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Henry</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world 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>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Waifs and Strays</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: O. Henry</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August, 2000 [eBook #2295]<br /> +[Most recently updated: October 30, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Earle C. Beach. HTML version by Al Haines</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAIFS AND STRAYS ***</div> + +<h1>Waifs and Strays</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by O. Henry</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style=""> + +<tr> +<td> <b>PART I—TWELVE STORIES</b></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">The Red Roses of Tonia</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">Round The Circle</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">The Rubber Plant’s Story</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">Out of Nazareth</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">Confessions of a Humorist</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">The Sparrows in Madison Square</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">Hearts and Hands</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">The Cactus</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">The Detective Detector</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">The Dog and the Playlet</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">A Little Talk About Mobs</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">The Snow Man</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>THE RED ROSES OF TONIA</h2> + +<p> +A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south-bound from San +Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia +Weaver’s Easter hat. +</p> + +<p> +Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the +Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands empty +except for a cigarette. At the small station, Nopal, he had learned of the +delayed train and, having no commands to wait, turned his ponies toward the +ranch again. +</p> + +<p> +Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any more for the +after-church parade on Fifth Avenue than she does for her loyal outfit of +subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cactus, Tex., a mistake has been +made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of the Frio country put forth +Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as faithfully as is done anywhere, and +the Southwest is, for one day, a mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise. +And now it was Good Friday, and Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat blushed unseen +in the desert air of an impotent express car, beyond the burned trestle. On +Saturday noon the Rogers girls, from the Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, +from the Anchor-O, and Mrs. Bennet and Ida, from Green Valley, would convene at +the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. With their Easter hats and frocks carefully +wrapped and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation would then merrily +jog the ten miles to Cactus, where on the morrow they would array themselves, +subjugate man, do homage to Easter, and cause jealous agitation among the +lilies of the field. +</p> + +<p> +Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house flicking gloomily with a +quirt at a tuft of curly mesquite. She displayed a frown and a contumelious +lip, and endeavored to radiate an aura of disagreeableness and tragedy. +</p> + +<p> +“I hate railroads,” she announced positively. “And men. Men +pretend to run them. Can you give any excuse why a trestle should burn? Ida +Bennet’s hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall not go one step +toward Cactus without a new hat. If I were a man I would get one.” +</p> + +<p> +Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement of their kind. One was Wells +Pearson, foreman of the Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other was Thompson +Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from the Quintana Valley. Both thought Tonia +Weaver adorable, especially when she railed at railroads and menaced men. +Either would have given up his epidermis to make for her an Easter hat more +cheerfully than the ostrich gives up his tip or the aigrette lays down its +life. Neither possessed the ingenuity to conceive a means of supplying the sad +deficiency against the coming Sabbath. Pearson’s deep brown face and +sunburned light hair gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of +youth’s profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia’s plight +grieved him through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and +pliable. He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties +and shoes, and was made dumb by woman’s presence. +</p> + +<p> +“The big water-hole on Sandy Creek,” said Pearson, scarcely hoping +to make a hit, “was filled up by that last rain.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! Was it?” said Tonia sharply. “Thank you for the +information. I suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you +think a woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as you +do. If your old water-hole could have put out the fire on that trestle you +might have some reason to talk about it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am deeply sorry,” said Burrows, warned by Pearson’s fate, +“that you failed to receive your hat, Miss Weaver—deeply sorry, +indeed. If there was anything I could do—” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t bother,” interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. +“If there was anything you could do, you’d be doing it, of course. +There isn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her frown +smoothed away. She had an inspiration. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Nueces,” +she said, “that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers there. She said it was +the latest style. It might have some left. But it’s twenty-eight miles to +Lone Elm.” +</p> + +<p> +The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost smiled. The +Knights, then, were not all turned to dust; nor were their rowels rust. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at a white gulf cloud +sailing across the cerulean dome, “nobody could ride to Lone Elm and back +by the time the girls call by for me to-morrow. So, I reckon I’ll have to +stay at home this Easter Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +And then she smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Miss Tonia,” said Pearson, reaching for his hat, as guileful +as a sleeping babe. “I reckon I’ll be trotting along back to Mucho +Calor. There’s some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first thing in +the morning; and me and Road Runner has got to be on hand. It’s too bad +your hat got sidetracked. Maybe they’ll get that trestle mended yet in +time for Easter.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia,” announced Burrows, looking at +his watch. “I declare, it’s nearly five o’clock! I must be +out at my lambing camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes.” +</p> + +<p> +Tonia’s suitors seemed to have been smitten with a need for haste. They +bade her a ceremonious farewell, and then shook each other’s hands with +the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the Southwesterner. +</p> + +<p> +“Hope I’ll see you again soon, Mr. Pearson,” said Burrows. +</p> + +<p> +“Same here,” said the cowman, with the serious face of one whose +friend goes upon a whaling voyage. “Be gratified to see you ride over to +Mucho Calor any time you strike that section of the range.” +</p> + +<p> +Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cow-pony on the Frio, and let him +pitch for a minute, as he always did on being mounted, even at the end of a +day’s travel. +</p> + +<p> +“What kind of a hat was that, Miss Tonia,” he called, “that +you ordered from San Antone? I can’t help but be sorry about that +hat.” +</p> + +<p> +“A straw,” said Tonia; “the latest shape, of course; trimmed +with red roses. That’s what I like—red roses.” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no color more becoming to your complexion and hair,” +said Burrows, admiringly. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s what I like,” said Tonia. “And of all the +flowers, give me red roses. Keep all the pinks and blues for yourself. But +what’s the use, when trestles burn and leave you without anything? +It’ll be a dry old Easter for me!” +</p> + +<p> +Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Runner at a gallop into the chaparral +east of the Espinosa ranch house. +</p> + +<p> +As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows’s long-legged sorrel +struck out down the narrow stretch of open prairie to the southwest. +</p> + +<p> +Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting-room. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn’t get your +hat,” said her mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t worry, mother,” said Tonia, coolly. +“I’ll have a new hat, all right, in time to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +When Burrows reached the end of the strip of prairie he pulled his sorrel to +the right and let him pick his way daintily across a sacuista flat through +which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a gravelly hill, matted +with bush, the horse scrambled, and at length emerged, with a snort of +satisfaction into a stretch of high, level prairie, grassy and dotted with the +lighter green of mesquites in their fresh spring foliage. Always to the right +Burrows bore, until in a little while he struck the old Indian trail that +followed the Nueces southward, and that passed, twenty-eight miles to the +southeast, through Lone Elm. +</p> + +<p> +Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled himself in the +saddle for a long ride he heard the drumming of hoofs, the hollow +“thwack” of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of a +Comanche; and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of the trail +like a precocious yellow chick from a dark green Easter egg. +</p> + +<p> +Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place in +Pearson’s bosom. In Tonia’s presence his voice was as soft as a +summer bullfrog’s in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits, +a mile away, ducked their ears, and sensitive plants closed their fearful +fronds. +</p> + +<p> +“Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven’t you, +neighbor?” asked Pearson, as Road Runner fell in at the sorrel’s +side. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty-eight miles,” said Burrows, looking a little grim. +Pearson’s laugh woke an owl one hour too early in his water-elm on the +river bank, half a mile away. +</p> + +<p> +“All right for you, sheepman. I like an open game, myself. We’re +two locoed he-milliners hat-hunting in the wilderness. I notify you. Burr, to +mind your corrals. We’ve got an even start, and the one that gets the +headgear will stand some higher at the Espinosa.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got a good pony,” said Burrows, eyeing Road +Runner’s barrel-like body and tapering legs that moved as regularly as +the pistonrod of an engine. “It’s a race, of course; but +you’re too much of a horseman to whoop it up this soon. Say we travel +together till we get to the home stretch.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m your company,” agreed Pearson, “and I admire your +sense. If there’s hats at Lone Elm, one of ’em shall set on Miss +Tonia’s brow to-morrow, and you won’t be at the crowning. I +ain’t bragging, Burr, but that sorrel of yours is weak in the +fore-legs.” +</p> + +<p> +“My horse against yours,” offered Burrows, “that Miss Tonia +wears the hat I take her to Cactus to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll take you up,” shouted Pearson. “But oh, +it’s just like horse-stealing for me! I can use that sorrel for a +lady’s animal when—when somebody comes over to Mucho Calor, +and—” +</p> + +<p> +Burrows’ dark face glowered so suddenly that the cowman broke off his +sentence. But Pearson could never feel any pressure for long. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s all this Easter business about, Burr?” he asked, +cheerfully. “Why do the women folks have to have new hats by the almanac +or bust all cinches trying to get ’em?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a seasonable statute out of the testaments,” explained +Burrows. “It’s ordered by the Pope or somebody. And it has +something to do with the Zodiac I don’t know exactly, but I think it was +invented by the Egyptians.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s an all-right jubilee if the heathens did put their brand on +it,” said Pearson; “or else Tonia wouldn’t have anything to +do with it. And they pull it off at church, too. Suppose there ain’t but +one hat in the Lone Elm store, Burr!” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” said Burrows, darkly, “the best man of us’ll +take it back to the Espinosa.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, man!” cried Pearson, throwing his hat high and catching it +again, “there’s nothing like you come off the sheep ranges before. +You talk good and collateral to the occasion. And if there’s more than +one?” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” said Burrows, “we’ll pick our choice and one of +us’ll get back first with his and the other won’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“There never was two souls,” proclaimed Pearson to the stars, +“that beat more like one heart than yourn and mine. Me and you might be +riding on a unicorn and thinking out of the same piece of mind.” +</p> + +<p> +At a little past midnight the riders loped into Lone Elm. The half a hundred +houses of the big village were dark. On its only street the big wooden store +stood barred and shuttered. +</p> + +<p> +In a few moments the horses were fastened and Pearson was pounding cheerfully +on the door of old Sutton, the storekeeper. +</p> + +<p> +The barrel of a Winchester came through a cranny of a solid window shutter +followed by a short inquiry. +</p> + +<p> +“Wells Pearson, of the Mucho Calor, and Burrows, of Green Valley,” +was the response. “We want to buy some goods in the store. Sorry to wake +you up but we must have ’em. Come on out, Uncle Tommy, and get a move on +you.” +</p> + +<p> +Uncle Tommy was slow, but at length they got him behind his counter with a +kerosene lamp lit, and told him of their dire need. +</p> + +<p> +“Easter hats?” said Uncle Tommy, sleepily. “Why, yes, I +believe I have got just a couple left. I only ordered a dozen this spring. +I’ll show ’em to you.” +</p> + +<p> +Now, Uncle Tommy Sutton was a merchant, half asleep or awake. In dusty +pasteboard boxes under the counter he had two left-over spring hats. But, alas! +for his commercial probity on that early Saturday morn—they were hats of +two springs ago, and a woman’s eye would have detected the fraud at half +a glance. But to the unintelligent gaze of the cowpuncher and the sheepman they +seemed fresh from the mint of contemporaneous April. +</p> + +<p> +The hats were of a variety once known as “cart-wheels.” They were +of stiff straw, colored red, and flat brimmed. Both were exactly alike, and +trimmed lavishly around their crowns with full blown, immaculate, artificial +white roses. +</p> + +<p> +“That all you got, Uncle Tommy?” said Pearson. “All right. +Not much choice here, Burr. Take your pick.” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re the latest styles” lied Uncle Tommy. +“You’d see ’em on Fifth Avenue, if you was in New +York.” +</p> + +<p> +Uncle Tommy wrapped and tied each hat in two yards of dark calico for a +protection. One Pearson tied carefully to his calfskin saddle-thongs; and the +other became part of Road Runner’s burden. They shouted thanks and +farewells to Uncle Tommy, and cantered back into the night on the home stretch. +</p> + +<p> +The horsemen jockeyed with all their skill. They rode more slowly on their way +back. The few words they spoke were not unfriendly. Burrows had a Winchester +under his left leg slung over his saddle horn. Pearson had a six shooter belted +around him. Thus men rode in the Frio country. +</p> + +<p> +At half-past seven in the morning they rode to the top of a hill and saw the +Espinosa Ranch, a white spot under a dark patch of live-oaks, five miles away. +</p> + +<p> +The sight roused Pearson from his drooping pose in the saddle. He knew what +Road Runner could do. The sorrel was lathered, and stumbling frequently; Road +Runner was pegging away like a donkey engine. +</p> + +<p> +Pearson turned toward the sheepman and laughed. “Good-bye, Burr,” +he cried, with a wave of his hand. “It’s a race now. We’re on +the home stretch.” +</p> + +<p> +He pressed Road Runner with his knees and leaned toward the Espinosa. Road +Runner struck into a gallop, with tossing head and snorting nostrils, as if he +were fresh from a month in pasture. +</p> + +<p> +Pearson rode twenty yards and heard the unmistakable sound of a Winchester +lever throwing a cartridge into the barrel. He dropped flat along his +horse’s back before the crack of the rifle reached his ears. +</p> + +<p> +It is possible that Burrows intended only to disable the horse—he was a +good enough shot to do that without endangering his rider. But as Pearson +stooped the ball went through his shoulder and then through Road Runner’s +neck. The horse fell and the cowman pitched over his head into the hard road, +and neither of them tried to move. +</p> + +<p> +Burrows rode on without stopping. +</p> + +<p> +In two hours Pearson opened his eyes and took inventory. He managed to get to +his feet and staggered back to where Road Runner was lying. +</p> + +<p> +Road Runner was lying there, but he appeared to be comfortable. Pearson +examined him and found that the bullet had “creased” him. He had +been knocked out temporarily, but not seriously hurt. But he was tired, and he +lay there on Miss Tonia’s hat and ate leaves from a mesquite branch that +obligingly hung over the road. +</p> + +<p> +Pearson made the horse get up. The Easter hat, loosed from the saddle-thongs, +lay there in its calico wrappings, a shapeless thing from its sojourn beneath +the solid carcass of Road Runner. Then Pearson fainted and fell head long upon +the poor hat again, crumpling it under his wounded shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +It is hard to kill a cowpuncher. In half an hour he revived—long enough +for a woman to have fainted twice and tried ice-cream for a restorer. He got up +carefully and found Road Runner who was busy with the near-by grass. He tied +the unfortunate hat to the saddle again, and managed to get himself there, too, +after many failures. +</p> + +<p> +At noon a gay and fluttering company waited in front of the Espinosa Ranch. The +Rogers girls were there in their new buckboard, and the Anchor-O outfit and the +Green Valley folks—mostly women. And each and every one wore her new +Easter hat, even upon the lonely prairies, for they greatly desired to shine +forth and do honor to the coming festival. +</p> + +<p> +At the gate stood Tonia, with undisguised tears upon her cheeks. In her hand +she held Burrow’s Lone Elm hat, and it was at its white roses, hated by +her, that she wept. For her friends were telling her, with the ecstatic joy of +true friends, that cart-wheels could not be worn, being three seasons passed +into oblivion. +</p> + +<p> +“Put on your old hat and come, Tonia,” they urged. +</p> + +<p> +“For Easter Sunday?” she answered. “I’ll die +first.” And wept again. +</p> + +<p> +The hats of the fortunate ones were curved and twisted into the style of +spring’s latest proclamation. +</p> + +<p> +A strange being rode out of the brush among them, and there sat his horse +languidly. He was stained and disfigured with the green of the grass and the +limestone of rocky roads. +</p> + +<p> +“Hallo, Pearson,” said Daddy Weaver. “Look like you’ve +been breaking a mustang. What’s that you’ve got tied to your +saddle—a pig in a poke?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, come on, Tonia, if you’re going,” said Betty Rogers. +“We mustn’t wait any longer. We’ve saved a seat in the +buckboard for you. Never mind the hat. That lovely muslin you’ve got on +looks sweet enough with any old hat.” +</p> + +<p> +Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on his saddle. Tonia looked at him +with a sudden hope. Pearson was a man who created hope. He got the thing loose +and handed it to her. Her quick fingers tore at the strings. +</p> + +<p> +“Best I could do,” said Pearson slowly. “What Road Runner and +me done to it will be about all it needs.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh! it’s just the right shape,” shrieked Tonia. +“And red roses! Wait till I try it on!” +</p> + +<p> +She flew in to the glass, and out again, beaming, radiating, blossomed. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t red become her?” chanted the girls in recitative. +“Hurry up, Tonia!” +</p> + +<p> +Tonia stopped for a moment by the side of Road Runner. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, thank you, Wells,” she said, happily. “It’s +just what I wanted. Won’t you come over to Cactus to-morrow and go to +church with me?” +</p> + +<p> +“If I can,” said Pearson. He was looking curiously at her hat, and +then he grinned weakly. +</p> + +<p> +Tonia flew into the buckboard like a bird. The vehicles sped away for Cactus. +</p> + +<p> +“What have you been doing, Pearson?” asked Daddy Weaver. “You +ain’t looking so well as common.” +</p> + +<p> +“Me?” said Pearson. “I’ve been painting flowers. Them +roses was white when I left Lone Elm. Help me down, Daddy Weaver, for I +haven’t got any more paint to spare.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>ROUND THE CIRCLE</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +[This story is especially interesting as an early treatment (1902) of the theme +afterward developed with a surer hand in The Pendulum.] +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Find yo’ shirt all right, Sam?” asked Mrs. Webber, from her +chair under the live-oak, where she was comfortably seated with a paper-back +volume for company. +</p> + +<p> +“It balances perfeckly, Marthy,” answered Sam, with a suspicious +pleasantness in his tone. “At first I was about ter be a little reckless +and kick ’cause ther buttons was all off, but since I diskiver that the +button holes is all busted out, why, I wouldn’t go so fur as to say the +buttons is any loss to speak of.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well,” said his wife, carelessly, “put on your +necktie—that’ll keep it together.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam Webber’s sheep ranch was situated in the loneliest part of the +country between the Nueces and the Frio. The ranch house—a two-room box +structure—was on the rise of a gently swelling hill in the midst of a +wilderness of high chaparral. In front of it was a small clearing where stood +the sheep pens, shearing shed, and wool house. Only a few feet back of it began +the thorny jungle. +</p> + +<p> +Sam was going to ride over to the Chapman ranch to see about buying some more +improved merino rams. At length he came out, ready for his ride. This being a +business trip of some importance, and the Chapman ranch being almost a small +town in population and size, Sam had decided to “dress up” +accordingly. The result was that he had transformed himself from a graceful, +picturesque frontiersman into something much less pleasing to the sight. The +tight white collar awkwardly constricted his muscular, mahogany-colored neck. +The buttonless shirt bulged in stiff waves beneath his unbuttoned vest. The +suit of “ready-made” effectually concealed the fine lines of his +straight, athletic figure. His berry-brown face was set to the melancholy +dignity befitting a prisoner of state. He gave Randy, his three-year-old son, a +pat on the head, and hurried out to where Mexico, his favorite saddle horse, +was standing. +</p> + +<p> +Marthy, leisurely rocking in her chair, fixed her place in the book with her +finger, and turned her head, smiling mischievously as she noted the havoc Sam +had wrought with his appearance in trying to “fix up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, ef I must say it, Sam,” she drawled, “you look jest +like one of them hayseeds in the picture papers, ’stead of a free and +independent sheepman of the State o’ Texas.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam climbed awkwardly into the saddle. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re the one ought to be ’shamed to say so,” he +replied hotly. “’Stead of ’tendin’ to a man’s +clothes you’re al’ays setting around a-readin’ them +billy-by-dam yaller-back novils.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, shet up and ride along,” said Mrs. Webber, with a little jerk +at the handles of her chair; “you always fussin’ ’bout my +readin’. I do a-plenty; and I’ll read when I wanter. I live in the +bresh here like a varmint, never seein’ nor hearin’ nothin’, +and what other ’musement kin I have? Not in listenin’ to you talk, +for it’s complain, complain, one day after another. Oh, go on, Sam, and +leave me in peace.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and “shoved” down the +wagon trail that connected his ranch with the old, open Government road. It was +eight o’clock, and already beginning to be very warm. He should have +started three hours earlier. Chapman ranch was only eighteen miles away, but +there was a road for only three miles of the distance. He had ridden over there +once with one of the Half-Moon cowpunchers, and he had the direction +well-defined in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +Sam turned off the old Government road at the split mesquite, and struck down +the arroyo of the Quintanilla. Here was a narrow stretch of smiling valley, +upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly mesquite grass; and Mexico consumed +those few miles quickly with his long, easy lope. Again, upon reaching Wild +Duck Waterhole, must he abandon well-defined ways. He turned now to his right +up a little hill, pebble-covered, upon which grew only the tenacious and thorny +prickly pear and chaparral. At the summit of this he paused to take his last +general view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind through brakes and +thickets of chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part seeing scarcely +farther than twenty yards in any direction, choosing his way by the +prairie-dweller’s instinct, guided only by an occasional glimpse of a far +distant hilltop, a peculiarly shaped knot of trees, or the position of the sun. +</p> + +<p> +Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat that lies +between the Quintanilla and the Piedra. +</p> + +<p> +In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the usual +confusion of mind and the hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was anxious to redeem +the situation, twisting with alacrity along the tortuous labyrinths of the +jungle. At the moment his master’s sureness of the route had failed his +horse had divined the fact. There were no hills now that they could climb to +obtain a view of the country. They came upon a few, but so dense and interlaced +was the brush that scarcely could a rabbit penetrate the mass. They were in the +great, lonely thicket of the Frio bottoms. +</p> + +<p> +It was a mere nothing for a cattleman or a sheepman to be lost for a day or a +night. The thing often happened. It was merely a matter of missing a meal or +two and sleeping comfortably on your saddle blankets on a soft mattress of +mesquite grass. But in Sam’s case it was different. He had never been +away from his ranch at night. Marthy was afraid of the country—afraid of +Mexicans, of snakes, of panthers, even of sheep. So he had never left her +alone. +</p> + +<p> +It must have been about four in the afternoon when Sam’s conscience +awoke. He was limp and drenched, rather from anxiety than the heat or fatigue. +Until now he had been hoping to strike the trail that led to the Frio crossing +and the Chapman ranch. He must have crossed it at some dim part of it and +ridden beyond. If so he was now something like fifty miles from home. If he +could strike a ranch—a camp—any place where he could get a fresh +horse and inquire the road, he would ride all night to get back to Marthy and +the kid. +</p> + +<p> +So, I have hinted, Sam was seized by remorse. There was a big lump in his +throat as he thought of the cross words he had spoken to his wife. Surely it +was hard enough for her to live in that horrible country without having to bear +the burden of his abuse. He cursed himself grimly, and felt a sudden flush of +shame that over-glowed the summer heat as he remembered the many times he had +flouted and railed at her because she had a liking for reading fiction. +</p> + +<p> +“Ther only so’ce ov amusement ther po’ gal’s +got,” said Sam aloud, with a sob, which unaccustomed sound caused Mexico +to shy a bit. “A-livin’ with a sore-headed kiote like me—a +low-down skunk that ought to be licked to death with a saddle +cinch—a-cookin’ and a-washin’ and a-livin’ on mutton +and beans and me abusin’ her fur takin’ a squint or two in a little +book!” +</p> + +<p> +He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in +Dogtown—smart, pretty, and saucy—before the sun had turned the +roses in her cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her +ambitions. +</p> + +<p> +“Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther little gal,” muttered +Sam, “or fails in the love and affection that’s coming to her in +the deal, I hopes a wildcat’ll t’ar me to pieces.” +</p> + +<p> +He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia & Jones, his San Antonio +merchants where he bought his supplies and sold his wool, and have them send +down a big box of novels and reading matter for Marthy. Things were going to be +different. He wondered whether a little piano could be placed in one of the +rooms of the ranch house without the family having to move out of doors. +</p> + +<p> +In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that Marthy and +Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their bickerings, when +night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the country, and rest her +head upon Sam’s strong arm with a sigh of peaceful content and +dependence. And were her fears so groundless? Sam thought of roving, marauding +Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that sometimes invaded the ranches, of +rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen possible dangers. Marthy would be frantic +with fear. Randy would cry, and call for dada to come. +</p> + +<p> +Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and mesquite. +Hollow after hollow, slope after slope—all exactly alike—all +familiar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If he could only +arrive <i>somewhere</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward man is +more an artificial product than a diplomatist is. Men lost in the snow travel +in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their footprints have attested. +Also, travellers in philosophy and other mental processes frequently wind up at +their starting-point. +</p> + +<p> +It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition and good resolves that Mexico, +with a heavy sigh, subsided from his regular, brisk trot into a slow complacent +walk. They were winding up an easy slope covered with brush ten or twelve feet +high. +</p> + +<p> +“I say now, Mex,” demurred Sam, “this here won’t do. I +know you’re plumb tired out, but we got ter git along. Oh, Lordy, +ain’t there no mo’ houses in the world!” He gave Mexico a +smart kick with his heels. +</p> + +<p> +Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: “What’s the use of +that, now we’re so near?” He quickened his gait into a languid +trot. Rounding a great clump of black chaparral he stopped short. Sam dropped +the bridle reins and sat, looking into the back door of his own house, not ten +yards away. +</p> + +<p> +Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rocking-chair before the door in the +shade of the house, with her feet resting luxuriously upon the steps. Randy, +who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground, looked up for a moment at +his father and went on spinning the rowels and singing a little song. Marthy +turned her head lazily against the back of the chair and considered the +arrivals with emotionless eyes. She held a book in her lap with her finger +holding the place. +</p> + +<p> +Sam shook himself queerly, like a man coming out of a dream, and slowly +dismounted. He moistened his dry lips. +</p> + +<p> +“I see you are still a-settin’,” he said, +“a-readin’ of them billy-by-dam yaller-back novils.” +</p> + +<p> +Sam had traveled round the circle and was himself again. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>THE RUBBER PLANT’S STORY</h2> + +<p> +We rubber plants form the connecting link between the vegetable kingdom and the +decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a Third Avenue theatre. I +haven’t looked up our family tree, but I believe we were raised by +grafting a gum overshoe on to a 30-cent table d’hôte stalk of asparagus. +You take a white bulldog with a Bourke Cockran air of independence about him +and a rubber plant and there you have the fauna and flora of a flat. What the +shamrock is to Ireland the rubber plant is to the dweller in flats and +furnished rooms. We get moved from one place to another so quickly that the +only way we can get our picture taken is with a kinetoscope. We are the vagrant +vine and the flitting fig tree. You know the proverb: “Where the rubber +plant sits in the window the moving van draws up to the door.” +</p> + +<p> +We are the city equivalent to the woodbine and the honeysuckle. No other +vegetable except the Pittsburg stogie can withstand as much handling as we can. +When the family to which we belong moves into a flat they set us in the front +window and we become lares and penates, fly-paper and the peripatetic emblem of +“Home Sweet Home.” We aren’t as green as we look. I guess we +are about what you would call the soubrettes of the conservatory. You try +sitting in the front window of a $40 flat in Manhattan and looking out into the +street all day, and back into the flat at night, and see whether you get wise +or not—hey? Talk about the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the +garden of Eden—say! suppose there had been a rubber plant there when +Eve—but I was going to tell you a story. +</p> + +<p> +The first thing I can remember I had only three leaves and belonged to a member +of the pony ballet. I was kept in a sunny window, and was generally watered +with seltzer and lemon. I had plenty of fun in those days. I got cross-eyed +trying to watch the numbers of the automobiles in the street and the dates on +the labels inside at the same time. +</p> + +<p> +Well, then the angel that was molting for the musical comedy lost his last +feather and the company broke up. The ponies trotted away and I was left in the +window ownerless. The janitor gave me to a refined comedy team on the eighth +floor, and in six weeks I had been set in the window of five different flats. I +took on experience and put out two more leaves. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Carruthers, of the refined comedy team—did you ever see her cross +both feet back of her neck?—gave me to a friend of hers who had made an +unfortunate marriage with a man in a store. Consequently I was placed in the +window of a furnished room, rent in advance, water two flights up, gas extra +after ten o’clock at night. Two of my leaves withered off here. Also, I +was moved from one room to another so many times that I got to liking the odor +of the pipes the expressmen smoked. +</p> + +<p> +I don’t think I ever had so dull a time as I did with this lady. There +was never anything amusing going on inside—she was devoted to her +husband, and, besides leaning out the window and flirting with the iceman, she +never did a thing toward breaking the monotony. +</p> + +<p> +When the couple broke up they left me with the rest of their goods at a +second-hand store. I was put out in front for sale along with the jobbiest lot +you ever heard of being lumped into one bargain. Think of this little +cornucopia of wonders, all for $1.89: Henry James’s works, six talking +machine records, one pair of tennis shoes, two bottles of horse radish, and a +rubber plant—that was me! +</p> + +<p> +One afternoon a girl came along and stopped to look at me. She had dark hair +and eyes, and she looked slim, and sad around the mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh!” she says to herself. “I never thought to see one up +here.” +</p> + +<p> +She pulls out a little purse about as thick as one of my leaves and fingers +over some small silver in it. Old Koen, always on the lockout, is ready, +rubbing his hands. This girl proceeds to turn down Mr. James and the other +commodities. Rubber plants or nothing is the burden of her song. And at last +Koen and she come together at 39 cents, and away she goes with me in her arms. +</p> + +<p> +She was a nice girl, but not my style. Too quiet and sober looking. Thinks I to +myself: “I’ll just about land on the fire-escape of a tenement, six +stories up. And I’ll spend the next six months looking at clothes on the +line.” +</p> + +<p> +But she carried me to a nice little room only three flights up in quite a +decent street. And she put me in the window, of course. And then she went to +work and cooked dinner for herself. And what do you suppose she had? Bread and +tea and a little dab of jam! Nothing else. Not a single lobster, nor so much as +one bottle of champagne. The Carruthers comedy team had both every evening, +except now and then when they took a notion for pig’s knuckle and kraut. +</p> + +<p> +After she had finished her dinner my new owner came to the window and leaned +down close to my leaves and cried softly to herself for a while. It made me +feel funny. I never knew anybody to cry that way over a rubber plant before. Of +course, I’ve seen a few of ’em turn on the tears for what they +could get out of it, but she seemed to be crying just for the pure enjoyment of +it. She touched my leaves like she loved ’em, and she bent down her head +and kissed each one of ’em. I guess I’m about the toughest specimen +of a peripatetic orchid on earth, but I tell you it made me feel sort of queer. +Home never was like that to me before. Generally I used to get chewed by +poodles and have shirt-waists hung on me to dry, and get watered with coffee +grounds and peroxide of hydrogen. +</p> + +<p> +This girl had a piano in the room, and she used to disturb it with both hands +while she made noises with her mouth for hours at a time. I suppose she was +practising vocal music. +</p> + +<p> +One day she seemed very much excited and kept looking at the clock. At eleven +somebody knocked and she let in a stout, dark man with tousled black hair. He +sat down at once at the piano and played while she sang for him. When she +finished she laid one hand on her bosom and looked at him. He shook his head, +and she leaned against the piano. “Two years already,” she said, +speaking slowly—“do you think in two more—or even +longer?” +</p> + +<p> +The man shook his head again. “You waste your time,” he said, +roughly I thought. “The voice is not there.” And then he looked at +her in a peculiar way. “But the voice is not everything,” he went +on. “You have looks. I can place you, as I told you if—” +</p> + +<p> +The girl pointed to the door without saying anything, and the dark man left the +room. And then she came over and cried around me again. It’s a good thing +I had enough rubber in me to be water-proof. +</p> + +<p> +About that time somebody else knocked at the door. “Thank +goodness,” I said to myself. “Here’s a chance to get the +water-works turned off. I hope it’s somebody that’s game enough to +stand a bird and a bottle to liven things up a little.” Tell you the +truth, this little girl made me tired. A rubber plant likes to see a little +sport now and then. I don’t suppose there’s another green thing in +New York that sees as much of gay life unless it’s the chartreuse or the +sprigs of parsley around the dish. +</p> + +<p> +When the girl opens the door in steps a young chap in a traveling cap and picks +her up in his arms, and she sings out “Oh, Dick!” and stays there +long enough to—well, you’ve been a rubber plant too, sometimes, I +suppose. +</p> + +<p> +“Good thing!” says I to myself. “This is livelier than scales +and weeping. Now there’ll be something doing.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve got to go back with me,” says the young man. +“I’ve come two thousand miles for you. Aren’t you tired of it +yet. Bess? You’ve kept all of us waiting so long. Haven’t you found +out yet what is best?” +</p> + +<p> +“The bubble burst only to-day,” says the girl. “Come here, +Dick, and see what I found the other day on the sidewalk for sale.” She +brings him by the hand and exhibits yours truly. “How one ever got away +up here who can tell? I bought it with almost the last money I had.” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at me, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off her for more than a +second. “Do you remember the night, Bess,” he said, “when we +stood under one of those on the bank of the bayou and what you told me +then?” +</p> + +<p> +“Geewillikins!” I said to myself. “Both of them stand under a +rubber plant! Seems to me they are stretching matters somewhat!” +</p> + +<p> +“Do I not,” says she, looking up at him and sneaking close to his +vest, “and now I say it again, and it is to last forever. Look, Dick, at +its leaves, how wet they are. Those are my tears, and it was thinking of you +that made them fall.” +</p> + +<p> +“The dear old magnolias!” says the young man, pinching one of my +leaves. “I love them all.” +</p> + +<p> +Magnolia! Well, wouldn’t that—say! those innocents thought I was a +magnolia! What the—well, wasn’t that tough on a genuine little old +New York rubber plant? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>OUT OF NAZARETH</h2> + +<p> +Okochee, in Georgia, had a boom, and J. Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a +“wad.” Okochee came out of it with a half-million-dollar debt, a +two and a half per cent. city property tax, and a city council that showed a +propensity for traveling the back streets of the town. These things came about +through a fatal resemblance of the river Cooloosa to the Hudson, as set forth +and expounded by a Northern tourist. Okochee felt that New York should not be +allowed to consider itself the only alligator in the swamp, so to speak. And +then that harmless, but persistent, individual so numerous in the +South—the man who is always clamoring for more cotton mills, and is ready +to take a dollar’s worth of stock, provided he can borrow the +dollar—that man added his deadly work to the tourist’s innocent +praise, and Okochee fell. +</p> + +<p> +The Cooloosa River winds through a range of small mountains, passes Okochee and +then blends its waters trippingly, as fall the mellifluous Indian syllables, +with the Chattahoochee. +</p> + +<p> +Okochee rose, as it were, from its sunny seat on the post-office stoop, hitched +up its suspender, and threw a granite dam two hundred and forty feet long and +sixty feet high across the Cooloosa one mile above the town. Thereupon, a +dimpling, sparkling lake backed up twenty miles among the little mountains. +Thus in the great game of municipal rivalry did Okochee match that famous +drawing card, the Hudson. It was conceded that nowhere could the Palisades be +judged superior in the way of scenery and grandeur. Following the picture card +was played the ace of commercial importance. Fourteen thousand horsepower would +this dam furnish. Cotton mills, factories, and manufacturing plants would rise +up as the green corn after a shower. The spindle and the flywheel and turbine +would sing the shrewd glory of Okochee. Along the picturesque heights above the +lake would rise in beauty the costly villas and the splendid summer residences +of capital. The naphtha launch of the millionaire would spit among the romantic +coves; the verdured hills would take formal shapes of terrace, lawn, and park. +Money would be spent like water in Okochee, and water would be turned into +money. +</p> + +<p> +The fate of the good town is quickly told. Capital decided not to invest. Of +all the great things promised, the scenery alone came to fulfilment. The wooded +peaks, the impressive promontories of solemn granite, the beautiful green +slants of bank and ravine did all they could to reconcile Okochee to the +delinquency of miserly gold. The sunsets gilded the dreamy draws and coves with +a minting that should charm away heart-burning. Okochee, true to the instinct +of its blood and clime, was lulled by the spell. It climbed out of the arena, +loosed its suspender, sat down again on the post-office stoop, and took a chew. +It consoled itself by drawling sarcasms at the city council which was not to +blame, causing the fathers, as has been said, to seek back streets and figure +perspiringly on the sinking fund and the appropriation for interest due. +</p> + +<p> +The youth of Okochee—they who were to carry into the rosy future the +burden of the debt—accepted failure with youth’s uncalculating joy. +For, here was sport, aquatic and nautical, added to the meagre round of +life’s pleasures. In yachting caps and flowing neckties they pervaded the +lake to its limits. Girls wore silk waists embroidered with anchors in blue and +pink. The trousers of the young men widened at the bottom, and their hands were +proudly calloused by the oft-plied oar. Fishermen were under the spell of a +deep and tolerant joy. Sailboats and rowboats furrowed the lenient waves, +popcorn and ice-cream booths sprang up about the little wooden pier. Two small +excursion steamboats were built, and plied the delectable waters. Okochee +philosophically gave up the hope of eating turtle soup with a gold spoon, and +settled back, not ill content, to its regular diet of lotus and fried hominy. +And out of this slow wreck of great expectations rose up J. Pinkney Bloom with +his “wad” and his prosperous, cheery smile. +</p> + +<p> +Needless to say J. Pinkney was no product of Georgia soil. He came out of that +flushed and capable region known as the “North.” He called himself +a “promoter”; his enemies had spoken of him as a +“grafter”; Okochee took a middle course, and held him to be no +better nor no worse than a “Yank.” +</p> + +<p> +Far up the lake—eighteen miles above the town—the eye of this +cheerful camp-follower of booms had spied out a graft. He purchased there a +precipitous tract of five hundred acres at forty-five cents per acre; and this +he laid out and subdivided as the city of Skyland—the Queen City of the +Switzerland of the South. Streets and avenues were surveyed; parks designed; +corners of central squares reserved for the “proposed” opera house, +board of trade, lyceum, market, public schools, and “Exposition +Hall.” The price of lots ranged from five to five hundred dollars. +Positively, no lot would be priced higher than five hundred dollars. +</p> + +<p> +While the boom was growing in Okochee, J. Pinkney’s circulars, maps, and +prospectuses were flying through the mails to every part of the country. +Investors sent in their money by post, and the Skyland Real Estate Company (J. +Pinkney Bloom) returned to each a deed, duly placed on record, to the best lot, +at the price, on hand that day. All this time the catamount screeched upon the +reserved lot of the Skyland Board of Trade, the opossum swung by his tail over +the site of the exposition hall, and the owl hooted a melancholy recitative to +his audience of young squirrels in opera house square. Later, when the money +was coming in fast, J. Pinkney caused to be erected in the coming city half a +dozen cheap box houses, and persuaded a contingent of indigent natives to +occupy them, thereby assuming the role of “population” in +subsequent prospectuses, which became, accordingly, more seductive and +remunerative. +</p> + +<p> +So, when the dream faded and Okochee dropped back to digging bait and nursing +its two and a half per cent. tax, J. Pinkney Bloom (unloving of checks and +drafts and the cold interrogatories of bankers) strapped about his +fifty-two-inch waist a soft leather belt containing eight thousand dollars in +big bills, and said that all was very good. +</p> + +<p> +One last trip he was making to Skyland before departing to other salad fields. +Skyland was a regular post-office, and the steamboat, <i>Dixie Belle</i>, under +contract, delivered the mail bag (generally empty) twice a week. There was a +little business there to be settled—the postmaster was to be paid off for +his light but lonely services, and the “inhabitants” had to be +furnished with another month’s homely rations, as per agreement. And then +Skyland would know J. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of these precipitous, +barren, useless lots might come and view the scene of their invested credulity, +or they might leave them to their fit tenants, the wild hog and the browsing +deer. The work of the Skyland Real Estate Company was finished. +</p> + +<p> +The little steamboat <i>Dixie Belle</i> was about to shove off on her regular +up-the-lake trip, when a rickety hired carriage rattled up to the pier, and a +tall, elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out, signaling courteously but +vivaciously for the boat to wait. Time was of the least importance in the +schedule of the <i>Dixie Belle</i>; Captain MacFarland gave the order, and the +boat received its ultimate two passengers. For, upon the arm of the tall, +elderly gentleman, as he crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady, with a +gray curl depending quaintly forward of her left ear. +</p> + +<p> +Captain MacFarland was at the wheel; therefore it seemed to J. Pinkney Bloom, +who was the only other passenger, that it should be his to play the part of +host to the boat’s new guests, who were, doubtless, on a scenery-viewing +expedition. He stepped forward, with that translucent, child-candid smile upon +his fresh, pink countenance, with that air of unaffected sincerity that was +redeemed from bluffness only by its exquisite calculation, with that +promptitude and masterly decision of manner that so well suited his +calling—with all his stock in trade well to the front; he stepped forward +to receive Colonel and Mrs. Peyton Blaylock. With the grace of a grand marshal +or a wedding usher, he escorted the two passengers to a side of the upper deck, +from which the scenery was supposed to present itself to the observer in +increased quantity and quality. There, in comfortable steamer chairs, they sat +and began to piece together the random lines that were to form an intelligent +paragraph in the big history of little events. +</p> + +<p> +“Our home, sir,” said Colonel Blaylock, removing his wide-brimmed, +rather shapeless black felt hat, “is in Holly Springs—Holly +Springs, Georgia. I am very proud to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bloom. Mrs. +Blaylock and myself have just arrived in Okochee this morning, sir, on +business—business of importance in connection with the recent rapid march +of progress in this section of our state.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel smoothed back, with a sweeping gesture, his long, smooth, locks. +His dark eyes, still fiery under the heavy black brows, seemed inappropriate to +the face of a business man. He looked rather to be an old courtier handed down +from the reign of Charles, and re-attired in a modern suit of fine, but +raveling and seam-worn, broadcloth. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Bloom, in his heartiest prospectus voice, +“things have been whizzing around Okochee. Biggest industrial revival and +waking up to natural resources Georgia ever had. Did you happen to squeeze in +on the ground floor in any of the gilt-edged grafts, Colonel?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, sir,” said the Colonel, hesitating in courteous doubt, +“if I understand your question, I may say that I took the opportunity to +make an investment that I believe will prove quite advantageous—yes, sir, +I believe it will result in both pecuniary profit and agreeable +occupation.” +</p> + +<p> +“Colonel Blaylock,” said the little elderly lady, shaking her gray +curl and smiling indulgent explanation at J. Pinkney Bloom, “is so +devoted to businesss. He has such a talent for financiering and markets and +investments and those kind of things. I think myself extremely fortunate in +having secured him for a partner on life’s journey—I am so unversed +in those formidable but very useful branches of learning.” +</p> + +<p> +Colonel Blaylock rose and made a bow—a bow that belonged with silk +stockings and lace ruffles and velvet. +</p> + +<p> +“Practical affairs,” he said, with a wave of his hand toward the +promoter, “are, if I may use the comparison, the garden walks upon which +we tread through life, viewing upon either side of us the flowers which +brighten that journey. It is my pleasure to be able to lay out a walk or two. +Mrs. Blaylock, sir, is one of those fortunate higher spirits whose mission it +is to make the flowers grow. Perhaps, Mr. Bloom, you have perused the lines of +Lorella, the Southern poetess. That is the name above which Mrs. Blaylock has +contributed to the press of the South for many years.” +</p> + +<p> +“Unfortunately,” said Mr. Bloom, with a sense of the loss clearly +written upon his frank face, “I’m like the Colonel—in the +walk-making business myself—and I haven’t had time to even take a +sniff at the flowers. Poetry is a line I never dealt in. It must be nice, +though—quite nice.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is the region,” smiled Mrs. Blaylock, “in which my soul +dwells. My shawl, Peyton, if you please—the breeze comes a little chilly +from yon verdured hills.” +</p> + +<p> +The Colonel drew from the tail pocket of his coat a small shawl of knitted silk +and laid it solicitously about the shoulders of the lady. Mrs. Blaylock sighed +contentedly, and turned her expressive eyes—still as clear and unworldly +as a child’s—upon the steep slopes that were slowly slipping past. +Very fair and stately they looked in the clear morning air. They seemed to +speak in familiar terms to the responsive spirit of Lorella. “My native +hills!” she murmured, dreamily. “See how the foliage drinks the +sunlight from the hollows and dells.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mrs. Blaylock’s maiden days,” said the Colonel, interpreting +her mood to J. Pinkney Bloom, “were spent among the mountains of northern +Georgia. Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her those days. Holly +Springs, where we have lived for twenty years, is low and flat. I fear that she +may have suffered in health and spirits by so long a residence there. That is +one portent reason for the change we are making. My dear, can you not recall +those lines you wrote—entitled, I think, ‘The Georgia +Hills’—the poem that was so extensively copied by the Southern +press and praised so highly by the Atlanta critics?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Blaylock turned a glance of speaking tenderness upon the Colonel, fingered +for a moment the silvery curl that drooped upon her bosom, then looked again +toward the mountains. Without preliminary or affectation or demurral she began, +in rather thrilling and more deeply pitched tones to recite these lines: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“The Georgia hills, the Georgia hills!—<br/> +    Oh, heart, why dost thou pine?<br/> +Are not these sheltered lowlands fair<br/> +    With mead and bloom and vine?<br/> +Ah! as the slow-paced river here<br/> +    Broods on its natal rills<br/> +My spirit drifts, in longing sweet,<br/> +    Back to the Georgia hills.<br/> +<br/> +“And through the close-drawn, curtained night<br/> +    I steal on sleep’s slow wings<br/> +Back to my heart’s ease—slopes of pine—<br/> +    Where end my wanderings.<br/> +Oh, heaven seems nearer from their tops—<br/> +    And farther earthly ills—<br/> +Even in dreams, if I may but<br/> +    Dream of my Georgia hills.<br/> +<br/> +The grass upon their orchard sides<br/> +    Is a fine couch to me;<br/> +The common note of each small bird<br/> +    Passes all minstrelsy.<br/> +It would not seem so dread a thing<br/> +    If, when the Reaper wills,<br/> +He might come there and take my hand<br/> +    Up in the Georgia hills.”<br/> +</p> + +<p> +“That’s great stuff, ma’am,” said J. Pinkney Bloom, +enthusiastically, when the poetess had concluded. “I wish I had looked up +poetry more than I have. I was raised in the pine hills myself.” +</p> + +<p> +“The mountains ever call to their children,” murmured Mrs. +Blaylock. “I feel that life will take on the rosy hue of hope again in +among these beautiful hills. Peyton—a little taste of the currant wine, +if you will be so good. The journey, though delightful in the extreme, slightly +fatigues me.” Colonel Blaylock again visited the depths of his prolific +coat, and produced a tightly corked, rough, black bottle. Mr. Bloom was on his +feet in an instant. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me bring a glass, ma’am. You come along, +Colonel—there’s a little table we can bring, too. Maybe we can +scare up some fruit or a cup of tea on board. I’ll ask Mac.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Blaylock reclined at ease. Few royal ladies have held their royal +prerogative with the serene grace of the petted Southern woman. The Colonel, +with an air as gallant and assiduous as in the days of his courtship, and J. +Pinkney Bloom, with a ponderous agility half professional and half directed by +some resurrected, unnamed, long-forgotten sentiment, formed a diversified but +attentive court. The currant wine—wine home made from the Holly Springs +fruit—went round, and then J. Pinkney began to hear something of Holly +Springs life. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed (from the conversation of the Blaylocks) that the Springs was +decadent. A third of the population had moved away. Business—and the +Colonel was an authority on business—had dwindled to nothing. After +carefully studying the field of opportunities open to capital he had sold his +little property there for eight hundred dollars and invested it in one of the +enterprises opened up by the book in Okochee. +</p> + +<p> +“Might I inquire, sir,” said Mr. Bloom, “in what particular +line of business you inserted your coin? I know that town as well as I know the +regulations for illegal use of the mails. I might give you a hunch as to +whether you can make the game go or not.” +</p> + +<p> +J. Pinkney, somehow, had a kindly feeling toward these unsophisticated +representatives of by-gone days. They were so simple, impractical, and +unsuspecting. He was glad that he happened not to have a gold brick or a block +of that western Bad Boy Silver Mine stock along with him. He would have +disliked to unload on people he liked so well as he did these; but there are +some temptations toe enticing to be resisted. +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir,” said Colonel Blaylock, pausing to arrange the +queen’s wrap. “I did not invest in Okochee. I have made an +exhaustive study of business conditions, and I regard old settled towns as +unfavorable fields in which to place capital that is limited in amount. Some +months ago, through the kindness of a friend, there came into my hands a map +and description of this new town of Skyland that has been built upon the lake. +The description was so pleasing, the future of the town set forth in such +convincing arguments, and its increasing prosperity portrayed in such an +attractive style that I decided to take advantage of the opportunity it +offered. I carefully selected a lot in the centre of the business district, +although its price was the highest in the schedule—five hundred +dollars—and made the purchase at once.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you the man—I mean, did you pay five hundred dollars for a lot +in Skyland” asked J. Pinkney Bloom. +</p> + +<p> +“I did, sir,” answered the Colonel, with the air of a modest +millionaire explaining his success; “a lot most excellently situated on +the same square with the opera house, and only two squares from the board of +trade. I consider the purchase a most fortuitous one. It is my intention to +erect a small building upon it at once, and open a modest book and stationery +store. During past years I have met with many pecuniary reverses, and I now +find it necessary to engage in some commercial occupation that will furnish me +with a livelihood. The book and stationery business, though an humble one, +seems to me not inapt nor altogether uncongenial. I am a graduate of the +University of Virginia; and Mrs. Blaylock’s really wonderful acquaintance +with belles-lettres and poetic literature should go far toward insuring +success. Of course, Mrs. Blaylock would not personally serve behind the +counter. With the nearly three hundred dollars I have remaining I can manage +the building of a house, by giving a lien on the lot. I have an old friend in +Atlanta who is a partner in a large book store, and he has agreed to furnish me +with a stock of goods on credit, on extremely easy terms. I am pleased to hope, +sir, that Mrs. Blaylock’s health and happiness will be increased by the +change of locality. Already I fancy I can perceive the return of those roses +that were once the hope and despair of Georgia cavaliers.” +</p> + +<p> +Again followed that wonderful bow, as the Colonel lightly touched the pale +cheek of the poetess. Mrs. Blaylock, blushing like a girl, shook her curl and +gave the Colonel an arch, reproving tap. Secret of eternal youth—where +art thou? Every second the answer comes—“Here, here, here.” +Listen to thine own heartbeats, O weary seeker after external miracles. +</p> + +<p> +“Those years,” said Mrs. Blaylock, “in Holly Springs were +long, long, long. But now is the promised land in sight. Skyland!—a +lovely name.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doubtless,” said the Colonel, “we shall be able to secure +comfortable accommodations at some modest hotel at reasonable rates. Our trunks +are in Okochee, to be forwarded when we shall have made permanent +arrangements.” +</p> + +<p> +J. Pinkney Bloom excused himself, went forward, and stood by the captain at the +wheel. +</p> + +<p> +“Mac,” said he, “do you remember my telling you once that I +sold one of those five-hundred-dollar lots in Skyland?” +</p> + +<p> +“Seems I do,” grinned Captain MacFarland. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not a coward, as a general rule,” went on the promoter, +“but I always said that if I ever met the sucker that bought that lot +I’d run like a turkey. Now, you see that old babe-in-the-wood over there? +Well, he’s the boy that drew the prize. That was the only +five-hundred-dollar lot that went. The rest ranged from ten dollars to two +hundred. His wife writes poetry. She’s invented one about the high +grounds of Georgia, that’s way up in G. They’re going to Skyland to +open a book store.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said MacFarland, with another grin, “it’s a +good thing you are along, J. P.; you can show ’em around town until they +begin to feel at home.” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s got three hundred dollars left to build a house and store +with,” went on J. Pinkney, as if he were talking to himself. “And +he thinks there’s an open house up there.” +</p> + +<p> +Captain MacFarland released the wheel long enough to give his leg a roguish +slap. +</p> + +<p> +“You old fat rascal!” he chuckled, with a wink. +</p> + +<p> +“Mac, you’re a fool,” said J. Pinkney Bloom, coldly. He went +back and joined the Blaylocks, where he sat, less talkative, with that straight +furrow between his brows that always stood as a signal of schemes being shaped +within. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a good many swindles connected with these booms,” he +said presently. “What if this Skyland should turn out to be +one—that is, suppose business should be sort of dull there, and no +special sale for books?” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear sir,” said Colonel Blaylock, resting his hand upon the +back of his wife’s chair, “three times I have been reduced to +almost penury by the duplicity of others, but I have not yet lost faith in +humanity. If I have been deceived again, still we may glean health and content, +if not worldly profit. I am aware that there are dishonest schemers in the +world who set traps for the unwary, but even they are not altogether bad. My +dear, can you recall those verses entitled ‘He Giveth the +Increase,’ that you composed for the choir of our church in Holly +Springs?” +</p> + +<p> +“That was four years ago,” said Mrs. Blaylock; “perhaps I can +repeat a verse or two. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“The lily springs from the rotting mould;<br/> +    Pearls from the deep sea slime;<br/> +Good will come out of Nazareth<br/> +    All in God’s own time.<br/> +<br/> +“To the hardest heart the softening grace<br/> +    Cometh, at last, to bless;<br/> +Guiding it right to help and cheer<br/> +    And succor in distress.<br/> +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot remember the rest. The lines were not ambitious. They were +written to the music composed by a dear friend.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a fine rhyme, just the same,” declared Mr. Bloom. +“It seems to ring the bell, all right. I guess I gather the sense of it. +It means that the rankest kind of a phony will give you the best end of it once +in a while.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Bloom strayed thoughtfully back to the captain, and stood meditating. +</p> + +<p> +“Ought to be in sight of the spires and gilded domes of Skyland now in a +few minutes,” chirruped MacFarland, shaking with enjoyment. +</p> + +<p> +“Go to the devil,” said Mr. Bloom, still pensive. +</p> + +<p> +And now, upon the left bank, they caught a glimpse of a white village, high up +on the hills, smothered among green trees. That was Cold Branch—no boom +town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold Branch lay on the edge of the +grape and corn lands. The big country road ran just back of the heights. Cold +Branch had nothing in common with the frisky ambition of Okochee with its +impertinent lake. +</p> + +<p> +“Mac,” said J. Pinkney suddenly, “I want you to stop at Cold +Branch. There’s a landing there that they made to use sometimes when the +river was up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t,” said the captain, grinning more broadly. +“I’ve got the United States mails on board. Right to-day this +boat’s in the government service. Do you want to have the poor old +captain keelhauled by Uncle Sam? And the great city of Skyland, all +disconsolate, waiting for its mail? I’m ashamed of your extravagance, J. +P.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mac,” almost whispered J. Pinkney, in his danger-line voice, +“I looked into the engine room of the <i>Dixie Belle</i> a while ago. +Don’t you know of somebody that needs a new boiler? Cement and black +Japan can’t hide flaws from me. And then, those shares of building and +loan that you traded for repairs—they were all yours, of course. I hate +to mention these things, but—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, come now, J. P.,” said the captain. “You know I was just +fooling. I’ll put you off at Cold Branch, if you say so.” +</p> + +<p> +“The other passengers get off there, too,” said Mr. Bloom. +</p> + +<p> +Further conversation was held, and in ten minutes the <i>Dixie Belle</i> turned +her nose toward a little, cranky wooden pier on the left bank, and the captain, +relinquishing the wheel to a roustabout, came to the passenger deck and made +the remarkable announcement: “All out for Skyland.” +</p> + +<p> +The Blaylocks and J. Pinkney Bloom disembarked, and the <i>Dixie Belle</i> +proceeded on her way up the lake. Guided by the indefatigable promoter, they +slowly climbed the steep hillside, pausing often to rest and admire the view. +Finally they entered the village of Cold Branch. Warmly both the Colonel and +his wife praised it for its homelike and peaceful beauty. Mr. Bloom conducted +them to a two-story building on a shady street that bore the legend, +“Pine-top Inn.” Here he took his leave, receiving the cordial +thanks of the two for his attentions, the Colonel remarking that he thought +they would spend the remainder of the day in rest, and take a look at his +purchase on the morrow. +</p> + +<p> +J. Pinkney Bloom walked down Cold Branch’s main street. He did not know +this town, but he knew towns, and his feet did not falter. Presently he saw a +sign over a door: “Frank E. Cooly, Attorney-at-Law and Notary +Public.” A young man was Mr. Cooly, and awaiting business. +</p> + +<p> +“Get your hat, son,” said Mr. Bloom, in his breezy way, “and +a blank deed, and come along. It’s a job for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now,” he continued, when Mr. Cooly had responded with alacrity, +“is there a bookstore in town?” +</p> + +<p> +“One,” said the lawyer. “Henry Williams’s.” +</p> + +<p> +“Get there,” said Mr. Bloom. “We’re going to buy +it.” +</p> + +<p> +Henry Williams was behind his counter. His store was a small one, containing a +mixture of books, stationery, and fancy rubbish. Adjoining it was Henry’s +home—a decent cottage, vine-embowered and cosy. Henry was lank and +soporific, and not inclined to rush his business. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to buy your house and store,” said Mr. Bloom. “I +haven’t got time to dicker—name your price.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s worth eight hundred,” said Henry, too much dazed to ask +more than its value. +</p> + +<p> +“Shut that door,” said Mr. Bloom to the lawyer. Then he tore off +his coat and vest, and began to unbutton his shirt. +</p> + +<p> +“Wanter fight about it, do yer?” said Henry Williams, jumping up +and cracking his heels together twice. “All right, hunky—sail in +and cut yer capers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Keep your clothes on,” said Mr. Bloom. “I’m only going +down to the bank.” +</p> + +<p> +He drew eight one-hundred-dollar bills from his money belt and planked them +down on the counter. Mr. Cooly showed signs of future promise, for he already +had the deed spread out, and was reaching across the counter for the ink +bottle. Never before or since was such quick action had in Cold Branch. +</p> + +<p> +“Your name, please?” asked the lawyer. +</p> + +<p> +“Make it out to Peyton Blaylock,” said Mr. Bloom. “God knows +how to spell it.” +</p> + +<p> +Within thirty minutes Henry Williams was out of business, and Mr. Bloom stood +on the brick sidewalk with Mr. Cooly, who held in his hand the signed and +attested deed. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll find the party at the Pinetop Inn,” said J. Pinkney +Bloom. “Get it recorded, and take it down and give it to him. He’ll +ask you a hell’s mint of questions; so here’s ten dollars for the +trouble you’ll have in not being able to answer ’em. Never run much +to poetry, did you, young man?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” said the really talented Cooly, who even yet retained his +right mind, “now and then.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dig into it,” said Mr. Bloom, “it’ll pay you. Never +heard a poem, now, that run something like this, did you?— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +A good thing out of Nazareth<br/> +    Comes up sometimes, I guess,<br/> +On hand, all right, to help and cheer<br/> +    A sucker in distress.”<br/> +</p> + +<p> +“I believe not,” said Mr. Cooly. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a hymn,” said J. Pinkney Bloom. “Now, show me the +way to a livery stable, son, for I’m going to hit the dirt road back to +Okochee.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CONFESSIONS OF A HUMORIST</h2> + +<p> +There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years, and +then it broke out on me, and people said I was It. +</p> + +<p> +But they called it humor instead of measles. +</p> + +<p> +The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior partner on +his fiftieth birthday. We crowded into his private office to present it. I had +been selected for spokesman, and I made a little speech that I had been +preparing for a week. +</p> + +<p> +It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams and funny twists that brought +down the house—which was a very solid one in the wholesale hardware line. +Old Marlowe himself actually grinned, and the employees took their cue and +roared. +</p> + +<p> +My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past nine o’clock on that +morning. For weeks afterward my fellow clerks fanned the flame of my +self-esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever speech +that was, old man, and carefully explained to me the point of each one of my +jokes. +</p> + +<p> +Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. Others might speak sanely +on business matters and the day’s topics, but from me something gamesome +and airy was required. +</p> + +<p> +I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery and lighten up the granite +ware with persiflage. I was second bookkeeper, and if I failed to show up a +balance sheet without something comic about the footings or could find no cause +for laughter in an invoice of plows, the other clerks were disappointed. By +degrees my fame spread, and I became a local “character.” Our town +was small enough to make this possible. The daily newspaper quoted me. At +social gatherings I was indispensable. +</p> + +<p> +I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for quick and +spontaneous repartee. This gift I cultivated and improved by practice. And the +nature of it was kindly and genial, not running to sarcasm or offending others. +People began to smile when they saw me coming, and by the time we had met I +generally had the word ready to broaden the smile into a laugh. +</p> + +<p> +I had married early. We had a charming boy of three and a girl of five. +Naturally, we lived in a vine-covered cottage, and were happy. My salary as +bookkeeper in the hardware concern kept at a distance those ills attendant upon +superfluous wealth. +</p> + +<p> +At sundry times I had written out a few jokes and conceits that I considered +peculiarly happy, and had sent them to certain periodicals that print such +things. All of them had been instantly accepted. Several of the editors had +written to request further contributions. +</p> + +<p> +One day I received a letter from the editor of a famous weekly publication. He +suggested that I submit to him a humorous composition to fill a column of +space; hinting that he would make it a regular feature of each issue if the +work proved satisfactory. I did so, and at the end of two weeks he offered to +make a contract with me for a year at a figure that was considerably higher +than the amount paid me by the hardware firm. +</p> + +<p> +I was filled with delight. My wife already crowned me in her mind with the +imperishable evergreens of literary success. We had lobster croquettes and a +bottle of blackberry wine for supper that night. Here was the chance to +liberate myself from drudgery. I talked over the matter very seriously with +Louisa. We agreed that I must resign my place at the store and devote myself to +humor. +</p> + +<p> +I resigned. My fellow clerks gave me a farewell banquet. The speech I made +there coruscated. It was printed in full by the <i>Gazette</i>. The next +morning I awoke and looked at the clock. +</p> + +<p> +“Late, by George!” I exclaimed, and grabbed for my clothes. Louisa +reminded me that I was no longer a slave to hardware and contractors’ +supplies. I was now a professional humorist. +</p> + +<p> +After breakfast she proudly led me to the little room off the kitchen. Dear +girl! There was my table and chair, writing pad, ink, and pipe tray. And all +the author’s trappings—the celery stand full of fresh roses and +honeysuckle, last year’s calendar on the wall, the dictionary, and a +little bag of chocolates to nibble between inspirations. Dear girl! +</p> + +<p> +I sat me to work. The wall paper is patterned with arabesques or odalisks +or—perhaps—it is trapezoids. Upon one of the figures I fixed my +eyes. I bethought me of humor. +</p> + +<p> +A voice startled me—Louisa’s voice. +</p> + +<p> +“If you aren’t too busy, dear,” it said, “come to +dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +I looked at my watch. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the grim +scytheman. I went to dinner. +</p> + +<p> +“You mustn’t work too hard at first,” said Louisa. +“Goethe—or was it Napoleon?—said five hours a day is enough +for mental labor. Couldn’t you take me and the children to the woods this +afternoon?” +</p> + +<p> +“I <i>am</i> a little tired,” I admitted. So we went to the woods. +</p> + +<p> +But I soon got the swing of it. Within a month I was turning out copy as +regular as shipments of hardware. +</p> + +<p> +And I had success. My column in the weekly made some stir, and I was referred +to in a gossipy way by the critics as something fresh in the line of humorists. +I augmented my income considerably by contributing to other publications. +</p> + +<p> +I picked up the tricks of the trade. I could take a funny idea and make a +two-line joke of it, earning a dollar. With false whiskers on, it would serve +up cold as a quatrain, doubling its producing value. By turning the skirt and +adding a ruffle of rhyme you would hardly recognize it as <i>vers de +societe</i> with neatly shod feet and a fashion-plate illustration. +</p> + +<p> +I began to save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ. My +townspeople began to look upon me as a citizen of some consequence instead of +the merry trifler I had been when I clerked in the hardware store. +</p> + +<p> +After five or six months the spontaniety seemed to depart from my humor. Quips +and droll sayings no longer fell carelessly from my lips. I was sometimes hard +run for material. I found myself listening to catch available ideas from the +conversation of my friends. Sometimes I chewed my pencil and gazed at the wall +paper for hours trying to build up some gay little bubble of unstudied fun. +</p> + +<p> +And then I became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, a vampire, to my acquaintances. +Anxious, haggard, greedy, I stood among them like a veritable killjoy. Let a +bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant phrase fall from their lips and I +was after it like a hound springing upon a bone. I dared not trust my memory; +but, turning aside guiltily and meanly, I would make a note of it in my +ever-present memorandum book or upon my cuff for my own future use. +</p> + +<p> +My friends regarded me in sorrow and wonder. I was not the same man. Where once +I had furnished them entertainment and jollity, I now preyed upon them. No +jests from me ever bid for their smiles now. They were too precious. I could +not afford to dispense gratuitously the means of my livelihood. +</p> + +<p> +I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crow’s, +that they might drop from their beaks the morsels of wit that I coveted. +</p> + +<p> +Nearly every one began to avoid me. I even forgot how to smile, not even paying +that much for the sayings I appropriated. +</p> + +<p> +No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt from my plundering in search +of material. Even in church my demoralized fancy went hunting among the solemn +aisles and pillars for spoil. +</p> + +<p> +Did the minister give out the long-meter doxology, at once I began: +“Doxology—sockdology—sockdolager—meter—meet +her.” +</p> + +<p> +The sermon ran through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering unheeded, could +I but glean a suggestion of a pun or a <i>bon mot</i>. The solemnest anthems of +the choir were but an accompaniment to my thoughts as I conceived new changes +to ring upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jealousies of soprano, +tenor, and basso. +</p> + +<p> +My own home became a hunting ground. My wife is a singularly feminine creature, +candid, sympathetic, and impulsive. Once her conversation was my delight, and +her ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked her. She was a gold mine +of those amusing but lovable inconsistencies that distinguish the female mind. +</p> + +<p> +I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched +only the sacred precincts of home. With devilish cunning I encouraged her to +talk. Unsuspecting, she laid her heart bare. Upon the cold, conspicuous, +common, printed page I offered it to the public gaze. +</p> + +<p> +A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her. For pieces of silver I dressed +her sweet confidences in the pantalettes and frills of folly and made them +dance in the market place. +</p> + +<p> +Dear Louisa! Of nights I have bent over her cruel as a wolf above a tender +lamb, hearkening even to her soft words murmured in sleep, hoping to catch an +idea for my next day’s grind. There is worse to come. +</p> + +<p> +God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of the fugitive sayings +of my little children. +</p> + +<p> +Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and +speeches. I found a ready sale for this kind of humor, and was furnishing a +regular department in a magazine with “Funny Fancies of Childhood.” +I began to stalk them as an Indian stalks the antelope. I would hide behind +sofas and doors, or crawl on my hands and knees among the bushes in the yard to +eavesdrop while they were at play. I had all the qualities of a harpy except +remorse. +</p> + +<p> +Once, when I was barren of ideas, and my copy must leave in the next mail, I +covered myself in a pile of autumn leaves in the yard, where I knew they +intended to come to play. I cannot bring myself to believe that Guy was aware +of my hiding place, but even if he was, I would be loath to blame him for his +setting fire to the leaves, causing the destruction of my new suit of clothes, +and nearly cremating a parent. +</p> + +<p> +Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping +upon them like a melancholy ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: +“Here comes papa,” and they would gather their toys and scurry away +to some safer hiding place. Miserable wretch that I was! +</p> + +<p> +And yet I was doing well financially. Before the first year had passed I had +saved a thousand dollars, and we had lived in comfort. +</p> + +<p> +But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to what a pariah is, but I was +everything that it sounds like. I had no friends, no amusements, no enjoyment +of life. The happiness of my family had been sacrificed. I was a bee, sucking +sordid honey from life’s fairest flowers, dreaded and shunned on account +of my sting. +</p> + +<p> +One day a man spoke to me, with a pleasant and friendly smile. Not in months +had the thing happened. I was passing the undertaking establishment of Peter +Heffelbower. Peter stood in the door and saluted me. I stopped, strangely wrung +in my heart by his greeting. He asked me inside. +</p> + +<p> +The day was chill and rainy. We went into the back room, where a fire burned, +in a little stove. A customer came, and Peter left me alone for a while. +Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me—a sense of beautiful calm +and content, I looked around the place. There were rows of shining rosewood +caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes, mourning streamers, and all the +paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was peace, order, silence, the abode of +grave and dignified reflections. Here, on the brink of life, was a little niche +pervaded by the spirit of eternal rest. +</p> + +<p> +When I entered it, the follies of the world abandoned me at the door. I felt no +inclination to wrest a humorous idea from those sombre and stately trappings. +My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful repose upon a couch draped with +gentle thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philosopher, +full of serenity and ease. I had found a refuge from humor, from the hot chase +of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit of the panting joke, from the +restless reach after the nimble repartee. +</p> + +<p> +I had not known Heffelbower well. When he came back, I let him talk, fearful +that he might prove to be a jarring note in the sweet, dirgelike harmony of his +establishment. +</p> + +<p> +But, no. He chimed truly. I gave a long sigh of happiness. Never have I known a +man’s talk to be as magnificently dull as Peter’s was. Compared +with it the Dead Sea is a geyser. Never a sparkle or a glimmer of wit marred +his words. Commonplaces as trite and as plentiful as blackberries flowed from +his lips no more stirring in quality than a last week’s tape running from +a ticker. Quaking a little, I tried upon him one of my best pointed jokes. It +fell back ineffectual, with the point broken. I loved that man from then on. +</p> + +<p> +Two or three evenings each week I would steal down to Heffelbower’s and +revel in his back room. That was my only joy. I began to rise early and hurry +through my work, that I might spend more time in my haven. In no other place +could I throw off my habit of extracting humorous ideas from my surroundings. +Peter’s talk left me no opening had I besieged it ever so hard. +</p> + +<p> +Under this influence I began to improve in spirits. It was the recreation from +one’s labor which every man needs. I surprised one or two of my former +friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word as I passed them on the +streets. Several times I dumfounded my family by relaxing long enough to make a +jocose remark in their presence. +</p> + +<p> +I had so long been ridden by the incubus of humor that I seized my hours of +holiday with a schoolboy’s zest. +</p> + +<p> +Mv work began to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. +I often whistled at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than before. I +accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my helpful retreat +as a drunkard is to get to his tavern. +</p> + +<p> +My wife had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my afternoons. I +thought it best not to tell her; women do not understand these things. Poor +girl!—she had one shock out of it. +</p> + +<p> +One day I brought home a silver coffin handle for a paper weight and a fine, +fluffy hearse plume to dust my papers with. +</p> + +<p> +I loved to see them on my desk, and think of the beloved back room down at +Heffelbower’s. But Louisa found them, and she shrieked with horror. I had +to console her with some lame excuse for having them, but I saw in her eyes +that the prejudice was not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, at +double-quick time. +</p> + +<p> +One day Peter Heffelbower laid before me a temptation that swept me off my +feet. In his sensible, uninspired way he showed me his books, and explained +that his profits and his business were increasing rapidly. He had thought of +taking in a partner with some cash. He would rather have me than any one he +knew. When I left his place that afternoon Peter had my check for the thousand +dollars I had in the bank, and I was a partner in his undertaking business. +</p> + +<p> +I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain amount of +doubt. I was dreading to tell my wife about it. But I walked on air. To give up +the writing of humorous stuff, once more to enjoy the apples of life, instead +of squeezing them to a pulp for a few drops of hard cider to make the pubic +feel funny—what a boon that would be! +</p> + +<p> +At the supper table Louisa handed me some letters that had come during my +absence. Several of them contained rejected manuscript. Ever since I first +began going to Heffelbower’s my stuff had been coming back with alarming +frequency. Lately I had been dashing off my jokes and articles with the +greatest fluency. Previously I had labored like a bricklayer, slowly and with +agony. +</p> + +<p> +Presently I opened a letter from the editor of the weekly with which I had a +regular contract. The checks for that weekly article were still our main +dependence. The letter ran thus: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +DEAR SIR: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the present month. +While regretting the necessity for so doing, we must say that we do not care to +renew same for the coming year. We were quite pleased with your style of humor, +which seems to have delighted quite a large proportion of our readers. But for +the past two months we have noticed a decided falling off in its quality. Your +earlier work showed a spontaneous, easy, natural flow of fun and wit. Of late +it is labored, studied, and unconvincing, giving painful evidence of hard toil +and drudging mechanism. +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions available any +longer, we are, yours sincerely, +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +THE EDITOR. +</p> + +<p> +I handed this letter to my wife. After she had read it her face grew extremely +long, and there were tears in her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“The mean old thing!” she exclaimed indignantly. “I’m +sure your pieces are just as good as they ever were. And it doesn’t take +you half as long to write them as it did.” And then, I suppose, Louisa +thought of the checks that would cease coming. “Oh, John,” she +wailed, “what will you do now?” +</p> + +<p> +For an answer I got up and began to do a polka step around the supper table. I +am sure Louisa thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children +hoped it had, for they tore after me, yelling with glee and emulating my steps. +I was now something like their old playmate as of yore. +</p> + +<p> +“The theatre for us to-night!” I shouted; “nothing less. And +a late, wild, disreputable supper for all of us at the Palace Restaurant. +Lumpty-diddle-de-dee-de-dum!” +</p> + +<p> +And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a +prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide +their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me. +</p> + +<p> +With the editor’s letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my +wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine +inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter +Hef—no, of Heffelbower & Co’s. undertaking establishment. +</p> + +<p> +In conclusion, I will say that to-day you will find no man in our town as well +liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised +about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife’s confidential +chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet +distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who +used to dog their steps, notebook in hand. +</p> + +<p> +Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the shop, +while Peter attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits +would simply turn any funeral into a regular Irish wake. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE</h2> + +<p> +The young man in straitened circumstances who comes to New York City to enter +literature has but one thing to do, provided he has studied carefully his field +in advance. He must go straight to Madison Square, write an article about the +sparrows there, and sell it to the <i>Sun</i> for $15. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot recall either a novel or a story dealing with the popular theme of the +young writer from the provinces who comes to the metropolis to win fame and +fortune with his pen in which the hero does not get his start that way. It does +seem strange that some author, in casting about for startlingly original plots, +has not hit upon the idea of having his hero write about the bluebirds in Union +Square and sell it to the <i>Herald</i>. But a search through the files of +metropolitan fiction counts up overwhelmingly for the sparrows and the old +Garden Square, and the <i>Sun</i> always writes the check. +</p> + +<p> +Of course it is easy to understand why this first city venture of the budding +author is always successful. He is primed by necessity to a superlative effort; +mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring city he has found this spot of +singing birds and green grass and trees; every tender sentiment in his nature +is battling with the sweet pain of homesickness; his genius is aroused as it +never may be again; the birds chirp, the tree branches sway, the noise of +wheels is forgotten; he writes with his soul in his pen—and he sells it +to the <i>Sun</i> for $15. +</p> + +<p> +I had read of this custom during many years before I came to New York. When my +friends were using their strongest arguments to dissuade me from coming, I only +smiled serenely. They did not know of that sparrow graft I had up my sleeve. +</p> + +<p> +When I arrived in New York, and the car took me straight from the ferry up +Twenty-third Street to Madison Square, I could hear that $15 check rustling in +my inside pocket. +</p> + +<p> +I obtained lodging at an unhyphenated hostelry, and the next morning I was on a +bench in Madison Square almost by the time the sparrows were awake. Their +melodious chirping, the benignant spring foliage of the noble trees and the +clean, fragrant grass reminded me so potently of the old farm I had left that +tears almost came into my eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Then, all in a moment, I felt my inspiration. The brave, piercing notes of +those cheerful small birds formed a keynote to a wonderful, light, fanciful +song of hope and joy and altruism. Like myself, they were creatures with hearts +pitched to the tune of woods and fields; as I was, so were they captives by +circumstance in the discordant, dull city—yet with how much grace and +glee they bore the restraint! +</p> + +<p> +And then the early morning people began to pass through the square to their +work—sullen people, with sidelong glances and glum faces, hurrying, +hurrying, hurrying. And I got my theme cut out clear from the bird notes, and +wrought it into a lesson, and a poem, and a carnival dance, and a lullaby; and +then translated it all into prose and began to write. +</p> + +<p> +For two hours my pencil traveled over my pad with scarcely a rest. Then I went +to the little room I had rented for two days, and there I cut it to half, and +then mailed it, white-hot, to the <i>Sun</i>. +</p> + +<p> +The next morning I was up by daylight and spent two cents of my capital for a +paper. If the word “sparrow” was in it I was unable to find it. I +took it up to my room and spread it out on the bed and went over it, column by +column. Something was wrong. +</p> + +<p> +Three hours afterward the postman brought me a large envelope containing my MS. +and a piece of inexpensive paper, about 3 inches by 4—I suppose some of +you have seen them—upon which was written in violet ink, “With the +<i>Sun’s</i> thanks.” +</p> + +<p> +I went over to the square and sat upon a bench. No; I did not think it +necessary to eat any breakfast that morning. The confounded pests of sparrows +were making the square hideous with their idiotic “cheep, cheep.” I +never saw birds so persistently noisy, impudent, and disagreeable in all my +life. +</p> + +<p> +By this time, according to all traditions, I should have been standing in the +office of the editor of the <i>Sun</i>. That personage—a tall, grave, +white-haired man—would strike a silver bell as he grasped my hand and +wiped a suspicious moisture from his glasses. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. McChesney,” he would be saying when a subordinate appeared, +“this is Mr. Henry, the young man who sent in that exquisite gem about +the sparrows in Madison Square. You may give him a desk at once. Your salary, +sir, will be $80 a week, to begin with.” +</p> + +<p> +This was what I had been led to expect by all writers who have evolved romances +of literary New York. +</p> + +<p> +Something was decidedly wrong with tradition. I could not assume the blame, so +I fixed it upon the sparrows. I began to hate them with intensity and heat. +</p> + +<p> +At that moment an individual wearing an excess of whiskers, two hats, and a +pestilential air slid into the seat beside me. +</p> + +<p> +“Say, Willie,” he muttered cajolingly, “could you cough up a +dime out of your coffers for a cup of coffee this morning?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m lung-weary, my friend,” said I. “The best I can do +is three cents.” +</p> + +<p> +“And you look like a gentleman, too,” said he. “What brung +you down?—boozer?” +</p> + +<p> +“Birds,” I said fiercely. “The brown-throated songsters +carolling songs of hope and cheer to weary man toiling amid the city’s +dust and din. The little feathered couriers from the meadows and woods chirping +sweetly to us of blue skies and flowering fields. The confounded little +squint-eyed nuisances yawping like a flock of steam pianos, and stuffing +themselves like aldermen with grass seeds and bugs, while a man sits on a bench +and goes without his breakfast. Yes, sir, birds! look at them!” +</p> + +<p> +As I spoke I picked up a dead tree branch that lay by the bench, and hurled it +with all my force into a close congregation of the sparrows on the grass. The +flock flew to the trees with a babel of shrill cries; but two of them remained +prostrate upon the turf. +</p> + +<p> +In a moment my unsavory friend had leaped over the row of benches and secured +the fluttering victims, which he thrust hurriedly into his pockets. Then he +beckoned me with a dirty forefinger. +</p> + +<p> +“Come on, cully,” he said hoarsely. “You’re in on the +feed.” +</p> + +<p> +Thank you very much! +</p> + +<p> +Weakly I followed my dingy acquaintance. He led me away from the park down a +side street and through a crack in a fence into a vacant lot where some +excavating had been going on. Behind a pile of old stones and lumber he paused, +and took out his birds. +</p> + +<p> +“I got matches,” said he. “You got any paper to start a fire +with?” +</p> + +<p> +I drew forth my manuscript story of the sparrows, and offered it for burnt +sacrifice. There were old planks, splinters, and chips for our fire. My frowsy +friend produced from some interior of his frayed clothing half a loaf of bread, +pepper, and salt. +</p> + +<p> +In ten minutes each of us was holding a sparrow spitted upon a stick over the +leaping flames. +</p> + +<p> +“Say,” said my fellow bivouacker, “this ain’t so bad +when a fellow’s hungry. It reminds me of when I struck New York +first—about fifteen years ago. I come in from the West to see if I could +get a job on a newspaper. I hit the Madison Square Park the first mornin’ +after, and was sitting around on the benches. I noticed the sparrows +chirpin’, and the grass and trees so nice and green that I thought I was +back in the country again. Then I got some papers out of my pocket, +and—” +</p> + +<p> +“I know,” I interrupted. “You sent it to the <i>Sun</i> and +got $15.” +</p> + +<p> +“Say,” said my friend, suspiciously, “you seem to know a good +deal. Where was you? I went to sleep on the bench there, in the sun, and +somebody touched me for every cent I had—$15.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>HEARTS AND HANDS</h2> + +<p> +At Denver there was an influx of passengers into the coaches on the eastbound +B. & M. express. In one coach there sat a very pretty young woman dressed +in elegant taste and surrounded by all the luxurious comforts of an experienced +traveler. Among the newcomers were two young men, one of handsome presence with +a bold, frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, glum-faced person, +heavily built and roughly dressed. The two were handcuffed together. +</p> + +<p> +As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only vacant seat offered was a +reversed one facing the attractive young woman. Here the linked couple seated +themselves. The young woman’s glance fell upon them with a distant, swift +disinterest; then with a lovely smile brightening her countenance and a tender +pink tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held out a little gray-gloved hand. When +she spoke her voice, full, sweet, and deliberate, proclaimed that its owner was +accustomed to speak and be heard. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Mr. Easton, if you <i>will</i> make me speak first, I suppose I +must. Don’t you ever recognize old friends when you meet them in the +West?” +</p> + +<p> +The younger man roused himself sharply at the sound of her voice, seemed to +struggle with a slight embarrassment which he threw off instantly, and then +clasped her fingers with his left hand. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Miss Fairchild,” he said, with a smile. +“I’ll ask you to excuse the other hand; it’s otherwise +engaged just at present.” +</p> + +<p> +He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the wrist by the shining +“bracelet” to the left one of his companion. The glad look in the +girl’s eyes slowly changed to a bewildered horror. The glow faded from +her cheeks. Her lips parted in a vague, relaxing distress. Easton, with a +little laugh, as if amused, was about to speak again when the other forestalled +him. The glum-faced man had been watching the girl’s countenance with +veiled glances from his keen, shrewd eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll excuse me for speaking, miss, but, I see you’re +acquainted with the marshall here. If you’ll ask him to speak a word for +me when we get to the pen he’ll do it, and it’ll make things easier +for me there. He’s taking me to Leavenworth prison. It’s seven +years for counterfeiting.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!” said the girl, with a deep breath and returning color. +“So that is what you are doing out here? A marshal!” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear Miss Fairchild,” said Easton, calmly, “I had to do +something. Money has a way of taking wings unto itself, and you know it takes +money to keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this opening in the +West, and—well, a marshalship isn’t quite as high a position as +that of ambassador, but—” +</p> + +<p> +“The ambassador,” said the girl, warmly, “doesn’t call +any more. He needn’t ever have done so. You ought to know that. And so +now you are one of these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot and go +into all kinds of dangers. That’s different from the Washington life. You +have been missed from the old crowd.” +</p> + +<p> +The girl’s eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a little, to rest upon +the glittering handcuffs. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you worry about them, miss,” said the other man. +“All marshals handcuff themselves to their prisoners to keep them from +getting away. Mr. Easton knows his business.” +</p> + +<p> +“Will we see you again soon in Washington?” asked the girl. +</p> + +<p> +“Not soon, I think,” said Easton. “My butterfly days are +over, I fear.” +</p> + +<p> +“I love the West,” said the girl irrelevantly. Her eyes were +shining softly. She looked away out the car window. She began to speak truly +and simply without the gloss of style and manner: “Mamma and I spent the +summer in Denver. She went home a week ago because father was slightly ill. I +could live and be happy in the West. I think the air here agrees with me. Money +isn’t everything. But people always misunderstand things and remain +stupid—” +</p> + +<p> +“Say, Mr. Marshal,” growled the glum-faced man. “This +isn’t quite fair. I’m needing a drink, and haven’t had a +smoke all day. Haven’t you talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, +won’t you? I’m half dead for a pipe.” +</p> + +<p> +The bound travelers rose to their feet, Easton with the same slow smile on his +face. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t deny a petition for tobacco,” he said, lightly. +“It’s the one friend of the unfortunate. Good-bye, Miss Fairchild. +Duty calls, you know.” He held out his hand for a farewell. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s too bad you are not going East,” she said, reclothing +herself with manner and style. “But you must go on to Leavenworth, I +suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Easton, “I must go on to Leavenworth.” +</p> + +<p> +The two men sidled down the aisle into the smoker. +</p> + +<p> +The two passengers in a seat near by had heard most of the conversation. Said +one of them: “That marshal’s a good sort of chap. Some of these +Western fellows are all right.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pretty young to hold an office like that, isn’t he?” asked +the other. +</p> + +<p> +“Young!” exclaimed the first speaker, “why—Oh! +didn’t you catch on? Say—did you ever know an officer to handcuff a +prisoner to his <i>right</i> hand?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>THE CACTUS</h2> + +<p> +The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large +amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and +it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing +one’s gloves. +</p> + +<p> +That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a table in his bachelor +apartments. On the table stood a singular-looking green plant in a red earthen +jar. The plant was one of the species of cacti, and was provided with long, +tentacular leaves that perpetually swayed with the slightest breeze with a +peculiar beckoning motion. +</p> + +<p> +Trysdale’s friend, the brother of the bride, stood at a sideboard +complaining at being allowed to drink alone. Both men were in evening dress. +White favors like stars upon their coats shone through the gloom of the +apartment. +</p> + +<p> +As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed through Trysdale’s mind +a swift, scarifying retrospect of the last few hours. It seemed that in his +nostrils was still the scent of the flowers that had been banked in odorous +masses about the church, and in his ears the lowpitched hum of a thousand +well-bred voices, the rustle of crisp garments, and, most insistently +recurring, the drawling words of the minister irrevocably binding her to +another. +</p> + +<p> +From this last hopeless point of view he still strove, as if it had become a +habit of his mind, to reach some conjecture as to why and how he had lost her. +Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he had suddenly found himself +confronted by a thing he had never before faced—his own innermost, +unmitigated, arid unbedecked self. He saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism +that he had worn now turn to rags of folly. He shuddered at the thought that to +others, before now, the garments of his soul must have appeared sorry and +threadbare. Vanity and conceit? These were the joints in his armor. And how +free from either she had always been—But why— +</p> + +<p> +As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the altar he had felt an unworthy, +sullen exultation that had served to support him. He had told himself that her +paleness was from thoughts of another than the man to whom she was about to +give herself. But even that poor consolation had been wrenched from him. For, +when he saw that swift, limpid, upward look that she gave the man when he took +her hand, he knew himself to be forgotten. Once that same look had been raised +to him, and he had gauged its meaning. Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; its +last prop was gone. Why had it ended thus? There had been no quarrel between +them, nothing— +</p> + +<p> +For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his mind the events of those last +few days before the tide had so suddenly turned. +</p> + +<p> +She had always insisted upon placing him upon a pedestal, and he had accepted +her homage with royal grandeur. It had been a very sweet incense that she had +burned before him; so modest (he told himself); so childlike and worshipful, +and (he would once have sworn) so sincere. She had invested him with an almost +supernatural number of high attributes and excellencies and talents, and he had +absorbed the oblation as a desert drinks the rain that can coax from it no +promise of blossom or fruit. +</p> + +<p> +As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of his last glove, the crowning +instance of his fatuous and tardily mourned egoism came vividly back to him. +The scene was the night when he had asked her to come up on his pedestal with +him and share his greatness. He could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his +mind to dwell upon the memory of her convincing beauty that night—the +careless wave of her hair, the tenderness and virginal charm of her looks and +words. But they had been enough, and they had brought him to speak. During +their conversation she had said: +</p> + +<p> +“And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak the Spanish language like +a native. Why have you hidden this accomplishment from me? Is there anything +you do not know?” +</p> + +<p> +Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he (Trysdale) had been guilty (he +sometimes did such things) of airing at the club some old, canting Castilian +proverb dug from the hotchpotch at the back of dictionaries. Carruthers, who +was one of his incontinent admirers, was the very man to have magnified this +exhibition of doubtful erudition. +</p> + +<p> +But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been so sweet and flattering. He +allowed the imputation to pass without denial. Without protest, he allowed her +to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish scholarship. He let it +grace his conquering head, and, among its soft convolutions, he did not feel +the prick of the thorn that was to pierce him later. +</p> + +<p> +How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was! How she fluttered like a snared bird +when he laid his mightiness at her feet! He could have sworn, and he could +swear now, that unmistakable consent was in her eyes, but, coyly, she would +give him no direct answer. “I will send you my answer to-morrow,” +she said; and he, the indulgent, confident victor, smilingly granted the delay. +The next day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for the word. At noon her groom +came to the door and left the strange cactus in the red earthen jar. There was +no note, no message, merely a tag upon the plant bearing a barbarous foreign or +botanical name. He waited until night, but her answer did not come. His large +pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her. Two evenings later they met at +a dinner. Their greetings were conventional, but she looked at him, breathless, +wondering, eager. He was courteous, adamant, waiting her explanation. With +womanly swiftness she took her cue from his manner, and turned to snow and ice. +Thus, and wider from this on, they had drifted apart. Where was his fault? Who +had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought the answer amid the ruins of his +self-conceit. If— +</p> + +<p> +The voice of the other man in the room, querulously intruding upon his +thoughts, aroused him. +</p> + +<p> +“I say, Trysdale, what the deuce is the matter with you? You look unhappy +as if you yourself had been married instead of having acted merely as an +accomplice. Look at me, another accessory, come two thousand miles on a +garlicky, cockroachy banana steamer all the way from South America to connive +at the sacrifice—please to observe how lightly my guilt rests upon my +shoulders. Only little sister I had, too, and now she’s gone. Come now! +take something to ease your conscience.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t drink just now, thanks,” said Trysdale. +</p> + +<p> +“Your brandy,” resumed the other, coming over and joining him, +“is abominable. Run down to see me some time at Punta Redonda, and try +some of our stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It’s worth the trip. +Hallo! here’s an old acquaintance. Wherever did you rake up this cactus, +Trysdale?” +</p> + +<p> +“A present,” said Trysdale, “from a friend. Know the +species?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well. It’s a tropical concern. See hundreds of ’em +around Punta every day. Here’s the name on this tag tied to it. Know any +Spanish, Trysdale?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” said Trysdale, with the bitter wraith of a +smile—“Is it Spanish?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reaching out and beckoning to +you. They call it by this name—Ventomarme. Name means in English, +‘Come and take me.’” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR</h2> + +<p> +I was walking in Central Park with Avery Knight, the great New York burglar, +highwayman, and murderer. +</p> + +<p> +“But, my dear Knight,” said I, “it sounds incredible. You +have undoubtedly performed some of the most wonderful feats in your profession +known to modern crime. You have committed some marvellous deeds under the very +noses of the police—you have boldly entered the homes of millionaires and +held them up with an empty gun while you made free with their silver and +jewels; you have sandbagged citizens in the glare of Broadway’s electric +lights; you have killed and robbed with superb openness and absolute +impunity—but when you boast that within forty-eight hours after +committing a murder you can run down and actually bring me face to face with +the detective assigned to apprehend you, I must beg leave to express my +doubts—remember, you are in New York.” +</p> + +<p> +Avery Knight smiled indulgently. +</p> + +<p> +“You pique my professional pride, doctor,” he said in a nettled +tone. “I will convince you.” +</p> + +<p> +About twelve yards in advance of us a prosperous-looking citizen was rounding a +clump of bushes where the walk curved. Knight suddenly drew a revolver and shot +the man in the back. His victim fell and lay without moving. +</p> + +<p> +The great murderer went up to him leisurely and took from his clothes his +money, watch, and a valuable ring and cravat pin. He then rejoined me smiling +calmly, and we continued our walk. +</p> + +<p> +Ten steps and we met a policeman running toward the spot where the shot had +been fired. Avery Knight stopped him. +</p> + +<p> +“I have just killed a man,” he announced, seriously, “and +robbed him of his possessions.” +</p> + +<p> +“G’wan,” said the policeman, angrily, “or I’ll +run yez in! Want yer name in the papers, don’t yez? I never knew the +cranks to come around so quick after a shootin’ before. Out of th’ +park, now, for yours, or I’ll fan yez.” +</p> + +<p> +“What you have done,” I said, argumentatively, as Knight and I +walked on, “was easy. But when you come to the task of hunting down the +detective that they send upon your trail you will find that you have undertaken +a difficult feat.” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps so,” said Knight, lightly. “I will admit that my +success depends in a degree upon the sort of man they start after me. If it +should be an ordinary plain-clothes man I might fail to gain a sight of him. If +they honor me by giving the case to some one of their celebrated sleuths I do +not fear to match my cunning and powers of induction against his.” +</p> + +<p> +On the next afternoon Knight entered my office with a satisfied look on his +keen countenance. +</p> + +<p> +“How goes the mysterious murder?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“As usual,” said Knight, smilingly. “I have put in the +morning at the police station and at the inquest. It seems that a card case of +mine containing cards with my name and address was found near the body. They +have three witnesses who saw the shooting and gave a description of me. The +case has been placed in the hands of Shamrock Jolnes, the famous detective. He +left Headquarters at 11:30 on the assignment. I waited at my address until two, +thinking he might call there.” +</p> + +<p> +I laughed, tauntingly. +</p> + +<p> +“You will never see Jolnes,” I continued, “until this murder +has been forgotten, two or three weeks from now. I had a better opinion of your +shrewdness, Knight. During the three hours and a half that you waited he has +got out of your ken. He is after you on true induction theories now, and no +wrongdoer has yet been known to come upon him while thus engaged. I advise you +to give it up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Doctor,” said Knight, with a sudden glint in his keen gray eye and +a squaring of his chin, “in spite of the record your city holds of +something like a dozen homicides without a subsequent meeting of the +perpetrator, and the sleuth in charge of the case, I will undertake to break +that record. To-morrow I will take you to Shamrock Jolnes—I will unmask +him before you and prove to you that it is not an impossibility for an officer +of the law and a manslayer to stand face to face in your city.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do it,” said I, “and you’ll have the sincere thanks of +the Police Department.” +</p> + +<p> +On the next day Knight called for me in a cab. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been on one or two false scents, doctor,” he admitted. +“I know something of detectives’ methods, and I followed out a few +of them, expecting to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a +.45-caliber, I thought surely I would find him at work on the clue in +Forty-fifth Street. Then, again, I looked for the detective at the Columbia +University, as the man’s being shot in the back naturally suggested +hazing. But I could not find a trace of him.” +</p> + +<p> +“—Nor will you,” I said, emphatically. +</p> + +<p> +“Not by ordinary methods,” said Knight. “I might walk up and +down Broadway for a month without success. But you have aroused my pride, +doctor; and if I fail to show you Shamrock Jolnes this day, I promise you I +will never kill or rob in your city again.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense, man,” I replied. “When our burglars walk into our +houses and politely demand, thousands of dollars’ worth of jewels, and +then dine and bang the piano an hour or two before leaving, how do you, a mere +murderer, expect to come in contact with the detective that is looking for +you?” +</p> + +<p> +Avery Knight, sat lost in thought for a while. At length he looked up brightly. +</p> + +<p> +“Doc,” said he, “I have it. Put on your hat, and come with +me. In half an hour I guarantee that you shall stand in the presence of +Shamrock Jolnes.” +</p> + +<p> +I entered a cab with Avery Knight. I did not hear his instructions to the +driver, but the vehicle set out at a smart pace up Broadway, turning presently +into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding northward again. It was with a rapidly +beating heart that I accompanied this wonderful and gifted assassin, whose +analytical genius and superb self-confidence had prompted him to make me the +tremendous promise of bringing me into the presence of a murderer and the New +York detective in pursuit of him simultaneously. Even yet I could not believe +it possible. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure that you are not being led into some trap?” I asked. +“Suppose that your clue, whatever it is, should bring us only into the +presence of the Commissioner of Police and a couple of dozen cops!” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear doctor,” said Knight, a little stiffly. “I would +remind you that I am no gambler.” +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon,” said I. “But I do not think you will +find Jolnes.” +</p> + +<p> +The cab stopped before one of the handsomest residences on the avenue. Walking +up and down in front of the house was a man with long red whiskers, with a +detective’s badge showing on the lapel of his coat. Now and then the man +would remove his whiskers to wipe his face, and then I would recognize at once +the well-known features of the great New York detective. Jolnes was keeping a +sharp watch upon the doors and windows of the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, doctor,” said Knight, unable to repress a note of triumph in +his voice, “have you seen?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is wonderful—wonderful!” I could not help exclaiming as +our cab started on its return trip. “But how did you do it? By what +process of induction—” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear doctor,” interrupted the great murderer, “the +inductive theory is what the detectives use. My process is more modern. I call +it the saltatorial theory. Without bothering with the tedious mental phenomena +necessary to the solution of a mystery from slight clues, I jump at once to a +conclusion. I will explain to you the method I employed in this case. +</p> + +<p> +“In the first place, I argued that as the crime was committed in New York +City in broad daylight, in a public place and under peculiarly atrocious +circumstances, and that as the most skilful sleuth available was let loose upon +the case, the perpetrator would never be discovered. Do you not think my +postulation justified by precedent?” +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps so,” I replied, doggedly. “But if Big Bill +Dev—” +</p> + +<p> +“Stop that,” interrupted Knight, with a smile, “I’ve +heard that several times. It’s too late now. I will proceed. +</p> + +<p> +“If homicides in New York went undiscovered, I reasoned, although the +best detective talent was employed to ferret them out, it must be true that the +detectives went about their work in the wrong way. And not only in the wrong +way, but exactly opposite from the right way. That was my clue. +</p> + +<p> +“I slew the man in Central Park. Now, let me describe myself to you. +</p> + +<p> +“I am tall, with a black beard, and I hate publicity. I have no money to +speak of; I do not like oatmeal, and it is the one ambition of my life to die +rich. I am of a cold and heartless disposition. I do not care for my fellowmen +and I never give a cent to beggars or charity. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, my dear doctor, that is the true description of myself, the man +whom that shrewd detective was to hunt down. You who are familiar with the +history of crime in New York of late should be able to foretell the result. +When I promised you to exhibit to your incredulous gaze the sleuth who was set +upon me, you laughed at me because you said that detectives and murderers never +met in New York. I have demonstrated to you that the theory is possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how did you do it?” I asked again. +</p> + +<p> +“It was very simple,” replied the distinguished murderer. “I +assumed that the detective would go exactly opposite to the clues he had. I +have given you a description of myself. Therefore, he must necessarily set to +work and trail a short man with a white beard who likes to be in the papers, +who is very wealthy, is fond ‘of oatmeal, wants to die poor, and is of an +extremely generous and philanthropic disposition. When thus far is reached the +mind hesitates no longer. I conveyed you at once to the spot where Shamrock +Jolnes was piping off Andrew Carnegie’s residence.” +</p> + +<p> +“Knight,” said I, “you’re a wonder. If there was no +danger of your reforming, what a rounds man you’d make for the Nineteenth +Precinct!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +[This story has been rewritten and published in “Strictly Business” +under the title, The Proof of the Pudding.] +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Usually it is a cold day in July when you can stroll up Broadway in that month +and get a story out of the drama. I found one a few breathless, parboiling days +ago, and it seems to decide a serious question in art. +</p> + +<p> +There was not a soul left in the city except Hollis and me—and two or +three million sunworshippers who remained at desks and counters. The elect had +fled to seashore, lake, and mountain, and had already begun to draw for +additional funds. Every evening Hollis and I prowled about the deserted town +searching for coolness in empty cafes, dining-rooms, and roofgardens. We knew +to the tenth part of a revolution the speed of every electric fan in Gotham, +and we followed the swiftest as they varied. Hollis’s fiancee. Miss Loris +Sherman, had been in the Adirondacks, at Lower Saranac Lake, for a month. In +another week he would join her party there. In the meantime, he cursed the city +cheerfully and optimistically, and sought my society because I suffered him to +show me her photograph during the black coffee every time we dined together. +</p> + +<p> +My revenge was to read to him my one-act play. +</p> + +<p> +It was one insufferable evening when the overplus of the day’s heat was +being hurled quiveringly back to the heavens by every surcharged brick and +stone and inch of iron in the panting town. But with the cunning of the +two-legged beasts we had found an oasis where the hoofs of Apollo’s steed +had not been allowed to strike. Our seats were on an ocean of cool, polished +oak; the white linen of fifty deserted tables flapped like seagulls in the +artificial breeze; a mile away a waiter lingered for a heliographic +signal—we might have roared songs there or fought a duel without +molestation. +</p> + +<p> +Out came Miss Loris’s photo with the coffee, and I once more praised the +elegant poise of the neck, the extremely low-coiled mass of heavy hair, and the +eyes that followed one, like those in an oil painting. +</p> + +<p> +“She’s the greatest ever,” said Hollis, with enthusiasm. +“Good as Great Northern Preferred, and a disposition built like a watch. +One week more and I’ll be happy Jonny-on-the-spot. Old Tom Tolliver, my +best college chum, went up there two weeks ago. He writes me that Loris +doesn’t talk about anything but me. Oh, I guess Rip Van Winkle +didn’t have all the good luck!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes,” said I, hurriedly, pulling out my typewritten play. +“She’s no doubt a charming girl. Now, here’s that little +curtain-raiser you promised to listen to.” +</p> + +<p> +“Ever been tried on the stage?” asked Hollis. +</p> + +<p> +“Not exactly,” I answered. “I read half of it the other day +to a fellow whose brother knows Robert Edeson; but he had to catch a train +before I finished.” +</p> + +<p> +“Go on,” said Hollis, sliding back in his chair like a good fellow. +“I’m no stage carpenter, but I’ll tell you what I think of it +from a first-row balcony standpoint. I’m a theatre bug during the season, +and I can size up a fake play almost as quick as the gallery can. Flag the +waiter once more, and then go ahead as hard as you like with it. I’ll be +the dog.” +</p> + +<p> +I read my little play lovingly, and, I fear, not without some elocution. There +was one scene in it that I believed in greatly. The comedy swiftly rises into +thrilling and unexpectedly developed drama. Capt. Marchmont suddenly becomes +cognizant that his wife is an unscrupulous adventuress, who has deceived him +from the day of their first meeting. The rapid and mortal duel between them +from that moment—she with her magnificent lies and siren charm, winding +about him like a serpent, trying to recover her lost ground; he with his +man’s agony and scorn and lost faith, trying to tear her from his heart. +That scene I always thought was a crackerjack. When Capt. Marchmont discovers +her duplicity by reading on a blotter in a mirror the impression of a note that +she has written to the Count, he raises his hand to heaven and exclaims: +“O God, who created woman while Adam slept, and gave her to him for a +companion, take back Thy gift and return instead the sleep, though it last +forever!” +</p> + +<p> +“Rot,” said Hollis, rudely, when I had given those lines with +proper emphasis. +</p> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon!” I said, as sweetly as I could. +</p> + +<p> +“Come now,” went on Hollis, “don’t be an idiot. You +know very well that nobody spouts any stuff like that these days. That sketch +went along all right until you rang in the skyrockets. Cut out that right-arm +exercise and the Adam and Eve stunt, and make your captain talk as you or I or +Bill Jones would.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll admit,” said I, earnestly (for my theory was being +touched upon), “that on all ordinary occasions all of us use commonplace +language to convey our thoughts. You will remember that up to the moment when +the captain makes his terrible discovery all the characters on the stage talk +pretty much as they would, in real life. But I believe that I am right in +allowing him lines suitable to the strong and tragic situation into which he +falls.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tragic, my eye!” said my friend, irreverently. “In +Shakespeare’s day he might have sputtered out some high-cockalorum +nonsense of that sort, because in those days they ordered ham and eggs in blank +verse and discharged the cook with an epic. But not for B’way in the +summer of 1905!” +</p> + +<p> +“It is my opinion,” said I, “that great human emotions shake +up our vocabulary and leave the words best suited to express them on top. A +sudden violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring expressions out of an +ordinary man as strong and solemn and dramatic as those used in fiction or on +the stage to portray those emotions.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s where you fellows are wrong,” said Hollis. +“Plain, every-day talk is what goes. Your captain would very likely have +kicked the cat, lit a cigar, stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a +lawyer, instead of getting off those Robert Mantell pyrotechnics.” +</p> + +<p> +“Possibly, a little later,” I continued. “But just at the +time—just as the blow is delivered, if something Scriptural or theatrical +and deep-tongued isn’t wrung from a man in spite of his modern and +practical way of speaking, then I’m wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” said Hollis, kindly, “you’ve got to whoop +her up some degrees for the stage. The audience expects it. When the villain +kidnaps little Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks out of the +atmosphere, and scream: “Me chee-ild, me chee-ild!” What she would +actually do would be to call up the police by ’phone, ring for some +strong tea, and get the little darling’s photo out, ready for the +reporters. When you get your villain in a corner—a stage +corner—it’s all right for him to clap his hand to his forehead and +hiss: “All is lost!” Off the stage he would remark: “This is +a conspiracy against me—I refer you to my lawyers.’” +</p> + +<p> +“I get no consolation,” said I, gloomily, “from your +concession of an accentuated stage treatment. In my play I fondly hoped that I +was following life. If people in real life meet great crises in a commonplace +way, they should do the same on the stage.” +</p> + +<p> +And then we drifted, like two trout, out of our cool pool in the great hotel +and began to nibble languidly at the gay flies in the swift current of +Broadway. And our question of dramatic art was unsettled. +</p> + +<p> +We nibbled at the flies, and avoided the hooks, as wise trout do; but soon the +weariness of Manhattan in summer overcame us. Nine stories up, facing the +south, was Hollis’s apartment, and we soon stepped into an elevator bound +for that cooler haven. +</p> + +<p> +I was familiar in those quarters, and quickly my play was forgotten, and I +stood at a sideboard mixing things, with cracked ice and glasses all about me. +A breeze from the bay came in the windows not altogether blighted by the +asphalt furnace over which it had passed. Hollis, whistling softly, turned over +a late-arrived letter or two on his table, and drew around the coolest wicker +armchairs. +</p> + +<p> +I was just measuring the Vermouth carefully when I heard a sound. Some +man’s voice groaned hoarsely: “False, oh, God!—false, and +Love is a lie and friendship but the byword of devils!” +</p> + +<p> +I looked around quickly. Hollis lay across the table with his head down upon +his outstretched arms. And then he looked up at me and laughed in his ordinary +manner. +</p> + +<p> +I knew him—he was poking fun at me about my theory. And it did seem so +unnatural, those swelling words during our quiet gossip, that I half began to +believe I had been mistaken—that my theory was wrong. +</p> + +<p> +Hollis raised himself slowly from the table. +</p> + +<p> +“You were right about that theatrical business, old man,” he said, +quietly, as he tossed a note to me. +</p> + +<p> +I read it. +</p> + +<p> +Loris had run away with Tom Tolliver. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS</h2> + +<p> +“I see,” remarked the tall gentleman in the frock coat and black +slouch hat, “that another street car motorman in your city has narrowly +excaped lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting a cigar and +walking a couple of blocks down the street.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you think they would have lynched him?” asked the New Yorker, +in the next seat of the ferry station, who was also waiting for the boat. +</p> + +<p> +“Not until after the election,” said the tall man, cutting a corner +off his plug of tobacco. “I’ve been in your city long enough to +know something about your mobs. The motorman’s mob is about the least +dangerous of them all, except the National Guard and the Dressmakers’ +Convention. +</p> + +<p> +“You see, when little Willie Goldstein is sent by his mother for +pigs’ knuckles, with a nickel tightly grasped in his chubby fist, he +always crosses the street car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and +then suddenly turns back to ask his mother whether it was pale ale or a spool +of 80 white cotton that she wanted. The motorman yells and throws himself on +the brakes like a football player. There is a horrible grinding and then a +ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, and Willie is sitting, with part of his +trousers torn away by the fender, screaming for his lost nickel. +</p> + +<p> +“In ten seconds the car is surrounded by 600 infuriated citizens, crying, +‘Lynch the motorman! Lynch the motorman!’ at the top of their +voices. Some of them run to the nearest cigar store to get a rope; but they +find the last one has just been cut up and labelled. Hundreds of the excited +mob press close to the cowering motorman, whose hand is observed to tremble +perceptibly as he transfers a stick of pepsin gum from his pocket to his mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“When the bloodthirsty mob of maddened citizens has closed in on the +motorman, some bringing camp stools and sitting quite close to him, and all +shouting, ‘Lynch him!’ Policeman Fogarty forces his way through +them to the side of their prospective victim. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Hello, Mike,’ says the motorman in a low voice, ‘nice +day. Shall I sneak off a block or so, or would you like to rescue me?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Well, Jerry, if you don’t mind,’ says the policeman, +‘I’d like to disperse the infuriated mob singlehanded. I +haven’t defeated a lynching mob since last Tuesday; and that was a small +one of only 300, that wanted to string up a Dago boy for selling wormy pears. +It would boost me some down at the station.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘All right, Mike,’ says the motorman, ‘anything to +oblige. I’ll turn pale and tremble.’ +</p> + +<p> +“And he does so; and Policeman Fogarty draws his club and says, +‘G’wan wid yez!’ and in eight seconds the desperate mob has +scattered and gone about its business, except about a hundred who remain to +search for Willie’s nickel.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never heard of a mob in our city doing violence to a motorman because +of an accident,” said the New Yorker. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not liable to,” said the tall man. “They know the +motorman’s all right, and that he wouldn’t even run over a stray +dog if he could help it. And they know that not a man among ’em would tie +the knot to hang even a Thomas cat that had been tried and condemned and +sentenced according to law.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why do they become infuriated and make threats of lynching?” +asked the New Yorker. +</p> + +<p> +“To assure the motorman,” answered the tall man, “that he is +safe. If they really wanted to do him up they would go into the houses and drop +bricks on him from the third-story windows.” +</p> + +<p> +“New Yorkers are not cowards,” said the other man, a little +stiffly. +</p> + +<p> +“Not one at a time,” agreed the tall man, promptly. +“You’ve got a fine lot of single-handed scrappers in your town. +I’d rather fight three of you than one; and I’d go up against all +the Gas Trust’s victims in a bunch before I’d pass two citizens on +a dark corner, with my watch chain showing. When you get rounded up in a bunch +you lose your nerve. Get you in crowds and you’re easy. Ask the +‘L’ road guards and George B. Cortelyou and the tintype booths at +Coney Island. Divided you stand, united you fall. <i>E pluribus nihil</i>. +Whenever one of your mobs surrounds a man and begins to holler, ‘Lynch +him!’ he says to himself, “Oh, dear, I suppose I must look pale to +please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my life insurance premium lapse +to-morrow. This is a sure tip for me to play Methuselah straight across the +board in the next handicap.’ +</p> + +<p> +“I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of New +York policemen when an infuriated mob demands that he be turned over to them +for lynching. ‘For God’s sake, officers,’ cries the +distracted wretch, ‘have ye hearts of stone, that ye will not let them +wrest me from ye?’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Sorry, Jimmy,’ says one of the policemen, ‘but it +won’t do. There’s three of us—me and Darrel and the +plain-clothes man; and there’s only sivin thousand of the mob. +How’d we explain it at the office if they took ye? Jist chase the +infuriated aggregation around the corner, Darrel, and we’ll be +movin’ along to the station.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so +harmless,” said the New Yorker, with a faint note of civic pride. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll admit that,” said the tall man. “A cousin of mine +who was on a visit here once had an arm broken and lost an ear in one of +them.” +</p> + +<p> +“That must have been during the Cooper Union riots,” remarked the +New Yorker. +</p> + +<p> +“Not the Cooper Union,” explained the tall man—“but it +was a union riot—at the Vanastor wedding.” +</p> + +<p> +“You seem to be in favor of lynch law,” said the New Yorker, +severely. +</p> + +<p> +“No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are certain +cases when people rise in their just majesty and take a righteous vengeance for +crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am an advocate of law and order, +but I will say to you that less than six months ago I myself assisted at the +lynching of one of that race that is creating a wide chasm between your section +of country and mine, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +“It is a deplorable condition,” said the New Yorker, “that +exists in the South, but—” +</p> + +<p> +“I am from Indiana, sir,” said the tall man, taking another chew; +“and I don’t think you will condemn my course when I tell you that +the colored man in question had stolen $9.60 in cash, sir, from my own +brother.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>THE SNOW MAN</h2> + +<p class="letter"> +EDITORIAL NOTE.—<i>Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter +(known through his literary work as “O. Henry”) this American +master of short-story writing had begun for Hampton’s Magazine the story +printed below. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled to give up +writing about at the point where the girl enters the story.</i> +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +<i>When he realized that he could do no more (it was his lifelong habit to +write with a pencil, never dictating to a stenographer), O. Henry told in +detail the remainder of The Snow Man to Harris Merton Lyon, whom he had often +spoken of as one of the most effective short-story writers of the present time. +Mr. Porter had delineated all of the characters, leaving only the rounding out +of the plot in the final pages to Mr. Lyon.</i> +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Housed and windowpaned from it, the greatest wonder to little children is the +snow. To men, it is something like a crucible in which their world melts into a +white star ten million miles away. The man who can stand the test is a Snow +Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Réaumur, or Moses’s carven +tablets of stone. +</p> + +<p> +Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the cañon of Big Lost River, and I +urged my horse toward the Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was deepening. The +flakes were as large as an hour’s circular tatting by Miss +Wilkins’s ablest spinster, betokening a heavy snowfall and less +entertainment and more adventure than the completion of the tatting could +promise. I knew Ross Curtis of the Bay Horse, and that I would be welcome as a +snow-bound pilgrim, both for hospitality’s sake and because Ross had few +chances to confide in living creatures who did not neigh, bellow, bleat, yelp, +or howl during his discourse. +</p> + +<p> +The ranch house was just within the jaws of the cañon where its builder may +have fatuously fancied that the timbered and rocky walls on both sides would +have protected it from the wintry Colorado winds; but I feared the drift. Even +now through the endless, bottomless rift in the hills—the speaking tube +of the four winds—came roaring the voice of the proprietor to the little +room on the top floor. +</p> + +<p> +At my “hello,” a ranch hand came from an outer building and +received my thankful horse. In another minute, Ross and I sat by a stove in the +dining-room of the four-room ranch house, while the big, simple welcome of the +household lay at my disposal. Fanned by the whizzing norther, the fine, dry +snow was sifted and bolted through the cracks and knotholes of the logs. The +cook room, without a separating door, appended. +</p> + +<p> +In there I could see a short, sturdy, leisurely and weather-beaten man moving +with professional sureness about his red-hot stove. His face was stolid and +unreadable—something like that of a great thinker, or of one who had no +thoughts to conceal. I thought his eye seemed unwarrantably superior to the +elements and to the man, but quickly attributed that to the characteristic +self-importance of a petty chef. “Camp cook” was the niche that I +gave him in the Hall of Types; and he fitted it as an apple fits a dumpling. +</p> + +<p> +Cold it was in spite of the glowing stove; and Ross and I sat and talked, +shuddering frequently, half from nerves and half from the freezing draughts. So +he brought the bottle and the cook brought boiling water, and we made +prodigious hot toddies against the attacks of Boreas. We clinked glasses often. +They sounded like icicles dropping from the eaves, or like the tinkle of a +thousand prisms on a Louis XIV chandelier that I once heard at a +boarder’s dance in the parlor of a ten-a-week boarding-house in Gramercy +Square. <i>Sic transit</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Silence in the terrible beauty of the snow and of the Sphinx and of the stars; +but they who believe that all things, from a without-wine table d’hôte to +the crucifixion, may be interpreted through music, might have found a nocturne +or a symphony to express the isolation of that blotted-out world. The clink of +glass and bottle, the aeolian chorus of the wind in the house crannies, its +deeper trombone through the cañon below, and the Wagnerian crash of the +cook’s pots and pans, united in a fit, discordant melody, I thought. No +less welcome an accompaniment was the sizzling of broiling ham and venison +cutlet indorsed by the solvent fumes of true Java, bringing rich promises of +comfort to our yearning souls. +</p> + +<p> +The cook brought the smoking supper to the table. He nodded to me +democratically as he cast the heavy plates around as though he were pitching +quoits or hurling the discus. I looked at him with some appraisement and +curiosity and much conciliation. There was no prophet to tell us when that +drifting evil outside might cease to fall; and it is well, when snow-bound, to +stand somewhere within the radius of the cook’s favorable consideration. +But I could read neither favor nor disapproval in the face and manner of our +pot-wrestler. +</p> + +<p> +He was about five feet nine inches, and two hundred pounds of commonplace, +bull-necked, pink-faced, callous calm. He wore brown duck trousers too tight +and too short, and a blue flannel shirt with sleeves rolled above his elbows. +There was a sort of grim, steady scowl on his features that looked to me as +though he had fixed it there purposely as a protection against the weakness of +an inherent amiability that, he fancied, were better concealed. And then I let +supper usurp his brief occupancy of my thoughts. +</p> + +<p> +“Draw up, George,” said Ross. “Let’s all eat while the +grub’s hot.” +</p> + +<p> +“You fellows go on and chew,” answered the cook. “I ate mine +in the kitchen before sun-down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Think it’ll be a big snow, George?” asked the ranchman. +</p> + +<p> +George had turned to reenter the cook room. He moved slowly around and, looking +at his face, it seemed to me that he was turning over the wisdom and knowledge +of centuries in his head. +</p> + +<p> +“It might,” was his delayed reply. +</p> + +<p> +At the door of the kitchen he stopped and looked back at us. Both Ross and I +held our knives and forks poised and gave him our regard. Some men have the +power of drawing the attention of others without speaking a word. Their +attitude is more effective than a shout. +</p> + +<p> +“And again it mightn’t,” said George, and went back to his +stove. +</p> + +<p> +After we had eaten, he came in and gathered the emptied dishes. He stood for a +moment, while his spurious frown deepened. +</p> + +<p> +“It might stop any minute,” he said, “or it might keep up for +days.” +</p> + +<p> +At the farther end of the cook room I saw George pour hot water into his +dishpan, light his pipe, and put the tableware through its required lavation. +He then carefully unwrapped from a piece of old saddle blanket a paperback +book, and settled himself to read by his dim oil lamp. +</p> + +<p> +And then the ranchman threw tobacco on the cleared table and set forth again +the bottles and glasses; and I saw that I stood in a deep channel through which +the long dammed flood of his discourse would soon be booming. But I was half +content, comparing my fate with that of the late Thomas Tucker, who had to sing +for his supper, thus doubling the burdens of both himself and his host. +</p> + +<p> +“Snow is a hell of a thing,” said Ross, by way of a foreword. +“It ain’t, somehow, it seems to me, salubrious. I can stand water +and mud and two inches below zero and a hundred and ten in the shade and +medium-sized cyclones, but this here fuzzy white stuff naturally gets me all +locoed. I reckon the reason it rattles you is because it changes the look of +things so much. It’s like you had a wife and left her in the morning with +the same old blue cotton wrapper on, and rides in of a night and runs across +her all outfitted in a white silk evening frock, waving an ostrich-feather fan, +and monkeying with a posy of lily flowers. Wouldn’t it make you look for +your pocket compass? You’d be liable to kiss her before you collected +your presence of mind.” +</p> + +<p> +By and by, the flood of Ross’s talk was drawn up into the clouds (so it +pleased me to fancy) and there condensed into the finer snowflakes of thought; +and we sat silent about the stove, as good friends and bitter enemies will do. +I thought of Ross’s preamble about the mysterious influence upon man +exerted by that ermine-lined monster that now covered our little world, and +knew he was right. +</p> + +<p> +Of all the curious knickknacks, mysteries, puzzles, Indian gifts, rat-traps, +and well-disguised blessings that the gods chuck down to us from the Olympian +peaks, the most disquieting and evil-bringing is the snow. By scientific +analysis it is absolute beauty and purity—so, at the beginning we look +doubtfully at chemistry. +</p> + +<p> +It falls upon the world, and lo! we live in another. It hides in a night the +old scars and familiar places with which we have grown heart-sick or enamored. +So, as quietly as we can, we hustle on our embroidered robes and hie us on +Prince Camaralzaman’s horse or in the reindeer sleigh into the white +country where the seven colors converge. This is when our fancy can overcome +the bane of it. +</p> + +<p> +But in certain spots of the earth comes the snow-madness, made known by people +turned wild and distracted by the bewildering veil that has obscured the only +world they know. In the cities, the white fairy who sets the brains of her +dupes whirling by a wave of her wand is cast for the comedy role. Her diamond +shoe buckles glitter like frost; with a pirouette she invites the spotless +carnival. +</p> + +<p> +But in the waste places the snow is sardonic. Sponging out the world of the +outliers, it gives no foothold on another sphere in return. It makes of the +earth a firmament under foot; it leaves us clawing and stumbling in space in an +inimical fifth element whose evil outdoes its strangeness and beauty, There +Nature, low comedienne, plays her tricks on man. Though she has put him forth +as her highest product, it appears that she has fashioned him with what seems +almost incredible carelessness and indexterity. One-sided and without balance, +with his two halves unequally fashioned and joined, must he ever jog his +eccentric way. The snow falls, the darkness caps it, and the ridiculous +man-biped strays in accurate circles until he succumbs in the ruins of his +defective architecture. +</p> + +<p> +In the throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol. In appearance as plausible as +the breakfast food of the angels, it is as hot in the mouth as ginger, +increasing the pangs of the water-famished. It is a derivative from water, air, +and some cold, uncanny fire from which the caloric has been extracted. Good has +been said of it; even the poets, crazed by its spell and shivering in their +attics under its touch, have indited permanent melodies commemorative of its +beauty. +</p> + +<p> +Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a plague—a corroding +plague that Pharaoh successfully side-stepped. It beneficently covers the wheat +fields, swelling the crop—and the Flour Trust gets us by the throat like +a sudden quinsy. It spreads the tail of its white kirtle over the red seams of +the rugged north—and the Alaskan short story is born. Etiolated perfidy, +it shelters the mountain traveler burrowing from the icy air—and, melting +to-morrow, drowns his brother in the valley below. +</p> + +<p> +At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and the wand of Circe. When it +corrals man in lonely ranches, mountain cabins, and forest huts, the snow makes +apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the bosoms of weaker ones to glass, +their tongues to infants’ rattles, their hearts to lawlessness and +spleen. It is not all from the isolation; the snow is not merely a blockader; +it is a Chemical Test. It is a good man who can show a reaction that is not +chiefly composed of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, with traces of +Adam, Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and the fretful porcupine. +</p> + +<p> +This is no story, you say; well, let it begin. +</p> + +<p> +There was a knock at the door (is the opening not full of context and +reminiscence oh, best buyers of best sellers?). +</p> + +<p> +We drew the latch, and in stumbled Etienne Girod (as he afterward named +himself). But just then he was no more than a worm struggling for life, +enveloped in a killing white chrysalis. +</p> + +<p> +We dug down through snow, overcoats, mufflers, and waterproofs, and dragged +forth a living thing with a Van Dyck beard and marvellous diamond rings. We put +it through the approved curriculum of snow-rubbing, hot milk, and teaspoonful +doses of whiskey, working him up to a graduating class entitled to a diploma of +three fingers of rye in half a glassful of hot water. One of the ranch boys had +already come from the quarters at Ross’s bugle-like yell and kicked the +stranger’s staggering pony to some sheltered corral where beasts were +entertained. +</p> + +<p> +Let a paragraphic biography of Girod intervene. +</p> + +<p> +Etienne was an opera singer originally, we gathered; but adversity and the snow +had made him <i>non compos vocis</i>. The adversity consisted of the stranded +San Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second-story work, and then a +career as a professional palmist, jumping from town to town. For, like other +professional palmists, every time he worked the Heart Line too strongly he +immediately moved along the Line of Least Resistance. Though Etienne did not +confide this to us, we surmised that he had moved out into the dusk about +twenty minutes ahead of a constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his +most sacred blue language he dilated upon the subject of snow; for Etienne was +Paris-born and loved the snow with the same passion that an orchid does. +</p> + +<p> +“Mee-ser-rhable!” commented Etienne, and took another three +fingers. +</p> + +<p> +“Complete, cast-iron, pussy-footed, blank... blank!” said Ross, and +followed suit. +</p> + +<p> +“Rotten,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst; and +insistently from behind that frozen visage I got two messages (via the M. A. M +wireless). One was that George considered our vituperation against the snow +childish; the other was that George did not love Dagoes. Inasmuch as Etienne +was a Frenchman, I concluded I had the message wrong. So I queried the other: +“Bright eyes, you don’t really mean Dagoes, do you?” and over +the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps: “Yes.” Then I +reflected that to George all foreigners were probably “Dagoes.” I +had once known another camp cook who had thought Mons., Sig., and Millie +(Trans-Mississippi for Mlle.) were Italian given names; this cook used to +marvel therefore at the paucity of Neo-Roman precognomens, and therefore why +not— +</p> + +<p> +I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days, Etienne stood at +the window, Fletcherizing his finger nails and shrieking and moaning at the +monotony. To me, Etienne was just about as unbearable as the snow; and so, +seeking relief, I went out on the second day to look at my horse, slipped on a +stone, broke my collarbone, and thereafter underwent not the snow test, but the +test of flat-on-the-back. A test that comes once too often for any man to +stand. +</p> + +<p> +However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from my couch +in the big room I could lie and watch the human interplay with that detached, +impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tell us is so valuable to +the litterateur, and American writers to the faro-dealer. +</p> + +<p> +“I shall go crazy in this abominable, mee-ser-rhable place!” was +Etienne’s constant prediction. +</p> + +<p> +“Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before,” said Ross, over and +over. He sat by the other window, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburg stogies +of the length, strength, and odor of a Pittsburg graft scandal deposited on one +side of him, and “Roughing It,” “The Jumping Frog,” and +“Life on the Mississippi” on the other. For every chapter he lit a +new stogy, puffing furiously. This in time, gave him a recurrent premonition of +cramps, gastritis, smoker’s colic or whatever it is they have in +Pittsburg after a too deep indulgence in graft scandals. To fend off the colic, +Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor Still’s Amber-Colored U. S. A. +Colic Cure. Result, after forty-eight hours—nerves. +</p> + +<p> +“Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make me tired before. Positive +fact.” Ross slammed “Roughing It” on the floor. “When +you’re snowbound this-away you want tragedy, I guess. Humor just seems to +bring out all your cussedness. You read a man’s poor, pitiful attempts to +be funny and it makes you so nervous you want to tear the book up, get out your +bandana, and have a good, long cry.” +</p> + +<p> +At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took his finger nails out of his +mouth long enough to exclaim: “Humor! Humor at such a time as thees! My +God, I shall go crazy in thees abominable—” +</p> + +<p> +“Supper,” announced George. +</p> + +<p> +These meals were not the meals of Rabelais who said, “the great God makes +the planets and we make the platters neat.” By that time, the ranch-house +meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental distraction, not bodily +provender. What they were to be later shall never be forgotten by Ross or me or +Etienne. +</p> + +<p> +After supper, the stogies and finger nails began again. My shoulder ached +wretchedly, and with half-closed eyes I tried to forget it by watching the deft +movements of the stolid cook. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly I saw him cock his ear, like a dog. Then, with a swift step, he moved +to the door, threw it open, and stood there. +</p> + +<p> +The rest of us had heard nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, George?” asked Ross. +</p> + +<p> +The cook reached out his hand into the darkness alongside the jamb. With +careful precision he prodded something. Then he made one careful step into the +snow. His back muscles bulged a little under the arms as he stooped and lightly +lifted a burden. Another step inside the door, which he shut methodically +behind him, and he dumped the burden at a safe distance from the fire. +</p> + +<p> +He stood up and fixed us with a solemn eye. None of us moved under that Orphic +suspense until, +</p> + +<p> +“A woman,” remarked George. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Miss Willie Adams was her name. Vocation, school-teacher. Present avocation, +getting lost in the snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for twenty). Take to the +woods if you would describe Miss Adams. A willow for grace; a hickory for +fibre; a birch for the clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky seen +through treetops; the silk in cocoons for her hair; her voice, the murmur of +the evening June wind in the leaves; her mouth, the berries of the wintergreen; +fingers as light as ferns; her toe as small as a deer track. General impression +upon the dazed beholder—you could not see the forest for the trees. +</p> + +<p> +Psychology, with a capital P and the foot of a lynx, at this juncture stalks +into the ranch house. Three men, a cook, a pretty young woman—all +snowbound. Count me out of it, as I did not count, anyway. I never did, with +women. Count the cook out, if you like. But note the effect upon Ross and +Etienne Girod. +</p> + +<p> +Ross dumped Mark Twain in a trunk and locked the trunk. Also, he discarded the +Pittsburg scandals. Also, he shaved off a three days’ beard. +</p> + +<p> +Etienne, being French, began on the beard first. He pomaded it, from a little +tube of grease Hongroise in his vest pocket. He combed it with a little +aluminum comb from the same vest pocket. He trimmed it with manicure scissors +from the same vest pocket. His light and Gallic spirits underwent a sudden, +miraculous change. He hummed a blithe San Salvador Opera Company tune; he +grinned, smirked, bowed, pirouetted, twiddled, twaddled, twisted, and +tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious troubadour, could not have equalled Etienne. +</p> + +<p> +Ross’s method of advance was brusque, domineering. “Little +woman,” he said, “you’re welcome here!”—and with +what he thought subtle double meaning—“welcome to stay here as long +as you like, snow or no snow.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Adams thanked him a little wildly, some of the wintergreen berries +creeping into the birch bark. She looked around hurriedly as if seeking escape. +But there was none, save the kitchen and the room allotted her. She made an +excuse and disappeared into her own room. +</p> + +<p> +Later I, feigning sleep, heard the following: +</p> + +<p> +“Mees Adams, I was almost to perish-die-of monotony w’en your fair +and beautiful face appear in thees mee-ser-rhable house.” I opened my +starboard eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a finger, the +Svengali eye was rolling, the chair was being hunched closer to the +school-teacher’s. “I am French—you +see—temperamental—nervous! I cannot endure thees dull hours in +thees ranch house; but—a woman comes! Ah!” The shoulders gave nine +’rahs and a tiger. “What a difference! All is light and gay; +ever’ting smile w’en you smile. You have ’eart, beauty, +grace. My ’eart comes back to me w’en I feel your ’eart. +So!” He laid his hand upon his vest pocket. From this vantage point he +suddenly snatched at the school-teacher’s own hand, “Ah! Mees +Adams, if I could only tell you how I ad—” +</p> + +<p> +“Dinner,” remarked George. He was standing just behind the +Frenchman’s ear. His eyes looked straight into the school-teacher’s +eyes. After thirty seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the flinty, +frozen maelstrom of his face: “Dinner,” he concluded, “will +be ready in two minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. “I must get ready for +dinner,” she said brightly, and went into her room. +</p> + +<p> +Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes had been cleaned away, I +waited until a propitious time when the room was temporarily ours alone, and +told him what had happened. +</p> + +<p> +He became so excited that he lit a stogy without thinking. “Yeller-hided, +unwashed, palm-readin’ skunk,” he said under his breath. +“I’ll shoot him full o’ holes if he don’t watch +out—talkin’ that way to my wife!” +</p> + +<p> +I gave a jump that set my collarbone back another week. “Your +wife!” I gasped. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I mean to make her that,” he announced. +</p> + +<p> +The air in the ranch house the rest of that day was tense with pent-up +emotions, oh, best buyers of best sellers. +</p> + +<p> +Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; he watched Etienne as a hawk does +a scarecrow, Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does a henhouse. He paid no +attention to Ross. +</p> + +<p> +The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of sought-after, was feverish. Lately +escaped from the agony and long torture of the white cold, where for hours +Nature had kept the little school-teacher’s vision locked in and turned +upon herself, nobody knows through what profound feminine introspections she +had gone. Now, suddenly cast among men, instead of finding relief and security, +she beheld herself plunged anew into other discomforts. Even in her own room +she could hear the loud voices of her imposed suitors. “I’ll blow +you full o’ holes!” shouted Ross. “Witnesses,” shrieked +Etienne, waving his hand at the cook and me. She could not have known the +previous harassed condition of the men, fretting under indoor conditions. All +she knew was, that where she had expected the frank freemasonry of the West, +she found the subtle tangle of two men’s minds, bent upon exacting +whatever romance there might be in her situation. +</p> + +<p> +She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by spells of nursing me. They also +came over to help nurse. This combination aroused such a natural state of +invalid cussedness on my part that they were all forced to retire. Once she did +manage to whisper: “I am so worried here. I don’t know what to +do.” +</p> + +<p> +To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, that I was a hunch-savant +and that the Eighth House under this sign, the Moon being in Virgo, showed that +everything would turn out all right. +</p> + +<p> +But twenty minutes later I saw Etienne reading her palm and felt that perhaps I +might have to recast her horoscope, and try for a dark man coming with a +bundle. +</p> + +<p> +Toward sunset, Etienne left the house for a few moments and Ross, who had been +sitting taciturn and morose, having unlocked Mark Twain, made another dash. It +was typical Ross talk. +</p> + +<p> +He stood in front of her and looked down majestically at that cool and perfect +spot where Miss Adams’ forehead met the neat part in her fragrant hair. +First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I was in a profound slumber. +</p> + +<p> +“Little woman,” he began, “it’s certainly tough for a +man like me to see you bothered this way. +You”—gulp—“you have been alone in this world too long. +You need a protector. I might say that at a time like this you need a protector +the worst kind—a protector who would take a three-ring delight in +smashing the saffron-colored kisser off of any yeller-skinned skunk that made +himself obnoxious to you. Hem. Hem. I am a lonely man, Miss Adams. I have so +far had to carry on my life without the”—gulp—“sweet +radiance”—gulp—“of a woman around the house. I feel +especially doggoned lonely at a time like this, when I am pretty near locoed +from havin’ to stall indoors, and hence it was with delight I welcomed +your first appearance in this here shack. Since then I have been packed jam +full of more different kinds of feelings, ornery, mean, dizzy, and superb, than +has fallen my way in years.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Adams made a useless movement toward escape. The Ross chin stuck firm. +“I don’t want to annoy you, Miss Adams, but, by heck, if it comes +to that you’ll have to be annoyed. And I’ll have to have my say. +This palm-ticklin’ slob of a Frenchman ought to be kicked off the place +and if you’ll say the word, off he goes. But I don’t want to do the +wrong thing. You’ve got to show a preference. I’m gettin’ +around to the point, Miss—Miss Willie, in my own brick fashion. +I’ve stood about all I can stand these last two days and somethin’s +got to happen. The suspense hereabouts is enough to hang a sheepherder. Miss +Willie”—he lassooed her hand by main force—“just say +the word. You need somebody to take your part all your life long. Will you +mar—” +</p> + +<p> +“Supper,” remarked George, tersely, from the kitchen door. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Adams hurried away. +</p> + +<p> +Ross turned angrily. “You—” +</p> + +<p> +“I have been revolving it in my head,” said George. +</p> + +<p> +He brought the coffee pot forward heavily. Then bravely the big platter of pork +and beans. Then somberly the potatoes. Then profoundly the biscuits. “I +have been revolving it in my mind. There ain’t no use waitin’ any +longer for Swengalley. Might as well eat now.” +</p> + +<p> +From my excellent vantage-point on the couch I watched the progress of that +meal. Ross, muddled, glowering, disappointed; Etienne, eternally blandishing, +attentive, ogling; Miss Adams, nervous, picking at her food, hesitant about +answering questions, almost hysterical; now and then the solid, flitting shadow +of the cook, passing behind their backs like a Dreadnaught in a fog. +</p> + +<p> +I used to own a clock which gurgled in its throat three minutes before it +struck the hour. I know, therefore, the slow freight of Anticipation. For I +have awakened at three in the morning, heard the clock gurgle, and waited those +three minutes for the three strokes I knew were to come. <i>Alors</i>. In +Ross’s ranch house that night the slow freight of Climax whistled in the +distance. +</p> + +<p> +Etienne began it after supper. Miss Adams had suddenly displayed a lively +interest in the kitchen layout and I could see her in there, chatting brightly +at George—not with him—the while he ducked his head and rattled his +pans. +</p> + +<p> +“My fren’,” said Etienne, exhaling a large cloud from his +cigarette and patting Ross lightly on the shoulder with a bediamonded hand +which, hung limp from a yard or more of bony arm, “I see I mus’ be +frank with you. Firs’, because we are rivals; second, because you take +these matters so serious. I—I am Frenchman. I love the +women”—he threw back his curls, bared his yellow teeth, and blew an +unsavory kiss toward the kitchen. “It is, I suppose, a trait of my +nation. All Frenchmen love the women—pretty women. Now, look: Here I +am!” He spread out his arms. “Cold outside! I detes’ the +col-l-l! Snow! I abominate the mees-ser-rhable snow! Two men! +This—” pointing to me—“an’ this!” Pointing +to’ Ross. “I am distracted! For two whole days I stan’ at the +window an’ tear my ’air! I am nervous, upset, pr-r-ro-foun’ly +distress inside my ’ead! An’ suddenly—be’old! A woman, +a nice, pretty, charming, innocen’ young woman! I, naturally, rejoice. I +become myself again—gay, light-’earted, ’appy. I address +myself to mademoiselle; it passes the time. That, m’sieu’, is wot +the women are for—pass the time! Entertainment—like the music, like +the wine! +</p> + +<p> +“They appeal to the mood, the caprice, the temperamen’. To play +with thees woman, follow her through her humor, pursue her—ah! that is +the mos’ delightful way to sen’ the hours about their +business.” +</p> + +<p> +Ross banged the table. “Shut up, you miserable yeller pup!” he +roared. “I object to your pursuin’ anything or anybody in my house. +Now, you listen to me, you—” He picked up the box of stogies and +used it on the table as an emphasizer. The noise of it awoke the attention of +the girl in the kitchen. Unheeded, she crept into the room. “I +don’t know anything about your French ways of lovemakin’ an’ +I don’t care. In my section of the country, it’s the best man wins. +And I’m the best man here, and don’t you forget it! This +girl’s goin’ to be mine. There ain’t going to be any playing, +or philandering, or palm reading about it. I’ve made up my mind +I’ll have this girl, and that settles it. My word is the law in this neck +o’ the woods. She’s mine, and as soon as she says she’s mine, +you pull out.” The box made one final, tremendous punctuation point. +</p> + +<p> +Etienne’s bravado was unruffled. “Ah! that is no way to win a +woman,” he smiled, easily. “I make prophecy you will never win +’er that way. No. Not thees woman. She mus’ be played along +an’ then keessed, this charming, delicious little creature. One kees! +An’ then you ’ave her.” Again he displayed his unpleasant +teeth. “I make you a bet I will kees her—” +</p> + +<p> +As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys me to relate that the hand +which fell upon Etienne’s amorous lips was not his own. There was one +sudden sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and then—through the +swinging doors of oblivion for Etienne. +</p> + +<p> +I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, unstudied, almost +absent-minded affair. I had thought the cook was rehearsing the proper method +of turning a flapjack. +</p> + +<p> +Silently, lost in thought, he stood there scratching his head. Then he began +rolling down his sleeves. +</p> + +<p> +“You’d better get your things on, Miss, and we’ll get out of +here,” he decided. “Wrap up warm.” +</p> + +<p> +I heard her heave a little sigh of relief as she went to get her cloak, +sweater, and hat. +</p> + +<p> +Ross jumped to his feet, and said: “George, what are you goin’ to +do?” +</p> + +<p> +George, who had been headed in my direction, slowly swivelled around and faced +his employer. “Bein’ a camp cook, I ain’t over-burdened with +hosses,” George enlightened us. “Therefore, I am going to try to +borrow this feller’s here.” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time in four days my soul gave a genuine cheer. “If +it’s for Lochinvar purposes, go as far as you like,” I said, +grandly. +</p> + +<p> +The cook studied me a moment, as if trying to find an insult in my words. +“No,” he replied. “It’s for mine and the young +lady’s purposes, and we’ll go only three miles—to Hicksville. +Now let me tell you somethin’, Ross.” Suddenly I was confronted +with the cook’s chunky back and I heard a low, curt, carrying voice shoot +through the room at my host. George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak. +“You’re nutty. That’s what’s the matter with you. You +can’t stand the snow. You’re getting nervouser, and nuttier every +day. That and this Dago”—he jerked a thumb at the half-dead +Frenchman in the corner—“has got you to the point where I thought I +better horn in. I got to revolving it around in my mind and I seen if +somethin’ wasn’t done, and done soon, there’d be murder +around here and maybe”—his head gave an imperceptible list toward +the girl’s room—“worse.” +</p> + +<p> +He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep any one else from speaking. +Then he plowed slowly through the drift of his ideas. “About this here +woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you reely think about women. If she +hadn’t happened in here durin’ this here snow, you’d never +have given two thoughts to the whole woman question. Likewise, when the storm +clears, and you and the boys go hustlin’ out, this here whole business +’ll clear out of your head and you won’t think of a skirt again +until Kingdom Come. Just because o’ this snow here, don’t forget +you’re living in the selfsame world you was in four days ago. And +you’re the same man, too. Now, what’s the use o’ getting all +snarled up over four days of stickin’ in the house? That there’s +what I been revolvin’ in my mind and this here’s the decision +I’ve come to.” +</p> + +<p> +He plodded to the door and shouted to one of the ranch hands to saddle my +horse. +</p> + +<p> +Ross lit a stogy and stood thoughtful in the middle of the room. Then he began: +“I’ve a durn good notion, George, to knock your confounded head off +and throw you into that snowbank, if—” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re wrong, mister. That ain’t a durned good notion +you’ve got. It’s durned bad. Look here!” He pointed steadily +out of doors until we were both forced to follow his finger. +“You’re in here for more’n a week yet.” After allowing +this fact to sink in, he barked out at Ross: “Can you cook?” Then +at me: “Can you cook?” Then he looked at the wreck of Etienne and +sniffed. +</p> + +<p> +There was an embarrassing silence as Ross and I thought solemnly of a foodless +week. +</p> + +<p> +“If you just use hoss sense,” concluded George, “and +don’t go for to hurt my feelin’s, all I want to do is to take this +young gal down to Hicksville; and then I’ll head back here and cook fer +you.” +</p> + +<p> +The horse and Miss Adams arrived simultaneously, both of them very serious and +quiet. The horse because he knew what he had before him in that weather; the +girl because of what she had left behind. +</p> + +<p> +Then all at once I awoke to a realization of what the cook was doing. “My +God, man!” I cried, “aren’t you afraid to go out in that +snow?” +</p> + +<p> +Behind my back I heard Ross mutter, “Not him.” +</p> + +<p> +George lifted the girl daintily up behind the saddle, drew on his gloves, put +his foot in the stirrup, and turned to inspect me leisurely. +</p> + +<p> +As I passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind’s eye the algebraic +equation of Snow, the equals sign, and the answer in the man before me. +</p> + +<p> +“Snow is my last name,” said George. He swung into the saddle and +they started cautiously out into the darkening swirl of fresh new currency just +issuing from the Snowdrop Mint. The girl, to keep her place, clung happily to +the sturdy figure of the camp cook. +</p> + +<p> +I brought three things away from Ross Curtis’s ranch house—yes, +four. One was the appreciation of snow, which I have so humbly tried here to +render; (2) was a collarbone, of which I am extra careful; (3) was a memory of +what it is to eat very extremely bad food for a week; and (4) was the cause of +(3) a little note delivered at the end of the week and hand-painted in blue +pencil on a sheet of meat paper. +</p> + +<p> +“I cannot come back there to that there job. Mrs. Snow say no, George. I +been revolvin’ it in my mind; considerin’ circumstances she’s +right.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAIFS AND STRAYS ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law 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™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. 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