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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes Holliday
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Peeps at People
+
+Author: Robert Cortes Holliday
+
+Illustrator: Walter Jack Duncan
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2011 [EBook #35675]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEEPS AT PEOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PEEPS AT PEOPLE
+
+ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
+
+
+
+
+PEEPS AT PEOPLE
+
+BY
+
+ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
+
+AUTHOR OF "WALKING-STICK PAPERS," "BOOTH
+TARKINGTON," "JOYCE KILMER: A
+MEMOIR," "BROOME STREET
+STRAWS," ETC.
+
+WITH PICTURES BY
+WALTER JACK DUNCAN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+_Copyright, 1919,
+By George H. Doran Company_
+
+_Printed in the United States of America_
+
+     I WROTE A BOOK SOME TIME AGO WHICH WAS DEDICATED TO "THREE FINE
+     MEN." THIS IS A SMALLER BOOK. THEREFORE, I DEDICATE IT TO TWO FINE
+     MEN:
+
+     EUGENE F. SAXTON CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     These little what-you-call-'ems, with the exception of the opening
+     one and the concluding ones, all appeared originally in the
+     Saturday Magazine of the New York _Evening Post_. They are
+     reprinted here by the courtesy of the editors of that otherwise
+     estimable newspaper. For permission to reprint the opening paper
+     _The Bookman_ is to blame.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                 PAGE
+
+       EVEN SO! OR, AS YOU MAY SAY, A PREFACE      13
+
+     I THE FORGETFUL TAILOR                        19
+
+    II TALK AT THE POST OFFICE                     23
+
+   III AS TO OFFICE BOYS                           28
+
+    IV A CONQUEROR'S ATTACK                        32
+
+     V THE CASE OF MR. WOOLEN                      36
+
+    VI WHEN THE TRAIN COMES IN                     41
+
+   VII AN OLD FOGY                                 44
+
+  VIII HAIR THAT IS SCENERY                        47
+
+    IX A NICE MAN                                  50
+
+     X NO SNOB                                     53
+
+    XI EVERY INCH A MAN                            59
+
+   XII HIS BUSINESS IS GOOD                        65
+
+  XIII A NICE TASTE IN MURDERS                     71
+
+   XIV IDA'S AMAZING SURPRISE                      74
+
+    XV NOT GULLIBLE, NOT HE                        77
+
+   XVI CRAMIS, PATRON OF ART                       81
+
+  XVII BARBER SHOPS AWESOME                        85
+
+ XVIII MUCH MARRIED STRATFORD                      88
+
+   XIX A HUMAN CASH REGISTER                       92
+
+    XX IT STANDS TO REASON                         94
+
+   XXI A THREE-RINGED CIRCUS                       96
+
+  XXII SNAPSHOTS IN X-RAY                         100
+
+ XXIII BACHELOR REMINISCENCES                     103
+
+  XXIV A TESTIMONIAL                              107
+
+   XXV FRAGRANT WITH PERFUME                      110
+
+  XXVI WOULDN'T LOOK AT HIM                       112
+
+ XXVII CONNUBIAL FELICITY                         114
+
+XXVIII A FRIEND, INDEED                           116
+
+
+
+
+PEEPS AT PEOPLE
+
+
+
+
+EVEN SO! OR, AS YOU MAY SAY, A PREFACE
+
+
+I knew a man who used to do some writing, more or less of it--articles
+and essays and little sketches and things like that--and he went to
+another man who was a publisher. (I know all of this because it was told
+to me not long ago at a club.) And he said (the first man) that he would
+like to have published a book of some of his pieces. He hadn't done
+much, if any, writing for a number of years. Matters had been going
+rather bad with him, and he had lost more than a little of his buoyancy.
+The spark had waned; in fact, it was not there. (This he did not say,
+but so the matter was.)
+
+Anyhow, he did say that this collection of material had about it the
+rich glow of his prime, that it was living with the fullness of his
+life, that as a contributor to these papers and magazines he had (or
+had had) a personal following decent enough in size, that the book, by
+all reasoning, ought to go far, and so on. The volume was published. It
+was called--no, I have forgotten what it was called. However, I heard
+that it got a very fair press, and sold somewhat.
+
+Then, in about a year or so, round came the man again to the publisher
+with another batch of little papers. He had aged perceptively within
+this time, and matters had been going with him rather worse than before.
+No, he hadn't been able to write anything lately. (For a moment a
+haunted look crossed his face, a look as though in some sad hidden
+secret he had been discovered.) But (brightening up again) here he had a
+better book than before; it was a much better book than before, as it
+was an earlier one. These things breathed the gusto of his young
+manhood. They were perhaps a bit miscellaneous in character, he had got
+them out of the files of various journals, but they had a verve, a fire,
+a flare for life, which he couldn't better now. A great deal more he
+said to this effect.
+
+Times, however, change (as has frequently been observed). What is sauce
+for the goose is _not_ always sauce for the gander. That is to say,
+other days other ways. I do not know that I gathered (that evening at
+the club) what was the upshot of the matter in this instance between the
+man of whom I am speaking and the publisher. But it is to be feared that
+time had blown upon those things of his of other days as it had upon the
+temple of his soul and its inhabitant.
+
+Well (so the story goes), the world went forward at a dizzy rate. There
+was flame and sword. Ministries rose and fell. Dynasties passed away.
+Customs handed down from antiquity, and honored among the ancients, were
+obliterated by mandate and statute. And man wrought things of many sorts
+in new ways.
+
+On a Friday at about half past two (a pleasant day it was, in the
+Spring, with new buds coming out in the parks and a new generation of
+children all about) again in came our old friend to see his friend the
+publisher. Well, well, and how was he now, and what was new with him?
+Why, a rotten bad run of cards had been his ever since he had been round
+before: rheumatism and influenza, dentist and oculist, wife down and
+brother dead, nothing much accomplished. He sat for a moment and there
+was no light in him. No (you saw it now, quite), he was a lamp without
+oil.
+
+He undid the package containing his manuscript. Here was a book (those
+yellow clippings), well, here was a book! This was a _younger_ book than
+either of his others. On it was the gleaming dew of his youth. Perhaps a
+little scrappy, very brief, and, many of them, rather unequal in
+length--these things; and very light. Ah, that was the point, that was
+the point! The lightness, the freshness, the spontaneity, the gaiety of
+the springtime of life! One could not recapture that. It would be
+impossible, quite impossible, for him now to write such things as these.
+He did not now think the same way, feel, see the same way, work--the
+same way. No, no; there comes a hardening of the spiritual and
+intellectual arteries. This was a _younger_ book, a _younger_ book (and
+as he leaned forward with finger raised, a light, for an instant,
+flickered again in his eye) than any of his others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a man at that club when this story was told who remarked: "It
+is said (is it not?) that Swift, re-reading 'Gulliver' many years after
+it was written, exclaimed: 'My God, what a genius I had at that time!'"
+
+And another man there at the time reminded us of the place somewhere in
+the books of George Moore where it is observed that "anybody can have
+talent at twenty, the thing is to have talent at fifty."
+
+R. C. H.
+
+_New York,_ 1919.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE FORGETFUL TAILOR
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+He is a tailor. His shop is down at the corner. When trousers are left
+with him to be pressed and to have suspender buttons sewed on he is
+always obligingly willing to promise them by the morrow; or if you are
+in somewhat of a hurry he will promise that the job shall be done this
+very night. He is the politest and most obliging of men. He will send
+those trousers up by a boy directly. He is such a cheerful man.
+
+After the time for those trousers to appear has long gone by and no boy
+has arrived, it is possible that you may work yourself into a passion.
+You clap your hat upon your head, storm out of the house, and stride
+toward that tailor shop. You become a little cooled by the evening air,
+and you begin to wonder if you have not been a trifle hasty. Perhaps you
+yourself made some mistake concerning your address; things very similar
+have happened before now, when you have laid the blame upon another and
+eventually realized that the fault was your own. It would never do to
+place yourself in such a position with this tailor--a comparative
+stranger to you. So you will not become abusive to him until you
+discover who is in the wrong.
+
+But if the fault is his, mind you, he shall learn your character; you
+are not a man to be trifled with. This fellow can have no sense of
+business, or anything else, you think. This shall be the last work he
+will ever get from you. Such a man should not have a business. You will
+speak to your friends about this; it will run him out of the
+neighborhood.
+
+You have been walking rapidly and are tolerably heated again. You arrive
+at the shop expecting to find the tailor on the defensive, with some
+inane excuse prepared. But you have resolved that it won't go down. You
+are considerably surprised, therefore, to discover the tailor seated,
+comfortably reading a newspaper, by a genial fire. He glances up at you
+as you open the door. His face is without expression at first. Then he
+recollects you, and your business flashes upon him. He smiles
+good-naturedly, then bursts into a hearty laugh. Well, of all things, if
+he hasn't forgotten all about those trousers until this very minute!
+It's such a joke, apparently, such a ridiculous situation. He so enters
+into the spirit of the thing and enjoys it so that you have not the
+heart to rebuke him. You even begin to appreciate the circumstance
+yourself.
+
+It is so warm in the tailor-shop and the tailor is so jolly you become
+almost jovial. The tailor promises to send those trousers around the
+first thing in the morning. He would promise to have them ready for you
+in ten minutes if you so desired. Upon leaving, you are tempted to
+invite the tailor out to have a cigar with you. He is so droll, such a
+felicitous chap, such a funny dog, that forgetful tailor.
+
+In the morning those trousers have not shown up. You pass the tailor
+shop on your way downtown. The tailor is standing in his doorway,
+smoking a cigar and looking altogether very bright and cheerful. When
+he sees you his face becomes still brighter; he apparently becomes
+brighter all over, in fact; and his eyes twinkle merrily. "Well! well!"
+he laughs, and slaps his thighs. He is the most forgetful man. He hardly
+knows what will become of him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TALK AT THE POST OFFICE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The attention of a little group within the dusk of the post office and
+general store was, apparently, still colored by an event which mutilated
+posters on a dilapidated wagon-shed wall, visible through the doorway in
+the hot light outside, had advertised. A "Wild Bill" show had lately
+moved through this part of the world. A large, loosely-constructed,
+earnest-looking man was speaking to several others, seriously, taking
+his time, allowing his words time to sink well in as he proceeded.
+
+"Now I have a brother," he was saying, "who I can produce," he added
+impressively (one realizes that it would be hard to get around this
+sort of evidence)--"who I can produce, who will take bullet
+cartridges--Buffalo Bill don't use bullet cartridges--Annie Oakley don't
+use bullet cartridges--and who will sit right here in this chair--sit
+right here in this chair where I am now--and show you," he nodded once
+to each listener, "something about shootin'," concluding, one who
+reports him felt, somewhat more vaguely than his start had led one to
+expect.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Well, Pawnee," began another of the group (from which sobriquet it will
+be seen that the large man was a personage in matters of shooting), but
+Pawnee stopped him. It seems he had not finished.
+
+"And if there is anybody that would like to shoot _shot_ with the _Old
+Man_," he continued, breathing the two last words loud and strong,
+"_I_," said Pawnee, with extreme emphasis on the personal pronoun,
+"would like to see them, that's all!"
+
+An odd figure a trifle removed from the group had attracted the notice
+of one reporting these proceedings, by a propensity which he evinced,
+perceived by a kind of mental telepathy, to have some remarks directed
+to him. One felt all through one, so to speak, the near presence of a
+disposition eminently social. As one's sight became more accustomed to
+the interior light this figure defined itself into that of an elderly
+man, somewhat angular, slightly stooped, and wearing a ministerial sort
+of straw hat, with a large rolling brim, considerably frayed; a man very
+kindly in effect, and suggesting to a contemplative observer of humanity
+a character whose walk in life is cutting grass for people.
+
+This gentleman (there was something very gentlemanly about him, not in
+haberdashery, but, as one read him, in spirit) showed, as was said, a
+decided inclination to, as less gentlemanly folks say, "butt in."
+
+"Here is a thing now," spoke up this old fellow, looking up from his
+newspaper, over his iron-rimmed spectacles in a more determined manner
+than heretofore, at one who reports him, and speaking in that tone in
+which it is the habit of genial men traveling in railroad trains to open
+a conversation with their seat-fellow for the journey, "that draws my
+attention." In the racing term, he was "off."
+
+"You know there is a strict law against swearing over the telephone," he
+paused for acquiescence. "Well, there _is_," he stated, very seriously,
+drawing a little nearer as the acquaintance got on--"a strict law. Now
+they say they can't stop it. It's a queer thing they can't stop it. They
+know who's at the other end; or at least they know who owns the 'phone.
+They know that. A fine of fifty dollars," he declared, "would stop it."
+It strikes one that this kindly character is almost ferocious on the
+side of morality.
+
+"Now," he continued, "there is no use in that. Say what you have to say,
+that's all that's necessary. What's the good of all those
+ad-_ject_-ives?" He pronounced the last word in three syllables with a
+very decided accent on the second. "That is done, now," he concluded,
+"by people who are, well--abrupt. Ain't that right, now? It's abrupt,
+that's what it is; it's abrupt.
+
+"Most assuredly," he said, answering himself.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+AS TO OFFICE BOYS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Mr. MacCrary is in the real estate business. It is incident to Mr.
+MacCrary's business that he has to employ an office boy. This position
+as factotum in the office of Mr. MacCrary is subject to much
+vicissitude.
+
+The first of the interesting line of boys successively employed by Mr.
+MacCrary was an office boy by profession; by natural talent and
+inclination he was a liar. He was a gifted liar, a brilliant and a
+versatile liar; a liar of resource, of imagination. He was a liar of
+something very near to genius. He lied for the love of lying. With him a
+lie was a thing of art. An artist for art's sake, he, and for art's
+sake alone. Like an amateur in short, a distinguished amateur, who is
+too proud to sell his lies, but willingly gives one away, now and then
+to some highly valued and much admiring friend. This boy would start
+with a little lie, then, as he progressed in his story, the wonderful
+possibilities of the thing would open up before him; he would grasp them
+and contort them, twist them into shape, and produce, create, a thing
+magnificent, stupendous, a thing which fairly made one gasp. He, a mere
+boy! It was wonderful.
+
+On the last day he came into the office and said: "Runaway down the
+street, Mr. MacCrary."
+
+"Is that so?" said Mr. MacCrary.
+
+"Yes," said the boy, "ran over a woman, killed her dead."
+
+"You don't say!" exclaimed Mr. MacCrary.
+
+"I should say so," said the boy; "killed the baby in her arms, too."
+
+"What!" cried Mr. MacCrary, "did she have a baby in her arms?"
+
+"And that ain't all," continued the boy, "ran on down the street and
+into a trolley car."
+
+"And killed all the passengers!" exclaimed Mr. MacCrary.
+
+"And the conductor," added the boy, "broke all the horse's legs, smashed
+the wagon, driver went insane from scare. They're shootin' the horse
+now," said the boy.
+
+Mr. MacCrary dismissed this boy that he might find a sphere more suited
+to his ability than the real estate business, which, to tell the truth,
+was evidently a little bourgeoise for his genius.
+
+The next boy was not particularly gifted in any direction, but he was
+mysterious. Upon a client's coming into the office during Mr. MacCrary's
+absence he, the client, was sure to be impressed by two circumstances:
+First, that there was no one in the office until he entered; secondly,
+that the boy had strangely appeared from nowhere in particular, and was
+following in close upon his heels. This consistently illustrates the
+whole course of this boy's conduct throughout the time he remained with
+Mr. MacCrary.
+
+The third boy, that is the present one, is not exactly mysterious, but
+he is peculiar. He attends strictly to his own business. He believes
+himself to be here for that purpose, apparently. He does not meddle
+with Mr. MacCrary's business. That is no concern of his. He is imbued
+with the good old adage: "If you want a thing well done, do it
+yourself." He follows this excellent principle himself, and believes
+others should do likewise. This boy is very sapient, and a wonderful
+student. His nature is more receptive than creative. He procures heavy
+sheep-skin-bound volumes from the circulating library, and his taste in
+literature, for one of his age, is unique. These books generally relate
+to primitive man, and contain exciting engravings of his stone hatchets
+and cooking utensils. He is also fond of perusing horticulture journals,
+these being the only magazines which he enjoys. When the first of these
+appeared about the office, Mr. MacCrary picked up one and inquired:
+
+"What is this, James?"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed James, "there's some fine pictures of berries in there."
+James is too scholarly for real estate, and will soon, no doubt, follow
+in the way of his earlier predecessor to the intellectual life.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+A CONQUEROR'S ATTACK
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+On the post-office store porch an old brindled Dane dog, town loafer,
+was asleep on his back. Chickens wallowed in the road. A baby crawled
+from behind a barrel at the post-office store door. A quorum was met on
+the hotel porch across the way. The butcher and the cobbler came forth
+from dove-cot shops to pass the time of day. The villagers come in ones
+and twos to get their mail. One, a fair, freckled milk-maid, as it would
+seem, from some old story, stands on the sidewalk path, waiting for the
+mail to be "sorted." A willowy lass, one would say a "summer boarder,"
+pokes her parasol musingly through a knot-hole in the porch floor. The
+shop next door is a "dry goods and notions" store; butter and peaches
+and cherries and roses and cream in the shape of a feminine clerk leans
+beneath the low lintel, and, one can guess, like the old dog, dreams.
+The one of brave days of the past, perchance; the other, perchance, of
+conquests to come.
+
+A fat fly buzzes leisurely about the door, then suddenly takes a
+straight line a considerable distance down the straggling street,
+pauses, circles about, returns, now through the early sunshine, now
+through the shadow of a venerable tree, back to the shelter of the
+porch, hums around again, poises absolutely stationary, tacks away
+another time over the same course, and returns as before.
+
+Suddenly appearing, briskly advancing upon the scene, walking rapidly up
+from the direction of the railroad station, scintillating punctuality,
+dispatch, succinctness, assurance, commercial agility, comes an
+apparition from, without manner of doubt, the hurrying ways, the
+collision of the busy marts of men. The chickens scatter from the road,
+making for picketless gaps in the picket fence; the old dog opens an eye
+and limply raises a limb; and the rapid, confident "traveling man" (it
+can be none but he), resplendent in the very latest "gent's furnishing,"
+with a neat grip and a bundle of what apparently are rolled calendars,
+springs nimbly upon the porch of the Chappaqua general store. Genial,
+pushing, the hurrying "good fellow," though sociability is his bent as
+well as business, he has not much time. It evidently is his habit to
+snatch a brief moment of pleasant acquaintanceship as he passes. As to
+this, he has as quick an eye for the sex as for commerce, and, as will
+be seen, as successful a manner with them as in the other.
+
+"Attacking," said another conqueror, Barry Lyndon, "is the only secret.
+That is my way of fascinating women." Quickly, as with a practiced eye,
+this gallant looks over the ground. Chappaqua apparently is rich in
+human flowers. A man of poorer mettle would be satisfied with one. That
+is not the way with your conquerors. Smugly, flashingly, he thrusts his
+grinning, big-prowed countenance forward, and with one killing glance
+that fair, freckled milk-maid is undone. So much for number one. Quick
+as a terrier that leaps from rat to rat, and with a single brilliant
+crunch breaks each rodent's back, our high-stepping man leaps his
+glance upon the dreaming butter and peaches and cream; her rich lashes
+fall, but she does not frown. No; she does not frown. But be bold
+enough, and you will not fail.
+
+He has stepped through the doorway, set his grip down. Brightly he turns
+and does for the summer boarder. She springs open her parasol before her
+pleased confusion, and retreats, very slowly. He has turned to business;
+whips out his watch, snaps it shut, replaces it, unrolls a calendar. He
+"makes" the next town in so many hours.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE CASE OF MR. WOOLEN
+
+
+They stopped at a bright little house with a neat little grass plot
+before it, fronting on the railroad. A border of very white,
+white-washed stones led up each side of the little path to the little
+porch before the door. On the porch, in the shade of the neat, screening
+vines, sat an old fellow, a stranger to them. "Is Mrs. Woolen at home?"
+one of the two inquired politely, as he thought. But this manner of
+putting the matter, it appeared, was not happy, for it was taken by the
+old fellow as implying that Mrs. Woolen was thought to be the one there
+superior in authority. He eyed the couple before him a moment as if in
+doubt whether to pay any attention to them; then, tapping himself on the
+chest, "_I_ am Mrs. Woolen," he said sternly. As this was unmistakenly a
+manner of saying, "You may state your business here if you have any,"
+one come for the washing humbly put the case in words as well chosen as
+possible. The old fellow was mollified; he had merely desired
+recognition, that was all. Mrs. Woolen was not at home; "the woman," he
+said, had gone "to Quarterly Meetin' over at the Quaker Church." But it
+was "all right," he said, which was understood to mean that the washing
+was ready here.
+
+"You'll find that washing first-class," said Mr. Woolen. "There's
+nothing crooked about her; she's a good, honest woman."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Asked concerning when Mrs. Woolen would be likely to return, Mr. Woolen
+replied in a very business-like manner, "Six o'clock, six o'clock sharp
+this evening."
+
+"Not till six o'clock?" He was asked when she had departed.
+
+"Eight o'clock, eight o'clock this morning," he said. He then furnished
+the information that Quarterly Meeting lasted several days, and that
+Mrs. Woolen was on deck, to put it so, throughout.
+
+From this point Mr. Woolen drifted into personal reminiscence of the
+surrender at Appomattox, in proof of his having been present at which,
+without his assertion having been questioned, he rather defiantly
+offered to exhibit "the papers," as he called them, which he said were
+"right there framed in the parlor." Though Mr. Woolen had been on the
+conquering side at the historic surrender, he rather suggested the idea
+of his having surrendered, in a more personal and figurative sense, at
+about that time also; that is to say, he did not impress one as having,
+for an able-bodied man, put up a very good fight since.
+
+He was recalled to the matter of the washing, and, rising, led the way
+into the house to procure it. But directly the party had entered, Mr.
+Woolen fell back, obviously in amazement, upon the toes of those
+following him. He cried that it was "gone!"
+
+"It was right there on that chair," he said, "in the corner. There's
+where she left it this morning. There's where she left it. Done up it
+was in newspaper. She said to me, 'There it is; now don't you let that
+go out of the house until you get your money for it.' That's what she
+said."
+
+He was prevailed on to make a search through the house, though he
+contended obstinately that it was right there in the corner, and no
+other place, that that which they were seeking had been "left." He
+almost offered the presence there of the chair as evidence. A search of
+the house, however, was not exhausting nor impracticable, as there were
+but two rooms to it, these very snug, no closets, and an economy of
+furniture behind which the bundle might be.
+
+Mr. Woolen's perturbation was too genuine for suspicion of his having
+made away with the package. But this very honesty of emotion, in
+conjunction with the circumstance of the absence of the washing, and
+divers indications in breath and manner, noticeable from the first,
+aided in making out a case against him. A jury would reasonably have
+inferred that Mr. Woolen had a frailty, known and provided against by
+his wife, that, specifically, he had a weakness which, though not
+uncommonly associated with the most amiable characters, is not
+compatible with being left to receive money for washing.
+
+Mr. Woolen was decidedly provoked at the situation. "I can do a man's
+work," he said, stumbling restlessly about the room, "but not a woman's.
+I can lay brick, lay brick; that's my work, that's what I do, but I
+can't keep the house in order." It was not to be expected of him.
+Coming, in his movements, plump upon the door of the kitchen, he
+disappeared through it, and could be heard going about out of view,
+ostensibly still at the search, testily kicking the furniture and
+mumbling concerning "her being away with a lot of her cronies."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+WHEN THE TRAIN COMES IN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A busy railroad station is a grand child's picture-book, for him who
+observes it. All the child has to do is to look; the leaves are turned
+before him. There, in all the colors of the rainbow, are countless
+pictures to cram himself with. And what is a rather curious fact is,
+that a railroad station may freely be classed among humorous
+picture-books. Other picture-books, such as church, theater, Broadway,
+Fifth Avenue, political meeting, ball game, and so forth, have, of
+course, many funny pictures. But, whether it is that almost all absurd
+people constantly travel, and those with no touch of the motley do but
+seldom, or whether, as here, nothing else goes forward seriously to
+occupy the attention, one's mind is left more free to be struck by the
+ridiculousness of all mankind, so it is that perhaps as humorous a place
+as one may find is a busy railroad station. And one must be very blasé
+who no longer feels an enjoyable stimulation at the approach of an
+expected train at the station.
+
+The psychology of the arrival of a railroad train at the station belongs
+to the proper study of mankind, and could be made into an interesting
+little monograph. As the train becomes due one feels but half a mind on
+the conversation, supposing one to be conversing; the other half is
+waiting for the train. One has, too, a feeling, faint at first, looming
+stronger within one, against continuing to sit quietly inside (supposing
+one to have gone within), where one is. An impelling to go see if the
+train is not coming numbs one's brain. A like contagious restlessness
+breathes through the waiting-room. People begin to stand up by their
+grips. Some go without on the search. They can be seen through the doors
+and windows, pacing the platform; they return, some of them, and one
+scans their expressions eagerly--they are discouragingly blank. After a
+bit, they go out again, or others do, and return as before; wholly
+unfitted now, one can see, for any concentration of thought.
+
+The train is late. There is an alarm or two. At last, an unmistakable
+elasticity impregnates the place. A distant whistle is heard; it stirs
+one like the tap of a drum. The train is coming! One's pulse beats high
+as one moves into the press toward the doorway. The whistle is heard
+much nearer. Then again and again! Then with a whirl that turns one a
+somersault inside, a long dark, heavy mass rushes across the light
+before one. When one comes again on one's feet, speaking figuratively,
+the train is standing there, and one hurries aboard to get a seat. But,
+first, one is stopped until arriving passengers get off.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AN OLD FOGY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Mr. Deats, senior, is an old fogy. There is no doubt about that. In
+early life Mr. Deats, sr., had a pretty hard time. He was denied the
+advantages of any particular schooling. In consequence of this, Mr.
+Deats now occasionally uses very mortifying English. At an early
+age--somewhere about the age of ten--he entered trade. A ridiculous
+combination of adverse circumstances made it impossible for Mr. Deats to
+go much into polite society. In consequence of this, he unfortunately
+lacks polish. For a great number of years the world was not kind to him.
+It may have been trouble that destroyed his beauty. At any rate, Mr.
+Deats is not a handsome man. Not being able to do anything better, he
+confined his attention to doing his duty; that is not a very brilliant
+employment, it is true, but it was good enough for Mr. Deats.
+
+In the course of time, Mr. Deats took to himself a wife; and, in the
+course of time again, this wife bore Mr. Deats a son--and died
+simultaneously. Well, Mr. Deats was left with a boy, and this boy must
+have something to start him on in life. "How can a boy start life with
+nothing?" thought Mr. Deats; and very rightly, too. One can't feed,
+clothe, and educate a boy on nothing. So Mr. Deats did his duty harder
+than ever; and he built up a business. Building up a business doesn't
+require culture or intelligence; but it does take some time. Mr. Deats
+has grown a trifle old in the building; but it is a good business. It
+has been said that Mr. Deats' business is one of the best in the city.
+And Mr. Deats has a fine son. After the manner of his class, Mr. Deats
+believed that all the things that were denied him were the very best
+things for his son. His son should not have to work as his father
+did--and he doesn't.
+
+Mr. Deats, jr., has had advantages; he is a college graduate, a member
+of clubs, and one of the prominent young men of the city socially. Of
+course, being much cleverer, young Deats sees many of the mistakes his
+father made in life. He sees, for one thing, what an old fogy is Mr.
+Deats, sr. He sees how much better the business could be run. Mr. Deats,
+sr., does not know how to run a business; he is not modern enough.
+Still, he thinks he knows it all--that is the way with these bull-headed
+old codgers--and won't let young Deats conduct the business as it should
+be conducted. This, naturally, is very irritating to young Deats. No man
+enjoys seeing his own business go to rack and ruin. But the old man
+can't be kicked plump out into the street. He has no home but with young
+Deats. And, in a way, he is useful about the office; though even were he
+not, he must be humored. After all, he is the father of young Deats, and
+blood is thicker than water.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+HAIR THAT IS SCENERY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Mr. Wigger, Mrs. Wigger's husband (the writer boards with Mrs. Wigger),
+is an iceman. It is not his business, however, with which this study is
+concerned; it is with his hair. Perhaps it is a great assumption of
+talent to attempt to describe Mr. Wigger's hair. Oh, Muse! as John
+Milton says, lend a hand here! Mr. Wigger's abundant hair, first, is a
+deep, lusterful black, and extremely curly. From his ears straight
+upward to the crown of his head (from the three-quarters view of him
+studied here only one full ear is visible, and just barely the tip of
+the other one) an oblong block of close curls is attached to the side of
+his head, like a pannier. Leftward from this, to a point directly over
+the beginning of his eyebrow, a broad, bare strip extends up to a black,
+undulating band of hair which marks the top of his head. Thence leftward
+to the part in the middle of his head is a plot of hair like a little
+black lawn, extending well down to his forehead and neatly rounded at
+the corner away from the part. Now, from the part onward the hair in a
+great mass sweeps upward in a towering concave wave, the high ridge of
+which, though it folds ever slightly inward, culminates at the top in a
+sharp, soaring point. Over the far temple the hair falls from the great
+waves in little swirling wavelets. Mr. Wigger's mustache, a great,
+glossy, oily, inky black, against a sallow background, with tall upward
+ends, is a worthy companion to his hair. His neck, to continue the
+portrait, takes a long dive into his collar, which is very much too big,
+with the fullness protruding in front. His shoulders are steeply
+sloping, and his waistcoat is cut extremely low, like one for full
+dress, his shirt front bulging when, as for this portrait, he is seated.
+In this man romance lives on. A prosaic age has not marred him. You can
+readily see how a woman would become infatuated with such a one. He is a
+man not tonsorially decadent.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+A NICE MAN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The clerk of the store (dry goods and gentlemen's furnishings) is what
+is known as a nice man. He is known as such among his neighbors. He is
+known as such by his customers. People, wives sometimes to their
+husbands, refer to him as a nice man. Motherly old ladies say, "He is
+such a nice man!" Younger ladies exclaim, "What a nice man!" You cannot
+look at him and fail to know that he is a nice man. You cannot look at
+him and fail to know that his life has been blameless. He is very clean,
+tidy, and very, fresh-faced. His cheeks are round and rosy; his eyes
+are bright; his mustache is silken. He is in perfect health; his
+expression is pleasant; his disposition agreeable; and his manners are
+perfect. His name is Will (certainly).
+
+The nice man has a little wife, who is almost as nice as he. She is
+interested in Sunday schools. The nice man and his wife have a little
+baby that looks just like its father. On Sundays they walk in the park,
+pushing the baby-cab before them. On great days of celebration they go
+together into the country, on picnics; and return home at night tired
+out. On these trips to the country the little wife brings home chestnut
+burrs to hang from the chandelier in the parlor. She made some
+pussy-willow buds to look like little cats on a stick. These are on the
+mantel. When Will got the job he now has his wife turned to the store's
+advertisement the first thing in the newspaper every evening to read it.
+She had always known that Will had it in him to be something, and so she
+had always told him. When the nice men gets a raise in salary he and his
+wife will put away so much a week and soon have a home of their own
+somewhere in the suburbs. Already, the baby has a savings-bank account
+of its own, and by the time it has developed into the grown image of the
+nice man, its father, it will have a sum of money.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+NO SNOB
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Let us walk down the street with Muldoon.
+
+Muldoon is always a bit shabby, and never well shaved. To be well
+groomed is the mark of a snob. Muldoon walks with a brisk step and
+somewhat defiantly. He carries his shoulders well back and a trifle
+raised. He wears a cap; and a fine rakish thing is the way he wears it.
+There is in his manner of wearing a cap a suggestion of the country fair
+gambling game of ring-a-cane. His appearance gives the impression that
+some one had tossed a cap at him and failed to ring him squarely, but
+had landed it insecurely, and left it liable to fall off at any moment,
+decidedly on one side of his head, and that then Muldoon had walked off
+without giving the slightest thought to the matter.
+
+Professionally, Muldoon's greatest virtue is that he is a champion
+"mixer" and "butter-in"; his greatest failing, that he is not reliable.
+Still he is spoken of among his confrérie as "a good man," and is never
+without employment. He has served upon a great multitude of newspapers
+in sundry and divers cities, towns, and hamlets, though never upon any
+one for a greater period than several months. His is a nature that
+requires constant change and variety. In distant places he has been
+editor--sporting editor, we believe he says--though in his own city--we
+should hardly say that he had a city but that he always comes back
+again--he serves in the capacity of police reporter. Thus we see that a
+rolling stone is not without honor, save in his own country.
+
+Muldoon's classics in literature are "Down the Line with John Henry" and
+"Fables in Slang," with a good appreciation of "Chimmy Fadden." He one
+time wrote a book himself which was distinguished chiefly for spirit and
+the odd circumstance that most of the lady characters were named
+Flossie, and which was a failure financially.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We were one day in company of Muldoon when he visited Hudson Street, in
+the neighborhood of his childhood days, and where he met again some of
+the friends of his youth. These meetings were affecting to witness. "Hi,
+Pat Muldoon!" cried a fine stocky lad who immediately fell into the
+attitude of pugilistic encounter. Muldoon, too, put up his fists. "Hi,
+Owen Heely!" he cried; and they circled about, working their arms in and
+out and grinning an affectionate greeting upon each other.
+
+We walk down the street with Muldoon; we pass an acquaintance (of
+Muldoon's). "How 'do, Pat!" says the acquaintance. "Hullo, Tom!" (or
+Dick, or Harry, as the case may be), cries Muldoon, then, as if in
+afterthought, "Hold on, just a minute, Tom." Muldoon leaves us for a
+moment--we had got quite past the acquaintance--goes back and engages
+him in earnest conversation, inaudible to us. The acquaintance's head is
+bent forward and while giving ear he gazes fixedly at the ground. Then
+he slowly shakes his head, and, straightening up, says (we hear), "I
+would if I had it, Pat. But I haven't got it with me." "All right,"
+cries Muldoon, in perfect good humor. "So long," and he returns to us.
+
+We continue down the street, and Muldoon beguiles the way with tales of
+his checkered experience. Muldoon's duties as a representative of the
+press require him to spend considerable of his time at the police
+station. One time there came a great hurry-up call for the ambulance
+when the ambulance surgeon was nowhere to be found. (This city hospital
+was next door to the police station.) The horses were hitched, and
+stomping and waiting. Again and again the call was repeated. A man, no
+doubt, lay dying. Still no ambulance surgeon. Muldoon fretted and
+waited. At length he could stand it no longer. He leaped into the seat,
+jerked the reins in his hand, clanged the gong, and dashed full tilt to
+the rescue. It was madness. What could he do when he got there? "Clang!
+Clang!" went the gong. Reeling, plunging, staggering, now on two
+wheels, now on one, now on none at all--on and on and on, around
+corners, across tracks, between vehicles, past poles, dashed the
+ambulance. "Clang! Clang!" Just missing a pedestrian here, who saves
+himself only by a hair's-breadth, grazing a wheel there, on, on! until
+he drew up by a knot of people along the curb. This drive was afterward
+reckoned the fastest run in the history of the service.
+
+A laborer, swinging a mighty sledge, had dropped it on and mashed his
+great toe. He was in acute pain. The man refused to budge until his
+wound has been attended to. What was to be done? Muldoon had picked up a
+trifling knowledge of surgery about the hospital. He whipped out the
+surgical kit and took off the fellow's toe, neat as you please, by the
+grace of heaven. We are now come to a public-house. Muldoon marches in
+(we follow). He puts his foot on the rail, a dime, a ten-cent piece, on
+the bar, turns to us, and says, "What'll you have?" We look at the dime
+and say, "Beer." Now, Muldoon enters into conversation with the barman
+(who has addressed him as "Pat"), and recounts to him the details of his
+late illness, which are most astonishing.
+
+When we resume our journey, which Muldoon does with some reluctance, he
+tells us the dream of his life. On the street where Muldoon spent his
+boyhood live a great number of gossiping old cats, who, in so far as
+they were able, made that boyhood miserable, who bore false witness to
+one another, to his family, and to others, against Muldoon, and who
+predicted that he (Muldoon) would come to a bad end. On the occasion of
+his coming into any great sum of money, he intends to wind up a
+tremendous bacchanalian orgy on that street. He will drive up it in a
+cab in broad daylight, howling and singing, and with his feet out the
+windows. On the roof of his equipage will be a great array of bottles,
+and the cabman will be drunk and screaming. We believe Muldoon sees in
+this mental picture a Brobdignagian placard on the back of the vehicle
+reading, "This is Muldoon!!!" That will give 'em something to talk
+about. It will be a fine revenge.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+EVERY INCH A MAN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If there is a finer fellow in the world than Chester Kirk we have never
+seen him. As he himself so often says, the finest things are done up in
+small packages. (There was Napoleon, for instance, as we have heard him
+say, and General Grant, and, at the moment, we do not remember who all.)
+
+When in eyeshot of ladies, especially when he is unknown to them, he is
+grand. He takes his gloves from his pocket and holds them in his left
+hand. He searches himself for a cigar, which, when found, he holds
+before him, unlighted, in his right hand, on a level with his chest, his
+elbow crooked. He stands very firmly, with one leg bending backward in a
+line of virile, graceful curve. His back is taut. His other knee is bent
+forward, relaxed. Or he strides up and down, with something of a fine
+strut, like a fighting cock. So, he reminds us of Alan Breck.
+
+When, in this stimulating position, he has on a long coat, he swings its
+skirt from side to side. He feels, undoubtedly so brave and strong. He
+laughs, when there is opportunity for it, in a deep, manly voice, and
+often. He sometimes pulls back his head so that he has a double chin. He
+is every inch a man.
+
+As is quite fitting and proper, he is one of the most photographed of
+men. This is a family trait. He has ever just had a new photograph taken
+to send to his people, or his people have just sent some new ones to
+him, which he shows about with great gusto to his friends. His room is
+littered with likenesses of the Kirks, a very remarkable family. Here is
+a photograph of his brother.
+
+"Notice that chest," says Kirk. "He's got an expansion on him like the
+front of a house. Why, in his freshman year he had the biggest
+expansion in his class. Athlete! That boy's a boxer." Kirk points the
+stem of his pipe at you and continues: "He stood up before the huskiest
+man in Seattle (and there are no huskier men than in Seattle), a big
+brute of a fireman, a regular giant, with a reputation as a whirlwind
+slugger. Yes. Why, it's all I can do to hold that boy myself. This,"
+exhibiting another picture, "is my father. See that pair of shoulders?
+He is a little under the medium height, but the way he carries himself
+he doesn't look it. He looks to be a rather big man. He has an air. He
+came West a poor man, but one that could see chances, take them, and
+hold on to them. He took them and hung on. He built up that business, I
+think I have a right to say that it's the biggest on the Pacific Slope,
+in an incredibly short time. Business he was from the word go. He could
+handle men! An entertainer he is, too; he makes friends wherever he
+goes; everybody likes him. Here's my sister. 'Sis' is the society woman
+of the younger set at home. That's my other brother. He's a hunter."
+
+Next to pictures of himself and family, and their pets and live stock,
+there is nothing Kirk revels in so much as snapshots of his native
+country, "greatest country in the world." He has these pasted into
+several volumes: each print is labeled, as "Mt. Ranier, looking north,"
+"Puget Sound, low tide," and so forth. Each new acquaintance Kirk takes
+through the lot and explains the circumstances under which each picture
+was taken.
+
+As Kirk himself remarks, his handwriting is very strong. It is that
+strong that it has only about three, sometimes four, short words to a
+line, with good strong spaces in between. The descending loops of
+letters on one line often come down and lariat small letters on the line
+below. The sense goes at a splendid break-neck speed, and takes pauses
+and stops as though they were hurdles. The whole is penned in somewhat
+that fashion in which express clerks make out receipts.
+
+That reminds us. We one time went with Kirk into an express office to
+send a package. We ignorantly considered this to be a thing of little
+moment. That was because we do not know how to handle men. A pale young
+man, with a high, bald forehead, who had the appearance of an excellent
+assistant to some one in an office, was standing at the counter. He
+witnessed the entrance of the two without remarking it as an impressive
+ceremony. Indeed, the clerk was quite apathetic. In an instant all this
+was changed.
+
+"Let me have your pencil," Kirk demanded. It was the voice of the man
+born to command, the man that moves an army of subordinates this way or
+that, as he wills, like chessmen. He took the pencil, hoisted his
+package onto the counter with a flourish, tilted his cigar upward in one
+corner of his mouth by a movement of his jaws, and fell into so fine an
+attitude that the pale young man became interested and leaned over to
+see what important name would appear in the address. In his strongest
+hand Kirk addressed it. It was a package worth two dollars Kirk was
+sending to his brother, who needed it. "Send collect," cried Kirk. And
+the entire company, Kirk included, and ourself, who also knew the
+contents of the package, felt, it was evident, that a transaction very
+important to the interests of business had been accomplished.
+
+Kirk was one time playing checkers when we entered. "Well, how are you
+coming out?" we inquired. "Are you being beaten, Chester?" He flared up
+like a flash. "I can beat you!" he cried. We had never seen the man so
+beautiful. (He had never in his life seen us play checkers.) He looked
+to be invincible; though he wasn't; for he had lost every game.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HIS BUSINESS IS GOOD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+"HULLO there, Bill! I'm glad to see you. How're you getting along? Do
+you know, I didn't know you when you first came in. Let me see, it's
+been a couple--no, four years since I saw you before. I was pretty much
+down and out then, ha! ha! Just bummed my way to New York, you know.
+Well, how are things with you? You know, I sat there looking an' a
+looking at you--couldn't make up my mind whether it was you or not. I
+says to myself, 'I'll risk it,' I says. 'If it's Bill, we'll have a
+time,' I says. Ha! Ha! I came over to take a bath--there's a fine bath
+place across the street, where I always go. I'm in the photograph
+business, you know, over in Brooklyn. Yes, doing well now; I'm manager
+of the place; I'll take you over to see it. Been in the business three
+years, same place; first two years work, work all the time, no pay at
+all, so to speak. But I knew I was learning the business, and I liked
+the job and liked the boss; we were busted together, you know. I was
+head musher in a mushhouse at Coney, you know, when I first met him;
+then I lost the job; we bummed around together awhile. Then I went back
+to Indiana--by freight--to see my folks.
+
+"Yes, the old man's well; Dora's married, you know; married a Sunday
+school superintendent, church where she taught Sunday school. Nothing
+doing in Indiana. Laid around awhile, then I got a letter from this
+feller. He had come into money, set up a photograph shop, told me to
+come back and take a job with him. I went to my sister, Dora, you know,
+and got railroad fare here. I says to her, 'If you can get me the money,
+I'll pay you as soon as I can, which won't be long,' I says. 'I've got a
+good job there,' I says. I says, 'Of course, I can bum my way back, but
+it will take me four or five days, maybe a week,' I says. 'If I have
+railroad fare I can get on a train here one day and get off there the
+next,' I says. She got me the money from her husband--sixteen dollars;
+she's been awful good to me; and I came in a passenger train. First
+time, you know, ha! ha! Second-class, though; just as good as first,
+though. I got on at Indianapolis one day, you know, and got off in New
+York the next day. Twenty-four hours, you know.
+
+"First thing, I went to the feller's place, but he had moved. Didn't
+leave any address, where he had gone, you know; nobody around there knew
+anything about him. I was in a deuce of a fix. Didn't have a cent of
+money--wasn't the first time, though. We used to write to each other
+sometimes through the General Delivery, so I went there, and sure enough
+there was a letter for me; but there was some postage due on it somehow.
+I says to the man, I says, 'I haven't got any money; I can't pay it';
+there was a feller standing behind me in the line; he ups and says,
+'Here, I'll pay it,' he says; 'it's only two cents' he says. So I got
+the letter and set right out for the address; the feller had moved to a
+better place.
+
+"Well, Bill, business has been good; we do a corking business on
+Saturdays and Sundays, and the feller owns two or three galleries now.
+He goes around tending to all of them and I have charge of one; there's
+my card. I'm thinking about quitting, though, and going out West again;
+business is too good, that's the trouble. No excitement; I'm getting
+discouraged. Too much responsibility. Lord, Bill, I'm a _tramp_; I am;
+yes, sir, that's what I am. I was raised that way. I like the life. The
+man across the street from me owns a restaurant, where I eat; offered to
+loan me a couple of hundred dollars to buy the gallery where I am. Ha!
+Ha! That's a good one, isn't it?
+
+"Girls, Bill! you ought to see the girls that come to my place, Bill,
+yes, sir, to get their pictures taken. They all call me 'Jack.' Yes,
+everybody around here calls me 'Jack.' I used to be 'John,' you know, at
+home, where we were boys together; great days those, yes, sir; I never
+will forget those days.
+
+"Why, you know, I could have been married, Bill; yes, sir, ha! ha! Me, a
+tramp. A fine girl, too, a regular lady, the real article, yes, sir,
+rich too, yes, sir. Why I went over there one day, and their dog--a
+blame little black dog--was sick; you ought to have seen the case of
+medicine they had for that dog. A whole blame box full of bottles of
+medicine; good medicine, too, yes, sir; why, I would have liked to have
+had some of that medicine myself.
+
+"I'll take you over and introduce you to some of those girls; here's a
+picture I took of one; she's a daisy. I took her to the theater last
+Saturday night. You know, it does a feller good to see good shows at the
+theater. This theater--it's a little place right near my gallery--I go
+there every once in awhile; they have better shows there than they do at
+the Opera House; I like 'em better. This was a fine show, 'His Mother's
+Son.' Yes, sir, it does a feller good to go to the theater.
+
+"What's the matter with your coming over and staying with me to-night?
+But no, I haven't a room now; you'd have to bunk in the gallery. That's
+where I sleep now. I did have a room, you know, blame fine room, running
+water, hot and cold, and all that sort of thing, three dollars a week.
+But I got tired of it. Yes, too comfortable, bed all made up for me
+every day, and everything else. It made me sick. I like to make my own
+bed. I like to rough it like I'm used to doing, yes, so I gave it up
+and sleep in the gallery now where I belong. I feel at home there, and
+there's plenty of room.
+
+"Say, Bill, how are you fixed? Need any money? I've got more'n I want.
+Don't know what to do with it all, you know. Not used to it, just blow
+it in. Well, all right, we'll take and spend it then. Drink up, Bill,
+and let's go some other place."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A NICE TASTE IN MURDERS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+WE are much interested in the picturesque character of Caroline.
+Caroline is twelve. She is like a buxom, rosy apple. Her dress is a
+"Peter Thompson." Her physical sports are running like the wind, and, in
+summer, fishing. Our concern, however, is more with her mind. Caroline
+is a voracious reader. We are somewhat bookish ourselves, and the
+conversations between us are often frankly literary. Caroline's taste in
+this matter, for one of her sex, is rather startling.
+
+"Oh, you ought to read the 'Pit and the Pendulum,'" says Caroline. "Is
+it good?" we ask. "Fine!" Caroline replies. "It's at the time of the
+Inquisition, you know," she explains. "They take a man and torture him.
+It's fine," declares Caroline. "The demon's eyes grow brighter and
+brighter" (phrases we recall from her synopsis of the tale), "the
+pendulum comes nearer and nearer--but I think he deserved to escape,"
+says Caroline, "because he tried so hard." Now that is really a deep
+moral observation, "because he tried so hard," and a sound questioning
+of the philosophical verity of a work of art.
+
+"There's a good murder in here," says Caroline.
+
+"I like Sherlock Holmes," Caroline says.
+
+She reads the "Mark of the Beast" and the "Black Cat" with great
+satisfaction. For comedy or for psychological moments she does not care,
+but there is nobody, we believe, with greater capacity for enjoyment of
+terrible murder in horrible dark places in the land of fiction.
+
+Night after night we heard her voice reading aloud to her visitor Emily
+after the two had retired, until we fell asleep; and in the morning we
+saw that the relish of horror was still upon her.
+
+Emily had gone. Caroline had retired alone. We read by the lamp in the
+living-room. We were startled and mystified to hear suddenly mingle with
+the sound of the night rain all around, a long, uncertain wailing, a
+melancholy, haunting, sinking, rising, halting, gruesome sound,
+uncannily redolent of weird Gothic tales; the "Castle of Otranto" came
+into our mind. This apparently proceeded from an "upper chamber," as
+would be said in the type of story mentioned.
+
+"That," said brother Henry, in replying doubtless to a blank face, "is
+Caroline playing the flute."
+
+No one alive, of course, has not in his head a picture of another that
+in the still hours sought solace in and loved a flute, Mr. Richard
+Swiveler propped up in bed, his nightcap raked, fluting out the sad
+thoughts in his bosom. So in the night and the storm, does another
+bizarre soul, Caroline, speak with the elements.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+IDA'S AMAZING SURPRISE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+IN "Bleak House," I think it is, that Poor Joe keeps "movin' along." One
+of the atoms of London, he passes his whole life in the midst of
+thousands upon thousands of signs. Printed letters, painted letters,
+carved letters, words, words, words, blaze upon him all about. Yet not a
+syllable of them all speaks to him; seen but all unheard by him they
+clothe his path. Poor Joe cannot read. How must he regard these strange,
+unmeaning signs? What is it goes on in this head which so little can
+enter? What has filtered in where the great main avenue of approach
+remains, as far from the first, black and unopened? What does this mind,
+sitting there far off in the dark, looking out, comprehend of the
+pageant? And how does it strike him? Some such a mysterious mind looks
+out from Ida's eyes.
+
+Ida is "colored." It is my belief that though she is grown and well
+formed a little child dwells in her head. I know that when I ask her to
+bring me another cup of coffee and she pauses, slightly bends forward,
+her lips a trifle parted, and fastens her clear, utterly innocent,
+curious eyes upon me, waiting to hear repeated what she has already
+heard, she sees me as a sort of toy balloon on a string, whose
+incomprehensible movements excite a pleasurable wonder. As regularly as
+the dinner hour comes around Ida asks, with that same amazingly
+unsophisticated, interested look, if each of us will have soup. If it
+were our custom occasionally not to take soup, if we had declined soup a
+couple of times even, a good while ago, if even we had declined soup
+once--but, as Mr. MacKeene says, what could have put it into her head
+that we might not take soup? It is the same with dessert, with cereal
+at breakfast. I hardly know why it is not the same with having our beds
+made.
+
+It is easy to give Ida pleasure. She has not been satiated, perhaps,
+with pleasure. A very little quite overjoys her. I turn about in my
+chair to reach a book, and discover Ida silently dusting the furniture.
+"Why! I didn't know you were in here," I say to Ida. Ida breaks into
+great light at this highly entertaining situation. "Didin you know I was
+in here! Didin you!" Her eyebrows go up with delight. Her pose might be
+the original of Miss Rogson's "Merely Mary Ann."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+NOT GULLIBLE, NOT HE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+"Sir," said Doctor Johnson, "a fallible being will fail somewhere," So
+far as penetration, at least, is concerned, this is not true of Dean. He
+is never caught without his grains of salt.
+
+Dean believes nothing that he reads in newspapers. He is not caught, for
+one thing, believing anecdotes of celebrated persons. These anecdotes
+are pretty stories yearned for by a sentimental public. The public is
+amusing, composed as it is of simple, guileless people who know nothing
+of the world. Newspapers are concoctions of press agents, for the most
+part--bait for the gullible. A citizen of the word is Dean, and he has,
+alas! lost his innocence. This pleases him. You can't impose on Dean's
+credulity. He hasn't got any credulity. In this respect he has much the
+same effect upon his company as the Mark Twain dog that didn't have any
+hind legs had upon the mind of his antagonist. That dog was hardly a
+pleasure to his opponent. He was baffling.
+
+It is perhaps a man's misfortune that he should be so without delusions.
+Dean has found out there is no Santa Claus, in a manner of speaking,
+while the rest of us are yet humbugged. So while we may be pleased with
+our callings or our hobby-horses, our coins, or our cockle-shells, our
+drums, our fiddles, our pictures, our talents, our maggots and our
+butterflies, he can only shrug his shoulders and depreciate them to the
+best of his ability, saying that they are very poor cockle-shells, to be
+sure, though no man more than he deplores it that this is so. Though no
+doubt it must be a melancholy thing to feel so severely the failings of
+all, Dean's cavilings are cheerfully made always, and they come to us
+filtered through a humorous nature. And to do him justice, he is
+whimsically aware of his own idiosyncrasies, and readily acknowledges
+them as he sees them, which is in a mellow, kindly light. "Now I could
+never make money," he says humorously, as it were. But that is not the
+sum of life, he knows perhaps too well.
+
+He sees the vanity of it all, does Dean. He sees the vanity of all
+useful endeavor. He sees the vanity most of all perhaps, of success.
+What is this success we see around us, after all? What is the fame of
+this man, this Mr. So-and-So, but sensationalism? Of what the success of
+that other, but cheap notoriety, and a rich wife? They are both of them,
+very probably, at heart as miserable as Dean. Ah me! 'tis a profitless
+world, and there's no satisfaction in it anywhere. "Though probably you
+are hardly of an age to see it yet," says Dean, and he smiles at the
+juvenility of ambition. You will see it, however, when you too have
+failed.
+
+"In this age when every man you meet is a genius," says Dean--it amuses
+him that he is not of the many--"I have really seen only one really
+great man, and I have been compelled to know a good many of the geniuses
+too." This remarkable, unique gentleman, it appears, was an old
+sou'easter sawbuck of a codger up in the backwoods of Maine, where he
+lived hermit-wise in a shanty, being a squatter. When Dean met him
+there he felt instinctively that here he was before a _man_. Uncle Eli
+was old: he was a trifle filthy; he was addicted to drink; and not what
+you would call much good in any way. He was uncouth; a man with the bark
+on; one of nature's noblemen. He lacked culture, and education, and
+intelligence; but he had eye-teeth. Lord! He wasn't polite; he wasn't
+learned; but when it came to downright bull-headed horse-sense he
+knocked the socks of all of them. He was a philosopher, this old B'gosh
+half-idiot wreck. By George, he was, and a great one. He reminded Dean
+of Lincoln. Some of his philosophical splinters from the old rail, rough
+they were but ready, rather laid over the wisdom of Hercules himself.
+"Ef 'n ol' hoss wus a Billygoat mighty few Christians there be 'ud git
+to Heaven." That hits the nail on the head, Dean reckons.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+CRAMIS, PATRON OF ART
+
+
+"Have you got any tobacco?" I inquired of Cramis.
+
+"Sure," he replied, "I'm never without it."
+
+He is a slave to the weed, a hopeless smoker. He hands me his pouch; the
+tobacco is a little old and mildewed. When Cramis comes to visit me he
+always brings a most disreputable looking pipe along in his mouth,
+charred and cold. This he calls attention to, musingly, as it were, by
+remarking that "that looks natural."
+
+"I shouldn't have known you without it," I answer. Then we are the best
+of friends. An old Swede, an engineer of some rare sort, a whimsical
+fellow, quite a character--Cramis is greatly interested in
+characters--was much addicted to his pipe (so runs Cramis's story). It
+was a limb of his body. He was one of those inveterate smokers that you
+find here and there about the world. One day placards announcing that
+smoking was prohibited among employees in the building were posted at
+conspicuous places in the mill where Olie was employed. Olie went on
+smoking. The manager came through; he paused at Olie.
+
+"Look-a-here," he said, "don't you see that sign? No smoking among
+employees in this building." Olie slowly took the pipe from his mouth,
+regarding it thoughtfully in his out-stretched hand as he blew a great
+cloud of blue smoke.
+
+"Where my pipe goes," he said, replacing it between his teeth, "I goes."
+You may notice it: there is something of the same idiosyncrasy between
+that picturesque character and Cramis.
+
+For all the idler and the dilettante that he is, no man ever more
+conscientiously attended to business than Cramis. He is at it early and
+late. He is very successful. Yet he knows himself to be an impractical
+cuss, a dreamer, an æsthetic visionary. No man so thoroughly reliable
+was ever before so irresponsible.
+
+On his visits at my place, Cramis writes a great quantity of letters.
+All globe trotters do this, I suppose, whether it is necessary or not.
+It is only natural. If Cramis did not, many of his friends would not,
+no doubt, be aware that he was in Connecticut, or, indeed, that he ever
+got off the island of Manhattan.
+
+Though Cramis is by nature shrewd, saving, and methodically economical,
+he is very careless about money. He has no more idea of the value of it
+than Oliver Goldsmith. It is pitiful--yet lovable.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Among Cramis's curious circle of acquaintances--his collection of
+acquaintances is a regular menagerie, as he so often says--was a
+painter, a fellow twenty-four years old and with nobody to support him.
+Cramis believed, after carefully inquiring, that the fellow had talent
+and might amount to something. He loaned him money. The scoundrel
+squandered it, probably; at any rate, he bought no fame with it. That
+was a year ago, and Cramis is eight dollars out of pocket. Still, his
+heart is a brother to genius. He consulted me on the question of the
+very least amount upon which a man could live, the length of time at the
+smallest estimate wherein he could reasonably be expected to attain
+greatness, and was for setting the fellow up in a studio elsewhere. I
+pointed out to Cramis that it might possibly be years before the hungry
+man became famous, and he abandoned the idea. It was too great a risk.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+BARBER SHOPS AWESOME
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+To patronize barbers' shops is a trying affair. Nothing but a crying
+need of services obtained there can drive one who knows them well into
+one of them. When you enter a barber shop, a long row of barber's
+chairs, like a line of guns down the deck of a man-o'-war, stretching
+away in perspective, confronts you. Three barbers, say, are engaged with
+patrons; and they go calmly on. They are unaware of your existence. The
+rest have been enjoying newspapers and leisure. You interrupt them; and
+they spring, as one man, each to the head of his chair, and stand at
+attention. To find such a company of well-fed, well-groomed, better-men
+than-you-are suddenly at your service is disturbing; to have to insult
+all the others in your selection of one is an uncomfortable thought.
+They are all equally friendly toward you; but it is impossible for them
+all to shave you; you must turn against some of them. There is no
+retreat for you; you cannot turn around and go out. You choose the
+nearest man, as the only solution: and the others show their displeasure
+by returning to their seats. A fiend is in this man whom you have
+chosen; his suavity was a diabolical mask. He gloats in publicly
+humiliating you. He forces you to confess there before his "gang" that
+you do not want anything but a shave. You have brought this man from his
+newspaper simply to shave you! Now the number of things the barber
+manages to do to you against your desire is a measure of the resistant
+force of your character. You deny that you need a shampoo. There is no
+denying that your hair is falling out. There is no denying that you
+sometimes shave yourself. You need try to conceal nothing from this man.
+He sees quite through you. (You recall a certain Roundabout Paper.) He
+has Found You Out! All you ask is to be allowed to go. He washes your
+face for you and turns you out of the chair. You pass into the hands of
+a boy, the same boy you denied to polish your shoes, a boy that has his
+opinions, who plays the tune of "Yankee Doodle" on you with a
+whisk-broom very much as if he snapped his fingers in your face; and you
+may go.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MUCH MARRIED STRATFORD
+
+
+What an excellent thing it is that Stratford is comfortably married. He
+is built for marriage. That is the life for him; a nice, quiet,
+wholesome, unexciting life of home comforts. Mr. and Mrs. Stratford
+dwell happily in a little nest called a cottage. Here they are
+surrounded by all the sundry and divers chattels and effects incident to
+the life they follow.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In order that he may be properly protected against the elements,
+Stratford is plentifully supplied with overshoes, earbobs, Storm King
+chest protectors, mufflers, and umbrellas. He arms himself with these
+instruments according to the precise demand of each different occasion.
+Going out into the weather is an undertaking, and an adventure,
+accompanied by hazardous risks. With Stratford, preparation for it is a
+system and a science. Sometimes, however, Stratford's judgment errs in
+the matter of precaution. One day last week Stratford went downtown.
+Yielding to his vanity on that day, he recklessly wore kid gloves
+instead of his mittens, which were so much more suited to the then
+prevailing inclement weather. Now he suffers from it. He has a cough,
+and is compelled to keep his breast goose-greased.
+
+Few people realize the importance of health, and the relation of diet to
+health. Pork is not wholesome. New potatoes are very hard to digest.
+Cream should never be eaten with peaches. This pernicious combination
+curdles. Stratford knows much more about these things than does the
+writer, which is fortunate for Stratford; the writer has only attempted
+to point out and warn you against a few of the most important, which he
+learned from Stratford. Stratford learned all this from experience. Last
+evening at dinner Stratford drank two cups of coffee. He did not sleep a
+wink all the night in consequence. Coffee is very bad for the nerves,
+very bad.
+
+It may be that there are many persons like the writer in not knowing how
+to serve coffee. The cream should always be put in the cup first, then
+the coffee poured on. Though you may not be aware of the fact, it
+absolutely ruins coffee to serve it any other way. It is better to put
+sugar on oatmeal after the cream is on. The writer does not know why;
+but it is better.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Though one would hardly suspect it, in his youth Stratford was
+considerable of a rake. He often tells the story. It appears that in a
+spirit of reckless dare-deviltry on an occasion Stratford partook of
+some spirituous liquor. Now Stratford has a tolerably strong head. But
+this wine--or was it cocktail?--proved almost too much for him. Ah,
+well! those wild and lawless days are past and gone. Stratford has
+reformed, and will not fill a drunkard's grave. No one, we hope,
+respects Stratford the less for having been a little wild. We all hate a
+milksop, you will agree.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+A HUMAN CASH REGISTER
+
+
+Across the table from a lodger sits Mr. Fife. Mr. Fife is a clerk. This
+statement comprises, not inadequately, his memoirs.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When a man speaks to you of the useful piece of mechanism called a cash
+register, you comprehend him perfectly. You know what a cash register
+is, for what purpose it was designed, how it looks, how much
+approximately it is worth, what it will perform, and what it will
+remain--a cash register. A cash register could not have been born a toy
+balloon, spent its youth as a bicycle, been educated as a pulpit, have
+imprudently married a footlight, been forced to obtain employment as a
+cash register, but cherishes a secret ambition to be a typewriter and
+solace itself in turn as a violin, a mug of ale, and a tobacco pipe. A
+lodger does not say that Mr. Fife is no better in any way than a cash
+register. A mother nursed him at her breast, watched him as he slept; he
+was somebody's baby. A grown man was strangely moved, probably, when he
+was born. He played somewhere as a child. Dirty little brothers and
+sisters, perhaps, were his. He was spanked and had diseases and suffered
+and was frightened and rejoiced. Hearts have been glad when he was near.
+One or two little girls, no doubt, have admired him very much. Some
+woman, probably somewhere, admires him still. A lodger does not say that
+Mr. Fife has no inner life. He does not say that the forces of existence
+constantly, ceaselessly beating in on this man (or rather clerk) are not
+here slowly, inevitably shaping a moral character, this way or that. But
+as this human life sits here at Mrs. Wigger's board a clerk is here,
+with his past and his future.
+
+Mr. Fife has a "furnished room" somewhere around on the next street, and
+only takes his meals at Mrs. Wigger's.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+IT STANDS TO REASON
+
+
+On the hotel porch a large, earnest man was delivering the argument. He
+poised his pipe in his hand; and, moving forward from period to period
+with judicial deliberation, choosing his words with care, building his
+sentences with a nice regard for precision, he constructed his
+exposition in logical sequence. He had time at his command; and, so he
+gripped his audience, was in no fear of interruption. "For instance, we
+will take, for instance, just for instance, do you understand? the
+little town of New York to represent the whole country. Well, here we
+have the little town of New York. Now, it stands to reason----" One who
+chanced to overhear passed beyond range.
+
+But what of the disquisition had been caught gave rise to an important
+reflection. When you examine the subject you find there are three
+fundamental phrases in arguing, in the dexterous use of which is
+largely constituted the talent of the born arguer. These home-driving
+phrases, which are his stock in trade, are: "It stands to reason,"
+"between man and man," and "that's human nature." With these, strongly
+used, one can do almost anything. "Does capital meet labor?" says the
+born arguer. "No; what is the consequence? It stands to reason. Labor
+goes to the wall." Or, again: "You take the generations we have now, the
+young people." He smokes a while in silence. "It's human nature," comes
+the philosophical conclusion. And when the arguer addresses his audience
+"as between man and man," when in this direct, blunt way all the
+frangipani of class and convention is cleared aside, and only their
+manhood stands between them, he has got at the bed-rock of argument.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+A THREE-RINGED CIRCUS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Our friend MacKeene is a very interesting person. One of his most
+pronounced characteristics is an assiduous striving on his part to
+increase his vocabulary. We are always made aware of any of his new
+acquisitions in this direction by its frequent repetition during a
+conversation, the loving way in which he appears to dwell upon it, to
+hug it to his heart, allow it gradually to mount to his throat, roll it
+in his mouth to suck its flavor, to send it forth at length, to watch it
+tenderly and admiringly (like a fine ring of tobacco smoke) until it
+loses itself in the flow of speech that comes after it. We relish this
+new word ourselves. It is like a play; it thrills our soul, and we sigh
+when it is gone--but we know it will come again many times before the
+night is passed.
+
+It has never been our fortune to see a man that enjoyed the show of life
+more than does MacKeene. He reads newspapers with a relish that is
+positively amazing; he smacks his lips over them; their contents are to
+him the headiest romance. MacKeene goes to the finest theater in the
+world every evening when he reads his penny paper. The anxiety with
+which he awaits the account of each new murder, swindle, election,
+disaster, marriage, or divorce of a special publicity, the mental
+agility with which he pounces upon it, the astonishing variety of points
+of view he can take of the thing, and the application with which he
+follows through successive installments the story to the very end, are
+delightful to behold.
+
+He invariably winds up his observations upon life with the comment that
+"it is a funny world; such funny people in it."
+
+True, or, rare MacKeene! It _is_ a funny world, and there _are_ such
+funny people in it! Everybody is queer but thee and us.
+
+The other evening, after he had devoured his newspaper and sat staring
+at the wall, we started him going by the remark:
+
+"Well, what's in the paper to-night, MacKeene?"
+
+"What's in the paper to-night?" cried he.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Everything is in the paper, everything--worlds of it--plays, skits,
+comedies, farces, tragedies, burlesques: material for the student, the
+historian, the author, the poet, the moralist, the humorist, much matter
+to be fast applauded for its slapstick good nature, and some bowed with
+leaden-eyed despair, some replete with rosy schemes, some of waxing
+hopes and sweet, unprofitable pipe dreams, some of many moneys, births,
+deaths, marriages and giving in marriages, loves, hatreds, wisdoms,
+follies, crimes, vices and virtues, heroisms, hypocrisies, arts,
+commercialism, surprises, bacchanals, hard exigencies, and poor resorts
+and petty contrivances. _Life_--ah! that's the boy--life and all its
+train of consequences, ringing in my ears, dancing before my eyes,
+crowding on the senses, a three-ringed circus in full blast, a roary,
+noisy, bloomin' spectacle, a mammoth aggregation of prodigious
+eye-openers and unparalleled splendors, with gorgeous hippodrome under
+perfect subjection, and a Casino Wonderland Musée of queer, peculiar,
+wild, domestic, instructing, funny, beautiful, horrible, and revolting
+curios and monstrosities of land, air, and sea."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+SNAPSHOTS IN X-RAY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+What a terrible thing is the X-ray!
+
+Terrible?
+
+Listen. Contemplate the prospect of this invention's being brought into
+popular use, so that, say, anybody might have such an attachment to his
+kodak. In such case, science, which has been so powerful a force in
+refining the civilization of man, would by one stroke lay waste the
+whole of her handiwork. Civilized society would collapse.
+
+A German professor at one time went pretty well into the subject of
+clothes and the philosophy thereof, and reasoned among other things
+that society would instantly dissolve without them. Nothing could more
+vividly bear out this gentleman than contemplation of the possibilities
+of the Roentgen ray. It is an exciting prospect. A press of the button,
+and there would be Herr Teufelsdrockh's "straddling Parliament." But a
+thousand times more grotesque: gentlemen stripped not only of the
+tailored habiliment of the bodies, the symbols of their gentility, as it
+were, but of the fleshly garments of their frame, laying bare their
+mortality. And humorously, witheringly, for among the other distinctions
+man is said to possess above his brethren the beasts, being the only
+animal that laughs, and so forth, it is certainly true that of all
+creation he has the funniest skeleton. It would be the end. No candidate
+for public office would dare to come forth upon the platform. What stout
+lady could give a party?
+
+Unless, indeed, as would probably result, for the preservation of
+society the use and carrying of kodaks would be regulated, like the
+carrying of revolvers, by statute. To photograph a gentleman or lady on
+the street would be a criminal deed carrying a penalty of twenty years'
+imprisonment. For though ladies blessed by nature might not, in this
+lingerie-less, tube-skirt age, shrink from further perception of their
+loveliness, it is doubtful if any man could make love to a woman after
+having seen an effigy of her skeleton. To snap the President would be
+equivalent, in the eyes of the law, to assassinating him. To take an
+X-ray photograph of a fashionable assembly would be, like discharging a
+dynamite bomb in the midst, punishable with death.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+BACHELOR REMINISCENCES
+
+
+Sometimes my thoughts carry me away from my solitary strife with the
+world; back to my boyhood, when all men were not thieves and scoundrels,
+as they are now; back to my old home and my family, where we loved one
+another and did not, lynx-eyed, watch for a grip upon our neighbors'
+throats nor count our every friend as a possibility of our own
+advancement, and every favor we did another a business investment.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In one such mood as this, on an evening, I was pleased, upon answering
+the knock at my door, to usher in my neighboring lodger Harrison. In
+reminiscence we would renew our youth; and to that purpose I started him
+off upon the desired track.
+
+Harrison poses as something of a philosopher, and he began with some of
+his customary rot.
+
+"Well," said he, "I have never known a man that talked at all upon the
+subject who did not follow a calling which was the most trying of all
+those at which men labor in this world, who did not have a most
+remarkably hard time in early life, and who did not fondly imagine that
+he was a very bad boy in his youth. These, I take it, are the three most
+familiar hallucinations in life. I am a victim to them myself. But I
+shall not regale you with them to-night. I was thinking of my own
+boyhood, the wickedness of it, and the happiness. Ah! boyhood, that is
+the happy time; girlhood may be, too--but I doubt it.
+
+"These many years have I been like poor Joe in 'Bleak House,' I must
+keep moving along; but when I was a boy I had a home. A strange word it
+is to me now. I am reminded of the old vaudeville 'stunt': Any old place
+I hang my hat is home, sweet home, to me. I follow a trunk about the
+world, and a devil of a globe-trotter of a trunk it is.
+
+"But when I was a boy," continued Harrison, the lines in his face
+softened--and he somehow just now looked very like a boy--"I had a home;
+there the board was always paid." The lines came back in his face for an
+instant, then faded away again. "There in the winter it was always
+warm," he said, looking very hard at my small fire. "There we had great
+feasting and drinking." I could not but notice how spare he was now.
+"There were noise and romping," and the softness of his voice now
+emphasized the extreme desertedness of my chambers. "There were brothers
+and sisters. Did you ever have a brother?" he asked me rather suddenly.
+
+I replied that I never did.
+
+"Or a sister?" he inquired.
+
+I said "No."
+
+He looked at me with a sort of annoying pity.
+
+"I hope," he said rather irritatedly, "that you had a mother?"
+
+I replied that I had had, but I did not see why we should fight about
+it.
+
+"Now, don't lose your temper, old man," said Harrison. "You're such an
+incorrigible old dope, you know, such a cynical, confirmed old bachelor
+of a bohemian, I mean; so contented with this lonesome, vagabond life,
+that I hardly think you ever had a real, happy, wholesome boyhood home.
+By the way, did you ever have a boyhood?" he asked with something very
+near to a sneer.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Now, look here," I said, "if you had such an insufferable home, why
+didn't you stay there and make your own family miserable instead of
+wandering about the world bemoaning your fate, wishing yourself back
+there, and insulting people who are not moved by ties of relationship to
+be tolerant with your spleen? And who won't be," I added, rising.
+
+"You're a fool," said Harrison, as he banged the door.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+A TESTIMONIAL
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+For years I was a great sufferer from insomnia. At one time this dread
+scourge had so fastened its terrible fangs upon me that I could scarcely
+walk. My body became one mass of sleeplessness; I tried many remedies,
+but without avail, and my friends had all given me up for dead when by
+chance from a mere acquaintance I heard of this great cure which I would
+recommend to all who are afflicted as I was.
+
+I remember with horror the tortures I used to endure in agony as I
+tossed to and fro on the hot pillow, going over in my fevered mind
+interminably the formulas of the so-called reliefs from this peerless
+disease. An unconscionable number of times I numbered a round of sheep
+over a stile. I counted up to ten, over and over again; and then up to
+fifteen, and then twenty, twenty-five, thirty, fifty, only to craze
+myself with the thought of the futility of this lunacy. I heard my
+dollar watch tick on the dresser, until in madness I arose and placed it
+on the restraining pad of a clothes-brush. I heard the clock in the next
+room relentlessly tell the passing hours; I heard a neighboring public
+clock follow it through the watches of the night. I heard my happy
+neighbor snore. I heard the sound of rats near by, and the creaking of
+floors, and the voice of the wind. I tried bathing my feet before going
+to bed. I tried eating a light lunch. I tried intoxicating liquors. But
+always I stared through the blackness of the fearful night until an
+eerie color tinged my window, and then the dawn came up like thunder
+across the bay.
+
+It was when my spirit had become worn through my body like elbows
+through the sleeve of an old coat that I heard the remarkable recipe for
+insomnia: Think of the top of your head. That is what I was told to do.
+"Think of the top of your head," I said to myself with some disdain in
+the awful grip of the night; "now how in thunder do you think of the top
+of your head?"
+
+"Do you think of your hair?" I asked, turning my eyeballs upward in
+their sockets. "Do you think of that lightly hidden baldness?" striving
+to put my mind, so to say, on the top of my head. "How the
+Dickens-can-you-think-of----" but a drowsy numbness pained my sense as
+though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
+one minute past, and Lethewards had sunk. And I dreamed that quite
+plainly, as though it were some other fellow's, I saw the top of my
+head.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+FRAGRANT WITH PERFUME
+
+
+Mr. Duff is the tenant of the second floor front. His wife has been
+away. Mr. Duff himself may be encountered about in the halls. He is a
+large man with a considerable girth and a face that one knows to be
+youthful for his age; he cannot be under thirty.
+
+Recently the second floor hall became fragrant with the odor of perfume.
+Mrs. Duff, presumably, had returned. Yes, Mrs. Duff was at the
+telephone. She calls, "Hello!" very sweetly, in two syllables. Mr.
+Duff's first name, it appears, is Walter, pronounced by his doting wife
+also in two syllables, "Wal-ter." Mrs. Duff bleats, it seems, in two
+syllables. Mr. Duff's middle name evidently is "Hon-ey."
+
+Mrs. Duff said over the telephone that she "had been ba-ad." She said
+it, or, so sweetly. She had, she said, taken a little walk and had
+stayed "too long" and she had been away when he had called her up. But
+she had had the "best little time." She was going to work now, "oh! so
+ha-rd." She was going to clean out the bureau drawers and "that little
+box," and unpack her trunk and put away her things. No, she would be
+careful not to overwork herself. She would see him, Walter Honey Duff,
+when he came home from work. "Good-by, little boy," she said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Then she called up a creamery. She wanted the creamery to send her,
+please, a pint of milk, and the smallest jar it had of cream cheese. How
+soon could those be sent, please? Oh-h! not till then? Well, she
+supposed she would have to wait.
+
+The second floor hall is fragrant with the odor of perfume.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+WOULDN'T LOOK AT HIM
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+"They say," remarked the portly man with several double chins on the
+back of his neck, "that the Duke is over in the Library."
+
+"I wouldn't walk across the street to see him," said a shabby
+individual, helping himself to a cracker.
+
+"He's no better than any other man," said the bar-boy.
+
+"I wouldn't look at him if they brought him in to me," announced an
+aggressive-looking character.
+
+Now this was a remark rich in pictorial suggestion. It was eloquent
+with dramatic evocation. One instantly imagines the striking scene; the
+duke is dragged in; the aggressive-looking character is called upon to
+look at him; this he refuses to do.
+
+"He breathes the same kind of air we do, don't he?" pointedly inquired
+the shabby individual.
+
+"I guess that's right enough, too!" exclaimed the bar-boy.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+CONNUBIAL FELICITY
+
+
+I've got a fine wife, too. I tell you, Bob, there's nothin' better can
+happen to a feller than to get the right woman. I don't care for battin'
+around any more now. Nothin' I like any better than to go home to my
+flat at night, take off my shoes and put on my slippers, and listen to
+my wife play the piano. My wife is musical, vocal and instrumental. Her
+vocal is on a par with her instrumental. I like music. I always said if
+ever I got married I'd marry, a wife that was musical. I ain't educated
+in music, exactly, but I've an ear. A feller told me,--Doc. Hoff, a
+mighty smart man, I'd like you to know him, his talk sometimes it would
+take a college professor to understand it,--he says to me, "I'm no
+phrenologist but I can see you've got an ear for music."
+
+My wife is an aristocrat. When I married her, Thunder! I had no polish,
+that is to speak of. You know that, Bob. My talk was the vernacular. My
+wife's an Episcopalian. She asked me if I had any objection to the
+Episcopal ceremony for marrying. I said I didn't have no religion;
+anything would suit me so long as it was legal. I had fifteen hundred
+dollars to the good. I don't know how I come to have it. I oughtn't to
+have, by rights. Some of these book makers ought to have had it,
+accordin' to the life I led. But I did have it, anyhow. I took three
+hundred dollars and got a sweet of drawing room furniture--Louie
+fourteenth, or fifteenth, they call it, I forget which. Then I got a
+mahogany table, solid parts through, for our dining room, and some what
+they call Chippendale chairs. I got a darn good library up there, too.
+
+My wife don't say "and so forth"; she says "and caetera."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+A FRIEND, INDEED
+
+
+He was a sturdy-looking little man, with a square, honest face, and an
+upright manner, to put it so. He seemed to be a Swede. His companion had
+something the look of Mr. Heep, and he wore a cap.
+
+"Yes, sir, Will," said his companion, "I'd like to see you own that
+piece of property. I would. If you owned that piece of property, Will,
+then you see you'd have something. You'd have something, Will. Something
+you could always call your own, Will."
+
+"Do you think it's good land?" said Will.
+
+"Oh, yes," said his companion; "that's a very fine piece of land, Will.
+I know every bit of it. I've worked up there, Will."
+
+"Rocky?" asked Will.
+
+"Oh, no, Will; there's hardly a rock on it."
+
+"How far now does it come down this way?" inquired Will musingly.
+
+"Down the hill, Will?" asked his companion, with great attention.
+
+"Yes," said Will.
+
+"Well, now as to that," said the other, casting his face upward in
+thought, "I couldn't just exactly say."
+
+"Down to the oak tree, don't it?" said Will.
+
+"That's right, Will!" exclaimed the other, in delighted recognition of
+the fact. "Down to the oak tree, Will. You're right, Will."
+
+"And how far would you say," asked Will thoughtfully, "does it run back
+in?"
+
+"Run back in, Will?" said the other as though in surprise. "Well, now
+you know, Will," shaking his head in doubt, "it's been some time since I
+was up there, Will."
+
+"It goes back as far as the big rock, don't you think?" said Will,
+thinking hard.
+
+"Back to the big rock, Will!" cried the other eagerly. "That's right,
+Will. You're right! Back to the big rock, Will!"
+
+"What's the name of those people who own the land just this way?" Will
+asked, looking hard into his mind.
+
+"Well, now, Will, I can't just bring to mind the name of those people,"
+answered the other, looking equally hard, apparently, into his own
+mind.
+
+"Smithers, ain't it?" said Will, gropingly.
+
+"Smithers is the name!" ejaculated the other. "You're right, Will!
+That's it! Smithers! You're right, Will! Nice people, too, Will!"
+
+"Well, I don't think though that I'll get that land, after all," said
+Will, in the manner of a man who has at length arrived at a decision.
+
+"Well, of course, Will," said his companion, nodding his head up and
+down, "property is a great care. I don't know that you're not right,
+Will. Property's a great care, Will; you're right about that, Will. You
+can do better, Will. You're right about that!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes Holliday
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+  The Project Gutenberg eBook of Peeps At People, by Robert Cortes Holliday.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes Holliday
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Peeps at People
+
+Author: Robert Cortes Holliday
+
+Illustrator: Walter Jack Duncan
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2011 [EBook #35675]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEEPS AT PEOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 392px;">
+<a href="images/cover.jpg">
+<img src="images/cover_sml.jpg" width="392" height="600" alt="image of the book&#39;s cover" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="cb"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">P&nbsp;E&nbsp;E&nbsp;P&nbsp;S &nbsp; A T&nbsp; &nbsp;P E O P L E</span><br />
+<a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a>
+ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p>
+
+<h1>PEEPS AT PEOPLE</h1>
+
+<p class="cb">BY<br />
+ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY<br />
+<small>AUTHOR OF "WALKING-STICK PAPERS," "BOOTH<br />
+TARKINGTON," "JOYCE KILMER: A<br />
+MEMOIR," "BROOME STREET<br />
+STRAWS," ETC.</small></p>
+
+<p class="cb">WITH PICTURES BY<br />
+WALTER JACK DUNCAN</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 148px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_title.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_title_sml.png" width="148" height="158" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p class="cb">NEW YORK<br />
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a></p>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="c"><small><i>Copyright, 1919,<br />
+By George H. Doran Company</i></small></p>
+
+<p class="c"><small><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></small><br />
+<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I WROTE A BOOK SOME TIME AGO WHICH WAS DEDICATED TO "THREE FINE
+MEN." THIS IS A SMALLER BOOK. THEREFORE, I DEDICATE IT TO TWO FINE
+MEN:</p>
+
+<p class="c">EUGENE F. SAXTON<br />
+CHRISTOPHER MORLEY</p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 284px;">
+<a href="images/illp_v.png">
+<img src="images/illp_v_sml.png" width="284" height="208" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>These little what-you-call-'ems, with the exception of the opening
+one and the concluding ones, all appeared originally in the
+Saturday Magazine of the New York <i>Evening Post</i>. They are
+reprinted here by the courtesy of the editors of that otherwise
+estimable newspaper. For permission to reprint the opening paper
+<i>The Bookman</i> is to blame.</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><span class="smcap">Even So! Or, As You May Say, a Preface</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_013">13</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#I">I</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Forgetful Tailor</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_019">19</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#II">II</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Talk at the Post Office</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_023">23</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#III">III</a></td><td><span class="smcap">As to Office Boys</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_028">28</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IV">IV</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Conqueror's Attack</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_032">32</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#V">V</a></td><td><span class="smcap">The Case of Mr. Woolen</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_036">36</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VI">VI</a></td><td><span class="smcap">When the Train Comes In</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_041">41</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VII">VII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">An Old Fogy</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_044">44</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#VIII">VIII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Hair That is Scenery</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_047">47</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#IX">IX</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Nice Man</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_050">50</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#X">X</a></td><td><span class="smcap">No Snob</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_053">53</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XI">XI</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Every Inch a Man</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_059">59</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XII">XII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">His Business Is Good</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_065">65</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XIII">XIII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Nice Taste in Murders</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_071">71</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XIV">XIV</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Ida's Amazing Surprise</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_074">74</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XV">XV</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Not Gullible, Not He</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_077">77</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XVI">XVI</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Cramis, Patron of Art</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_081">81</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XVII">XVII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Barber Shops Awesome</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_085">85</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Much Married Stratford</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_088">88</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XIX">XIX</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Human Cash Register</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_092">92</a><a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XX">XX</a></td><td><span class="smcap">It Stands To Reason</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_094">94</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXI">XXI</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Three-ringed Circus</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_096">96</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXII">XXII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Snapshots in X-ray</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_100">100</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Bachelor Reminiscences</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_103">103</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Testimonial</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXV">XXV</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Fragrant with Perfume</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Wouldn't Look at Him</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_112">112</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">Connubial Felicity</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_114">114</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a></td><td><span class="smcap">A Friend, Indeed</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_116">116</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a></p>
+
+<h1>PEEPS AT PEOPLE</h1>
+
+<p><a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="EVEN_SO_OR_AS_YOU_MAY_SAY_A_PREFACE" id="EVEN_SO_OR_AS_YOU_MAY_SAY_A_PREFACE"></a>EVEN SO! OR, AS YOU MAY SAY,<br />
+A PREFACE</h3>
+
+<p>I <small>KNEW</small> a man who used to do some writing, more or less of it&mdash;articles
+and essays and little sketches and things like that&mdash;and he went to
+another man who was a publisher. (I know all of this because it was told
+to me not long ago at a club.) And he said (the first man) that he would
+like to have published a book of some of his pieces. He hadn't done
+much, if any, writing for a number of years. Matters had been going
+rather bad with him, and he had lost more than a little of his buoyancy.
+The spark had waned; in fact, it was not there. (This he did not say,
+but so the matter was.)</p>
+
+<p>Anyhow, he did say that this collection of material had about it the
+rich glow of his prime, that it was living with the fullness of his
+life, that as a contributor to these papers<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> and magazines he had (or
+had had) a personal following decent enough in size, that the book, by
+all reasoning, ought to go far, and so on. The volume was published. It
+was called&mdash;no, I have forgotten what it was called. However, I heard
+that it got a very fair press, and sold somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in about a year or so, round came the man again to the publisher
+with another batch of little papers. He had aged perceptively within
+this time, and matters had been going with him rather worse than before.
+No, he hadn't been able to write anything lately. (For a moment a
+haunted look crossed his face, a look as though in some sad hidden
+secret he had been discovered.) But (brightening up again) here he had a
+better book than before; it was a much better book than before, as it
+was an earlier one. These things breathed the gusto of his young
+manhood. They were perhaps a bit miscellaneous in character, he had got
+them out of the files of various journals, but they had a verve, a fire,
+a flare for life, which he couldn't better now. A great deal more he
+said to this effect.</p>
+
+<p>Times, however, change (as has frequently been observed). What is sauce
+for the goose<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> is <i>not</i> always sauce for the gander. That is to say,
+other days other ways. I do not know that I gathered (that evening at
+the club) what was the upshot of the matter in this instance between the
+man of whom I am speaking and the publisher. But it is to be feared that
+time had blown upon those things of his of other days as it had upon the
+temple of his soul and its inhabitant.</p>
+
+<p>Well (so the story goes), the world went forward at a dizzy rate. There
+was flame and sword. Ministries rose and fell. Dynasties passed away.
+Customs handed down from antiquity, and honored among the ancients, were
+obliterated by mandate and statute. And man wrought things of many sorts
+in new ways.</p>
+
+<p>On a Friday at about half past two (a pleasant day it was, in the
+Spring, with new buds coming out in the parks and a new generation of
+children all about) again in came our old friend to see his friend the
+publisher. Well, well, and how was he now, and what was new with him?
+Why, a rotten bad run of cards had been his ever since he had been round
+before: rheumatism and influenza, dentist and oculist, wife down and
+brother dead, nothing<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> much accomplished. He sat for a moment and there
+was no light in him. No (you saw it now, quite), he was a lamp without
+oil.</p>
+
+<p>He undid the package containing his manuscript. Here was a book (those
+yellow clippings), well, here was a book! This was a <i>younger</i> book than
+either of his others. On it was the gleaming dew of his youth. Perhaps a
+little scrappy, very brief, and, many of them, rather unequal in
+length&mdash;these things; and very light. Ah, that was the point, that was
+the point! The lightness, the freshness, the spontaneity, the gaiety of
+the springtime of life! One could not recapture that. It would be
+impossible, quite impossible, for him now to write such things as these.
+He did not now think the same way, feel, see the same way, work&mdash;the
+same way. No, no; there comes a hardening of the spiritual and
+intellectual arteries. This was a <i>younger</i> book, a <i>younger</i> book (and
+as he leaned forward with finger raised, a light, for an instant,
+flickered again in his eye) than any of his others.</p>
+
+<p class="cb">* * * * *</p>
+
+<p>There was a man at that club when this story was told who remarked: "It
+is said (is it not?) that Swift, re-reading 'Gulliver' many<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> years after
+it was written, exclaimed: 'My God, what a genius I had at that time!'"</p>
+
+<p>And another man there at the time reminded us of the place somewhere in
+the books of George Moore where it is observed that "anybody can have
+talent at twenty, the thing is to have talent at fifty."</p>
+
+<p class="r">R. C. H.</p>
+
+<p><i>New York,</i> 1919.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I<br /><br />
+THE FORGETFUL TAILOR</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 295px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_019.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_019_sml.png" width="295" height="180" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>H<small>E</small> is a tailor. His shop is down at the corner. When trousers are left
+with him to be pressed and to have suspender buttons sewed on he is
+always obligingly willing to promise them by the morrow; or if you are
+in somewhat of a hurry he will promise that the job shall be done this
+very night. He is the politest and most obliging of men. He will send
+those trousers up by a boy directly. He is such a cheerful man.</p>
+
+<p>After the time for those trousers to appear has long gone by and no boy
+has arrived, it is possible that you may work yourself into a<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> passion.
+You clap your hat upon your head, storm out of the house, and stride
+toward that tailor shop. You become a little cooled by the evening air,
+and you begin to wonder if you have not been a trifle hasty. Perhaps you
+yourself made some mistake concerning your address; things very similar
+have happened before now, when you have laid the blame upon another and
+eventually realized that the fault was your own. It would never do to
+place yourself in such a position with this tailor&mdash;a comparative
+stranger to you. So you will not become abusive to him until you
+discover who is in the wrong.</p>
+
+<p>But if the fault is his, mind you, he shall learn your character; you
+are not a man to be trifled with. This fellow can have no sense of
+business, or anything else, you think. This shall be the last work he
+will ever get from you. Such a man should not have a business. You will
+speak to your friends about this; it will run him out of the
+neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>You have been walking rapidly and are tolerably heated again. You arrive
+at the shop expecting to find the tailor on the defensive, with some
+inane excuse prepared. But you have resolved that it won't go down. You
+are<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> considerably surprised, therefore, to discover the tailor seated,
+comfortably reading a newspaper, by a genial fire. He glances up at you
+as you open the door. His face is without expression at first. Then he
+recollects you, and your business flashes upon him. He smiles
+good-naturedly, then bursts into a hearty laugh. Well, of all things, if
+he hasn't forgotten all about those trousers until this very minute!
+It's such a joke, apparently, such a ridiculous situation. He so enters
+into the spirit of the thing and enjoys it so that you have not the
+heart to rebuke him. You even begin to appreciate the circumstance
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>It is so warm in the tailor-shop and the tailor is so jolly you become
+almost jovial. The tailor promises to send those trousers around the
+first thing in the morning. He would promise to have them ready for you
+in ten minutes if you so desired. Upon leaving, you are tempted to
+invite the tailor out to have a cigar with you. He is so droll, such a
+felicitous chap, such a funny dog, that forgetful tailor.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning those trousers have not shown up. You pass the tailor
+shop on your way downtown. The tailor is standing in his doorway,
+smoking a cigar and looking altogether<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> very bright and cheerful. When
+he sees you his face becomes still brighter; he apparently becomes
+brighter all over, in fact; and his eyes twinkle merrily. "Well! well!"
+he laughs, and slaps his thighs. He is the most forgetful man. He hardly
+knows what will become of him.<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="II" id="II"></a>II<br /><br />
+TALK AT THE POST OFFICE</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 517px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_023.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_023_sml.png" width="517" height="191" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>T<small>HE</small> attention of a little group within the dusk of the post office and
+general store was, apparently, still colored by an event which mutilated
+posters on a dilapidated wagon-shed wall, visible through the doorway in
+the hot light outside, had advertised. A "Wild Bill" show had lately
+moved through this part of the world. A large, loosely-constructed,
+earnest-looking man was speaking to several others, seriously, taking
+his time, allowing his words time to sink well in as he proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I have a brother," he was saying, "who I can produce," he added
+impressively<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> (one realizes that it would be hard to get around this
+sort of evidence)&mdash;"who I can produce, who will take bullet
+cartridges&mdash;Buffalo Bill don't use bullet cartridges&mdash;Annie Oakley don't
+use bullet cartridges&mdash;and who will sit right here in this chair&mdash;sit
+right here in this chair where I am now&mdash;and show you," he nodded once
+to each listener, "something about shootin'," concluding, one who
+reports him felt, somewhat more vaguely than his start had led one to
+expect.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 232px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_024.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_024_sml.png" width="232" height="190" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Well, Pawnee," began another of the group (from which sobriquet it will
+be seen that the large man was a personage in matters of shooting), but
+Pawnee stopped him. It seems he had not finished.</p>
+
+<p>"And if there is anybody that would like to shoot <i>shot</i> with the <i>Old
+Man</i>," he continued, breathing the two last words loud and strong,<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a>
+"<i>I</i>," said Pawnee, with extreme emphasis on the personal pronoun,
+"would like to see them, that's all!"</p>
+
+<p>An odd figure a trifle removed from the group had attracted the notice
+of one reporting these proceedings, by a propensity which he evinced,
+perceived by a kind of mental telepathy, to have some remarks directed
+to him. One felt all through one, so to speak, the near presence of a
+disposition eminently social. As one's sight became more accustomed to
+the interior light this figure defined itself into that of an elderly
+man, somewhat angular, slightly stooped, and wearing a ministerial sort
+of straw hat, with a large rolling brim, considerably frayed; a man very
+kindly in effect, and suggesting to a contemplative observer of humanity
+a character whose walk in life is cutting grass for people.</p>
+
+<p>This gentleman (there was something very gentlemanly about him, not in
+haberdashery, but, as one read him, in spirit) showed, as was said, a
+decided inclination to, as less gentlemanly folks say, "butt in."</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a thing now," spoke up this old fellow, looking up from his
+newspaper, over<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> his iron-rimmed spectacles in a more determined manner
+than heretofore, at one who reports him, and speaking in that tone in
+which it is the habit of genial men traveling in railroad trains to open
+a conversation with their seat-fellow for the journey, "that draws my
+attention." In the racing term, he was "off."</p>
+
+<p>"You know there is a strict law against swearing over the telephone," he
+paused for acquiescence. "Well, there <i>is</i>," he stated, very seriously,
+drawing a little nearer as the acquaintance got on&mdash;"a strict law. Now
+they say they can't stop it. It's a queer thing they can't stop it. They
+know who's at the other end; or at least they know who owns the 'phone.
+They know that. A fine of fifty dollars," he declared, "would stop it."
+It strikes one that this kindly character is almost ferocious on the
+side of morality.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he continued, "there is no use in that. Say what you have to say,
+that's all that's necessary. What's the good of all those
+ad-<i>ject</i>-ives?" He pronounced the last word in three syllables with a
+very decided accent on the second. "That is done, now," he concluded,
+"by people who are, well&mdash;abrupt. Ain't<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> that right, now? It's abrupt,
+that's what it is; it's abrupt.</p>
+
+<p>"Most assuredly," he said, answering himself.<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III<br /><br />
+AS TO OFFICE BOYS</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 486px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_028.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_028_sml.png" width="486" height="170" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>M<small>R</small>. M<small>AC</small>C<small>RARY</small> is in the real estate business. It is incident to Mr.
+MacCrary's business that he has to employ an office boy. This position
+as factotum in the office of Mr. MacCrary is subject to much
+vicissitude.</p>
+
+<p>The first of the interesting line of boys successively employed by Mr.
+MacCrary was an office boy by profession; by natural talent and
+inclination he was a liar. He was a gifted liar, a brilliant and a
+versatile liar; a liar of resource, of imagination. He was a liar of
+something very near to genius. He lied for the love of lying. With him a
+lie was a thing of<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> art. An artist for art's sake, he, and for art's
+sake alone. Like an amateur in short, a distinguished amateur, who is
+too proud to sell his lies, but willingly gives one away, now and then
+to some highly valued and much admiring friend. This boy would start
+with a little lie, then, as he progressed in his story, the wonderful
+possibilities of the thing would open up before him; he would grasp them
+and contort them, twist them into shape, and produce, create, a thing
+magnificent, stupendous, a thing which fairly made one gasp. He, a mere
+boy! It was wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>On the last day he came into the office and said: "Runaway down the
+street, Mr. MacCrary."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so?" said Mr. MacCrary.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said the boy, "ran over a woman, killed her dead."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say!" exclaimed Mr. MacCrary.</p>
+
+<p>"I should say so," said the boy; "killed the baby in her arms, too."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" cried Mr. MacCrary, "did she have a baby in her arms?"</p>
+
+<p>"And that ain't all," continued the boy, "ran on down the street and
+into a trolley car."<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a></p>
+
+<p>"And killed all the passengers!" exclaimed Mr. MacCrary.</p>
+
+<p>"And the conductor," added the boy, "broke all the horse's legs, smashed
+the wagon, driver went insane from scare. They're shootin' the horse
+now," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. MacCrary dismissed this boy that he might find a sphere more suited
+to his ability than the real estate business, which, to tell the truth,
+was evidently a little bourgeoise for his genius.</p>
+
+<p>The next boy was not particularly gifted in any direction, but he was
+mysterious. Upon a client's coming into the office during Mr. MacCrary's
+absence he, the client, was sure to be impressed by two circumstances:
+First, that there was no one in the office until he entered; secondly,
+that the boy had strangely appeared from nowhere in particular, and was
+following in close upon his heels. This consistently illustrates the
+whole course of this boy's conduct throughout the time he remained with
+Mr. MacCrary.</p>
+
+<p>The third boy, that is the present one, is not exactly mysterious, but
+he is peculiar. He attends strictly to his own business. He believes
+himself to be here for that purpose, apparently.<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> He does not meddle
+with Mr. MacCrary's business. That is no concern of his. He is imbued
+with the good old adage: "If you want a thing well done, do it
+yourself." He follows this excellent principle himself, and believes
+others should do likewise. This boy is very sapient, and a wonderful
+student. His nature is more receptive than creative. He procures heavy
+sheep-skin-bound volumes from the circulating library, and his taste in
+literature, for one of his age, is unique. These books generally relate
+to primitive man, and contain exciting engravings of his stone hatchets
+and cooking utensils. He is also fond of perusing horticulture journals,
+these being the only magazines which he enjoys. When the first of these
+appeared about the office, Mr. MacCrary picked up one and inquired:</p>
+
+<p>"What is this, James?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" exclaimed James, "there's some fine pictures of berries in there."
+James is too scholarly for real estate, and will soon, no doubt, follow
+in the way of his earlier predecessor to the intellectual life.<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV<br /><br />
+A CONQUEROR'S ATTACK</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 483px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_032.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_032_sml.png" width="483" height="120" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>O<small>N</small> the post-office store porch an old brindled Dane dog, town loafer,
+was asleep on his back. Chickens wallowed in the road. A baby crawled
+from behind a barrel at the post-office store door. A quorum was met on
+the hotel porch across the way. The butcher and the cobbler came forth
+from dove-cot shops to pass the time of day. The villagers come in ones
+and twos to get their mail. One, a fair, freckled milk-maid, as it would
+seem, from some old story, stands on the sidewalk path, waiting for the
+mail to be "sorted." A willowy lass, one would say a "summer boarder,"
+pokes her parasol musingly through a knot-hole<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> in the porch floor. The
+shop next door is a "dry goods and notions" store; butter and peaches
+and cherries and roses and cream in the shape of a feminine clerk leans
+beneath the low lintel, and, one can guess, like the old dog, dreams.
+The one of brave days of the past, perchance; the other, perchance, of
+conquests to come.</p>
+
+<p>A fat fly buzzes leisurely about the door, then suddenly takes a
+straight line a considerable distance down the straggling street,
+pauses, circles about, returns, now through the early sunshine, now
+through the shadow of a venerable tree, back to the shelter of the
+porch, hums around again, poises absolutely stationary, tacks away
+another time over the same course, and returns as before.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly appearing, briskly advancing upon the scene, walking rapidly up
+from the direction of the railroad station, scintillating punctuality,
+dispatch, succinctness, assurance, commercial agility, comes an
+apparition from, without manner of doubt, the hurrying ways, the
+collision of the busy marts of men. The chickens scatter from the road,
+making for picketless gaps in the picket fence; the old dog opens an eye
+and limply raises a limb; and the<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> rapid, confident "traveling man" (it
+can be none but he), resplendent in the very latest "gent's furnishing,"
+with a neat grip and a bundle of what apparently are rolled calendars,
+springs nimbly upon the porch of the Chappaqua general store. Genial,
+pushing, the hurrying "good fellow," though sociability is his bent as
+well as business, he has not much time. It evidently is his habit to
+snatch a brief moment of pleasant acquaintanceship as he passes. As to
+this, he has as quick an eye for the sex as for commerce, and, as will
+be seen, as successful a manner with them as in the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Attacking," said another conqueror, Barry Lyndon, "is the only secret.
+That is my way of fascinating women." Quickly, as with a practiced eye,
+this gallant looks over the ground. Chappaqua apparently is rich in
+human flowers. A man of poorer mettle would be satisfied with one. That
+is not the way with your conquerors. Smugly, flashingly, he thrusts his
+grinning, big-prowed countenance forward, and with one killing glance
+that fair, freckled milk-maid is undone. So much for number one. Quick
+as a terrier that leaps from rat to rat, and with a single brilliant
+crunch<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> breaks each rodent's back, our high-stepping man leaps his
+glance upon the dreaming butter and peaches and cream; her rich lashes
+fall, but she does not frown. No; she does not frown. But be bold
+enough, and you will not fail.</p>
+
+<p>He has stepped through the doorway, set his grip down. Brightly he turns
+and does for the summer boarder. She springs open her parasol before her
+pleased confusion, and retreats, very slowly. He has turned to business;
+whips out his watch, snaps it shut, replaces it, unrolls a calendar. He
+"makes" the next town in so many hours.<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="V" id="V"></a>V<br /><br />
+THE CASE OF MR. WOOLEN</h3>
+
+<p>T<small>HEY</small> stopped at a bright little house with a neat little grass plot
+before it, fronting on the railroad. A border of very white,
+white-washed stones led up each side of the little path to the little
+porch before the door. On the porch, in the shade of the neat, screening
+vines, sat an old fellow, a stranger to them. "Is Mrs. Woolen at home?"
+one of the two inquired politely, as he thought. But this manner of
+putting the matter, it appeared, was not happy, for it was taken by the
+old fellow as implying that Mrs. Woolen was thought to be the one there
+superior in authority. He eyed the couple before him a moment as if in
+doubt whether to pay any attention to them; then, tapping himself on the
+chest, "<i>I</i> am Mrs. Woolen," he said sternly. As this was unmistakenly a
+manner of saying, "You may state your business here if you have any,"
+one come<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> for the washing humbly put the case in words as well chosen as
+possible. The old fellow was mollified; he had merely desired
+recognition, that was all. Mrs. Woolen was not at home; "the woman," he
+said, had gone "to Quarterly Meetin' over at the Quaker Church." But it
+was "all right," he said, which was understood to mean that the washing
+was ready here.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find that washing first-class," said Mr. Woolen. "There's
+nothing crooked about her; she's a good, honest woman."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 432px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_037.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_037_sml.png" width="432" height="180" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>Asked concerning when Mrs. Woolen would be likely to return, Mr. Woolen
+replied in a very business-like manner, "Six o'clock, six o'clock sharp
+this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Not till six o'clock?" He was asked when she had departed.</p>
+
+<p>"Eight o'clock, eight o'clock this morning," he said. He then furnished
+the information<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> that Quarterly Meeting lasted several days, and that
+Mrs. Woolen was on deck, to put it so, throughout.</p>
+
+<p>From this point Mr. Woolen drifted into personal reminiscence of the
+surrender at Appomattox, in proof of his having been present at which,
+without his assertion having been questioned, he rather defiantly
+offered to exhibit "the papers," as he called them, which he said were
+"right there framed in the parlor." Though Mr. Woolen had been on the
+conquering side at the historic surrender, he rather suggested the idea
+of his having surrendered, in a more personal and figurative sense, at
+about that time also; that is to say, he did not impress one as having,
+for an able-bodied man, put up a very good fight since.</p>
+
+<p>He was recalled to the matter of the washing, and, rising, led the way
+into the house to procure it. But directly the party had entered, Mr.
+Woolen fell back, obviously in amazement, upon the toes of those
+following him. He cried that it was "gone!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was right there on that chair," he said, "in the corner. There's
+where she left it this morning. There's where she left it. Done up it
+was in newspaper. She said to me, 'There<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a> it is; now don't you let that
+go out of the house until you get your money for it.' That's what she
+said."</p>
+
+<p>He was prevailed on to make a search through the house, though he
+contended obstinately that it was right there in the corner, and no
+other place, that that which they were seeking had been "left." He
+almost offered the presence there of the chair as evidence. A search of
+the house, however, was not exhausting nor impracticable, as there were
+but two rooms to it, these very snug, no closets, and an economy of
+furniture behind which the bundle might be.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Woolen's perturbation was too genuine for suspicion of his having
+made away with the package. But this very honesty of emotion, in
+conjunction with the circumstance of the absence of the washing, and
+divers indications in breath and manner, noticeable from the first,
+aided in making out a case against him. A jury would reasonably have
+inferred that Mr. Woolen had a frailty, known and provided against by
+his wife, that, specifically, he had a weakness which, though not
+uncommonly associated with the most amiable characters, is<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a> not
+compatible with being left to receive money for washing.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Woolen was decidedly provoked at the situation. "I can do a man's
+work," he said, stumbling restlessly about the room, "but not a woman's.
+I can lay brick, lay brick; that's my work, that's what I do, but I
+can't keep the house in order." It was not to be expected of him.
+Coming, in his movements, plump upon the door of the kitchen, he
+disappeared through it, and could be heard going about out of view,
+ostensibly still at the search, testily kicking the furniture and
+mumbling concerning "her being away with a lot of her cronies."<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI<br /><br />
+WHEN THE TRAIN COMES IN</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 493px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_041.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_041_sml.png" width="493" height="149" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>A <small>BUSY</small> railroad station is a grand child's picture-book, for him who
+observes it. All the child has to do is to look; the leaves are turned
+before him. There, in all the colors of the rainbow, are countless
+pictures to cram himself with. And what is a rather curious fact is,
+that a railroad station may freely be classed among humorous
+picture-books. Other picture-books, such as church, theater, Broadway,
+Fifth Avenue, political meeting, ball game, and so forth, have, of
+course, many funny pictures. But, whether it is that almost all absurd
+people constantly travel, and those with no touch of the motley do but
+seldom, or whether,<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> as here, nothing else goes forward seriously to
+occupy the attention, one's mind is left more free to be struck by the
+ridiculousness of all mankind, so it is that perhaps as humorous a place
+as one may find is a busy railroad station. And one must be very blasé
+who no longer feels an enjoyable stimulation at the approach of an
+expected train at the station.</p>
+
+<p>The psychology of the arrival of a railroad train at the station belongs
+to the proper study of mankind, and could be made into an interesting
+little monograph. As the train becomes due one feels but half a mind on
+the conversation, supposing one to be conversing; the other half is
+waiting for the train. One has, too, a feeling, faint at first, looming
+stronger within one, against continuing to sit quietly inside (supposing
+one to have gone within), where one is. An impelling to go see if the
+train is not coming numbs one's brain. A like contagious restlessness
+breathes through the waiting-room. People begin to stand up by their
+grips. Some go without on the search. They can be seen through the doors
+and windows, pacing the platform; they return, some of them, and one
+scans their expressions eagerly&mdash;they are discouragingly blank. After a<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a>
+bit, they go out again, or others do, and return as before; wholly
+unfitted now, one can see, for any concentration of thought.</p>
+
+<p>The train is late. There is an alarm or two. At last, an unmistakable
+elasticity impregnates the place. A distant whistle is heard; it stirs
+one like the tap of a drum. The train is coming! One's pulse beats high
+as one moves into the press toward the doorway. The whistle is heard
+much nearer. Then again and again! Then with a whirl that turns one a
+somersault inside, a long dark, heavy mass rushes across the light
+before one. When one comes again on one's feet, speaking figuratively,
+the train is standing there, and one hurries aboard to get a seat. But,
+first, one is stopped until arriving passengers get off.<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII<br /><br />
+AN OLD FOGY</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 501px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_044.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_044_sml.png" width="501" height="132" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>M<small>R</small>. D<small>EATS</small>, senior, is an old fogy. There is no doubt about that. In
+early life Mr. Deats, sr., had a pretty hard time. He was denied the
+advantages of any particular schooling. In consequence of this, Mr.
+Deats now occasionally uses very mortifying English. At an early
+age&mdash;somewhere about the age of ten&mdash;he entered trade. A ridiculous
+combination of adverse circumstances made it impossible for Mr. Deats to
+go much into polite society. In consequence of this, he unfortunately
+lacks polish. For a great number of years the world was not kind to him.
+It may have been trouble that destroyed his beauty. At any rate, Mr.<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a>
+Deats is not a handsome man. Not being able to do anything better, he
+confined his attention to doing his duty; that is not a very brilliant
+employment, it is true, but it was good enough for Mr. Deats.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of time, Mr. Deats took to himself a wife; and, in the
+course of time again, this wife bore Mr. Deats a son&mdash;and died
+simultaneously. Well, Mr. Deats was left with a boy, and this boy must
+have something to start him on in life. "How can a boy start life with
+nothing?" thought Mr. Deats; and very rightly, too. One can't feed,
+clothe, and educate a boy on nothing. So Mr. Deats did his duty harder
+than ever; and he built up a business. Building up a business doesn't
+require culture or intelligence; but it does take some time. Mr. Deats
+has grown a trifle old in the building; but it is a good business. It
+has been said that Mr. Deats' business is one of the best in the city.
+And Mr. Deats has a fine son. After the manner of his class, Mr. Deats
+believed that all the things that were denied him were the very best
+things for his son. His son should not have to work as his father
+did&mdash;and he doesn't.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Deats, jr., has had advantages; he is a<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> college graduate, a member
+of clubs, and one of the prominent young men of the city socially. Of
+course, being much cleverer, young Deats sees many of the mistakes his
+father made in life. He sees, for one thing, what an old fogy is Mr.
+Deats, sr. He sees how much better the business could be run. Mr. Deats,
+sr., does not know how to run a business; he is not modern enough.
+Still, he thinks he knows it all&mdash;that is the way with these bull-headed
+old codgers&mdash;and won't let young Deats conduct the business as it should
+be conducted. This, naturally, is very irritating to young Deats. No man
+enjoys seeing his own business go to rack and ruin. But the old man
+can't be kicked plump out into the street. He has no home but with young
+Deats. And, in a way, he is useful about the office; though even were he
+not, he must be humored. After all, he is the father of young Deats, and
+blood is thicker than water.<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII<br /><br />
+HAIR THAT IS SCENERY</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 173px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_047.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_047_sml.png" width="173" height="190" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>M<small>R</small>. W<small>IGGER</small>, Mrs. Wigger's husband (the writer boards with Mrs. Wigger),
+is an iceman. It is not his business, however, with which this study is
+concerned; it is with his hair. Perhaps it is a great assumption of
+talent to attempt to describe Mr. Wigger's hair. Oh, Muse! as John
+Milton says, lend a hand here! Mr. Wigger's abundant hair, first, is a
+deep, lusterful black, and extremely curly. From his ears straight
+upward to the crown of his head (from the three-quarters view of him
+studied here only one full ear is visible, and just barely<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> the tip of
+the other one) an oblong block of close curls is attached to the side of
+his head, like a pannier. Leftward from this, to a point directly over
+the beginning of his eyebrow, a broad, bare strip extends up to a black,
+undulating band of hair which marks the top of his head. Thence leftward
+to the part in the middle of his head is a plot of hair like a little
+black lawn, extending well down to his forehead and neatly rounded at
+the corner away from the part. Now, from the part onward the hair in a
+great mass sweeps upward in a towering concave wave, the high ridge of
+which, though it folds ever slightly inward, culminates at the top in a
+sharp, soaring point. Over the far temple the hair falls from the great
+waves in little swirling wavelets. Mr. Wigger's mustache, a great,
+glossy, oily, inky black, against a sallow background, with tall upward
+ends, is a worthy companion to his hair. His neck, to continue the
+portrait, takes a long dive into his collar, which is very much too big,
+with the fullness protruding in front. His shoulders are steeply
+sloping, and his waistcoat is cut extremely low, like one for full
+dress, his shirt front bulging when, as for this portrait, he is seated.
+In this man romance lives on. A<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> prosaic age has not marred him. You can
+readily see how a woman would become infatuated with such a one. He is a
+man not tonsorially decadent.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 171px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_049.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_049_sml.png" width="171" height="201" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX<br /><br />
+A NICE MAN</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 231px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_050.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_050_sml.png" width="231" height="194" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>T<small>HE</small> clerk of the store (dry goods and gentlemen's furnishings) is what
+is known as a nice man. He is known as such among his neighbors. He is
+known as such by his customers. People, wives sometimes to their
+husbands, refer to him as a nice man. Motherly old ladies say, "He is
+such a nice man!" Younger ladies exclaim, "What a nice man!" You cannot
+look at him and fail to know that he is a nice man. You cannot look at
+him and fail to know that his life has been blameless. He is very clean,
+tidy, and very, fresh-faced.<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> His cheeks are round and rosy; his eyes
+are bright; his mustache is silken. He is in perfect health; his
+expression is pleasant; his disposition agreeable; and his manners are
+perfect. His name is Will (certainly).</p>
+
+<p>The nice man has a little wife, who is almost as nice as he. She is
+interested in Sunday schools. The nice man and his wife have a little
+baby that looks just like its father. On Sundays they walk in the park,
+pushing the baby-cab before them. On great days of celebration they go
+together into the country, on picnics; and return home at night tired
+out. On these trips to the country the little wife brings home chestnut
+burrs to hang from the chandelier in the parlor. She made some
+pussy-willow buds to look like little cats on a stick. These are on the
+mantel. When Will got the job he now has his wife turned to the store's
+advertisement the first thing in the newspaper every evening to read it.
+She had always known that Will had it in him to be something, and so she
+had always told him. When the nice men gets a raise in salary he and his
+wife will put away so much a week and soon have a home of their own
+somewhere in<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> the suburbs. Already, the baby has a savings-bank account
+of its own, and by the time it has developed into the grown image of the
+nice man, its father, it will have a sum of money.<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="X" id="X"></a>X<br /><br />
+NO SNOB</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 204px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_053.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_053_sml.png" width="204" height="184" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>L<small>ET</small> us walk down the street with Muldoon.</p>
+
+<p>Muldoon is always a bit shabby, and never well shaved. To be well
+groomed is the mark of a snob. Muldoon walks with a brisk step and
+somewhat defiantly. He carries his shoulders well back and a trifle
+raised. He wears a cap; and a fine rakish thing is the way he wears it.
+There is in his manner of wearing a cap a suggestion of the country fair
+gambling game of ring-a-cane. His appearance gives the impression that
+some one had tossed a cap at him and failed to ring him squarely, but
+had landed it<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> insecurely, and left it liable to fall off at any moment,
+decidedly on one side of his head, and that then Muldoon had walked off
+without giving the slightest thought to the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Professionally, Muldoon's greatest virtue is that he is a champion
+"mixer" and "butter-in"; his greatest failing, that he is not reliable.
+Still he is spoken of among his confrérie as "a good man," and is never
+without employment. He has served upon a great multitude of newspapers
+in sundry and divers cities, towns, and hamlets, though never upon any
+one for a greater period than several months. His is a nature that
+requires constant change and variety. In distant places he has been
+editor&mdash;sporting editor, we believe he says&mdash;though in his own city&mdash;we
+should hardly say that he had a city but that he always comes back
+again&mdash;he serves in the capacity of police reporter. Thus we see that a
+rolling stone is not without honor, save in his own country.</p>
+
+<p>Muldoon's classics in literature are "Down the Line with John Henry" and
+"Fables in Slang," with a good appreciation of "Chimmy Fadden." He one
+time wrote a book himself which was distinguished chiefly for spirit and
+the odd circumstance that most of the lady<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a> characters were named
+Flossie, and which was a failure financially.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 235px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_055.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_055_sml.png" width="235" height="180" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>We were one day in company of Muldoon when he visited Hudson Street, in
+the neighborhood of his childhood days, and where he met again some of
+the friends of his youth. These meetings were affecting to witness. "Hi,
+Pat Muldoon!" cried a fine stocky lad who immediately fell into the
+attitude of pugilistic encounter. Muldoon, too, put up his fists. "Hi,
+Owen Heely!" he cried; and they circled about, working their arms in and
+out and grinning an affectionate greeting upon each other.</p>
+
+<p>We walk down the street with Muldoon; we pass an acquaintance (of
+Muldoon's). "How 'do, Pat!" says the acquaintance. "Hullo, Tom!" (or
+Dick, or Harry, as the case may be), cries Muldoon, then, as if in
+afterthought, "Hold on, just a minute, Tom." Muldoon leaves us for a
+moment&mdash;we had got quite past<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> the acquaintance&mdash;goes back and engages
+him in earnest conversation, inaudible to us. The acquaintance's head is
+bent forward and while giving ear he gazes fixedly at the ground. Then
+he slowly shakes his head, and, straightening up, says (we hear), "I
+would if I had it, Pat. But I haven't got it with me." "All right,"
+cries Muldoon, in perfect good humor. "So long," and he returns to us.</p>
+
+<p>We continue down the street, and Muldoon beguiles the way with tales of
+his checkered experience. Muldoon's duties as a representative of the
+press require him to spend considerable of his time at the police
+station. One time there came a great hurry-up call for the ambulance
+when the ambulance surgeon was nowhere to be found. (This city hospital
+was next door to the police station.) The horses were hitched, and
+stomping and waiting. Again and again the call was repeated. A man, no
+doubt, lay dying. Still no ambulance surgeon. Muldoon fretted and
+waited. At length he could stand it no longer. He leaped into the seat,
+jerked the reins in his hand, clanged the gong, and dashed full tilt to
+the rescue. It was madness. What could he do when he got there? "Clang!
+Clang!" went the gong. Reeling, plunging,<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> staggering, now on two
+wheels, now on one, now on none at all&mdash;on and on and on, around
+corners, across tracks, between vehicles, past poles, dashed the
+ambulance. "Clang! Clang!" Just missing a pedestrian here, who saves
+himself only by a hair's-breadth, grazing a wheel there, on, on! until
+he drew up by a knot of people along the curb. This drive was afterward
+reckoned the fastest run in the history of the service.</p>
+
+<p>A laborer, swinging a mighty sledge, had dropped it on and mashed his
+great toe. He was in acute pain. The man refused to budge until his
+wound has been attended to. What was to be done? Muldoon had picked up a
+trifling knowledge of surgery about the hospital. He whipped out the
+surgical kit and took off the fellow's toe, neat as you please, by the
+grace of heaven. We are now come to a public-house. Muldoon marches in
+(we follow). He puts his foot on the rail, a dime, a ten-cent piece, on
+the bar, turns to us, and says, "What'll you have?" We look at the dime
+and say, "Beer." Now, Muldoon enters into conversation with the barman
+(who has addressed him as "Pat"), and recounts to him the details of his
+late illness, which are most astonishing.<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a></p>
+
+<p>When we resume our journey, which Muldoon does with some reluctance, he
+tells us the dream of his life. On the street where Muldoon spent his
+boyhood live a great number of gossiping old cats, who, in so far as
+they were able, made that boyhood miserable, who bore false witness to
+one another, to his family, and to others, against Muldoon, and who
+predicted that he (Muldoon) would come to a bad end. On the occasion of
+his coming into any great sum of money, he intends to wind up a
+tremendous bacchanalian orgy on that street. He will drive up it in a
+cab in broad daylight, howling and singing, and with his feet out the
+windows. On the roof of his equipage will be a great array of bottles,
+and the cabman will be drunk and screaming. We believe Muldoon sees in
+this mental picture a Brobdignagian placard on the back of the vehicle
+reading, "This is Muldoon!!!" That will give 'em something to talk
+about. It will be a fine revenge.<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI<br /><br />
+EVERY INCH A MAN</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 488px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_059.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_059_sml.png" width="488" height="206" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>I<small>F</small> there is a finer fellow in the world than Chester Kirk we have never
+seen him. As he himself so often says, the finest things are done up in
+small packages. (There was Napoleon, for instance, as we have heard him
+say, and General Grant, and, at the moment, we do not remember who all.)</p>
+
+<p>When in eyeshot of ladies, especially when he is unknown to them, he is
+grand. He takes his gloves from his pocket and holds them in his left
+hand. He searches himself for a cigar,<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> which, when found, he holds
+before him, unlighted, in his right hand, on a level with his chest, his
+elbow crooked. He stands very firmly, with one leg bending backward in a
+line of virile, graceful curve. His back is taut. His other knee is bent
+forward, relaxed. Or he strides up and down, with something of a fine
+strut, like a fighting cock. So, he reminds us of Alan Breck.</p>
+
+<p>When, in this stimulating position, he has on a long coat, he swings its
+skirt from side to side. He feels, undoubtedly so brave and strong. He
+laughs, when there is opportunity for it, in a deep, manly voice, and
+often. He sometimes pulls back his head so that he has a double chin. He
+is every inch a man.</p>
+
+<p>As is quite fitting and proper, he is one of the most photographed of
+men. This is a family trait. He has ever just had a new photograph taken
+to send to his people, or his people have just sent some new ones to
+him, which he shows about with great gusto to his friends. His room is
+littered with likenesses of the Kirks, a very remarkable family. Here is
+a photograph of his brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Notice that chest," says Kirk. "He's got an expansion on him like the
+front of a house.<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> Why, in his freshman year he had the biggest
+expansion in his class. Athlete! That boy's a boxer." Kirk points the
+stem of his pipe at you and continues: "He stood up before the huskiest
+man in Seattle (and there are no huskier men than in Seattle), a big
+brute of a fireman, a regular giant, with a reputation as a whirlwind
+slugger. Yes. Why, it's all I can do to hold that boy myself. This,"
+exhibiting another picture, "is my father. See that pair of shoulders?
+He is a little under the medium height, but the way he carries himself
+he doesn't look it. He looks to be a rather big man. He has an air. He
+came West a poor man, but one that could see chances, take them, and
+hold on to them. He took them and hung on. He built up that business, I
+think I have a right to say that it's the biggest on the Pacific Slope,
+in an incredibly short time. Business he was from the word go. He could
+handle men! An entertainer he is, too; he makes friends wherever he
+goes; everybody likes him. Here's my sister. 'Sis' is the society woman
+of the younger set at home. That's my other brother. He's a hunter."</p>
+
+<p>Next to pictures of himself and family, and their pets and live stock,
+there is nothing Kirk<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> revels in so much as snapshots of his native
+country, "greatest country in the world." He has these pasted into
+several volumes: each print is labeled, as "Mt. Ranier, looking north,"
+"Puget Sound, low tide," and so forth. Each new acquaintance Kirk takes
+through the lot and explains the circumstances under which each picture
+was taken.</p>
+
+<p>As Kirk himself remarks, his handwriting is very strong. It is that
+strong that it has only about three, sometimes four, short words to a
+line, with good strong spaces in between. The descending loops of
+letters on one line often come down and lariat small letters on the line
+below. The sense goes at a splendid break-neck speed, and takes pauses
+and stops as though they were hurdles. The whole is penned in somewhat
+that fashion in which express clerks make out receipts.</p>
+
+<p>That reminds us. We one time went with Kirk into an express office to
+send a package. We ignorantly considered this to be a thing of little
+moment. That was because we do not know how to handle men. A pale young
+man, with a high, bald forehead, who had the appearance of an excellent
+assistant to some one in an office, was standing at the counter. He<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a>
+witnessed the entrance of the two without remarking it as an impressive
+ceremony. Indeed, the clerk was quite apathetic. In an instant all this
+was changed.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me have your pencil," Kirk demanded. It was the voice of the man
+born to command, the man that moves an army of subordinates this way or
+that, as he wills, like chessmen. He took the pencil, hoisted his
+package onto the counter with a flourish, tilted his cigar upward in one
+corner of his mouth by a movement of his jaws, and fell into so fine an
+attitude that the pale young man became interested and leaned over to
+see what important name would appear in the address. In his strongest
+hand Kirk addressed it. It was a package worth two dollars Kirk was
+sending to his brother, who needed it. "Send collect," cried Kirk. And
+the entire company, Kirk included, and ourself, who also knew the
+contents of the package, felt, it was evident, that a transaction very
+important to the interests of business had been accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>Kirk was one time playing checkers when we entered. "Well, how are you
+coming out?" we inquired. "Are you being beaten, Chester?" He flared up
+like a flash. "I can beat<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> you!" he cried. We had never seen the man so
+beautiful. (He had never in his life seen us play checkers.) He looked
+to be invincible; though he wasn't; for he had lost every game.<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII<br /><br />
+HIS BUSINESS IS GOOD</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 491px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_065.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_065_sml.png" width="491" height="199" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"H<small>ULLO</small> there, Bill! I'm glad to see you. How're you getting along? Do
+you know, I didn't know you when you first came in. Let me see, it's
+been a couple&mdash;no, four years since I saw you before. I was pretty much
+down and out then, ha! ha! Just bummed my way to New York, you know.
+Well, how are things with you? You know, I sat there looking an' a
+looking at you&mdash;couldn't make up my mind whether it was you or not. I
+says to myself, 'I'll risk it,' I says. 'If it's Bill, we'll have a
+time,' I says. Ha! Ha! I came over to take a<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> bath&mdash;there's a fine bath
+place across the street, where I always go. I'm in the photograph
+business, you know, over in Brooklyn. Yes, doing well now; I'm manager
+of the place; I'll take you over to see it. Been in the business three
+years, same place; first two years work, work all the time, no pay at
+all, so to speak. But I knew I was learning the business, and I liked
+the job and liked the boss; we were busted together, you know. I was
+head musher in a mushhouse at Coney, you know, when I first met him;
+then I lost the job; we bummed around together awhile. Then I went back
+to Indiana&mdash;by freight&mdash;to see my folks.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the old man's well; Dora's married, you know; married a Sunday
+school superintendent, church where she taught Sunday school. Nothing
+doing in Indiana. Laid around awhile, then I got a letter from this
+feller. He had come into money, set up a photograph shop, told me to
+come back and take a job with him. I went to my sister, Dora, you know,
+and got railroad fare here. I says to her, 'If you can get me the money,
+I'll pay you as soon as I can, which won't be long,' I says. 'I've got a
+good job there,' I says. I says, 'Of course, I can bum my way back, but<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a>
+it will take me four or five days, maybe a week,' I says. 'If I have
+railroad fare I can get on a train here one day and get off there the
+next,' I says. She got me the money from her husband&mdash;sixteen dollars;
+she's been awful good to me; and I came in a passenger train. First
+time, you know, ha! ha! Second-class, though; just as good as first,
+though. I got on at Indianapolis one day, you know, and got off in New
+York the next day. Twenty-four hours, you know.</p>
+
+<p>"First thing, I went to the feller's place, but he had moved. Didn't
+leave any address, where he had gone, you know; nobody around there knew
+anything about him. I was in a deuce of a fix. Didn't have a cent of
+money&mdash;wasn't the first time, though. We used to write to each other
+sometimes through the General Delivery, so I went there, and sure enough
+there was a letter for me; but there was some postage due on it somehow.
+I says to the man, I says, 'I haven't got any money; I can't pay it';
+there was a feller standing behind me in the line; he ups and says,
+'Here, I'll pay it,' he says; 'it's only two cents' he says. So I got
+the letter and set right out for the address; the feller had moved to a
+better place.<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Well, Bill, business has been good; we do a corking business on
+Saturdays and Sundays, and the feller owns two or three galleries now.
+He goes around tending to all of them and I have charge of one; there's
+my card. I'm thinking about quitting, though, and going out West again;
+business is too good, that's the trouble. No excitement; I'm getting
+discouraged. Too much responsibility. Lord, Bill, I'm a <i>tramp</i>; I am;
+yes, sir, that's what I am. I was raised that way. I like the life. The
+man across the street from me owns a restaurant, where I eat; offered to
+loan me a couple of hundred dollars to buy the gallery where I am. Ha!
+Ha! That's a good one, isn't it?</p>
+
+<p>"Girls, Bill! you ought to see the girls that come to my place, Bill,
+yes, sir, to get their pictures taken. They all call me 'Jack.' Yes,
+everybody around here calls me 'Jack.' I used to be 'John,' you know, at
+home, where we were boys together; great days those, yes, sir; I never
+will forget those days.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you know, I could have been married, Bill; yes, sir, ha! ha! Me, a
+tramp. A fine girl, too, a regular lady, the real article, yes, sir,
+rich too, yes, sir. Why I went over<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> there one day, and their dog&mdash;a
+blame little black dog&mdash;was sick; you ought to have seen the case of
+medicine they had for that dog. A whole blame box full of bottles of
+medicine; good medicine, too, yes, sir; why, I would have liked to have
+had some of that medicine myself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you over and introduce you to some of those girls; here's a
+picture I took of one; she's a daisy. I took her to the theater last
+Saturday night. You know, it does a feller good to see good shows at the
+theater. This theater&mdash;it's a little place right near my gallery&mdash;I go
+there every once in awhile; they have better shows there than they do at
+the Opera House; I like 'em better. This was a fine show, 'His Mother's
+Son.' Yes, sir, it does a feller good to go to the theater.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with your coming over and staying with me to-night?
+But no, I haven't a room now; you'd have to bunk in the gallery. That's
+where I sleep now. I did have a room, you know, blame fine room, running
+water, hot and cold, and all that sort of thing, three dollars a week.
+But I got tired of it. Yes, too comfortable, bed all made up for me
+every day, and everything else. It made me sick. I like to make my own
+bed. I like to<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> rough it like I'm used to doing, yes, so I gave it up
+and sleep in the gallery now where I belong. I feel at home there, and
+there's plenty of room.</p>
+
+<p>"Say, Bill, how are you fixed? Need any money? I've got more'n I want.
+Don't know what to do with it all, you know. Not used to it, just blow
+it in. Well, all right, we'll take and spend it then. Drink up, Bill,
+and let's go some other place."<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII<br /><br />
+A NICE TASTE IN MURDERS</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 496px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_071.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_071_sml.png" width="496" height="180" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>W<small>E</small> are much interested in the picturesque character of Caroline.
+Caroline is twelve. She is like a buxom, rosy apple. Her dress is a
+"Peter Thompson." Her physical sports are running like the wind, and, in
+summer, fishing. Our concern, however, is more with her mind. Caroline
+is a voracious reader. We are somewhat bookish ourselves, and the
+conversations between us are often frankly literary. Caroline's taste in
+this matter, for one of her sex, is rather startling.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you ought to read the 'Pit and the Pendulum,'"<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> says Caroline. "Is
+it good?" we ask. "Fine!" Caroline replies. "It's at the time of the
+Inquisition, you know," she explains. "They take a man and torture him.
+It's fine," declares Caroline. "The demon's eyes grow brighter and
+brighter" (phrases we recall from her synopsis of the tale), "the
+pendulum comes nearer and nearer&mdash;but I think he deserved to escape,"
+says Caroline, "because he tried so hard." Now that is really a deep
+moral observation, "because he tried so hard," and a sound questioning
+of the philosophical verity of a work of art.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a good murder in here," says Caroline.</p>
+
+<p>"I like Sherlock Holmes," Caroline says.</p>
+
+<p>She reads the "Mark of the Beast" and the "Black Cat" with great
+satisfaction. For comedy or for psychological moments she does not care,
+but there is nobody, we believe, with greater capacity for enjoyment of
+terrible murder in horrible dark places in the land of fiction.</p>
+
+<p>Night after night we heard her voice reading aloud to her visitor Emily
+after the two had retired, until we fell asleep; and in the morning<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> we
+saw that the relish of horror was still upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Emily had gone. Caroline had retired alone. We read by the lamp in the
+living-room. We were startled and mystified to hear suddenly mingle with
+the sound of the night rain all around, a long, uncertain wailing, a
+melancholy, haunting, sinking, rising, halting, gruesome sound,
+uncannily redolent of weird Gothic tales; the "Castle of Otranto" came
+into our mind. This apparently proceeded from an "upper chamber," as
+would be said in the type of story mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>"That," said brother Henry, in replying doubtless to a blank face, "is
+Caroline playing the flute."</p>
+
+<p>No one alive, of course, has not in his head a picture of another that
+in the still hours sought solace in and loved a flute, Mr. Richard
+Swiveler propped up in bed, his nightcap raked, fluting out the sad
+thoughts in his bosom. So in the night and the storm, does another
+bizarre soul, Caroline, speak with the elements.<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV<br /><br />
+IDA'S AMAZING SURPRISE</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 195px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_074.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_074_sml.png" width="195" height="184" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>I<small>N</small> "Bleak House," I think it is, that Poor Joe keeps "movin' along." One
+of the atoms of London, he passes his whole life in the midst of
+thousands upon thousands of signs. Printed letters, painted letters,
+carved letters, words, words, words, blaze upon him all about. Yet not a
+syllable of them all speaks to him; seen but all unheard by him they
+clothe his path. Poor Joe cannot read. How must he regard these strange,
+unmeaning signs? What is it goes on in this head which so little can
+enter?<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> What has filtered in where the great main avenue of approach
+remains, as far from the first, black and unopened? What does this mind,
+sitting there far off in the dark, looking out, comprehend of the
+pageant? And how does it strike him? Some such a mysterious mind looks
+out from Ida's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Ida is "colored." It is my belief that though she is grown and well
+formed a little child dwells in her head. I know that when I ask her to
+bring me another cup of coffee and she pauses, slightly bends forward,
+her lips a trifle parted, and fastens her clear, utterly innocent,
+curious eyes upon me, waiting to hear repeated what she has already
+heard, she sees me as a sort of toy balloon on a string, whose
+incomprehensible movements excite a pleasurable wonder. As regularly as
+the dinner hour comes around Ida asks, with that same amazingly
+unsophisticated, interested look, if each of us will have soup. If it
+were our custom occasionally not to take soup, if we had declined soup a
+couple of times even, a good while ago, if even we had declined soup
+once&mdash;but, as Mr. MacKeene says, what could have put it into her head
+that we might not take soup? It is the same with dessert, with cereal<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a>
+at breakfast. I hardly know why it is not the same with having our beds
+made.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to give Ida pleasure. She has not been satiated, perhaps,
+with pleasure. A very little quite overjoys her. I turn about in my
+chair to reach a book, and discover Ida silently dusting the furniture.
+"Why! I didn't know you were in here," I say to Ida. Ida breaks into
+great light at this highly entertaining situation. "Didin you know I was
+in here! Didin you!" Her eyebrows go up with delight. Her pose might be
+the original of Miss Rogson's "Merely Mary Ann."<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV<br /><br />
+NOT GULLIBLE, NOT HE</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 345px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_077.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_077_sml.png" width="345" height="198" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"S<small>IR</small>," said Doctor Johnson, "a fallible being will fail somewhere," So
+far as penetration, at least, is concerned, this is not true of Dean. He
+is never caught without his grains of salt.</p>
+
+<p>Dean believes nothing that he reads in newspapers. He is not caught, for
+one thing, believing anecdotes of celebrated persons. These anecdotes
+are pretty stories yearned for by a sentimental public. The public is
+amusing, composed as it is of simple, guileless people who know nothing
+of the world. Newspapers are concoctions of press agents, for the most<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a>
+part&mdash;bait for the gullible. A citizen of the word is Dean, and he has,
+alas! lost his innocence. This pleases him. You can't impose on Dean's
+credulity. He hasn't got any credulity. In this respect he has much the
+same effect upon his company as the Mark Twain dog that didn't have any
+hind legs had upon the mind of his antagonist. That dog was hardly a
+pleasure to his opponent. He was baffling.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps a man's misfortune that he should be so without delusions.
+Dean has found out there is no Santa Claus, in a manner of speaking,
+while the rest of us are yet humbugged. So while we may be pleased with
+our callings or our hobby-horses, our coins, or our cockle-shells, our
+drums, our fiddles, our pictures, our talents, our maggots and our
+butterflies, he can only shrug his shoulders and depreciate them to the
+best of his ability, saying that they are very poor cockle-shells, to be
+sure, though no man more than he deplores it that this is so. Though no
+doubt it must be a melancholy thing to feel so severely the failings of
+all, Dean's cavilings are cheerfully made always, and they come to us
+filtered through a humorous nature. And to do him justice, he is
+whimsically aware of his own<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> idiosyncrasies, and readily acknowledges
+them as he sees them, which is in a mellow, kindly light. "Now I could
+never make money," he says humorously, as it were. But that is not the
+sum of life, he knows perhaps too well.</p>
+
+<p>He sees the vanity of it all, does Dean. He sees the vanity of all
+useful endeavor. He sees the vanity most of all perhaps, of success.
+What is this success we see around us, after all? What is the fame of
+this man, this Mr. So-and-So, but sensationalism? Of what the success of
+that other, but cheap notoriety, and a rich wife? They are both of them,
+very probably, at heart as miserable as Dean. Ah me! 'tis a profitless
+world, and there's no satisfaction in it anywhere. "Though probably you
+are hardly of an age to see it yet," says Dean, and he smiles at the
+juvenility of ambition. You will see it, however, when you too have
+failed.</p>
+
+<p>"In this age when every man you meet is a genius," says Dean&mdash;it amuses
+him that he is not of the many&mdash;"I have really seen only one really
+great man, and I have been compelled to know a good many of the geniuses
+too." This remarkable, unique gentleman, it appears, was an old
+sou'easter sawbuck of a codger up in the backwoods of Maine, where he
+lived hermit<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a>-wise in a shanty, being a squatter. When Dean met him
+there he felt instinctively that here he was before a <i>man</i>. Uncle Eli
+was old: he was a trifle filthy; he was addicted to drink; and not what
+you would call much good in any way. He was uncouth; a man with the bark
+on; one of nature's noblemen. He lacked culture, and education, and
+intelligence; but he had eye-teeth. Lord! He wasn't polite; he wasn't
+learned; but when it came to downright bull-headed horse-sense he
+knocked the socks of all of them. He was a philosopher, this old B'gosh
+half-idiot wreck. By George, he was, and a great one. He reminded Dean
+of Lincoln. Some of his philosophical splinters from the old rail, rough
+they were but ready, rather laid over the wisdom of Hercules himself.
+"Ef 'n ol' hoss wus a Billygoat mighty few Christians there be 'ud git
+to Heaven." That hits the nail on the head, Dean reckons.<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI<br /><br />
+CRAMIS, PATRON OF ART</h3>
+
+<p>"H<small>AVE</small> you got any tobacco?" I inquired of Cramis.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," he replied, "I'm never without it."</p>
+
+<p>He is a slave to the weed, a hopeless smoker. He hands me his pouch; the
+tobacco is a little old and mildewed. When Cramis comes to visit me he
+always brings a most disreputable looking pipe along in his mouth,
+charred and cold. This he calls attention to, musingly, as it were, by
+remarking that "that looks natural."</p>
+
+<p>"I shouldn't have known you without it," I answer. Then we are the best
+of friends. An old Swede, an engineer of some rare sort, a whimsical
+fellow, quite a character&mdash;Cramis is greatly interested in
+characters&mdash;was much addicted to his pipe (so runs Cramis's story). It
+was a limb of his body. He was one of those inveterate smokers that you
+find here and there about the world. One day placards announcing<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> that
+smoking was prohibited among employees in the building were posted at
+conspicuous places in the mill where Olie was employed. Olie went on
+smoking. The manager came through; he paused at Olie.</p>
+
+<p>"Look-a-here," he said, "don't you see that sign? No smoking among
+employees in this building." Olie slowly took the pipe from his mouth,
+regarding it thoughtfully in his out-stretched hand as he blew a great
+cloud of blue smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Where my pipe goes," he said, replacing it between his teeth, "I goes."
+You may notice it: there is something of the same idiosyncrasy between
+that picturesque character and Cramis.</p>
+
+<p>For all the idler and the dilettante that he is, no man ever more
+conscientiously attended to business than Cramis. He is at it early and
+late. He is very successful. Yet he knows himself to be an impractical
+cuss, a dreamer, an æsthetic visionary. No man so thoroughly reliable
+was ever before so irresponsible.</p>
+
+<p>On his visits at my place, Cramis writes a great quantity of letters.
+All globe trotters do this, I suppose, whether it is necessary or not.
+It is only natural. If Cramis did not,<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> many of his friends would not,
+no doubt, be aware that he was in Connecticut, or, indeed, that he ever
+got off the island of Manhattan.</p>
+
+<p>Though Cramis is by nature shrewd, saving, and methodically economical,
+he is very careless about money. He has no more idea of the value of it
+than Oliver Goldsmith. It is pitiful&mdash;yet lovable.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 270px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_083.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_083_sml.png" width="270" height="197" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>Among Cramis's curious circle of acquaintances&mdash;his collection of
+acquaintances is a regular menagerie, as he so often says&mdash;was a
+painter, a fellow twenty-four years old and with nobody to support him.
+Cramis believed, after carefully inquiring, that the fellow had talent
+and might amount to something. He loaned him money. The scoundrel
+squandered it, probably; at any rate, he bought no fame with it. That
+was a year ago, and Cramis is eight dollars out of pocket. Still, his
+heart is<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> a brother to genius. He consulted me on the question of the
+very least amount upon which a man could live, the length of time at the
+smallest estimate wherein he could reasonably be expected to attain
+greatness, and was for setting the fellow up in a studio elsewhere. I
+pointed out to Cramis that it might possibly be years before the hungry
+man became famous, and he abandoned the idea. It was too great a risk.<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII<br /><br />
+BARBER SHOPS AWESOME</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 182px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_085.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_085_sml.png" width="182" height="183" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>T<small>O</small> patronize barbers' shops is a trying affair. Nothing but a crying
+need of services obtained there can drive one who knows them well into
+one of them. When you enter a barber shop, a long row of barber's
+chairs, like a line of guns down the deck of a man-o'-war, stretching
+away in perspective, confronts you. Three barbers, say, are engaged with
+patrons; and they go calmly on. They are unaware of your existence. The
+rest have been enjoying newspapers and leisure. You interrupt them; and
+they spring, as one man, each to the head of his<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> chair, and stand at
+attention. To find such a company of well-fed, well-groomed, better-men
+than-you-are suddenly at your service is disturbing; to have to insult
+all the others in your selection of one is an uncomfortable thought.
+They are all equally friendly toward you; but it is impossible for them
+all to shave you; you must turn against some of them. There is no
+retreat for you; you cannot turn around and go out. You choose the
+nearest man, as the only solution: and the others show their displeasure
+by returning to their seats. A fiend is in this man whom you have
+chosen; his suavity was a diabolical mask. He gloats in publicly
+humiliating you. He forces you to confess there before his "gang" that
+you do not want anything but a shave. You have brought this man from his
+newspaper simply to shave you! Now the number of things the barber
+manages to do to you against your desire is a measure of the resistant
+force of your character. You deny that you need a shampoo. There is no
+denying that your hair is falling out. There is no denying that you
+sometimes shave yourself. You need try to conceal nothing from this man.
+He sees quite through you. (You recall a certain Roundabout Paper.)<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> He
+has Found You Out! All you ask is to be allowed to go. He washes your
+face for you and turns you out of the chair. You pass into the hands of
+a boy, the same boy you denied to polish your shoes, a boy that has his
+opinions, who plays the tune of "Yankee Doodle" on you with a
+whisk-broom very much as if he snapped his fingers in your face; and you
+may go.<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII<br /><br />
+MUCH MARRIED STRATFORD</h3>
+
+<p>W<small>HAT</small> an excellent thing it is that Stratford is comfortably married. He
+is built for marriage. That is the life for him; a nice, quiet,
+wholesome, unexciting life of home comforts. Mr. and Mrs. Stratford
+dwell happily in a little nest called a cottage. Here they are
+surrounded by all the sundry and divers chattels and effects incident to
+the life they follow.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 264px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_088.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_088_sml.png" width="264" height="169" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>In order that he may be properly protected against the elements,
+Stratford is plentifully supplied with overshoes, earbobs, Storm King
+chest protectors, mufflers, and umbrellas. He<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> arms himself with these
+instruments according to the precise demand of each different occasion.
+Going out into the weather is an undertaking, and an adventure,
+accompanied by hazardous risks. With Stratford, preparation for it is a
+system and a science. Sometimes, however, Stratford's judgment errs in
+the matter of precaution. One day last week Stratford went downtown.
+Yielding to his vanity on that day, he recklessly wore kid gloves
+instead of his mittens, which were so much more suited to the then
+prevailing inclement weather. Now he suffers from it. He has a cough,
+and is compelled to keep his breast goose-greased.</p>
+
+<p>Few people realize the importance of health, and the relation of diet to
+health. Pork is not wholesome. New potatoes are very hard to digest.
+Cream should never be eaten with peaches. This pernicious combination
+curdles. Stratford knows much more about these things than does the
+writer, which is fortunate for Stratford; the writer has only attempted
+to point out and warn you against a few of the most important, which he
+learned from Stratford. Stratford learned all this from experience. Last
+evening at dinner Stratford drank two cups of coffee. He did not sleep a
+wink<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> all the night in consequence. Coffee is very bad for the nerves,
+very bad.</p>
+
+<p>It may be that there are many persons like the writer in not knowing how
+to serve coffee. The cream should always be put in the cup first, then
+the coffee poured on. Though you may not be aware of the fact, it
+absolutely ruins coffee to serve it any other way. It is better to put
+sugar on oatmeal after the cream is on. The writer does not know why;
+but it is better.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 180px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_090.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_090_sml.png" width="180" height="168" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>Though one would hardly suspect it, in his youth Stratford was
+considerable of a rake. He often tells the story. It appears that in a
+spirit of reckless dare-deviltry on an occasion Stratford partook of
+some spirituous liquor. Now Stratford has a tolerably strong head. But
+this wine&mdash;or was it cocktail?&mdash;proved almost too much for him. Ah,
+well! those wild and lawless days are past and gone. Stratford<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> has
+reformed, and will not fill a drunkard's grave. No one, we hope,
+respects Stratford the less for having been a little wild. We all hate a
+milksop, you will agree.<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX<br /><br />
+A HUMAN CASH REGISTER</h3>
+
+<p>A<small>CROSS</small> the table from a lodger sits Mr. Fife. Mr. Fife is a clerk. This
+statement comprises, not inadequately, his memoirs.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 180px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_092.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_092_sml.png" width="180" height="180" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>When a man speaks to you of the useful piece of mechanism called a cash
+register, you comprehend him perfectly. You know what a cash register
+is, for what purpose it was designed, how it looks, how much
+approximately it is worth, what it will perform, and what it will
+remain&mdash;a cash register. A cash register could not have been born a toy
+balloon, spent its youth as a bicycle, been educated as a pulpit, have
+imprudently married<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> a footlight, been forced to obtain employment as a
+cash register, but cherishes a secret ambition to be a typewriter and
+solace itself in turn as a violin, a mug of ale, and a tobacco pipe. A
+lodger does not say that Mr. Fife is no better in any way than a cash
+register. A mother nursed him at her breast, watched him as he slept; he
+was somebody's baby. A grown man was strangely moved, probably, when he
+was born. He played somewhere as a child. Dirty little brothers and
+sisters, perhaps, were his. He was spanked and had diseases and suffered
+and was frightened and rejoiced. Hearts have been glad when he was near.
+One or two little girls, no doubt, have admired him very much. Some
+woman, probably somewhere, admires him still. A lodger does not say that
+Mr. Fife has no inner life. He does not say that the forces of existence
+constantly, ceaselessly beating in on this man (or rather clerk) are not
+here slowly, inevitably shaping a moral character, this way or that. But
+as this human life sits here at Mrs. Wigger's board a clerk is here,
+with his past and his future.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Fife has a "furnished room" somewhere around on the next street, and
+only takes his meals at Mrs. Wigger's.<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX<br /><br />
+IT STANDS TO REASON</h3>
+
+<p>O<small>N</small> the hotel porch a large, earnest man was delivering the argument. He
+poised his pipe in his hand; and, moving forward from period to period
+with judicial deliberation, choosing his words with care, building his
+sentences with a nice regard for precision, he constructed his
+exposition in logical sequence. He had time at his command; and, so he
+gripped his audience, was in no fear of interruption. "For instance, we
+will take, for instance, just for instance, do you understand? the
+little town of New York to represent the whole country. Well, here we
+have the little town of New York. Now, it stands to reason&mdash;&mdash;" One who
+chanced to overhear passed beyond range.</p>
+
+<p>But what of the disquisition had been caught gave rise to an important
+reflection. When you examine the subject you find there are three
+fundamental phrases in arguing, in the<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> dexterous use of which is
+largely constituted the talent of the born arguer. These home-driving
+phrases, which are his stock in trade, are: "It stands to reason,"
+"between man and man," and "that's human nature." With these, strongly
+used, one can do almost anything. "Does capital meet labor?" says the
+born arguer. "No; what is the consequence? It stands to reason. Labor
+goes to the wall." Or, again: "You take the generations we have now, the
+young people." He smokes a while in silence. "It's human nature," comes
+the philosophical conclusion. And when the arguer addresses his audience
+"as between man and man," when in this direct, blunt way all the
+frangipani of class and convention is cleared aside, and only their
+manhood stands between them, he has got at the bed-rock of argument.<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI<br /><br />
+A THREE-RINGED CIRCUS</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 479px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_096.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_096_sml.png" width="479" height="150" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>O<small>UR</small> friend MacKeene is a very interesting person. One of his most
+pronounced characteristics is an assiduous striving on his part to
+increase his vocabulary. We are always made aware of any of his new
+acquisitions in this direction by its frequent repetition during a
+conversation, the loving way in which he appears to dwell upon it, to
+hug it to his heart, allow it gradually to mount to his throat, roll it
+in his mouth to suck its flavor, to send it forth at length, to watch it
+tenderly and admiringly (like a fine ring of tobacco smoke) until it
+loses itself in the flow of speech that comes<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> after it. We relish this
+new word ourselves. It is like a play; it thrills our soul, and we sigh
+when it is gone&mdash;but we know it will come again many times before the
+night is passed.</p>
+
+<p>It has never been our fortune to see a man that enjoyed the show of life
+more than does MacKeene. He reads newspapers with a relish that is
+positively amazing; he smacks his lips over them; their contents are to
+him the headiest romance. MacKeene goes to the finest theater in the
+world every evening when he reads his penny paper. The anxiety with
+which he awaits the account of each new murder, swindle, election,
+disaster, marriage, or divorce of a special publicity, the mental
+agility with which he pounces upon it, the astonishing variety of points
+of view he can take of the thing, and the application with which he
+follows through successive installments the story to the very end, are
+delightful to behold.</p>
+
+<p>He invariably winds up his observations upon life with the comment that
+"it is a funny world; such funny people in it."</p>
+
+<p>True, or, rare MacKeene! It <i>is</i> a funny world, and there <i>are</i> such
+funny people in it! Everybody is queer but thee and us.</p>
+
+<p>The other evening, after he had devoured his<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a> newspaper and sat staring
+at the wall, we started him going by the remark:</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what's in the paper to-night, MacKeene?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's in the paper to-night?" cried he.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 471px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_098.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_098_sml.png" width="471" height="154" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Everything is in the paper, everything&mdash;worlds of it&mdash;plays, skits,
+comedies, farces, tragedies, burlesques: material for the student, the
+historian, the author, the poet, the moralist, the humorist, much matter
+to be fast applauded for its slapstick good nature, and some bowed with
+leaden-eyed despair, some replete with rosy schemes, some of waxing
+hopes and sweet, unprofitable pipe dreams, some of many moneys, births,
+deaths, marriages and giving in marriages, loves, hatreds, wisdoms,
+follies, crimes, vices and virtues, heroisms, hypocrisies, arts,
+commercialism, surprises, bacchanals, hard exigencies, and poor resorts
+and petty contrivances. <i>Life</i>&mdash;ah! that's the boy&mdash;life and all its
+train of consequences, ringing in my<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> ears, dancing before my eyes,
+crowding on the senses, a three-ringed circus in full blast, a roary,
+noisy, bloomin' spectacle, a mammoth aggregation of prodigious
+eye-openers and unparalleled splendors, with gorgeous hippodrome under
+perfect subjection, and a Casino Wonderland Musée of queer, peculiar,
+wild, domestic, instructing, funny, beautiful, horrible, and revolting
+curios and monstrosities of land, air, and sea."<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII<br /><br />
+SNAPSHOTS IN X-RAY</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 479px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_100.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_100_sml.png" width="479" height="189" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>W<small>HAT</small> a terrible thing is the X-ray!</p>
+
+<p>Terrible?</p>
+
+<p>Listen. Contemplate the prospect of this invention's being brought into
+popular use, so that, say, anybody might have such an attachment to his
+kodak. In such case, science, which has been so powerful a force in
+refining the civilization of man, would by one stroke lay waste the
+whole of her handiwork. Civilized society would collapse.</p>
+
+<p>A German professor at one time went pretty well into the subject of
+clothes and the philosophy thereof, and reasoned among other things<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a>
+that society would instantly dissolve without them. Nothing could more
+vividly bear out this gentleman than contemplation of the possibilities
+of the Roentgen ray. It is an exciting prospect. A press of the button,
+and there would be Herr Teufelsdrockh's "straddling Parliament." But a
+thousand times more grotesque: gentlemen stripped not only of the
+tailored habiliment of the bodies, the symbols of their gentility, as it
+were, but of the fleshly garments of their frame, laying bare their
+mortality. And humorously, witheringly, for among the other distinctions
+man is said to possess above his brethren the beasts, being the only
+animal that laughs, and so forth, it is certainly true that of all
+creation he has the funniest skeleton. It would be the end. No candidate
+for public office would dare to come forth upon the platform. What stout
+lady could give a party?</p>
+
+<p>Unless, indeed, as would probably result, for the preservation of
+society the use and carrying of kodaks would be regulated, like the
+carrying of revolvers, by statute. To photograph a gentleman or lady on
+the street would be a criminal deed carrying a penalty of twenty years'
+imprisonment. For though ladies<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> blessed by nature might not, in this
+lingerie-less, tube-skirt age, shrink from further perception of their
+loveliness, it is doubtful if any man could make love to a woman after
+having seen an effigy of her skeleton. To snap the President would be
+equivalent, in the eyes of the law, to assassinating him. To take an
+X-ray photograph of a fashionable assembly would be, like discharging a
+dynamite bomb in the midst, punishable with death.<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII<br /><br />
+BACHELOR REMINISCENCES</h3>
+
+<p>S<small>OMETIMES</small> my thoughts carry me away from my solitary strife with the
+world; back to my boyhood, when all men were not thieves and scoundrels,
+as they are now; back to my old home and my family, where we loved one
+another and did not, lynx-eyed, watch for a grip upon our neighbors'
+throats nor count our every friend as a possibility of our own
+advancement, and every favor we did another a business investment.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 128px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_103.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_103_sml.png" width="128" height="146" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>In one such mood as this, on an evening, I was pleased, upon answering
+the knock at my door, to usher in my neighboring lodger Harrison.<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> In
+reminiscence we would renew our youth; and to that purpose I started him
+off upon the desired track.</p>
+
+<p>Harrison poses as something of a philosopher, and he began with some of
+his customary rot.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "I have never known a man that talked at all upon the
+subject who did not follow a calling which was the most trying of all
+those at which men labor in this world, who did not have a most
+remarkably hard time in early life, and who did not fondly imagine that
+he was a very bad boy in his youth. These, I take it, are the three most
+familiar hallucinations in life. I am a victim to them myself. But I
+shall not regale you with them to-night. I was thinking of my own
+boyhood, the wickedness of it, and the happiness. Ah! boyhood, that is
+the happy time; girlhood may be, too&mdash;but I doubt it.</p>
+
+<p>"These many years have I been like poor Joe in 'Bleak House,' I must
+keep moving along; but when I was a boy I had a home. A strange word it
+is to me now. I am reminded of the old vaudeville 'stunt': Any old place
+I hang my hat is home, sweet home, to me. I follow<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> a trunk about the
+world, and a devil of a globe-trotter of a trunk it is.</p>
+
+<p>"But when I was a boy," continued Harrison, the lines in his face
+softened&mdash;and he somehow just now looked very like a boy&mdash;"I had a home;
+there the board was always paid." The lines came back in his face for an
+instant, then faded away again. "There in the winter it was always
+warm," he said, looking very hard at my small fire. "There we had great
+feasting and drinking." I could not but notice how spare he was now.
+"There were noise and romping," and the softness of his voice now
+emphasized the extreme desertedness of my chambers. "There were brothers
+and sisters. Did you ever have a brother?" he asked me rather suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>I replied that I never did.</p>
+
+<p>"Or a sister?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>I said "No."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me with a sort of annoying pity.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope," he said rather irritatedly, "that you had a mother?"</p>
+
+<p>I replied that I had had, but I did not see why we should fight about
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, don't lose your temper, old man,"<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> said Harrison. "You're such an
+incorrigible old dope, you know, such a cynical, confirmed old bachelor
+of a bohemian, I mean; so contented with this lonesome, vagabond life,
+that I hardly think you ever had a real, happy, wholesome boyhood home.
+By the way, did you ever have a boyhood?" he asked with something very
+near to a sneer.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 383px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_106.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_106_sml.png" width="383" height="168" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Now, look here," I said, "if you had such an insufferable home, why
+didn't you stay there and make your own family miserable instead of
+wandering about the world bemoaning your fate, wishing yourself back
+there, and insulting people who are not moved by ties of relationship to
+be tolerant with your spleen? And who won't be," I added, rising.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a fool," said Harrison, as he banged the door.<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV<br /><br />
+A TESTIMONIAL</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 365px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_107.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_107_sml.png" width="365" height="143" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>F<small>OR</small> years I was a great sufferer from insomnia. At one time this dread
+scourge had so fastened its terrible fangs upon me that I could scarcely
+walk. My body became one mass of sleeplessness; I tried many remedies,
+but without avail, and my friends had all given me up for dead when by
+chance from a mere acquaintance I heard of this great cure which I would
+recommend to all who are afflicted as I was.</p>
+
+<p>I remember with horror the tortures I used to endure in agony as I
+tossed to and fro on the hot pillow, going over in my fevered mind
+interminably the formulas of the so-called reliefs<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a> from this peerless
+disease. An unconscionable number of times I numbered a round of sheep
+over a stile. I counted up to ten, over and over again; and then up to
+fifteen, and then twenty, twenty-five, thirty, fifty, only to craze
+myself with the thought of the futility of this lunacy. I heard my
+dollar watch tick on the dresser, until in madness I arose and placed it
+on the restraining pad of a clothes-brush. I heard the clock in the next
+room relentlessly tell the passing hours; I heard a neighboring public
+clock follow it through the watches of the night. I heard my happy
+neighbor snore. I heard the sound of rats near by, and the creaking of
+floors, and the voice of the wind. I tried bathing my feet before going
+to bed. I tried eating a light lunch. I tried intoxicating liquors. But
+always I stared through the blackness of the fearful night until an
+eerie color tinged my window, and then the dawn came up like thunder
+across the bay.</p>
+
+<p>It was when my spirit had become worn through my body like elbows
+through the sleeve of an old coat that I heard the remarkable recipe for
+insomnia: Think of the top of your head. That is what I was told to do.
+"Think of the top of your head," I said to<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> myself with some disdain in
+the awful grip of the night; "now how in thunder do you think of the top
+of your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think of your hair?" I asked, turning my eyeballs upward in
+their sockets. "Do you think of that lightly hidden baldness?" striving
+to put my mind, so to say, on the top of my head. "How the
+Dickens-can-you-think-of&mdash;&mdash;" but a drowsy numbness pained my sense as
+though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
+one minute past, and Lethewards had sunk. And I dreamed that quite
+plainly, as though it were some other fellow's, I saw the top of my
+head.<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV<br /><br />
+FRAGRANT WITH PERFUME</h3>
+
+<p>M<small>R</small>. D<small>UFF</small> is the tenant of the second floor front. His wife has been
+away. Mr. Duff himself may be encountered about in the halls. He is a
+large man with a considerable girth and a face that one knows to be
+youthful for his age; he cannot be under thirty.</p>
+
+<p>Recently the second floor hall became fragrant with the odor of perfume.
+Mrs. Duff, presumably, had returned. Yes, Mrs. Duff was at the
+telephone. She calls, "Hello!" very sweetly, in two syllables. Mr.
+Duff's first name, it appears, is Walter, pronounced by his doting wife
+also in two syllables, "Wal-ter." Mrs. Duff bleats, it seems, in two
+syllables. Mr. Duff's middle name evidently is "Hon-ey."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Duff said over the telephone that she "had been ba-ad." She said
+it, or, so sweetly. She had, she said, taken a little walk and had
+stayed "too long" and she had been away when<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> he had called her up. But
+she had had the "best little time." She was going to work now, "oh! so
+ha-rd." She was going to clean out the bureau drawers and "that little
+box," and unpack her trunk and put away her things. No, she would be
+careful not to overwork herself. She would see him, Walter Honey Duff,
+when he came home from work. "Good-by, little boy," she said.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 175px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_111.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_111_sml.png" width="175" height="155" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then she called up a creamery. She wanted the creamery to send her,
+please, a pint of milk, and the smallest jar it had of cream cheese. How
+soon could those be sent, please? Oh-h! not till then? Well, she
+supposed she would have to wait.</p>
+
+<p>The second floor hall is fragrant with the odor of perfume.<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI<br /><br />
+WOULDN'T LOOK AT HIM</h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 249px;">
+<a href="images/illpg_112.png">
+<img src="images/illpg_112_sml.png" width="249" height="210" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>"T<small>HEY</small> say," remarked the portly man with several double chins on the
+back of his neck, "that the Duke is over in the Library."</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't walk across the street to see him," said a shabby
+individual, helping himself to a cracker.</p>
+
+<p>"He's no better than any other man," said the bar-boy.</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't look at him if they brought him in to me," announced an
+aggressive-looking character.</p>
+
+<p>Now this was a remark rich in pictorial suggestion.<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> It was eloquent
+with dramatic evocation. One instantly imagines the striking scene; the
+duke is dragged in; the aggressive-looking character is called upon to
+look at him; this he refuses to do.</p>
+
+<p>"He breathes the same kind of air we do, don't he?" pointedly inquired
+the shabby individual.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess that's right enough, too!" exclaimed the bar-boy.<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII<br /><br />
+CONNUBIAL FELICITY</h3>
+
+<p>I'<small>VE</small> got a fine wife, too. I tell you, Bob, there's nothin' better can
+happen to a feller than to get the right woman. I don't care for battin'
+around any more now. Nothin' I like any better than to go home to my
+flat at night, take off my shoes and put on my slippers, and listen to
+my wife play the piano. My wife is musical, vocal and instrumental. Her
+vocal is on a par with her instrumental. I like music. I always said if
+ever I got married I'd marry, a wife that was musical. I ain't educated
+in music, exactly, but I've an ear. A feller told me,&mdash;Doc. Hoff, a
+mighty smart man, I'd like you to know him, his talk sometimes it would
+take a college professor to understand it,&mdash;he says to me, "I'm no
+phrenologist but I can see you've got an ear for music."</p>
+
+<p>My wife is an aristocrat. When I married her, Thunder! I had no polish,
+that is to<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> speak of. You know that, Bob. My talk was the vernacular. My
+wife's an Episcopalian. She asked me if I had any objection to the
+Episcopal ceremony for marrying. I said I didn't have no religion;
+anything would suit me so long as it was legal. I had fifteen hundred
+dollars to the good. I don't know how I come to have it. I oughtn't to
+have, by rights. Some of these book makers ought to have had it,
+accordin' to the life I led. But I did have it, anyhow. I took three
+hundred dollars and got a sweet of drawing room furniture&mdash;Louie
+fourteenth, or fifteenth, they call it, I forget which. Then I got a
+mahogany table, solid parts through, for our dining room, and some what
+they call Chippendale chairs. I got a darn good library up there, too.</p>
+
+<p>My wife don't say "and so forth"; she says "and caetera."<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII<br /><br />
+A FRIEND, INDEED</h3>
+
+<p>H<small>E</small> was a sturdy-looking little man, with a square, honest face, and an
+upright manner, to put it so. He seemed to be a Swede. His companion had
+something the look of Mr. Heep, and he wore a cap.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, Will," said his companion, "I'd like to see you own that
+piece of property. I would. If you owned that piece of property, Will,
+then you see you'd have something. You'd have something, Will. Something
+you could always call your own, Will."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it's good land?" said Will.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," said his companion; "that's a very fine piece of land, Will.
+I know every bit of it. I've worked up there, Will."</p>
+
+<p>"Rocky?" asked Will.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Will; there's hardly a rock on it."</p>
+
+<p>"How far now does it come down this way?" inquired Will musingly.<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Down the hill, Will?" asked his companion, with great attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Will.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now as to that," said the other, casting his face upward in
+thought, "I couldn't just exactly say."</p>
+
+<p>"Down to the oak tree, don't it?" said Will.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right, Will!" exclaimed the other, in delighted recognition of
+the fact. "Down to the oak tree, Will. You're right, Will."</p>
+
+<p>"And how far would you say," asked Will thoughtfully, "does it run back
+in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Run back in, Will?" said the other as though in surprise. "Well, now
+you know, Will," shaking his head in doubt, "it's been some time since I
+was up there, Will."</p>
+
+<p>"It goes back as far as the big rock, don't you think?" said Will,
+thinking hard.</p>
+
+<p>"Back to the big rock, Will!" cried the other eagerly. "That's right,
+Will. You're right! Back to the big rock, Will!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the name of those people who own the land just this way?" Will
+asked, looking hard into his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, Will, I can't just bring to mind the name of those people,"
+answered the other,<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> looking equally hard, apparently, into his own
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Smithers, ain't it?" said Will, gropingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Smithers is the name!" ejaculated the other. "You're right, Will!
+That's it! Smithers! You're right, Will! Nice people, too, Will!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't think though that I'll get that land, after all," said
+Will, in the manner of a man who has at length arrived at a decision.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, Will," said his companion, nodding his head up and
+down, "property is a great care. I don't know that you're not right,
+Will. Property's a great care, Will; you're right about that, Will. You
+can do better, Will. You're right about that!"</p>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes Holliday
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,2341 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes Holliday
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Peeps at People
+
+Author: Robert Cortes Holliday
+
+Illustrator: Walter Jack Duncan
+
+Release Date: March 24, 2011 [EBook #35675]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEEPS AT PEOPLE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
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+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PEEPS AT PEOPLE
+
+ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
+
+
+
+
+PEEPS AT PEOPLE
+
+BY
+
+ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY
+
+AUTHOR OF "WALKING-STICK PAPERS," "BOOTH
+TARKINGTON," "JOYCE KILMER: A
+MEMOIR," "BROOME STREET
+STRAWS," ETC.
+
+WITH PICTURES BY
+WALTER JACK DUNCAN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+NEW YORK
+GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+_Copyright, 1919,
+By George H. Doran Company_
+
+_Printed in the United States of America_
+
+     I WROTE A BOOK SOME TIME AGO WHICH WAS DEDICATED TO "THREE FINE
+     MEN." THIS IS A SMALLER BOOK. THEREFORE, I DEDICATE IT TO TWO FINE
+     MEN:
+
+     EUGENE F. SAXTON CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+     These little what-you-call-'ems, with the exception of the opening
+     one and the concluding ones, all appeared originally in the
+     Saturday Magazine of the New York _Evening Post_. They are
+     reprinted here by the courtesy of the editors of that otherwise
+     estimable newspaper. For permission to reprint the opening paper
+     _The Bookman_ is to blame.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                 PAGE
+
+       EVEN SO! OR, AS YOU MAY SAY, A PREFACE      13
+
+     I THE FORGETFUL TAILOR                        19
+
+    II TALK AT THE POST OFFICE                     23
+
+   III AS TO OFFICE BOYS                           28
+
+    IV A CONQUEROR'S ATTACK                        32
+
+     V THE CASE OF MR. WOOLEN                      36
+
+    VI WHEN THE TRAIN COMES IN                     41
+
+   VII AN OLD FOGY                                 44
+
+  VIII HAIR THAT IS SCENERY                        47
+
+    IX A NICE MAN                                  50
+
+     X NO SNOB                                     53
+
+    XI EVERY INCH A MAN                            59
+
+   XII HIS BUSINESS IS GOOD                        65
+
+  XIII A NICE TASTE IN MURDERS                     71
+
+   XIV IDA'S AMAZING SURPRISE                      74
+
+    XV NOT GULLIBLE, NOT HE                        77
+
+   XVI CRAMIS, PATRON OF ART                       81
+
+  XVII BARBER SHOPS AWESOME                        85
+
+ XVIII MUCH MARRIED STRATFORD                      88
+
+   XIX A HUMAN CASH REGISTER                       92
+
+    XX IT STANDS TO REASON                         94
+
+   XXI A THREE-RINGED CIRCUS                       96
+
+  XXII SNAPSHOTS IN X-RAY                         100
+
+ XXIII BACHELOR REMINISCENCES                     103
+
+  XXIV A TESTIMONIAL                              107
+
+   XXV FRAGRANT WITH PERFUME                      110
+
+  XXVI WOULDN'T LOOK AT HIM                       112
+
+ XXVII CONNUBIAL FELICITY                         114
+
+XXVIII A FRIEND, INDEED                           116
+
+
+
+
+PEEPS AT PEOPLE
+
+
+
+
+EVEN SO! OR, AS YOU MAY SAY, A PREFACE
+
+
+I knew a man who used to do some writing, more or less of it--articles
+and essays and little sketches and things like that--and he went to
+another man who was a publisher. (I know all of this because it was told
+to me not long ago at a club.) And he said (the first man) that he would
+like to have published a book of some of his pieces. He hadn't done
+much, if any, writing for a number of years. Matters had been going
+rather bad with him, and he had lost more than a little of his buoyancy.
+The spark had waned; in fact, it was not there. (This he did not say,
+but so the matter was.)
+
+Anyhow, he did say that this collection of material had about it the
+rich glow of his prime, that it was living with the fullness of his
+life, that as a contributor to these papers and magazines he had (or
+had had) a personal following decent enough in size, that the book, by
+all reasoning, ought to go far, and so on. The volume was published. It
+was called--no, I have forgotten what it was called. However, I heard
+that it got a very fair press, and sold somewhat.
+
+Then, in about a year or so, round came the man again to the publisher
+with another batch of little papers. He had aged perceptively within
+this time, and matters had been going with him rather worse than before.
+No, he hadn't been able to write anything lately. (For a moment a
+haunted look crossed his face, a look as though in some sad hidden
+secret he had been discovered.) But (brightening up again) here he had a
+better book than before; it was a much better book than before, as it
+was an earlier one. These things breathed the gusto of his young
+manhood. They were perhaps a bit miscellaneous in character, he had got
+them out of the files of various journals, but they had a verve, a fire,
+a flare for life, which he couldn't better now. A great deal more he
+said to this effect.
+
+Times, however, change (as has frequently been observed). What is sauce
+for the goose is _not_ always sauce for the gander. That is to say,
+other days other ways. I do not know that I gathered (that evening at
+the club) what was the upshot of the matter in this instance between the
+man of whom I am speaking and the publisher. But it is to be feared that
+time had blown upon those things of his of other days as it had upon the
+temple of his soul and its inhabitant.
+
+Well (so the story goes), the world went forward at a dizzy rate. There
+was flame and sword. Ministries rose and fell. Dynasties passed away.
+Customs handed down from antiquity, and honored among the ancients, were
+obliterated by mandate and statute. And man wrought things of many sorts
+in new ways.
+
+On a Friday at about half past two (a pleasant day it was, in the
+Spring, with new buds coming out in the parks and a new generation of
+children all about) again in came our old friend to see his friend the
+publisher. Well, well, and how was he now, and what was new with him?
+Why, a rotten bad run of cards had been his ever since he had been round
+before: rheumatism and influenza, dentist and oculist, wife down and
+brother dead, nothing much accomplished. He sat for a moment and there
+was no light in him. No (you saw it now, quite), he was a lamp without
+oil.
+
+He undid the package containing his manuscript. Here was a book (those
+yellow clippings), well, here was a book! This was a _younger_ book than
+either of his others. On it was the gleaming dew of his youth. Perhaps a
+little scrappy, very brief, and, many of them, rather unequal in
+length--these things; and very light. Ah, that was the point, that was
+the point! The lightness, the freshness, the spontaneity, the gaiety of
+the springtime of life! One could not recapture that. It would be
+impossible, quite impossible, for him now to write such things as these.
+He did not now think the same way, feel, see the same way, work--the
+same way. No, no; there comes a hardening of the spiritual and
+intellectual arteries. This was a _younger_ book, a _younger_ book (and
+as he leaned forward with finger raised, a light, for an instant,
+flickered again in his eye) than any of his others.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a man at that club when this story was told who remarked: "It
+is said (is it not?) that Swift, re-reading 'Gulliver' many years after
+it was written, exclaimed: 'My God, what a genius I had at that time!'"
+
+And another man there at the time reminded us of the place somewhere in
+the books of George Moore where it is observed that "anybody can have
+talent at twenty, the thing is to have talent at fifty."
+
+R. C. H.
+
+_New York,_ 1919.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE FORGETFUL TAILOR
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+He is a tailor. His shop is down at the corner. When trousers are left
+with him to be pressed and to have suspender buttons sewed on he is
+always obligingly willing to promise them by the morrow; or if you are
+in somewhat of a hurry he will promise that the job shall be done this
+very night. He is the politest and most obliging of men. He will send
+those trousers up by a boy directly. He is such a cheerful man.
+
+After the time for those trousers to appear has long gone by and no boy
+has arrived, it is possible that you may work yourself into a passion.
+You clap your hat upon your head, storm out of the house, and stride
+toward that tailor shop. You become a little cooled by the evening air,
+and you begin to wonder if you have not been a trifle hasty. Perhaps you
+yourself made some mistake concerning your address; things very similar
+have happened before now, when you have laid the blame upon another and
+eventually realized that the fault was your own. It would never do to
+place yourself in such a position with this tailor--a comparative
+stranger to you. So you will not become abusive to him until you
+discover who is in the wrong.
+
+But if the fault is his, mind you, he shall learn your character; you
+are not a man to be trifled with. This fellow can have no sense of
+business, or anything else, you think. This shall be the last work he
+will ever get from you. Such a man should not have a business. You will
+speak to your friends about this; it will run him out of the
+neighborhood.
+
+You have been walking rapidly and are tolerably heated again. You arrive
+at the shop expecting to find the tailor on the defensive, with some
+inane excuse prepared. But you have resolved that it won't go down. You
+are considerably surprised, therefore, to discover the tailor seated,
+comfortably reading a newspaper, by a genial fire. He glances up at you
+as you open the door. His face is without expression at first. Then he
+recollects you, and your business flashes upon him. He smiles
+good-naturedly, then bursts into a hearty laugh. Well, of all things, if
+he hasn't forgotten all about those trousers until this very minute!
+It's such a joke, apparently, such a ridiculous situation. He so enters
+into the spirit of the thing and enjoys it so that you have not the
+heart to rebuke him. You even begin to appreciate the circumstance
+yourself.
+
+It is so warm in the tailor-shop and the tailor is so jolly you become
+almost jovial. The tailor promises to send those trousers around the
+first thing in the morning. He would promise to have them ready for you
+in ten minutes if you so desired. Upon leaving, you are tempted to
+invite the tailor out to have a cigar with you. He is so droll, such a
+felicitous chap, such a funny dog, that forgetful tailor.
+
+In the morning those trousers have not shown up. You pass the tailor
+shop on your way downtown. The tailor is standing in his doorway,
+smoking a cigar and looking altogether very bright and cheerful. When
+he sees you his face becomes still brighter; he apparently becomes
+brighter all over, in fact; and his eyes twinkle merrily. "Well! well!"
+he laughs, and slaps his thighs. He is the most forgetful man. He hardly
+knows what will become of him.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+TALK AT THE POST OFFICE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The attention of a little group within the dusk of the post office and
+general store was, apparently, still colored by an event which mutilated
+posters on a dilapidated wagon-shed wall, visible through the doorway in
+the hot light outside, had advertised. A "Wild Bill" show had lately
+moved through this part of the world. A large, loosely-constructed,
+earnest-looking man was speaking to several others, seriously, taking
+his time, allowing his words time to sink well in as he proceeded.
+
+"Now I have a brother," he was saying, "who I can produce," he added
+impressively (one realizes that it would be hard to get around this
+sort of evidence)--"who I can produce, who will take bullet
+cartridges--Buffalo Bill don't use bullet cartridges--Annie Oakley don't
+use bullet cartridges--and who will sit right here in this chair--sit
+right here in this chair where I am now--and show you," he nodded once
+to each listener, "something about shootin'," concluding, one who
+reports him felt, somewhat more vaguely than his start had led one to
+expect.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Well, Pawnee," began another of the group (from which sobriquet it will
+be seen that the large man was a personage in matters of shooting), but
+Pawnee stopped him. It seems he had not finished.
+
+"And if there is anybody that would like to shoot _shot_ with the _Old
+Man_," he continued, breathing the two last words loud and strong,
+"_I_," said Pawnee, with extreme emphasis on the personal pronoun,
+"would like to see them, that's all!"
+
+An odd figure a trifle removed from the group had attracted the notice
+of one reporting these proceedings, by a propensity which he evinced,
+perceived by a kind of mental telepathy, to have some remarks directed
+to him. One felt all through one, so to speak, the near presence of a
+disposition eminently social. As one's sight became more accustomed to
+the interior light this figure defined itself into that of an elderly
+man, somewhat angular, slightly stooped, and wearing a ministerial sort
+of straw hat, with a large rolling brim, considerably frayed; a man very
+kindly in effect, and suggesting to a contemplative observer of humanity
+a character whose walk in life is cutting grass for people.
+
+This gentleman (there was something very gentlemanly about him, not in
+haberdashery, but, as one read him, in spirit) showed, as was said, a
+decided inclination to, as less gentlemanly folks say, "butt in."
+
+"Here is a thing now," spoke up this old fellow, looking up from his
+newspaper, over his iron-rimmed spectacles in a more determined manner
+than heretofore, at one who reports him, and speaking in that tone in
+which it is the habit of genial men traveling in railroad trains to open
+a conversation with their seat-fellow for the journey, "that draws my
+attention." In the racing term, he was "off."
+
+"You know there is a strict law against swearing over the telephone," he
+paused for acquiescence. "Well, there _is_," he stated, very seriously,
+drawing a little nearer as the acquaintance got on--"a strict law. Now
+they say they can't stop it. It's a queer thing they can't stop it. They
+know who's at the other end; or at least they know who owns the 'phone.
+They know that. A fine of fifty dollars," he declared, "would stop it."
+It strikes one that this kindly character is almost ferocious on the
+side of morality.
+
+"Now," he continued, "there is no use in that. Say what you have to say,
+that's all that's necessary. What's the good of all those
+ad-_ject_-ives?" He pronounced the last word in three syllables with a
+very decided accent on the second. "That is done, now," he concluded,
+"by people who are, well--abrupt. Ain't that right, now? It's abrupt,
+that's what it is; it's abrupt.
+
+"Most assuredly," he said, answering himself.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+AS TO OFFICE BOYS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Mr. MacCrary is in the real estate business. It is incident to Mr.
+MacCrary's business that he has to employ an office boy. This position
+as factotum in the office of Mr. MacCrary is subject to much
+vicissitude.
+
+The first of the interesting line of boys successively employed by Mr.
+MacCrary was an office boy by profession; by natural talent and
+inclination he was a liar. He was a gifted liar, a brilliant and a
+versatile liar; a liar of resource, of imagination. He was a liar of
+something very near to genius. He lied for the love of lying. With him a
+lie was a thing of art. An artist for art's sake, he, and for art's
+sake alone. Like an amateur in short, a distinguished amateur, who is
+too proud to sell his lies, but willingly gives one away, now and then
+to some highly valued and much admiring friend. This boy would start
+with a little lie, then, as he progressed in his story, the wonderful
+possibilities of the thing would open up before him; he would grasp them
+and contort them, twist them into shape, and produce, create, a thing
+magnificent, stupendous, a thing which fairly made one gasp. He, a mere
+boy! It was wonderful.
+
+On the last day he came into the office and said: "Runaway down the
+street, Mr. MacCrary."
+
+"Is that so?" said Mr. MacCrary.
+
+"Yes," said the boy, "ran over a woman, killed her dead."
+
+"You don't say!" exclaimed Mr. MacCrary.
+
+"I should say so," said the boy; "killed the baby in her arms, too."
+
+"What!" cried Mr. MacCrary, "did she have a baby in her arms?"
+
+"And that ain't all," continued the boy, "ran on down the street and
+into a trolley car."
+
+"And killed all the passengers!" exclaimed Mr. MacCrary.
+
+"And the conductor," added the boy, "broke all the horse's legs, smashed
+the wagon, driver went insane from scare. They're shootin' the horse
+now," said the boy.
+
+Mr. MacCrary dismissed this boy that he might find a sphere more suited
+to his ability than the real estate business, which, to tell the truth,
+was evidently a little bourgeoise for his genius.
+
+The next boy was not particularly gifted in any direction, but he was
+mysterious. Upon a client's coming into the office during Mr. MacCrary's
+absence he, the client, was sure to be impressed by two circumstances:
+First, that there was no one in the office until he entered; secondly,
+that the boy had strangely appeared from nowhere in particular, and was
+following in close upon his heels. This consistently illustrates the
+whole course of this boy's conduct throughout the time he remained with
+Mr. MacCrary.
+
+The third boy, that is the present one, is not exactly mysterious, but
+he is peculiar. He attends strictly to his own business. He believes
+himself to be here for that purpose, apparently. He does not meddle
+with Mr. MacCrary's business. That is no concern of his. He is imbued
+with the good old adage: "If you want a thing well done, do it
+yourself." He follows this excellent principle himself, and believes
+others should do likewise. This boy is very sapient, and a wonderful
+student. His nature is more receptive than creative. He procures heavy
+sheep-skin-bound volumes from the circulating library, and his taste in
+literature, for one of his age, is unique. These books generally relate
+to primitive man, and contain exciting engravings of his stone hatchets
+and cooking utensils. He is also fond of perusing horticulture journals,
+these being the only magazines which he enjoys. When the first of these
+appeared about the office, Mr. MacCrary picked up one and inquired:
+
+"What is this, James?"
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed James, "there's some fine pictures of berries in there."
+James is too scholarly for real estate, and will soon, no doubt, follow
+in the way of his earlier predecessor to the intellectual life.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+A CONQUEROR'S ATTACK
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+On the post-office store porch an old brindled Dane dog, town loafer,
+was asleep on his back. Chickens wallowed in the road. A baby crawled
+from behind a barrel at the post-office store door. A quorum was met on
+the hotel porch across the way. The butcher and the cobbler came forth
+from dove-cot shops to pass the time of day. The villagers come in ones
+and twos to get their mail. One, a fair, freckled milk-maid, as it would
+seem, from some old story, stands on the sidewalk path, waiting for the
+mail to be "sorted." A willowy lass, one would say a "summer boarder,"
+pokes her parasol musingly through a knot-hole in the porch floor. The
+shop next door is a "dry goods and notions" store; butter and peaches
+and cherries and roses and cream in the shape of a feminine clerk leans
+beneath the low lintel, and, one can guess, like the old dog, dreams.
+The one of brave days of the past, perchance; the other, perchance, of
+conquests to come.
+
+A fat fly buzzes leisurely about the door, then suddenly takes a
+straight line a considerable distance down the straggling street,
+pauses, circles about, returns, now through the early sunshine, now
+through the shadow of a venerable tree, back to the shelter of the
+porch, hums around again, poises absolutely stationary, tacks away
+another time over the same course, and returns as before.
+
+Suddenly appearing, briskly advancing upon the scene, walking rapidly up
+from the direction of the railroad station, scintillating punctuality,
+dispatch, succinctness, assurance, commercial agility, comes an
+apparition from, without manner of doubt, the hurrying ways, the
+collision of the busy marts of men. The chickens scatter from the road,
+making for picketless gaps in the picket fence; the old dog opens an eye
+and limply raises a limb; and the rapid, confident "traveling man" (it
+can be none but he), resplendent in the very latest "gent's furnishing,"
+with a neat grip and a bundle of what apparently are rolled calendars,
+springs nimbly upon the porch of the Chappaqua general store. Genial,
+pushing, the hurrying "good fellow," though sociability is his bent as
+well as business, he has not much time. It evidently is his habit to
+snatch a brief moment of pleasant acquaintanceship as he passes. As to
+this, he has as quick an eye for the sex as for commerce, and, as will
+be seen, as successful a manner with them as in the other.
+
+"Attacking," said another conqueror, Barry Lyndon, "is the only secret.
+That is my way of fascinating women." Quickly, as with a practiced eye,
+this gallant looks over the ground. Chappaqua apparently is rich in
+human flowers. A man of poorer mettle would be satisfied with one. That
+is not the way with your conquerors. Smugly, flashingly, he thrusts his
+grinning, big-prowed countenance forward, and with one killing glance
+that fair, freckled milk-maid is undone. So much for number one. Quick
+as a terrier that leaps from rat to rat, and with a single brilliant
+crunch breaks each rodent's back, our high-stepping man leaps his
+glance upon the dreaming butter and peaches and cream; her rich lashes
+fall, but she does not frown. No; she does not frown. But be bold
+enough, and you will not fail.
+
+He has stepped through the doorway, set his grip down. Brightly he turns
+and does for the summer boarder. She springs open her parasol before her
+pleased confusion, and retreats, very slowly. He has turned to business;
+whips out his watch, snaps it shut, replaces it, unrolls a calendar. He
+"makes" the next town in so many hours.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE CASE OF MR. WOOLEN
+
+
+They stopped at a bright little house with a neat little grass plot
+before it, fronting on the railroad. A border of very white,
+white-washed stones led up each side of the little path to the little
+porch before the door. On the porch, in the shade of the neat, screening
+vines, sat an old fellow, a stranger to them. "Is Mrs. Woolen at home?"
+one of the two inquired politely, as he thought. But this manner of
+putting the matter, it appeared, was not happy, for it was taken by the
+old fellow as implying that Mrs. Woolen was thought to be the one there
+superior in authority. He eyed the couple before him a moment as if in
+doubt whether to pay any attention to them; then, tapping himself on the
+chest, "_I_ am Mrs. Woolen," he said sternly. As this was unmistakenly a
+manner of saying, "You may state your business here if you have any,"
+one come for the washing humbly put the case in words as well chosen as
+possible. The old fellow was mollified; he had merely desired
+recognition, that was all. Mrs. Woolen was not at home; "the woman," he
+said, had gone "to Quarterly Meetin' over at the Quaker Church." But it
+was "all right," he said, which was understood to mean that the washing
+was ready here.
+
+"You'll find that washing first-class," said Mr. Woolen. "There's
+nothing crooked about her; she's a good, honest woman."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Asked concerning when Mrs. Woolen would be likely to return, Mr. Woolen
+replied in a very business-like manner, "Six o'clock, six o'clock sharp
+this evening."
+
+"Not till six o'clock?" He was asked when she had departed.
+
+"Eight o'clock, eight o'clock this morning," he said. He then furnished
+the information that Quarterly Meeting lasted several days, and that
+Mrs. Woolen was on deck, to put it so, throughout.
+
+From this point Mr. Woolen drifted into personal reminiscence of the
+surrender at Appomattox, in proof of his having been present at which,
+without his assertion having been questioned, he rather defiantly
+offered to exhibit "the papers," as he called them, which he said were
+"right there framed in the parlor." Though Mr. Woolen had been on the
+conquering side at the historic surrender, he rather suggested the idea
+of his having surrendered, in a more personal and figurative sense, at
+about that time also; that is to say, he did not impress one as having,
+for an able-bodied man, put up a very good fight since.
+
+He was recalled to the matter of the washing, and, rising, led the way
+into the house to procure it. But directly the party had entered, Mr.
+Woolen fell back, obviously in amazement, upon the toes of those
+following him. He cried that it was "gone!"
+
+"It was right there on that chair," he said, "in the corner. There's
+where she left it this morning. There's where she left it. Done up it
+was in newspaper. She said to me, 'There it is; now don't you let that
+go out of the house until you get your money for it.' That's what she
+said."
+
+He was prevailed on to make a search through the house, though he
+contended obstinately that it was right there in the corner, and no
+other place, that that which they were seeking had been "left." He
+almost offered the presence there of the chair as evidence. A search of
+the house, however, was not exhausting nor impracticable, as there were
+but two rooms to it, these very snug, no closets, and an economy of
+furniture behind which the bundle might be.
+
+Mr. Woolen's perturbation was too genuine for suspicion of his having
+made away with the package. But this very honesty of emotion, in
+conjunction with the circumstance of the absence of the washing, and
+divers indications in breath and manner, noticeable from the first,
+aided in making out a case against him. A jury would reasonably have
+inferred that Mr. Woolen had a frailty, known and provided against by
+his wife, that, specifically, he had a weakness which, though not
+uncommonly associated with the most amiable characters, is not
+compatible with being left to receive money for washing.
+
+Mr. Woolen was decidedly provoked at the situation. "I can do a man's
+work," he said, stumbling restlessly about the room, "but not a woman's.
+I can lay brick, lay brick; that's my work, that's what I do, but I
+can't keep the house in order." It was not to be expected of him.
+Coming, in his movements, plump upon the door of the kitchen, he
+disappeared through it, and could be heard going about out of view,
+ostensibly still at the search, testily kicking the furniture and
+mumbling concerning "her being away with a lot of her cronies."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+WHEN THE TRAIN COMES IN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A busy railroad station is a grand child's picture-book, for him who
+observes it. All the child has to do is to look; the leaves are turned
+before him. There, in all the colors of the rainbow, are countless
+pictures to cram himself with. And what is a rather curious fact is,
+that a railroad station may freely be classed among humorous
+picture-books. Other picture-books, such as church, theater, Broadway,
+Fifth Avenue, political meeting, ball game, and so forth, have, of
+course, many funny pictures. But, whether it is that almost all absurd
+people constantly travel, and those with no touch of the motley do but
+seldom, or whether, as here, nothing else goes forward seriously to
+occupy the attention, one's mind is left more free to be struck by the
+ridiculousness of all mankind, so it is that perhaps as humorous a place
+as one may find is a busy railroad station. And one must be very blase
+who no longer feels an enjoyable stimulation at the approach of an
+expected train at the station.
+
+The psychology of the arrival of a railroad train at the station belongs
+to the proper study of mankind, and could be made into an interesting
+little monograph. As the train becomes due one feels but half a mind on
+the conversation, supposing one to be conversing; the other half is
+waiting for the train. One has, too, a feeling, faint at first, looming
+stronger within one, against continuing to sit quietly inside (supposing
+one to have gone within), where one is. An impelling to go see if the
+train is not coming numbs one's brain. A like contagious restlessness
+breathes through the waiting-room. People begin to stand up by their
+grips. Some go without on the search. They can be seen through the doors
+and windows, pacing the platform; they return, some of them, and one
+scans their expressions eagerly--they are discouragingly blank. After a
+bit, they go out again, or others do, and return as before; wholly
+unfitted now, one can see, for any concentration of thought.
+
+The train is late. There is an alarm or two. At last, an unmistakable
+elasticity impregnates the place. A distant whistle is heard; it stirs
+one like the tap of a drum. The train is coming! One's pulse beats high
+as one moves into the press toward the doorway. The whistle is heard
+much nearer. Then again and again! Then with a whirl that turns one a
+somersault inside, a long dark, heavy mass rushes across the light
+before one. When one comes again on one's feet, speaking figuratively,
+the train is standing there, and one hurries aboard to get a seat. But,
+first, one is stopped until arriving passengers get off.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+AN OLD FOGY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Mr. Deats, senior, is an old fogy. There is no doubt about that. In
+early life Mr. Deats, sr., had a pretty hard time. He was denied the
+advantages of any particular schooling. In consequence of this, Mr.
+Deats now occasionally uses very mortifying English. At an early
+age--somewhere about the age of ten--he entered trade. A ridiculous
+combination of adverse circumstances made it impossible for Mr. Deats to
+go much into polite society. In consequence of this, he unfortunately
+lacks polish. For a great number of years the world was not kind to him.
+It may have been trouble that destroyed his beauty. At any rate, Mr.
+Deats is not a handsome man. Not being able to do anything better, he
+confined his attention to doing his duty; that is not a very brilliant
+employment, it is true, but it was good enough for Mr. Deats.
+
+In the course of time, Mr. Deats took to himself a wife; and, in the
+course of time again, this wife bore Mr. Deats a son--and died
+simultaneously. Well, Mr. Deats was left with a boy, and this boy must
+have something to start him on in life. "How can a boy start life with
+nothing?" thought Mr. Deats; and very rightly, too. One can't feed,
+clothe, and educate a boy on nothing. So Mr. Deats did his duty harder
+than ever; and he built up a business. Building up a business doesn't
+require culture or intelligence; but it does take some time. Mr. Deats
+has grown a trifle old in the building; but it is a good business. It
+has been said that Mr. Deats' business is one of the best in the city.
+And Mr. Deats has a fine son. After the manner of his class, Mr. Deats
+believed that all the things that were denied him were the very best
+things for his son. His son should not have to work as his father
+did--and he doesn't.
+
+Mr. Deats, jr., has had advantages; he is a college graduate, a member
+of clubs, and one of the prominent young men of the city socially. Of
+course, being much cleverer, young Deats sees many of the mistakes his
+father made in life. He sees, for one thing, what an old fogy is Mr.
+Deats, sr. He sees how much better the business could be run. Mr. Deats,
+sr., does not know how to run a business; he is not modern enough.
+Still, he thinks he knows it all--that is the way with these bull-headed
+old codgers--and won't let young Deats conduct the business as it should
+be conducted. This, naturally, is very irritating to young Deats. No man
+enjoys seeing his own business go to rack and ruin. But the old man
+can't be kicked plump out into the street. He has no home but with young
+Deats. And, in a way, he is useful about the office; though even were he
+not, he must be humored. After all, he is the father of young Deats, and
+blood is thicker than water.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+HAIR THAT IS SCENERY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Mr. Wigger, Mrs. Wigger's husband (the writer boards with Mrs. Wigger),
+is an iceman. It is not his business, however, with which this study is
+concerned; it is with his hair. Perhaps it is a great assumption of
+talent to attempt to describe Mr. Wigger's hair. Oh, Muse! as John
+Milton says, lend a hand here! Mr. Wigger's abundant hair, first, is a
+deep, lusterful black, and extremely curly. From his ears straight
+upward to the crown of his head (from the three-quarters view of him
+studied here only one full ear is visible, and just barely the tip of
+the other one) an oblong block of close curls is attached to the side of
+his head, like a pannier. Leftward from this, to a point directly over
+the beginning of his eyebrow, a broad, bare strip extends up to a black,
+undulating band of hair which marks the top of his head. Thence leftward
+to the part in the middle of his head is a plot of hair like a little
+black lawn, extending well down to his forehead and neatly rounded at
+the corner away from the part. Now, from the part onward the hair in a
+great mass sweeps upward in a towering concave wave, the high ridge of
+which, though it folds ever slightly inward, culminates at the top in a
+sharp, soaring point. Over the far temple the hair falls from the great
+waves in little swirling wavelets. Mr. Wigger's mustache, a great,
+glossy, oily, inky black, against a sallow background, with tall upward
+ends, is a worthy companion to his hair. His neck, to continue the
+portrait, takes a long dive into his collar, which is very much too big,
+with the fullness protruding in front. His shoulders are steeply
+sloping, and his waistcoat is cut extremely low, like one for full
+dress, his shirt front bulging when, as for this portrait, he is seated.
+In this man romance lives on. A prosaic age has not marred him. You can
+readily see how a woman would become infatuated with such a one. He is a
+man not tonsorially decadent.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+A NICE MAN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+The clerk of the store (dry goods and gentlemen's furnishings) is what
+is known as a nice man. He is known as such among his neighbors. He is
+known as such by his customers. People, wives sometimes to their
+husbands, refer to him as a nice man. Motherly old ladies say, "He is
+such a nice man!" Younger ladies exclaim, "What a nice man!" You cannot
+look at him and fail to know that he is a nice man. You cannot look at
+him and fail to know that his life has been blameless. He is very clean,
+tidy, and very, fresh-faced. His cheeks are round and rosy; his eyes
+are bright; his mustache is silken. He is in perfect health; his
+expression is pleasant; his disposition agreeable; and his manners are
+perfect. His name is Will (certainly).
+
+The nice man has a little wife, who is almost as nice as he. She is
+interested in Sunday schools. The nice man and his wife have a little
+baby that looks just like its father. On Sundays they walk in the park,
+pushing the baby-cab before them. On great days of celebration they go
+together into the country, on picnics; and return home at night tired
+out. On these trips to the country the little wife brings home chestnut
+burrs to hang from the chandelier in the parlor. She made some
+pussy-willow buds to look like little cats on a stick. These are on the
+mantel. When Will got the job he now has his wife turned to the store's
+advertisement the first thing in the newspaper every evening to read it.
+She had always known that Will had it in him to be something, and so she
+had always told him. When the nice men gets a raise in salary he and his
+wife will put away so much a week and soon have a home of their own
+somewhere in the suburbs. Already, the baby has a savings-bank account
+of its own, and by the time it has developed into the grown image of the
+nice man, its father, it will have a sum of money.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+NO SNOB
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Let us walk down the street with Muldoon.
+
+Muldoon is always a bit shabby, and never well shaved. To be well
+groomed is the mark of a snob. Muldoon walks with a brisk step and
+somewhat defiantly. He carries his shoulders well back and a trifle
+raised. He wears a cap; and a fine rakish thing is the way he wears it.
+There is in his manner of wearing a cap a suggestion of the country fair
+gambling game of ring-a-cane. His appearance gives the impression that
+some one had tossed a cap at him and failed to ring him squarely, but
+had landed it insecurely, and left it liable to fall off at any moment,
+decidedly on one side of his head, and that then Muldoon had walked off
+without giving the slightest thought to the matter.
+
+Professionally, Muldoon's greatest virtue is that he is a champion
+"mixer" and "butter-in"; his greatest failing, that he is not reliable.
+Still he is spoken of among his confrerie as "a good man," and is never
+without employment. He has served upon a great multitude of newspapers
+in sundry and divers cities, towns, and hamlets, though never upon any
+one for a greater period than several months. His is a nature that
+requires constant change and variety. In distant places he has been
+editor--sporting editor, we believe he says--though in his own city--we
+should hardly say that he had a city but that he always comes back
+again--he serves in the capacity of police reporter. Thus we see that a
+rolling stone is not without honor, save in his own country.
+
+Muldoon's classics in literature are "Down the Line with John Henry" and
+"Fables in Slang," with a good appreciation of "Chimmy Fadden." He one
+time wrote a book himself which was distinguished chiefly for spirit and
+the odd circumstance that most of the lady characters were named
+Flossie, and which was a failure financially.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We were one day in company of Muldoon when he visited Hudson Street, in
+the neighborhood of his childhood days, and where he met again some of
+the friends of his youth. These meetings were affecting to witness. "Hi,
+Pat Muldoon!" cried a fine stocky lad who immediately fell into the
+attitude of pugilistic encounter. Muldoon, too, put up his fists. "Hi,
+Owen Heely!" he cried; and they circled about, working their arms in and
+out and grinning an affectionate greeting upon each other.
+
+We walk down the street with Muldoon; we pass an acquaintance (of
+Muldoon's). "How 'do, Pat!" says the acquaintance. "Hullo, Tom!" (or
+Dick, or Harry, as the case may be), cries Muldoon, then, as if in
+afterthought, "Hold on, just a minute, Tom." Muldoon leaves us for a
+moment--we had got quite past the acquaintance--goes back and engages
+him in earnest conversation, inaudible to us. The acquaintance's head is
+bent forward and while giving ear he gazes fixedly at the ground. Then
+he slowly shakes his head, and, straightening up, says (we hear), "I
+would if I had it, Pat. But I haven't got it with me." "All right,"
+cries Muldoon, in perfect good humor. "So long," and he returns to us.
+
+We continue down the street, and Muldoon beguiles the way with tales of
+his checkered experience. Muldoon's duties as a representative of the
+press require him to spend considerable of his time at the police
+station. One time there came a great hurry-up call for the ambulance
+when the ambulance surgeon was nowhere to be found. (This city hospital
+was next door to the police station.) The horses were hitched, and
+stomping and waiting. Again and again the call was repeated. A man, no
+doubt, lay dying. Still no ambulance surgeon. Muldoon fretted and
+waited. At length he could stand it no longer. He leaped into the seat,
+jerked the reins in his hand, clanged the gong, and dashed full tilt to
+the rescue. It was madness. What could he do when he got there? "Clang!
+Clang!" went the gong. Reeling, plunging, staggering, now on two
+wheels, now on one, now on none at all--on and on and on, around
+corners, across tracks, between vehicles, past poles, dashed the
+ambulance. "Clang! Clang!" Just missing a pedestrian here, who saves
+himself only by a hair's-breadth, grazing a wheel there, on, on! until
+he drew up by a knot of people along the curb. This drive was afterward
+reckoned the fastest run in the history of the service.
+
+A laborer, swinging a mighty sledge, had dropped it on and mashed his
+great toe. He was in acute pain. The man refused to budge until his
+wound has been attended to. What was to be done? Muldoon had picked up a
+trifling knowledge of surgery about the hospital. He whipped out the
+surgical kit and took off the fellow's toe, neat as you please, by the
+grace of heaven. We are now come to a public-house. Muldoon marches in
+(we follow). He puts his foot on the rail, a dime, a ten-cent piece, on
+the bar, turns to us, and says, "What'll you have?" We look at the dime
+and say, "Beer." Now, Muldoon enters into conversation with the barman
+(who has addressed him as "Pat"), and recounts to him the details of his
+late illness, which are most astonishing.
+
+When we resume our journey, which Muldoon does with some reluctance, he
+tells us the dream of his life. On the street where Muldoon spent his
+boyhood live a great number of gossiping old cats, who, in so far as
+they were able, made that boyhood miserable, who bore false witness to
+one another, to his family, and to others, against Muldoon, and who
+predicted that he (Muldoon) would come to a bad end. On the occasion of
+his coming into any great sum of money, he intends to wind up a
+tremendous bacchanalian orgy on that street. He will drive up it in a
+cab in broad daylight, howling and singing, and with his feet out the
+windows. On the roof of his equipage will be a great array of bottles,
+and the cabman will be drunk and screaming. We believe Muldoon sees in
+this mental picture a Brobdignagian placard on the back of the vehicle
+reading, "This is Muldoon!!!" That will give 'em something to talk
+about. It will be a fine revenge.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+EVERY INCH A MAN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+If there is a finer fellow in the world than Chester Kirk we have never
+seen him. As he himself so often says, the finest things are done up in
+small packages. (There was Napoleon, for instance, as we have heard him
+say, and General Grant, and, at the moment, we do not remember who all.)
+
+When in eyeshot of ladies, especially when he is unknown to them, he is
+grand. He takes his gloves from his pocket and holds them in his left
+hand. He searches himself for a cigar, which, when found, he holds
+before him, unlighted, in his right hand, on a level with his chest, his
+elbow crooked. He stands very firmly, with one leg bending backward in a
+line of virile, graceful curve. His back is taut. His other knee is bent
+forward, relaxed. Or he strides up and down, with something of a fine
+strut, like a fighting cock. So, he reminds us of Alan Breck.
+
+When, in this stimulating position, he has on a long coat, he swings its
+skirt from side to side. He feels, undoubtedly so brave and strong. He
+laughs, when there is opportunity for it, in a deep, manly voice, and
+often. He sometimes pulls back his head so that he has a double chin. He
+is every inch a man.
+
+As is quite fitting and proper, he is one of the most photographed of
+men. This is a family trait. He has ever just had a new photograph taken
+to send to his people, or his people have just sent some new ones to
+him, which he shows about with great gusto to his friends. His room is
+littered with likenesses of the Kirks, a very remarkable family. Here is
+a photograph of his brother.
+
+"Notice that chest," says Kirk. "He's got an expansion on him like the
+front of a house. Why, in his freshman year he had the biggest
+expansion in his class. Athlete! That boy's a boxer." Kirk points the
+stem of his pipe at you and continues: "He stood up before the huskiest
+man in Seattle (and there are no huskier men than in Seattle), a big
+brute of a fireman, a regular giant, with a reputation as a whirlwind
+slugger. Yes. Why, it's all I can do to hold that boy myself. This,"
+exhibiting another picture, "is my father. See that pair of shoulders?
+He is a little under the medium height, but the way he carries himself
+he doesn't look it. He looks to be a rather big man. He has an air. He
+came West a poor man, but one that could see chances, take them, and
+hold on to them. He took them and hung on. He built up that business, I
+think I have a right to say that it's the biggest on the Pacific Slope,
+in an incredibly short time. Business he was from the word go. He could
+handle men! An entertainer he is, too; he makes friends wherever he
+goes; everybody likes him. Here's my sister. 'Sis' is the society woman
+of the younger set at home. That's my other brother. He's a hunter."
+
+Next to pictures of himself and family, and their pets and live stock,
+there is nothing Kirk revels in so much as snapshots of his native
+country, "greatest country in the world." He has these pasted into
+several volumes: each print is labeled, as "Mt. Ranier, looking north,"
+"Puget Sound, low tide," and so forth. Each new acquaintance Kirk takes
+through the lot and explains the circumstances under which each picture
+was taken.
+
+As Kirk himself remarks, his handwriting is very strong. It is that
+strong that it has only about three, sometimes four, short words to a
+line, with good strong spaces in between. The descending loops of
+letters on one line often come down and lariat small letters on the line
+below. The sense goes at a splendid break-neck speed, and takes pauses
+and stops as though they were hurdles. The whole is penned in somewhat
+that fashion in which express clerks make out receipts.
+
+That reminds us. We one time went with Kirk into an express office to
+send a package. We ignorantly considered this to be a thing of little
+moment. That was because we do not know how to handle men. A pale young
+man, with a high, bald forehead, who had the appearance of an excellent
+assistant to some one in an office, was standing at the counter. He
+witnessed the entrance of the two without remarking it as an impressive
+ceremony. Indeed, the clerk was quite apathetic. In an instant all this
+was changed.
+
+"Let me have your pencil," Kirk demanded. It was the voice of the man
+born to command, the man that moves an army of subordinates this way or
+that, as he wills, like chessmen. He took the pencil, hoisted his
+package onto the counter with a flourish, tilted his cigar upward in one
+corner of his mouth by a movement of his jaws, and fell into so fine an
+attitude that the pale young man became interested and leaned over to
+see what important name would appear in the address. In his strongest
+hand Kirk addressed it. It was a package worth two dollars Kirk was
+sending to his brother, who needed it. "Send collect," cried Kirk. And
+the entire company, Kirk included, and ourself, who also knew the
+contents of the package, felt, it was evident, that a transaction very
+important to the interests of business had been accomplished.
+
+Kirk was one time playing checkers when we entered. "Well, how are you
+coming out?" we inquired. "Are you being beaten, Chester?" He flared up
+like a flash. "I can beat you!" he cried. We had never seen the man so
+beautiful. (He had never in his life seen us play checkers.) He looked
+to be invincible; though he wasn't; for he had lost every game.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HIS BUSINESS IS GOOD
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+"HULLO there, Bill! I'm glad to see you. How're you getting along? Do
+you know, I didn't know you when you first came in. Let me see, it's
+been a couple--no, four years since I saw you before. I was pretty much
+down and out then, ha! ha! Just bummed my way to New York, you know.
+Well, how are things with you? You know, I sat there looking an' a
+looking at you--couldn't make up my mind whether it was you or not. I
+says to myself, 'I'll risk it,' I says. 'If it's Bill, we'll have a
+time,' I says. Ha! Ha! I came over to take a bath--there's a fine bath
+place across the street, where I always go. I'm in the photograph
+business, you know, over in Brooklyn. Yes, doing well now; I'm manager
+of the place; I'll take you over to see it. Been in the business three
+years, same place; first two years work, work all the time, no pay at
+all, so to speak. But I knew I was learning the business, and I liked
+the job and liked the boss; we were busted together, you know. I was
+head musher in a mushhouse at Coney, you know, when I first met him;
+then I lost the job; we bummed around together awhile. Then I went back
+to Indiana--by freight--to see my folks.
+
+"Yes, the old man's well; Dora's married, you know; married a Sunday
+school superintendent, church where she taught Sunday school. Nothing
+doing in Indiana. Laid around awhile, then I got a letter from this
+feller. He had come into money, set up a photograph shop, told me to
+come back and take a job with him. I went to my sister, Dora, you know,
+and got railroad fare here. I says to her, 'If you can get me the money,
+I'll pay you as soon as I can, which won't be long,' I says. 'I've got a
+good job there,' I says. I says, 'Of course, I can bum my way back, but
+it will take me four or five days, maybe a week,' I says. 'If I have
+railroad fare I can get on a train here one day and get off there the
+next,' I says. She got me the money from her husband--sixteen dollars;
+she's been awful good to me; and I came in a passenger train. First
+time, you know, ha! ha! Second-class, though; just as good as first,
+though. I got on at Indianapolis one day, you know, and got off in New
+York the next day. Twenty-four hours, you know.
+
+"First thing, I went to the feller's place, but he had moved. Didn't
+leave any address, where he had gone, you know; nobody around there knew
+anything about him. I was in a deuce of a fix. Didn't have a cent of
+money--wasn't the first time, though. We used to write to each other
+sometimes through the General Delivery, so I went there, and sure enough
+there was a letter for me; but there was some postage due on it somehow.
+I says to the man, I says, 'I haven't got any money; I can't pay it';
+there was a feller standing behind me in the line; he ups and says,
+'Here, I'll pay it,' he says; 'it's only two cents' he says. So I got
+the letter and set right out for the address; the feller had moved to a
+better place.
+
+"Well, Bill, business has been good; we do a corking business on
+Saturdays and Sundays, and the feller owns two or three galleries now.
+He goes around tending to all of them and I have charge of one; there's
+my card. I'm thinking about quitting, though, and going out West again;
+business is too good, that's the trouble. No excitement; I'm getting
+discouraged. Too much responsibility. Lord, Bill, I'm a _tramp_; I am;
+yes, sir, that's what I am. I was raised that way. I like the life. The
+man across the street from me owns a restaurant, where I eat; offered to
+loan me a couple of hundred dollars to buy the gallery where I am. Ha!
+Ha! That's a good one, isn't it?
+
+"Girls, Bill! you ought to see the girls that come to my place, Bill,
+yes, sir, to get their pictures taken. They all call me 'Jack.' Yes,
+everybody around here calls me 'Jack.' I used to be 'John,' you know, at
+home, where we were boys together; great days those, yes, sir; I never
+will forget those days.
+
+"Why, you know, I could have been married, Bill; yes, sir, ha! ha! Me, a
+tramp. A fine girl, too, a regular lady, the real article, yes, sir,
+rich too, yes, sir. Why I went over there one day, and their dog--a
+blame little black dog--was sick; you ought to have seen the case of
+medicine they had for that dog. A whole blame box full of bottles of
+medicine; good medicine, too, yes, sir; why, I would have liked to have
+had some of that medicine myself.
+
+"I'll take you over and introduce you to some of those girls; here's a
+picture I took of one; she's a daisy. I took her to the theater last
+Saturday night. You know, it does a feller good to see good shows at the
+theater. This theater--it's a little place right near my gallery--I go
+there every once in awhile; they have better shows there than they do at
+the Opera House; I like 'em better. This was a fine show, 'His Mother's
+Son.' Yes, sir, it does a feller good to go to the theater.
+
+"What's the matter with your coming over and staying with me to-night?
+But no, I haven't a room now; you'd have to bunk in the gallery. That's
+where I sleep now. I did have a room, you know, blame fine room, running
+water, hot and cold, and all that sort of thing, three dollars a week.
+But I got tired of it. Yes, too comfortable, bed all made up for me
+every day, and everything else. It made me sick. I like to make my own
+bed. I like to rough it like I'm used to doing, yes, so I gave it up
+and sleep in the gallery now where I belong. I feel at home there, and
+there's plenty of room.
+
+"Say, Bill, how are you fixed? Need any money? I've got more'n I want.
+Don't know what to do with it all, you know. Not used to it, just blow
+it in. Well, all right, we'll take and spend it then. Drink up, Bill,
+and let's go some other place."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+A NICE TASTE IN MURDERS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+WE are much interested in the picturesque character of Caroline.
+Caroline is twelve. She is like a buxom, rosy apple. Her dress is a
+"Peter Thompson." Her physical sports are running like the wind, and, in
+summer, fishing. Our concern, however, is more with her mind. Caroline
+is a voracious reader. We are somewhat bookish ourselves, and the
+conversations between us are often frankly literary. Caroline's taste in
+this matter, for one of her sex, is rather startling.
+
+"Oh, you ought to read the 'Pit and the Pendulum,'" says Caroline. "Is
+it good?" we ask. "Fine!" Caroline replies. "It's at the time of the
+Inquisition, you know," she explains. "They take a man and torture him.
+It's fine," declares Caroline. "The demon's eyes grow brighter and
+brighter" (phrases we recall from her synopsis of the tale), "the
+pendulum comes nearer and nearer--but I think he deserved to escape,"
+says Caroline, "because he tried so hard." Now that is really a deep
+moral observation, "because he tried so hard," and a sound questioning
+of the philosophical verity of a work of art.
+
+"There's a good murder in here," says Caroline.
+
+"I like Sherlock Holmes," Caroline says.
+
+She reads the "Mark of the Beast" and the "Black Cat" with great
+satisfaction. For comedy or for psychological moments she does not care,
+but there is nobody, we believe, with greater capacity for enjoyment of
+terrible murder in horrible dark places in the land of fiction.
+
+Night after night we heard her voice reading aloud to her visitor Emily
+after the two had retired, until we fell asleep; and in the morning we
+saw that the relish of horror was still upon her.
+
+Emily had gone. Caroline had retired alone. We read by the lamp in the
+living-room. We were startled and mystified to hear suddenly mingle with
+the sound of the night rain all around, a long, uncertain wailing, a
+melancholy, haunting, sinking, rising, halting, gruesome sound,
+uncannily redolent of weird Gothic tales; the "Castle of Otranto" came
+into our mind. This apparently proceeded from an "upper chamber," as
+would be said in the type of story mentioned.
+
+"That," said brother Henry, in replying doubtless to a blank face, "is
+Caroline playing the flute."
+
+No one alive, of course, has not in his head a picture of another that
+in the still hours sought solace in and loved a flute, Mr. Richard
+Swiveler propped up in bed, his nightcap raked, fluting out the sad
+thoughts in his bosom. So in the night and the storm, does another
+bizarre soul, Caroline, speak with the elements.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+IDA'S AMAZING SURPRISE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+IN "Bleak House," I think it is, that Poor Joe keeps "movin' along." One
+of the atoms of London, he passes his whole life in the midst of
+thousands upon thousands of signs. Printed letters, painted letters,
+carved letters, words, words, words, blaze upon him all about. Yet not a
+syllable of them all speaks to him; seen but all unheard by him they
+clothe his path. Poor Joe cannot read. How must he regard these strange,
+unmeaning signs? What is it goes on in this head which so little can
+enter? What has filtered in where the great main avenue of approach
+remains, as far from the first, black and unopened? What does this mind,
+sitting there far off in the dark, looking out, comprehend of the
+pageant? And how does it strike him? Some such a mysterious mind looks
+out from Ida's eyes.
+
+Ida is "colored." It is my belief that though she is grown and well
+formed a little child dwells in her head. I know that when I ask her to
+bring me another cup of coffee and she pauses, slightly bends forward,
+her lips a trifle parted, and fastens her clear, utterly innocent,
+curious eyes upon me, waiting to hear repeated what she has already
+heard, she sees me as a sort of toy balloon on a string, whose
+incomprehensible movements excite a pleasurable wonder. As regularly as
+the dinner hour comes around Ida asks, with that same amazingly
+unsophisticated, interested look, if each of us will have soup. If it
+were our custom occasionally not to take soup, if we had declined soup a
+couple of times even, a good while ago, if even we had declined soup
+once--but, as Mr. MacKeene says, what could have put it into her head
+that we might not take soup? It is the same with dessert, with cereal
+at breakfast. I hardly know why it is not the same with having our beds
+made.
+
+It is easy to give Ida pleasure. She has not been satiated, perhaps,
+with pleasure. A very little quite overjoys her. I turn about in my
+chair to reach a book, and discover Ida silently dusting the furniture.
+"Why! I didn't know you were in here," I say to Ida. Ida breaks into
+great light at this highly entertaining situation. "Didin you know I was
+in here! Didin you!" Her eyebrows go up with delight. Her pose might be
+the original of Miss Rogson's "Merely Mary Ann."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+NOT GULLIBLE, NOT HE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+"Sir," said Doctor Johnson, "a fallible being will fail somewhere," So
+far as penetration, at least, is concerned, this is not true of Dean. He
+is never caught without his grains of salt.
+
+Dean believes nothing that he reads in newspapers. He is not caught, for
+one thing, believing anecdotes of celebrated persons. These anecdotes
+are pretty stories yearned for by a sentimental public. The public is
+amusing, composed as it is of simple, guileless people who know nothing
+of the world. Newspapers are concoctions of press agents, for the most
+part--bait for the gullible. A citizen of the word is Dean, and he has,
+alas! lost his innocence. This pleases him. You can't impose on Dean's
+credulity. He hasn't got any credulity. In this respect he has much the
+same effect upon his company as the Mark Twain dog that didn't have any
+hind legs had upon the mind of his antagonist. That dog was hardly a
+pleasure to his opponent. He was baffling.
+
+It is perhaps a man's misfortune that he should be so without delusions.
+Dean has found out there is no Santa Claus, in a manner of speaking,
+while the rest of us are yet humbugged. So while we may be pleased with
+our callings or our hobby-horses, our coins, or our cockle-shells, our
+drums, our fiddles, our pictures, our talents, our maggots and our
+butterflies, he can only shrug his shoulders and depreciate them to the
+best of his ability, saying that they are very poor cockle-shells, to be
+sure, though no man more than he deplores it that this is so. Though no
+doubt it must be a melancholy thing to feel so severely the failings of
+all, Dean's cavilings are cheerfully made always, and they come to us
+filtered through a humorous nature. And to do him justice, he is
+whimsically aware of his own idiosyncrasies, and readily acknowledges
+them as he sees them, which is in a mellow, kindly light. "Now I could
+never make money," he says humorously, as it were. But that is not the
+sum of life, he knows perhaps too well.
+
+He sees the vanity of it all, does Dean. He sees the vanity of all
+useful endeavor. He sees the vanity most of all perhaps, of success.
+What is this success we see around us, after all? What is the fame of
+this man, this Mr. So-and-So, but sensationalism? Of what the success of
+that other, but cheap notoriety, and a rich wife? They are both of them,
+very probably, at heart as miserable as Dean. Ah me! 'tis a profitless
+world, and there's no satisfaction in it anywhere. "Though probably you
+are hardly of an age to see it yet," says Dean, and he smiles at the
+juvenility of ambition. You will see it, however, when you too have
+failed.
+
+"In this age when every man you meet is a genius," says Dean--it amuses
+him that he is not of the many--"I have really seen only one really
+great man, and I have been compelled to know a good many of the geniuses
+too." This remarkable, unique gentleman, it appears, was an old
+sou'easter sawbuck of a codger up in the backwoods of Maine, where he
+lived hermit-wise in a shanty, being a squatter. When Dean met him
+there he felt instinctively that here he was before a _man_. Uncle Eli
+was old: he was a trifle filthy; he was addicted to drink; and not what
+you would call much good in any way. He was uncouth; a man with the bark
+on; one of nature's noblemen. He lacked culture, and education, and
+intelligence; but he had eye-teeth. Lord! He wasn't polite; he wasn't
+learned; but when it came to downright bull-headed horse-sense he
+knocked the socks of all of them. He was a philosopher, this old B'gosh
+half-idiot wreck. By George, he was, and a great one. He reminded Dean
+of Lincoln. Some of his philosophical splinters from the old rail, rough
+they were but ready, rather laid over the wisdom of Hercules himself.
+"Ef 'n ol' hoss wus a Billygoat mighty few Christians there be 'ud git
+to Heaven." That hits the nail on the head, Dean reckons.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+CRAMIS, PATRON OF ART
+
+
+"Have you got any tobacco?" I inquired of Cramis.
+
+"Sure," he replied, "I'm never without it."
+
+He is a slave to the weed, a hopeless smoker. He hands me his pouch; the
+tobacco is a little old and mildewed. When Cramis comes to visit me he
+always brings a most disreputable looking pipe along in his mouth,
+charred and cold. This he calls attention to, musingly, as it were, by
+remarking that "that looks natural."
+
+"I shouldn't have known you without it," I answer. Then we are the best
+of friends. An old Swede, an engineer of some rare sort, a whimsical
+fellow, quite a character--Cramis is greatly interested in
+characters--was much addicted to his pipe (so runs Cramis's story). It
+was a limb of his body. He was one of those inveterate smokers that you
+find here and there about the world. One day placards announcing that
+smoking was prohibited among employees in the building were posted at
+conspicuous places in the mill where Olie was employed. Olie went on
+smoking. The manager came through; he paused at Olie.
+
+"Look-a-here," he said, "don't you see that sign? No smoking among
+employees in this building." Olie slowly took the pipe from his mouth,
+regarding it thoughtfully in his out-stretched hand as he blew a great
+cloud of blue smoke.
+
+"Where my pipe goes," he said, replacing it between his teeth, "I goes."
+You may notice it: there is something of the same idiosyncrasy between
+that picturesque character and Cramis.
+
+For all the idler and the dilettante that he is, no man ever more
+conscientiously attended to business than Cramis. He is at it early and
+late. He is very successful. Yet he knows himself to be an impractical
+cuss, a dreamer, an aesthetic visionary. No man so thoroughly reliable
+was ever before so irresponsible.
+
+On his visits at my place, Cramis writes a great quantity of letters.
+All globe trotters do this, I suppose, whether it is necessary or not.
+It is only natural. If Cramis did not, many of his friends would not,
+no doubt, be aware that he was in Connecticut, or, indeed, that he ever
+got off the island of Manhattan.
+
+Though Cramis is by nature shrewd, saving, and methodically economical,
+he is very careless about money. He has no more idea of the value of it
+than Oliver Goldsmith. It is pitiful--yet lovable.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Among Cramis's curious circle of acquaintances--his collection of
+acquaintances is a regular menagerie, as he so often says--was a
+painter, a fellow twenty-four years old and with nobody to support him.
+Cramis believed, after carefully inquiring, that the fellow had talent
+and might amount to something. He loaned him money. The scoundrel
+squandered it, probably; at any rate, he bought no fame with it. That
+was a year ago, and Cramis is eight dollars out of pocket. Still, his
+heart is a brother to genius. He consulted me on the question of the
+very least amount upon which a man could live, the length of time at the
+smallest estimate wherein he could reasonably be expected to attain
+greatness, and was for setting the fellow up in a studio elsewhere. I
+pointed out to Cramis that it might possibly be years before the hungry
+man became famous, and he abandoned the idea. It was too great a risk.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+BARBER SHOPS AWESOME
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+To patronize barbers' shops is a trying affair. Nothing but a crying
+need of services obtained there can drive one who knows them well into
+one of them. When you enter a barber shop, a long row of barber's
+chairs, like a line of guns down the deck of a man-o'-war, stretching
+away in perspective, confronts you. Three barbers, say, are engaged with
+patrons; and they go calmly on. They are unaware of your existence. The
+rest have been enjoying newspapers and leisure. You interrupt them; and
+they spring, as one man, each to the head of his chair, and stand at
+attention. To find such a company of well-fed, well-groomed, better-men
+than-you-are suddenly at your service is disturbing; to have to insult
+all the others in your selection of one is an uncomfortable thought.
+They are all equally friendly toward you; but it is impossible for them
+all to shave you; you must turn against some of them. There is no
+retreat for you; you cannot turn around and go out. You choose the
+nearest man, as the only solution: and the others show their displeasure
+by returning to their seats. A fiend is in this man whom you have
+chosen; his suavity was a diabolical mask. He gloats in publicly
+humiliating you. He forces you to confess there before his "gang" that
+you do not want anything but a shave. You have brought this man from his
+newspaper simply to shave you! Now the number of things the barber
+manages to do to you against your desire is a measure of the resistant
+force of your character. You deny that you need a shampoo. There is no
+denying that your hair is falling out. There is no denying that you
+sometimes shave yourself. You need try to conceal nothing from this man.
+He sees quite through you. (You recall a certain Roundabout Paper.) He
+has Found You Out! All you ask is to be allowed to go. He washes your
+face for you and turns you out of the chair. You pass into the hands of
+a boy, the same boy you denied to polish your shoes, a boy that has his
+opinions, who plays the tune of "Yankee Doodle" on you with a
+whisk-broom very much as if he snapped his fingers in your face; and you
+may go.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+MUCH MARRIED STRATFORD
+
+
+What an excellent thing it is that Stratford is comfortably married. He
+is built for marriage. That is the life for him; a nice, quiet,
+wholesome, unexciting life of home comforts. Mr. and Mrs. Stratford
+dwell happily in a little nest called a cottage. Here they are
+surrounded by all the sundry and divers chattels and effects incident to
+the life they follow.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In order that he may be properly protected against the elements,
+Stratford is plentifully supplied with overshoes, earbobs, Storm King
+chest protectors, mufflers, and umbrellas. He arms himself with these
+instruments according to the precise demand of each different occasion.
+Going out into the weather is an undertaking, and an adventure,
+accompanied by hazardous risks. With Stratford, preparation for it is a
+system and a science. Sometimes, however, Stratford's judgment errs in
+the matter of precaution. One day last week Stratford went downtown.
+Yielding to his vanity on that day, he recklessly wore kid gloves
+instead of his mittens, which were so much more suited to the then
+prevailing inclement weather. Now he suffers from it. He has a cough,
+and is compelled to keep his breast goose-greased.
+
+Few people realize the importance of health, and the relation of diet to
+health. Pork is not wholesome. New potatoes are very hard to digest.
+Cream should never be eaten with peaches. This pernicious combination
+curdles. Stratford knows much more about these things than does the
+writer, which is fortunate for Stratford; the writer has only attempted
+to point out and warn you against a few of the most important, which he
+learned from Stratford. Stratford learned all this from experience. Last
+evening at dinner Stratford drank two cups of coffee. He did not sleep a
+wink all the night in consequence. Coffee is very bad for the nerves,
+very bad.
+
+It may be that there are many persons like the writer in not knowing how
+to serve coffee. The cream should always be put in the cup first, then
+the coffee poured on. Though you may not be aware of the fact, it
+absolutely ruins coffee to serve it any other way. It is better to put
+sugar on oatmeal after the cream is on. The writer does not know why;
+but it is better.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Though one would hardly suspect it, in his youth Stratford was
+considerable of a rake. He often tells the story. It appears that in a
+spirit of reckless dare-deviltry on an occasion Stratford partook of
+some spirituous liquor. Now Stratford has a tolerably strong head. But
+this wine--or was it cocktail?--proved almost too much for him. Ah,
+well! those wild and lawless days are past and gone. Stratford has
+reformed, and will not fill a drunkard's grave. No one, we hope,
+respects Stratford the less for having been a little wild. We all hate a
+milksop, you will agree.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+A HUMAN CASH REGISTER
+
+
+Across the table from a lodger sits Mr. Fife. Mr. Fife is a clerk. This
+statement comprises, not inadequately, his memoirs.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When a man speaks to you of the useful piece of mechanism called a cash
+register, you comprehend him perfectly. You know what a cash register
+is, for what purpose it was designed, how it looks, how much
+approximately it is worth, what it will perform, and what it will
+remain--a cash register. A cash register could not have been born a toy
+balloon, spent its youth as a bicycle, been educated as a pulpit, have
+imprudently married a footlight, been forced to obtain employment as a
+cash register, but cherishes a secret ambition to be a typewriter and
+solace itself in turn as a violin, a mug of ale, and a tobacco pipe. A
+lodger does not say that Mr. Fife is no better in any way than a cash
+register. A mother nursed him at her breast, watched him as he slept; he
+was somebody's baby. A grown man was strangely moved, probably, when he
+was born. He played somewhere as a child. Dirty little brothers and
+sisters, perhaps, were his. He was spanked and had diseases and suffered
+and was frightened and rejoiced. Hearts have been glad when he was near.
+One or two little girls, no doubt, have admired him very much. Some
+woman, probably somewhere, admires him still. A lodger does not say that
+Mr. Fife has no inner life. He does not say that the forces of existence
+constantly, ceaselessly beating in on this man (or rather clerk) are not
+here slowly, inevitably shaping a moral character, this way or that. But
+as this human life sits here at Mrs. Wigger's board a clerk is here,
+with his past and his future.
+
+Mr. Fife has a "furnished room" somewhere around on the next street, and
+only takes his meals at Mrs. Wigger's.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+IT STANDS TO REASON
+
+
+On the hotel porch a large, earnest man was delivering the argument. He
+poised his pipe in his hand; and, moving forward from period to period
+with judicial deliberation, choosing his words with care, building his
+sentences with a nice regard for precision, he constructed his
+exposition in logical sequence. He had time at his command; and, so he
+gripped his audience, was in no fear of interruption. "For instance, we
+will take, for instance, just for instance, do you understand? the
+little town of New York to represent the whole country. Well, here we
+have the little town of New York. Now, it stands to reason----" One who
+chanced to overhear passed beyond range.
+
+But what of the disquisition had been caught gave rise to an important
+reflection. When you examine the subject you find there are three
+fundamental phrases in arguing, in the dexterous use of which is
+largely constituted the talent of the born arguer. These home-driving
+phrases, which are his stock in trade, are: "It stands to reason,"
+"between man and man," and "that's human nature." With these, strongly
+used, one can do almost anything. "Does capital meet labor?" says the
+born arguer. "No; what is the consequence? It stands to reason. Labor
+goes to the wall." Or, again: "You take the generations we have now, the
+young people." He smokes a while in silence. "It's human nature," comes
+the philosophical conclusion. And when the arguer addresses his audience
+"as between man and man," when in this direct, blunt way all the
+frangipani of class and convention is cleared aside, and only their
+manhood stands between them, he has got at the bed-rock of argument.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+A THREE-RINGED CIRCUS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Our friend MacKeene is a very interesting person. One of his most
+pronounced characteristics is an assiduous striving on his part to
+increase his vocabulary. We are always made aware of any of his new
+acquisitions in this direction by its frequent repetition during a
+conversation, the loving way in which he appears to dwell upon it, to
+hug it to his heart, allow it gradually to mount to his throat, roll it
+in his mouth to suck its flavor, to send it forth at length, to watch it
+tenderly and admiringly (like a fine ring of tobacco smoke) until it
+loses itself in the flow of speech that comes after it. We relish this
+new word ourselves. It is like a play; it thrills our soul, and we sigh
+when it is gone--but we know it will come again many times before the
+night is passed.
+
+It has never been our fortune to see a man that enjoyed the show of life
+more than does MacKeene. He reads newspapers with a relish that is
+positively amazing; he smacks his lips over them; their contents are to
+him the headiest romance. MacKeene goes to the finest theater in the
+world every evening when he reads his penny paper. The anxiety with
+which he awaits the account of each new murder, swindle, election,
+disaster, marriage, or divorce of a special publicity, the mental
+agility with which he pounces upon it, the astonishing variety of points
+of view he can take of the thing, and the application with which he
+follows through successive installments the story to the very end, are
+delightful to behold.
+
+He invariably winds up his observations upon life with the comment that
+"it is a funny world; such funny people in it."
+
+True, or, rare MacKeene! It _is_ a funny world, and there _are_ such
+funny people in it! Everybody is queer but thee and us.
+
+The other evening, after he had devoured his newspaper and sat staring
+at the wall, we started him going by the remark:
+
+"Well, what's in the paper to-night, MacKeene?"
+
+"What's in the paper to-night?" cried he.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Everything is in the paper, everything--worlds of it--plays, skits,
+comedies, farces, tragedies, burlesques: material for the student, the
+historian, the author, the poet, the moralist, the humorist, much matter
+to be fast applauded for its slapstick good nature, and some bowed with
+leaden-eyed despair, some replete with rosy schemes, some of waxing
+hopes and sweet, unprofitable pipe dreams, some of many moneys, births,
+deaths, marriages and giving in marriages, loves, hatreds, wisdoms,
+follies, crimes, vices and virtues, heroisms, hypocrisies, arts,
+commercialism, surprises, bacchanals, hard exigencies, and poor resorts
+and petty contrivances. _Life_--ah! that's the boy--life and all its
+train of consequences, ringing in my ears, dancing before my eyes,
+crowding on the senses, a three-ringed circus in full blast, a roary,
+noisy, bloomin' spectacle, a mammoth aggregation of prodigious
+eye-openers and unparalleled splendors, with gorgeous hippodrome under
+perfect subjection, and a Casino Wonderland Musee of queer, peculiar,
+wild, domestic, instructing, funny, beautiful, horrible, and revolting
+curios and monstrosities of land, air, and sea."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+SNAPSHOTS IN X-RAY
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+What a terrible thing is the X-ray!
+
+Terrible?
+
+Listen. Contemplate the prospect of this invention's being brought into
+popular use, so that, say, anybody might have such an attachment to his
+kodak. In such case, science, which has been so powerful a force in
+refining the civilization of man, would by one stroke lay waste the
+whole of her handiwork. Civilized society would collapse.
+
+A German professor at one time went pretty well into the subject of
+clothes and the philosophy thereof, and reasoned among other things
+that society would instantly dissolve without them. Nothing could more
+vividly bear out this gentleman than contemplation of the possibilities
+of the Roentgen ray. It is an exciting prospect. A press of the button,
+and there would be Herr Teufelsdrockh's "straddling Parliament." But a
+thousand times more grotesque: gentlemen stripped not only of the
+tailored habiliment of the bodies, the symbols of their gentility, as it
+were, but of the fleshly garments of their frame, laying bare their
+mortality. And humorously, witheringly, for among the other distinctions
+man is said to possess above his brethren the beasts, being the only
+animal that laughs, and so forth, it is certainly true that of all
+creation he has the funniest skeleton. It would be the end. No candidate
+for public office would dare to come forth upon the platform. What stout
+lady could give a party?
+
+Unless, indeed, as would probably result, for the preservation of
+society the use and carrying of kodaks would be regulated, like the
+carrying of revolvers, by statute. To photograph a gentleman or lady on
+the street would be a criminal deed carrying a penalty of twenty years'
+imprisonment. For though ladies blessed by nature might not, in this
+lingerie-less, tube-skirt age, shrink from further perception of their
+loveliness, it is doubtful if any man could make love to a woman after
+having seen an effigy of her skeleton. To snap the President would be
+equivalent, in the eyes of the law, to assassinating him. To take an
+X-ray photograph of a fashionable assembly would be, like discharging a
+dynamite bomb in the midst, punishable with death.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+BACHELOR REMINISCENCES
+
+
+Sometimes my thoughts carry me away from my solitary strife with the
+world; back to my boyhood, when all men were not thieves and scoundrels,
+as they are now; back to my old home and my family, where we loved one
+another and did not, lynx-eyed, watch for a grip upon our neighbors'
+throats nor count our every friend as a possibility of our own
+advancement, and every favor we did another a business investment.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+In one such mood as this, on an evening, I was pleased, upon answering
+the knock at my door, to usher in my neighboring lodger Harrison. In
+reminiscence we would renew our youth; and to that purpose I started him
+off upon the desired track.
+
+Harrison poses as something of a philosopher, and he began with some of
+his customary rot.
+
+"Well," said he, "I have never known a man that talked at all upon the
+subject who did not follow a calling which was the most trying of all
+those at which men labor in this world, who did not have a most
+remarkably hard time in early life, and who did not fondly imagine that
+he was a very bad boy in his youth. These, I take it, are the three most
+familiar hallucinations in life. I am a victim to them myself. But I
+shall not regale you with them to-night. I was thinking of my own
+boyhood, the wickedness of it, and the happiness. Ah! boyhood, that is
+the happy time; girlhood may be, too--but I doubt it.
+
+"These many years have I been like poor Joe in 'Bleak House,' I must
+keep moving along; but when I was a boy I had a home. A strange word it
+is to me now. I am reminded of the old vaudeville 'stunt': Any old place
+I hang my hat is home, sweet home, to me. I follow a trunk about the
+world, and a devil of a globe-trotter of a trunk it is.
+
+"But when I was a boy," continued Harrison, the lines in his face
+softened--and he somehow just now looked very like a boy--"I had a home;
+there the board was always paid." The lines came back in his face for an
+instant, then faded away again. "There in the winter it was always
+warm," he said, looking very hard at my small fire. "There we had great
+feasting and drinking." I could not but notice how spare he was now.
+"There were noise and romping," and the softness of his voice now
+emphasized the extreme desertedness of my chambers. "There were brothers
+and sisters. Did you ever have a brother?" he asked me rather suddenly.
+
+I replied that I never did.
+
+"Or a sister?" he inquired.
+
+I said "No."
+
+He looked at me with a sort of annoying pity.
+
+"I hope," he said rather irritatedly, "that you had a mother?"
+
+I replied that I had had, but I did not see why we should fight about
+it.
+
+"Now, don't lose your temper, old man," said Harrison. "You're such an
+incorrigible old dope, you know, such a cynical, confirmed old bachelor
+of a bohemian, I mean; so contented with this lonesome, vagabond life,
+that I hardly think you ever had a real, happy, wholesome boyhood home.
+By the way, did you ever have a boyhood?" he asked with something very
+near to a sneer.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Now, look here," I said, "if you had such an insufferable home, why
+didn't you stay there and make your own family miserable instead of
+wandering about the world bemoaning your fate, wishing yourself back
+there, and insulting people who are not moved by ties of relationship to
+be tolerant with your spleen? And who won't be," I added, rising.
+
+"You're a fool," said Harrison, as he banged the door.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+A TESTIMONIAL
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+For years I was a great sufferer from insomnia. At one time this dread
+scourge had so fastened its terrible fangs upon me that I could scarcely
+walk. My body became one mass of sleeplessness; I tried many remedies,
+but without avail, and my friends had all given me up for dead when by
+chance from a mere acquaintance I heard of this great cure which I would
+recommend to all who are afflicted as I was.
+
+I remember with horror the tortures I used to endure in agony as I
+tossed to and fro on the hot pillow, going over in my fevered mind
+interminably the formulas of the so-called reliefs from this peerless
+disease. An unconscionable number of times I numbered a round of sheep
+over a stile. I counted up to ten, over and over again; and then up to
+fifteen, and then twenty, twenty-five, thirty, fifty, only to craze
+myself with the thought of the futility of this lunacy. I heard my
+dollar watch tick on the dresser, until in madness I arose and placed it
+on the restraining pad of a clothes-brush. I heard the clock in the next
+room relentlessly tell the passing hours; I heard a neighboring public
+clock follow it through the watches of the night. I heard my happy
+neighbor snore. I heard the sound of rats near by, and the creaking of
+floors, and the voice of the wind. I tried bathing my feet before going
+to bed. I tried eating a light lunch. I tried intoxicating liquors. But
+always I stared through the blackness of the fearful night until an
+eerie color tinged my window, and then the dawn came up like thunder
+across the bay.
+
+It was when my spirit had become worn through my body like elbows
+through the sleeve of an old coat that I heard the remarkable recipe for
+insomnia: Think of the top of your head. That is what I was told to do.
+"Think of the top of your head," I said to myself with some disdain in
+the awful grip of the night; "now how in thunder do you think of the top
+of your head?"
+
+"Do you think of your hair?" I asked, turning my eyeballs upward in
+their sockets. "Do you think of that lightly hidden baldness?" striving
+to put my mind, so to say, on the top of my head. "How the
+Dickens-can-you-think-of----" but a drowsy numbness pained my sense as
+though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
+one minute past, and Lethewards had sunk. And I dreamed that quite
+plainly, as though it were some other fellow's, I saw the top of my
+head.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+FRAGRANT WITH PERFUME
+
+
+Mr. Duff is the tenant of the second floor front. His wife has been
+away. Mr. Duff himself may be encountered about in the halls. He is a
+large man with a considerable girth and a face that one knows to be
+youthful for his age; he cannot be under thirty.
+
+Recently the second floor hall became fragrant with the odor of perfume.
+Mrs. Duff, presumably, had returned. Yes, Mrs. Duff was at the
+telephone. She calls, "Hello!" very sweetly, in two syllables. Mr.
+Duff's first name, it appears, is Walter, pronounced by his doting wife
+also in two syllables, "Wal-ter." Mrs. Duff bleats, it seems, in two
+syllables. Mr. Duff's middle name evidently is "Hon-ey."
+
+Mrs. Duff said over the telephone that she "had been ba-ad." She said
+it, or, so sweetly. She had, she said, taken a little walk and had
+stayed "too long" and she had been away when he had called her up. But
+she had had the "best little time." She was going to work now, "oh! so
+ha-rd." She was going to clean out the bureau drawers and "that little
+box," and unpack her trunk and put away her things. No, she would be
+careful not to overwork herself. She would see him, Walter Honey Duff,
+when he came home from work. "Good-by, little boy," she said.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Then she called up a creamery. She wanted the creamery to send her,
+please, a pint of milk, and the smallest jar it had of cream cheese. How
+soon could those be sent, please? Oh-h! not till then? Well, she
+supposed she would have to wait.
+
+The second floor hall is fragrant with the odor of perfume.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+WOULDN'T LOOK AT HIM
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+"They say," remarked the portly man with several double chins on the
+back of his neck, "that the Duke is over in the Library."
+
+"I wouldn't walk across the street to see him," said a shabby
+individual, helping himself to a cracker.
+
+"He's no better than any other man," said the bar-boy.
+
+"I wouldn't look at him if they brought him in to me," announced an
+aggressive-looking character.
+
+Now this was a remark rich in pictorial suggestion. It was eloquent
+with dramatic evocation. One instantly imagines the striking scene; the
+duke is dragged in; the aggressive-looking character is called upon to
+look at him; this he refuses to do.
+
+"He breathes the same kind of air we do, don't he?" pointedly inquired
+the shabby individual.
+
+"I guess that's right enough, too!" exclaimed the bar-boy.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+CONNUBIAL FELICITY
+
+
+I've got a fine wife, too. I tell you, Bob, there's nothin' better can
+happen to a feller than to get the right woman. I don't care for battin'
+around any more now. Nothin' I like any better than to go home to my
+flat at night, take off my shoes and put on my slippers, and listen to
+my wife play the piano. My wife is musical, vocal and instrumental. Her
+vocal is on a par with her instrumental. I like music. I always said if
+ever I got married I'd marry, a wife that was musical. I ain't educated
+in music, exactly, but I've an ear. A feller told me,--Doc. Hoff, a
+mighty smart man, I'd like you to know him, his talk sometimes it would
+take a college professor to understand it,--he says to me, "I'm no
+phrenologist but I can see you've got an ear for music."
+
+My wife is an aristocrat. When I married her, Thunder! I had no polish,
+that is to speak of. You know that, Bob. My talk was the vernacular. My
+wife's an Episcopalian. She asked me if I had any objection to the
+Episcopal ceremony for marrying. I said I didn't have no religion;
+anything would suit me so long as it was legal. I had fifteen hundred
+dollars to the good. I don't know how I come to have it. I oughtn't to
+have, by rights. Some of these book makers ought to have had it,
+accordin' to the life I led. But I did have it, anyhow. I took three
+hundred dollars and got a sweet of drawing room furniture--Louie
+fourteenth, or fifteenth, they call it, I forget which. Then I got a
+mahogany table, solid parts through, for our dining room, and some what
+they call Chippendale chairs. I got a darn good library up there, too.
+
+My wife don't say "and so forth"; she says "and caetera."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+A FRIEND, INDEED
+
+
+He was a sturdy-looking little man, with a square, honest face, and an
+upright manner, to put it so. He seemed to be a Swede. His companion had
+something the look of Mr. Heep, and he wore a cap.
+
+"Yes, sir, Will," said his companion, "I'd like to see you own that
+piece of property. I would. If you owned that piece of property, Will,
+then you see you'd have something. You'd have something, Will. Something
+you could always call your own, Will."
+
+"Do you think it's good land?" said Will.
+
+"Oh, yes," said his companion; "that's a very fine piece of land, Will.
+I know every bit of it. I've worked up there, Will."
+
+"Rocky?" asked Will.
+
+"Oh, no, Will; there's hardly a rock on it."
+
+"How far now does it come down this way?" inquired Will musingly.
+
+"Down the hill, Will?" asked his companion, with great attention.
+
+"Yes," said Will.
+
+"Well, now as to that," said the other, casting his face upward in
+thought, "I couldn't just exactly say."
+
+"Down to the oak tree, don't it?" said Will.
+
+"That's right, Will!" exclaimed the other, in delighted recognition of
+the fact. "Down to the oak tree, Will. You're right, Will."
+
+"And how far would you say," asked Will thoughtfully, "does it run back
+in?"
+
+"Run back in, Will?" said the other as though in surprise. "Well, now
+you know, Will," shaking his head in doubt, "it's been some time since I
+was up there, Will."
+
+"It goes back as far as the big rock, don't you think?" said Will,
+thinking hard.
+
+"Back to the big rock, Will!" cried the other eagerly. "That's right,
+Will. You're right! Back to the big rock, Will!"
+
+"What's the name of those people who own the land just this way?" Will
+asked, looking hard into his mind.
+
+"Well, now, Will, I can't just bring to mind the name of those people,"
+answered the other, looking equally hard, apparently, into his own
+mind.
+
+"Smithers, ain't it?" said Will, gropingly.
+
+"Smithers is the name!" ejaculated the other. "You're right, Will!
+That's it! Smithers! You're right, Will! Nice people, too, Will!"
+
+"Well, I don't think though that I'll get that land, after all," said
+Will, in the manner of a man who has at length arrived at a decision.
+
+"Well, of course, Will," said his companion, nodding his head up and
+down, "property is a great care. I don't know that you're not right,
+Will. Property's a great care, Will; you're right about that, Will. You
+can do better, Will. You're right about that!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Peeps at People, by Robert Cortes Holliday
+
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