
+
+
+   'Ill 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 ever. 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 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.'
+
+"I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the
+constable 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
+Pitfall & 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.
+
+"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 at the Vacation in 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
+manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished in the way of
+indirect brigandage or nonactionable 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
+accents, '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 atterwards.
+Some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler 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, Mr. Tatum, it would be
+considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State
+Gas. However, 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 atmosphere 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 had idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was
+feeling 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
+though the farming belt of the Middle West; so we headed in that
+direction. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley
+Brothers' circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into
+town and pounding the Belgian blocks with their hand-pegged sabots as
+artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I
+never pass a circus without 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 I knew he would, after he was rigged up
+in the ready-made rutabaga regalia. 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
+capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed the game with only
+forty-two dollars 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 honest 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. 'You flimflammed in your part of the
+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've really got kleptopigia. And maybe when
+we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind to higher and more
+remunerative 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,' 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 whenever
+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. He'll 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 I'll do, Rufe,'
+I says. 'I'll give you ten dollars for that pig.'
+
+"'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
+fireside 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 for?'
+
+"'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'you wouldn't
+think that I've got an artistic side to my temper. But I have. I'm a
+collector 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 Merino to a Poland China. This looks like a blooded pig to me,
+Rufe,' says I. 'I 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 better 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
+matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is
+philanthropy. 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 collection. 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 I.
+
+"'Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, 'and I'll 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.
+
+"'I'll just take him into my own room,' says I, 'and lock him up till
+after 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
+under 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
+Misfitzky's 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
+morning. I'll take the five thousand dollars 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 to 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
+1 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.
+
+"'Fake,' 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.
+
+"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the
+newspaper 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.'
+
+"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 endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs--what's the
+difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLE GRAFTER***
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry
+#18 in our series by O. Henry
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+The Gentle Grafter
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+by O. Henry
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+
+
+
+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz
+and Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+
+
+
+
+
+The Gentle Grafter
+
+by O. Henry
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   I. The Octopus Marooned
+  II. Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet
+ III. Modern Rural Sports
+  IV. The Chair of Philanthromathematics
+   V. The Hand That Riles the World
+  VI. The Exact Science of Matrimony
+ VII. A Midsummer Masquerade
+VIII. Shearing the Wolf
+  IX. Innocents of Broadway
+   X. Conscience in Art
+  XI. The Man Higher Up
+ XII. A Tempered Wind
+XIII. Hostages to Momus
+ XIV. The Ethics of Pig
+
+
+
+
+THE GENTLE GRAFTER
+
+
+
+I
+
+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 chirping 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."
+
+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 word "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 hands 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
+interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all
+right. The other half interest must have been worth two or three
+thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.
+
+"In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes
+against a little 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 between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. 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
+procession 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 third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so
+me and Andy walked out to the edge of 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
+Mexican 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 pin feathers and
+strolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe's place was
+closed and likewise the other little 'dobe life saving station. So,
+naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and
+ports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it find there?
+
+"Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with a
+sixshooter 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: '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
+promised 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 had 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
+beautiful 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
+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
+calculated 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
+dormitory 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
+rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and
+premonitions. 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 proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker,
+incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in
+the sole apoplectic region. No?'
+
+"'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
+monopolists, 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
+riotousness 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?'
+
+"'I'm the crater of a volcano,' says he. 'I'm 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 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, 'why not
+go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems to me there was
+an old spell-binder named Cantharides that used to go 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. Southworth.'
+
+"'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
+deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There
+was only a light drizzle falling then.
+
+"A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to
+scrape the mud off his boots.
+
+"'Pardner,' 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.'
+
+"'The whole town,' says the muddy man, 'is up in Sperry's wool
+warehouse 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 he'll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,' says I, 'for
+trade languishes.'
+
+"Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o'clock two
+Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro.
+We put him in 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.'"
+
+
+
+II
+
+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
+liniments 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 a 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 in the last town, so I only had five
+dollars. I went to the Fisher Hill druggist and he credited me for
+half a 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
+cinchona 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
+hypothetical pneumocardiac 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.'
+
+"'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.'
+
+"'I'll 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
+landlord 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 doctor to practice in town.'
+
+"'I don't practice medicine,' says I, 'I've 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 Vernon--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
+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 in 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 canvass the whole 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.
+
+"'I'm no doctor,' says I. 'Why don't you go and get the doctor?'
+
+"'Boss,' says he. 'Doc Hoskins am done gone twenty miles in de 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, 'I'll 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 mannered roof
+and two cast iron dogs on the lawn.
+
+"This Mayor 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, 'I'm awful sick. I'm about to die. Can't you
+do nothing for me?'
+
+"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'I'm 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 off assistance.'
+
+"'I'm 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 that 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!'
+
+"'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
+sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness except
+what is produced when we ain't feeling well. Declare yourself in
+arrears. Demonstrate.'
+
+"'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 personal magnetism.'
+
+"'Can you work it, doc?' asks the Mayor.
+
+"'I'm 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 late president of the Vinegar Bitters Company could revisit
+the earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling
+medicine on the street,' 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. 'I'll pay it. I guess my life's worth
+that much.'
+
+"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?'
+
+"'I do feel some little better, doc,' says the Mayor, 'darned if I
+don't. Now state a few lies 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,' says I, 'the inflammation's gone. The right lobe of the
+perihelion 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 wonders of modern science.'
+
+"'Biddle,' says he, 'When will you give uncle the rest of the
+treatment, Dr. Pooh-pooh?'
+
+"'Waugh-hoo,' says I. 'I'll 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 was 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.'
+
+"'I've 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.
+
+"'You're under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters,' says he, 'for
+practising medicine without authority under the State law.'
+
+"'Who are you?' I asks.
+
+"'I'll tell you who he is,' says Mr. 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?' the mayor
+laughs, 'compound--well, it wasn't softening of the brain, I guess,
+anyway.'
+
+"'A detective,' says I.
+
+"'Correct,' says Biddle. 'I'll 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 window, 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 bank 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 rattles 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."
+
+
+
+III
+
+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," said 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 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 pre-digested hoe-cake 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 Kentucky 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. We'll 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 questions. 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 down stairs 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 wide-spread agricultural
+agglomeration 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
+horticultural accessories of Farmer Ezra Plunkett, one of our
+country'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 one-sided 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 rebates from the rutabag raisers. What bait are you going
+to use for this Ezra thing?' Andy asks me.
+
+"'Oh,' I says, '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 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's 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 use. I've had to take rolls from 'em that looked like bundles
+of microbe cultures 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.
+
+"'I'd 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
+rollicking lines of that merry jingle, 'The Man 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
+ratiocination; but I pulled out the little brick and unwrapped my
+handkerchief 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
+starting. I got a $5,000 one last week for $2.10.'
+
+"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 this 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.'
+
+"'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
+Indianapolis, 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. Goodbye.'
+
+"'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 himself knows better than to try to catch an up-to-date
+agriculturalist 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 casualities.
+
+"'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 that herd of 15 Jerseys go at $600 a head; and to sow the 900-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.
+
+"'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,' says 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 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
+outwardly 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.'
+
+"'I'll 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.'
+
+"'Right,' says Andy. 'Is the buggy outside? Wait here till I come
+back. I won't be long.'
+
+"Two hours afterwards Andy steps into the room and lays a wad of money
+on the table.
+
+"'Eight hundred and sixty dollars,' said 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, gentlemen,' 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 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
+agriculturalist. 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."
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE CHAIR OF PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS
+
+"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 before we recovered our presence of intellect. Twenty-
+five thousand dollars doesn'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 out 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
+Floresville, 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 you'll 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, 'I'll 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.
+
+"'I dinna ken,' says B. 'I offered ye libraries; and there they are. I
+suppose if I'd 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 I'd 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 from
+selling self-igniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke
+Smith presidential 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.'
+
+"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 phonograph and pineapple sherbert.
+
+"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 car load of desks, footballs, arithmetics, penholders,
+dictionaries, 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 chalk-plate cuts of me and Andy we
+wired an employment agency in Chicago to express us f.o.b., six
+professors immediately--one English literature, one up-to-date dead
+languages, 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
+Proprietors. And when September the first got a cross-mark on the
+calendar, the come-ons begun to roll in. First the faculty got off the
+tri-weekly express 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--ultra-marine 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
+pictures 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 I. '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,
+    Done, done, done,
+  Peters, Tucker,
+    Lots of fun,
+  Bow-wow-wow,
+    Haw-hee-haw,
+  World University,
+    Hip, hurrah!'
+
+"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 comes 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, silk-socked little sons of sap-suckers have got more money
+than you and me ever had. Look at the rolls they're pulling out of
+their pistol pockets?'
+
+"'Yes,' 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 business 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.'
+
+"'We'll be leaving on the morning train,' says Andy. 'You'd better get
+your collars and cuffs and press clippings together.'
+
+"'Great!' says I. 'I'll be ready. But, Andy,' says I, 'I wish I could
+have met that Professor James Darnley McCorkle before we 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.'"
+
+
+
+V
+
+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 best cooks, milliners, nurses, housekeepers, stenographers,
+clerks, hairdressers 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 Jeff, 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 the 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 Marshall. 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 annoying me and Andy some, and when Bill spoke to me
+about his officious aspirations, I saw how the appointment as Marshall
+might help along the firm of Peters & Tucker.
+
+"'Jeff,' says Bill to me, 'you are a man of learning and education,
+besides 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 racking?'
+
+"'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 and
+philanthropy,' 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 impunity in boot-
+legging whiskey for twelve months. Are you patriotic to the West
+enough to help me put this thing through the Whitewashed 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 commercial deflections. So we accepted Bill's offer, and
+strikes out for Washington.
+
+"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 malpractice like this it seems to me that the
+straightforward and aboveboard way is the best. I propose,' 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
+magazine look like a cook on a Monongahela coal barge.
+
+"She had on a low necked dress covered with silver spangles, and
+diamond 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 the
+Territorial 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 my private menu card.' She takes some papers out of a
+pigeon-hole 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, Tolstoi, poker and stewed terrapin; sentimental at third
+bottle of wine." Yes,' she goes on, 'I am sure I can have your friend,
+Mr. Bummer, appointed 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
+sometimes 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 the left end of his mustache.
+
+"'A woman of high intellect and perfect beauty is a 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.
+
+"'A 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 Swinburne 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 overshoes and three months supply of bird seed
+into the canary's cage. "Sioux Falls?" he asks with a kind of hopeful
+light 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
+indiscriminating letters written to her by a member of the Cabinet
+when she 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
+evening 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-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 postcards 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
+Marshalship for Bill?'
+
+"'I do not,' says I. 'I do not wish to be a sceptic, 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.
+
+"'You 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: 'Job
+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. 'I'll 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, and a genuine document, but it
+appointed him postmaster of Dade City, Fla.
+
+"Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill's
+appointment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward Lake
+Superior.
+
+"I never saw Bill Humble after that."
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY
+
+"As I have told you before," said Jeff Peters, "I never had much
+confidence 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 I. "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 owning 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 judgment. Address, with
+  particulars.
+
+Lonely,
+Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, Ill.
+
+
+"'So far, so pernicious,' says I, when we had finished the literary
+concoction. '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 rule, Andy, that in all my
+illegitimate 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 ordinances and train schedules I have kept out
+of all trouble with the police 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,' 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
+dyspepsia 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
+sunflowers 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,' she asks me
+when I tell her what we want.
+
+"'Mrs. Trotter,' says I, 'Andy Tucker and me have computed the
+calculation that 3,000 men in this broad and unfair 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,' 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 Millennial 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,' says I, 'some of the more ardent and impetuous suitors
+who can raise the railroad fare may come to Cairo to personally press
+their suit or whatever fraction 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,
+suppose 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
+interesting letter and requesting them to write again; stating more
+particulars; and enclosing photograph if convenient. Peters & Tucker
+also informed 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 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 eye 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, Mrs. 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 the
+$2,000.
+
+"When I got 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. 'I'll 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 the 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
+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
+financially. 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
+emotions 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 heart and 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 up 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 up 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. 'I 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. 'I've been calling on her three
+evenings a week for more than a month.'
+
+"'Then are you William Wilkinson?' says I.
+
+"'I was,' says Andy."
+
+
+
+VII
+
+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 somebody for idle hands to do.'
+
+"I remember one summer when me and my partner, Andy Tucker, tried to
+take a layoff from our professional and business duties; but it seems
+that our work followed us wherever we went.
+
+"Now, with a preacher it's different. He can throw off his
+responsibilities and enjoy himself. On the 31st of May he wraps
+mosquito netting and tin foil around the pulpit, grabs his niblick,
+breviary and fishing pole and hikes for Lake Como or Atlantic City
+according to the size of the loudness with which he has been called by
+his congregation. And, sir, for three months he don't have to think
+about business except to hunt around in Deuteronomy and Proverbs and
+Timothy to find texts to cover and exculpate such little midsummer
+penances as dropping a couple of looey door on rouge or teaching a
+Presbyterian widow to swim.
+
+"But I was going to tell you about mine and Andy's summer vacation
+that wasn't one.
+
+"We was tired of finance and all the branches of unsanctified
+ingenuity. Even Andy, whose brain rarely ever stopped working, began
+to make noises like a tennis cabinet.
+
+"'Heigh ho!' says Andy. 'I'm tired. I've got that steam up the yacht
+Corsair and ho for the Riviera! feeling. I want to loaf and indict my
+soul, as Walt Whittier says. I want to play pinochle with Merry del
+Val or give a knouting to the tenants on my Tarrytown estates or do a
+monologue at a Chautauqua picnic in kilts or something summery and
+outside the line of routine and sand-bagging.'
+
+"'Patience,' says I. 'You'll have to climb higher in the profession
+before you can taste the laurels that crown the footprints of the
+great captains of industry. Now, what I'd like, Andy,' says I, 'would
+be a summer sojourn in a mountain village far from scenes of larceny,
+labor and overcapitalization. I'm tired, too, and a month or so of
+sinlessness ought to leave us in good shape to begin again to take
+away the white man's burdens in the fall.'
+
+"Andy fell in with the rest cure at once, so we struck the general
+passenger agents of all the railroads for summer resort literature,
+and took a week to study out where we should go. I reckon the first
+passenger agent in the world was that man Genesis. But there wasn't
+much competition in his day, and when he said: 'The Lord made the
+earth in six days, and all very good,' he hadn't any idea to what
+extent the press agents of the summer hotels would plagiarize from him
+later on.
+
+"When we finished the booklets we perceived, easy, that the United
+States from Passadumkeg, Maine, to El Paso, and from Skagway to Key
+West was a paradise of glorious mountain peaks, crystal lakes, new
+laid eggs, golf, girls, garages, cooling breezes, straw rides, open
+plumbing and tennis; and all within two hours' ride.
+
+"So me and Andy dumps the books out the back window and packs our
+trunk and takes the 6 o'clock Tortoise Flyer for Crow Knob, a kind of
+a dernier resort in the mountains on the line of Tennessee and North
+Carolina.
+
+"We was directed to a kind of private hotel called Woodchuck Inn, and
+thither me and Andy bent and almost broke our footsteps over the rocks
+and stumps. The Inn set back from the road in a big grove of trees,
+and it looked fine with its broad porches and a lot of women in white
+dresses rocking in the shade. The rest of Crow Knob was a post office
+and some scenery set an angle of forty-five degrees and a welkin.
+
+"Well, sir, when we got to the gate who do you suppose comes down the
+walk to greet us? Old Smoke-'em-out Smithers, who used to be the best
+open air painless dentist and electric liver pad faker in the
+Southwest.
+
+"Old Smoke-'em-out is dressed clerico-rural, and has the mingled air
+of a landlord and a claim jumper. Which aspect he corroborates by
+telling us that he is the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I
+introduces Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will
+go around at meetings of boards of directors and old associates like
+us three were. Old Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of summer house
+in the yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on
+all the chords with his mighty right.
+
+"'Gents,' says he, 'I'm glad to see you. Maybe you can help me out of
+a scrape. I'm getting a bit old for street work, so I leased this
+dogdays emporium so the good things would come to me. Two weeks before
+the season opened I gets a letter signed Lieut. Peary and one from the
+Duke of Marlborough, each wanting to engage board for part of the
+summer.
+
+"'Well, sir, you gents know what a big thing for an obscure hustlery
+it would be to have for guests two gentlemen whose names are famous
+from long association with icebergs and the Coburgs. So I prints a lot
+of handbills announcing that Woodchuck Inn would shelter these
+distinguished boarders during the summer, except in places where it
+leaked, and I sends 'em out to towns around as far as Knoxville and
+Charlotte and Fish Dam and Bowling Green.
+
+"'And now look up there on the porch, gents,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'at
+them disconsolate specimens of their fair sex waiting for the arrival
+of the Duke and the Lieutenant. The house is packed from rafters to
+cellar with hero worshippers.
+
+"'There's four normal school teachers and two abnormal; there's three
+high school graduates between 37 and 42; there's two literary old
+maids and one that can write; there's a couple of society women and a
+lady from Haw River. Two elocutionists are bunking in the corn crib,
+and I've put cots in the hay loft for the cook and the society
+editress of the Chattanooga /Opera Glass/. You see how names draw,
+gents.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'how is it that you seem to be biting your thumbs at
+good luck? You didn't use to be that way.'
+
+"'I ain't through,' says Smoke-'em-out. 'Yesterday was the day for the
+advent of the auspicious personages. I goes down to the depot to
+welcome 'em. Two apparently animate substances gets off the train,
+both carrying bags full of croquet mallets and these magic lanterns
+with pushbuttons.
+
+"I compares these integers with the original signatures to the letters
+--and, well, gents, I reckon the mistake was due to my poor eyesight.
+Instead of being the Lieutenant, the daisy chain and wild verbena
+explorer was none other than Levi T. Peevy, a soda water clerk from
+Asheville. And the Duke of Marlborough turned out to be Theo. Drake of
+Murfreesborough, a bookkeeper in a grocery. What did I do? I kicked
+'em both back on the train and watched 'em depart for the lowlands,
+the low.
+
+"'Now you see the fix I'm in, gents,' goes on Smoke-'em-out Smithers.
+'I told the ladies that the notorious visitors had been detained on
+the road by some unavoidable circumstances that made a noise like an
+ice jam and an heiress, but they would arrive a day or two later. When
+they find out that they've been deceived,' says Smoke-'em-out, 'every
+yard of cross barred muslin and natural waved switch in the house will
+pack up and leave. It's a hard deal,' says old Smoke-'em-out.
+
+"'Friend,' says Andy, touching the old man on the aesophagus, 'why this
+jeremiad when the polar regions and the portals of Blenheim are
+conspiring to hand you prosperity on a hall-marked silver salver. We
+have arrived.'
+
+"A light breaks out on Smoke-'em-out's face.
+
+"'Can you do it, gents?' he asks. 'Could ye do it? Could ye play the
+polar man and the little duke for the nice ladies? Will ye do it?'
+
+"I see that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral
+and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about
+10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband
+sophistries and parables when they came out.
+
+"'Listen,' says Andy to old Smoke-'em-out. 'Can we do it? You behold
+before you, Mr. Smithers, two of the finest equipped men on earth for
+inveigling the proletariat, whether by word of mouth, sleight-of-hand
+or swiftness of foot. Dukes come and go, explorers go and get lost,
+but me and Jeff Peters,' says Andy, 'go after the come-ons forever. If
+you say so, we're the two illustrious guests you were expecting. And
+you'll find,' says Andy, 'that we'll give you the true local color of
+the title roles from the aurora borealis to the ducal portcullis.'
+
+"Old Smoke-'em-out is delighted. He takes me and Andy up to the inn by
+an arm apiece, telling us on the way that the finest fruits of the can
+and luxuries of the fast freights should be ours without price as long
+as we would stay.
+
+"On the porch Smoke-'em-out says: 'Ladies, I have the honor to
+introduce His Gracefulness the Duke of Marlborough and the famous
+inventor of the North Pole, Lieut. Peary.'
+
+"The skirts all flutter and the rocking chairs squeak as me and Andy
+bows and then goes on in with old Smoke-'em-out to register. And then
+we washed up and turned our cuffs, and the landlord took us to the
+rooms he'd been saving for us and got out a demijohn of North Carolina
+real mountain dew.
+
+"I expected trouble when Andy began to drink. He has the artistic
+metempsychosis which is half drunk when sober and looks down on
+airships when stimulated.
+
+"After lingering with the demijohn me and Andy goes out on the porch,
+where the ladies are to begin to earn our keep. We sit in two special
+chairs and then the schoolma'ams and literaterrers hunched their
+rockers close around us.
+
+"One lady says to me: 'How did that last venture of yours turn out,
+sir?'
+
+"Now, I'd clean forgot to have an understanding with Andy which I was
+to be, the duke or the lieutenant. And I couldn't tell from her
+question whether she was referring to Arctic or matrimonial
+expeditions. So I gave an answer that would cover both cases.
+
+"'Well, ma'am,' says I, 'it was a freeze out--right smart of a freeze
+out, ma'am.'
+
+"And then the flood gates of Andy's perorations was opened and I knew
+which one of the renowned ostensible guests I was supposed to be. I
+wasn't either. Andy was both. And still furthermore it seemed that he
+was trying to be the mouthpiece of the whole British nobility and of
+Arctic exploration from Sir John Franklin down. It was the union of
+corn whiskey and the conscientious fictional form that Mr. W. D.
+Howletts admires so much.
+
+"'Ladies,' says Andy, smiling semicircularly, 'I am truly glad to
+visit America. I do not consider the magna charta,' says he, 'or gas
+balloons or 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,' says Andy, 'that I go after the North Pole
+all the Vanderbilts in Greenland won't be able to turn me out in the
+cold--I mean make it hot for me.'
+
+"'Tell us about one of your trips, Lieutenant,' says one of the
+normals.
+
+"'Sure,' says Andy, getting the decision over a hiccup. 'It was in the
+spring of last year that I sailed the Castle of Blenheim up to
+latitude 87 degrees Fahrenheit and beat the record. Ladies,' says
+Andy, 'it was a sad sight to see a Duke allied by a civil and
+liturgical chattel mortgage to one of your first families lost in a
+region of semiannual days.' And then he goes on, 'At four bells we
+sighted Westminster Abbey, but there was not a drop to eat. At noon we
+threw out five sandbags, and the ship rose fifteen knots higher. At
+midnight,' continues Andy, 'the restaurants closed. Sitting on a cake
+of ice we ate seven hot dogs. All around us was snow and ice. Six
+times a night the boatswain rose up and tore a leaf off the calendar,
+so we could keep time with the barometer. At 12,' says Andy, with a
+lot of anguish on his face, 'three huge polar bears sprang down the
+hatchway, into the cabin. And then--'
+
+"'What then, Lieutenant?' says a schoolma'am, excitedly.
+
+"Andy gives a loud sob.
+
+"'The Duchess shook me,' he cries out, and slides out of the chair and
+weeps on the porch.
+
+"Well, of course, that fixed the scheme. The women boarders all left
+the next morning. The landlord wouldn't speak to us for two days, but
+when he found we had money to pay our way he loosened up.
+
+"So me and Andy had a quiet, restful summer after all, coming away
+from Crow Knob with $1,100, that we enticed out of old Smoke-'em-out
+playing seven up."
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+SHEARING THE WOLF
+
+Jeff Peters was always eloquent when the ethics of his profession was
+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.
+One word led on to another till he said I reminded him of Rockefeller.
+
+"'I don't 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
+cessation 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?' says he, laughing--'a letter like
+that to ME!'
+
+"Me and Andy sees at a glance what it is; but we pretend to read it
+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.
+
+"'Lot's of good men get 'em,' 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 all 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 him 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 waiting. They show
+you brand new real money and sell you all you want at five for 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, 'I've 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 $1, 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 1 shot on J. Smith. I guess
+the water'll 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.
+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, 'I 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 his
+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 insists 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 of 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 1 shot. Yes, I'd
+really take it as a pastime 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. I'll show
+'em whether the water's fine. Five dollars for one--that's what J.
+Smith offers, and he'll 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
+inoculate 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 'em along," he'll 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, I'll tell you what I say,' says I. '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 of 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.
+
+"'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 handbill 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, 'when 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 foot-notes of that conscience of yours. I'd
+like to have it to refer to occasionally.'"
+
+
+
+IX
+
+INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY
+
+"I hope some day 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 managed 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 railroad
+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
+dynamiting a Texas lake for bass. All you have to do anywhere between
+the North 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 without 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, traveling 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 Beekman
+street, and he hadn't been above Fourteenth street in ten years.
+Moreover, he had whiskers, and the time had 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 beer.'
+
+"'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 farm-
+hand from the Kaw River bottoms strolls in here and sells you a copper
+mine.'
+
+"'Oh, I don't know,' says Whiskers. 'I 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 comes in.'
+
+"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.
+I'll ask you fer 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 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, 'I don't blame you for not
+wanting to play. I've forgotten the fine points of the game, I guess,
+it's been so 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 cousin, he says, is in the artificial
+limb and lead casket business, and hasn't crossed the bridge in eight
+years. 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.
+
+"'I'll use what I've 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 up 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.
+We've 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 Goldfields.
+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
+introduction. 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 out 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,' 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 skyscraper. 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 back-
+water if you don't get out of the way.
+
+"'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 of 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,' says I, 'and with blind and beautiful idiocy
+laid the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when he
+wants it.'
+
+"'Your 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, 'I'll 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, I'll take that
+five thousand. I met a man last night that's got a sure winner at the
+racetrack to-morrow. Excuse me for being so impolite as to go to
+sleep, Mr. Peters.'
+
+"And so this inhabitant of the second city in the world reposes
+himself 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 comes 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 that.'
+
+"I open the paper and see that it is a corporation charter issued by
+the State of New Jersey to 'The Peters and Tucker Consolidated and
+Amalgamated 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,' says Andy, 'expected to reach a par value of $1. 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
+taking the money now, Jeff?'
+
+"'Why shouldn't it be?' says I. 'Are we any better than any other
+Holding Corporation?'"
+
+
+
+X
+
+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, stock 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
+financiering.
+
+"'Jeff,' says he, 'I've been thinking that we ought to drop these
+rutabaga fanciers and give our attention to something more nourishing
+and prolific. 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 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 00
+  Cab fare to and from hotel . . . . . . . .      2 00
+  Hotel bill @ $5 per day  . . . . . . . . .     50 00
+  Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5,750 00
+                                            ----------
+     Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $5,823 00
+
+"'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 confidence 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 transfer 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 cinderpath
+they call Smithfield street, 'had you figured out how we are going to
+get acquainted with these coke kings and pig iron squeezers? Not that
+I would decry my own worth or system of 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
+impoliteness 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 consumers. 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 glassblower before he made his money.
+
+"One evening Andy failed to come to the hotel for dinner. About 11
+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 in education--art and literature and haberdashery and such
+things.
+
+"'When I saw him he'd just won a bet of $10,000 with a Steel
+Corporation 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 a 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.'
+
+"'All 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 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 anybody
+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 a 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
+$35. 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.
+
+"'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,
+Pennsylvania?'
+
+"'I am,' says he. 'Come out and have a drink.'
+
+"'I've 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. 'I 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
+his 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
+on.'"
+
+
+
+XI
+
+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, uncapitalized, unlimited asylum for the reception of the
+restless and unwise dollars of his fellowmen.
+
+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 graft," 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 que 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
+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 drugstore 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 of 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
+interjections. 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.
+
+"'Fall 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
+shoulder--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
+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
+professional 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.'
+
+"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 sometimes 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 a swag in it and a pretty
+parlor-maid, and you might as well call the silver melted down and
+sold, and me spilling 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
+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 memories 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 until some of those 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 I'll borrow a hairpin from some lady, and open the Farmers and
+Drovers Marine Bank with it.'
+
+"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 railroads 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
+corruption. He always gives something for the money he gets. I'm 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, swindling, and financiering all represented. Please
+examine Mr. Rick's 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
+intelligence that said alleged Ricks had laid off all that portion of
+the State 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 degrees 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
+Alfred 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 come 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 westward ho! with only feetwear and a dozen
+15-and-a-half 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
+spareribs 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 than I am. Now, what could either of you have done in the
+present emergency to set us on our feet again? Could you do it,
+Ricksy?'
+
+"'I 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--'
+
+"'I 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 contracts. 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 left-over victuals.'
+
+"'That was only getting the pumpkin ready,' says Bassett, braggy and
+cheerful. 'The coach and six'll 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, 'I'm fifteen years older than you are, and young
+enough 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 wagon.
+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
+handkerchief 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 I'll 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
+out five packages of one thousand dollars each on the floor, and
+begins to cackle over the nest-egg like a hen.
+
+"'I'll 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
+getting some better. I had a talk on these liliputian 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 morning 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--'
+
+"Basset unpins a package of the currency and throws five twenties to
+Ricks.
+
+"'Trade, how much?' he says to me.
+
+"'Put 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, I 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 a kind of Industrial
+Christian Science. She pays 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 contaminating 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 his money in his pocket. I never
+had the respect for burglary that some people have. I always gave
+something for the money I took, even if it was only some little trifle
+for 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
+disgrace to 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 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 would stake me to web money if I could show him a fly buzzing
+'round 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
+slugshot 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, 'I'm 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 bazar.'
+
+"'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
+furniture 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.
+
+"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, 'I have no business being in business. I
+was preordained to labor. When a No. 1 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. 'Peace 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 some 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. Non-
+assessable. The Blue Gopher mine. Just discovered a month ago. Better
+get in yourself 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 out 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.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+A TEMPERED WIND
+
+The first time my optical nerves was disturbed by the sight of
+Buckingham Skinner was in Kansas City. I was standing on a corner when
+I see Buck stick his straw-colored head out of a third-story window of
+a business block and holler, "Whoa, there! Whoa!" like you would in
+endeavoring to assuage a team of runaway mules.
+
+I looked around; but all the animals I see in sight is a policeman,
+having his shoes shined, and a couple of delivery wagons hitched to
+posts. Then in a minute downstairs tumbles this Buckingham Skinner,
+and runs to the corner, and stands and gazes down the other street at
+the imaginary dust kicked up by the fabulous hoofs of the fictitious
+team of chimerical quadrupeds. And then B. Skinner goes back up to the
+third-story room again, and I see that the lettering on the window is
+"The Farmers' Friend Loan Company."
+
+By and by Straw-top comes down again, and I crossed the street to meet
+him, for I had my ideas. Yes, sir, when I got close I could see where
+he overdone it. He was Reub all right as far as his blue jeans and
+cowhide boots went, but he had a matinee actor's hands, and the rye
+straw stuck over his ear looked like it belonged to the property man
+of the Old Homestead Co. Curiosity to know what his graft was got the
+best of me.
+
+"Was that your team broke away and run just now?" I asks him, polite.
+"I tried to stop 'em," says I, "but I couldn't. I guess they're half
+way 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 loathsome apparel of the rural dub. Thus embalmed I am Jonas
+Stubblefield--a name impossible to improve upon. I repair noisily to
+the office of some loan company conveniently located in the third-
+floor, front. There I lay my hat and yarn gloves on the floor and ask
+to mortgage my farm for $2,000 to pay for my sister's musical
+education in Europe. Loans like that always suit the loan companies.
+It's ten to one that when the note falls due the foreclosure will be
+leading the semiquavers by a couple of lengths.
+
+"Well, sir, I reach in my pocket for the abstract of title; but I
+suddenly hear my team running away. I run to the window and emit the
+word--or exclamation, which-ever 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 doubletree and
+two traces. Now I got to hoof it home, for I never brought no money
+along. Reckon we'll talk about that loan some other time, gen'lemen.'
+
+"Then I spreads out my tarpaulin, like the Israelites, and waits for
+the manna to drop.
+
+"'Why, no, Mr. Stubblefield,' says the lobster-colored party in the
+specs and dotted pique vest; 'oblige us by accepting this ten-dollar
+bill until to-morrow. Get your harness repaired and call in at ten.
+We'll be pleased to accommodate you in the matter of this loan.'
+
+"It's a slight thing," says Buckingham Skinner, modest, "but, as I
+said, only for temporary loose change."
+
+"It's nothing to be ashamed of," says I, in respect for his
+mortification; "in case of an emergency. Of course, it's small
+compared to organizing a trust or bridge whist, but even the Chicago
+University had to be started in a small way."
+
+"What's your graft these days?" Buckingham Skinner asks me.
+
+"The legitimate," says I. "I'm handling rhinestones and Dr. Oleum
+Sinapi's Electric Headache Battery and the Swiss Warbler's Bird Call,
+a small lot of the new queer ones and twos, and the Bonanza Budget,
+consisting of a rolled-gold wedding and engagement ring, six Egyptian
+lily bulbs, a combination pickle fork and nail-clipper, and fifty
+engraved visiting cards--no two names alike--all for the sum of 38
+cents."
+
+"Two months ago," says Buckingham Skinner, "I was doing well down in
+Texas with a patent instantaneous fire kindler, made of compressed
+wood ashes and benzine. I sold loads of 'em in towns where they like
+to burn niggers quick, without having to ask somebody for a light. And
+just when I was doing the best they strikes oil down there and puts me
+out of business. 'Your machine's too slow, now, pardner,' they tells
+me. 'We can have a coon in hell with this here petroleum before your
+old flint-and-tinder truck can get him warm enough to perfess
+religion.' And so I gives up the kindler and drifts up here to K.C.
+This little curtain-raiser you seen me doing, Mr. Pickens, with the
+simulated farm and the hypothetical teams, ain't in my line at all,
+and I'm ashamed you found me working it."
+
+"No man," says I, kindly, "need to be ashamed of putting the skibunk
+on a loan corporation for even so small a sum as ten dollars, when he
+is financially abashed. Still, it wasn't quite the proper thing. It's
+too much like borrowing money without paying it back."
+
+I liked Buckingham Skinner from the start, for as good a man as ever
+stood over the axles and breathed gasoline smoke. And pretty soon we
+gets thick, and I let him in on a scheme I'd had in mind for some
+time, and offers to go partners.
+
+"Anything," says Buck, "that is not actually dishonest will find me
+willing and ready. Let us perforate into the inwardness of your
+proposition. I feel degraded when I am forced to wear property straw
+in my hair and assume a bucolic air for the small sum of ten dollars.
+Actually, Mr. Pickens, it makes me feel like the Ophelia of the Great
+Occidental All-Star One-Night Consolidated Theatrical Aggregation."
+
+This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I
+am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying
+elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and
+sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human
+works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and
+poetry and the Seasons. I never skin a sucker without admiring the
+prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little auriferous
+beauty to the man with the hoe without noticing the beautiful harmony
+there is between gold and green. And that's why I liked this scheme;
+it was so full of outdoor air and landscapes and easy money.
+
+We had to have a young lady assistant to help us work this graft; and
+I asked Buck if he knew of one to fill the bill.
+
+"One," says I, "that is cool and wise and strictly business from her
+pompadour to her Oxfords. No ex-toe-dancers or gum-chewers or crayon
+portrait canvassers for this."
+
+Buck claimed he knew a suitable feminine and he takes me around to see
+Miss Sarah Malloy. The minute I see her I am pleased. She looked to be
+the goods as ordered. No sign of the three p's about her--no peroxide,
+patchouli, nor peau de soie; about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant
+ways--the kind of a lady for the place.
+
+"A description of the sandbag, if you please," she begins.
+
+"Why, ma'am," says I, "this graft of ours is so nice and refined and
+romantic, it would make the balcony scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' look
+like second-story work."
+
+We talked it over, and Miss Malloy agreed to come in as a business
+partner. She said she was glad to get a chance to give up her place as
+stenographer and secretary to a suburban lot company, and go into
+something respectable.
+
+This is the way we worked our scheme. First, I figured it out by a
+kind of a proverb. The best grafts in the world are built up on copy-
+book 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. Any one can see that she is a peach and of
+the cling variety. They claim they are eloping for to be married on
+account of cruel parents. They ask where they can find a preacher.
+Farmer says, "B'gum there ain't any preacher nigher than Reverend
+Abels, four miles over on Caney Creek." Farmeress wipes her hand on
+her apron and rubbers through her specs.
+
+Then, lo and look ye! Up the road from the other way jogs Parleyvoo
+Pickens in a gig, dressed in black, white necktie, long face, sniffing
+his nose, emitting a spurious kind of noise resembling the long meter
+doxology.
+
+"B'jinks!" says farmer, "if thar ain't a preacher now!"
+
+It transpires that I am Rev. Abijah Green, travelling over to Little
+Bethel 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 hesitating, marries 'em in the farmer's parlor. And farmer
+grins, and has in cider, and says "B'gum!" and farmeress sniffles a
+bit and pats the bride on the shoulder. And Parleyvoo Pickens, the
+wrong reverend, writes out a marriage certificate, and farmer and
+farmeress sign it as witnesses. And the parties of the first, second
+and third part gets in their vehicles and rides away. Oh, that was an
+idyllic graft! True love and the lowing kine and the sun shining on
+the red barns--it certainly had all other impostures I know about beat
+to a batter.
+
+I suppose I happened along in time to marry Buck and Miss Malloy at
+about twenty farm-houses. I hated to think how the romance was going
+to fade later on when all them marriage certificates turned up in
+banks where we'd discounted 'em, and the farmers had to pay them notes
+of hand they'd signed, running from $300 to $500.
+
+On the 15th day of May us three divided about $6,000. Miss Malloy
+nearly cried with joy. You don't often see a tenderhearted girl or one
+that is bent on doing right.
+
+"Boys," says she, dabbing her eyes with a little handkerchief, "this
+stake comes in handier than a powder rag at a fat men's ball. It gives
+me a chance to reform. I was trying to get out of the real estate
+business when you fellows came along. But if you hadn't taken me in on
+this neat little proposition for removing the cuticle of the rutabaga
+propagators I'm afraid I'd have got into something worse. I was about
+to accept a place in one of these Women's Auxiliary Bazars, where they
+build a parsonage by selling a spoonful of chicken salad and a cream-
+puff for seventy-five cents and calling it a Business Man's Lunch.
+
+"Now I can go into a square, honest business, and give all them queer
+jobs the shake. I'm going to Cincinnati and start a palm reading and
+clairvoyant joint. As Madame Saramaloi, the Egyptian Sorceress, I
+shall give everybody a dollar's worth of good honest prognostication.
+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
+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 Phum 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 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
+tonsolitis on the street corners every evening.
+
+So, in six weeks you see a handsome furnished set of offices down in
+the Wall Street neighborhood, with "The Golconda Gold Bond and
+Investment Company" in gilt letters on the door. And you see in his
+private room, with the door open, the secretary and treasurer, Mr.
+Buckingham Skinner, costumed like the lilies of the conservatory, with
+his high silk hat close to his hand. Nobody yet ever saw Buck outside
+of an instantaneous reach for his hat.
+
+And you might perceive the president and general manager, Mr. R. G.
+Atterbury, with his priceless polished poll, busy in the main office
+room dictating letters to a shorthand countess, who has got pomp and a
+pompadour that is no less than a guarantee to investors.
+
+There is a bookkeeper and an assistant, and a general atmosphere of
+varnish and culpability.
+
+At another desk the eye is relieved by the sight of an ordinary man,
+attired with unscrupulous plainness, sitting with his feet up, eating
+apples, with his obnoxious hat on the back of his head. That man is no
+other than Colonel Tecumseh (once "Parleyvoo") Pickens, the vice-
+president of the company.
+
+"No recherche rags for me," I says to Atterbury, when we was
+organizing the stage properties of the robbery. "I'm a plain man,"
+says I, "and I do not use pajamas, French, or military 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.
+You've got so many stocks you can afford to shake socks. Conservative,
+homely, rough, shrewd, saving--that's your pose. It's a winner in New
+York. Keep your feet on the desk and eat apples. Whenever anybody
+comes in eat an apple. Let 'em see you stuff the peelings in a drawer
+of your desk. Look as economical and rich and rugged as you can."
+
+I followed out Atterbury's instructions. I played the Rocky Mountain
+capitalist without ruching or frills. The way I deposited apple
+peelings to my credit in a drawer when any customers came in made
+Hetty Green look like a spendthrift. I could hear Atterbury saying to
+victims, as he smiled at me, indulgent and venerating, "That's our
+vice-president, Colonel Pickens . . . fortune in Western investments
+. . . delightfully plain manners, but . . . could sign his check for
+half a million . . . simple as a child . . . wonderful head . . .
+conservative and careful almost to a fault."
+
+Atterbury managed the business. Me and Buck never quite understood all
+of it, though he explained it to us in full. It seems the company was
+a kind of cooperative one, and everybody that bought stock shared in
+the profits. First, we officers bought up a controlling interest--we
+had to have that--of the shares at 50 cents a hundred--just what the
+printer charged us--and the rest went to the public at a dollar each.
+The company guaranteed the stockholders a profit of ten 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 a bowknot, and he looked at me like his
+feelings was hurt.
+
+"My dear Colonel Pickens," says he, "you have no soul for Art. Think
+of a thousand homes made happy by possessing one of these beautiful
+gems of the lithographer's skill! Think of the joy in the household
+where one of these Gold Bonds hangs by a pink cord to the 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 per cent. of it; it's plain enough
+that you make a clean, legitimate profit of 90 per cent., less
+expenses, as long as the fish bite.
+
+Atterbury wanted to be president and treasurer too, but Buck winks an
+eye at him and says: "You was to furnish the brains. Do you call it
+good brain work when you propose to take in money at the door, too?
+Think again. I hereby nominate myself treasurer ad valorem, sine die,
+and by acclamation. I chip in that much brain work free. Me and
+Pickens, we furnished the capital, and we'll handle the unearned
+increment as it incremates."
+
+It costs us $500 for office rent and first payment on furniture;
+$1,500 more went for printing and advertising. Atterbury knew his
+business. "Three months to a minute we'll last," says he. "A day
+longer than that and we'll have to either go under or go under an
+alias. By that time we ought to clean up $60,000. And then a money
+belt and a lower berth for me, and the yellow journals and the
+furniture men can pick the bones."
+
+Our ads. done the work. "Country weeklies and Washington hand-press
+dailies, of course," says I when we was ready to make contracts.
+
+"Man," says Atterbury, "as its advertising manager you would cause a
+Limburger cheese factory to remain undiscovered during a hot summer.
+The game we're after is right here in New York and Brooklyn and the
+Harlem reading-rooms. They're the people that the 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
+President Atterbury shines with enthusiasm and demerit, while Colonel
+Tecumseh Pickens, the rude but reputable Croesus of the West, consumes
+so many apples that the peelings hang to the floor from the mahogany
+garbage chest that he calls his desk.
+
+Just as Atterbury said, we ran along about three months without being
+troubled. Buck cashed the paper as fast as it came in and kept the
+money in a safe deposit vault a block or so away. Buck never thought
+much of banks for such purposes. We paid the interest regular on the
+stock we'd sold, so there was nothing for anybody to squeal about. We
+had nearly $50,000 on hand and all three of us had been living as high
+as prize fighters out of training.
+
+One morning, as me and Buck sauntered into the office, fat and
+flippant, from our noon grub, we met an easy-looking fellow, with a
+bright eye and a pipe in his mouth, coming out. We found Atterbury
+looking like he'd been caught a mile from home in a wet shower.
+
+"Know that man?" he asked us.
+
+We said we didn't.
+
+"I don't either," says Atterbury, wiping off his head; "but I'll bet
+enough Gold Bonds to paper a cell in the Tombs that he's a newspaper
+reporter."
+
+"What did he want?" asks Buck.
+
+"Information," says our president. "Said he was thinking of buying
+some stock. He asked me about nine hundred questions, and every one of
+'em hit some sore place in the business. I know he's on a paper. You
+can't fool me. You see a man about half shabby, with an eye like a
+gimlet, smoking cut plug, with dandruff on his coat collar, and
+knowing more than J. P. Morgan and Shakespeare put together--if that
+ain't a reporter I never saw one. I was afraid of this. I don't mind
+detectives and post-office inspectors--I talk to 'em eight minutes and
+then sell 'em stock--but them reporters take the starch out of my
+collar. Boys, I recommend that we declare a dividend and fade away.
+The signs point that way."
+
+Me and Buck talked to Atterbury and got him to stop sweating and stand
+still. That fellow didn't look like a reporter to us. Reporters always
+pull out a pencil and tablet on you, and tell you a story you've
+heard, and strikes you for the drinks. But Atterbury was shaky and
+nervous all day.
+
+The next day me and Buck comes down from the hotel about ten-thirty.
+On the way we buys the papers, and the first thing we see is a column
+on the front page about our little imposition. It was a shame the way
+that reporter intimated that we were no blood relatives of the late
+George W. Childs. He tells all about the scheme as he sees it, in a
+rich, racy kind of a guying style that might amuse most anybody except
+a stockholder. Yes, Atterbury was right; it behooveth the gaily clad
+treasurer and the pearly pated president and the rugged vice-president
+of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company to go away real
+sudden and quick that their days might be longer upon the land.
+
+Me and Buck hurries down to the office. We finds on the stairs and in
+the hall a crowd of people trying to squeeze into our office, which is
+already jammed full inside to the railing. They've nearly all got
+Golconda stock and Gold Bonds in their hands. Me and Buck judged
+they'd been reading the papers, too.
+
+We stopped and looked at our stockholders, some surprised. It wasn't
+quite the kind of a gang we supposed had been investing. They all
+looked like poor people; there was plenty of old women and lots of
+young girls that you'd say worked in factories and mills. Some was old
+men that looked like war veterans, and some was crippled, and a good
+many was just kids--bootblacks and newsboys and messengers. Some was
+working-men in overalls, with their sleeves rolled up. Not one of the
+gang looked like a stockholder in anything unless it was a peanut
+stand. But they all had Golconda stock and looked as sick as you
+please.
+
+I saw a queer kind of a pale look come on Buck's face when he sized up
+the crowd. He stepped up to a sickly looking woman and says: "Madam,
+do you own any of this stock?"
+
+"I put in a hundred dollars," says the woman, faint like. "It was all
+I had saved in a year. One of my children is dying at home now and I
+haven't a cent in the house. I came to see if I could draw out some.
+The circulars said you could draw it at any time. But they say now I
+will lose it all."
+
+There was a smart kind of kid in the gang--I guess he was a newsboy.
+"I got in twenty-fi', mister," he says, looking hopeful at Buck's silk
+hat and clothes. "Dey paid me two-fifty a mont' on it. Say, a man
+tells me dey can't do dat and be on de square. Is dat straight? Do you
+guess I can get out my twenty-fi'?"
+
+Some of the old women was crying. The factory girls was plumb
+distracted. They'd lost all their savings and they'd be docked for the
+time they lost coming to see about it.
+
+There was one girl--a pretty one--in a red shawl, crying in a corner
+like her heart would dissolve. Buck goes over and asks her about it.
+
+"It ain't so much losing the money, mister," says she, shaking all
+over, "though I've been two years saving it up; but Jakey won't marry
+me now. He'll take Rosa Steinfeld. I know J--J--Jakey. She's got $400
+in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai--" she sings out.
+
+Buck looks all around with that same funny look on his face. And then
+we see leaning against the wall, puffing at his pipe, with his eye
+shining at us, this newspaper reporter. Buck and me walks over to him.
+
+"You're a real interesting writer," says Buck. "How far do you mean to
+carry it? Anything more up your sleeve?"
+
+"Oh, I'm just waiting around," says the reporter, smoking away, "in
+case any news turns up. It's up to your stockholders now. Some of them
+might complain, you know. Isn't that the patrol wagon now?" he says,
+listening to a sound outside. "No," he goes on, "that's Doc.
+Whittleford's old cadaver coupe from the Roosevelt. I ought to know
+that gong. Yes, I suppose I've written some interesting stuff at
+times."
+
+"You wait," says Buck; "I'm going to throw an item of news in your
+way."
+
+Buck reaches in his pocket and hands me a key. I knew what he meant
+before he spoke. Confounded old buccaneer--I knew what he meant. They
+don't make them any better than Buck.
+
+"Pick," says he, looking at me hard, "ain't this graft a little out of
+our line? Do we want Jakey to marry Rosa Steinfeld?"
+
+"You've got my vote," says I. "I'll have it here in ten minutes." And
+I starts for the safe deposit vaults.
+
+I comes back with the money done up in a big bundle, and then Buck and
+me takes the journalist reporter around to another door and we let
+ourselves into one of the office rooms.
+
+"Now, my literary friend," says Buck, "take a chair, and keep still,
+and I'll give you an interview. You see before you two grafters from
+Graftersville, Grafter County, Arkansas. Me and Pick have sold brass
+jewelry, hair tonic, song books, marked cards, patent medicines,
+Connecticut Smyrna rugs, furniture polish, and albums in every town
+from Old Point Comfort to the Golden Gate. We've grafted a dollar
+whenever we saw one that had a surplus look to it. But we never went
+after the simoleon in the toe of the sock under the loose brick in the
+corner of the kitchen hearth. There's an old saying you may have heard
+--'fussily decency averni'--which means it's an easy slide from the
+street faker's dry goods box to a desk in Wall Street. We've took that
+slide, but we didn't know exactly what was at the bottom of it. Now,
+you ought to be wise, but you ain't. You've got New York wiseness,
+which means that you judge a man by the outside of his clothes. That
+ain't right. You ought to look at the lining and seams and the 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 put in brains, and if he gets his capital out he's
+lucky. But what do you say, Pick?"
+
+"Me?" says I. "You ought to know me, Buck. I didn't know who was
+buying the stock."
+
+"All right," says Buck. And then he goes through the inside door into
+the main office and looks at the gang trying to squeeze through the
+railing. Atterbury and his hat was gone. And Buck makes 'em a short
+speech.
+
+"All you lambs get in line. You're going to get your wool back. Don't
+shove so. Get in a line--a /line/--not in a pile. Lady, will you
+please stop bleating? Your money's waiting for you. Here, sonny, don't
+climb over that railing; your dimes are safe. Don't cry, sis; you
+ain't out a cent. Get in /line/, I say. Here, Pick, come and
+straighten 'em out and let 'em through and out by the other door."
+
+Buck takes off his coat, pushes his silk hat on the back of his head,
+and lights up a reina victoria. He sets at the table with the boodle
+before him, all done up in neat packages. I gets the stockholders
+strung out and marches 'em, single file, through from the main room;
+and the reporter man passes 'em out of the side door into the hall
+again. As they go by, Buck takes up the stock and the Gold Bonds,
+paying 'em cash, dollar for dollar, the same as they paid in. The
+shareholders of the Golconda Gold Bond and Investment Company can't
+hardly believe it. They almost grabs the money out of Buck's hands.
+Some of the women keep on crying, for it's a custom of the sex to cry
+when they have sorrow, to weep when they have joy, and to shed tears
+whenever they find themselves without either.
+
+The old women's fingers shake when they stuff the skads in the bosom
+of their rusty dresses. The factory girls just stoop over and flap
+their dry goods a second, and you hear the elastic go "pop" as the
+currency goes down in the ladies' department of the "Old Domestic
+Lisle-Thread Bank."
+
+Some of the stockholders that had been doing the Jeremiah act the
+loudest outside had spasms of restored confidence and wanted to leave
+the money invested. "Salt away that chicken feed in your duds, and
+skip along," says Buck. "What business have you got investing in
+bonds? The 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 Company.
+And say--if Jakey ever follows his nose, even at a respectful
+distance, around the corner where Rosa Steinfeld lives, you are hereby
+authorized to knock a couple of inches of it off."
+
+When they was all paid off and gone, Buck calls the newspaper reporter
+and shoves the rest of the money over to him.
+
+"You begun this," says Buck; "now finish it. Over there are the books,
+showing every share and bond issued. Here's the money to cover, except
+what we've spent to live on. You'll have to act as receiver. I guess
+you'll do the square thing on account of your paper. This is the best
+way we know how to settle it. Me and our substantial but apple-weary
+vice-president are going to follow the example of our revered
+president, and skip. Now, have you got enough news for 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. What'll the managing editor
+say? He'll just hand me a pass to Bellevue and tell me to come back
+when I get cured. I might turn in a story about a sea serpent wiggling
+up Broadway, but I haven't got the nerve to try 'em with a pipe like
+this. A get-rich-quick scheme--excuse me--gang giving back the boodle!
+Oh, no. I'm not on the comic supplement."
+
+"You can't understand it, of course," says Buck, with his hand on the
+door knob. "Me and Pick ain't Wall Streeters like you know 'em. We
+never allowed to swindle sick old women and working girls and take
+nickels off of kids. In the lines of graft we've worked we took money
+from the people the Lord made to be buncoed--sports and rounders and
+smart Alecks and street crowds, that always have a few dollars to
+throw away, and farmers that wouldn't ever be happy if the grafters
+didn't come around and play with 'em when they sold their crops. We
+never cared to fish for the kind of suckers that bite here. No, sir.
+We got too much respect for the profession and for ourselves. 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."
+
+And me and Buck slides out the door; and that's the way the Golconda
+Company went into involuntary liquefaction.
+
+If you had seen me and Buck the next night you'd have had to go to a
+little bum hotel over near the West Side ferry landings. We was in a
+little back room, and I was filling up a gross of six-ounce bottles
+with hydrant water colored red with aniline and flavored with
+cinnamon. Buck was smoking, contented, and he wore a decent brown
+derby in place of his silk hat.
+
+"It's a good thing, Pick," says he, as he drove in the corks, "that we
+got Brady to lend us his horse and wagon for a week. We'll rustle up
+the stake by then. This hair tonic'll sell right along over in Jersey.
+Bald heads ain't popular over there on account of the mosquitoes."
+
+Directly I dragged out my valise and went down in it for labels.
+
+"Hair tonic labels are out," says I. "Only about a dozen on hand."
+
+"Buy some more," says Buck.
+
+We investigated our pockets and found we had just enough money to
+settle our hotel bill in the morning and pay our passage over the
+ferry.
+
+"Plenty of the 'Shake-the-Shakes Chill Cure' labels," says I, after
+looking.
+
+"What more do you want?" says Buck. "Slap 'em on. The chill season is
+just opening up in the Hackensack low grounds. What's hair, anyway, if
+you have to shake it off?"
+
+We 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.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+HOSTAGES TO MOMUS
+
+
+I
+
+I never got inside of the legitimate line of graft but once. 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 to our case.
+
+/Rurales/? They're a sort of country police; but don't draw any mental
+crayon portraits of the worthy constables 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 /rurales/ started for us we started for the States. They
+chased 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 emigrated to San Antone, and then over to New Orleans,
+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 named McCarty--wait a minute;
+Adolph McCarty--was trying to make the French Quarter pay up the back
+trading-stamps due on the 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
+except 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 down-stairs. The landlord was shelling
+peas on the front porch. He was six feet of chills and fever, and
+Hongkong in complexion 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, gentlemen," says the landlord, "I 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
+yellowish 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 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 cutlets 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 traveled, 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
+Norfolk 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
+ramifications 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 streetcards, with a hand-organ
+playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest
+suicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that's
+all, except a /demi-tasse/."
+
+"Well," says Caligula, "I reckon in New York you get to be a
+conniseer; and when you go around with the /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
+polish 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 mighty poor. As
+far as we could see was red hills all washed down with gullies and
+scattered over with patches of piny woods. Blackberry bushes was all
+that 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-
+barrels 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 Jackson
+T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad,
+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
+morning. 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 worth 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 dish-towels. 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."
+
+"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
+gunboats 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
+magazines; and then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside
+the 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
+administration 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 thousand 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 little mountains,
+and stick up his 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."
+
+
+III
+
+Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch of
+mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T.
+Rockingham. 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 out 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-fifty-
+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
+comfortable; 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! 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 mean time 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 inculcate the occasion with a few well-timed
+trivialities in the way of 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 tobasco 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
+appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real /vive bonjour/.
+
+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
+beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator
+who--"
+
+"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attend 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 a cross 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 take on a
+postscript about how 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 signalling 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
+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 he'll 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 dimension 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
+disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our general
+passenger agent, is now negotiating a peachcrate 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 Pendergast, 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.
+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," I 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 been 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
+agglomeration 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 Pendergast 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
+gathers 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 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
+going 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 /Puck/. 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
+remember 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
+himself never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with
+the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE ETHICS OF PIG
+
+On an east-bound train I went into the smoker and found Jefferson
+Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use
+his cerebrum 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
+reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential 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
+upright, 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 yet entered, and see if I can find a
+partner 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 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
+neighborhood, 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 women 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:
+
+  'Ill 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 ever. 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 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.'
+
+"I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the
+constable 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
+Pitfall & 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.
+
+"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 at the Vacation in 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
+manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished in the way of
+indirect brigandage or nonactionable 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
+accents, '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 atterwards.
+Some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler 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, Mr. Tatum, it would be
+considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State
+Gas. However, 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 atmosphere 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 had idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was
+feeling 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
+though the farming belt of the Middle West; so we headed in that
+direction. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley
+Brothers' circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into town
+and pounding the Belgian blocks with their hand-pegged sabots as
+artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I
+never pass a circus without 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 I knew he would, after he was rigged up
+in the ready-made rutabaga regalia. 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 bed. 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
+capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed the game with only
+forty-two dollars 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 honest 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. 'You flimflammed in your part of the
+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've really got kleptopigia. And maybe when
+we get out of the pig belt you'll turn your mind to higher and more
+remunerative 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,' 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 whenever
+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. He'll 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 I'll do, Rufe,'
+I says. 'I'll give you ten dollars for that pig.'
+
+"'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
+fireside 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 for?'
+
+"'Viewing me casuistically,' says I, with a rare smile, 'you wouldn't
+think that I've got an artistic side to my temper. But I have. I'm a
+collector 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 Merino to a Poland China. This looks like a blooded pig to me,
+Rufe,' says I. 'I 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 better 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
+matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is
+philanthropy. 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 collection. 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 I.
+
+"'Make it eight hundred,' says Rufe, 'and I'll 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.
+
+"'I'll just take him into my own room,' says I, 'and lock him up till
+after 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
+under 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
+Misfitzky's 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
+morning. I'll take the five thousand dollars 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 to 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
+1 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.
+
+"'Fake,' 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.
+
+"Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the
+newspaper 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.'
+
+"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 endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs--what's the
+difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Gentle Grafter, by O. Henry
+
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