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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:17:46 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:17:46 -0700 |
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diff --git a/1805-h/1805-h.htm b/1805-h/1805-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3fb9bad --- /dev/null +++ b/1805-h/1805-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6332 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<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> +<style type="text/css"> + body {background:#fdfdfd; + color:black; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + font-size: large; + margin-top:100px; + margin-left:15%; + margin-right:15%; + text-align:justify; } + h1, h2, h3, h4 {text-align: center; } + hr.narrow { width: 40%; + text-align: center; } + hr { width: 100%; } + blockquote { font-size: large; } + blockquote.med { font-size: medium; } + table {font-size: large; + text-align: left; } + table.med {font-size: medium; + text-align: left; } + p {text-indent: 4%; } + p.noindent {text-indent: 0%; } + img { border: 0; } + .caption { font-size: small; + font-weight: bold; } + .center { text-align: center; } + .ind2 {margin-left: 2em; } + .ind10 {margin-left: 10em; } + .ind15 {margin-left: 15em; } + .smallcaps { font-variant: small-caps; } + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + pre {font-size: 65%; } +</style> +</head> +<body> +<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> </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> </p> +<hr /> +<p> <a name="IL1"></a> </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> </p> +<p> </p> +<h1>THE GENTLE GRAFTER</h1> + +<h4>by</h4> + +<h2>O. Henry</h2> + +<p> </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> </p> +<p> </p> +<h4>Illustrated by</h4> +<h3>H. C. Greening and May Wilson Preston</h3> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h4>1919</h4> +<p> </p> +<hr class="narrow" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<p> </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> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="narrow" /> + +<p> </p> +<p><a name="1"></a> </p> +<h3>THE OCTOPUS MAROONED</h3> +<p> </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—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."</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—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> <a name="IL2"></a> </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> </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—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> <a name="IL3"></a> </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> </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> </p> +<p><a name="2"></a> </p> +<h3>JEFF PETERS AS A PERSONAL MAGNET</h3> +<p> </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> <a name="IL4"></a> </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…"</span> +</div> +<p> </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> <a name="IL5"></a> </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 … commenced selling the bitters +on Main Street."</span> +</div> +<p> </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—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—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—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—ow-ouch—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—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—of the enlightened school of long-distance, +sub-conscientious treatment of fallacies and meningitis—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—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—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> <a name="IL6"></a> </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> </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—' +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> </p> +<p><a name="3"></a> </p> +<h3>MODERN RURAL SPORTS</h3> +<p> </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—'</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—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—my usual ones. Yes; +Friday—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—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.'</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'—and +so forth.</p> + +<p>"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.</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"—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> </p> +<p><a name="4"></a> </p> +<h3>THE CHAIR OF PHILANTHROMATHEMATICS</h3> +<p> </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—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—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—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.</p> + +<p>"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.</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—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.</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 /> </p> + + +<div class="center"> +<table class="med"><tr><td> +<p class="noindent">"'Raw, raw, raw,<br /> + <span class="ind2">Done, done, done,</span><br /> + Peters, Tucker,<br /> + <span class="ind2">Lots of fun,</span><br /> + Bow-wow-wow,<br /> + <span class="ind2">Haw-hee-haw,</span><br /> + World University,<br /> + <span class="ind2">Hip, hurrah!'</span><br /> </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—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> </p> +<p><a name="5"></a> </p> +<h3>THE HAND THAT RILES THE WORLD</h3> +<p> </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?—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—er—business."</p> + +<p>"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.</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 & Tucker.</p> + + +<p> <a name="IL7"></a> </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> </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—er—, playing the po—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> <a name="IL8"></a> </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> </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> <a name="IL9"></a> </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> </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. & 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.'</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> </p> +<p><a name="6"></a> </p> +<h3>THE EXACT SCIENCE OF MATRIMONY</h3> +<p> </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—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.</p> + +<p>"We fixed up an advertisement that read about like +this:<br /> </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 & Tucker, agents, Cairo, +Ill.</span><br /> </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> <a name="IL10"></a> </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> </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 & 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.</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> <a name="IL11"></a> </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> </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> <a name="IL12"></a> </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> </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> </p> +<p><a name="7"></a> </p> +<h3>A MIDSUMMER MASQUERADE</h3> +<p> </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> <a name="IL13"></a> </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> </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—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> <a name="IL14"></a> </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> </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 +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.'</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> <a name="IL15"></a> </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> </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 rôles 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—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—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—'</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> </p> +<p><a name="8"></a> </p> +<h3>SHEARING THE WOLF</h3> +<p> </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 subpœna 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> <a name="IL16"></a> </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> </p> + + +<p>"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.</p> + +<p>"'Now, what do you think of that?' says he, laughing—'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> <a name="IL17"></a> </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> </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> <a name="IL18"></a> </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> </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—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—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> </p> +<p><a name="9"></a> </p> +<h3>INNOCENTS OF BROADWAY</h3> +<p> </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 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.</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—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> <a name="IL19"></a> </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> </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—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—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—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.</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—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> <a name="IL20"></a> </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> </p> + + +<p>"'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.</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 & 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> <a name="IL21"></a> </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> </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> </p> +<p><a name="10"></a> </p> +<h3>CONSCIENCE IN ART</h3> +<p> </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—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—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 $15,000,000 once. Here's the +way he set it down:<br /> </p> + + +<div class="center"> +<table class="med"> +<tr> + <td>R. R. fare to and from</td> + <td align="right">$ 21 00</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td>Cab fare to and from hotel </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> </td> + <td align="right">________</td> +</tr> + <tr><td> Total</td> + <td align="right">$5,823 00<br /> </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—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—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—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. +& 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—'</p> + +<p>"'Oh,' says Andy, 'out of respect for that conscience of yours. +Come on.'"</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p><a name="11"></a> </p> +<h3>THE MAN HIGHER UP</h3> +<p> </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—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—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—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. & 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.</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 +Phœbe 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—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—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.'</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—'</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—'</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—all +silver—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—"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.'</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—'</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—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> </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—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—"</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—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—"</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> </p> +<p><a name="12"></a> </p> +<h3>A TEMPERED WIND</h3> +<p> </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—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—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.'</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—no two names alike—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—no peroxide, patchouli, nor peau de soie; +about twenty-two, brown hair, pleasant ways—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—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> <a name="IL22"></a> </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> </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—it certainly had all other impostures I know about +beat to a batter.</p> + + +<p> <a name="IL23"></a> </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> </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> <a name="IL24"></a> </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> </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"—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—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> <a name="IL25"></a> </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> </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 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."</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—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 … 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."</p> + + +<p> <a name="IL26"></a> </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> </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—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.</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—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—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.</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—$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 Crœsus 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—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."</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—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> <a name="IL27"></a> </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> </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—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—a pretty one—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—J—Jakey. She's got $400 in the savings bank. Ai, ai, ai—" +she sings out.</p> + + +<p> <a name="IL28"></a> </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> </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 +coupé 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—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—'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."</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—a <i>line</i>—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> <a name="IL29"></a> </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> </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—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—excuse me—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—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> </p> +<p><a name="13"></a> </p> +<h3>HOSTAGES TO MOMUS</h3> +<p> </p> + + +<h4>I<br /> </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>—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—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.</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> </p> +<h4>II<br /> </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 & +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 & +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> </p> +<h4>III<br /> </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 & +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—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>à 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—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—"</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 /> </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 /> </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> </p> +<h4>IV<br /> </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 & 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. +& 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—"</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 entrées and <i>pièces 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 & 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—"</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—"</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 & Edenville Tap Railroad.</p> + + +<p> </p> +<p><a name="14"></a> </p> +<h3>THE ETHICS OF PIG</h3> +<p> </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 /> </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 /> </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 & 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 /> </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 /> </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—"</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—don't Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and +pigs—what's the difference? Why not bristles as well as horns +and fur?" </p> + + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLE GRAFTER***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 1805-h.txt or 1805-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/8/0/1805">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/0/1805</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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