diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:22:09 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:22:09 -0700 |
| commit | 2cf20ba7bea5fa906fe4109ce637330b4629c01a (patch) | |
| tree | 71c5ce2a255f2a792f033557519f65ef1f3b032e | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 3707-0.txt | 7018 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 3707-0.zip | bin | 0 -> 141997 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 3707-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 297030 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 3707-h/3707-h.htm | 9670 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 3707-h/images/frontis.jpg | bin | 0 -> 120592 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/20010730.zip | bin | 0 -> 140833 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/20040604-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 140522 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/20040604-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 142951 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/20040604.zip | bin | 0 -> 140475 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/3707-8.txt | 7246 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/3707-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 141139 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/3707.txt | 7246 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/3707.zip | bin | 0 -> 141101 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/tlamp10.txt | 7239 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/tlamp10.zip | bin | 0 -> 140324 bytes |
18 files changed, 38435 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3707-0.txt b/3707-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cec2854 --- /dev/null +++ b/3707-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7018 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Trimmed Lamp, by O. Henry + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: The Trimmed Lamp + And Other Stories of the Four Million + +Author: O. Henry + +Release Date: July 30, 2001 [eBook #3707] +[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Charles Franks, Greg Weeks, the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP *** + + + + +[Illustration: +“Wooed her across the counter +with a King Cophetua air.”] + + + + +THE +TRIMMED LAMP + +AND OTHER STORIES OF +THE FOUR MILLION + +BY +O. HENRY + +_Author of “The Four Million,” “The Voice of the +City,” “Strictly Business,” “Whirligigs,” +“Sixes and Sevens,” Etc._ + + +CONTENTS + +THE TRIMMED LAMP +A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT +THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL +THE PENDULUM +TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN +THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS +THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY +THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O’ROON +BRICKDUST ROW +THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER +VANITY AND SOME SABLES +THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE +THE PURPLE DRESS +THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 +THE LOST BLEND +A HARLEM TRAGEDY +“THE GUILTY PARTY”—AN EAST SIDE TRAGEDY +ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS +A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT’S DREAM +THE LAST LEAF +THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST +THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION +THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT +THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER +ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + + + +THE TRIMMED LAMP + + +Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the +other. We often hear “shop-girls” spoken of. No such persons exist. +There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But +why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not +refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as “marriage-girls.” + +Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work +because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. Nancy +was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, country girls +who had no ambition to go on the stage. + +The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and +respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became +wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months that +I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them. Meddlesome +Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou. While you are shaking +hands please take notice—cautiously—of their attire. Yes, cautiously; +for they are as quick to resent a stare as a lady in a box at the horse +show is. + +Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a +badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too long; +but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts will be +ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over. Her cheeks +are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment radiates from +her. + +Nancy you would call a shop-girl—because you have the habit. There is +no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so this is +what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, and the +exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the correct +flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air, but she wears +her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though it were Persian lamb! +On her face and in her eyes, remorseless type-seeker, is the typical +shop-girl expression. It is a look of silent but contemptuous revolt +against cheated womanhood; of sad prophecy of the vengeance to come. +When she laughs her loudest the look is still there. The same look can +be seen in the eyes of Russian peasants; and those of us left will see +it some day on Gabriel’s face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look +that should wither and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it +and offer flowers—with a string tied to them. + +Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou’s cheery “See +you again,” and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, somehow, +to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the housetops +to the stars. + +The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou’s steady company. +Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a dozen +subpoena servers to find her lamb. + +“Ain’t you cold, Nance?” said Lou. “Say, what a chump you are for +working in that old store for $8 a week! I made $18.50 last week. Of +course ironing ain’t as swell work as selling lace behind a counter, +but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I don’t know +that it’s any less respectful work, either.” + +“You can have it,” said Nancy, with uplifted nose. “I’ll take my eight +a week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and swell +people. And look what a chance I’ve got! Why, one of our glove girls +married a Pittsburg—steel maker, or blacksmith or something—the other +day worth a million dollars. I’ll catch a swell myself some time. I +ain’t bragging on my looks or anything; but I’ll take my chances where +there’s big prizes offered. What show would a girl have in a laundry?” + +“Why, that’s where I met Dan,” said Lou, triumphantly. “He came in for +his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board, ironing. We +all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis was sick that +day, and I had her place. He said he noticed my arms first, how round +and white they was. I had my sleeves rolled up. Some nice fellows come +into laundries. You can tell ’em by their bringing their clothes in +suit cases; and turning in the door sharp and sudden.” + +“How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?” said Nancy, gazing down at +the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. “It +shows fierce taste.” + +“This waist?” cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. “Why, I paid $16 +for this waist. It’s worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be +laundered, and never called for it. The boss sold it to me. It’s got +yards and yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that ugly, +plain thing you’ve got on.” + +“This ugly, plain thing,” said Nancy, calmly, “was copied from one that +Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in the +store last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me $1.50. Ten +feet away you couldn’t tell it from hers.” + +“Oh, well,” said Lou, good-naturedly, “if you want to starve and put on +airs, go ahead. But I’ll take my job and good wages; and after hours +give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able to buy.” + +But just then Dan came—a serious young man with a ready-made necktie, +who had escaped the city’s brand of frivolity—an electrician earning 30 +dollars per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo, and +thought her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should delight to +be caught. + +“My friend, Mr. Owens—shake hands with Miss Danforth,” said Lou. + +“I’m mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth,” said Dan, with +outstretched hand. “I’ve heard Lou speak of you so often.” + +“Thanks,” said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool +ones, “I’ve heard her mention you—a few times.” + +Lou giggled. + +“Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?” she +asked. + +“If I did, you can feel safe in copying it,” said Nancy. + +“Oh, I couldn’t use it, at all. It’s too stylish for me. It’s intended +to set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I get a few and +then I’ll try it.” + +“Learn it first,” said Nancy wisely, “and you’ll be more likely to get +the rings.” + +“Now, to settle this argument,” said Dan, with his ready, cheerful +smile, “let me make a proposition. As I can’t take both of you up to +Tiffany’s and do the right thing, what do you say to a little +vaudeville? I’ve got the tickets. How about looking at stage diamonds +since we can’t shake hands with the real sparklers?” + +The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a +little peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the inside, +slender, and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the true Van +Alstyne Fisher walk—thus they set out for their evening’s moderate +diversion. + +I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an +educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was +something like that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things that +breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere of +luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another’s. + +The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and +position in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them Nancy +began to take toll—the best from each according to her view. + +From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an +eloquent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of +carrying a purse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing +“inferiors in station.” From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van Alstyne +Fisher, she made requisition for that excellent thing, a soft, low +voice as clear as silver and as perfect in articulation as the notes of +a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social refinement and good +breeding, it was impossible for her to escape a deeper effect of it. As +good habits are said to be better than good principles, so, perhaps, +good manners are better than good habits. The teachings of your parents +may not keep alive your New England conscience; but if you sit on a +straight-back chair and repeat the words “prisms and pilgrims” forty +times the devil will flee from you. And when Nancy spoke in the Van +Alstyne Fisher tones she felt the thrill of _noblesse oblige_ to her +very bones. + +There was another source of learning in the great departmental school. +Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch and jingle +their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently frivolous +conversation, do not think that they are there for the purpose of +criticizing the way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting may lack the +dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; but it has all the +importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first daughter first +put their heads together to make Adam understand his proper place in +the household. It is Woman’s Conference for Common Defense and Exchange +of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse upon and against the +World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience who Persists in Throwing +Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most helpless of the young of any +animal—with the fawn’s grace but without its fleetness; with the bird’s +beauty but without its power of flight; with the honey-bee’s burden of +sweetness but without its—Oh, let’s drop that simile—some of us may +have been stung. + +During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and +exchange stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the +tactics of life. + +“I says to ’im,” says Sadie, “ain’t you the fresh thing! Who do you +suppose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what do you +think he says back to me?” + +The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the +answer is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be +used by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, man. + +Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful defense +means victory. + +The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other +college could have fitted her as well for her life’s ambition—the +drawing of a matrimonial prize. + +Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near +enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the best +composers—at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for +appreciation in the social world in which she was vaguely trying to set +a tentative and aspiring foot. She absorbed the educating influence of +art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of adornments that are almost +culture to women. + +The other girls soon became aware of Nancy’s ambition. “Here comes your +millionaire, Nancy,” they would call to her whenever any man who looked +the rôle approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were +hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to +the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy’s +imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. +Many men thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may +have been millionaires; others were certainly no more than their +sedulous apes. Nancy learned to discriminate. There was a window at the +end of the handkerchief counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles +waiting for the shoppers in the street below. She looked and perceived +that automobiles differ as well as do their owners. + +Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and wooed +her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had gone one +of the girls said: + +“What’s wrong, Nance, that you didn’t warm up to that fellow. He looks +the swell article, all right, to me.” + +“Him?” said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van +Alstyne Fisher smile; “not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12 +H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of +handkerchiefs he bought—silk! And he’s got dactylis on him. Give me the +real thing or nothing, if you please.” + +Two of the most “refined” women in the store—a forelady and a +cashier—had a few “swell gentlemen friends” with whom they now and then +dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner took place +in a spectacular café whose tables are engaged for New Year’s eve a +year in advance. There were two “gentlemen friends”—one without any +hair on his head—high living ungrew it; and we can prove it—the other a +young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed upon you in two +convincing ways—he swore that all the wine was corked; and he wore +diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived irresistible +excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and here was one +that added the voice and manners of his high social world to the +franker charms of her own caste. So, on the following day, he appeared +in the store and made her a serious proposal of marriage over a box of +hem-stitched, grass-bleached Irish linens. Nancy declined. A brown +pompadour ten feet away had been using her eyes and ears. When the +rejected suitor had gone she heaped carboys of upbraidings and horror +upon Nancy’s head. + +“What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow’s a millionaire—he’s +a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level, +too. Have you gone crazy, Nance?” + +“Have I?” said Nancy. “I didn’t take him, did I? He isn’t a millionaire +so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him +$20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him about it +the other night at supper.” + +The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes. + +“Say, what do you want?” she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of +chewing-gum. “Ain’t that enough for you? Do you want to be a Mormon, +and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and the +whole bunch? Ain’t $20,000 a year good enough for you?” + +Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow eyes. + +“It wasn’t altogether the money, Carrie,” she explained. “His friend +caught him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was about some +girl he said he hadn’t been to the theater with. Well, I can’t stand a +liar. Put everything together—I don’t like him; and that settles it. +When I sell out it’s not going to be on any bargain day. I’ve got to +have something that sits up in a chair like a man, anyhow. Yes, I’m +looking out for a catch; but it’s got to be able to do something more +than make a noise like a toy bank.” + +“The physiopathic ward for yours!” said the brown pompadour, walking +away. + +These high ideas, if not ideals—Nancy continued to cultivate on $8. per +week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown “catch,” eating +her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her face was the +faint, soldierly, sweet, grim smile of the preordained man-hunter. The +store was her forest; and many times she raised her rifle at game that +seemed broad-antlered and big; but always some deep unerring +instinct—perhaps of the huntress, perhaps of the woman—made her hold +her fire and take up the trail again. + +Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid $6. +for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her +opportunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared +with Nancy’s. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, work +and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly and +showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her growing +fondness for dress was thus transmitted to her through the conducting +metal. + +When the day’s work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful +shadow in whatever light she stood. + +Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou’s clothes that +increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no +disloyalty; he deprecated the attention they called to her in the +streets. + +And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy +should go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore the +extra burden heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that Lou +furnished the color, Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the +distraction-seeking trio. The escort, in his neat but obviously +ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing, genial, ready-made +wit never startled or clashed. He was of that good kind that you are +likely to forget while they are present, but remember distinctly after +they are gone. + +To Nancy’s superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures was +sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a gourmand, +when it cannot be a gourmet. + +“Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away,” Lou told her once. +“But why should I? I’m independent. I can do as I please with the money +I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on working afterward. +And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old store for, and +half starve and half dress yourself? I could get you a place in the +laundry right now if you’d come. It seems to me that you could afford +to be a little less stuck-up if you could make a good deal more money.” + +“I don’t think I’m stuck-up, Lou,” said Nancy, “but I’d rather live on +half rations and stay where I am. I suppose I’ve got the habit. It’s +the chance that I want. I don’t expect to be always behind a counter. +I’m learning something new every day. I’m right up against refined and +rich people all the time—even if I do only wait on them; and I’m not +missing any pointers that I see passing around.” + +“Caught your millionaire yet?” asked Lou with her teasing laugh. + +“I haven’t selected one yet,” answered Nancy. “I’ve been looking them +over.” + +“Goodness! the idea of picking over ’em! Don’t you ever let one get by +you Nance—even if he’s a few dollars shy. But of course you’re +joking—millionaires don’t think about working girls like us.” + +“It might be better for them if they did,” said Nancy, with cool +wisdom. “Some of us could teach them how to take care of their money.” + +“If one was to speak to me,” laughed Lou, “I know I’d have a duck-fit.” + +“That’s because you don’t know any. The only difference between swells +and other people is you have to watch ’em closer. Don’t you think that +red silk lining is just a little bit too bright for that coat, Lou?” + +Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend. + +“Well, no I don’t—but it may seem so beside that faded-looking thing +you’ve got on.” + +“This jacket,” said Nancy, complacently, “has exactly the cut and fit +of one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day. The +material cost me $3.98. I suppose hers cost about $100. more.” + +“Oh, well,” said Lou lightly, “it don’t strike me as millionaire bait. +Shouldn’t wonder if I catch one before you do, anyway.” + +Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values of +the theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain pride +and fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with girls +working for the barest living, thumped away gaily with her iron in the +noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the +point of comfort; so that her dress profited until sometimes she cast a +sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but inelegant apparel of +Dan—Dan the constant, the immutable, the undeviating. + +As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels +and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world of +good-breeding and taste—these were made for woman; they are her +equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life to +her, and if she will. She is no traitor to herself, as Esau was; for +she keeps her birthright and the pottage she earns is often very scant. + +In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her +frugal meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined and +contented mind. She already knew woman; and she was studying man, the +animal, both as to his habits and eligibility. Some day she would bring +down the game that she wanted; but she promised herself it would be +what seemed to her the biggest and the best, and nothing smaller. + +Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bridegroom +when he should come. + +But, another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard of +values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew +blurred in her mind’s eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled +such words as “truth” and “honor” and now and then just “kindness.” Let +us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk in some mighty +wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, where a rill +trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these times the spear +of Nimrod himself grows blunt. + +So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at its +market value by the hearts that it covered. + +One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth +Avenue westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and Dan +to a musical comedy. + +Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was a +queer, strained look on his face. + +“I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her,” he +said. + +“Heard from who?” asked Nancy. “Isn’t Lou there?” + +“I thought you knew,” said Dan. “She hasn’t been here or at the house +where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from there. She +told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going to Europe.” + +“Hasn’t anybody seen her anywhere?” asked Nancy. + +Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in his +steady gray eyes. + +“They told me in the laundry,” he said, harshly, “that they saw her +pass yesterday—in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I +suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about.” + +For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand that +trembled slightly on Dan’s sleeve. + +“You’ve no right to say such a thing to me, Dan—as if I had anything to +do with it!” + +“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his +vest pocket. + +“I’ve got the tickets for the show to-night,” he said, with a gallant +show of lightness. “If you—” + +Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it. + +“I’ll go with you, Dan,” she said. + +Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again. + +At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the +border of a little quiet park. She heard her name called, and wheeled +about in time to catch Lou rushing into her arms. + +After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do, +ready to attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on +their swift tongues. And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had +descended upon Lou, manifesting itself in costly furs, flashing gems, +and creations of the tailors’ art. + +“You little fool!” cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. “I see you are +still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how about that +big catch you were going to make—nothing doing yet, I suppose?” + +And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity had +descended upon Nancy—something that shone brighter than gems in her +eyes and redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced like +electricity anxious to be loosed from the tip of her tongue. + +“Yes, I’m still in the store,” said Nancy, “but I’m going to leave it +next week. I’ve made my catch—the biggest catch in the world. You won’t +mind now Lou, will you?—I’m going to be married to Dan—to Dan!—he’s my +Dan now—why, Lou!” + +Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, +smooth-faced young policemen that are making the force more +endurable—at least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur +coat, and diamond-ringed hands crouching down against the iron fence of +the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender, plainly-dressed working +girl leaned close, trying to console her. But the Gibsonian cop, being +of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice, for he was wise +enough to know that these matters are beyond help so far as the power +he represents is concerned, though he rap the pavement with his +nightstick till the sound goes up to the furthermost stars. + + + + +A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT + + +To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips brought +the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there were two +items bearing the same foreign postmark. + +One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The +other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, +absorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and it +contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered with +innuendoes concerning the photographed woman. + +Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out +his expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal +from the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts when +he is housed in a jungle of doubt. + +By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an enchanted +one. For sixteen feet he could travel along it; three thousand miles +was beyond its power to aid. + +Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a +well-oiled genie. + +“Will you dine here, sir, or out?” he asked. + +“Here,” said Chalmers, “and in half an hour.” He listened glumly to the +January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty street. + +“Wait,” he said to the disappearing genie. “As I came home across the +end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There was one +mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in rows, and +why are they there?” + +“They are homeless men, sir,” said Phillips. “The man standing on the +box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come around to +listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the money will pay +for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in rows; they get +sent to bed in order as they come.” + +“By the time dinner is served,” said Chalmers, “have one of those men +here. He will dine with me.” + +“W-w-which—,” began Phillips, stammering for the first time during his +service. + +“Choose one at random,” said Chalmers. “You might see that he is +reasonably sober—and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be held +against him. That is all.” + +It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But on +that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to +melancholy. Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored and +Arabian, he must have to lighten his mood. + +On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the lamp. +The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the delectable +dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily in the glow of +the pink-shaded candles. + +And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal—or held in charge a +burglar—wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the line +of mendicant lodgers. + +It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be used +here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through fire. +Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting hulk. His +face and hands had been recently washed—a rite insisted upon by +Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In the +candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the +apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes with +a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter’s coat. Phillips’s comb had +failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and conformed to the +contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were full of a hopeless, +tricky defiance like that seen in a cur’s that is cornered by his +tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, but a quarter inch of +redeeming collar showed above it. His manner was singularly free from +embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his chair across the round dining +table. + +“If you will oblige me,” said the host, “I will be glad to have your +company at dinner.” + +“My name is Plumer,” said the highway guest, in harsh and aggressive +tones. “If you’re like me, you like to know the name of the party +you’re dining with.” + +“I was going on to say,” continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, “that +mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?” + +Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide the +chair beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended boards +before. Phillips set out the anchovies and olives. + +“Good!” barked Plumer; “going to be in courses, is it? All right, my +jovial ruler of Bagdad. I’m your Scheherezade all the way to the +toothpicks. You’re the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor I’ve +struck since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I +finished counting, just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me to +the feast. I had about as much chance of getting a bed to-night as I +have of being the next President. How will you have the sad story of my +life, Mr. Al Raschid—a chapter with each course or the whole edition +with the cigars and coffee?” + +“The situation does not seem a novel one to you,” said Chalmers with a +smile. + +“By the chin whiskers of the prophet—no!” answered the guest. “New +York’s as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas. I’ve +been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my head twenty +times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something for nothing! They +spell curiosity and charity with the same set of building blocks. Lots +of ’em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; and a few of ’em will +play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; but every one of ’em will +stand over you till they screw your autobiography out of you with foot +notes, appendix and unpublished fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I +see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I +strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel +yarns for my supper. I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who +was forced to hand out vocal harmony for his pre-digested wheaterina +and spoopju.” + +“I do not ask your story,” said Chalmers. “I tell you frankly that it +was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to dine +with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity of +mine.” + +“Oh, fudge!” exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his soup; +“I don’t mind it a bit. I’m a regular Oriental magazine with a red +cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. In fact, we +fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate for things of this +sort. Somebody’s always stopping and wanting to know what brought us +down so low in the world. For a sandwich and a glass of beer I tell ’em +that drink did it. For corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I +give ’em the hard-hearted-landlord—six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job +story. A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street +tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This is the +first spread of this kind I’ve stumbled against. I haven’t got a story +to fit it. I’ll tell you what, Mr. Chalmers, I’m going to tell you the +truth for this, if you’ll listen to it. It’ll be harder for you to +believe than the made-up ones.” + +An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction +while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table. + +“Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?” he asked, with a strange smile. + +“I remember the name,” said Chalmers. “He was a painter, I think, of a +good deal of prominence a few years ago.” + +“Five years,” said the guest. “Then I went down like a chunk of lead. +I’m Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for $2,000. +After that I couldn’t have found a sitter for a gratis picture.” + +“What was the trouble?” Chalmers could not resist asking. + +“Funny thing,” answered Plumer, grimly. “Never quite understood it +myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd +and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a +fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever I +finished a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and look +queerly at one another.” + +“I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing out +in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. I don’t +know how I did it—I painted what I saw—but I know it did me. Some of my +sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their pictures. I painted +the portrait of a very beautiful and popular society dame. When it was +finished her husband looked at it with a peculiar expression on his +face, and the next week he sued for divorce.” + +“I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I had +his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his came in +to look at it. ‘Bless me,’ says he, ‘does he really look like that?” I +told him it was considered a faithful likeness. ‘I never noticed that +expression about his eyes before,’ said he; ‘I think I’ll drop downtown +and change my bank account.’ He did drop down, but the bank account was +gone and so was Mr. Banker. + +“It wasn’t long till they put me out of business. People don’t want +their secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile and twist +their own faces and deceive you, but the picture can’t. I couldn’t get +an order for another picture, and I had to give up. I worked as a +newspaper artist for a while, and then for a lithographer, but my work +with them got me into the same trouble. If I drew from a photograph my +drawing showed up characteristics and expressions that you couldn’t +find in the photo, but I guess they were in the original, all right. +The customers raised lively rows, especially the women, and I never +could hold a job long. So I began to rest my weary head upon the breast +of Old Booze for comfort. And pretty soon I was in the free-bed line +and doing oral fiction for hand-outs among the food bazaars. Does the +truthful statement weary thee, O Caliph? I can turn on the Wall Street +disaster stop if you prefer, but that requires a tear, and I’m afraid I +can’t hustle one up after that good dinner.” + +“No, no,” said Chalmers, earnestly, “you interest me very much. Did all +of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there some that +did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?” + +“Some? Yes,” said Plumer. “Children generally, a good many women and a +sufficient number of men. All people aren’t bad, you know. When they +were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don’t explain +it, but I’m telling you facts.” + +On Chalmers’s writing-table lay the photograph that he had received +that day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at work +making a sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the artist +rose and stretched wearily. + +“It’s done,” he yawned. “You’ll excuse me for being so long. I got +interested in the job. Lordy! but I’m tired. No bed last night, you +know. Guess it’ll have to be good night now, O Commander of the +Faithful!” + +Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills into +his hand. + +“Oh! I’ll take ’em,” said Plumer. “All that’s included in the fall. +Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I shall sleep on feathers +to-night and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won’t turn out to be a dream in +the morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!” + +Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as far +from the table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would permit. +Twice, thrice, he tried to approach it, but failed. He could see the +dun and gold and brown of the colors, but there was a wall about it +built by his fears that kept him at a distance. He sat down and tried +to calm himself. He sprang up and rang for Phillips. + +“There is a young artist in this building,” he said. “—a Mr. +Reineman—do you know which is his apartment?” + +“Top floor, front, sir,” said Phillips. + +“Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few +minutes.” + +Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself. + +“Mr. Reineman,” said he, “there is a little pastel sketch on yonder +table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to its +artistic merits and as a picture.” + +The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch. Chalmers +half turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair. + +“How—do—you find it?” he asked, slowly. + +“As a drawing,” said the artist, “I can’t praise it enough. It’s the +work of a master—bold and fine and true. It puzzles me a little; I +haven’t seen any pastel work near as good in years.” + +“The face, man—the subject—the original—what would you say of that?” + +“The face,” said Reineman, “is the face of one of God’s own angels. May +I ask who—” + +“My wife!” shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the astonished +artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. “She is traveling in +Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture of your life from +it and leave the price to me.” + + + + +THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL + + +This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance +lecture and the “Bartender’s Guide.” Relative to the latter, drink +shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to the +former, not an elbow shall be crooked. + +Bob Babbitt was “off the stuff.” Which means—as you will discover by +referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia—that he had “cut out +the booze;” that he was “on the water wagon.” The reason for Bob’s +sudden attitude of hostility toward the “demon rum”—as the white +ribboners miscall whiskey (see the “Bartender’s Guide”), should be of +interest to reformers and saloon-keepers. + +There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or +acknowledge that he was ever drunk. But when a man will say (in the apt +words of the phrase-distiller), “I had a beautiful skate on last +night,” you will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for +him. + +One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar that +he liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there from the +downtown offices whom he knew. And then there would be high-balls and +stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little late but feeling +good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil Company. On this +evening as he entered he heard some one say: “Babbitt was in last night +as full as a boiled owl.” + +Babbitt walked to the bar, and saw in the mirror that his face was as +white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the eyes. +Others had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was a +drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a +pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit +had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a +sot. But, never again! + +“A glass of seltzer,” he said to the bartender. + +A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been +expecting him to join them. + +“Going off the stuff, Bob?” one of them asked politely and with more +formality than the highballs ever called forth. + +“Yes,” said Babbitt. + +Some one of the group took up the unwashed thread of a story he had +been telling; the bartender shoved over a dime and a nickel change from +the quarter, ungarnished with his customary smile; and Babbitt walked +out. + +Now, Babbitt had a home and a wife—but that is another story. And I +will tell you that story, which will show you a better habit and a +worse story than you could find in the man who invented the phrase. + +It began away up in Sullivan County, where so many rivers and so much +trouble begins—or begin; how would you say that? It was July, and +Jessie was a summer boarder at the Mountain Squint Hotel, and Bob, who +was just out of college, saw her one day—and they were married in +September. That’s the tabloid novel—one swallow of water, and it’s +gone. + +But those July days! + +Let the exclamation point expound it, for I shall not. For particulars +you might read up on “Romeo and Juliet,” and Abraham Lincoln’s +thrilling sonnet about “You can fool some of the people,” &c., and +Darwin’s works. + +But one thing I must tell you about. Both of them were mad over Omar’s +Rubaiyat. They knew every verse of the old bluffer by heart—not +consecutively, but picking ’em out here and there as you fork the +mushrooms in a fifty-cent steak à la Bordelaise. Sullivan County is +full of rocks and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them, and—please be +good—used to sit on the rocks; and Bob had a way of standing behind her +with his hands over her shoulders holding her hands, and his face close +to hers, and they would repeat over and over their favorite verses of +the old tent-maker. They saw only the poetry and philosophy of the +lines then—indeed, they agreed that the Wine was only an image, and +that what was meant to be celebrated was some divinity, or maybe Love +or Life. However, at that time neither of them had tasted the stuff +that goes with a sixty-cent _table d’hôte_. + +Where was I? Oh, they married and came to New York. Bob showed his +college diploma, and accepted a position filling inkstands in a +lawyer’s office at $15 a week. At the end of two years he had worked up +to $50, and gotten his first taste of Bohemia—the kind that won’t stand +the borax and formaldehyde tests. + +They had two furnished rooms and a little kitchen. To Jess, accustomed +to the mild but beautiful savor of a country town, the dreggy Bohemia +was sugar and spice. She hung fish seines on the walls of her rooms, +and bought a rakish-looking sideboard, and learned to play the banjo. +Twice or thrice a week they dined at French or Italian _tables d’hôte_ +in a cloud of smoke, and brag and unshorn hair. Jess learned to drink a +cocktail in order to get the cherry. At home she smoked a cigarette +after dinner. She learned to pronounce Chianti, and leave her olive +stones for the waiter to pick up. Once she essayed to say la, la, la! +in a crowd but got only as far as the second one. They met one or two +couples while dining out and became friendly with them. The sideboard +was stocked with Scotch and rye and a liqueur. They had their new +friends in to dinner and all were laughing at nothing by 1 A. M. Some +plastering fell in the room below them, for which Bob had to pay $4.50. +Thus they footed it merrily on the ragged frontiers of the country that +has no boundary lines or government. + +And soon Bob fell in with his cronies and learned to keep his foot on +the little rail six inches above the floor for an hour or so every +afternoon before he went home. Drink always rubbed him the right way, +and he would reach his rooms as jolly as a sandboy. Jessie would meet +him at the door, and generally they would dance some insane kind of a +rigadoon about the floor by way of greeting. Once when Bob’s feet +became confused and he tumbled headlong over a foot-stool Jessie +laughed so heartily and long that he had to throw all the couch pillows +at her to make her hush. + +In such wise life was speeding for them on the day when Bob Babbitt +first felt the power that the giftie gi’ed him. + +But let us get back to our lamb and mint sauce. + +When Bob got home that evening he found Jessie in a long apron cutting +up a lobster for the Newburg. Usually when Bob came in mellow from his +hour at the bar his welcome was hilarious, though somewhat tinctured +with Scotch smoke. + +By screams and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of +domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot on +the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton into her +ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and favor of these +spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false Bohemia gradually +encompassed her she came to accept them as love’s true and proper +greeting. + +Bob came in without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but noiselessly, +took up a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old maid held her +two plugs of cotton poised, filled with anxiety. + +Jessie dropped lobster and knife and ran to him with frightened eyes. + +“What’s the matter, Bob, are you ill?” + +“Not at all, dear.” + +“Then what’s the matter with you?” + +“Nothing.” + +Hearken, brethren. When She-who-has-a-right-to-ask interrogates you +concerning a change she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her +that you, in a sudden rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her +that you have robbed orphans and that remorse has stricken you; tell +her your fortune is swept away; that you are beset by enemies, by +bunions, by any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, if peace and +happiness are worth as much as a grain of mustard seed to you—do not +answer her “Nothing.” + +Jessie went back to the lobster in silence. She cast looks of darkest +suspicion at Bob. He had never acted that way before. + +When dinner was on the table she set out the bottle of Scotch and the +glasses. Bob declined. + +“Tell you the truth, Jess,” he said. “I’ve cut out the drink. Help +yourself, of course. If you don’t mind I’ll try some of the seltzer +straight.” + +“You’ve stopped drinking?” she said, looking at him steadily and +unsmilingly. “What for?” + +“It wasn’t doing me any good,” said Bob. “Don’t you approve of the +idea?” + +Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly. + +“Entirely,” she said with a sculptured smile. “I could not +conscientiously advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on +Sunday.” + +The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk, but +his efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt +miserable, and once or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but +each time the scathing words of his bibulous friend sounded in his ear, +and his mouth set with determination. + +Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to +have departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the +unnatural excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived had +dropped away in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole curious +and forlorn glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty look of at +least a wife-beater or a family tyrant. + +After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such chores +cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable countenance, +brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and a bowl of cracked +ice and set them on the table. + +“May I ask,” she said, with some of the ice in her tones, “whether I am +to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, I’ll make one +for myself. It’s rather chilly this evening, for some reason.” + +“Oh, come now, Jess,” said Bob good-naturedly, “don’t be too rough on +me. Help yourself, by all means. There’s no danger of your overdoing +it. But I thought there was with me; and that’s why I quit. Have yours, +and then let’s get out the banjo and try over that new quickstep.” + +“I’ve heard,” said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, “that drinking +alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don’t think I feel like playing this +evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the evil +habit of banjo-playing, too.” + +She took up a book and sat in her little willow rocker on the other +side of the table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour. + +And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent look +on his face and went behind her chair and reached over her shoulders, +taking her hands in his, and laid his face close to hers. + +In a moment to Jessie the walls of the seine-hung room vanished, and +she saw the Sullivan County hills and rills. Bob felt her hands quiver +in his as he began the verse from old Omar: + +“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring +The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: +The Bird of Time has but a little way +To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!” + + +And then he walked to the table and poured a stiff drink of Scotch into +a glass. + +But in that moment a mountain breeze had somehow found its way in and +blown away the mist of the false Bohemia. + +Jessie leaped and with one fierce sweep of her hand sent the bottle and +glasses crashing to the floor. The same motion of her arm carried it +around Bob’s neck, where it met its mate and fastened tight. + +“Oh, my God, Bobbie—not that verse—I see now. I wasn’t always such a +fool, was I? The other one, boy—the one that says: ‘Remould it to the +Heart’s Desire.’ Say that one—‘to the Heart’s Desire.’” + +“I know that one,” said Bob. “It goes: + +“‘Ah! Love, could you and I with Him conspire +To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire +Would not we—’” + + +“Let me finish it,” said Jessie. + +“‘Would not we shatter it to bits—and then +Remould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!’” + + +“It’s shattered all right,” said Bob, crunching some glass under his +heel. + +In some dungeon below the accurate ear of Mrs. Pickens, the landlady, +located the smash. + +“It’s that wild Mr. Babbitt coming home soused again,” she said. “And +he’s got such a nice little wife, too!” + + + + +THE PENDULUM + + +“Eighty-first street—let ’em out, please,” yelled the shepherd in blue. + +A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled +aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled +away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with +the released flock. + +John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon of +his daily life there was no such word as “perhaps.” There are no +surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a +flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and +downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous day. + +Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream +and butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized +lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaughtered +by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad +flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, +stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the +certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner Katy would +show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that the iceman had cut for +her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven they would +spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering +that fell when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his +physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the +vaudeville team (unbooked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to +the gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs +under the delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a +five-hundred-dollar-a-week contract. Then the gent at the window across +the air-shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal +forth to frolic in the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its +trolley; the janitor would drive Mrs. Zanowitski’s five children once +more across the Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye +terrier would trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell +and letter-box—and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be +under way. + +John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a +quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, and +that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone: + +“Now, where are you going, I’d like to know, John Perkins?” + +“Thought I’d drop up to McCloskey’s,” he would answer, “and play a game +or two of pool with the fellows.” + +Of late such had been John Perkins’s habit. At ten or eleven he would +return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, ready to +melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating from the +wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid will have to +answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his victims from the +Frogmore flats. + +To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the +commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her +affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in portentous +disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in the middle of +the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder box, jumbled +together on dresser and chairs—this was not Katy’s way. With a sinking +heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of her brown hair among +its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation must have possessed her, +for she always carefully placed these combings in the little blue vase +on the mantel to be some day formed into the coveted feminine “rat.” + +Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper. +John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus: + + +“Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. I am +going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the +depot there. There is cold mutton in the ice box. I hope it isn’t her +quinzy again. Pay the milkman 50 cents. She had it bad last spring. +Don’t forget to write to the company about the gas meter, and your good +socks are in the top drawer. I will write to-morrow. + +Hastily, +KATY.” + + +Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been +separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a +dumbfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never varied, +and it left him dazed. + +There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, the +red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the +meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her +haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butter-scotch lay with its +string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping +rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. +Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its soul +and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains with a +queer feeling of desolation in his heart. + +He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched her +clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He had +never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had become so +thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he +breathed—necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without warning, she was +gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had never existed. Of +course it would be only for a few days, or at most a week or two, but +it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had pointed a finger at +his secure and uneventful home. + +John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat down +to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade’s shameless +certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings now appeared to +him the ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan polish dressing. +His home was dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law had knocked his lares +and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal John sat at a front +window. + +He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come join +in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might go +forth unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as any gay +bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his fling until +dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy waiting for him, +bearing the chalice that held the dregs of his joy. He might play pool +at McCloskey’s with his roistering friends until Aurora dimmed the +electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings that had curbed him +always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon him were loosened. Katy +was gone. + +John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he +sat in his Katy-bereft 10×12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote +of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his +happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull +round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her +presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and +fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has +flown—or in other no less florid and true utterances? + +“I’m a double-dyed dub,” mused John Perkins, “the way I’ve been +treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the boys +instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone with +nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, you’re the +worst kind of a shine. I’m going to make it up for the little girl. +I’ll take her out and let her see some amusement. And I’ll cut out the +McCloskey gang right from this minute.” + +Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come dance +in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey’s the boys were knocking the +balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the nightly game. But +no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the remorseful soul of +Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his, lightly held and half +scorned, had been taken away from him, and he wanted it. Backward to a +certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim bounced from the orchard, +could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his descent. + +Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of it +stood Katy’s blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of her +contour. Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles made by +the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and pleasure. A +delicate but impelling odor of bluebells came from it. John took it and +looked long and soberly at the unresponsive grenadine. Katy had never +been unresponsive. Tears:—yes, tears—came into John Perkins’s eyes. +When she came back things would be different. He would make up for all +his neglect. What was life without her? + +The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John +stared at her stupidly. + +“My! I’m glad to get back,” said Katy. “Ma wasn’t sick to amount to +anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little spell, +and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the next train +back. I’m just dying for a cup of coffee.” + +Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cog-wheels as the third-floor +front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order of +Things. A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted and +the wheels revolve in their old orbit. + +John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his hat +and walked to the door. + +“Now, where are you going, I’d like to know, John Perkins?” asked Katy, +in a querulous tone. + +“Thought I’d drop up to McCloskey’s,” said John, “and play a game or +two of pool with the fellows.” + + + + +TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN + + +There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans +who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits +and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used +to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives it to us. We hear some +talk of the Puritans, but don’t just remember who they were. Bet we can +lick ’em, anyhow, if they try to land again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that +sounds more familiar. Lots of us have had to come down to hens since +the Turkey Trust got its work in. But somebody in Washington is leaking +out advance information to ’em about these Thanksgiving proclamations. + +The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an +institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the year +on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the ferries. It +is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of celebration, +exclusively American. + +And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have traditions +on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a much rapider +rate than those of England are—thanks to our git-up and enterprise. + +Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you enter +Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. Every +Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there promptly at +1 o’clock. For every time he had done so things had happened to +him—Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat above his heart, +and equally on the other side. + +But to-day Stuffy Pete’s appearance at the annual trysting place seemed +to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly hunger +which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the poor at such +extended intervals. + +Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast that had +left him of his powers barely those of respiration and locomotion. His +eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded in a swollen and +gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came in short wheezes; a +senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a fashionable set to his +upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been sewed upon his clothes by +kind Salvation fingers a week before flew like popcorn, strewing the +earth around him. Ragged he was, with a split shirt front open to the +wishbone; but the November breeze, carrying fine snowflakes, brought +him only a grateful coolness. For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the +caloric produced by a super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters +and ending with plum pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the +roast turkey and baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and +ice cream in the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the +world with after-dinner contempt. + +The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick mansion +near the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old ladies of +ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even denied the +existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day was declared +solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional habits was to +station a servant at the postern gate with orders to admit the first +hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of noon had struck, and +banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to +the park, and the seneschals gathered him in and upheld the custom of +the castle. + +After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he was +conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a +tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his +eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod +ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel. + +For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his bench. + +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there +and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the Old +Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving Day for +nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a restaurant +and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in England +unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years is not so +bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and considered +himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to become picturesque +we must keep on doing one thing for a long time without ever letting it +get away from us. Something like collecting the weekly dimes in +industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets. + +The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the Institution +that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy Pete was +nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta or jam for +breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was almost feudal. It +showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible to New +Y—ahem!—America. + +The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in +black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won’t stay on +your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year, +and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with the crooked +handle. + +As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered like +some woman’s over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. He +would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not have +separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two old +ladies done their work. + +“Good morning,” said the Old Gentleman. “I am glad to perceive that the +vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health about +the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of thanksgiving +is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with me, my man, I +will provide you with a dinner that should make your physical being +accord with the mental.” + +That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day +for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution. +Nothing could be compared with them except the Declaration of +Independence. Always before they had been music in Stuffy’s ears. But +now he looked up at the Old Gentleman’s face with tearful agony in his +own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell upon his perspiring +brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little and turned his back to +the wind. + +Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech +rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing every +time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come there after +he was gone—a son who would stand proud and strong before some +subsequent Stuffy, and say: “In memory of my father.” Then it would be +an Institution. + +But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in one +of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the quiet +streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in a little +conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he walked in +the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse in the New +Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of a butterfly, +the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some day. In the +autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old Gentleman’s +occupations. + +Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless in +his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the +giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his +little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen was +beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully at the +ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas bubbling in a +pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had heard the sounds +nine times before, he rightly construed them into Stuffy’s old formula +of acceptance. + +“Thankee, sir. I’ll go with ye, and much obliged. I’m very hungry, +sir.” + +The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy’s mind the +conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His Thanksgiving +appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred rights of +established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of Limitations, to +this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, America is free; +but in order to establish tradition some one must be a repetend—a +repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of steel and gold. See +one here that wielded only weapons of iron, badly silvered, and tin. + +The Old Gentleman led his annual protégé southward to the restaurant, +and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were +recognized. + +“Here comes de old guy,” said a waiter, “dat blows dat same bum to a +meal every Thanksgiving.” + +The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl at +his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped the +table with holiday food—and Stuffy, with a sigh that was mistaken for +hunger’s expression, raised knife and fork and carved for himself a +crown of imperishable bay. + +No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an enemy. +Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before him as fast +as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost when he entered +the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused him to lose his +honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a true knight. He saw the +look of beneficent happiness on the Old Gentleman’s face—a happier look +than even the fuchsias and the ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought +to it—and he had not the heart to see it wane. + +In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. “Thankee kindly, sir,” +he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; “thankee kindly for a hearty meal.” +Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started toward the kitchen. +A waiter turned him about like a top, and pointed him toward the door. +The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30 in silver change, leaving +three nickels for the waiter. + +They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman going +south, Stuffy north. + +Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. Then +he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his feathers, and +fell to the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse. + +When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed softly +at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a transfer to +the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to the hospital. +There they stretched him on a bed and began to test him for strange +diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some problem with the +bare steel. + +And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. And +they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he looked +good for the bill. + +But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses +whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases. + +“That nice old gentleman over there, now,” he said, “you wouldn’t think +that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I guess. He +told me he hadn’t eaten a thing for three days.” + + + + +THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS + + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a pitying +look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They were a +motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven faces; +the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining their +feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks. + +Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions in my +inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park Commissioners +(around the corner, if necessary), and arrange for benches in all the +parks of the world low enough for women to sit upon, and rest their +feet upon the ground. After that I might furnish libraries to towns +that would pay for ’em, or build sanitariums for crank professors, and +call ’em colleges, if I wanted to. + +Women’s rights societies have been laboring for many years after +equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they must +twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their highest +French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom, ladies. Get +your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of mental equality. + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That was +the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It is denied +us to look further into a man’s bosom than the starch on his shirt +front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and conversation. + +Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a +hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have no +more when the sun’s first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter building +on the west side of the square. But Morley would have enough by then. +Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but sunrise had always seen +them lined. + +First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and +presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to +issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed up by +a realistic romance of a delayed remittance. + +On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman’s door, a pale-faced, +fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist and the voice of +a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score. + +“Why, Bergman, man,” sang Morley, dulcetly, “is this you? I was just on +my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my aunt +arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come up to +the corner and I’ll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a walk.” + +Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about +Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed off a +call loan at Rothschilds’. When he was penniless his bluff was pitched +half a tone lower, but few are competent to detect the difference in +the notes. + +“You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley,” said Bergman. +“Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen you in dree +mont’. Pros’t!” + +Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. The +credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to avoid +Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that Bergman +ever went home by that route. + +At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley knocked +with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the length of a +six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of an African +guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was admitted. + +In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung for +ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, and was +out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the 40 cents in +silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. At the corner +he lingered, undecided. + +Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth gleams +from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and glasses. +Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, stepping +high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to which his +advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he clutched +something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously. + +Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech. + +“Me?” said the youngster. “I’m doin’ to the drug ’tore for mamma. She +dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med’cin.” + +“Now, now, now!” said Morley. “Such a big man you are to be doing +errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the +cars don’t run over him. And on the way we’ll have some chocolates. Or +would he rather have lemon drops?” + +Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He +presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money. + +On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. + +“Aqua pura, one pint,” said he to the druggist. “Sodium chloride, ten +grains. Fiat solution. And don’t try to skin me, because I know all +about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and I +always use the other ingredient on my potatoes.” + +“Fifteen cents,” said the druggist, with a wink after he had compounded +the order. “I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is the regular +price.” + +“To gulls,” said Morley, smilingly. + +He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child’s arms and +escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 cents +accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge. + +“Look out for the cars, sonny,” he said, cheerfully, to his small +victim. + +Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the +youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile +messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner of +his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky with +vile, cheap candy from the Italian’s fruit stand. + +Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of +inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely +that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had come his way. + +“Why, no,” said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one. “It +is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what +three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in transactions of +all kinds?” + +“Sure,” said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by +the careful knot of Morley’s tie; “there’s the buyers from the dry +goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from Staten +Island, and”— + +“Wrong!” said Morley, chuckling happily. “The answer is just—men, women +and children. The world—well, say New York and as far as summer +boarders can swim out from Long Island—is full of greenhorns. Two +minutes longer on the broiler would have made this steak fit to be +eaten by a gentleman, Francois.” + +“If yez t’inks it’s on de bum,” said the waiter, “Oi’ll”— + +Morley lifted his hand in protest—slightly martyred protest. + +“It will do,” he said, magnanimously. “And now, green Chartreuse, +frappe and a demi-tasse.” + +Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful +arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he +stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the +tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his +net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak +Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. + +A joyful party of four—two women and two men—fell upon him with cries +of delight. There was a dinner party on—where had he been for a +fortnight past?—what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded and +engulfed him—he must join them—tra la la—and the rest. + +One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his sleeve, +and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: “See what I can do +with him?” and added her queen’s command to the invitations. + +“I leave you to imagine,” said Morley, pathetically, “how it desolates +me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York +Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at 8.” + +The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an +arc light down the frolicsome way. + +Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and laughing +gleefully to himself. “‘Front,’” he chanted under his breath; “‘front’ +does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it in! Men, women and +children—forgeries, water-and-salt lies—how they all take it in!” + +An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a +corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street +cars to the sidewalk at Morley’s side. + +“Stranger,” said he, “excuse me for troubling you, but do you know +anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He’s my son, and I’ve +come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what I done +with his street and number.” + +“I do not, sir,” said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy in +them. “You had better apply to the police.” + +“The police!” said the old man. “I ain’t done nothin’ to call in the +police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story +house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could”— + +“I told you I did not,” said Morley, coldly. “I know no one by the name +of Smithers, and I advise you to”— + +“Smothers not Smithers,” interrupted the old man hopefully. “A +heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth +out, about five foot”— + +“Oh, ‘Smothers!’” exclaimed Morley. “Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in the +next house to me. I thought you said ‘Smithers.’” + +Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it for a +dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the +ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads—according to these +watchmakers—are run by. + +“The Bishop of Long Island,” said Morley, “was to meet me here at 8 to +dine with me at the Kingfishers’ Club. But I can’t leave the father of +my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, Mr. +Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no name for it! I +was about to step across to the other corner and have a glass of ginger +ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. You must let me take +you to Sol’s house, Mr. Smothers. But, before we take the car I hope +you will join me in”— + +An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench in +Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips and $140 +in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, light-hearted, +ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon drifting in and out +amidst a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged man with a low-bowed +head sat at the other end of the bench. + +Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In +Morley’s appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the +usual nightly occupants of the benches. + +“Kind sir,” he whined, “if you could spare a dime or even a few pennies +to one who”— + +Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar. + +“God bless you!” said the old man. “I’ve been trying to find work for”— + +“Work!” echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. “You are a fool, my +friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an Aaron +and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will gush out +of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to me whatever I +want from it.” + +“God has blessed you,” said the old man. “It is only work that I have +known. And now I can get no more.” + +“I must go home,” said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. “I +stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work.” + +“May your kindness be rewarded this night,” said the old man. + +“Oh,” said Morley, “you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I think +good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel across +the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting up the city +to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such little things as +I do. Well, a good-night to you.” + +Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He blew +slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman passing +saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was. + +The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on the +corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if homeward +from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she was dressed +in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and neither to the +right nor the left. + +Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with +her at school. There had been no sentiment between them—nothing but the +friendship of innocent days. + +But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his +suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said +dully: + +“God! I wish I could die.” + + + + +THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY + + +It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful +vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of Navarro & +Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at. + +Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with +liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of this +semiprecious metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick building +covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You can buy of +them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile or an eighty-five +dollar, latest style, ladies’ tan coat in twenty different shades. +Navarro & Platt first introduced pennies west of the Colorado River. +They had been ranchmen with business heads, who saw that the world did +not necessarily have to cease its revolutions after free grass went +out. + +Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half Spanish, +cosmopolitan, able, polished, had “gone on” to New York to buy goods. +This year he shied at taking up the long trail. He was undoubtedly +growing older; and he looked at his watch several times a day before +the hour came for his siesta. + +“John,” he said, to his junior partner, “you shall go on this year to +buy the goods.” + +Platt looked tired. + +“I’m told,” said he, “that New York is a plumb dead town; but I’ll go. +I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and have some +fun.” + +Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit—black frock coat, +broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3-4 inch high, with +black, wrought iron necktie—entered the wholesale cloak and suit +establishment of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway. + +Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and a +mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of the +carpenter’s rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar bear, +and shook Platt’s hand. + +“And how is the good Mr. Navarro in Texas?” he said. “The trip was too +long for him this year, so? We welcome Mr. Platt instead.” + +“A bull’s eye,” said Platt, “and I’d give forty acres of unirrigated +Pecos County land to know how you did it.” + +“I knew,” grinned Zizzbaum, “just as I know that the rainfall in El +Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and +that therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits this +spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be +to-morrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will remove +from your mouth the taste of the ones you smuggle across the Rio Grande +and like—because they are smuggled.” + +It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended, +Zizzbaum left Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the +private office to Son, who was arranging his diamond scarfpin before a +mirror, ready to leave. + +“Abey,” he said, “you will have to take Mr. Platt around to-night and +show him things. They are customers for ten years. Mr. Navarro and I we +played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That is good, but +Mr. Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to New York. He +should amuse easily.” + +“All right,” said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. “I’ll +take him on. After he’s seen the Flatiron and the head waiter at the +Hotel Astor and heard the phonograph play ‘Under the Old Apple Tree’ +it’ll be half past ten, and Mr. Texas will be ready to roll up in his +blanket. I’ve got a supper engagement at 11:30, but he’ll be all to the +Mrs. Winslow before then.” + +The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do +business. He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum +himself waited on him. Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never +failed to take their discount for cash. + +“And what did you think of our little town?” asked Zizzbaum, with the +fatuous smile of the Manhattanite. + +“I shouldn’t care to live in it,” said the Texan. “Your son and I +knocked around quite a little last night. You’ve got good water, but +Cactus City is better lit up.” + +“We’ve got a few lights on Broadway, don’t you think, Mr. Platt?” + +“And a good many shadows,” said Platt. “I think I like your horses +best. I haven’t seen a crow-bait since I’ve been in town.” + +Zizzbaum led him up stairs to show the samples of suits. + +“Ask Miss Asher to come,” he said to a clerk. + +Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first time +the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon him. He +stood still as a granite cliff above the cañon of the Colorado, with +his wide-open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his look and flushed a +little, which was contrary to her custom. + +Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the blond +type known as “medium,” and her measurements even went the required +38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at Zizzbaum’s two +years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but cool; and had she +chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the famed basilisk, that +fabulous monster’s gaze would have wavered and softened first. +Incidentally, she knew buyers. + +“Now, Mr. Platt,” said Zizzbaum, “I want you to see these princess +gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. This +first, if you please, Miss Asher.” + +Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each time +wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every change. She +posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken buyer, who +stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated oilily of the +styles. On the model’s face was her faint, impersonal professional +smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or contempt. + +When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a +little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try +elsewhere. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best +building sites in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to build a +house for his wife-to-be—who was just then in the dressing-room taking +off an evening gown of lavender and tulle. + +“Take your time, Mr. Platt,” said Zizzbaum. “Think it over to-night. +You won’t find anybody else meet our prices on goods like these. I’m +afraid you’re having a dull time in New York, Mr. Platt. A young man +like you—of course, you miss the society of the ladies. Wouldn’t you +like a nice young lady to take out to dinner this evening? Miss Asher, +now, is a very nice young lady; she will make it agreeable for you.” + +“Why, she doesn’t know me,” said Platt, wonderingly. “She doesn’t know +anything about me. Would she go? I’m not acquainted with her.” + +“Would she go?” repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. “Sure, she +would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go.” + +He called Miss Asher loudly. + +She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist and +plain black skirt. + +“Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this +evening,” said Zizzbaum, walking away. + +“Sure,” said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. “I’d be much pleased. +Nine-eleven West Twentieth street. What time?” + +“Say seven o’clock.” + +“All right, but please don’t come ahead of time. I room with a school +teacher, and she doesn’t allow any gentlemen to call in the room. There +isn’t any parlor, so you’ll have to wait in the hall. I’ll be ready.” + +At half past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway +restaurant. She was dressed in a plain, filmy black. Platt didn’t know +that it was all a part of her day’s work. + +With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a +respectable dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries. + +Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile. + +“Mayn’t I have something to drink?” she asked. + +“Why, certainly,” said Platt. “Anything you want.” + +“A dry Martini,” she said to the waiter. + +When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took it +away. + +“What is this?” he asked. + +“A cocktail, of course.” + +“I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You +can’t drink this. What is your first name?” + +“To my intimate friends,” said Miss Asher, freezingly, “it is ‘Helen.’” + +“Listen, Helen,” said Platt, leaning over the table. “For many years +every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to +thinking of somebody that I’d never seen or heard of. I knew it was you +the minute I saw you yesterday. I’m going back home to-morrow, and +you’re going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when you +first looked at me. You needn’t kick, for you’ve got to fall into line. +Here’s a little trick I picked out for you on my way over.” + +He flicked a two-carat diamond solitaire ring across the table. Miss +Asher flipped it back to him with her fork. + +“Don’t get fresh,” she said, severely. + +“I’m worth a hundred thousand dollars,” said Platt. “I’ll build you the +finest house in West Texas.” + +“You can’t buy me, Mr. Buyer,” said Miss Asher, “if you had a hundred +million. I didn’t think I’d have to call you down. You didn’t look like +the others to me at first, but I see you’re all alike.” + +“All who?” asked Platt. + +“All you buyers. You think because we girls have to go out to dinner +with you or lose our jobs that you’re privileged to say what you +please. Well, forget it. I thought you were different from the others, +but I see I was mistaken.” + +Platt struck his fingers on the table with a gesture of sudden, +illuminating satisfaction. + +“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed, almost hilariously—“the Nicholson place, +over on the north side. There’s a big grove of live oaks and a natural +lake. The old house can be pulled down and the new one set further +back.” + +“Put out your pipe,” said Miss Asher. “I’m sorry to wake you up, but +you fellows might as well get wise, once for all, to where you stand. +I’m supposed to go to dinner with you and help jolly you along so +you’ll trade with old Zizzy, but don’t expect to find me in any of the +suits you buy.” + +“Do you mean to tell me,” said Platt, “that you go out this way with +customers, and they all—they all talk to you like I have?” + +“They all make plays,” said Miss Asher. “But I must say that you’ve got +’em beat in one respect. They generally talk diamonds, while you’ve +actually dug one up.” + +“How long have you been working, Helen?” + +“Got my name pat, haven’t you? I’ve been supporting myself for eight +years. I was a cash girl and a wrapper and then a shop girl until I was +grown, and then I got to be a suit model. Mr. Texas Man, don’t you +think a little wine would make this dinner a little less dry?” + +“You’re not going to drink wine any more, dear. It’s awful to think +how— I’ll come to the store to-morrow and get you. I want you to pick +out an automobile before we leave. That’s all we need to buy here.” + +“Oh, cut that out. If you knew how sick I am of hearing such talk.” + +After the dinner they walked down Broadway and came upon Diana’s little +wooded park. The trees caught Platt’s eye at once, and he must turn +along under the winding walk beneath them. The lights shone upon two +bright tears in the model’s eyes. + +“I don’t like that,” said Platt. “What’s the matter?” + +“Don’t you mind,” said Miss Asher. “Well, it’s because—well, I didn’t +think you were that kind when I first saw you. But you are all like. +And now will you take me home, or will I have to call a cop?” + +Platt took her to the door of her boarding-house. They stood for a +minute in the vestibule. She looked at him with such scorn in her eyes +that even his heart of oak began to waver. His arm was half way around +her waist, when she struck him a stinging blow on the face with her +open hand. + +As he stepped back a ring fell from somewhere and bounded on the tiled +floor. Platt groped for it and found it. + +“Now, take your useless diamond and go, Mr. Buyer,” she said. + +“This was the other one—the wedding ring,” said the Texan, holding the +smooth gold band on the palm of his hand. + +Miss Asher’s eyes blazed upon him in the half darkness. + +“Was that what you meant?—did you”— + +Somebody opened the door from inside the house. + +“Good-night,” said Platt. “I’ll see you at the store to-morrow.” + +Miss Asher ran up to her room and shook the school teacher until she +sat up in bed ready to scream “Fire!” + +“Where is it?” she cried. + +“That’s what I want to know,” said the model. “You’ve studied +geography, Emma, and you ought to know. Where is a town called +Cac—Cac—Carac—Caracas City, I think, they called it?” + +“How dare you wake me up for that?” said the school teacher. “Caracas +is in Venezuela, of course.” + +“What’s it like?” + +“Why, it’s principally earthquakes and negroes and monkeys and malarial +fever and volcanoes.” + +“I don’t care,” said Miss Asher, blithely; “I’m going there to-morrow.” + + + + +THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O’ROON + + +It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another for +the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky process, +this love at first sight, before she has seen him in Bradstreet or he +has seen her in curl papers. But these things do happen; and one +instance must form a theme for this story—though not, thank Heaven, to +the overshadowing of more vital and important subjects, such as drink, +policemen, horses and earldoms. + +During a certain war a troop calling itself the Gentle Riders rode into +history and one or two ambuscades. The Gentle Riders were recruited +from the aristocracy of the wild men of the West and the wild men of +the aristocracy of the East. In khaki there is little telling them one +from another, so they became good friends and comrades all around. + +Ellsworth Remsen, whose old Knickerbocker descent atoned for his modest +rating at only ten millions, ate his canned beef gayly by the campfires +of the Gentle Riders. The war was a great lark to him, so that he +scarcely regretted polo and planked shad. + +One of the troopers was a well set up, affable, cool young man, who +called himself O’Roon. To this young man Remsen took an especial +liking. The two rode side by side during the famous mooted up-hill +charge that was disputed so hotly at the time by the Spaniards and +afterward by the Democrats. + +After the war Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a well set +up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and +O’Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious +epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O’Roon looked seedy and +out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that his content was +only apparent. + +“Get me a job, Remsen,” he said. “I’ve just handed a barber my last +shilling.” + +“No trouble at all,” said Remsen. “I know a lot of men who have banks +and stores and things downtown. Any particular line you fancy?” + +“Yes,” said O’Roon, with a look of interest. “I took a walk in your +Central Park this morning. I’d like to be one of those bobbies on +horseback. That would be about the ticket. Besides, it’s the only thing +I could do. I can ride a little and the fresh air suits me. Think you +could land that for me?” + +Remsen was sure that he could. And in a very short time he did. And +they who were not above looking at mounted policemen might have seen a +well set up, affable, cool young man on a prancing chestnut steed +attending to his duties along the driveways of the park. + +And now at the extreme risk of wearying old gentlemen who carry leather +fob chains, and elderly ladies who—but no! grandmother herself yet +thrills at foolish, immortal Romeo—there must be a hint of love at +first sight. + +It came just as Remsen was strolling into Fifth avenue from his club a +few doors away. + +A motor car was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet of +vehicles that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and an old +gentleman with snowy side whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could +not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. Not even a wine +agent would dare do it. But these two were of no consequence—except, +perhaps, for the guiding of the machine and the paying for it. At the +old gentleman’s side sat a young lady more beautiful than pomegranate +blossoms, more exquisite than the first quarter moon viewed at twilight +through the tops of oleanders. Remsen saw her and knew his fate. He +could have flung himself under the very wheels that conveyed her, but +he knew that would be the last means of attracting the attention of +those who ride in motor cars. Slowly the auto passed, and, if we place +the poets above the autoists, carried the heart of Remsen with it. Here +was a large city of millions, and many women who at a certain distance +appear to resemble pomegranate blossoms. Yet he hoped to see her again; +for each one fancies that his romance has its own tutelary guardian and +divinity. + +Luckily for Remsen’s peace of mind there came a diversion in the guise +of a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were not many of +them—perhaps a score—and there was wassail and things to eat, and +speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in recapitulation. And when +daylight threatened them the survivors prepared to depart. But some +remained upon the battlefield. One of these was Trooper O’Roon, who was +not seasoned to potent liquids. His legs declined to fulfil the +obligations they had sworn to the police department. + +“I’m stewed, Remsen,” said O’Roon to his friend. “Why do they build +hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They’ll take away +my shield and break me. I can think and talk +con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I’ve got +to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is up, I +tell you.” + +“Look at me,” said Remsen, who was his smiling self, pointing to his +own face; “whom do you see here?” + +“Goo’ fellow,” said O’Roon, dizzily, “Goo’ old Remsen.” + +“Not so,” said Remsen. “You see Mounted Policeman O’Roon. Look at your +face—no; you can’t do that without a glass—but look at mine, and think +of yours. How much alike are we? As two French _table d’hôte_ dinners. +With your badge, on your horse, in your uniform, will I charm +nurse-maids and prevent the grass from growing under people’s feet in +the Park this day. I will have your badge and your honor, besides +having the jolliest lark I’ve been blessed with since we licked Spain.” + +Promptly on time the counterfeit presentment of Mounted Policeman +O’Roon single-footed into the Park on his chestnut steed. In a uniform +two men who are unlike will look alike; two who somewhat resemble each +other in feature and figure will appear as twin brothers. So Remsen +trotted down the bridle paths, enjoying himself hugely, so few real +pleasures do ten-millionaires have. + +Along the driveway in the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a pair +of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, for the +Park is rarely used in the morning except by unimportant people who +love to be healthy, poor and wise. In the vehicle sat an old gentleman +with snowy side-whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could not be worn +while driving except by a personage. At his side sat the lady of +Remsen’s heart—the lady who looked like pomegranate blossoms and the +gibbous moon. + +Remsen met them coming. At the instant of their passing her eyes looked +into his, and but for the ever coward’s heart of a true lover he could +have sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for twenty +yards, and then wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway hoofs. The +bays had bolted. + +Remsen sent his chestnut after the victoria like a shot. There was work +cut out for the impersonator of Policeman O’Roon. The chestnut ranged +alongside the off bay thirty seconds after the chase began, rolled his +eye back at Remsen, and said in the only manner open to policemen’s +horses: + +“Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You’re not O’Roon, +but it seems to me if you’d lean to the right you could reach the reins +of that foolish slow-running bay—ah! you’re all right; O’Roon couldn’t +have done it more neatly!” + +The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen’s tough +muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped reins, jumped +from his seat and stood at the heads of the team. The chestnut, +approving his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling equinely the +subdued bays. Remsen, lingering, was dimly conscious of a vague, +impossible, unnecessary old gentleman in a Scotch cap who talked +incessantly about something. And he was acutely conscious of a pair of +violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his iron pillar—or +whatever the allusion is—and of the lady’s smile and look—a little +frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward heart of a true +lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking his name and +bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, and the Scotch +cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the eloquent appeal was +in the eyes of the lady. + +A little thrill of satisfaction ran through Remsen, because he had a +name to give which, without undue pride, was worthy of being spoken in +high places, and a small fortune which, with due pride, he could leave +at his end without disgrace. + +He opened his lips to speak and closed them again. + +Who was he? Mounted Policeman O’Roon. The badge and the honor of his +comrade were in his hands. If Ellsworth Remsen, ten-millionaire and +Knickerbocker, had just rescued pomegranate blossoms and Scotch cap +from possible death, where was Policeman O’Roon? Off his beat, exposed, +disgraced, discharged. Love had come, but before that there had been +something that demanded precedence—the fellowship of men on +battlefields fighting an alien foe. + +Remsen touched his cap, looked between the chestnut’s ears, and took +refuge in vernacularity. + +“Don’t mention it,” he said stolidly. “We policemen are paid to do +these things. It’s our duty.” + +And he rode away—rode away cursing _noblesse oblige_, but knowing he +could never have done anything else. + +At the end of the day Remsen sent the chestnut to his stable and went +to O’Roon’s room. The policeman was again a well set up, affable, cool +young man who sat by the window smoking cigars. + +“I wish you and the rest of the police force and all badges, horses, +brass buttons and men who can’t drink two glasses of _brut_ without +getting upset were at the devil,” said Remsen feelingly. + +O’Roon smiled with evident satisfaction. + +“Good old Remsen,” he said, affably, “I know all about it. They trailed +me down and cornered me here two hours ago. There was a little row at +home, you know, and I cut sticks just to show them. I don’t believe I +told you that my Governor was the Earl of Ardsley. Funny you should bob +against them in the Park. If you damaged that horse of mine I’ll never +forgive you. I’m going to buy him and take him back with me. Oh, yes, +and I think my sister—Lady Angela, you know—wants particularly for you +to come up to the hotel with me this evening. Didn’t lose my badge, did +you, Remsen? I’ve got to turn that in at Headquarters when I resign.” + + + + +BRICKDUST ROW + + +Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth +would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a +gentleman—a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked +bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of +disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who was +agent for the Blinker estate. + +“I don’t see,” said Blinker, “why I should be always signing confounded +papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North Woods this +morning. Now I must wait until to-morrow morning. I hate night trains. +My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some unidentifiable +trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a monologueing, +thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn’t scratch. I hate pens +that scratch.” + +“Sit down,” said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. “The worst has +not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not +yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you to-morrow at eleven. +You will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless +nose of a Blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a +haircut.” + +“If,” said Blinker, rising, “the act did not involve more signing of +papers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a +cigar, please.” + +“If,” said Lawyer Oldport, “I had cared to see an old friend’s son +gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered you to take +it away long ago. Now, let’s quit fooling, Alexander. Besides the +grinding task of signing your name some thirty times to-morrow, I must +impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business—of business, +and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about this five years +ago, but you would not listen—you were in a hurry for a coaching trip, +I think. The subject has come up again. The property—” + +“Oh, property!” interrupted Blinker. “Dear Mr. Oldport, I think you +mentioned to-morrow. Let’s have it all at one dose to-morrow—signatures +and property and snappy rubber bands and that smelly sealing-wax and +all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I’ll try to remember to drop in at +eleven to-morrow. Morning.” + +The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the +legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his +little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and rows +of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was sole heir. +They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so incapable of +producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport kept piling up in +banks for him to spend. + +In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine. +Nobody was there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to him +with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. Everybody +was out of town. But here he was kept in like a schoolboy to write his +name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were deep. + +Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward who +had come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe: + +“Symons, I’m going to Coney Island.” He said it as one might say: +“All’s off; I’m going to jump into the river.” + +The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of the +audibility permitted by the laws governing employees. + +“Certainly, sir,” he tittered. “Of course, sir, I think I can see you +at Coney, Mr. Blinker.” + +Blinker got a paper and looked up the movements of Sunday steamboats. +Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a North River +pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and bought a ticket, +and was trampled upon and shoved forward until, at last, he found +himself on the upper deck of the boat staring brazenly at a girl who +sat alone upon a camp stool. But Blinker did not intend to be brazen; +the girl was so wonderfully good looking that he forgot for one minute +that he was the prince incog, and behaved just as he did in society. + +She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind +threatened Blinker’s straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it +again. The movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and +smiled, and in another instant he was seated at her side. She was +dressed all in white, she was paler than Blinker imagined milkmaids and +girls of humble stations to be, but she was as tidy as a cherry +blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked out from the +intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul. + +“How dare you raise your hat to me?” she asked, with a smile-redeemed +severity. + +“I didn’t,” Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by +extending it to “I didn’t know how to keep from it after I saw you.” + +“I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been +introduced,” she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. He +rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down to his +chair again. + +“I guess you weren’t going far,” she declared, with beauty’s +magnificent self-confidence. + +“Are you going to Coney Island?” asked Blinker. + +“Me?” She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering surprise. +“Why, what a question! Can’t you see that I’m riding a bicycle in the +park?” Her drollery took the form of impertinence. + +“And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney,” said Blinker. +“Mayn’t we see Coney together? I’m all alone and I’ve never been there +before.” + +“It depends,” said the girl, “on how nicely you behave. I’ll consider +your application until we get there.” + +Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his application. +He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his nonsensical phrase, +he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of his devoirs until, at +length, the structure was stable and complete. The manners of the best +society come around finally to simplicity; and as the girl’s way was +that naturally, they were on a mutual plane of communication from the +beginning. + +He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she +trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room +with her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that a +glass of milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that boils +itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good enough for +any one. Florence laughed when she heard “Blinker.” + +“Well,” she said. “It certainly shows that you have imagination. It +gives the ‘Smiths’ a chance for a little rest, anyhow.” + +They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human +wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland +gone into vaudeville. + +With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment +Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized +delights. Hoi polloi trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket parties +bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his feet, candying +his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the booths with hard-won +canes under one arm and easily won girls on the other, blew defiant +smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The publicity gentlemen with +megaphones, each before his own stupendous attraction, roared like +Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that could be tortured from +brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the air to gain space for its +vibrations against its competitors. But what held Blinker in awful +fascination was the mob, the multitude, the proletariat shrieking, +struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling itself in incontinent frenzy, +with unabashed abandon, into the ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery +and tinsel pleasures. The vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all +the tenets of repression and taste that were held by his caste, +repelled him strongly. + +In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence by +his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy eyes, +as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were saying +that they had the right to be shining and happy, for was their owner +not with her (for the present) Man, her Gentleman Friend and holder of +the keys to the enchanted city of fun? + +Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he +suddenly saw Coney aright. + +He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now looked +clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their offenses were +wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish joys of these +spangled temples were, he perceived that deep under the gilt surface +they offered saving and apposite balm and satisfaction to the restless +human heart. Here, at least, was the husk of Romance, the empty but +shining casque of Chivalry, the breath-catching though safe-guarded dip +and flight of Adventure, the magic carpet that transports you to the +realms of fairyland, though its journey be through but a few poor yards +of space. He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the +ideal. There was no magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of +their imagination turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the +megaphones into the silver trumpets of joy’s heralds. + +Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and +joined the idealists. + +“You are the lady doctor,” he said to Florence. “How shall we go about +doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?” + +“We will begin there,” said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda on +the edge of the sea, “and we will take them all in, one by one.” + +They caught the eight o’clock returning boat and sat, filled with +pleasant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the +Italians’ fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The North +Woods seemed to him an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss he had +made over signing his name—pooh! he could sign it a hundred times. And +her name was as pretty as she was—“Florence,” he said it to himself a +great many times. + +As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled, +drab, foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the +bay. The boat turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered as +if to seek midstream, and then yawed, seemed to increase its speed and +struck the Coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting into it with +a terrifying shock and crash. + +While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling about +the decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the steamer +that it should not back off and leave the rent exposed for the water to +enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage sawfish and +cleaved its heartless way, full speed ahead. + +The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the slip. +The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold. + +Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. She +made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped off the +slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life preservers. +He began to buckle one around Florence. The rotten canvas split and the +fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in a stream. Florence +caught a handful of it and laughed gleefully. + +“It looks like breakfast food,” she said. “Take it off. They’re no +good.” + +She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down +and sat by his side and put her hand in his. “What’ll you bet we don’t +reach the pier all right?” she said and began to hum a song. + +And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled order. The +boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the women +and children to the bow, where they could land first. The boat, very +low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make his promise +good. + +“Florence,” said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, “I +love you.” + +“That’s what they all say,” she replied, lightly. + +“I am not one of ‘they all,’” he persisted. “I never knew any one I +could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every +day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you.” + +“That’s what they all say,” said the girl again, weaving the words into +her little, reckless song. + +“Don’t say that again,” said Blinker in a tone that made her look at +him in frank surprise. + +“Why shouldn’t I say it?” she asked calmly. “They all do.” + +“Who are ‘they’?” he asked, jealous for the first time in his +existence. + +“Why, the fellows I know.” + +“Do you know so many?” + +“Oh, well, I’m not a wall flower,” she answered with modest +complacency. + +“Where do you see these—these men? At your home?” + +“Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the boat, +sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I’m a pretty good judge +of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who is likely to +get fresh.” + +“What do you mean by ‘fresh?’” + +“Why, try to kiss you—me, I mean.” + +“Do any of them try that?” asked Blinker, clenching his teeth. + +“Sure. All men do. You know that.” + +“Do you allow them?” + +“Some. Not many. They won’t take you out anywhere unless you do.” + +She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes were as +innocent as a child’s. There was a puzzled look in them, as though she +did not understand him. + +“What’s wrong about my meeting fellows?” she asked, wonderingly. + +“Everything,” he answered, almost savagely. “Why don’t you entertain +your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up +Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?” + +She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. “If you could see the +place where I live you wouldn’t ask that. I live in Brickdust Row. They +call it that because there’s red dust from the bricks crumbling over +everything. I’ve lived there for more than four years. There’s no place +to receive company. You can’t have anybody come to your room. What else +is there to do? A girl has got to meet the men, hasn’t she?” + +“Yes,” he said, hoarsely. “A girl has got to meet a—has got to meet the +men.” + +“The first time one spoke to me on the street,” she continued, “I ran +home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good many +nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the vestibule +until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a parlor, so I +could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker—are you really sure it isn’t +‘Smith,’ now?” + +The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking +with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a +corner and held out her hand. + +“I live just one more block over,” she said. “Thank you for a very +pleasant afternoon.” + +Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a cab. A +big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook his fist at +it through the window. + +“I gave you a thousand dollars last week,” he cried under his breath, +“and she meets them in your very doors. There is something wrong; there +is something wrong.” + +At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a new +pen provided by Lawyer Oldport. + +“Now let me go to the woods,” he said surlily. + +“You are not looking well,” said Lawyer Oldport. “The trip will do you +good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business of +which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There are some +buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new five-year leases +to be signed. Your father contemplated a change in the lease +provisions, but never made it. He intended that the parlors of these +houses should not be sub-let, but that the tenants should be allowed to +use them for reception rooms. These houses are in the shopping +district, and are mainly tenanted by young working girls. As it is they +are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of red brick—” + +Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh. + +“Brickdust Row for an even hundred,” he cried. “And I own it. Have I +guessed right?” + +“The tenants have some such name for it,” said Lawyer Oldport. + +Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes. + +“Do what you please with it,” he said harshly. “Remodel it, burn it, +raze it to the ground. But, man, it’s too late I tell you. It’s too +late. It’s too late. It’s too late.” + + + + +THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER + + +Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; +but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a +philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. But +most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line of +verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been a Limerick, had +it been written. But, to linger with the primary proposition, Raggles +was a poet. + +Raggles’s specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would have +been sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their +reflections in mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of a +dislocated doll; as the men who write about wild animals study the +cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricks and +mortar, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants; it was a thing with +a soul characteristic and distinct; an individual conglomeration of +life, with its own peculiar essence, flavor and feeling. Two thousand +miles to the north and south, east and west, Raggles wandered in poetic +fervor, taking the cities to his breast. He footed it on dusty roads, +or sped magnificently in freight cars, counting time as of no account. +And when he had found the heart of a city and listened to its secret +confession, he strayed on, restless, to another. Fickle Raggles!—but +perhaps he had not met the civic corporation that could engage and hold +his critical fancy. + +Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are feminine. +So they were to poet Raggles; and his mind carried a concrete and clear +conception of the figure that symbolized and typified each one that he +had wooed. + +Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of Mrs. +Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with a +soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would awake +to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of ideals lost +in a depressing aura of potato salad and fish. + +Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness and inaccuracy +in the description; but that is Raggles’s fault. He should have +recorded his sensations in magazine poems. + +Pittsburg impressed him as the play of “Othello” performed in the +Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader’s minstrels. A +royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though—homely, hearty, with +flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid +slippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and +drink champagne with his pigs’ feet and fried potatoes. + +New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He could see +her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, and that was +all. Only once he came face to face with her. It was at dawn, when she +was flushing the red bricks of the banquette with a pail of water. She +laughed and hummed a chansonette and filled Raggles’s shoes with +ice-cold water. Allons! + +Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic and +singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that the +city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around his +brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. And, +after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the cloth, +becoming wet, tightened its knots and could not be removed. + +Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you will say; but your +disapprobation should be tempered with gratitude, for these are poets’ +fancies—and suppose you had come upon them in verse! + +One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city of +Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learn her note +in the scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solve and label +her and arrange her with the other cities that had given him up the +secret of their individuality. And here we cease to be Raggles’s +translator and become his chronicler. + +Raggles landed from a ferry-boat one morning and walked into the core +of the town with the blasé air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed with +care to play the rôle of an “unidentified man.” No country, race, +class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association could have +claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to him piece-meal by +citizens of different height, but same number of inches around the +heart, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as those specimens of +raiment, self-measured, that are railroaded to you by transcontinental +tailors with a suit case, suspenders, silk handkerchief and pearl studs +as a bonus. Without money—as a poet should be—but with the ardor of an +astronomer discovering a new star in the chorus of the milky way, or a +man who has seen ink suddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles +wandered into the great city. + +Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a look +of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, +discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer to +read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as +send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster +cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, +impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside +fingering damply in his pocket his ribbon-counter salary. + +The greetings of the other cities he had known—their homespun +kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, +garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference. +This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him. +Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an eye +was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned for the +clap of Pittsburg’s sooty hand on his shoulder; for Chicago’s menacing +but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and eleemosynary stare through +the Bostonian eyeglass—even for the precipitate but unmalicious +boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis. + +On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood, bashful, +like any country swain. For the first time he experienced the poignant +humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried to reduce this +brilliant, swiftly changing, ice-cold city to a formula he failed +utterly. Poet though he was, it offered him no color similes, no points +of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets, no handle by which he +could hold it up and view its shape and structure, as he familiarly and +often contemptuously had done with other towns. The houses were +interminable ramparts loopholed for defense; the people were bright but +bloodless spectres passing in sinister and selfish array. + +The thing that weighed heaviest on Raggles’s soul and clogged his +poet’s fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to saturate +the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one that he +considered appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit. +Humanity was gone from them; they were toddling idols of stone and +varnish, worshipping themselves and greedy for though oblivious of +worship from their fellow graven images. Frozen, cruel, implacable, +impervious, cut to an identical pattern, they hurried on their ways +like statues brought by some miracles to motion, while soul and feeling +lay unaroused in the reluctant marble. + +Gradually Raggles became conscious of certain types. One was an elderly +gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled face and +stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded youth, who +seemed to personify the city’s wealth, ripeness and frigid unconcern. +Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, clear as a steel engraving, +goddess-like, calm, clothed like the princesses of old, with eyes as +coldly blue as the reflection of sunlight on a glacier. And another was +a by-product of this town of marionettes—a broad, swaggering, grim, +threateningly sedate fellow, with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat +field, the complexion of a baptized infant and the knuckles of a +prize-fighter. This type leaned against cigar signs and viewed the +world with frappéd contumely. + +A poet is a sensitive creature, and Raggles soon shrivelled in the +bleak embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, ironical, +illegible, unnatural, ruthless expression of the city left him downcast +and bewildered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, the scolding of +vinegar-faced housewives at back doors, the kindly spleen of bartenders +behind provincial free-lunch counters, the amiable truculence of rural +constables, the kicks, arrests and happy-go-lucky chances of the other +vulgar, loud, crude cities than this freezing heartlessness. + +Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace. +Unheeding, regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelash to +testify that they were conscious of his existence. And then he said to +himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a +soul; that its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs, +and that he was alone in a great wilderness. + +Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, a +hissing and a crash as something struck him and hurled him over and +over six yards from where he had been. As he was coming down like the +stick of a rocket the earth and all the cities thereof turned to a +fractured dream. + +Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him—an odor +of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a hand soft as a +falling petal touched his brow. Bending over him was the woman clothed +like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and humid with human +sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silks and furs. With +Raggles’s hat in his hand and with his face pinker than ever from a +vehement burst of oratory against reckless driving, stood the elderly +gentleman who personified the city’s wealth and ripeness. From a nearby +café hurried the by-product with the vast jowl and baby complexion, +bearing a glass full of a crimson fluid that suggested delightful +possibilities. + +“Drink dis, sport,” said the by-product, holding the glass to Raggles’s +lips. + +Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearing the +deepest concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got into the +circle and pressed back the overplus of Samaritans. An old lady in a +black shawl spoke loudly of camphor; a newsboy slipped one of his +papers beneath Raggles’s elbow, where it lay on the muddy pavement. A +brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names. + +A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned a lane through +the crowd. A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs. + +“How do you feel, old man?” asked the surgeon, stooping easily to his +task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red drop or two from +Raggles’s brow with a fragrant cobweb. + +“Me?” said Raggles, with a seraphic smile, “I feel fine.” + +He had found the heart of his new city. + +In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward in +the hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendants heard +sounds of conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggles had +assaulted and damaged a brother convalescent—a glowering transient whom +a freight train collision had sent in to be patched up. + +“What’s all this about?” inquired the head nurse. + +“He was runnin’ down me town,” said Raggles. + +“What town?” asked the nurse. + +“Noo York,” said Raggles. + + + + +VANITY AND SOME SABLES + + +When “Kid” Brady was sent to the ropes by Molly McKeever’s blue-black +eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a +colleen’s blanderin’ tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you are a +man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 o’clock +to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you this +morning with a cold nose—a sign of doghealth and your happiness. + +The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city +called the “Stovepipe,” which is a narrow and natural extension of the +familiar district known as “Hell’s Kitchen.” The “Stovepipe” strip of +town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues on the river, and bends a +hard and sooty elbow around little, lost homeless DeWitt Clinton park. +Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in any kitchen and the +situation is analyzed. The chefs in “Hell’s Kitchen” are many, and the +“Stovepipe” gang, wears the cordon blue. + +The members of this unchartered but widely known brotherhood appeared +to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the lilies of the +conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. Thus displayed as +a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an innocuous conversation in +a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual observer as innocent and +immaterial as that heard in clubs seven blocks to the east. + +But off exhibition the “Stovepipes” were not mere street corner +ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation +was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. +Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise or +bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honored by their attentions refused +to impoverish himself gracefully his objections came to be spread +finally upon some police station blotter or hospital register. + +The police held the “Stovepipe” gang in perpetual suspicion and +respect. As the nightingale’s liquid note is heard in the deepest +shadows, so along the “Stovepipe’s” dark and narrow confines the +whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there +was smoke in the “stovepipe” the tasselled men in blue knew there was +fire in “Hell’s Kitchen.” + +“Kid” Brady promised Molly to be good. “Kid” was the vainest, the +strongest, the wariest and the most successful plotter in the gang. +Therefore, the boys were sorry to give him up. + +But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. For, in +the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for a guy to +do as his girl advises. + +Black her eye for love’s sake, if you will; but it is all-to-the-good +business to do a thing when she wants you to do it. + +“Turn off the hydrant,” said the Kid, one night when Molly, tearful, +besought him to amend his ways. “I’m going to cut out the gang. You for +mine, and the simple life on the side. I’ll tell you, Moll—I’ll get +work; and in a year we’ll get married. I’ll do it for you. We’ll get a +flat and a flute, and a sewing machine and a rubber plant and live as +honest as we can.” + +“Oh, Kid,” sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with her +handkerchief, “I’d rather hear you say that than to own all of New +York. And we can be happy on so little!” + +The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent leathers +with a suspicion of melancholy. + +“It’ll hurt hardest in the rags department,” said he. “I’ve kind of +always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate cheap +things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in the wearing +apparel line has got to be just so, or it’s to the misfit parlors for +it, for mine. If I work I won’t have so much coin to hand over to the +little man with the big shears.” + +“Never mind, Kid. I’ll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I +would in a red automobile.” + +Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he had +been compelled to learn the plumber’s art. So now back to this +honorable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an assistant +that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and not the +assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and looks +contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark’s mansion. + +Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had +“elapsed” on a theater program. The Kid worked away at his pipes and +solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The Stovepipe gang continued +its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen’s heads, held up late +travelers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied Fifth +avenue’s cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported itself +according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and faithful to +his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his fingernails and it +took him 15 minutes to tie his purple silk ascot so that the worn +places would not show. + +One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly’s house. + +“Open that, Moll!” he said in his large, quiet way. “It’s for you.” + +Molly’s eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, and +in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, dishwashy, +but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve. + +Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew and +enveloped her neck like an anaconda. + +“Russian sables,” said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of +Molly’s round cheek against the clinging fur. “The real thing. They +don’t grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll.” + +Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the family +infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. To make +bright eyes, rosy cheeks and a bewitching smile: Recipe—one set Russian +sables. Apply. + +When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice of +common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness. + +“You’re a bird, all right, Kid,” she admitted gratefully. “I never had +any furs on before in my life. But ain’t Russian sables awful +expensive? Seems to me I’ve heard they were.” + +“Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?” asked the +Kid, with calm dignity. “Did you ever notice me leaning on the remnant +counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call that scarf +$250 and the muff $175 and you won’t make any mistake about the price +of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they look fine on you, +Moll.” + +Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile +went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the eye +sadly and steadily. + +He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint +flush upon his face. + +“Cut it out,” he said, with affectionate roughness. “I told you I was +done with that. I bought ’em and paid for ’em, all right, with my own +money.” + +“Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?” + +“Sure. I been saving up.” + +“Let’s see—saved $425 in eight months, Kid?” + +“Ah, let up,” said the Kid, with some heat. “I had some money when I +went to work. Do you think I’ve been holding ’em up again? I told you +I’d quit. They’re paid for on the square. Put ’em on and come out for a +walk.” + +Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she went +forth in the streets at the Kid’s side. In all that region of low-lying +streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The word sped, and +doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see the swell furs Kid +Brady had given his girl. All down the street there were “Oh’s” and +“Ah’s” and the reported fabulous sum paid for the sables was passed +from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her right elbow sauntered +the Kid with the air of princes. Work had not diminished his love of +pomp and show and his passion for the costly and genuine. On a corner +they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang loafing, immaculate. They raised +their hats to the Kid’s girl and went on with their calm, unaccented +palaver. + +Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, of +the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who +could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair +dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the +inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would tip +off to him something that he was looking for. + +“What’s the excitement down the street?” asked Ransom of a pale youth +in a red sweater. + +“Dey’re out rubberin’ at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady staked his +girl to,” answered the youth. “Some say he paid $900 for de skins. +Dey’re swell all right enough.” + +“I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year,” +said the detective. “He doesn’t travel with the gang any more, does +he?” + +“He’s workin’, all right,” said the red sweater, “but—say, sport, are +you trailin’ anything in the fur line? A job in a plumbin’ shop don’ +match wid dem skins de Kid’s girl’s got on.” + +Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the river +bank. He touched the Kid’s arm from behind. + +“Let me see you a moment, Brady,” he said, quietly. His eye rested for +a second on the long fur scarf thrown stylishly back over Molly’s left +shoulder. The Kid, with his old-time police hating frown on his face, +stepped a yard or two aside with the detective. + +“Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote’s on West 7—th street yesterday to fix a +leaky water pipe?” asked Ransom. + +“I did,” said the Kid. “What of it?” + +“The lady’s $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house about +the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has on.” + +“To h—Harlem with you,” cried the Kid, angrily. “You know I’ve cut out +that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables yesterday at—” + +The Kid stopped short. + +“I know you’ve been working straight lately,” said Ransom. “I’ll give +you every chance. I’ll go with you where you say you bought the furs +and investigate. The lady can wear ’em along with us and nobody’ll be +on. That’s fair, Brady.” + +“Come on,” agreed the Kid, hotly. And then he stopped suddenly in his +tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly’s distressed and anxious +face. + +“No use,” he said, grimly. “They’re the Hethcote sables, all right. +You’ll have to turn ’em over, Moll, but they ain’t too good for you if +they cost a million.” + +Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid’s arm. + +“Oh, Kiddy, you’ve broke my heart,” she said. “I was so proud of +you—and now they’ll do you—and where’s our happiness gone?” + +“Go home,” said the Kid, wildly. “Come on, Ransom—take the furs. Let’s +get away from here. Wait a minute—I’ve a good mind to—no, I’ll be d–––– +if I can do it—run along, Moll—I’m ready, Ransom.” + +Around the corner of a lumber-yard came Policeman Kohen on his way to +his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for assistance. +Kohen joined the group. Ransom explained. + +“Sure,” said Kohen. “I hear about those saples dat vas stole. You say +you have dem here?” + +Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly’s late scarf in his hands and +looked at it closely. + +“Once,” he said, “I sold furs in Sixth avenue. Yes, dese are saples. +Dey come from Alaska. Dis scarf is vort $12 and dis muff—” + +“Biff!” came the palm of the Kid’s powerful hand upon the policeman’s +mouth. Kohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The detective threw +himself upon Brady and with Kohen’s aid got the nippers on his wrist. + +“The scarf is vort $12 and the muff is vort $9,” persisted the +policeman. “Vot is dis talk about $1,000 saples?” + +The Kid sat upon a pile of lumber and his face turned dark red. + +“Correct, Solomonski!” he declared, viciously. “I paid $21.50 for the +set. I’d rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, the swell +guy that wouldn’t look at anything cheap! I’m a plain bluffer. Moll—my +salary couldn’t spell sables in Russian.” + +Molly cast herself upon his neck. + +“What do I care for all the sables and money in the world,” she cried. +“It’s my Kiddy I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy blockhead!” + +“You can take dose nippers off,” said Kohen to the detective. “Before I +leaf de station de report come in dat de lady vind her saples—hanging +in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you dat punch in my vace—dis von +time.” + +Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the Kid. She +wound the scarf and threw the end over her left shoulder with a +duchess’ grace. + +“A gouple of young vools,” said Policeman Kohen to Ransom; “come on +away.” + + + + +THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE + + +At the stroke of six Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was a +tailor’s apprentice. Are there tailor’s apprentices nowadays? + +At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and patched +and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. But when work +was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his firmament let +shine. + +It was Saturday night, and the boss laid twelve begrimed and begrudged +dollars in his hand. Ikey dabbled discreetly in water, donned coat, hat +and collar with its frazzled tie and chalcedony pin, and set forth in +pursuit of his ideals. + +For each of us, when our day’s work is done, must seek our ideal, +whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet +silence of the musty bookshelves. + +Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring “El” between +the rows of reeking sweat-shops. Pallid, stooping, insignificant, +squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body and mind, yet, as he +swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome inhalations from his +cigarette you perceive that he nurtures in his narrow bosom the +bacillus of society. + +Ikey’s legs carried him to and into that famous place of entertainment +known as the Café Maginnis—famous because it was the rendezvous of +Billy McMahan, the greatest man, the most wonderful man, Ikey thought, +that the world had ever produced. + +Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred, and +his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered, McMahan stood, +flushed and triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing concourse +of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had been an +election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been swept back +into line by a resistless besom of ballots. + +Ikey slunk along the bar and gazed, breath-quickened, at his idol. + +How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great, smooth, laughing +face; his gray eye, shrewd as a chicken hawk’s; his diamond ring, his +voice like a bugle call, his prince’s air, his plump and active roll of +money, his clarion call to friend and comrade—oh, what a king of men he +was! How he obscured his lieutenants, though they themselves loomed +large and serious, blue of chin and important of mien, with hands +buried deep in the pockets of their short overcoats! But Billy—oh, what +small avail are words to paint for you his glory as seen by Ikey +Snigglefritz! + +The Café Maginnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated +bartenders threw themselves featfully upon bottle, cork and glass. From +a score of clear Havanas the air received its paradox of clouds. The +leal and the hopeful shook Billy McMahan’s hand. And there was born +suddenly in the worshipful soul of Ikey Snigglefritz an audacious, +thrilling impulse. + +He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which majesty +moved, and held out his hand. + +Billy McMahan grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled. + +Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey threw away +his scabbard and charged upon Olympus. + +“Have a drink with me, Billy,” he said familiarly, “you and your +friends?” + +“Don’t mind if I do, old man,” said the great leader, “just to keep the +ball rolling.” + +The last spark of Ikey’s reason fled. + +“Wine,” he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand. + +The corks of three bottles were drawn; the champagne bubbled in the +long row of glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahan took his and +nodded, with his beaming smile, at Ikey. The lieutenants and satellites +took theirs and growled “Here’s to you.” Ikey took his nectar in +delirium. All drank. + +Ikey threw his week’s wages in a crumpled roll upon the bar. + +“C’rect,” said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar notes. +The crowd surged around Billy McMahan again. Some one was telling how +Brannigan fixed ’em over in the Eleventh. Ikey leaned against the bar a +while, and then went out. + +He went down Hester street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to where +he lived. And there his women folk, a bibulous mother and three dingy +sisters, pounced upon him for his wages. And at his confession they +shrieked and objurgated him in the pithy rhetoric of the locality. + +But even as they plucked at him and struck him Ikey remained in his +ecstatic trance of joy. His head was in the clouds; the star was +drawing his wagon. Compared with what he had achieved the loss of wages +and the bray of women’s tongues were slight affairs. + +He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahan. + + +Billy McMahan had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved the +name “Mrs. William Darragh McMahan.” And there was a certain vexation +attendant upon these cards; for, small as they were, there were houses +in which they could not be inserted. Billy McMahan was a dictator in +politics, a four-walled tower in business, a mogul, dreaded, loved and +obeyed among his own people. He was growing rich; the daily papers had +a dozen men on his trail to chronicle his every word of wisdom; he had +been honored in caricature holding the Tiger cringing in leash. + +But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a race +of men from which he stood apart but that he viewed with the eye of +Moses looking over into the promised land. He, too, had ideals, even as +had Ikey Snigglefritz; and sometimes, hopeless of attaining them, his +own solid success was as dust and ashes in his mouth. And Mrs. William +Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent upon her plump but pretty +face, and the very rustle of her silks seemed a sigh. + +There was a brave and conspicuous assemblage in the dining saloon of a +noted hostelry where Fashion loves to display her charms. At one table +sat Billy McMahan and his wife. Mostly silent they were, but the +accessories they enjoyed little needed the indorsement of speech. Mrs. +McMahan’s diamonds were outshone by few in the room. The waiter bore +the costliest brands of wine to their table. In evening dress, with an +expression of gloom upon his smooth and massive countenance, you would +look in vain for a more striking figure than Billy’s. + +Four tables away sat alone a tall, slender man, about thirty, with +thoughtful, melancholy eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly white, +thin hands. He was dining on filet mignon, dry toast and apollinaris. +That man was Cortlandt Van Duyckink, a man worth eighty millions, who +inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive inner circle of +society. + +Billy McMahan spoke to no one around him, because he knew no one. Van +Duyckink kept his eyes on his plate because he knew that every one +present was hungry to catch his. He could bestow knighthood and +prestige by a nod, and he was chary of creating a too extensive +nobility. + +And then Billy McMahan conceived and accomplished the most startling +and audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked over to +Cortlandt Van Duyckink’s table and held out his hand. + +“Say, Mr. Van Duyckink,” he said, “I’ve heard you was talking about +starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. I’m +McMahan, you know. Say, now, if that’s straight I’ll do all I can to +help you. And what I says goes in that neck of the woods, don’t it? Oh, +say, I rather guess it does.” + +Van Duyckink’s rather sombre eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank +height and grasped Billy McMahan’s hand. + +“Thank you, Mr. McMahan,” he said, in his deep, serious tones. “I have +been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad of your +assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with you.” + +Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the +accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon him +in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan trembled with +ecstasy, so that her diamonds smote the eye almost with pain. And now +it was apparent that at many tables there were those who suddenly +remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahan’s acquaintance. He saw smiles +and bows about him. He became enveloped in the aura of dizzy greatness. +His campaign coolness deserted him. + +“Wine for that gang!” he commanded the waiter, pointing with his +finger. “Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green bush. +Tell ’em it’s on me. D––––n it! Wine for everybody!” + +The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to carry +out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house and its +custom. + +“All right,” said Billy, “if it’s against the rules. I wonder if +’twould do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, it’ll +flow all right at the caffy to-night, just the same. It’ll be rubber +boots for anybody who comes in there any time up to 2 A. M.” + +Billy McMahan was happy. + +He had shaken the hand of Cortlandt Van Duyckink. + + +The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out of place +moving slowly among the push carts and trash-heaps on the lower east +side. So did Cortlandt Van Duyckink, with his aristocratic face and +white, thin hands, as he steered carefully between the groups of +ragged, scurrying youngsters in the streets. And so did Miss Constance +Schuyler, with her dim, ascetic beauty, seated at his side. + +“Oh, Cortlandt,” she breathed, “isn’t it sad that human beings have to +live in such wretchedness and poverty? And you—how noble it is of you +to think of them, to give your time and money to improve their +condition!” + +Van Duyckink turned his solemn eyes upon her. + +“It is little,” he said, sadly, “that I can do. The question is a large +one, and belongs to society. But even individual effort is not thrown +away. Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to build soup +kitchens, where no one who is hungry will be turned away. And down this +other street are the old buildings that I shall cause to be torn down +and there erect others in place of those death-traps of fire and +disease.” + +Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it toddled +coveys of wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children. It +stopped before a crazy brick structure, foul and awry. + +Van Duyckink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the +leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who +seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity—a +narrow-chested, pale, unsavory young man, puffing at a cigarette. + +Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly grasped +the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke. + +“I want to know you people,” he said, sincerely. “I am going to help +you as much as I can. We shall be friends.” + +As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an +unaccustomed glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man. + +He had shaken the hand of Ikey Snigglefritz. + + + + +THE PURPLE DRESS + + +We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly in +repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it for their +especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their noses to the +genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and blue. We say of +princes that they are born to the purple; and no doubt they are, for +the colic tinges their faces with the royal tint equally with the +snub-nosed countenance of a woodchopper’s brat. All women love it—when +it is the fashion. + +And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course +other colors are quite stylish as well—in fact, I saw a lovely thing +the other day in olive green albatross, with a triple-lapped flounce +skirt trimmed with insert squares of silk, and a draped fichu of lace +opening over a shirred vest and double puff sleeves with a lace band +holding two gathered frills—but you see lots of purple too. Oh, yes, +you do; just take a walk down Twenty-third street any afternoon. + +Therefore Maida—the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon-colored +hair in the Bee-Hive Store—said to Grace—the girl with the rhinestone +brooch and peppermint-pepsin flavor to her speech—“I’m going to have a +purple dress—a tailor-made purple dress—for Thanksgiving.” + +“Oh, are you,” said Grace, putting away some 7½ gloves into the 6¾ box. +“Well, it’s me for red. You see more red on Fifth avenue. And the men +all seem to like it.” + +“I like purple best,” said Maida. “And old Schlegel has promised to +make it for $8. It’s going to be lovely. I’m going to have a plaited +skirt and a blouse coat trimmed with a band of galloon under a white +cloth collar with two rows of—” + +“Sly boots!” said Grace with an educated wink. + +“—soutache braid over a surpliced white vest; and a plaited basque +and—” + +“Sly boots—sly boots!” repeated Grace. + +“—plaited gigot sleeves with a drawn velvet ribbon over an inside cuff. +What do you mean by saying that?” + +“You think Mr. Ramsay likes purple. I heard him say yesterday he +thought some of the dark shades of red were stunning.” + +“I don’t care,” said Maida. “I prefer purple, and them that don’t like +it can just take the other side of the street.” + +Which suggests the thought that after all, the followers of purple may +be subject to slight delusions. Danger is near when a maiden thinks she +can wear purple regardless of complexions and opinions; and when +Emperors think their purple robes will wear forever. + +Maida had saved $18 after eight months of economy; and this had bought +the goods for the purple dress and paid Schlegel $4 on the making of +it. On the day before Thanksgiving she would have just enough to pay +the remaining $4. And then for a holiday in a new dress—can earth offer +anything more enchanting? + +Old Bachman, the proprietor of the Bee-Hive Store, always gave a +Thanksgiving dinner to his employees. On every one of the subsequent +364 days, excusing Sundays, he would remind them of the joys of the +past banquet and the hopes of the coming ones, thus inciting them to +increased enthusiasm in work. The dinner was given in the store on one +of the long tables in the middle of the room. They tacked wrapping +paper over the front windows; and the turkeys and other good things +were brought in the back way from the restaurant on the corner. You +will perceive that the Bee-Hive was not a fashionable department store, +with escalators and pompadours. It was almost small enough to be called +an emporium; and you could actually go in there and get waited on and +walk out again. And always at the Thanksgiving dinners Mr. Ramsay— + +Oh, bother! I should have mentioned Mr. Ramsay first of all. He is more +important than purple or green, or even the red cranberry sauce. + +Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for +him. He never pinched the girls’ arms when he passed them in dark +corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business was +dull and the girls giggled and said: “Oh, pshaw!” it wasn’t G. Bernard +they meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay was queer and +original in other ways. He was a health crank, and believed that people +should never eat anything that was good for them. He was violently +opposed to anybody being comfortable, and coming in out of snow storms, +or wearing overshoes, or taking medicine, or coddling themselves in any +way. Every one of the ten girls in the store had little +pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay. +For, next year old Bachman was going to take him in for a partner. And +each one of them knew that if she should catch him she would knock +those cranky health notions of his sky high before the wedding cake +indigestion was over. + +Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had two +Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in the +store. + +And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsay—one purple +and the other red. Of course, the other eight girls were going to have +dresses too, but they didn’t count. Very likely they’d wear some +shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs—nothing as resplendent as purple or +red. + +Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress +ready-made. Oh, what’s the use of bothering with a tailor—when you’ve +got a figger it’s easy to get a fit—the ready-made are intended for a +perfect figger—except I have to have ’em all taken in at the waist—the +average figger is so large waisted. + +The night before Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and bright +with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of purple, +but they were white themselves—the joyous enthusiasm of the young for +the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew purple would +become her, and—for the thousandth time she tried to assure herself +that it was purple Mr. Ramsay said he liked and not red. She was going +home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of tissue paper in the +bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was going to pay Schlegel +and take the dress home herself. + +Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above +Maida’s. + +At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landlady’s tongue +clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in +buttermilk. And then Grace come down to her room crying with eyes as +red as any dress. + +“She says I’ve got to get out,” said Grace. “The old beast. Because I +owe her $4. She’s put my trunk in the hall and locked the door. I can’t +go anywhere else. I haven’t got a cent of money.” + +“You had some yesterday,” said Maida. + +“I paid it on my dress,” said Grace. “I thought she’d wait till next +week for the rent.” + +Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle. + +Out came—out it had to come—Maida’s $4. + +“You blessed darling,” cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset. +“I’ll pay the mean old thing and then I’m going to try on my dress. I +think it’s heavenly. Come up and look at it. I’ll pay the money back, a +dollar a week—honest I will.” + +Thanksgiving. + +The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched +into Maida’s room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. Maida +sat by the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist darning a +st—. Oh, doing fancy work. + +“Why, goodness me! ain’t you dressed yet?” shrilled the red one. “How +does it fit in the back? Don’t you think these velvet tabs look awful +swell? Why ain’t you dressed, Maida?” + +“My dress didn’t get finished in time,” said Maida. “I’m not going to +the dinner.” + +“That’s too bad. Why, I’m awfully sorry, Maida. Why don’t you put on +anything and come along—it’s just the store folks, you know, and they +won’t mind.” + +“I was set on my purple,” said Maida. “If I can’t have it I won’t go at +all. Don’t bother about me. Run along or you’ll be late. You look awful +nice in red.” + +At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the time of +the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls shrieking +over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachman’s roar over his own +deeply-concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. Bachman, who +came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see Mr. Ramsay +moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of all. + +At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless +air she slowly made her way to Schlegel’s shop and told him she could +not pay the $4 due on the dress. + +“Gott!” cried Schlegel, angrily. “For what do you look so glum? Take +him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass mine +shop every day in two years? If I make clothes is it that I do not know +how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when you can. +Take him away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in him all +right. So. Pay me when you can.” + +Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and hurried +away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of rain struck +upon her face. She smiled and did not feel it. + +Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose +wardrobes are charged to the old man’s account, you cannot begin to +comprehend—you could not understand why Maida did not feel the cold +dash of the Thanksgiving rain. + +At five o’clock she went out upon the street wearing her purple dress. +The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her in a steady, +wind-blown pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with close-held +umbrellas and tight buttoned raincoats. Many of them turned their heads +to marvel at this beautiful, serene, happy-eyed girl in the purple +dress walking through the storm as though she were strolling in a +garden under summer skies. + +I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied +wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual longing +for pretty things—to starve eight months in order to bring a purple +dress and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, hailed, +blew, snowed, cycloned? + +Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and she +walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart must +have one crumb during a year. The rain ran down and dripped from her +fingers. + +Some one turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. +Ramsay’s eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest. + +“Why, Miss Maida,” said he, “you look simply magnificent in your new +dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. And of +all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and +intelligence. There is nothing more healthful and invigorating than +braving the weather as you are doing. May I walk with you?” + +And Maida blushed and sneezed. + + + + +THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 + + +John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted +with what his comrades called Japanitis. + +Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second +story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour of +the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions of both +the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of pins stuck +in the map which represented the opposing forces, and these he moved +about from day to day in conformity with the war news in the daily +papers. + +Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, and +then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen +would hear him yell: “Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, +huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat ’em up, you little +sleight-o’-hand, bow-legged bull terriers—give ’em another of them Yalu +looloos, and you’ll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your +Russians—say, wouldn’t they give you a painsky when it comes to a +scrapovitch?” + +Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic +champion of the Mikado’s men. Supporters of the Russian cause did well +to keep clear of Engine-House No. 99. + +Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes’s head. That was +when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his driver’s +seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the finest team in +the whole department—according to the crew of 99. + +Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his +fellow-mortals, the greatest are these—the code of King Arthur’s +Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United States and +the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table +methods are no longer practicable since the invention of street cars +and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is being found more +and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of our firemen must be +considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and Jeffries’s new punch +trying for place and show. + +The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the Fire +Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the +law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes +perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself to the +attention of the S. P. C. A. + +One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of +protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A +steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes +like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled ashore +and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty—perhaps, +theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of its +own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered happily +into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased child. It +was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body was lithely +built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; its face was brightly +vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was mostly covered by a thick, +ragged, curling beard like the coat of a spaniel. In the pocket of the +imported Thing were a few +coins—denarii—scudi—kopecks—pfennigs—pilasters—whatever the financial +nomenclature of his unknown country may have been. + +Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar and +movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates had +shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he hated, as +far as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99. Light as a cork, +he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the crudest atom in all +the silt of the stream that emptied into the reservoir of Liberty. + +While crossing Third avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the +thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the +wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful chord in +the uproar—the musical clanging of a gong and a great shining +juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were hurrying to see. + +This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the +protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, +enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the +path of No. 99’s flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms +of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe. + +The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions or +amendments. It is a simple thing—as simple as the rule of three. There +was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the hose-cart and +the iron pillar of the elevated railroad. + +John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team +and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. +The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver’s strap +burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car +track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, +raven-black, best-loved Erebus—lay whickering in his harness with a +broken leg. + +In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the details +will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of +that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and +while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of No. 99 heard +the crack of the S. P. C. A. agent’s pistol, and turned their heads +away, not daring to look toward Erebus again. + +When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one of +them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and +grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly about +it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered effervescently +and waved its hands. + +“Sounds like a seidlitz powder,” said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, “and +it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man!—that hoss was worth a +steamer full of such two-legged animals. It’s a immigrant—that’s what +it is.” + +“Look at the doctor’s chalk mark on its coat,” said Reilly, the desk +man. “It’s just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one of +them Finns, I guess. That’s the kind of truck that Europe unloads onto +us.” + +“Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up in +hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city,” groaned another +fireman. “It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned.” + +“Somebody go around and get Sloviski,” suggested the engine driver, +“and let’s see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of +hair and head noises.” + +Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third avenue, +and was reputed to be a linguist. + +One of the men fetched him—a fat, cringing man, with a discursive eye +and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him. + +“Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski,” +requested Mike Dowling. “We can’t quite figure out whether he’s from +the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong-on-the-Ganges.” + +Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in +rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle to +the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immigrant +replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger ale. + +“I have you his name,” reported Sloviski. “You shall not pronounce it. +Writing of it in paper is better.” They gave him paper, and he wrote, +“Demetre Svangvsk.” + +“Looks like short hand,” said the desk man. + +“He speaks some language,” continued the interpreter, wiping his +forehead, “of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he +have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the +Roumanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not +him quite understand.” + +“Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?” asked Mike, +frowning at the polyglot description. + +“He is a”—answered Sloviski—“he is a—I dink he come from—I dink he is a +fool,” he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, “and if you +pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen.” + +“Whatever he is, he’s a bird,” said Mike Dowling; “and you want to +watch him fly.” + +Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of +Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and bestowed upon +him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus of Company 99. +Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, turning once to show +his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen. + +In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital. With +great gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. “My money on +the Japs every time,” he declared. “Why, look at them Russians—they’re +nothing but wolves. Wipe ’em out, I say—and the little old jiu jitsu +gang are just the cherry blossoms to do the trick, and don’t you forget +it!” + +The second day after Byrnes’s reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, the +unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than ever. He +managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose-cart +driver on his recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident. +This he accomplished by so many extravagant gestures and explosive +noises that the company was diverted for half an hour. Then they kicked +him out again, and on the next day he came back grinning. How or where +he lived no one knew. And then John Byrnes’s nine-year-old son, Chris, +who brought him convalescent delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy +to Svangvsk, and they allowed him to loaf about the door of the +engine-house occasionally. + +One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire Commissioner +buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped inside for an +informal inspection. The men kicked Svangvsk out a little harder than +usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, in which everything +shone like my lady’s mirror. + +The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss of +Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that would +do him credit. So they let Joe out of his stall and showed the Deputy +how deserving he was of the finest mate that could be in horsedom. + +While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into the +Deputy’s auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a monster +puffing and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. The big +auto shot away, luckily taking a straight course down the street. The +boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the cushions and +howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped that auto except +a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to gain by such a +stoppage. + +Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another kick +when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others sprang for +the door Demetre sprang for Joe. He glided upon the horse’s bare back +like a snake and shouted something at him like the crack of a dozen +whips. One of the firemen afterward swore that Joe answered him back in +the same language. Ten seconds after the auto started the big horse was +eating up the asphalt behind it like a strip of macaroni. + +Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said that +the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the middle +of it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on its back +cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over and picked the +black speck out of the noise. + +Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk’s last kicking at the hands—or +rather the feet—of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through the +door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he was +going to receive. + +Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe’s and made a +noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his +nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of the +delicatessen. + +John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be kicked. +Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that Demetre +grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of punishment. + +“The heathen rides like a Cossack,” remarked a fireman who had seen a +Wild West show—“they’re the greatest riders in the world.” + +The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever. + +“Yas—yas—me Cossack,” he spluttered, striking his chest. + +“Cossack!” repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, “ain’t that a kind of a +Russian?” + +“They’re one of the Russian tribes, sure,” said the desk man, who read +books between fire alarms. + +Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know of +the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called to +Byrnes: + +“Hello there, Jimmy, me boy—how’s the war coming along? Japs still got +the bear on the trot, have they?” + +“Oh, I don’t know,” said John Byrnes, argumentatively, “them Japs +haven’t got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets a good whack at +’em and they won’t be knee-high to a puddle-ducksky.” + + + + +THE LOST BLEND + + +Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the +dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need not +listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, where a +dime dropped into the cold bouillon aperture will bring forth a dry +Martini. + +Con Lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Kenealy’s café. You +and I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side and went into +voluntary liquidation with our week’s wages. Opposite danced Con, +clean, temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, punctual, +trustworthy, young, responsible, and took our money. + +The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little +“places” which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited by +laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have +nothing to do with either. + +Over the café lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter Katherine had +eyes of dark Irish—but why should you be told? Be content with your +Geraldine or your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; and when she +called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the pitcher of beer +for dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk punch in the shaker. +Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; and if you hurl the last +shilling of your fortune upon the bar for whiskey, the bartender shall +take it, and marry his boss’s daughter, and good will grow out of it. + +But not so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and +scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom the +claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the +obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle +coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was +voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of +bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, +with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest +lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence of his divinity. + +There came to Kenealy’s two sunburned men, Riley and McQuirk. They had +conference with Kenealy; and then they took possession of a back room +which they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and druggist’s +measuring glasses. All the appurtenances and liquids of a saloon were +there, but they dispensed no drinks. All day long the two sweltered in +there pouring and mixing unknown brews and decoctions from the liquors +in their store. Riley had the education, and he figured on reams of +paper, reducing gallons to ounces and quarts to fluid drams. McQuirk, a +morose man with a red eye, dashed each unsuccessful completed mixture +into the waste pipes with curses gentle, husky and deep. They labored +heavily and untiringly to achieve some mysterious solution like two +alchemists striving to resolve gold from the elements. + +Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. +His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders +at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy’s store of +liquors to follow their consuming and fruitless experiments. + +Down the back stairs came Katherine with her smile like sunrise on +Gweebarra Bay. + +“Good evening, Mr. Lantry,” says she. “And what is the news to-day, if +you please?” + +“It looks like r-rain,” stammered the shy one, backing to the wall. + +“It couldn’t do better,” said Katherine. “I’m thinking there’s nothing +the worse off for a little water.” In the back room Riley and McQuirk +toiled like bearded witches over their strange compounds. From fifty +bottles they drew liquids carefully measured after Riley’s figures, and +shook the whole together in a great glass vessel. Then McQuirk would +dash it out, with gloomy profanity, and they would begin again. + +“Sit down,” said Riley to Con, “and I’ll tell you. + +“Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this nation +of Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where there’s +nothing to eat but quinine and nothing to drink but rum. The natives +and foreigners lay down with chills and get up with fevers; and a good +mixed drink is nature’s remedy for all such tropical inconveniences. + +“So we lays in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar fixtures +and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on a lime +steamer. On the way me and Tim sees flying fish and plays seven-up with +the captain and steward, and already begins to feel like the high-ball +kings of the tropics of Capricorn. + +“When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to +introduce to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over to +the starboard binnacle and recollects a few things. + +“‘I forgot to tell you, boys,’ says he, ‘that Nicaragua slapped an +import duty of 48 per cent. ad valorem on all bottled goods last month. +The President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by mistake for +tabasco sauce, and he’s getting even. Barrelled goods is free.’ + +“‘Sorry you didn’t mention it sooner,’ says we. And we bought two +forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we had +and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That 48 per cent. would +have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1,200 cocktail +rather than throw the stuff away. + +“Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was +something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea soup, +and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt makes you +take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We gave a nigger +four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a cocoanut tree three +days beating the sand with his heels and refused to sign a testimonial. + +“But the other barrel! Say, bartender, did you ever put on a straw hat +with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a pretty girl +with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? That’s what thirty +drops of it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you +you would bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn’t +anything more worth while around for you to lick than little Jim +Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second barrel was distilled +elixir of battle, money and high life. It was the color of gold and as +clear as glass, and it shone after dark like the sunshine was still in +it. A thousand years from now you’ll get a drink like that across the +bar. + +“Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it was +enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a hive of +bees. If that barrel had lasted that country would have become the +greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a line of +Generals and Colonels and ex-Presidents and revolutionists a block long +waiting to be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a drink. The +last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful stuff. It +gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything; at the same +time he didn’t care whether his money was tainted or fresh from the Ice +Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua had repudiated the +National debt, removed the duty on cigarettes and was about to declare +war on the United States and England. + +“’Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and ’twill be by +good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we’ve been trying. +Small lots at a time, we’ve mixed barrels of all the harmful +ingredients known to the profession of drinking. Ye could have stocked +ten bars with the whiskies, brandies, cordials, bitters, gins and wines +me and Tim have wasted. A glorious drink like that to be denied to the +world! ’Tis a sorrow and a loss of money. The United States as a nation +would welcome a drink of that sort, and pay for it.” + +All the while McQuirk had been carefully measuring and pouring together +small quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them, from his +latest pencilled prescription. The completed mixture was of a vile, +mottled chocolate color. McQuirk tasted it, and hurled it, with +appropriate epithets, into the waste sink. + +“’Tis a strange story, even if true,” said Con. “I’ll be going now +along to my supper.” + +“Take a drink,” said Riley. “We’ve all kinds except the lost blend.” + +“I never drink,” said Con, “anything stronger than water. I am just +after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word. +‘There’s not anything,’ says she, ‘but is better off for a little +water.’” + +When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on the +back. + +“Did ye hear that?” he shouted. “Two fools are we. The six dozen +bottles of ’pollinaris we had on the ship—ye opened them yourself—which +barrel did ye pour them in—which barrel, ye mudhead?” + +“I mind,” said McQuirk, slowly, “’twas in the second barrel we opened. +I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it.” + +“We’ve got it now,” cried Riley. “’Twas that we lacked. ’Tis the water +that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man, and get +two bottles of ’pollinaris from the bar, while I figure out the +proportionments with me pencil.” + +An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy’s café. +Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the +vicinity where they labor, drawn by some mysterious attraction. + +A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were half +carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The eyes +and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous +conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon the +police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious madness. + +“Began fighting each other in the back room,” explained Kenealy to Con. +“And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much up. But +they’re good men. They’ll pay for everything. Trying to invent some new +kind of cocktail, they was. I’ll see they come out all right in the +morning.” + +Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went +through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs. + +“Good evening again, Mr. Lantry,” said she. “And is there no news from +the weather yet?” + +“Still threatens r-rain,” said Con, slipping past with red in his +smooth, pale cheek. + +Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. Broken +bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of alcohol +fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles. + +On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom of +it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid—a bright golden liquid that seemed +to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths. + +Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it. + +As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the stairs. + +“No news yet, Mr. Lantry?” she asked with her teasing laugh. + +Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there. + +“The news is,” he said, “that we’re to be married.” + +“Put me down, sir!” she cried indignantly, “or I will— Oh, Con, where, +oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?” + + + + +A HARLEM TRAGEDY + + +Harlem. + +Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy’s flat one flight below. + +“Ain’t it a beaut?” said Mrs. Cassidy. + +She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye +was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. Her +lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red finger-marks on +each side of her neck. + +“My husband wouldn’t ever think of doing that to me,” said Mrs. Fink, +concealing her envy. + +“I wouldn’t have a man,” declared Mrs. Cassidy, “that didn’t beat me up +at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you. Say! but that +last dose Jack gave me wasn’t no homeopathic one. I can see stars yet. +But he’ll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the week to make +up for it. This eye is good for theater tickets and a silk shirt waist +at the very least.” + +“I should hope,” said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, “that Mr. Fink +is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me.” + +“Oh, go on, Maggie!” said Mrs. Cassidy, laughing and applying witch +hazel, “you’re only jealous. Your old man is too frappéd and slow to +ever give you a punch. He just sits down and practises physical culture +with a newspaper when he comes home—now ain’t that the truth?” + +“Mr. Fink certainly peruses of the papers when he comes home,” +acknowledged Mrs. Fink, with a toss of her head; “but he certainly +don’t ever make no Steve O’Donnell out of me just to amuse +himself—that’s a sure thing.” + +Mrs. Cassidy laughed the contented laugh of the guarded and happy +matron. With the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew down +the collar of her kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, +maroon-colored, edged with olive and orange—a bruise now nearly well, +but still to memory dear. + +Mrs. Fink capitulated. The formal light in her eye softened to envious +admiration. She and Mrs. Cassidy had been chums in the downtown +paper-box factory before they had married, one year before. Now she and +her man occupied the flat above Mame and her man. Therefore she could +not put on airs with Mame. + +“Don’t it hurt when he soaks you?” asked Mrs. Fink, curiously. + +“Hurt!”—Mrs. Cassidy gave a soprano scream of delight. “Well, say—did +you ever have a brick house fall on you?—well, that’s just the way it +feels—just like when they’re digging you out of the ruins. Jack’s got a +left that spells two matinees and a new pair of Oxfords—and his +right!—well, it takes a trip to Coney and six pairs of openwork, silk +lisle threads to make that good.” + +“But what does he beat you for?” inquired Mrs. Fink, with wide-open +eyes. + +“Silly!” said Mrs. Cassidy, indulgently. “Why, because he’s full. It’s +generally on Saturday nights.” + +“But what cause do you give him?” persisted the seeker after knowledge. + +“Why, didn’t I marry him? Jack comes in tanked up; and I’m here, ain’t +I? Who else has he got a right to beat? I’d just like to catch him once +beating anybody else! Sometimes it’s because supper ain’t ready; and +sometimes it’s because it is. Jack ain’t particular about causes. He +just lushes till he remembers he’s married, and then he makes for home +and does me up. Saturday nights I just move the furniture with sharp +corners out of the way, so I won’t cut my head when he gets his work +in. He’s got a left swing that jars you! Sometimes I take the count in +the first round; but when I feel like having a good time during the +week or want some new rags I come up again for more punishment. That’s +what I done last night. Jack knows I’ve been wanting a black silk waist +for a month, and I didn’t think just one black eye would bring it. Tell +you what, Mag, I’ll bet you the ice cream he brings it to-night.” + +Mrs. Fink was thinking deeply. + +“My Mart,” she said, “never hit me a lick in his life. It’s just like +you said, Mame; he comes in grouchy and ain’t got a word to say. He +never takes me out anywhere. He’s a chair-warmer at home for fair. He +buys me things, but he looks so glum about it that I never appreciate +’em.” + +Mrs. Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum. “You poor thing!” she +said. “But everybody can’t have a husband like Jack. Marriage wouldn’t +be no failure if they was all like him. These discontented wives you +hear about—what they need is a man to come home and kick their slats in +once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and chocolate creams. +That’d give ’em some interest in life. What I want is a masterful man +that slugs you when he’s jagged and hugs you when he ain’t jagged. +Preserve me from the man that ain’t got the sand to do neither!” + +Mrs. Fink sighed. + +The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at the +kick of Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame flew and +hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love light that +shines in the eye of the Maori maid when she recovers consciousness in +the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged her there. + +“Hello, old girl!” shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and lifted +her off her feet in a mighty hug. “I got tickets for Barnum & Bailey’s, +and if you’ll bust the string of one of them bundles I guess you’ll +find that silk waist—why, good evening, Mrs. Fink—I didn’t see you at +first. How’s old Mart coming along?” + +“He’s very well, Mr. Cassidy—thanks,” said Mrs. Fink. “I must be going +along up now. Mart’ll be home for supper soon. I’ll bring you down that +pattern you wanted to-morrow, Mame.” + +Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a +meaningless cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a cry +from no particular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most transient +and the most hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why had Martin +never thrashed her? He was as big and strong as Jack Cassidy. Did he +not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he came home and lounged +about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly good provider, but he +ignored the spices of life. + +Mrs. Fink’s ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between +plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or stamp +his foot on the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought to sail +so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But now, to vary +the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired out, without a +scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her sparring partner. +For one moment she almost hated Mame—Mame, with her cuts and bruises, +her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy voyage with her fighting, +brutal, loving mate. + +Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of +domesticity. Beyond the portals of his cozy home he cared not to roam, +to roam. He was the man who had caught the street car, the anaconda +that had swallowed its prey, the tree that lay as it had fallen. + +“Like the supper, Mart?” asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it. + +“M-m-m-yep,” grunted Mr. Fink. + +After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his stocking +feet. + +Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition +for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters of +Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, yarn, +cotton, lisle thread or woollen—does not the new canto belong? + +The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Fink +ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would parade and +otherwise disport itself. + +Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy’s pattern down early. Mame had on her new +silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday gleam. Jack +was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious scheme for the day +afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it. + +A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her +flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following +balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin Fink +was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always +unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant, breathless idea came +to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as able to +use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any Jack. + +The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink had +the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks’ wash +that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged feet +reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed. + +Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink’s heart, and higher still surged an +audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her—if he would not so +far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in conjugal +affairs, he must be prompted to his duty. + +Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a stockinged +toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of unblended suet +in a pudding. This was his level Elysium—to sit at ease vicariously +girdling the world in print amid the wifely splashing of suds and the +agreeable smells of breakfast dishes departed and dinner ones to come. +Many ideas were far from his mind; but the furthest one was the thought +of beating his wife. + +Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the suds. +Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It sounded +like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face of the +unslugged bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink’s time. + +Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading. + +“You lazy loafer!” she cried, “must I work my arms off washing and +toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a kitchen +hound?” + +Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared that +he would not strike—that the provocation had been insufficient. She +leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face with her clenched +hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love for him such as she had +not felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin Fink, and come into your +kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of his hand now—just to show that +he cared—just to show that he cared! + +Mr. Fink sprang to his feet—Maggie caught him again on the jaw with a +wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful, +blissful moment before his blow should come—she whispered his name to +herself—she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it. + +In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was +powdering Mame’s eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat +above came the sound of a woman’s voice, high-raised, a bumping, a +stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned—unmistakable sounds of +domestic conflict. + +“Mart and Mag scrapping?” postulated Mr. Cassidy. “Didn’t know they +ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?” + +One of Mrs. Cassidy’s eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other twinkled +at least like paste. + +“Oh, oh,” she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the +feminine ejaculatory manner. “I wonder if—wonder if! Wait, Jack, till I +go up and see.” + +Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out from +the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink. + +“Oh, Maggie,” cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; “did he? Oh, +did he?” + +Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum’s shoulder and sobbed +hopelessly. + +Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie’s face between her hands and lifted it gently. +Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, +pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, unbruised, +unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink. + +“Tell me, Maggie,” pleaded Mame, “or I’ll go in there and find out. +What was it? Did he hurt you—what did he do?” + +Mrs. Fink’s face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her +friend. + +“For God’s sake don’t open that door, Mame,” she sobbed. “And don’t +ever tell nobody—keep it under your hat. He—he never touched me, +and—he’s—oh, Gawd—he’s washin’ the clothes—he’s washin’ the clothes!” + + + + +“THE GUILTY PARTY” + + +A red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window. +He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great +satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of blue, faded +carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed daily news +drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening paper, +eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be followed as a +chaser by the milder details of the smaller type. + +In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong +bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from the +vespertine pipe. + +Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, as +twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty host of +children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in rags, some in +clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks, some +gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words, some +listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to embrace—here were the +children playing in the corridors of the House of Sin. Above the +playground forever hovered a great bird. The bird was known to +humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie street were better +ornithologists. They called it a vulture. + +A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and resting +by the window, and said: + +“Papa, won’t you play a game of checkers with me if you aren’t too +tired?” + +The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window +answered, with a frown. + +“Checkers. No, I won’t. Can’t a man who works hard all day have a +little rest when he comes home? Why don’t you go out and play with the +other kids on the sidewalk?” + +The woman who was cooking came to the door. + +“John,” she said, “I don’t like for Lizzie to play in the street. They +learn too much there that ain’t good for ’em. She’s been in the house +all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your time to +amuse her when you come home.” + +“Let her go out and play like the rest of ’em if she wants to be +amused,” said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, “and don’t bother +me.” + + +“You’re on,” said Kid Mullaly. “Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to +the dance. Put up.” + +The Kid’s black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and +challenged. He drew out his “roll” and slapped five tens upon the bar. +The three or four young fellows who were thus “taken” more slowly +produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder, took the +money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an inch-long +pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash register. + +“And, oh, what’ll be done to you’ll be a plenty,” said a bettor, with +anticipatory glee. + +“That’s my lookout,” said the “Kid,” sternly. “Fill ’em up all around, +Mike.” + +After the round Burke, the “Kid’s” sponge, sponge-holder, pal, Mentor +and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon +corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours +Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the +club’s President and Secretary for the fifth time that day, Burke spake +words of wisdom to his chief. + +“Cut that blond out, ‘Kid,’” was his advice, “or there’ll be trouble. +What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for? You’ll never +find one that’ll freeze to you like Liz has. She’s worth a hallful of +Annies.” + +“I’m no Annie admirer!” said the “Kid,” dropping a cigarette ash on his +polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony’s shoulder. “But I want to +teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She’s been bragging +that I daren’t speak to another girl. Liz is all right—in some ways. +She’s drinking a little too much lately. And she uses language that a +lady oughtn’t.” + +“You’re engaged, ain’t you?” asked Burke. + +“Sure. We’ll get married next year, maybe.” + +“I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer,” said Burke. “That +was two years ago, when she used to come down to the corner of Chrystie +bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort of a kid +then, and couldn’t speak without blushing.” + +“She’s a little spitfire, sometimes, now,” said the Kid. “I hate +jealousy. That’s why I’m going to the dance with Annie. It’ll teach her +some sense.” + +“Well, you better look a little out,” were Burke’s last words. “If Liz +was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an Annie, +I’d want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all right.” + +Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes +searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she +hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her small, +white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east side has +added to language. + +Liz’s skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink plaid, +well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring of huge +imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the bottom of a +silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high heels, and were +strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have passed into a flour +barrel. + +The “Family Entrance” of the Blue Jay Café received her. At a table she +sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her +carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner of +respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied +wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited +upon. It was all that her world offered her of the prerogative of +woman. + +“Whiskey, Tommy,” she said as her sisters further uptown murmur, +“Champagne, James.” + +“Sure, Miss Lizzie. What’ll the chaser be?” + +“Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?” + +“Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven’t saw him to-day.” + +Fluently came the “Miss Lizzie,” for the Kid was known to be one who +required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee. + +“I’m lookin’ for ’m,” said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under +her nose. “It’s got to me that he says he’ll take Annie Karlson to the +dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I’m lookin’ for ’m. You know +me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid’s been engaged. Look at that ring. +Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to the dance. What’ll I +do? I’ll cut his heart out. Another whiskey, Tommy.” + +“I wouldn’t listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie,” said the waiter +smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. “Kid Mullaly’s not +the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?” + +“Two years,” repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under the +magic of the distiller’s art. “I always used to play out on the street +of evenin’s ’cause there was nothin’ doin’ for me at home. For a long +time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights and the people +goin’ by. And then the Kid came along one evenin’ and sized me up, and +I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first drink he made me take I +cried all night at home, and got a lickin’ for makin’ a noise. And +now—say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie Karlson? If it wasn’t for +peroxide the chloroform limit would have put her out long ago. Oh, I’m +lookin’ for ’m. You tell the Kid if he comes in. Me? I’ll cut his heart +out. Leave it to me. Another whiskey, Tommy.” + +A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz walked +up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a curly-haired child +sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled string. Liz flopped +down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile on her flushed face. +But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a sudden. + +“Let me show you how to make a cat’s-cradle, kid,” she said, tucking +her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes. + +And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the dance +in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the bi-monthly +dance, a dress affair in which the members took great pride and +bestirred themselves huskily to further and adorn. + +At 9 o’clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a +lady on his arm. As the Loreley’s was her hair golden. Her “yes” was +softened to a “yah,” but its quality of assent was patent to the most +Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, and—she +smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly. + +And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the thing +happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in many +studies and libraries. + +Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green +silk skirt, under the _nom de guerre_ of “Liz.” Her eyes were hard and +blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly, she +cried out one oath—the Kid’s own favorite oath—and in his own deep +voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went frantically to +pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the waiter—made good as far +as the length of her knife blade and the strength of her arm permitted. + +And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation—or was it +self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the natural +branch? + +Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying +through a grove of saplings at dusk. + +And then followed the big city’s biggest shame, its most ancient and +rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight and +perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved and +cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest +barbarity—the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it +survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of +culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in the +chase. + +They pursued—a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and +maidens—howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. Well +may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may his +heart, the gentler, falter at the siege. + +Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the +familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the +rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps—and good +mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but +quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights +burning o’ nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges. + + +It’s mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call +them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed +the rest of this story. + +I thought I was in the next world. I don’t know how I got there; I +suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking patent +medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries’s nose, or doing some such +little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there was a +great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgments were going +on. And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing court-officer +angel would come outside the door and call another case. + +While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether there +would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming that I +lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and sang out: + +“Case No. 99,852,743.” + +Up stepped a plain-clothes man—there were lots of ’em there, dressed +exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just like cops do +on earth—and by the arm he dragged—whom, do you think? Why, Liz! + +The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to Mr. +Fly-Cop and inquired about the case. + +“A very sad one,” says he, laying the points of his manicured fingers +together. “An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special Terrestrial +Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to me. The girl +murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had no defense. My +report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of which are +substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is death. Praise +the Lord.” + +The court officer opened the door and stepped out. + +“Poor girl,” said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, with +a tear in his eye. “It was one of the saddest cases that I ever met +with. Of course she was”— + +“Discharged,” said the court officer. “Come here, Jonesy. First thing +you know you’ll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How would you like to +be on the missionary force in the South Sea Islands—hey? Now, you quit +making these false arrests, or you’ll be transferred—see? The guilty +party you’ve got to look for in this case is a red-haired, unshaven, +untidy man, sitting by the window reading, in his stocking feet, while +his children play in the streets. Get a move on you.” + +Now, wasn’t that a silly dream? + + + + +ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS + + +Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are +forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and +become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; +both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability +and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and +peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic +alma mater. + +The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral +cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high and +profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his badge and +buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the solid pieces of +real estate that his frugality had enabled him to accumulate. The +passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month after his +dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck from his +free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from her nest, +and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after that he +acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and wrote +complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought the attendant +at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give him a bath. When +Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of an Italian woman who +sold apples and garlic on Essex street, and quoting the words of a song +book ballad. + +Murray’s fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All the +pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The +megaphone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on a +grand and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about +something, and the prince had been escorted to the door by the butler, +which, in said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the avuncular +shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he drifted +downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the crusts of the +streets with him. + +One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great +bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase—drawing irony +instead of pity to his petitions for aid—was heaped against the arm of +the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by tufts of +vermilion, week-old whiskers and topped by a sagging white straw hat, +looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that you may observe +in a dark Third avenue window, challenging your imagination to say +whether it be something recent in the way of ladies’ hats or a +strawberry shortcake. A tight-drawn belt—last relic of his official +spruceness—made a deep furrow in his circumference. The Captain’s shoes +were buttonless. In a smothered bass he cursed his star of ill-luck. + +Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of blue +serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little indistinct, +like some ghost that had been dispossessed. + +“I’m hungry,” growled the Captain—“by the top sirloin of the Bull of +Bashan, I’m starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery +restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can’t you think +of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders scrunched up, +giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving his coach—what good +are them airs doing you now? Think of some place we can get something +to chew.” + +“You forget, my dear Captain,” said Murray, without moving, “that our +last attempt at dining was at my suggestion.” + +“You bet it was,” groaned the Captain, “you bet your life it was. Have +you got any more like that to make—hey?” + +“I admit we failed,” sighed Murray. “I was sure Malone would be good +for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the +last time I spent a nickel in his establishment.” + +“I had this hand,” said the Captain, extending the unfortunate +member—“I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two sardine +sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us.” + +“I was within two inches of the olives,” said Murray. “Stuffed olives. +I haven’t tasted one in a year.” + +“What’ll we do?” grumbled the Captain. “We can’t starve.” + +“Can’t we?” said Murray quietly. “I’m glad to hear that. I was afraid +we could.” + +“You wait here,” said the Captain, rising heavily and puffily to his +feet. “I’m going to try to make one more turn. You stay here till I +come back, Murray. I won’t be over half an hour. If I turn the trick +I’ll come back flush.” + +He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He gave +his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a pair of +black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by tightening his +belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo rhinoceros, across the +south end of the park. + +When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly +eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two +green lights. + +“A police captain named Maroney,” he said to the desk sergeant, “was +dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years +ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the +police?” + +“Why are ye asking?” inquired the sergeant, with a frown. + +“I thought there might be a reward standing,” explained Murray, easily. +“I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty shady at +present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there should be a +reward—” + +“There’s no reward,” interrupted the sergeant, shortly. “The man’s not +wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um, and ye +would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I’ll give ye a start.” + +Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity. + +“I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman,” he said, +severely, “if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of its +offenders.” + +Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and +shrank within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment. + +Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy and +thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn away; his +straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with ox-blood +stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he was drenched with +some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly proclaimed to the nose +its component leaven of garlic and kitchen stuff. + +“For Heaven’s sake, Captain,” sniffed Murray, “I doubt that I would +have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to +resort to swill barrels. I”— + +“Cheese it,” said the Captain, harshly. “I’m not hogging it yet. It’s +all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed marriage to +that Catrina that’s got the fruit shop there. Now, that business could +be built up. She’s a peach as far as a Dago could be. I thought I had +that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what she done to me! I +guess I got too fresh. Well there’s another scheme queered.” + +“You don’t mean to say,” said Murray, with infinite contempt, “that you +would have married that woman to help yourself out of your disgraceful +troubles!” + +“Me?” said the Captain. “I’d marry the Empress of China for one bowl of +chop suey. I’d commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I’d steal a +wafer from a waif. I’d be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder.” + +“I think,” said Murray, resting his head on his hands, “that I would +play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces of +silver I would”— + +“Oh, come now!” exclaimed the Captain in dismay. “You wouldn’t do that, +Murray! I always thought that Kike’s squeal on his boss was about the +lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his friend away +is worse than a pirate.” + +Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the +electric light fell. + +“Is that you, Mac?” he said, halting before the derelicts. His diamond +stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. He was big +and smooth and well fed. “Yes, I see it’s you,” he continued. “They +told me at Mike’s that I might find you over here. Let me see you a few +minutes, Mac.” + +The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie +Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must be +something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of shadow. + +“You know, Mac,” he said, “they’re trying Inspector Pickering on graft +charges.” + +“He was my inspector,” said the Captain. + +“O’Shea wants the job,” went on Finnegan. “He must have it. It’s for +the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony +will do it. He was your ‘man higher up’ when you were on the force. His +share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the stand +and testify against him.” + +“He was”—began the Captain. + +“Wait a minute,” said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out of +his inside pocket. “Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty on +the spot, and the rest”— + +“He was my friend, I say,” finished the Captain. “I’ll see you and the +gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before I’ll +take the stand against Dan Pickering. I’m down and out; but I’m no +traitor to a man that’s been my friend.” The Captain’s voice rose and +boomed like a split trombone. “Get out of this park, Charlie Finnegan, +where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; and take your +dirty money with you.” + +Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his seat. + +“I couldn’t avoid hearing,” said Murray, drearily. “I think you are the +biggest fool I ever saw.” + +“What would you have done?” asked the Captain. + +“Nailed Pickering to the cross,” said Murray. + +“Sonny,” said the Captain, huskily and without heat. “You and me are +different. New York is divided into two parts—above Forty-second +street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both act +according to our lights.” + +An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that it +lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and moved +away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the park, struck +through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway, at this hour as +dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii. + +Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt and +slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he would +have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every street in +that part of the city other unkempt and slinking figures were shuffling +and hurrying toward a converging point—a point that is marked by no +monument save that groove on the pavement worn by tens of thousands of +waiting feet. + +At Ninth street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a +Broadway car and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray, pounced +upon him and dragged him under a street light. The Captain lumbered +slowly to the corner, like a wounded bear, and waited, growling. + +“Jerry!” cried the hatted one. “How fortunate! I was to begin a search +for you to-morrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You’re to be +restored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the office in the morning +and get all the money you want. I’ve liberal instructions in that +respect.” + +“And the little matrimonial arrangement?” said Murray, with his head +turned sidewise. + +“Why—er—well, of course, your uncle understands—expects that the +engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be”— + +“Good night,” said Murray, moving away. + +“You madman!” cried the other, catching his arm. “Would you give up two +millions on account of”— + +“Did you ever see her nose, old man?” asked Murray, solemnly. + +“But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress, and”— + +“Did you ever see it?” + +“Yes, I admit that her nose isn’t”— + +“Good night!” said Murray. “My friend is waiting for me. I am quoting +him when I authorize you to report that there is ‘nothing doing.’ Good +night.” + +A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth street +far up Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain and +Murray fell in at the tail of the quivering millipede. + +“Twenty feet longer than it was last night,” said Murray, looking up at +his measuring angle of Grace Church. + +“Half an hour,” growled the Captain, “before we get our punk.” + +The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward +slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a +hissing serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights closed +up in the rear. + + + + +A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT’S DREAM + + +“_The knights are dead; +Their swords are rust. +Except a few who have to hust- +Le all the time +To raise the dust._” + + +Dear Reader: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city with +pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious and +exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was—oh, bother +thermometers!—who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so hot +that— + +The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to +get your gin fizz now—as soon as all the other people got theirs. The +hospitals were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when little, +woolly dogs loll their tongues out and say “woof, woof!” at the fleas +that bite ’em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies screech “Mad +dog!” and policemen begin to shoot, somebody is going to get hurt. The +man from Pompton, N.J., who always wears an overcoat in July, had +turned up in a Broadway hotel drinking hot Scotches and enjoying his +annual ray from the calcium. Philanthropists were petitioning the +Legislature to pass a bill requiring builders to make tenement +fire-escapes more commodious, so that families might die all together +of the heat instead of one or two at a time. So many men were telling +you about the number of baths they took each day that you wondered how +they got along after the real lessee of the apartment came back to town +and thanked ’em for taking such good care of it. The young man who +called loudly for cold beef and beer in the restaurant, protesting that +roast pullet and Burgundy was really too heavy for such weather, +blushed when he met your eye, for you had heard him all winter calling, +in modest tones, for the same ascetic viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt +waists, actors and baseball excuses grew thinner. Yes, it was +summertime. + +A man stood at Thirty-fourth street waiting for a downtown car. A man +of forty, gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly dressed, with +a harassed look around the eyes. He wiped his forehead and laughed +loudly when a fat man with an outing look stopped and spoke with him. + +“No, siree,” he shouted with defiance and scorn. “None of your old +mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators for +me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do it. New +York, sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep in the +shade and watch your diet, and don’t get too far away from an electric +fan. Talk about your Adirondacks and your Catskills! There’s more solid +comfort in the borough of Manhattan than in all the rest of the country +together. No, siree! No tramping up perpendicular cliffs and being +waked up at 4 in the morning by a million flies, and eating canned +goods straight from the city for me. Little old New York will take a +few select summer boarders; comforts and conveniences of homes—that’s +the ad. that I answer every time.” + +“You need a vacation,” said the fat man, looking closely at the other. +“You haven’t been away from town in years. Better come with me for two +weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at anything now +that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed a three-pound +brown last week.” + +“Nonsense!” cried the other man. “Go ahead, if you like, and boggle +around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish. When +I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at you +fellows whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat in the +country thinking you are having a good time. For me Father +Knickerbocker’s little improved farm with the big shady lane running +through the middle of it.” + +The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who +thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country boarded +a car and went buzzing down to his office. On the way he threw away his +newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky above the housetops. + +“Three pounds!” he muttered, absently. “And Harding isn’t a liar. I +believe, if I could—but it’s impossible—they’ve got to have another +month—another month at least.” + +In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, headforemost, +into the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk, came and added a +spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams. + +At 5 o’clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office +chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud: + +“I wonder what kind of bait Harding used.” + + +She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to +Gaines. Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew +that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire’s son, and +that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure thing. But +white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with twenty-five’s +lordly air. + +The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that year. +There were two or three young college men and a couple of artists and a +young naval officer on one side. On the other there were enough +beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of a society +paper to refer to them as a “bevy.” But the moon among the stars was +Mary Sewell. Each one of the young men greatly desired to arrange +matters so that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix the furnace, +and have her do away with the “Sewell” part of her name forever. Those +who could stay only a week or two went away hinting at pistols and +blighted hearts. But Compton stayed like the mountains themselves, for +he could afford it. And Gaines stayed because he was a fighter and +wasn’t afraid of millionaire’s sons, and—well, he adored the country. + +“What do you think, Miss Mary?” he said once. “I knew a duffer in New +York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could keep +cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn’t he an awful silly? I +don’t think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of June.” + +“Mamma was thinking of going back week after next,” said Miss Mary with +a lovely frown. + +“But when you think of it,” said Gaines, “there are lots of jolly +places in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and +the—er—the roof gardens.” + +Deepest blue was the lake that day—the day when they had the mock +tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in a glade in +the woods and caught curtain rings on the end of a lance. Such fun! + +Cool and dry as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed forest. +The valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A white mist +from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand’s breadth of tree tops +half-way down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand with young +summer. Nothing on Broadway like that. + +The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad drollery. +The woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and sprites. +Gaines caught most of the rings. His was the privilege to crown the +queen of the tournament. He was the conquering knight—as far as the +rings went. On his arm he wore a white scarf. Compton wore light blue. +She had declared her preference for blue, but she wore white that day. + +Gaines looked about for the queen to crown her. He heard her merry +laugh, as if from the clouds. She had slipped away and climbed Chimney +Rock, a little granite bluff, and stood there, a white fairy among the +laurels, fifty feet above their heads. + +Instantly he and Compton accepted the implied challenge. The bluff was +easily mounted at the rear, but the front offered small hold to hand or +foot. Each man quickly selected his route and began to climb. A +crevice, a bush, a slight projection, a vine or tree branch—all of +these were aids that counted in the race. It was all foolery—there was +no stake; but there was youth in it, cross reader, and light hearts, +and something else that Miss Clay writes so charmingly about. + +Gaines gave a great tug at the root of a laurel and pulled himself to +Miss Mary’s feet. On his arm he carried the wreath of roses; and while +the villagers and summer boarders screamed and applauded below he +placed it on the queen’s brow. + +“You are a gallant knight,” said Miss Mary. + +“If I could be your true knight always,” began Gaines, but Miss Mary +laughed him dumb, for Compton scrambled over the edge of the rock one +minute behind time. + +What a twilight that was when they drove back to the hotel! The opal of +the valley turned slowly to purple, the dark woods framed the lake as a +mirror, the tonic air stirred the very soul in one. The first pale +stars came out over the mountain tops where yet a faint glow of— + + +“I beg your pardon, Mr. Gaines,” said Adkins. + +The man who believed New York to be the finest summer resort in the +world opened his eyes and kicked over the mucilage bottle on his desk. + +“I—I believe I was asleep,” he said. + +“It’s the heat,” said Adkins. “It’s something awful in the city these”— + +“Nonsense!” said the other. “The city beats the country ten to one in +summer. Fools go out tramping in muddy brooks and wear themselves out +trying to catch little fish as long as your finger. Stay in town and +keep comfortable—that’s my idea.” + +“Some letters just came,” said Adkins. “I thought you might like to +glance at them before you go.” + +Let us look over his shoulder and read just a few lines of one of them: + +My Dear, Dear Husband: Just received your letter ordering us to stay +another month. … Rita’s cough is almost gone. … Johnny has simply gone +wild like a little Indian … Will be the making of both children … work +so hard, and I know that your business can hardly afford to keep us +here so long … best man that ever … you always pretend that you like +the city in summer … trout fishing that you used to be so fond of … and +all to keep us well and happy … come to you if it were not doing the +babies so much good. … I stood last evening on Chimney Rock in exactly +the same spot where I was when you put the wreath of roses on my head … +through all the world … when you said you would be my true knight … +fifteen years ago, dear, just think! … have always been that to me … +ever and ever, + + +Mary. + + +The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in the +country dropped into a café on his way home and had a glass of beer +under an electric fan. + +“Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used,” he said to himself. + + + + +THE LAST LEAF + + +In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run +crazy and broken themselves into small strips called “places.” These +“places” make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a +time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this +street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas +should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, +without a cent having been paid on account! + +So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, +hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch +attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing +dish or two from Sixth avenue, and became a “colony.” + +At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their +studio. “Johnsy” was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other +from California. They had met at the _table d’hôte_ of an Eighth street +“Delmonico’s,” and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop +sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. + +That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors +called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there +with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, +smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the +maze of the narrow and moss-grown “places.” + +Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A +mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was +hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But +Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron +bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank +side of the next brick house. + +One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, +gray eyebrow. + +“She has one chance in—let us say, ten,” he said, as he shook down the +mercury in his clinical thermometer. “And that chance is for her to +want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of the +undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little lady +has made up her mind that she’s not going to get well. Has she anything +on her mind?” + +“She—she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,” said Sue. + +“Paint?—bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice—a +man, for instance?” + +“A man?” said Sue, with a jew’s-harp twang in her voice. “Is a man +worth—but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind.” + +“Well, it is the weakness, then,” said the doctor. “I will do all that +science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. +But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral +procession I subtract 50 per cent. from the curative power of +medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter +styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for +her, instead of one in ten.” + +After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a +Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy’s room with +her drawing board, whistling ragtime. + +Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her +face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. + +She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a +magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing +pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their +way to Literature. + +As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a +monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low +sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. + +Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and +counting—counting backward. + +“Twelve,” she said, and a little later “eleven;” and then “ten,” and +“nine;” and then “eight” and “seven,” almost together. + +Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? There +was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the +brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed +at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of +autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton +branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. + +“What is it, dear?” asked Sue. + +“Six,” said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. “They’re falling faster now. +Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to +count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are only +five left now.” + +“Five what, dear. Tell your Sudie.” + +“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I’ve +known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?” + +“Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,” complained Sue, with magnificent +scorn. “What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you +used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don’t be a goosey. Why, +the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real +soon were—let’s see exactly what he said—he said the chances were ten +to one! Why, that’s almost as good a chance as we have in New York when +we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take +some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell +the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork +chops for her greedy self.” + +“You needn’t get any more wine,” said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed +out the window. “There goes another. No, I don’t want any broth. That +leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. +Then I’ll go, too.” + +“Johnsy, dear,” said Sue, bending over her, “will you promise me to +keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done +working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, +or I would draw the shade down.” + +“Couldn’t you draw in the other room?” asked Johnsy, coldly. + +“I’d rather be here by you,” said Sue. “Besides I don’t want you to +keep looking at those silly ivy leaves.” + +“Tell me as soon as you have finished,” said Johnsy, closing her eyes, +and lying white and still as a fallen statue, “because I want to see +the last one fall. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of thinking. I want +to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just +like one of those poor, tired leaves.” + +“Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman up to be my model for +the old hermit miner. I’ll not be gone a minute. Don’t try to move +’till I come back.” + +Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. +He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo’s Moses beard curling down +from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. Behrman was a +failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting +near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress’s robe. He had been always +about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several +years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of +commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to +those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a +professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming +masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed +terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial +mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio +above. + +Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly +lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that +had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line +of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy’s fancy, and how she feared +she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when +her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. + +Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt +and derision for such idiotic imaginings. + +“Vass!” he cried. “Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to +die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard +of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool +hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der +prain of her? Ach, dot poor lettle Miss Johnsy.” + +“She is very ill and weak,” said Sue, “and the fever has left her mind +morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do +not care to pose for me, you needn’t. But I think you are a horrid +old—old flibbertigibbet.” + +“You are just like a woman!” yelled Behrman. “Who said I will not bose? +Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I +am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as +Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve +shall all go away. Gott! yes.” + +Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down +to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there +they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked +at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain +was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took +his seat as the hermit-miner on an upturned kettle for a rock. + +When Sue awoke from an hour’s sleep the next morning she found Johnsy +with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. + +“Pull it up; I want to see,” she ordered, in a whisper. + +Wearily Sue obeyed. + +But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had +endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the +brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green +near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of +dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet +above the ground. + +“It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely fall +during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall +die at the same time.” + +“Dear, dear!” said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, +“think of me, if you won’t think of yourself. What would I do?” + +But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a +soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The +fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that +bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed. + +The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the +lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the +coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain +still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch +eaves. + +When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the +shade be raised. + +The ivy leaf was still there. + +Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, +who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. + +“I’ve been a bad girl, Sudie,” said Johnsy. “Something has made that +last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want +to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with a +little port in it, and—no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack +some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook.” + +An hour later she said. + +“Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.” + +The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the +hallway as he left. + +“Even chances,” said the doctor, taking Sue’s thin, shaking hand in +his. “With good nursing you’ll win. And now I must see another case I +have downstairs. Behrman, his name is—some kind of an artist, I +believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is +acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to +be made more comfortable.” + +The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s out of danger. You’ve won. +Nutrition and care now—that’s all.” + +And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly +knitting a very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put +one arm around her, pillows and all. + +“I have something to tell you, white mouse,” she said. “Mr. Behrman +died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The +janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room +downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through +and icy cold. They couldn’t imagine where he had been on such a +dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a +ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered +brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, +and—look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn’t +you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, +darling, it’s Behrman’s masterpiece—he painted it there the night that +the last leaf fell.” + + + + +THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST + + +One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue +boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young +lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a +plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed +languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one +perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured his +name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the grace and +beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, business and +political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one from the tablets +of his consideration. + +Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps enjoying his cigar. +There was a soft rustle behind and above him, and Andy turned his +head—and had his head turned. + +Just coming out the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black dress +of _crêpe de_—_crêpe de_—oh, this thin black goods. Her hat was black, +and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a spider’s +web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk gloves. Not a +speck of white or a spot of color about her dress anywhere. Her rich +golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, into a shining, smooth +knot low on her neck. Her face was plain rather than pretty, but it was +now illuminated and made almost beautiful by her large gray eyes that +gazed above the houses across the street into the sky with an +expression of the most appealing sadness and melancholy. + +Gather the idea, girls—all black, you know, with the preference for +_crêpe de_—oh, _crêpe de Chine_—that’s it. All black, and that sad, +faraway look, and the hair shining under the black veil (you have to be +a blonde, of course), and try to look as if, although your young life +had been blighted just as it was about to give a hop-skip-and-a-jump +over the threshold of life, a walk in the park might do you good, and +be sure to happen out the door at the right moment, and—oh, it’ll fetch +’em every time. But it’s fierce, now, how cynical I am, ain’t it?—to +talk about mourning costumes this way. + +Mr. Donovan suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of his +consideration. He threw away the remaining inch-and-a-quarter of his +cigar, that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly +shifted his center of gravity to his low cut patent leathers. + +“It’s a fine, clear evening, Miss Conway,” he said; and if the Weather +Bureau could have heard the confident emphasis of his tones it would +have hoisted the square white signal, and nailed it to the mast. + +“To them that has the heart to enjoy it, it is, Mr. Donovan,” said Miss +Conway, with a sigh. + +Mr. Donovan, in his heart, cursed fair weather. Heartless weather! It +should hail and blow and snow to be consonant with the mood of Miss +Conway. + +“I hope none of your relatives—I hope you haven’t sustained a loss?” +ventured Mr. Donovan. + +“Death has claimed,” said Miss Conway, hesitating—“not a relative, but +one who—but I will not intrude my grief upon you, Mr. Donovan.” + +“Intrude?” protested Mr. Donovan. “Why, say, Miss Conway, I’d be +delighted, that is, I’d be sorry—I mean I’m sure nobody could +sympathize with you truer than I would.” + +Miss Conway smiled a little smile. And oh, it was sadder than her +expression in repose. + +“‘Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and they give you the +laugh,’” she quoted. “I have learned that, Mr. Donovan. I have no +friends or acquaintances in this city. But you have been kind to me. I +appreciate it highly.” + +He had passed her the pepper twice at the table. + +“It’s tough to be alone in New York—that’s a cinch,” said Mr. Donovan. +“But, say—whenever this little old town does loosen up and get friendly +it goes the limit. Say you took a little stroll in the park, Miss +Conway—don’t you think it might chase away some of your mullygrubs? And +if you’d allow me—” + +“Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I’d be pleased to accept of your escort if you +think the company of one whose heart is filled with gloom could be +anyways agreeable to you.” + +Through the open gates of the iron-railed, old, downtown park, where +the elect once took the air, they strolled, and found a quiet bench. + +There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old +age: youth’s burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; +old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same. + +“He was my fiance,” confided Miss Conway, at the end of an hour. “We +were going to be married next spring. I don’t want you to think that I +am stringing you, Mr. Donovan, but he was a real Count. He had an +estate and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. I +never saw the beat of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, and +once we eloped, but papa overtook us, and took us back. I thought sure +papa and Fernando would fight a duel. Papa has a livery business—in +P’kipsee, you know.” + +“Finally, papa came ’round, all right, and said we might be married +next spring. Fernando showed him proofs of his title and wealth, and +then went over to Italy to get the castle fixed up for us. Papa’s very +proud, and when Fernando wanted to give me several thousand dollars for +my trousseau he called him down something awful. He wouldn’t even let +me take a ring or any presents from him. And when Fernando sailed I +came to the city and got a position as cashier in a candy store.” + +“Three days ago I got a letter from Italy, forwarded from P’kipsee, +saying that Fernando had been killed in a gondola accident.” + +“That is why I am in mourning. My heart, Mr. Donovan, will remain +forever in his grave. I guess I am poor company, Mr. Donovan, but I +cannot take any interest in no one. I should not care to keep you from +gayety and your friends who can smile and entertain you. Perhaps you +would prefer to walk back to the house?” + +Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick +and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow’s +grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature. Ask any widow. Something +must be done to restore that missing organ to weeping angels in _crêpe +de Chine_. Dead men certainly get the worst of it from all sides. + +“I’m awfully sorry,” said Mr. Donovan, gently. “No, we won’t walk back +to the house just yet. And don’t say you haven’t no friends in this +city, Miss Conway. I’m awful sorry, and I want you to believe I’m your +friend, and that I’m awful sorry.” + +“I’ve got his picture here in my locket,” said Miss Conway, after +wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. “I never showed it to anybody; +but I will to you, Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be a true +friend.” + +Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph in the +locket that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count Mazzini was +one to command interest. It was a smooth, intelligent, bright, almost a +handsome face—the face of a strong, cheerful man who might well be a +leader among his fellows. + +“I have a larger one, framed, in my room,” said Miss Conway. “When we +return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of +Fernando. But he ever will be present in my heart, that’s a sure +thing.” + +A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan,—that of supplanting the +unfortunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration for +her determined him to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking did not +seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful friend was +the rôle he essayed; and he played it so successfully that the next +half-hour found them conversing pensively across two plates of +ice-cream, though yet there was no diminution of the sadness in Miss +Conway’s large gray eyes. + +Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and +brought down the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk +scarf. Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes. + +“He gave me this the night he left for Italy,” said Miss Conway. “I had +the one for the locket made from this.” + +“A fine-looking man,” said Mr. Donovan, heartily. “How would it suit +you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney next +Sunday afternoon?” + +A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the +other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black. + +A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the +downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim +kinetoscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn a +look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that love’s +lips could not keep back any longer the questions that love’s heart +propounded. + +“What’s the matter, Andy, you are so solemn and grouchy to-night?” + +“Nothing, Maggie.” + +“I know better. Can’t I tell? You never acted this way before. What is +it?” + +“It’s nothing much, Maggie.” + +“Yes it is; and I want to know. I’ll bet it’s some other girl you are +thinking about. All right. Why don’t you go get her if you want her? +Take your arm away, if you please.” + +“I’ll tell you then,” said Andy, wisely, “but I guess you won’t +understand it exactly. You’ve heard of Mike Sullivan, haven’t you? ‘Big +Mike’ Sullivan, everybody calls him.” + +“No, I haven’t,” said Maggie. “And I don’t want to, if he makes you act +like this. Who is he?” + +“He’s the biggest man in New York,” said Andy, almost reverently. “He +can about do anything he wants to with Tammany or any other old thing +in the political line. He’s a mile high and as broad as East River. You +say anything against Big Mike, and you’ll have a million men on your +collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit over to the old +country awhile back, and the kings took to their holes like rabbits. + +“Well, Big Mike’s a friend of mine. I ain’t more than deuce-high in the +district as far as influence goes, but Mike’s as good a friend to a +little man, or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him to-day on +the Bowery, and what do you think he does? Comes up and shakes hands. +‘Andy,’ says he, ‘I’ve been keeping cases on you. You’ve been putting +in some good licks over on your side of the street, and I’m proud of +you. What’ll you take to drink?” He takes a cigar, and I take a +highball. I told him I was going to get married in two weeks. ‘Andy,’ +says he, ‘send me an invitation, so I’ll keep in mind of it, and I’ll +come to the wedding.’ That’s what Big Mike says to me; and he always +does what he says. + +“You don’t understand it, Maggie, but I’d have one of my hands cut off +to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would be the proudest day +of my life. When he goes to a man’s wedding, there’s a guy being +married that’s made for life. Now, that’s why I’m maybe looking sore +to-night.” + +“Why don’t you invite him, then, if he’s so much to the mustard?” said +Maggie, lightly. + +“There’s a reason why I can’t,” said Andy, sadly. “There’s a reason why +he mustn’t be there. Don’t ask me what it is, for I can’t tell you.” + +“Oh, I don’t care,” said Maggie. “It’s something about politics, of +course. But it’s no reason why you can’t smile at me.” + +“Maggie,” said Andy, presently, “do you think as much of me as you did +of your—as you did of the Count Mazzini?” + +He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply. And then, suddenly she +leaned against his shoulder and began to cry—to cry and shake with +sobs, holding his arm tightly, and wetting the _crêpe de Chine_ with +tears. + +“There, there, there!” soothed Andy, putting aside his own trouble. +“And what is it, now?” + +“Andy,” sobbed Maggie. “I’ve lied to you, and you’ll never marry me, or +love me any more. But I feel that I’ve got to tell. Andy, there never +was so much as the little finger of a count. I never had a beau in my +life. But all the other girls had; and they talked about ’em; and that +seemed to make the fellows like ’em more. And, Andy, I look swell in +black—you know I do. So I went out to a photograph store and bought +that picture, and had a little one made for my locket, and made up all +that story about the Count, and about his being killed, so I could wear +black. And nobody can love a liar, and you’ll shake me, Andy, and I’ll +die for shame. Oh, there never was anybody I liked but you—and that’s +all.” + +But instead of being pushed away, she found Andy’s arm folding her +closer. She looked up and saw his face cleared and smiling. + +“Could you—could you forgive me, Andy?” + +“Sure,” said Andy. “It’s all right about that. Back to the cemetery for +the Count. You’ve straightened everything out, Maggie. I was in hopes +you would before the wedding-day. Bully girl!” + +“Andy,” said Maggie, with a somewhat shy smile, after she had been +thoroughly assured of forgiveness, “did you believe all that story +about the Count?” + +“Well, not to any large extent,” said Andy, reaching for his cigar +case, “because it’s Big Mike Sullivan’s picture you’ve got in that +locket of yours.” + + + + +THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION + + +The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then +set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception +of what it is not—and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow +the prolix and unmapable trail into that mooted country, Bohemia. + +Grainger, sub-editor of _Doc’s Magazine_, closed his roll-top desk, put +on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the “down” button, and waited +for the elevator. + +Grainger’s day had been trying. The chief had tried to ruin the +magazine a dozen times by going against Grainger’s ideas for running +it. A lady whose grandfather had fought with McClellan had brought a +portfolio of poems in person. + +Grainger was curator of the Lion’s House of the magazine. That day he +had “lunched” an Arctic explorer, a short-story writer, and the famous +conductor of a slaughter-house exposé. Consequently his mind was in a +whirl of icebergs, Maupassant, and trichinosis. + +But there was a surcease and a recourse; there was Bohemia. He would +seek distraction there; and, let’s see—he would call by for Mary +Adrian. + +Half an hour later he threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid-hunter +through the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the “Idealia” +apartment-house. One day the christeners of apartment-houses and the +cognominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there will be some +jealous and sanguinary knifing. + +The clerk breathed Grainger’s name so languidly into the house +telephone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, down +to the janitor’s regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily up to +Miss Adrian’s ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to come up immediately. + +A colored maid with an Eliza-crossing-the-ice expression opened the +door of the apartment for him. Grainger walked sideways down the narrow +hall. A bunch of burnt umber hair and a sea-green eye appeared in the +crack of a door. A long, white, undraped arm came out, barring the way. + +“So glad you came, Ricky, instead of any of the others,” said the eye. +“Light a cigarette and give it to me. Going to take me to dinner? Fine. +Go into the front room till I finish dressing. But don’t sit in your +usual chair. There’s pie in it—Meringue. Kappelman threw it at Reeves +last evening while he was reciting. Sophy has just come to straighten +up. Is it lit? Thanks. There’s Scotch on the mantel—oh, no, it +isn’t,—that’s chartreuse. Ask Sophy to find you some. I won’t be long.” + +Grainger escaped the meringue. As he waited his spirits sank still +lower. The atmosphere of the room was as vapid as a zephyr wandering +over a Vesuvian lava-bed. Relics of some feast lay about the room, +scattered in places where even a prowling cat would have been surprised +to find them. A straggling cluster of deep red roses in a marmalade jar +bowed their heads over tobacco ashes and unwashed goblets. A +chafing-dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet music supported a +stack of sandwiches in a chair. + +Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black +fabric whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to summon +visions ranging between the extremes of man’s experience. Spelled with +an “ê” it belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous dreams; with an “a” +it drapes lamentation and woe. + +That evening they went to the Café André. And, as people would confide +to you in a whisper that André’s was the only truly Bohemian restaurant +in town, it may be well to follow them. + +André began his professional career as a waiter in a Bowery ten-cent +eating-house. Had you seen him there you would have called him tough—to +yourself. Not aloud, for he would have “soaked” you as quickly as he +would have soaked his thumb in your coffee. He saved money and started +a basement _table d’hôte_ in Eighth (or Ninth) Street. One afternoon +André drank too much absinthe. He announced to his startled family that +he was the Grand Llama of Thibet, therefore requiring an empty audience +hall in which to be worshiped. He moved all the tables and chairs from +the restaurant into the back yard, wrapped a red table-cloth around +himself, and sat on a step-ladder for a throne. When the diners began +to arrive, madame, in a flurry of despair, laid cloths and ushered +them, trembling, outside. Between the tables clothes-lines were +stretched, bearing the family wash. A party of Bohemia hunters greeted +the artistic innovation with shrieks and acclamations of delight. That +week’s washing was not taken in for two years. When André came to his +senses he had the menu printed on stiffly starched cuffs, and served +the ices in little wooden tubs. Next he took down his sign and darkened +the front of the house. When you went there to dine you fumbled for an +electric button and pressed it. A lookout slid open a panel in the +door, looked at you suspiciously, and asked if you were acquainted with +Senator Herodotus Q. McMilligan, of the Chickasaw Nation. If you were, +you were admitted and allowed to dine. If you were not, you were +admitted and allowed to dine. There you have one of the abiding +principles of Bohemia. When André had accumulated $20,000 he moved +up-town, near Broadway, in the fierce light that beats upon the +thrown-down. There we find him and leave him, with customers in pearls +and automobile veils, striving to catch his excellently graduated nod +of recognition. + +There is a large round table in the northeast corner of André’s at +which six can sit. To this table Grainger and Mary Adrian made their +way. Kappelman and Reeves were already there. And Miss Tooker, who +designed the May cover for the _Ladies’ Notathome Magazine_. And Mrs. +Pothunter, who never drank anything but black and white highballs, +being in mourning for her husband, who—oh, I’ve forgotten what he +did—died, like as not. + +Spaghetti-weary reader, wouldst take one penny-in-the-slot peep into +the fair land of Bohemia? Then look; and when you think you have seen +it you have not. And it is neither thimbleriggery nor astigmatism. + +The walls of the Café André were covered with original sketches by the +artists who furnished much of the color and sound of the place. Fair +woman furnished the theme for the bulk of the drawings. When you say +“sirens and siphons” you come near to estimating the alliterative +atmosphere of André’s. + +First, I want you to meet my friend, Miss Adrian. Miss Tooker and Mrs. +Pothunter you already know. While she tucks in the fingers of her elbow +gloves you shall have her daguerreotype. So faint and uncertain shall +the portrait be: + +Age, somewhere between twenty-seven and highneck evening dresses. +Camaraderie in large bunches—whatever the fearful word may mean. +Habitat—anywhere from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego. Temperament +uncharted—she let Reeves squeeze her hand after he recited one of his +poems; but she counted the change after sending him out with a dollar +to buy some pickled pig’s feet. Deportment 75 out of a possible 100. +Morals 100. + +Mary was one of the princesses of Bohemia. In the first place, it was a +royal and a daring thing to have been named Mary. There are twenty +Fifines and Heloises to one Mary in the Country of Elusion. + +Now her gloves are tucked in. Miss Tooker has assumed a June poster +pose; Mrs. Pothunter has bitten her lips to make the red show; Reeves +has several times felt his coat to make sure that his latest poem is in +the pocket. (It had been neatly typewritten; but he has copied it on +the backs of letters with a pencil.) Kappelman is underhandedly +watching the clock. It is ten minutes to nine. When the hour comes it +is to remind him of a story. Synopsis: A French girl says to her +suitor: “Did you ask my father for my hand at nine o’clock this +morning, as you said you would?” “I did not,” he replies. “At nine +o’clock I was fighting a duel with swords in the Bois de Boulogne.” +“Coward!” she hisses. + +The dinner was ordered. You know how the Bohemian feast of reason keeps +up with the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with the soup; +repartee with the entrée; brag with the roast; knocks for Whistler and +Kipling with the salad; songs with the coffee; the slapsticks with the +cordials. + +Between Miss Adrian’s eyebrows was the pucker that shows the intense +strain it requires to be at ease in Bohemia. Pat must come each sally, +_mot_, and epigram. Every second of deliberation upon a reply costs you +a bay leaf. Fine as a hair, a line began to curve from her nostrils to +her mouth. To hold her own not a chance must be missed. A sentence +addressed to her must be as a piccolo, each word of it a stop, which +she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she must always be +quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle the light canoe of conversation +away from the rocks in the rapids that flow from the Pierian spring. +For, plodding reader, the handwriting on the wall in the banquet hall +of Bohemia is “_Laisser faire_.” The gray ghost that sometimes peeps +through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King Convention. +Freedom is the tyrant that holds them in slavery. + +As the dinner waned, hands reached for the pepper cruet rather than for +the shaker of Attic salt. Miss Tooker, with an elbow to business, +leaned across the table toward Grainger, upsetting her glass of wine. + +“Now while you are fed and in good humor,” she said, “I want to make a +suggestion to you about a new cover.” + +“A good idea,” said Grainger, mopping the tablecloth with his napkin. +“I’ll speak to the waiter about it.” + +Kappelman, the painter, was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate Athenian +wit he got up from his chair and waltzed down the room with a waiter. +That dependent, no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, worthy, tax-paying, +art-despising biped, released himself from the unequal encounter, +carried his professional smile back to the dumb-waiter and dropped it +down the shaft to eternal oblivion. Reeves began to make Keats turn in +his grave. Mrs. Pothunter told the story of the man who met the widow +on the train. Miss Adrian hummed what is still called a _chanson_ in +the cafés of Bridgeport. Grainger edited each individual effort with +his assistant editor’s smile, which meant: “Great! but you’ll have to +send them in through the regular channels. If I were the chief now—but +you know how it is.” + +And soon the head waiter bowed before them, desolated to relate that +the closing hour had already become chronologically historical; so out +all trooped into the starry midnight, filling the street with gay +laughter, to be barked at by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed by the +dull inhabitants of an uninspired world. + +Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of the +Idealia. After he had gone she came down again carrying a small +hand-bag, ’phoned for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, +boarded a 12.55 commuter’s train, rode four hours with her burnt-umber +head bobbing against the red-plush back of the seat, and landed during +a fresh, stinging, glorious sunrise at a deserted station, the size of +a peach crate, called Crocusville. + +She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown +cottage stood twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, +Calvinistic face and clothes dyed blacker than a raven in a coal-mine +was washing his hands in a tin basin on the front porch. + +“How are you, father?” said Mary timidly. + +“I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your +mother in the kitchen.” + +In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the +forehead, and pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for +breakfast. Mary sat in a wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a +thrill in her heart. + +For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and tea. + +“You are pursuing the same avocation in the city concerning which you +have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust,” said her father. + +“Yes,” said Mary, “I am still reviewing books for the same +publication.” + +After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat in +straight-back chairs in the bare-floored parlor. + +“It is my custom,” said the old man, “on the Sabbath day to read aloud +from the great work entitled the ‘Apology for Authorized and Set Forms +of Liturgy,’ by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered theologian, +Jeremy Taylor.” + +“I know it,” said Mary blissfully, folding her hands. + +For two hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the +notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in +the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair +brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the +martyr’s. Jeremy’s minor chords soothed her like the music of a +tom-tom. “Why, oh why,” she said to herself, “does some one not write +words to it?” + +At eleven they went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine +bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would have +brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The preacher +singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious head the damnation of +the world. At each side of her an adamant parent held her rigidly to +the bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her neck, but she dared not +move. She lowered her eyes before the congregation—a hundred-eyed +Cerberus that watched the gates through which her sins were fast +thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a delirious, almost a fanatic +joy. For she was out of the clutch of the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and +creed pinioned her with beneficent cruelty, as steel braces bind the +feet of a crippled child. She was hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, +strait-jacketed, silenced, ordered. When they came out the minister +stopped to greet them. Mary could only hang her head and answer “Yes, +sir,” and “No, sir,” to his questions. When she saw that the other +women carried their hymn-books at their waists with their left hands, +she blushed and moved hers there, too, from her right. + +She took the three-o’clock train back to the city. At nine she sat at +the round table for dinner in the Café André. Nearly the same crowd was +there. + +“Where have you been to-day?” asked Mrs. Pothunter. “I ’phoned to you +at twelve.” + +“I have been away in Bohemia,” answered Mary, with a mystic smile. + +There! Mary has given it away. She has spoiled my climax. For I was to +have told you that Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in +which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once +the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move +away beyond the hills. It is a hillside that you turn your head to peer +at from the windows of the Through Express. + +At exactly half past eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness and +slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. +Instantly she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that he +shrank down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across his +leering features. And all sounds ceased, as when the shadows of great +wings come upon a flock of chattering sparrows. One had broken the +paramount law of sham-Bohemia—the law of “_Laisser faire_.” The shock +came not from the blow delivered, but from the blow received. With the +effect of a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his pupils was that +blow administered. Women pulled down their sleeves and laid prim hands +against their ruffled side locks. Men looked at their watches. There +was nothing of the effect of a brawl about it; it was purely the still +panic produced by the sound of the ax of the fly cop, Conscience +hammering at the gambling-house doors of the Heart. + +With their punctilious putting on of cloaks, with their exaggerated +pretense of not having seen or heard, with their stammering exchange of +unaccustomed formalities, with their false show of a light-hearted exit +I must take leave of my Bohemian party. Mary has robbed me of my +climax; and she may go. + +But I am not defeated. Somewhere there exists a great vault miles broad +and miles long—more capacious than the champagne caves of France. In +that vault are stored the anticlimaxes that should have been tagged to +all the stories that have been told in the world. I shall cheat that +vault of one deposit. + +Minnie Brown, with her aunt, came from Crocusville down to the city to +see the sights. And because she had escorted me to fishless trout +streams and exhibited to me open-plumbed waterfalls and broken my +camera while I Julyed in her village, I must escort her to the hives +containing the synthetic clover honey of town. + +Especially did the custom-made Bohemia charm her. The spaghetti wound +its tendrils about her heart; the free red wine drowned her belief in +the existence of commercialism in the world; she was dared and +enchanted by the rugose wit that can be churned out of California +claret. + +But one evening I got her away from the smell of halibut and linoleum +long enough to read to her the manuscript of this story, which then +ended before her entrance into it. I read it to her because I knew that +all the printing-presses in the world were running to try to please her +and some others. And I asked her about it. + +“I didn’t quite catch the trains,” said she. “How long was Mary in +Crocusville?” + +“Ten hours and five minutes,” I replied. + +“Well, then, the story may do,” said Minnie. “But if she had stayed +there a week Kappelman would have got his kiss.” + + + + +THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT + + +At the street corner, as solid as granite in the “rush-hour” tide of +humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had stained +him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the glaciers. + +He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as +broad-gauged as the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara of +sound—the crash of the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding of +rubberless tires and the antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers +indulging in scarifying repartee. And so, with his gold dust cashed in +to the merry air of a hundred thousand, and with the cakes and ale of +one week in Gotham turning bitter on his tongue, the Man from Nome +sighed to set foot again in Chilkoot, the exit from the land of street +noises and Dead Sea apple pies. + +Up Sixth avenue, with the tripping, scurrying, chattering, bright-eyed, +homing tide came the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s. The Man from Nome looked +and saw, first, that she was supremely beautiful after his own +conception of beauty; and next, that she moved with exactly the steady +grace of a dog sled on a level crust of snow. His third sensation was +an instantaneous conviction that he desired her greatly for his own. +This quickly do men from Nome make up their minds. Besides, he was +going back to the North in a short time, and to act quickly was no less +necessary. + +A thousand girls from the great department store of Sieber-Mason flowed +along the sidewalk, making navigation dangerous to men whose feminine +field of vision for three years has been chiefly limited to Siwash and +Chilkat squaws. But the Man from Nome, loyal to her who had resurrected +his long cached heart, plunged into the stream of pulchritude and +followed her. + +Down Twenty-third street she glided swiftly, looking to neither side; +no more flirtatious than the bronze Diana above the Garden. Her fine +brown hair was neatly braided; her neat waist and unwrinkled black +skirt were eloquent of the double virtues—taste and economy. Ten yards +behind followed the smitten Man from Nome. + +Miss Claribel Colby, the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s, belonged to that sad +company of mariners known as Jersey commuters. She walked into the +waiting-room of the ferry, and up the stairs, and by a marvellous +swift, little run, caught the ferry-boat that was just going out. The +Man from Nome closed up his ten yards in three jumps and gained the +deck close beside her. + +Miss Colby chose a rather lonely seat on the outside of the +upper-cabin. The night was not cold, and she desired to be away from +the curious eyes and tedious voices of the passengers. Besides, she was +extremely weary and drooping from lack of sleep. On the previous night +she had graced the annual ball and oyster fry of the West Side +Wholesale Fish Dealers’ Assistants’ Social Club No. 2, thus reducing +her usual time of sleep to only three hours. + +And the day had been uncommonly troublous. Customers had been +inordinately trying; the buyer in her department had scolded her +roundly for letting her stock run down; her best friend, Mamie Tuthill, +had snubbed her by going to lunch with that Dockery girl. + +The Girl from Sieber-Mason’s was in that relaxed, softened mood that +often comes to the independent feminine wage-earner. It is a mood most +propitious for the man who would woo her. Then she has yearnings to be +set in some home and heart; to be comforted, and to hide behind some +strong arm and rest, rest. But Miss Claribel Colby was also very +sleepy. + +There came to her side a strong man, browned and dressed carelessly in +the best of clothes, with his hat in his hand. + +“Lady,” said the Man from Nome, respectfully, “excuse me for speaking +to you, but I—I—I saw you on the street, and—and—” + +“Oh, gee!” remarked the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s, glancing up with the +most capable coolness. “Ain’t there any way to ever get rid of you +mashers? I’ve tried everything from eating onions to using hatpins. Be +on your way, Freddie.” + +“I’m not one of that kind, lady,” said the Man from Nome—“honest, I’m +not. As I say, I saw you on the street, and I wanted to know you so bad +I couldn’t help followin’ after you. I was afraid I wouldn’t ever see +you again in this big town unless I spoke; and that’s why I done so.” + +Miss Colby looked once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the +ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen +swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his +boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little of +what he had to say. + +“You may sit down,” she said, laying her hand over a yawn with +ostentatious politness; “and—mind—don’t get fresh or I’ll call the +steward.” + +The Man from Nome sat by her side. He admired her greatly. He more than +admired her. She had exactly the looks he had tried so long in vain to +find in a woman. Could she ever come to like him? Well, that was to be +seen. He must do all in his power to stake his claim, anyhow. + +“My name’s Blayden,” said he—“Henry Blayden.” + +“Are you real sure it ain’t Jones?” asked the girl, leaning toward him, +with delicious, knowing raillery. + +“I’m down from Nome,” he went on with anxious seriousness. “I scraped +together a pretty good lot of dust up there, and brought it down with +me.” + +“Oh, say!” she rippled, pursuing persiflage with engaging lightness, +“then you must be on the White Wings force. I thought I’d seen you +somewhere.” + +“You didn’t see me on the street to-day when I saw you.” + +“I never look at fellows on the street.” + +“Well, I looked at you; and I never looked at anything before that I +thought was half as pretty.” + +“Shall I keep the change?” + +“Yes, I reckon so. I reckon you could keep anything I’ve got. I reckon +I’m what you would call a rough man, but I could be awful good to +anybody I liked. I’ve had a rough time of it up yonder, but I beat the +game. Nearly 5,000 ounces of dust was what I cleaned up while I was +there.” + +“Goodness!” exclaimed Miss Colby, obligingly sympathetic. “It must be +an awful dirty place, wherever it is.” + +And then her eyes closed. The voice of the Man from Nome had a monotony +in its very earnestness. Besides, what dull talk was this of brooms and +sweeping and dust? She leaned her head back against the wall. + +“Miss,” said the Man from Nome, with deeper earnestness and monotony, +“I never saw anybody I liked as well as I do you. I know you can’t +think that way of me right yet; but can’t you give me a chance? Won’t +you let me know you, and see if I can’t make you like me?” + +The head of the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s slid over gently and rested +upon his shoulder. Sweet sleep had won her, and she was dreaming +rapturously of the Wholesale Fish Dealers’ Assistants’ ball. + +The gentleman from Nome kept his arms to himself. He did not suspect +sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to surrender. +He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding the +head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, merely advanced +as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken advantage of. + +One small speck of alloy discounted the gold of his satisfaction. Had +he spoken too freely of his wealth? He wanted to be liked for himself. + +“I want to say, Miss,” he said, “that you can count on me. They know me +in the Klondike from Juneau to Circle City and down the whole length of +the Yukon. Many a night I’ve laid in the snow up there where I worked +like a slave for three years, and wondered if I’d ever have anybody to +like me. I didn’t want all that dust just myself. I thought I’d meet +just the right one some time, and I done it to-day. Money’s a mighty +good thing to have, but to have the love of the one you like best is +better still. If you was ever to marry a man, Miss, which would you +rather he’d have?” + +“Cash!” + +The word came sharply and loudly from Miss Colby’s lips, giving +evidence that in her dreams she was now behind her counter in the great +department store of Sieber-Mason. + +Her head suddenly bobbed over sideways. She awoke, sat straight, and +rubbed her eyes. The Man from Nome was gone. + +“Gee! I believe I’ve been asleep,” said Miss Colby. “Wonder what became +of the White Wings!” + + + + +THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER + + +Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old +ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. Oh, +very well! Pass up this _sotto voce_ autobiography of an X if you like. +If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John D’s checkbook +roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all right. But don’t +forget that small change can say a word to the point now and then. The +next time you tip your grocer’s clerk a silver quarter to give you +extra weight of his boss’s goods read the four words above the lady’s +head. How are they for repartee? + +I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen one +in a friend’s hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture of the +bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions of +Americans. The heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn the ends. On +my back is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres or Maxine Elliot +standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatory plant. My +references is—or are—Section 3,588, Revised Statutes. Ten cold, hard +dollars—I don’t say whether silver, gold, lead or iron—Uncle Sam will +hand you over his counter if you want to cash me in. + +I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make—thanks, I +knew you would—got that sneaking little respect and agreeable feeling +toward even an X, haven’t you? You see, a tainted bill doesn’t have +much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I never knew a +really cultured and educated person that could afford to hold a +ten-spot any longer than it would take to do an Arthur Duffy to the +nearest That’s All! sign or delicatessen store. + +For a six-year-old, I’ve had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I guess +I’ve paid as many debts as the man who dies. I’ve been owned by a good +many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingy five-dollar +silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to it in the fat +and bad-smelling purse of a butcher. + +“Hey, you Sitting Bull,” says I, “don’t scrouge so. Anyhow, don’t you +think it’s about time you went in on a customs payment and got +reissued? For a series of 1899 you’re a sight.” + +“Oh, don’t get crackly just because you’re a Buffalo bill,” says the +fiver. “You’d be limp, too, if you’d been stuffed down in a thick +cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and the thermometer +not a degree under 85 in the store.” + +“I never heard of a pocketbook like that,” says I. “Who carried you?” + +“A shopgirl,” says the five-spot. + +“What’s that?” I had to ask. + +“You’ll never know till their millennium comes,” says the fiver. + +Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head, +spoke up to the fiver: + +“Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain’t lisle thread good enough for yer? If you +was under all cotton like I’ve been to-day, and choked up with factory +dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a dozen +times, you’d have some reason to complain.” + +That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500 +package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania +correspondents—and I haven’t made the acquaintance of any of the five +and two spot’s friends’ pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, every time. + +I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands twenty +times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for my +owner’s every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never +missed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, +while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got in +the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little +straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. Once I +got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart peddler’s +jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again, for the future +department store owner lived on eight cents’ worth of dog meat and +onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one day on account of +having his cart too near a crossing, and I was rescued. I always will +feel grateful to the cop that got me. He changed me at a cigar store +near the Bowery that was running a crap game in the back room. So it +was the Captain of the precinct, after all, that did me the best turn, +when he got his. He blew me for wine the next evening in a Broadway +restaurant; and I really felt as glad to get back again as an Astor +does when he sees the lights of Charing Cross. + +A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony +once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes. +They were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossining whenever +three girls got hold of one of them during the ice cream season. But +it’s Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for the little Bok tips +when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse to stick to anything +during the rush lobster hour. + +The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good thing +with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to buy a +stack of blues. + +About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk’s and +the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot of other +notes and rolled us into what is termed a “wad” among the money +tainters. + +“Ticket me for five hundred,” said he to the banker, “and look out for +everything, Charlie. I’m going out for a stroll in the glen before the +moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody finds the roof +in their way there’s $60,000 wrapped in a comic supplement in the upper +left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold; everywhere be bold, but be not +bowled over. ’Night.” + +I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of ’em says to +me: + +“Well, old shorthorn, you’re in luck to-night. You’ll see something of +life. Old Jack’s going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg +steak.” + +“Explain,” says I. “I’m used to joints, but I don’t care for filet +mignon with the kind of sauce you serve.” + +“’Xcuse me,” said the twenty. “Old Jack is the proprietor of this +gambling house. He’s going on a whiz to-night because he offered +$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said his +money was tainted.” + +“What is a church?” I asked. + +“Oh, I forgot,” says the twenty, “that I was talking to a tenner. Of +course you don’t know. You’re too much to put into the contribution +basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is—a large +building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each.” + +I don’t care much about chinning with gold certificates. There’s a +streak of yellow in ’em. All is not gold that’s quitters. + +Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time to +loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary. + +By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the wilderness; +and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hot gullets fell in +on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there waiting for somebody to +put covers on it. Old Jack’s money may have had a taint to it, but all +the same he had orders for his Camembert piling up on him every minute. +First his friends rallied round him; and then the fellows that his +friends knew by sight; and then a few of his enemies buried the +hatchet; and finally he was buying souvenirs for so many Neapolitan +fisher maidens and butterfly octettes that the head waiters were +’phoning all over town for Julian Mitchell to please come around and +get them into some kind of order. + +At last we floated into an uptown café that I knew by heart. When the +hod-carriers’ union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief goal +kicker called out: “Six—eleven—forty-two—nineteen—twelve” to his men, +and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we meant Port +Arthur or Portsmouth. But Old Jack wasn’t working for the furniture and +glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang “Ramble” in a +half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the twenty told me, +because his offer to the church had been refused. + +But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn’t have hammered the +thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the stuff +that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin. + +Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the +outside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the +proprietor. + +“Mike,” says he, “here’s money that the good people have refused. Will +it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it’s tainted.” + +“It will,” says Mike, “and I’ll put it in the drawer next to the bills +that was paid to the parson’s daughter for kisses at the church fair to +build a new parsonage for the parson’s daughter to live in.” + +At 1 o’clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up the +front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of the +restaurant and comes up to Old Jack’s table. You’ve seen the kind—black +shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a cross between +Gabriel’s and a sick kitten’s—the kind of woman that’s always on the +lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy squad—and she stands there +without a word and looks at the money. + +Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a bow. + +“Madam,” says he, just like actors I’ve heard, “here is a tainted bill. +I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a gentleman’s son. +Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me the favor to accept +it, it is yours.” + +The woman took me with a trembling hand. + +“Sir,” said she, “I counted thousands of this issue of bills into +packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in the +Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my position. +You say they are tainted now. If you only knew—but I won’t say any +more. Thank you with all my heart, sir—thank you—thank you.” + +Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a +bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery. And I +get changed, and she does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away with a dozen +rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbine water-wheel. Of +course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed up in the bakery, +wondering whether I’d get changed at the drug store the next day in an +alum deal or paid over to the cement works. + +A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills the +baker had given the woman for change. + +“Hallo, E35039669,” says I, “weren’t you in the change for me in a +bakery last Saturday night?” + +“Yep,” says the solitaire in his free and easy style. + +“How did the deal turn out?” I asked. + +“She blew E17051431 for milk and round steak,” says the one-spot. “She +kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sick kid in +it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and tincture of +formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed some. Don’t get +stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers, where you hear one. +She said something about ‘who giveth to the poor.’ Oh, let’s cut out +the slum talk. I’m certainly tired of the company that keeps me. I wish +I was big enough to move in society with you tainted bills.” + +“Shut up,” says I; “there’s no such thing. I know the rest of it. +There’s a ‘lendeth to the Lord’ somewhere in it. Now look on my back +and read what you see there.” + +“This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public and +private.” + +“This talk about tainted money makes me tired,” says I. + + + + +ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + +No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie +series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there +might have been a chapter in her books not very different from this. + +Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan +beset “with pitfall and with gin.” But the civic guardians of the young +have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, and most +of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who seek to turn +straying ones away from the peril that menaces them. And this will tell +you how they guided my Elsie safely through all peril to the goal that +she was seeking. + +Elsie’s father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, on +lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, so a +pot-hunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when +livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he lay on +his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and a letter +from Mr. Otter offering to do anything he could to help his faithful +old employee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a valuable legacy +to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with pride as the shears +of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off his thread of life. + +That was the landlord’s cue; and forth he came and did his part in the +great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to steal +out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her shoulders, but +she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for the red shawl—back +to Blaney with it! Elsie’s fall tan coat was cheap, but it had the +style and fit of the best at Fox & Otter’s. And her lucky stars had +given her good looks, and eyes as blue and innocent as the new shade of +note paper, and she had $1 left of the $2.50. And the letter from Mr. +Otter. Keep your eye on the letter from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I +desire that everything be made plain as we go. Detective stories are so +plentiful now that they do not sell. + +And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to seek +her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was that it +did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved about a month +before. But Elsie thought she could find it. She had heard that +policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an investigation +committee, will give up information and addresses. So she boarded a +downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh street and rode south +to Forty-second, which she thought must surely be the end of the +island. There she stood against the wall undecided, for the city’s roar +and dash was new to her. Up where she had lived was rural New York, so +far out that the milkmen awaken you in the morning by the squeaking of +pumps instead of the rattling of cans. + +A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past Elsie +into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the Sunflower +Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East. Hank’s heart +was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome place, lacking the +presence of a woman. He had hoped to find one during his visit who +would congenially share his prosperity and home, but the girls of +Gotham had not pleased his fancy. But, as he passed in, he noted, with +a jumping of his pulses, the sweet, ingenuous face of Elsie and her +pose of doubt and loneliness. With true and honest Western impulse he +said to himself that here was his mate. He could love her, he knew; and +he would surround her with so much comfort, and cherish her so +carefully that she would be happy, and make two sunflowers grow on the +ranch where there grew but one before. + +Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never before questioned +honesty of purpose, he approached the girl and removed his soft-brimmed +hat. Elsie had but time to sum up his handsome frank face with one shy +look of modest admiration when a burly cop hurled himself upon the +ranchman, seized him by the collar and backed him against the wall. Two +blocks away a burglar was coming out of an apartment-house with a bag +of silverware on his shoulder; but that is neither here nor there. + +“Carry on yez mashin’ tricks right before me eyes, will yez?” shouted +the cop. “I’ll teach yez to speak to ladies on me beat that ye’re not +acquainted with. Come along.” + +Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. She had +liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned complexion. +She walked southward, thinking herself already in the district where +her father used to work, and hoping to find some one who could direct +her to the firm of Fox & Otter. + +But did she want to find Mr. Otter? She had inherited much of the old +cutter’s independence. How much better it would be if she could find +work and support herself without calling on him for aid! + +Elsie saw a sign “Employment Agency” and went in. Many girls were +sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were +looking them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling +black silk hurried up to Elsie. + +“My dear,” she said in a sweet, gentle voice, “are you looking for a +position? I like your face and appearance so much. I want a young woman +who will be half maid and half companion to me. You will have a good +home and I will pay you $30 a month.” + +Before Elsie could stammer forth her gratified acceptance, a young +woman with gold glasses on her bony nose and her hands in her jacket +pockets seized her arm and drew her aside. + +“I am Miss Ticklebaum,” said she, “of the Association for the +Prevention of Jobs Being Put Up on Working Girls Looking for Jobs. We +prevented forty-seven girls from securing positions last week. I am +here to protect you. Beware of any one who offers you a job. How do you +know that this woman does not want to make you work as a breaker-boy in +a coal mine or murder you to get your teeth? If you accept work of any +kind without permission of our association you will be arrested by one +of our agents.” + +“But what am I to do?” asked Elsie. “I have no home or money. I must do +something. Why am I not allowed to accept this kind lady’s offer?” + +“I do not know,” said Miss Ticklebaum. “That is the affair of our +Committee on the Abolishment of Employers. It is my duty simply to see +that you do not get work. You will give me your name and address and +report to our secretary every Thursday. We have 600 girls on the +waiting list who will in time be allowed to accept positions as +vacancies occur on our roll of Qualified Employers, which now comprises +twenty-seven names. There is prayer, music and lemonade in our chapel +the third Sunday of every month.” + +Elsie hurried away after thanking Miss Ticklebaum for her timely +warning and advice. After all, it seemed that she must try to find Mr. +Otter. + +But after walking a few blocks she saw a sign, “Cashier wanted,” in the +window of a confectionery store. In she went and applied for the place, +after casting a quick glance over her shoulder to assure herself that +the job-preventer was not on her trail. + +The proprietor of the confectionery was a benevolent old man with a +peppermint flavor, who decided, after questioning Elsie pretty closely, +that she was the very girl he wanted. Her services were needed at once, +so Elsie, with a thankful heart, drew off her tan coat and prepared to +mount the cashier’s stool. + +But before she could do so a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and +black mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing, and +exclaimed: “Young woman, hesitate!” + +Elsie hesitated. + +“Do you know,” said the black-and-steel lady, “that in accepting this +position you may this day cause the loss of a hundred lives in +agonizing physical torture and the sending as many souls to perdition?” + +“Why, no,” said Elsie, in frightened tones. “How could I do that?” + +“Rum,” said the lady—“the demon rum. Do you know why so many lives are +lost when a theatre catches fire? Brandy balls. The demon rum lurking +in brandy balls. Our society women while in theatres sit grossly +intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. When the fire +fiend sweeps down upon them they are unable to escape. The candy stores +are the devil’s distilleries. If you assist in the distribution of +these insidious confections you assist in the destruction of the bodies +and souls of your fellow-beings, and in the filling of our jails, +asylums and almshouses. Think, girl, ere you touch the money for which +brandy balls are sold.” + +“Dear me,” said Elsie, bewildered. “I didn’t know there was rum in +brandy balls. But I must live by some means. What shall I do?” + +“Decline the position,” said the lady, “and come with me. I will tell +you what to do.” + +After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind +about the cashiership she put on her coat and followed the lady to the +sidewalk, where awaited an elegant victoria. + +“Seek some other work,” said the black-and-steel lady, “and assist in +crushing the hydra-headed demon rum.” And she got into the victoria and +drove away. + +“I guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again,” said Elsie, ruefully, +turning down the street. “And I’m sorry, too, for I’d much rather make +my way without help.” + +Near Fourteenth street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a +doorway that read: “Fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on +theatrical costumes. Good pay.” + +She was about to enter, when a solemn man, dressed all in black, laid +his hand on her arm. + +“My dear girl,” he said, “I entreat you not to enter that dressing-room +of the devil.” + +“Goodness me!” exclaimed Elsie, with some impatience. “The devil seems +to have a cinch on all the business in New York. What’s wrong about the +place?” + +“It is here,” said the solemn man, “that the regalia of Satan—in other +words, the costumes worn on the stage—are manufactured. The stage is +the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil your soul by +lending the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, my dear +girl, what the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors and actresses +go after the curtain of the playhouse has fallen upon them for the last +time?” + +“Sure,” said Elsie. “Into vaudeville. But do you think it would be +wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must get +something to do pretty soon.” + +“The flesh-pots of Egypt,” exclaimed the reverend gentleman, uplifting +his hands. “I beseech you, my child, to turn away from this place of +sin and iniquity.” + +“But what will I do for a living?” asked Elsie. “I don’t care to sew +for this musical comedy, if it’s as rank as you say it is; but I’ve got +to have a job.” + +“The Lord will provide,” said the solemn man. “There is a free Bible +class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next to +the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell.” + +Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where +factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, “Posey & +Trimmer, Artificial Flowers.” Below it was hung a newly stretched +canvas bearing the words, “Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. +Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up.” + +Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups some +twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat tipped down +over her eyes stepped in front of her. + +“Say, you’se,” said the girl, “are you’se goin’ in there after a job?” + +“Yes,” said Elsie; “I must have work.” + +“Now don’t do it,” said the girl. “I’m chairman of our Scab Committee. +There’s 400 of us girls locked out just because we demanded 50 cents a +week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the foreman to shave off +his mustache. You’re too nice a looking girl to be a scab. Wouldn’t you +please help us along by trying to find a job somewhere else, or would +you’se rather have your face pushed in?” + +“I’ll try somewhere else,” said Elsie. + +She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart leaped +to see the sign, “Fox & Otter,” stretching entirely across the front of +a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it +through the by-ways of her fruitless search for work. + +She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her name +and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly into +his private office. + +Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands with +a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of nearly +middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well dressed, +radiating. + +“Well, well, and so this is Beatty’s little daughter! Your father was +one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? Well, +well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I am sure +there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy work—nothing +easier.” + +Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nosed clerk thrust a portion of himself +inside the door. + +“Send Miss Hawkins in,” said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came. + +“Miss Hawkins,” said Mr. Otter, “bring for Miss Beatty to try on one of +those Russian sable coats and—let’s see—one of those latest model black +tulle hats with white tips.” + +Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick +breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! she +was beautiful. + +I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it’s got +to run it out. I didn’t make it up. I’m just repeating it. + +I’d like to throw bouquets at the wise cop, and the lady who rescues +Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush brandy +balls, and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage people +(there are others), and all the thousands of good people who are at +work protecting young people from the pitfalls of a great city; and +then wind up by pointing out how they were the means of Elsie reaching +her father’s benefactor and her kind friend and rescuer from poverty. +This would make a fine Elsie story of the old sort. I’d like to do +this; but there’s just a word or two to follow. + +While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to the +telephone booth and called up some number. Don’t ask me what it was. + +“Oscar,” said he, “I want you to reserve the same table for me this +evening. … What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left of the +shrubbery. … Yes; two. … Yes, the usual brand; and the ’85 +Johannisburger with the roast. If it isn’t the right temperature I’ll +break your neck. … No; not her … No, indeed … A new one—a peacherino, +Oscar, a peacherino!” + +Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a +paraphrase of a few words that you will remember were written by him—by +him of Gad’s Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, you shall +stand with a covered pumpkin—aye, sir, a pumpkin. + +Lost, Your Excellency. Lost, Associations and Societies. Lost, Right +Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and +Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with the +reverence of money in your souls. And lost thus around us every day. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following +the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use +of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for +copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very +easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation +of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project +Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may +do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected +by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark +license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country other than the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where + you are located before using this eBook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that: + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of +the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set +forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, +Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up +to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website +and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without +widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our website which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + diff --git a/3707-0.zip b/3707-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7df3494 --- /dev/null +++ b/3707-0.zip diff --git a/3707-h.zip b/3707-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d1a1f9e --- /dev/null +++ b/3707-h.zip diff --git a/3707-h/3707-h.htm b/3707-h/3707-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bfc93a0 --- /dev/null +++ b/3707-h/3707-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9670 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Trimmed Lamp, by O. Henry</title> + +<style type="text/css"> + body { margin-left:20%; + margin-right:20%; + text-align:justify; } +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +hr.narrow { width: 40%; + text-align: center; } + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent { text-indent: 0%; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + + table {font-size: large; } + table.sm {font-size: medium; } + + .caption { font-size: small; + font-weight: bold; } + .center { text-align: center; } + img { border: 0; } + .vsmall { font-size: 60%; } + .smallcaps { font-variant: small-caps; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Trimmed Lamp, by O. Henry</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Trimmed Lamp<br /> + And Other Stories of the Four Million</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: O. Henry</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: July 30, 2001 [eBook #3707]<br /> +[Most recently updated: October 24, 2021]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Charles Franks, Greg Weeks, the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP ***</div> + +<div class="center"> +<table style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="4px"> + <tr> + <td align="center"> + <a href="images/frontis.jpg"> + <img src="images/frontis.jpg" height="500" + alt="Wooed her across the counter + with a King Cophetua air" /></a> + </td> + </tr> + <tr> + <td align="center"> + <span class="caption">“Wooed her across the counter + with a King Cophetua air.”</span> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +</div> + +<h1>THE<br /> +TRIMMED LAMP</h1> + +<h3>AND OTHER STORIES OF<br /> +THE FOUR MILLION</h3> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2>O. HENRY</h2> + +<h5><i>Author of “The Four Million,” “The Voice of the<br /> +City,” “Strictly Business,” “Whirligigs,”<br /> +“Sixes and Sevens,” Etc.</i></h5> + +<hr class="narrow" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class="center"> +<table class="sm" style="margin: 0 auto" cellpadding="3"> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c1" >THE TRIMMED LAMP</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c2" >A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c3" >THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c4" >THE PENDULUM</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c5" >TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c6" >THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c7" >THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c8" >THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O’ROON</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c9" >BRICKDUST ROW</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c10">THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c11">VANITY AND SOME SABLES</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c12">THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c13">THE PURPLE DRESS</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c14">THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c15">THE LOST BLEND</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c16">A HARLEM TRAGEDY</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c17">“THE GUILTY PARTY”—AN EAST SIDE TRAGEDY</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c18">ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c19">A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT’S DREAM</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c20">THE LAST LEAF</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c21">THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c22">THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c23">THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c24">THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#c25">ELSIE IN NEW YORK</a></td></tr> +</table> +</div> + +<hr class="narrow" /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c1" id="c1"></a>THE TRIMMED LAMP</h2> + +<p> +Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We +often hear “shop-girls” spoken of. No such persons exist. There are +girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their +occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who +live on Fifth Avenue as “marriage-girls.” +</p> + +<p> +Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work because there +was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. Nancy was nineteen; Lou was +twenty. Both were pretty, active, country girls who had no ambition to go on +the stage. +</p> + +<p> +The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respectable +boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners. They remained +chums. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and +be introduced to them. Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss +Lou. While you are shaking hands please take notice—cautiously—of +their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a stare as a +lady in a box at the horse show is. +</p> + +<p> +Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a badly-fitting +purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too long; but her ermine muff +and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts will be ticketed in the windows at +$7.98 before the season is over. Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes +bright. Contentment radiates from her. +</p> + +<p> +Nancy you would call a shop-girl—because you have the habit. There is no +type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so this is what the +type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, and the exaggerated +straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the correct flare. No furs protect +her against the bitter spring air, but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as +jauntily as though it were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes, +remorseless type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of +silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad prophecy of +the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the look is still there. The +same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian peasants; and those of us left +will see it some day on Gabriel’s face when he comes to blow us up. It is +a look that should wither and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it +and offer flowers—with a string tied to them. +</p> + +<p> +Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou’s cheery +“See you again,” and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, +somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the housetops +to the stars. +</p> + +<p> +The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou’s steady company. +Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a dozen +subpoena servers to find her lamb. +</p> + +<p> +“Ain’t you cold, Nance?” said Lou. “Say, what a chump +you are for working in that old store for $8 a week! I made $18.50 last week. +Of course ironing ain’t as swell work as selling lace behind a counter, +but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I don’t know that +it’s any less respectful work, either.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can have it,” said Nancy, with uplifted nose. +“I’ll take my eight a week and hall bedroom. I like to be among +nice things and swell people. And look what a chance I’ve got! Why, one +of our glove girls married a Pittsburg—steel maker, or blacksmith or +something—the other day worth a million dollars. I’ll catch a swell +myself some time. I ain’t bragging on my looks or anything; but +I’ll take my chances where there’s big prizes offered. What show +would a girl have in a laundry?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, that’s where I met Dan,” said Lou, triumphantly. +“He came in for his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first +board, ironing. We all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis was +sick that day, and I had her place. He said he noticed my arms first, how round +and white they was. I had my sleeves rolled up. Some nice fellows come into +laundries. You can tell ’em by their bringing their clothes in suit +cases; and turning in the door sharp and sudden.” +</p> + +<p> +“How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?” said Nancy, gazing down +at the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. “It +shows fierce taste.” +</p> + +<p> +“This waist?” cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. “Why, I +paid $16 for this waist. It’s worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be +laundered, and never called for it. The boss sold it to me. It’s got +yards and yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that ugly, plain +thing you’ve got on.” +</p> + +<p> +“This ugly, plain thing,” said Nancy, calmly, “was copied +from one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in +the store last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me $1.50. Ten +feet away you couldn’t tell it from hers.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well,” said Lou, good-naturedly, “if you want to starve +and put on airs, go ahead. But I’ll take my job and good wages; and after +hours give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able to +buy.” +</p> + +<p> +But just then Dan came—a serious young man with a ready-made necktie, who +had escaped the city’s brand of frivolity—an electrician earning 30 +dollars per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo, and thought +her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should delight to be caught. +</p> + +<p> +“My friend, Mr. Owens—shake hands with Miss Danforth,” said +Lou. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth,” said Dan, with +outstretched hand. “I’ve heard Lou speak of you so often.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks,” said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her +cool ones, “I’ve heard her mention you—a few times.” +</p> + +<p> +Lou giggled. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?” +she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“If I did, you can feel safe in copying it,” said Nancy. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I couldn’t use it, at all. It’s too stylish for me. +It’s intended to set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I +get a few and then I’ll try it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Learn it first,” said Nancy wisely, “and you’ll be +more likely to get the rings.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, to settle this argument,” said Dan, with his ready, cheerful +smile, “let me make a proposition. As I can’t take both of you up +to Tiffany’s and do the right thing, what do you say to a little +vaudeville? I’ve got the tickets. How about looking at stage diamonds +since we can’t shake hands with the real sparklers?” +</p> + +<p> +The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a little +peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the inside, slender, and +soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the true Van Alstyne Fisher +walk—thus they set out for their evening’s moderate diversion. +</p> + +<p> +I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an educational +institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was something like that to her. +She was surrounded by beautiful things that breathed of taste and refinement. +If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays +for it, or another’s. +</p> + +<p> +The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and position in +the social world were quoted as criterions. From them Nancy began to take +toll—the best from each according to her view. +</p> + +<p> +From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an eloquent +lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of carrying a purse, +of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing “inferiors in +station.” From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, she made +requisition for that excellent thing, a soft, low voice as clear as silver and +as perfect in articulation as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of +this high social refinement and good breeding, it was impossible for her to +escape a deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good +principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good habits. The +teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New England conscience; but +if you sit on a straight-back chair and repeat the words “prisms and +pilgrims” forty times the devil will flee from you. And when Nancy spoke +in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt the thrill of <i>noblesse oblige</i> +to her very bones. +</p> + +<p> +There was another source of learning in the great departmental school. Whenever +you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch and jingle their wire +bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently frivolous conversation, do not +think that they are there for the purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her +back hair. The meeting may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; +but it has all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first +daughter first put their heads together to make Adam understand his proper +place in the household. It is Woman’s Conference for Common Defense and +Exchange of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse upon and against the +World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience who Persists in Throwing +Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most helpless of the young of any +animal—with the fawn’s grace but without its fleetness; with the +bird’s beauty but without its power of flight; with the honey-bee’s +burden of sweetness but without its—Oh, let’s drop that +simile—some of us may have been stung. +</p> + +<p> +During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and exchange +stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the tactics of life. +</p> + +<p> +“I says to ’im,” says Sadie, “ain’t you the fresh +thing! Who do you suppose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what +do you think he says back to me?” +</p> + +<p> +The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the answer is +given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be used by each +thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, man. +</p> + +<p> +Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful defense means +victory. +</p> + +<p> +The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other college +could have fitted her as well for her life’s ambition—the drawing +of a matrimonial prize. +</p> + +<p> +Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near enough for +her to hear and become familiar with the works of the best composers—at +least to acquire the familiarity that passed for appreciation in the social +world in which she was vaguely trying to set a tentative and aspiring foot. She +absorbed the educating influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of +adornments that are almost culture to women. +</p> + +<p> +The other girls soon became aware of Nancy’s ambition. “Here comes +your millionaire, Nancy,” they would call to her whenever any man who +looked the rôle approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who +were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the +handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy’s +imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men +thus came to display their graces before her. Some of them may have been +millionaires; others were certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy +learned to discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchief +counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the shoppers in the +street below. She looked and perceived that automobiles differ as well as do +their owners. +</p> + +<p> +Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and wooed her +across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had gone one of the girls +said: +</p> + +<p> +“What’s wrong, Nance, that you didn’t warm up to that fellow. +He looks the swell article, all right, to me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Him?” said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van +Alstyne Fisher smile; “not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12 H. +P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of handkerchiefs he +bought—silk! And he’s got dactylis on him. Give me the real thing +or nothing, if you please.” +</p> + +<p> +Two of the most “refined” women in the store—a forelady and a +cashier—had a few “swell gentlemen friends” with whom they +now and then dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner took +place in a spectacular café whose tables are engaged for New Year’s eve a +year in advance. There were two “gentlemen friends”—one +without any hair on his head—high living ungrew it; and we can prove +it—the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed upon +you in two convincing ways—he swore that all the wine was corked; and he +wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived irresistible excellencies +in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and here was one that added the voice +and manners of his high social world to the franker charms of her own caste. +So, on the following day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious +proposal of marriage over a box of hem-stitched, grass-bleached Irish linens. +Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had been using her eyes and +ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she heaped carboys of upbraidings and +horror upon Nancy’s head. +</p> + +<p> +“What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow’s a +millionaire—he’s a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was +talking on the level, too. Have you gone crazy, Nance?” +</p> + +<p> +“Have I?” said Nancy. “I didn’t take him, did I? He +isn’t a millionaire so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family +only allows him $20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him +about it the other night at supper.” +</p> + +<p> +The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Say, what do you want?” she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack +of chewing-gum. “Ain’t that enough for you? Do you want to be a +Mormon, and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and the +whole bunch? Ain’t $20,000 a year good enough for you?” +</p> + +<p> +Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t altogether the money, Carrie,” she explained. +“His friend caught him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was +about some girl he said he hadn’t been to the theater with. Well, I +can’t stand a liar. Put everything together—I don’t like him; +and that settles it. When I sell out it’s not going to be on any bargain +day. I’ve got to have something that sits up in a chair like a man, +anyhow. Yes, I’m looking out for a catch; but it’s got to be able +to do something more than make a noise like a toy bank.” +</p> + +<p> +“The physiopathic ward for yours!” said the brown pompadour, +walking away. +</p> + +<p> +These high ideas, if not ideals—Nancy continued to cultivate on $8. per +week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown “catch,” +eating her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her face was the +faint, soldierly, sweet, grim smile of the preordained man-hunter. The store +was her forest; and many times she raised her rifle at game that seemed +broad-antlered and big; but always some deep unerring instinct—perhaps of +the huntress, perhaps of the woman—made her hold her fire and take up the +trail again. +</p> + +<p> +Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid $6. for her +room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her opportunities for +bettering her taste and manners were few compared with Nancy’s. In the +steaming laundry there was nothing but work, work and her thoughts of the +evening pleasures to come. Many costly and showy fabrics passed under her iron; +and it may be that her growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted to her +through the conducting metal. +</p> + +<p> +When the day’s work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful shadow +in whatever light she stood. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou’s clothes that +increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no disloyalty; he +deprecated the attention they called to her in the streets. +</p> + +<p> +And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy should go +with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore the extra burden +heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that Lou furnished the color, +Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the distraction-seeking trio. The escort, +in his neat but obviously ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing, +genial, ready-made wit never startled or clashed. He was of that good kind that +you are likely to forget while they are present, but remember distinctly after +they are gone. +</p> + +<p> +To Nancy’s superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures was +sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a gourmand, when it +cannot be a gourmet. +</p> + +<p> +“Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away,” Lou told her +once. “But why should I? I’m independent. I can do as I please with +the money I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on working afterward. +And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old store for, and half +starve and half dress yourself? I could get you a place in the laundry right +now if you’d come. It seems to me that you could afford to be a little +less stuck-up if you could make a good deal more money.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think I’m stuck-up, Lou,” said Nancy, +“but I’d rather live on half rations and stay where I am. I suppose +I’ve got the habit. It’s the chance that I want. I don’t +expect to be always behind a counter. I’m learning something new every +day. I’m right up against refined and rich people all the time—even +if I do only wait on them; and I’m not missing any pointers that I see +passing around.” +</p> + +<p> +“Caught your millionaire yet?” asked Lou with her teasing laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“I haven’t selected one yet,” answered Nancy. +“I’ve been looking them over.” +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness! the idea of picking over ’em! Don’t you ever let +one get by you Nance—even if he’s a few dollars shy. But of course +you’re joking—millionaires don’t think about working girls +like us.” +</p> + +<p> +“It might be better for them if they did,” said Nancy, with cool +wisdom. “Some of us could teach them how to take care of their +money.” +</p> + +<p> +“If one was to speak to me,” laughed Lou, “I know I’d +have a duck-fit.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s because you don’t know any. The only difference +between swells and other people is you have to watch ’em closer. +Don’t you think that red silk lining is just a little bit too bright for +that coat, Lou?” +</p> + +<p> +Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, no I don’t—but it may seem so beside that +faded-looking thing you’ve got on.” +</p> + +<p> +“This jacket,” said Nancy, complacently, “has exactly the cut +and fit of one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day. The +material cost me $3.98. I suppose hers cost about $100. more.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well,” said Lou lightly, “it don’t strike me as +millionaire bait. Shouldn’t wonder if I catch one before you do, +anyway.” +</p> + +<p> +Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values of the +theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain pride and +fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with girls working for the +barest living, thumped away gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling +laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the point of comfort; so that her +dress profited until sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the +neat but inelegant apparel of Dan—Dan the constant, the immutable, the +undeviating. +</p> + +<p> +As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels and laces +and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world of good-breeding and +taste—these were made for woman; they are her equitable portion. Let her +keep near them if they are a part of life to her, and if she will. She is no +traitor to herself, as Esau was; for she keeps her birthright and the pottage +she earns is often very scant. +</p> + +<p> +In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her frugal +meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined and contented mind. +She already knew woman; and she was studying man, the animal, both as to his +habits and eligibility. Some day she would bring down the game that she wanted; +but she promised herself it would be what seemed to her the biggest and the +best, and nothing smaller. +</p> + +<p> +Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bridegroom when he +should come. +</p> + +<p> +But, another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard of values +began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew blurred in her +mind’s eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled such words as +“truth” and “honor” and now and then just +“kindness.” Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or +elk in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, where a +rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these times the spear of +Nimrod himself grows blunt. +</p> + +<p> +So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at its market +value by the hearts that it covered. +</p> + +<p> +One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth Avenue +westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and Dan to a musical +comedy. +</p> + +<p> +Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was a queer, +strained look on his face. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +“Heard from who?” asked Nancy. “Isn’t Lou there?” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you knew,” said Dan. “She hasn’t been here +or at the house where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from +there. She told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going to +Europe.” +</p> + +<p> +“Hasn’t anybody seen her anywhere?” asked Nancy. +</p> + +<p> +Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in his steady +gray eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“They told me in the laundry,” he said, harshly, “that they +saw her pass yesterday—in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I +suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about.” +</p> + +<p> +For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand that trembled +slightly on Dan’s sleeve. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve no right to say such a thing to me, Dan—as if I had +anything to do with it!” +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Dan, softening. He fumbled +in his vest pocket. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got the tickets for the show to-night,” he said, with a +gallant show of lightness. “If you—” +</p> + +<p> +Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll go with you, Dan,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again. +</p> + +<p> +At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the border of a +little quiet park. She heard her name called, and wheeled about in time to +catch Lou rushing into her arms. +</p> + +<p> +After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do, ready to +attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on their swift tongues. +And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had descended upon Lou, manifesting +itself in costly furs, flashing gems, and creations of the tailors’ art. +</p> + +<p> +“You little fool!” cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. “I +see you are still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how about +that big catch you were going to make—nothing doing yet, I +suppose?” +</p> + +<p> +And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity had +descended upon Nancy—something that shone brighter than gems in her eyes +and redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced like electricity anxious +to be loosed from the tip of her tongue. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I’m still in the store,” said Nancy, “but +I’m going to leave it next week. I’ve made my catch—the +biggest catch in the world. You won’t mind now Lou, will +you?—I’m going to be married to Dan—to Dan!—he’s +my Dan now—why, Lou!” +</p> + +<p> +Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, smooth-faced +young policemen that are making the force more endurable—at least to the +eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur coat, and diamond-ringed hands +crouching down against the iron fence of the park sobbing turbulently, while a +slender, plainly-dressed working girl leaned close, trying to console her. But +the Gibsonian cop, being of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice, +for he was wise enough to know that these matters are beyond help so far as the +power he represents is concerned, though he rap the pavement with his +nightstick till the sound goes up to the furthermost stars. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c2" id="c2"></a>A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT</h2> + +<p> +To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips brought the +evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there were two items bearing +the same foreign postmark. +</p> + +<p> +One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The other +contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, absorbed, for a +long time. The letter was from another woman; and it contained poisoned barbs, +sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered with innuendoes concerning the +photographed woman. +</p> + +<p> +Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out his +expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal from the +jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts when he is housed in a +jungle of doubt. +</p> + +<p> +By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an enchanted one. For +sixteen feet he could travel along it; three thousand miles was beyond its +power to aid. +</p> + +<p> +Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a well-oiled +genie. +</p> + +<p> +“Will you dine here, sir, or out?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Here,” said Chalmers, “and in half an hour.” He +listened glumly to the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty +street. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait,” he said to the disappearing genie. “As I came home +across the end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There was +one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in rows, and why +are they there?” +</p> + +<p> +“They are homeless men, sir,” said Phillips. “The man +standing on the box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come +around to listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the money will +pay for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in rows; they get sent to +bed in order as they come.” +</p> + +<p> +“By the time dinner is served,” said Chalmers, “have one of +those men here. He will dine with me.” +</p> + +<p> +“W-w-which—,” began Phillips, stammering for the first time +during his service. +</p> + +<p> +“Choose one at random,” said Chalmers. “You might see that he +is reasonably sober—and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be held +against him. That is all.” +</p> + +<p> +It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But on that +night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to melancholy. Something +wanton and egregious, something high-flavored and Arabian, he must have to +lighten his mood. +</p> + +<p> +On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the lamp. The +waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the delectable dinner. The +dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily in the glow of the pink-shaded +candles. +</p> + +<p> +And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal—or held in charge a +burglar—wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the line of +mendicant lodgers. +</p> + +<p> +It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be used here it +is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through fire. Even yet some +flickering combustion illuminated the drifting hulk. His face and hands had +been recently washed—a rite insisted upon by Phillips as a memorial to +the slaughtered conventions. In the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the +decorous fittings of the apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost +to the eyes with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter’s coat. +Phillips’s comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted +and conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were full of a +hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur’s that is cornered by +his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, but a quarter inch of +redeeming collar showed above it. His manner was singularly free from +embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his chair across the round dining table. +</p> + +<p> +“If you will oblige me,” said the host, “I will be glad to +have your company at dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“My name is Plumer,” said the highway guest, in harsh and +aggressive tones. “If you’re like me, you like to know the name of +the party you’re dining with.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was going on to say,” continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, +“that mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?” +</p> + +<p> +Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide the chair +beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended boards before. Phillips +set out the anchovies and olives. +</p> + +<p> +“Good!” barked Plumer; “going to be in courses, is it? All +right, my jovial ruler of Bagdad. I’m your Scheherezade all the way to +the toothpicks. You’re the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor +I’ve struck since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I +finished counting, just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me to the +feast. I had about as much chance of getting a bed to-night as I have of being +the next President. How will you have the sad story of my life, Mr. Al +Raschid—a chapter with each course or the whole edition with the cigars +and coffee?” +</p> + +<p> +“The situation does not seem a novel one to you,” said Chalmers +with a smile. +</p> + +<p> +“By the chin whiskers of the prophet—no!” answered the guest. +“New York’s as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of +fleas. I’ve been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my +head twenty times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something for nothing! +They spell curiosity and charity with the same set of building blocks. Lots of +’em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; and a few of ’em will +play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; but every one of ’em will stand +over you till they screw your autobiography out of you with foot notes, +appendix and unpublished fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals +coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three +times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I claim +descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out vocal harmony +for his pre-digested wheaterina and spoopju.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not ask your story,” said Chalmers. “I tell you frankly +that it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to dine +with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity of mine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, fudge!” exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his +soup; “I don’t mind it a bit. I’m a regular Oriental magazine +with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. In fact, we +fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate for things of this sort. +Somebody’s always stopping and wanting to know what brought us down so +low in the world. For a sandwich and a glass of beer I tell ’em that +drink did it. For corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give ’em +the hard-hearted-landlord—six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story. A +sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street tragedy of the +swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This is the first spread of this +kind I’ve stumbled against. I haven’t got a story to fit it. +I’ll tell you what, Mr. Chalmers, I’m going to tell you the truth +for this, if you’ll listen to it. It’ll be harder for you to +believe than the made-up ones.” +</p> + +<p> +An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction while +Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?” he asked, with a strange +smile. +</p> + +<p> +“I remember the name,” said Chalmers. “He was a painter, I +think, of a good deal of prominence a few years ago.” +</p> + +<p> +“Five years,” said the guest. “Then I went down like a chunk +of lead. I’m Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for +$2,000. After that I couldn’t have found a sitter for a gratis +picture.” +</p> + +<p> +“What was the trouble?” Chalmers could not resist asking. +</p> + +<p> +“Funny thing,” answered Plumer, grimly. “Never quite +understood it myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell +crowd and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a +fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever I finished +a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and look queerly at one +another.” +</p> + +<p> +“I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing out in +the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. I don’t know +how I did it—I painted what I saw—but I know it did me. Some of my +sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their pictures. I painted the +portrait of a very beautiful and popular society dame. When it was finished her +husband looked at it with a peculiar expression on his face, and the next week +he sued for divorce.” +</p> + +<p> +“I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I had his +portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his came in to look at +it. ‘Bless me,’ says he, ‘does he really look like +that?” I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. ‘I never +noticed that expression about his eyes before,’ said he; ‘I think +I’ll drop downtown and change my bank account.’ He did drop down, +but the bank account was gone and so was Mr. Banker. +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t long till they put me out of business. People +don’t want their secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile +and twist their own faces and deceive you, but the picture can’t. I +couldn’t get an order for another picture, and I had to give up. I worked +as a newspaper artist for a while, and then for a lithographer, but my work +with them got me into the same trouble. If I drew from a photograph my drawing +showed up characteristics and expressions that you couldn’t find in the +photo, but I guess they were in the original, all right. The customers raised +lively rows, especially the women, and I never could hold a job long. So I +began to rest my weary head upon the breast of Old Booze for comfort. And +pretty soon I was in the free-bed line and doing oral fiction for hand-outs +among the food bazaars. Does the truthful statement weary thee, O Caliph? I can +turn on the Wall Street disaster stop if you prefer, but that requires a tear, +and I’m afraid I can’t hustle one up after that good dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” said Chalmers, earnestly, “you interest me very +much. Did all of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there +some that did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some? Yes,” said Plumer. “Children generally, a good many +women and a sufficient number of men. All people aren’t bad, you know. +When they were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don’t +explain it, but I’m telling you facts.” +</p> + +<p> +On Chalmers’s writing-table lay the photograph that he had received that +day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at work making a +sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the artist rose and stretched +wearily. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s done,” he yawned. “You’ll excuse me for +being so long. I got interested in the job. Lordy! but I’m tired. No bed +last night, you know. Guess it’ll have to be good night now, O Commander +of the Faithful!” +</p> + +<p> +Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills into his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh! I’ll take ’em,” said Plumer. “All +that’s included in the fall. Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I +shall sleep on feathers to-night and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won’t +turn out to be a dream in the morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!” +</p> + +<p> +Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as far from the +table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would permit. Twice, thrice, he +tried to approach it, but failed. He could see the dun and gold and brown of +the colors, but there was a wall about it built by his fears that kept him at a +distance. He sat down and tried to calm himself. He sprang up and rang for +Phillips. +</p> + +<p> +“There is a young artist in this building,” he said. +“—a Mr. Reineman—do you know which is his apartment?” +</p> + +<p> +“Top floor, front, sir,” said Phillips. +</p> + +<p> +“Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few +minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Reineman,” said he, “there is a little pastel sketch on +yonder table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to its +artistic merits and as a picture.” +</p> + +<p> +The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch. Chalmers half +turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair. +</p> + +<p> +“How—do—you find it?” he asked, slowly. +</p> + +<p> +“As a drawing,” said the artist, “I can’t praise it +enough. It’s the work of a master—bold and fine and true. It +puzzles me a little; I haven’t seen any pastel work near as good in +years.” +</p> + +<p> +“The face, man—the subject—the original—what would you +say of that?” +</p> + +<p> +“The face,” said Reineman, “is the face of one of God’s +own angels. May I ask who—” +</p> + +<p> +“My wife!” shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the +astonished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. “She is +traveling in Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture of your life +from it and leave the price to me.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c3" id="c3"></a>THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL</h2> + +<p> +This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance lecture and +the “Bartender’s Guide.” Relative to the latter, drink shall +swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to the former, not an +elbow shall be crooked. +</p> + +<p> +Bob Babbitt was “off the stuff.” Which means—as you will +discover by referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia—that he had +“cut out the booze;” that he was “on the water wagon.” +The reason for Bob’s sudden attitude of hostility toward the “demon +rum”—as the white ribboners miscall whiskey (see the +“Bartender’s Guide”), should be of interest to reformers and +saloon-keepers. +</p> + +<p> +There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or acknowledge +that he was ever drunk. But when a man will say (in the apt words of the +phrase-distiller), “I had a beautiful skate on last night,” you +will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for him. +</p> + +<p> +One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar that he +liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there from the downtown +offices whom he knew. And then there would be high-balls and stories, and he +would hurry home to dinner a little late but feeling good, and a little sorry +for the poor Standard Oil Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some +one say: “Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl.” +</p> + +<p> +Babbitt walked to the bar, and saw in the mirror that his face was as white as +chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the eyes. Others had lied to +him; he had dissembled with himself. He was a drunkard, and had not known it. +What he had fondly imagined was a pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin +intoxication. His fancied wit had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the +noisy vagaries of a sot. But, never again! +</p> + +<p> +“A glass of seltzer,” he said to the bartender. +</p> + +<p> +A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been expecting him +to join them. +</p> + +<p> +“Going off the stuff, Bob?” one of them asked politely and with +more formality than the highballs ever called forth. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Babbitt. +</p> + +<p> +Some one of the group took up the unwashed thread of a story he had been +telling; the bartender shoved over a dime and a nickel change from the quarter, +ungarnished with his customary smile; and Babbitt walked out. +</p> + +<p> +Now, Babbitt had a home and a wife—but that is another story. And I will +tell you that story, which will show you a better habit and a worse story than +you could find in the man who invented the phrase. +</p> + +<p> +It began away up in Sullivan County, where so many rivers and so much trouble +begins—or begin; how would you say that? It was July, and Jessie was a +summer boarder at the Mountain Squint Hotel, and Bob, who was just out of +college, saw her one day—and they were married in September. That’s +the tabloid novel—one swallow of water, and it’s gone. +</p> + +<p> +But those July days! +</p> + +<p> +Let the exclamation point expound it, for I shall not. For particulars you +might read up on “Romeo and Juliet,” and Abraham Lincoln’s +thrilling sonnet about “You can fool some of the people,” &c., +and Darwin’s works. +</p> + +<p> +But one thing I must tell you about. Both of them were mad over Omar’s +Rubaiyat. They knew every verse of the old bluffer by heart—not +consecutively, but picking ’em out here and there as you fork the +mushrooms in a fifty-cent steak à la Bordelaise. Sullivan County is full +of rocks and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them, and—please be +good—used to sit on the rocks; and Bob had a way of standing behind her +with his hands over her shoulders holding her hands, and his face close to +hers, and they would repeat over and over their favorite verses of the old +tent-maker. They saw only the poetry and philosophy of the lines +then—indeed, they agreed that the Wine was only an image, and that what +was meant to be celebrated was some divinity, or maybe Love or Life. However, +at that time neither of them had tasted the stuff that goes with a sixty-cent +<i>table d’hôte</i>. +</p> + +<p> +Where was I? Oh, they married and came to New York. Bob showed his college +diploma, and accepted a position filling inkstands in a lawyer’s office +at $15 a week. At the end of two years he had worked up to $50, and gotten his +first taste of Bohemia—the kind that won’t stand the borax and +formaldehyde tests. +</p> + +<p> +They had two furnished rooms and a little kitchen. To Jess, accustomed to the +mild but beautiful savor of a country town, the dreggy Bohemia was sugar and +spice. She hung fish seines on the walls of her rooms, and bought a +rakish-looking sideboard, and learned to play the banjo. Twice or thrice a week +they dined at French or Italian <i>tables d’hôte</i> in a cloud of smoke, +and brag and unshorn hair. Jess learned to drink a cocktail in order to get the +cherry. At home she smoked a cigarette after dinner. She learned to pronounce +Chianti, and leave her olive stones for the waiter to pick up. Once she essayed +to say la, la, la! in a crowd but got only as far as the second one. They met +one or two couples while dining out and became friendly with them. The +sideboard was stocked with Scotch and rye and a liqueur. They had their new +friends in to dinner and all were laughing at nothing by 1 A. M. Some +plastering fell in the room below them, for which Bob had to pay $4.50. Thus +they footed it merrily on the ragged frontiers of the country that has no +boundary lines or government. +</p> + +<p> +And soon Bob fell in with his cronies and learned to keep his foot on the +little rail six inches above the floor for an hour or so every afternoon before +he went home. Drink always rubbed him the right way, and he would reach his +rooms as jolly as a sandboy. Jessie would meet him at the door, and generally +they would dance some insane kind of a rigadoon about the floor by way of +greeting. Once when Bob’s feet became confused and he tumbled headlong +over a foot-stool Jessie laughed so heartily and long that he had to throw all +the couch pillows at her to make her hush. +</p> + +<p> +In such wise life was speeding for them on the day when Bob Babbitt first felt +the power that the giftie gi’ed him. +</p> + +<p> +But let us get back to our lamb and mint sauce. +</p> + +<p> +When Bob got home that evening he found Jessie in a long apron cutting up a +lobster for the Newburg. Usually when Bob came in mellow from his hour at the +bar his welcome was hilarious, though somewhat tinctured with Scotch smoke. +</p> + +<p> +By screams and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of domestic +felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot on the stairs the +old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton into her ears. At first Jessie +had shrunk from the rudeness and favor of these spiritual greetings, but as the +fog of the false Bohemia gradually encompassed her she came to accept them as +love’s true and proper greeting. +</p> + +<p> +Bob came in without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but noiselessly, took up +a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old maid held her two plugs of +cotton poised, filled with anxiety. +</p> + +<p> +Jessie dropped lobster and knife and ran to him with frightened eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter, Bob, are you ill?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not at all, dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then what’s the matter with you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +Hearken, brethren. When She-who-has-a-right-to-ask interrogates you concerning +a change she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her that you, in a sudden +rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her that you have robbed orphans and +that remorse has stricken you; tell her your fortune is swept away; that you +are beset by enemies, by bunions, by any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, +if peace and happiness are worth as much as a grain of mustard seed to +you—do not answer her “Nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +Jessie went back to the lobster in silence. She cast looks of darkest suspicion +at Bob. He had never acted that way before. +</p> + +<p> +When dinner was on the table she set out the bottle of Scotch and the glasses. +Bob declined. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell you the truth, Jess,” he said. “I’ve cut out the +drink. Help yourself, of course. If you don’t mind I’ll try some of +the seltzer straight.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve stopped drinking?” she said, looking at him steadily +and unsmilingly. “What for?” +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t doing me any good,” said Bob. “Don’t +you approve of the idea?” +</p> + +<p> +Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly. +</p> + +<p> +“Entirely,” she said with a sculptured smile. “I could not +conscientiously advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on Sunday.” +</p> + +<p> +The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk, but his +efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt miserable, and once +or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but each time the scathing words +of his bibulous friend sounded in his ear, and his mouth set with +determination. +</p> + +<p> +Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to have +departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the unnatural +excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived had dropped away in +the space of the popping of a cork. She stole curious and forlorn glances at +the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty look of at least a wife-beater or a +family tyrant. +</p> + +<p> +After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such chores cleared +away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable countenance, brought back the +bottle of Scotch and the glasses and a bowl of cracked ice and set them on the +table. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask,” she said, with some of the ice in her tones, +“whether I am to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, +I’ll make one for myself. It’s rather chilly this evening, for some +reason.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, come now, Jess,” said Bob good-naturedly, “don’t +be too rough on me. Help yourself, by all means. There’s no danger of +your overdoing it. But I thought there was with me; and that’s why I +quit. Have yours, and then let’s get out the banjo and try over that new +quickstep.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve heard,” said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, +“that drinking alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don’t think I +feel like playing this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well +abandon the evil habit of banjo-playing, too.” +</p> + +<p> +She took up a book and sat in her little willow rocker on the other side of the +table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour. +</p> + +<p> +And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent look on his +face and went behind her chair and reached over her shoulders, taking her hands +in his, and laid his face close to hers. +</p> + +<p> +In a moment to Jessie the walls of the seine-hung room vanished, and she saw +the Sullivan County hills and rills. Bob felt her hands quiver in his as he +began the verse from old Omar: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring<br /> +The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:<br /> +The Bird of Time has but a little way<br /> +To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!” +</p> + +<p> +And then he walked to the table and poured a stiff drink of Scotch into a +glass. +</p> + +<p> +But in that moment a mountain breeze had somehow found its way in and blown +away the mist of the false Bohemia. +</p> + +<p> +Jessie leaped and with one fierce sweep of her hand sent the bottle and glasses +crashing to the floor. The same motion of her arm carried it around Bob’s +neck, where it met its mate and fastened tight. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my God, Bobbie—not that verse—I see now. I wasn’t +always such a fool, was I? The other one, boy—the one that says: +‘Remould it to the Heart’s Desire.’ Say that +one—‘to the Heart’s Desire.’” +</p> + +<p> +“I know that one,” said Bob. “It goes: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘Ah! Love, could you and I with Him conspire<br /> +To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire<br /> +Would not we—’” +</p> + +<p> +“Let me finish it,” said Jessie. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“‘Would not we shatter it to bits—and then<br /> +Remould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!’” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s shattered all right,” said Bob, crunching some glass +under his heel. +</p> + +<p> +In some dungeon below the accurate ear of Mrs. Pickens, the landlady, located +the smash. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s that wild Mr. Babbitt coming home soused again,” she +said. “And he’s got such a nice little wife, too!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c4" id="c4"></a>THE PENDULUM</h2> + +<p> +“Eighty-first street—let ’em out, please,” yelled the +shepherd in blue. +</p> + +<p> +A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled aboard. +Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled away, and John +Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with the released flock. +</p> + +<p> +John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon of his daily +life there was no such word as “perhaps.” There are no surprises +awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a flat. As he walked +John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and downtrodden cynicism the +foregone conclusions of the monotonous day. +</p> + +<p> +Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream and +butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized lounge and +read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaughtered by the deadly +linotype. For dinner there would be pot roast, a salad flavored with a dressing +warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of +strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its +label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy quilt that +the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. At half-past seven +they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of +plastering that fell when the fat man in the flat overhead began to take his +physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the +vaudeville team (unbooked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to the +gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the +delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week +contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out his +flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways; the +dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor would drive Mrs. +Zanowitski’s five children once more across the Yalu, the lady with the +champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would trip downstairs and paste her +Thursday name over her bell and letter-box—and the evening routine of the +Frogmore flats would be under way. +</p> + +<p> +John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a quarter past +eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, and that his wife would +deliver this speech in a querulous tone: +</p> + +<p> +“Now, where are you going, I’d like to know, John Perkins?” +</p> + +<p> +“Thought I’d drop up to McCloskey’s,” he would answer, +“and play a game or two of pool with the fellows.” +</p> + +<p> +Of late such had been John Perkins’s habit. At ten or eleven he would +return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, ready to melt in +the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating from the wrought steel +chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid will have to answer when he stands +at the bar of justice with his victims from the Frogmore flats. +</p> + +<p> +To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the commonplace when +he reached his door. No Katy was there with her affectionate, confectionate +kiss. The three rooms seemed in portentous disorder. All about lay her things +in confusion. Shoes in the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, +kimonos, powder box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs—this was not +Katy’s way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud +of her brown hair among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation must +have possessed her, for she always carefully placed these combings in the +little blue vase on the mantel to be some day formed into the coveted feminine +“rat.” +</p> + +<p> +Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper. John +seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +“Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. I am going +to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the depot there. +There is cold mutton in the ice box. I hope it isn’t her quinzy again. +Pay the milkman 50 cents. She had it bad last spring. Don’t forget to +write to the company about the gas meter, and your good socks are in the top +drawer. I will write to-morrow. +</p> + +<p class="right"> +Hastily,<br /> +KATY.” +</p> + +<p> +Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been separated for a +night. John read the note over and over in a dumbfounded way. Here was a break +in a routine that had never varied, and it left him dazed. +</p> + +<p> +There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, the red +wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the meals. Her +week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her haste. A little paper +bag of her favorite butter-scotch lay with its string yet unwound. A daily +paper sprawled on the floor, gaping rectangularly where a railroad time-table +had been clipped from it. Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence +gone, of its soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains +with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart. +</p> + +<p> +He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched her clothes +a thrill of something like terror went through him. He had never thought what +existence would be without Katy. She had become so thoroughly annealed into his +life that she was like the air he breathed—necessary but scarcely +noticed. Now, without warning, she was gone, vanished, as completely absent as +if she had never existed. Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most +a week or two, but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had pointed a +finger at his secure and uneventful home. +</p> + +<p> +John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat down to a +lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade’s shameless +certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings now appeared to him the +ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan polish dressing. His home was +dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law had knocked his lares and penates +sky-high. After his solitary meal John sat at a front window. +</p> + +<p> +He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come join in its +dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might go forth unquestioned +and thrum the strings of jollity as free as any gay bachelor there. He might +carouse and wander and have his fling until dawn if he liked; and there would +be no wrathful Katy waiting for him, bearing the chalice that held the dregs of +his joy. He might play pool at McCloskey’s with his roistering friends +until Aurora dimmed the electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings that +had curbed him always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon him were +loosened. Katy was gone. +</p> + +<p> +John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his +Katy-bereft 10×12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his +discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling +for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been +sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by +proverb and sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the +sweet-voiced bird has flown—or in other no less florid and true +utterances? +</p> + +<p> +“I’m a double-dyed dub,” mused John Perkins, “the way +I’ve been treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with +the boys instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone with +nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, you’re the +worst kind of a shine. I’m going to make it up for the little girl. +I’ll take her out and let her see some amusement. And I’ll cut out +the McCloskey gang right from this minute.” +</p> + +<p> +Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come dance in the +train of Momus. And at McCloskey’s the boys were knocking the balls idly +into the pockets against the hour for the nightly game. But no primrose way nor +clicking cue could woo the remorseful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing +that was his, lightly held and half scorned, had been taken away from him, and +he wanted it. Backward to a certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim bounced +from the orchard, could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his descent. +</p> + +<p> +Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of it stood +Katy’s blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of her contour. +Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles made by the movements of +her arms in working for his comfort and pleasure. A delicate but impelling odor +of bluebells came from it. John took it and looked long and soberly at the +unresponsive grenadine. Katy had never been unresponsive. Tears:—yes, +tears—came into John Perkins’s eyes. When she came back things +would be different. He would make up for all his neglect. What was life without +her? +</p> + +<p> +The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John stared at +her stupidly. +</p> + +<p> +“My! I’m glad to get back,” said Katy. “Ma wasn’t +sick to amount to anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a +little spell, and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the next +train back. I’m just dying for a cup of coffee.” +</p> + +<p> +Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cog-wheels as the third-floor front of +the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order of Things. A band +slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted and the wheels revolve in +their old orbit. +</p> + +<p> +John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his hat and +walked to the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, where are you going, I’d like to know, John Perkins?” +asked Katy, in a querulous tone. +</p> + +<p> +“Thought I’d drop up to McCloskey’s,” said John, +“and play a game or two of pool with the fellows.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c5" id="c5"></a>TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN</h2> + +<p> +There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are +not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how +much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. +President Roosevelt gives it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but +don’t just remember who they were. Bet we can lick ’em, anyhow, if +they try to land again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots +of us have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work in. But +somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information to ’em about +these Thanksgiving proclamations. +</p> + +<p> +The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an +institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the year on which +it recognizes the part of America lying across the ferries. It is the one day +that is purely American. Yes, a day of celebration, exclusively American. +</p> + +<p> +And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have traditions on this +side of the ocean that are becoming older at a much rapider rate than those of +England are—thanks to our git-up and enterprise. +</p> + +<p> +Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you enter Union +Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. Every Thanksgiving Day +for nine years he had taken his seat there promptly at 1 o’clock. For +every time he had done so things had happened to him—Charles Dickensy +things that swelled his waistcoat above his heart, and equally on the other +side. +</p> + +<p> +But to-day Stuffy Pete’s appearance at the annual trysting place seemed +to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly hunger which, as the +philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the poor at such extended intervals. +</p> + +<p> +Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast that had left him +of his powers barely those of respiration and locomotion. His eyes were like +two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of +putty. His breath came in short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue +denied a fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been +sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew like +popcorn, strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a split shirt front +open to the wishbone; but the November breeze, carrying fine snowflakes, +brought him only a grateful coolness. For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the +caloric produced by a super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending +with plum pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and +baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in the world. +Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with after-dinner contempt. +</p> + +<p> +The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick mansion near +the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old ladies of ancient family +and a reverence for traditions. They even denied the existence of New York, and +believed that Thanksgiving Day was declared solely for Washington Square. One +of their traditional habits was to station a servant at the postern gate with +orders to admit the first hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of +noon had struck, and banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by +on his way to the park, and the seneschals gathered him in and upheld the +custom of the castle. +</p> + +<p> +After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he was +conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a tremendous +effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his eyes bulged out +fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod ends of his short legs +wriggled and rustled on the gravel. +</p> + +<p> +For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his bench. +</p> + +<p> +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there and +found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the Old Gentleman was +trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had +found Stuffy there, and had led him to a restaurant and watched him eat a big +dinner. They do those things in England unconsciously. But this is a young +country, and nine years is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American +patriot, and considered himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to +become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time without ever +letting it get away from us. Something like collecting the weekly dimes in +industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets. +</p> + +<p> +The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the Institution that he +was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy Pete was nothing national in +its character, such as the Magna Charta or jam for breakfast was in England. +But it was a step. It was almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was +not impossible to New Y—ahem!—America. +</p> + +<p> +The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in black, and +wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won’t stay on your nose. His +hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year, and he seemed to make +more use of his big, knobby cane with the crooked handle. +</p> + +<p> +As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered like some +woman’s over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. He would have +flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not have separated him from his +bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two old ladies done their work. +</p> + +<p> +“Good morning,” said the Old Gentleman. “I am glad to +perceive that the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in +health about the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of +thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with me, my +man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your physical being +accord with the mental.” +</p> + +<p> +That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine +years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution. Nothing could be +compared with them except the Declaration of Independence. Always before they +had been music in Stuffy’s ears. But now he looked up at the Old +Gentleman’s face with tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost +sizzled when it fell upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a +little and turned his back to the wind. +</p> + +<p> +Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech rather sadly. +He did not know that it was because he was wishing every time that he had a son +to succeed him. A son who would come there after he was gone—a son who +would stand proud and strong before some subsequent Stuffy, and say: “In +memory of my father.” Then it would be an Institution. +</p> + +<p> +But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in one of the +decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the quiet streets east of the +park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in a little conservatory the size of a +steamer trunk. In the spring he walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he +lived at a farmhouse in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, +speaking of a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find +some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old +Gentleman’s occupations. +</p> + +<p> +Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless in his own +self-pity. The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the giving-pleasure. +His face was getting more lined each year, but his little black necktie was in +as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen was beautiful and white, and his gray +mustache was curled carefully at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that +sounded like peas bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old +Gentleman had heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed them +into Stuffy’s old formula of acceptance. +</p> + +<p> +“Thankee, sir. I’ll go with ye, and much obliged. I’m very +hungry, sir.” +</p> + +<p> +The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy’s mind the +conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His Thanksgiving appetite +was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred rights of established custom, if +not, by the actual Statute of Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad +preempted it. True, America is free; but in order to establish tradition some +one must be a repetend—a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes +of steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron, badly +silvered, and tin. +</p> + +<p> +The Old Gentleman led his annual protégé southward to the restaurant, and to +the table where the feast had always occurred. They were recognized. +</p> + +<p> +“Here comes de old guy,” said a waiter, “dat blows dat same +bum to a meal every Thanksgiving.” +</p> + +<p> +The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl at his +corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped the table with +holiday food—and Stuffy, with a sigh that was mistaken for hunger’s +expression, raised knife and fork and carved for himself a crown of +imperishable bay. +</p> + +<p> +No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an enemy. Turkey, +chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before him as fast as they could be +served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost when he entered the restaurant, the +smell of food had almost caused him to lose his honor as a gentleman, but he +rallied like a true knight. He saw the look of beneficent happiness on the Old +Gentleman’s face—a happier look than even the fuchsias and the +ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought to it—and he had not the heart +to see it wane. +</p> + +<p> +In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. “Thankee kindly, +sir,” he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; “thankee kindly for a +hearty meal.” Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started toward +the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and pointed him toward the +door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30 in silver change, leaving +three nickels for the waiter. +</p> + +<p> +They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman going south, +Stuffy north. +</p> + +<p> +Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. Then he seemed +to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his feathers, and fell to the sidewalk +like a sunstricken horse. +</p> + +<p> +When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed softly at his +weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a transfer to the patrol +wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to the hospital. There they stretched +him on a bed and began to test him for strange diseases, with the hope of +getting a chance at some problem with the bare steel. +</p> + +<p> +And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. And they +laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he looked good for the +bill. +</p> + +<p> +But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses whose eyes +he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases. +</p> + +<p> +“That nice old gentleman over there, now,” he said, “you +wouldn’t think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I +guess. He told me he hadn’t eaten a thing for three days.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c6" id="c6"></a>THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS</h2> + +<p> +Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a pitying look at +the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They were a motley lot, he +thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven faces; the women wriggling and +self-conscious, twining and untwining their feet that hung four inches above +the gravelled walks. +</p> + +<p> +Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions in my inside +pocket and make an appointment with all the Park Commissioners (around the +corner, if necessary), and arrange for benches in all the parks of the world +low enough for women to sit upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After +that I might furnish libraries to towns that would pay for ’em, or build +sanitariums for crank professors, and call ’em colleges, if I wanted to. +</p> + +<p> +Women’s rights societies have been laboring for many years after equality +with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they must twist their +ankles together and uncomfortably swing their highest French heels clear of +earthly support. Begin at the bottom, ladies. Get your feet on the ground, and +then rise to theories of mental equality. +</p> + +<p> +Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That was the result +of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It is denied us to look further +into a man’s bosom than the starch on his shirt front; so it is left to +us only to recount his walks and conversation. +</p> + +<p> +Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a hundred +grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have no more when the +sun’s first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter building on the west side +of the square. But Morley would have enough by then. Sundown had seen his +pockets empty before; but sunrise had always seen them lined. +</p> + +<p> +First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and presented a +forged letter of introduction that holily purported to issue from a pastorate +in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed up by a realistic romance of a +delayed remittance. +</p> + +<p> +On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman’s door, a pale-faced, +fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist and the voice of a bell +buoy, demanding payment of an old score. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Bergman, man,” sang Morley, dulcetly, “is this you? I +was just on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my aunt +arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come up to the corner +and I’ll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a walk.” +</p> + +<p> +Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about Morley when +he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed off a call loan at +Rothschilds’. When he was penniless his bluff was pitched half a tone +lower, but few are competent to detect the difference in the notes. +</p> + +<p> +“You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley,” said +Bergman. “Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen you +in dree mont’. Pros’t!” +</p> + +<p> +Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. The +credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to avoid +Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that Bergman ever went +home by that route. +</p> + +<p> +At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley knocked with a +peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the length of a six-inch chain, +and the pompous, important black face of an African guardian imposed itself in +the opening. Morley was admitted. +</p> + +<p> +In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung for ten +minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, and was out-sped by +the important negro, jingling in his pocket the 40 cents in silver that +remained to him of his five-dollar capital. At the corner he lingered, +undecided. +</p> + +<p> +Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth gleams from the +German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and glasses. Along came a +youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, stepping high with the +consequence of a big errand, possibly one to which his advancing age had earned +him promotion. In his hand he clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, +conspicuously. +</p> + +<p> +Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech. +</p> + +<p> +“Me?” said the youngster. “I’m doin’ to the drug +’tore for mamma. She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of +med’cin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now, now, now!” said Morley. “Such a big man you are to be +doing errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that the +cars don’t run over him. And on the way we’ll have some chocolates. +Or would he rather have lemon drops?” +</p> + +<p> +Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He presented the +prescription that had been wrapped around the money. +</p> + +<p> +On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. +</p> + +<p> +“Aqua pura, one pint,” said he to the druggist. “Sodium +chloride, ten grains. Fiat solution. And don’t try to skin me, because I +know all about the number of gallons of H<span class="vsmall">2</span>O in the +Croton reservoir, and I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Fifteen cents,” said the druggist, with a wink after he had +compounded the order. “I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is the +regular price.” +</p> + +<p> +“To gulls,” said Morley, smilingly. +</p> + +<p> +He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child’s arms and escorted +him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 cents accruing to him by +virtue of his chemical knowledge. +</p> + +<p> +“Look out for the cars, sonny,” he said, cheerfully, to his small +victim. +</p> + +<p> +Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the youngster. +Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile messenger by the neck, +holding him in safety. Then from the corner of his street he sent him on his +way, swindled, happy, and sticky with vile, cheap candy from the +Italian’s fruit stand. +</p> + +<p> +Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of inexpensive +Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so genuinely that the waiter +ventured to premise that good news had come his way. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, no,” said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one. +“It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know what +three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in transactions of all +kinds?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure,” said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised +by the careful knot of Morley’s tie; “there’s the buyers from +the dry goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from Staten +Island, and”— +</p> + +<p> +“Wrong!” said Morley, chuckling happily. “The answer is +just—men, women and children. The world—well, say New York and as +far as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island—is full of +greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this steak fit to +be eaten by a gentleman, Francois.” +</p> + +<p> +“If yez t’inks it’s on de bum,” said the waiter, +“Oi’ll”— +</p> + +<p> +Morley lifted his hand in protest—slightly martyred protest. +</p> + +<p> +“It will do,” he said, magnanimously. “And now, green +Chartreuse, frappe and a demi-tasse.” +</p> + +<p> +Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful arteries of +the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he stood on the curb +watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed +past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further +sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance +and bait-lore. +</p> + +<p> +A joyful party of four—two women and two men—fell upon him with +cries of delight. There was a dinner party on—where had he been for a +fortnight past?—what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded and +engulfed him—he must join them—tra la la—and the rest. +</p> + +<p> +One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his sleeve, and cast +at the others a triumphant look that said: “See what I can do with +him?” and added her queen’s command to the invitations. +</p> + +<p> +“I leave you to imagine,” said Morley, pathetically, “how it +desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York +Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at 8.” +</p> + +<p> +The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an arc light +down the frolicsome way. +</p> + +<p> +Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and laughing +gleefully to himself. “‘Front,’” he chanted under his +breath; “‘front’ does it. It is trumps in the game. How they +take it in! Men, women and children—forgeries, water-and-salt +lies—how they all take it in!” +</p> + +<p> +An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a corpulent +umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street cars to the sidewalk +at Morley’s side. +</p> + +<p> +“Stranger,” said he, “excuse me for troubling you, but do you +know anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He’s my son, and +I’ve come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what I +done with his street and number.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not, sir,” said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy +in them. “You had better apply to the police.” +</p> + +<p> +“The police!” said the old man. “I ain’t done +nothin’ to call in the police about. I just come down to see Ben. He +lives in a five-story house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and +could”— +</p> + +<p> +“I told you I did not,” said Morley, coldly. “I know no one +by the name of Smithers, and I advise you to”— +</p> + +<p> +“Smothers not Smithers,” interrupted the old man hopefully. +“A heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth +out, about five foot”— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, ‘Smothers!’” exclaimed Morley. “Sol +Smothers? Why, he lives in the next house to me. I thought you said +‘Smithers.’” +</p> + +<p> +Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it for a dollar. +Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the ninety-eight-cent one that the +railroads—according to these watchmakers—are run by. +</p> + +<p> +“The Bishop of Long Island,” said Morley, “was to meet me +here at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers’ Club. But I can’t +leave the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, +Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no name for it! I was +about to step across to the other corner and have a glass of ginger ale with a +dash of sherry when you approached me. You must let me take you to Sol’s +house, Mr. Smothers. But, before we take the car I hope you will join me +in”— +</p> + +<p> +An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench in Madison +Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips and $140 in deeply +creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, light-hearted, ironical, keenly +philosophic, he watched the moon drifting in and out amidst a maze of flying +clouds. An old, ragged man with a low-bowed head sat at the other end of the +bench. +</p> + +<p> +Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In +Morley’s appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the +usual nightly occupants of the benches. +</p> + +<p> +“Kind sir,” he whined, “if you could spare a dime or even a +few pennies to one who”— +</p> + +<p> +Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar. +</p> + +<p> +“God bless you!” said the old man. “I’ve been trying to +find work for”— +</p> + +<p> +“Work!” echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. “You are a +fool, my friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an Aaron +and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will gush out of it +for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to me whatever I want from +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“God has blessed you,” said the old man. “It is only work +that I have known. And now I can get no more.” +</p> + +<p> +“I must go home,” said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. +“I stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work.” +</p> + +<p> +“May your kindness be rewarded this night,” said the old man. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh,” said Morley, “you have your wish already. I am +satisfied. I think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright +hotel across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting up the +city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such little things as I +do. Well, a good-night to you.” +</p> + +<p> +Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He blew slow +streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman passing saluted to his +benign nod. What a fine moon it was. +</p> + +<p> +The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on the corner +waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if homeward from +employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she was dressed in simple +white, she looked eagerly for the car and neither to the right nor the left. +</p> + +<p> +Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with her at +school. There had been no sentiment between them—nothing but the +friendship of innocent days. +</p> + +<p> +But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his suddenly +burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said dully: +</p> + +<p> +“God! I wish I could die.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c7" id="c7"></a>THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY</h2> + +<p> +It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful vicinity of +Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of Navarro & Platt, situated +there, is not to be sneezed at. +</p> + +<p> +Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with liberal +hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of this semiprecious +metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick building covers enough +ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You can buy of them a rattlesnake-skin +necktie, an automobile or an eighty-five dollar, latest style, ladies’ +tan coat in twenty different shades. Navarro & Platt first introduced +pennies west of the Colorado River. They had been ranchmen with business heads, +who saw that the world did not necessarily have to cease its revolutions after +free grass went out. +</p> + +<p> +Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half Spanish, cosmopolitan, +able, polished, had “gone on” to New York to buy goods. This year +he shied at taking up the long trail. He was undoubtedly growing older; and he +looked at his watch several times a day before the hour came for his siesta. +</p> + +<p> +“John,” he said, to his junior partner, “you shall go on this +year to buy the goods.” +</p> + +<p> +Platt looked tired. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m told,” said he, “that New York is a plumb dead +town; but I’ll go. I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my +way and have some fun.” +</p> + +<p> +Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit—black frock coat, +broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3-4 inch high, with black, +wrought iron necktie—entered the wholesale cloak and suit establishment +of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway. +</p> + +<p> +Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and a mind +that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of the +carpenter’s rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar bear, and +shook Platt’s hand. +</p> + +<p> +“And how is the good Mr. Navarro in Texas?” he said. “The +trip was too long for him this year, so? We welcome Mr. Platt instead.” +</p> + +<p> +“A bull’s eye,” said Platt, “and I’d give forty +acres of unirrigated Pecos County land to know how you did it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I knew,” grinned Zizzbaum, “just as I know that the rainfall +in El Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and that +therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits this spring +instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be to-morrow. There is +first a cigar in my private office that will remove from your mouth the taste +of the ones you smuggle across the Rio Grande and like—because they are +smuggled.” +</p> + +<p> +It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended, Zizzbaum left +Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the private office to Son, who +was arranging his diamond scarfpin before a mirror, ready to leave. +</p> + +<p> +“Abey,” he said, “you will have to take Mr. Platt around +to-night and show him things. They are customers for ten years. Mr. Navarro and +I we played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That is good, but +Mr. Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to New York. He should +amuse easily.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. +“I’ll take him on. After he’s seen the Flatiron and the head +waiter at the Hotel Astor and heard the phonograph play ‘Under the Old +Apple Tree’ it’ll be half past ten, and Mr. Texas will be ready to +roll up in his blanket. I’ve got a supper engagement at 11:30, but +he’ll be all to the Mrs. Winslow before then.” +</p> + +<p> +The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do business. He had +a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum himself waited on him. +Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never failed to take their +discount for cash. +</p> + +<p> +“And what did you think of our little town?” asked Zizzbaum, with +the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite. +</p> + +<p> +“I shouldn’t care to live in it,” said the Texan. “Your +son and I knocked around quite a little last night. You’ve got good +water, but Cactus City is better lit up.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve got a few lights on Broadway, don’t you think, Mr. +Platt?” +</p> + +<p> +“And a good many shadows,” said Platt. “I think I like your +horses best. I haven’t seen a crow-bait since I’ve been in +town.” +</p> + +<p> +Zizzbaum led him up stairs to show the samples of suits. +</p> + +<p> +“Ask Miss Asher to come,” he said to a clerk. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first time the +wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon him. He stood still as +a granite cliff above the cañon of the Colorado, with his wide-open eyes +fixed upon her. She noticed his look and flushed a little, which was contrary +to her custom. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the blond type +known as “medium,” and her measurements even went the required +38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at Zizzbaum’s two years, +and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but cool; and had she chosen to +match her gaze against the optic of the famed basilisk, that fabulous +monster’s gaze would have wavered and softened first. Incidentally, she +knew buyers. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, Mr. Platt,” said Zizzbaum, “I want you to see these +princess gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. +This first, if you please, Miss Asher.” +</p> + +<p> +Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each time wearing +a new costume and looking more stunning with every change. She posed with +absolute self-possession before the stricken buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and +motionless, while Zizzbaum orated oilily of the styles. On the model’s +face was her faint, impersonal professional smile that seemed to cover +something like weariness or contempt. +</p> + +<p> +When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a little +anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try elsewhere. But +Platt was only looking over in his mind the best building sites in Cactus City, +trying to select one on which to build a house for his wife-to-be—who was +just then in the dressing-room taking off an evening gown of lavender and +tulle. +</p> + +<p> +“Take your time, Mr. Platt,” said Zizzbaum. “Think it over +to-night. You won’t find anybody else meet our prices on goods like +these. I’m afraid you’re having a dull time in New York, Mr. Platt. +A young man like you—of course, you miss the society of the ladies. +Wouldn’t you like a nice young lady to take out to dinner this evening? +Miss Asher, now, is a very nice young lady; she will make it agreeable for +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, she doesn’t know me,” said Platt, wonderingly. +“She doesn’t know anything about me. Would she go? I’m not +acquainted with her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would she go?” repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. +“Sure, she would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go.” +</p> + +<p> +He called Miss Asher loudly. +</p> + +<p> +She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist and plain +black skirt. +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this +evening,” said Zizzbaum, walking away. +</p> + +<p> +“Sure,” said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. “I’d +be much pleased. Nine-eleven West Twentieth street. What time?” +</p> + +<p> +“Say seven o’clock.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right, but please don’t come ahead of time. I room with a +school teacher, and she doesn’t allow any gentlemen to call in the room. +There isn’t any parlor, so you’ll have to wait in the hall. +I’ll be ready.” +</p> + +<p> +At half past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway +restaurant. She was dressed in a plain, filmy black. Platt didn’t know +that it was all a part of her day’s work. +</p> + +<p> +With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a respectable +dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile. +</p> + +<p> +“Mayn’t I have something to drink?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, certainly,” said Platt. “Anything you want.” +</p> + +<p> +“A dry Martini,” she said to the waiter. +</p> + +<p> +When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took it away. +</p> + +<p> +“What is this?” he asked. +</p> + +<p> +“A cocktail, of course.” +</p> + +<p> +“I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You +can’t drink this. What is your first name?” +</p> + +<p> +“To my intimate friends,” said Miss Asher, freezingly, “it is +‘Helen.’” +</p> + +<p> +“Listen, Helen,” said Platt, leaning over the table. “For +many years every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to +thinking of somebody that I’d never seen or heard of. I knew it was you +the minute I saw you yesterday. I’m going back home to-morrow, and +you’re going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when you first +looked at me. You needn’t kick, for you’ve got to fall into line. +Here’s a little trick I picked out for you on my way over.” +</p> + +<p> +He flicked a two-carat diamond solitaire ring across the table. Miss Asher +flipped it back to him with her fork. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t get fresh,” she said, severely. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m worth a hundred thousand dollars,” said Platt. +“I’ll build you the finest house in West Texas.” +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t buy me, Mr. Buyer,” said Miss Asher, “if you +had a hundred million. I didn’t think I’d have to call you down. +You didn’t look like the others to me at first, but I see you’re +all alike.” +</p> + +<p> +“All who?” asked Platt. +</p> + +<p> +“All you buyers. You think because we girls have to go out to dinner with +you or lose our jobs that you’re privileged to say what you please. Well, +forget it. I thought you were different from the others, but I see I was +mistaken.” +</p> + +<p> +Platt struck his fingers on the table with a gesture of sudden, illuminating +satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed, almost +hilariously—“the Nicholson place, over on the north side. +There’s a big grove of live oaks and a natural lake. The old house can be +pulled down and the new one set further back.” +</p> + +<p> +“Put out your pipe,” said Miss Asher. “I’m sorry to +wake you up, but you fellows might as well get wise, once for all, to where you +stand. I’m supposed to go to dinner with you and help jolly you along so +you’ll trade with old Zizzy, but don’t expect to find me in any of +the suits you buy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you mean to tell me,” said Platt, “that you go out this +way with customers, and they all—they all talk to you like I have?” +</p> + +<p> +“They all make plays,” said Miss Asher. “But I must say that +you’ve got ’em beat in one respect. They generally talk diamonds, +while you’ve actually dug one up.” +</p> + +<p> +“How long have you been working, Helen?” +</p> + +<p> +“Got my name pat, haven’t you? I’ve been supporting myself +for eight years. I was a cash girl and a wrapper and then a shop girl until I +was grown, and then I got to be a suit model. Mr. Texas Man, don’t you +think a little wine would make this dinner a little less dry?” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re not going to drink wine any more, dear. It’s awful to +think how— I’ll come to the store to-morrow and get you. I want you +to pick out an automobile before we leave. That’s all we need to buy +here.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, cut that out. If you knew how sick I am of hearing such talk.” +</p> + +<p> +After the dinner they walked down Broadway and came upon Diana’s little +wooded park. The trees caught Platt’s eye at once, and he must turn along +under the winding walk beneath them. The lights shone upon two bright tears in +the model’s eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like that,” said Platt. “What’s the +matter?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you mind,” said Miss Asher. “Well, it’s +because—well, I didn’t think you were that kind when I first saw +you. But you are all like. And now will you take me home, or will I have to +call a cop?” +</p> + +<p> +Platt took her to the door of her boarding-house. They stood for a minute in +the vestibule. She looked at him with such scorn in her eyes that even his +heart of oak began to waver. His arm was half way around her waist, when she +struck him a stinging blow on the face with her open hand. +</p> + +<p> +As he stepped back a ring fell from somewhere and bounded on the tiled floor. +Platt groped for it and found it. +</p> + +<p> +“Now, take your useless diamond and go, Mr. Buyer,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“This was the other one—the wedding ring,” said the Texan, +holding the smooth gold band on the palm of his hand. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Asher’s eyes blazed upon him in the half darkness. +</p> + +<p> +“Was that what you meant?—did you”— +</p> + +<p> +Somebody opened the door from inside the house. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-night,” said Platt. “I’ll see you at the store +to-morrow.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Asher ran up to her room and shook the school teacher until she sat up in +bed ready to scream “Fire!” +</p> + +<p> +“Where is it?” she cried. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I want to know,” said the model. +“You’ve studied geography, Emma, and you ought to know. Where is a +town called Cac—Cac—Carac—Caracas City, I think, they called +it?” +</p> + +<p> +“How dare you wake me up for that?” said the school teacher. +“Caracas is in Venezuela, of course.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’s it like?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, it’s principally earthquakes and negroes and monkeys and +malarial fever and volcanoes.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care,” said Miss Asher, blithely; “I’m +going there to-morrow.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c8" id="c8"></a>THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O’ROON</h2> + +<p> +It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another for the +first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky process, this love at +first sight, before she has seen him in Bradstreet or he has seen her in curl +papers. But these things do happen; and one instance must form a theme for this +story—though not, thank Heaven, to the overshadowing of more vital and +important subjects, such as drink, policemen, horses and earldoms. +</p> + +<p> +During a certain war a troop calling itself the Gentle Riders rode into history +and one or two ambuscades. The Gentle Riders were recruited from the +aristocracy of the wild men of the West and the wild men of the aristocracy of +the East. In khaki there is little telling them one from another, so they +became good friends and comrades all around. +</p> + +<p> +Ellsworth Remsen, whose old Knickerbocker descent atoned for his modest rating +at only ten millions, ate his canned beef gayly by the campfires of the Gentle +Riders. The war was a great lark to him, so that he scarcely regretted polo and +planked shad. +</p> + +<p> +One of the troopers was a well set up, affable, cool young man, who called +himself O’Roon. To this young man Remsen took an especial liking. The two +rode side by side during the famous mooted up-hill charge that was disputed so +hotly at the time by the Spaniards and afterward by the Democrats. +</p> + +<p> +After the war Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a well set up, +affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he and O’Roon were +soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious epithets after the manner +of long-lost friends. O’Roon looked seedy and out of luck and perfectly +contented. But it seemed that his content was only apparent. +</p> + +<p> +“Get me a job, Remsen,” he said. “I’ve just handed a +barber my last shilling.” +</p> + +<p> +“No trouble at all,” said Remsen. “I know a lot of men who +have banks and stores and things downtown. Any particular line you +fancy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said O’Roon, with a look of interest. “I took a +walk in your Central Park this morning. I’d like to be one of those +bobbies on horseback. That would be about the ticket. Besides, it’s the +only thing I could do. I can ride a little and the fresh air suits me. Think +you could land that for me?” +</p> + +<p> +Remsen was sure that he could. And in a very short time he did. And they who +were not above looking at mounted policemen might have seen a well set up, +affable, cool young man on a prancing chestnut steed attending to his duties +along the driveways of the park. +</p> + +<p> +And now at the extreme risk of wearying old gentlemen who carry leather fob +chains, and elderly ladies who—but no! grandmother herself yet thrills at +foolish, immortal Romeo—there must be a hint of love at first sight. +</p> + +<p> +It came just as Remsen was strolling into Fifth avenue from his club a few +doors away. +</p> + +<p> +A motor car was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet of vehicles +that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and an old gentleman with +snowy side whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could not be worn while +automobiling except by a personage. Not even a wine agent would dare do it. But +these two were of no consequence—except, perhaps, for the guiding of the +machine and the paying for it. At the old gentleman’s side sat a young +lady more beautiful than pomegranate blossoms, more exquisite than the first +quarter moon viewed at twilight through the tops of oleanders. Remsen saw her +and knew his fate. He could have flung himself under the very wheels that +conveyed her, but he knew that would be the last means of attracting the +attention of those who ride in motor cars. Slowly the auto passed, and, if we +place the poets above the autoists, carried the heart of Remsen with it. Here +was a large city of millions, and many women who at a certain distance appear +to resemble pomegranate blossoms. Yet he hoped to see her again; for each one +fancies that his romance has its own tutelary guardian and divinity. +</p> + +<p> +Luckily for Remsen’s peace of mind there came a diversion in the guise of +a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were not many of +them—perhaps a score—and there was wassail and things to eat, and +speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in recapitulation. And when +daylight threatened them the survivors prepared to depart. But some remained +upon the battlefield. One of these was Trooper O’Roon, who was not +seasoned to potent liquids. His legs declined to fulfil the obligations they +had sworn to the police department. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m stewed, Remsen,” said O’Roon to his friend. +“Why do they build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? +They’ll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk +con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I’ve got +to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is up, I tell +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at me,” said Remsen, who was his smiling self, pointing to +his own face; “whom do you see here?” +</p> + +<p> +“Goo’ fellow,” said O’Roon, dizzily, “Goo’ +old Remsen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not so,” said Remsen. “You see Mounted Policeman +O’Roon. Look at your face—no; you can’t do that without a +glass—but look at mine, and think of yours. How much alike are we? As two +French <i>table d’hôte</i> dinners. With your badge, on your horse, in +your uniform, will I charm nurse-maids and prevent the grass from growing under +people’s feet in the Park this day. I will have your badge and your +honor, besides having the jolliest lark I’ve been blessed with since we +licked Spain.” +</p> + +<p> +Promptly on time the counterfeit presentment of Mounted Policeman O’Roon +single-footed into the Park on his chestnut steed. In a uniform two men who are +unlike will look alike; two who somewhat resemble each other in feature and +figure will appear as twin brothers. So Remsen trotted down the bridle paths, +enjoying himself hugely, so few real pleasures do ten-millionaires have. +</p> + +<p> +Along the driveway in the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a pair of +fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, for the Park is +rarely used in the morning except by unimportant people who love to be healthy, +poor and wise. In the vehicle sat an old gentleman with snowy side-whiskers and +a Scotch plaid cap which could not be worn while driving except by a personage. +At his side sat the lady of Remsen’s heart—the lady who looked like +pomegranate blossoms and the gibbous moon. +</p> + +<p> +Remsen met them coming. At the instant of their passing her eyes looked into +his, and but for the ever coward’s heart of a true lover he could have +sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for twenty yards, and then +wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway hoofs. The bays had bolted. +</p> + +<p> +Remsen sent his chestnut after the victoria like a shot. There was work cut out +for the impersonator of Policeman O’Roon. The chestnut ranged alongside +the off bay thirty seconds after the chase began, rolled his eye back at +Remsen, and said in the only manner open to policemen’s horses: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You’re not +O’Roon, but it seems to me if you’d lean to the right you could +reach the reins of that foolish slow-running bay—ah! you’re all +right; O’Roon couldn’t have done it more neatly!” +</p> + +<p> +The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen’s tough +muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped reins, jumped from his +seat and stood at the heads of the team. The chestnut, approving his new rider, +danced and pranced, reviling equinely the subdued bays. Remsen, lingering, was +dimly conscious of a vague, impossible, unnecessary old gentleman in a Scotch +cap who talked incessantly about something. And he was acutely conscious of a +pair of violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his iron +pillar—or whatever the allusion is—and of the lady’s smile +and look—a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward heart +of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking his name and +bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, and the Scotch cap was +especially babbling and insistent. But the eloquent appeal was in the eyes of +the lady. +</p> + +<p> +A little thrill of satisfaction ran through Remsen, because he had a name to +give which, without undue pride, was worthy of being spoken in high places, and +a small fortune which, with due pride, he could leave at his end without +disgrace. +</p> + +<p> +He opened his lips to speak and closed them again. +</p> + +<p> +Who was he? Mounted Policeman O’Roon. The badge and the honor of his +comrade were in his hands. If Ellsworth Remsen, ten-millionaire and +Knickerbocker, had just rescued pomegranate blossoms and Scotch cap from +possible death, where was Policeman O’Roon? Off his beat, exposed, +disgraced, discharged. Love had come, but before that there had been something +that demanded precedence—the fellowship of men on battlefields fighting +an alien foe. +</p> + +<p> +Remsen touched his cap, looked between the chestnut’s ears, and took +refuge in vernacularity. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t mention it,” he said stolidly. “We policemen are +paid to do these things. It’s our duty.” +</p> + +<p> +And he rode away—rode away cursing <i>noblesse oblige</i>, but knowing he +could never have done anything else. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of the day Remsen sent the chestnut to his stable and went to +O’Roon’s room. The policeman was again a well set up, affable, cool +young man who sat by the window smoking cigars. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish you and the rest of the police force and all badges, horses, +brass buttons and men who can’t drink two glasses of <i>brut</i> without +getting upset were at the devil,” said Remsen feelingly. +</p> + +<p> +O’Roon smiled with evident satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“Good old Remsen,” he said, affably, “I know all about it. +They trailed me down and cornered me here two hours ago. There was a little row +at home, you know, and I cut sticks just to show them. I don’t believe I +told you that my Governor was the Earl of Ardsley. Funny you should bob against +them in the Park. If you damaged that horse of mine I’ll never forgive +you. I’m going to buy him and take him back with me. Oh, yes, and I think +my sister—Lady Angela, you know—wants particularly for you to come +up to the hotel with me this evening. Didn’t lose my badge, did you, +Remsen? I’ve got to turn that in at Headquarters when I resign.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c9" id="c9"></a>BRICKDUST ROW</h2> + +<p> +Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth would have +sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a gentleman—a thing that +no gentleman should do. So he merely looked bored and sardonic while he rode in +a hansom to the center of disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer +Oldport, who was agent for the Blinker estate. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t see,” said Blinker, “why I should be always +signing confounded papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North +Woods this morning. Now I must wait until to-morrow morning. I hate night +trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some unidentifiable +trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a monologueing, thumb-handed +barber. Give me a pen that doesn’t scratch. I hate pens that +scratch.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down,” said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. “The +worst has not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not +yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you to-morrow at eleven. You will +miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless nose of a Blinker. +Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a haircut.” +</p> + +<p> +“If,” said Blinker, rising, “the act did not involve more +signing of papers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a +cigar, please.” +</p> + +<p> +“If,” said Lawyer Oldport, “I had cared to see an old +friend’s son gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered +you to take it away long ago. Now, let’s quit fooling, Alexander. Besides +the grinding task of signing your name some thirty times to-morrow, I must +impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business—of business, +and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about this five years ago, but +you would not listen—you were in a hurry for a coaching trip, I think. +The subject has come up again. The property—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, property!” interrupted Blinker. “Dear Mr. Oldport, I +think you mentioned to-morrow. Let’s have it all at one dose +to-morrow—signatures and property and snappy rubber bands and that smelly +sealing-wax and all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I’ll try to remember to +drop in at eleven to-morrow. Morning.” +</p> + +<p> +The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the legal +phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his little pulmonary +gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and rows of buildings that he owned +in the city. For Alexander was sole heir. They had amused Blinker very much. +The houses looked so incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer +Oldport kept piling up in banks for him to spend. +</p> + +<p> +In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine. Nobody was +there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to him with grave +politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. Everybody was out of town. +But here he was kept in like a schoolboy to write his name over and over on +pieces of paper. His wounds were deep. +</p> + +<p> +Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward who had +come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe: +</p> + +<p> +“Symons, I’m going to Coney Island.” He said it as one might +say: “All’s off; I’m going to jump into the river.” +</p> + +<p> +The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of the +audibility permitted by the laws governing employees. +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly, sir,” he tittered. “Of course, sir, I think I can +see you at Coney, Mr. Blinker.” +</p> + +<p> +Blinker got a paper and looked up the movements of Sunday steamboats. Then he +found a cab at the first corner and drove to a North River pier. He stood in +line, as democratic as you or I, and bought a ticket, and was trampled upon and +shoved forward until, at last, he found himself on the upper deck of the boat +staring brazenly at a girl who sat alone upon a camp stool. But Blinker did not +intend to be brazen; the girl was so wonderfully good looking that he forgot +for one minute that he was the prince incog, and behaved just as he did in +society. +</p> + +<p> +She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind threatened +Blinker’s straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it again. The +movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and smiled, and in another +instant he was seated at her side. She was dressed all in white, she was paler +than Blinker imagined milkmaids and girls of humble stations to be, but she was +as tidy as a cherry blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked +out from the intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul. +</p> + +<p> +“How dare you raise your hat to me?” she asked, with a +smile-redeemed severity. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t,” Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake +by extending it to “I didn’t know how to keep from it after I saw +you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been +introduced,” she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. He +rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down to his chair +again. +</p> + +<p> +“I guess you weren’t going far,” she declared, with +beauty’s magnificent self-confidence. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you going to Coney Island?” asked Blinker. +</p> + +<p> +“Me?” She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering +surprise. “Why, what a question! Can’t you see that I’m +riding a bicycle in the park?” Her drollery took the form of +impertinence. +</p> + +<p> +“And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney,” said Blinker. +“Mayn’t we see Coney together? I’m all alone and I’ve +never been there before.” +</p> + +<p> +“It depends,” said the girl, “on how nicely you behave. +I’ll consider your application until we get there.” +</p> + +<p> +Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his application. He +strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his nonsensical phrase, he laid +brick upon brick on the tall chimney of his devoirs until, at length, the +structure was stable and complete. The manners of the best society come around +finally to simplicity; and as the girl’s way was that naturally, they +were on a mutual plane of communication from the beginning. +</p> + +<p> +He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she trimmed +hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room with her best chum +Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that a glass of milk from the bottle +on the window-sill and an egg that boils itself while you twist up your hair +makes a breakfast good enough for any one. Florence laughed when she heard +“Blinker.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well,” she said. “It certainly shows that you have +imagination. It gives the ‘Smiths’ a chance for a little rest, +anyhow.” +</p> + +<p> +They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human wave of mad +pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland gone into vaudeville. +</p> + +<p> +With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment Blinker +considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized delights. Hoi polloi +trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket parties bumped him; sticky children +tumbled, howling, under his feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths +strolling among the booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily won +girls on the other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The +publicity gentlemen with megaphones, each before his own stupendous attraction, +roared like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that could be tortured from +brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the air to gain space for its vibrations +against its competitors. But what held Blinker in awful fascination was the +mob, the multitude, the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, +hurling itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the +ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures. The vulgarity of it, +its brutal overriding of all the tenets of repression and taste that were held +by his caste, repelled him strongly. +</p> + +<p> +In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence by his side. +She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy eyes, as bright and +clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were saying that they had the right +to be shining and happy, for was their owner not with her (for the present) +Man, her Gentleman Friend and holder of the keys to the enchanted city of fun? +</p> + +<p> +Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he suddenly saw +Coney aright. +</p> + +<p> +He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now looked clearly +upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their offenses were wiped out. +Counterfeit and false though the garish joys of these spangled temples were, he +perceived that deep under the gilt surface they offered saving and apposite +balm and satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here, at least, was the husk +of Romance, the empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the breath-catching +though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the magic carpet that +transports you to the realms of fairyland, though its journey be through but a +few poor yards of space. He no longer saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking +the ideal. There was no magic of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their +imagination turned yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the +silver trumpets of joy’s heralds. +</p> + +<p> +Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and joined the +idealists. +</p> + +<p> +“You are the lady doctor,” he said to Florence. “How shall we +go about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?” +</p> + +<p> +“We will begin there,” said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda +on the edge of the sea, “and we will take them all in, one by one.” +</p> + +<p> +They caught the eight o’clock returning boat and sat, filled with +pleasant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the Italians’ +fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The North Woods seemed to him +an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss he had made over signing his +name—pooh! he could sign it a hundred times. And her name was as pretty +as she was—“Florence,” he said it to himself a great many +times. +</p> + +<p> +As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled, drab, +foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the bay. The boat +turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered as if to seek midstream, +and then yawed, seemed to increase its speed and struck the Coney boat on the +side near the stern, cutting into it with a terrifying shock and crash. +</p> + +<p> +While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling about the +decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the steamer that it +should not back off and leave the rent exposed for the water to enter. But the +steamer tore its way out like a savage sawfish and cleaved its heartless way, +full speed ahead. +</p> + +<p> +The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the slip. The +passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold. +</p> + +<p> +Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. She made no +sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped off the slats above his +head and pulled down a number of the life preservers. He began to buckle one +around Florence. The rotten canvas split and the fraudulent granulated cork +came pouring out in a stream. Florence caught a handful of it and laughed +gleefully. +</p> + +<p> +“It looks like breakfast food,” she said. “Take it off. +They’re no good.” +</p> + +<p> +She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down and sat by +his side and put her hand in his. “What’ll you bet we don’t +reach the pier all right?” she said and began to hum a song. +</p> + +<p> +And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled order. The boat +would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the women and children to +the bow, where they could land first. The boat, very low in the water at the +stern, tried gallantly to make his promise good. +</p> + +<p> +“Florence,” said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, +“I love you.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what they all say,” she replied, lightly. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not one of ‘they all,’” he persisted. “I +never knew any one I could love before. I could pass my life with you and be +happy every day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what they all say,” said the girl again, weaving the +words into her little, reckless song. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t say that again,” said Blinker in a tone that made her +look at him in frank surprise. +</p> + +<p> +“Why shouldn’t I say it?” she asked calmly. “They all +do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who are ‘they’?” he asked, jealous for the first time +in his existence. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, the fellows I know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know so many?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, well, I’m not a wall flower,” she answered with modest +complacency. +</p> + +<p> +“Where do you see these—these men? At your home?” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the boat, +sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I’m a pretty good judge +of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who is likely to get +fresh.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you mean by ‘fresh?’” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, try to kiss you—me, I mean.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do any of them try that?” asked Blinker, clenching his teeth. +</p> + +<p> +“Sure. All men do. You know that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you allow them?” +</p> + +<p> +“Some. Not many. They won’t take you out anywhere unless you +do.” +</p> + +<p> +She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes were as +innocent as a child’s. There was a puzzled look in them, as though she +did not understand him. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s wrong about my meeting fellows?” she asked, +wonderingly. +</p> + +<p> +“Everything,” he answered, almost savagely. “Why don’t +you entertain your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick +up Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?” +</p> + +<p> +She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. “If you could see the +place where I live you wouldn’t ask that. I live in Brickdust Row. They +call it that because there’s red dust from the bricks crumbling over +everything. I’ve lived there for more than four years. There’s no +place to receive company. You can’t have anybody come to your room. What +else is there to do? A girl has got to meet the men, hasn’t she?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he said, hoarsely. “A girl has got to meet a—has +got to meet the men.” +</p> + +<p> +“The first time one spoke to me on the street,” she continued, +“I ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good +many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the vestibule +until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a parlor, so I could ask +you to call, Mr. Blinker—are you really sure it isn’t +‘Smith,’ now?” +</p> + +<p> +The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking with the +girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a corner and held out +her hand. +</p> + +<p> +“I live just one more block over,” she said. “Thank you for a +very pleasant afternoon.” +</p> + +<p> +Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a cab. A big, +gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook his fist at it through +the window. +</p> + +<p> +“I gave you a thousand dollars last week,” he cried under his +breath, “and she meets them in your very doors. There is something wrong; +there is something wrong.” +</p> + +<p> +At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a new pen +provided by Lawyer Oldport. +</p> + +<p> +“Now let me go to the woods,” he said surlily. +</p> + +<p> +“You are not looking well,” said Lawyer Oldport. “The trip +will do you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business of +which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There are some +buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new five-year leases to be +signed. Your father contemplated a change in the lease provisions, but never +made it. He intended that the parlors of these houses should not be sub-let, +but that the tenants should be allowed to use them for reception rooms. These +houses are in the shopping district, and are mainly tenanted by young working +girls. As it is they are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of red +brick—” +</p> + +<p> +Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh. +</p> + +<p> +“Brickdust Row for an even hundred,” he cried. “And I own it. +Have I guessed right?” +</p> + +<p> +“The tenants have some such name for it,” said Lawyer Oldport. +</p> + +<p> +Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Do what you please with it,” he said harshly. “Remodel it, +burn it, raze it to the ground. But, man, it’s too late I tell you. +It’s too late. It’s too late. It’s too late.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c10" id="c10"></a>THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER</h2> + +<p> +Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a tramp; but that +was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a philosopher, an artist, a +traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. But most of all he was a poet. In all +his life he never wrote a line of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would +have been a Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger with the primary +proposition, Raggles was a poet. +</p> + +<p> +Raggles’s specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would have been +sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their reflections in +mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of a dislocated doll; as the +men who write about wild animals study the cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles +was not merely a pile of bricks and mortar, peopled by a certain number of +inhabitants; it was a thing with a soul characteristic and distinct; an +individual conglomeration of life, with its own peculiar essence, flavor and +feeling. Two thousand miles to the north and south, east and west, Raggles +wandered in poetic fervor, taking the cities to his breast. He footed it on +dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars, counting time as of no +account. And when he had found the heart of a city and listened to its secret +confession, he strayed on, restless, to another. Fickle Raggles!—but +perhaps he had not met the civic corporation that could engage and hold his +critical fancy. +</p> + +<p> +Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are feminine. So they +were to poet Raggles; and his mind carried a concrete and clear conception of +the figure that symbolized and typified each one that he had wooed. +</p> + +<p> +Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of Mrs. +Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with a soaring and +beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would awake to a sense of +shivering cold and a haunting impression of ideals lost in a depressing aura of +potato salad and fish. +</p> + +<p> +Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness and inaccuracy in the +description; but that is Raggles’s fault. He should have recorded his +sensations in magazine poems. +</p> + +<p> +Pittsburg impressed him as the play of “Othello” performed in the +Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader’s minstrels. A royal +and generous lady this Pittsburg, though—homely, hearty, with flushed +face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid slippers, and bidding +Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and drink champagne with his +pigs’ feet and fried potatoes. +</p> + +<p> +New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He could see her +pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, and that was all. Only +once he came face to face with her. It was at dawn, when she was flushing the +red bricks of the banquette with a pail of water. She laughed and hummed a +chansonette and filled Raggles’s shoes with ice-cold water. Allons! +</p> + +<p> +Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic and singular way. +It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that the city was a white, cold +cloth that had been bound tightly around his brow to spur him to some unknown +but tremendous mental effort. And, after all, he came to shovel snow for a +livelihood; and the cloth, becoming wet, tightened its knots and could not be +removed. +</p> + +<p> +Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you will say; but your disapprobation +should be tempered with gratitude, for these are poets’ fancies—and +suppose you had come upon them in verse! +</p> + +<p> +One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city of +Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learn her note in the +scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solve and label her and arrange +her with the other cities that had given him up the secret of their +individuality. And here we cease to be Raggles’s translator and become +his chronicler. +</p> + +<p> +Raggles landed from a ferry-boat one morning and walked into the core of the +town with the blasé air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed with care to play the +rôle of an “unidentified man.” No country, race, class, +clique, union, party clan or bowling association could have claimed him. His +clothing, which had been donated to him piece-meal by citizens of different +height, but same number of inches around the heart, was not yet as +uncomfortable to his figure as those specimens of raiment, self-measured, that +are railroaded to you by transcontinental tailors with a suit case, suspenders, +silk handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money—as a poet +should be—but with the ardor of an astronomer discovering a new star in +the chorus of the milky way, or a man who has seen ink suddenly flow from his +fountain pen, Raggles wandered into the great city. +</p> + +<p> +Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a look of dumb +terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, discomfited, frightened. +Other cities had been to him as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly +to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as +oyster cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, +impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering +damply in his pocket his ribbon-counter salary. +</p> + +<p> +The greetings of the other cities he had known—their homespun kindliness, +their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, garrulous curiosity and +easily estimated credulity or indifference. This city of Manhattan gave him no +clue; it was walled against him. Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in +the streets. Never an eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart +yearned for the clap of Pittsburg’s sooty hand on his shoulder; for +Chicago’s menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and +eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass—even for the +precipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis. +</p> + +<p> +On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood, bashful, like any +country swain. For the first time he experienced the poignant humiliation of +being ignored. And when he tried to reduce this brilliant, swiftly changing, +ice-cold city to a formula he failed utterly. Poet though he was, it offered +him no color similes, no points of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets, +no handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape and structure, as he +familiarly and often contemptuously had done with other towns. The houses were +interminable ramparts loopholed for defense; the people were bright but +bloodless spectres passing in sinister and selfish array. +</p> + +<p> +The thing that weighed heaviest on Raggles’s soul and clogged his +poet’s fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to saturate +the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one that he considered +appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit. Humanity was gone from +them; they were toddling idols of stone and varnish, worshipping themselves and +greedy for though oblivious of worship from their fellow graven images. Frozen, +cruel, implacable, impervious, cut to an identical pattern, they hurried on +their ways like statues brought by some miracles to motion, while soul and +feeling lay unaroused in the reluctant marble. +</p> + +<p> +Gradually Raggles became conscious of certain types. One was an elderly +gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled face and stony, +sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded youth, who seemed to +personify the city’s wealth, ripeness and frigid unconcern. Another type +was a woman, tall, beautiful, clear as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, +clothed like the princesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection +of sunlight on a glacier. And another was a by-product of this town of +marionettes—a broad, swaggering, grim, threateningly sedate fellow, with +a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field, the complexion of a baptized infant +and the knuckles of a prize-fighter. This type leaned against cigar signs and +viewed the world with frappéd contumely. +</p> + +<p> +A poet is a sensitive creature, and Raggles soon shrivelled in the bleak +embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, ironical, illegible, +unnatural, ruthless expression of the city left him downcast and bewildered. +Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, the scolding of vinegar-faced housewives +at back doors, the kindly spleen of bartenders behind provincial free-lunch +counters, the amiable truculence of rural constables, the kicks, arrests and +happy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud, crude cities than this +freezing heartlessness. +</p> + +<p> +Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace. Unheeding, +regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelash to testify that they +were conscious of his existence. And then he said to himself that this fair but +pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul; that its inhabitants were +manikins moved by wires and springs, and that he was alone in a great +wilderness. +</p> + +<p> +Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, a hissing and a +crash as something struck him and hurled him over and over six yards from where +he had been. As he was coming down like the stick of a rocket the earth and all +the cities thereof turned to a fractured dream. +</p> + +<p> +Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him—an odor +of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a hand soft as a falling +petal touched his brow. Bending over him was the woman clothed like the +princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and humid with human sympathy. Under +his head on the pavement were silks and furs. With Raggles’s hat in his +hand and with his face pinker than ever from a vehement burst of oratory +against reckless driving, stood the elderly gentleman who personified the +city’s wealth and ripeness. From a nearby café hurried the by-product +with the vast jowl and baby complexion, bearing a glass full of a crimson fluid +that suggested delightful possibilities. +</p> + +<p> +“Drink dis, sport,” said the by-product, holding the glass to +Raggles’s lips. +</p> + +<p> +Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearing the deepest +concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got into the circle and pressed +back the overplus of Samaritans. An old lady in a black shawl spoke loudly of +camphor; a newsboy slipped one of his papers beneath Raggles’s elbow, +where it lay on the muddy pavement. A brisk young man with a notebook was +asking for names. +</p> + +<p> +A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned a lane through the crowd. +A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs. +</p> + +<p> +“How do you feel, old man?” asked the surgeon, stooping easily to +his task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red drop or two from +Raggles’s brow with a fragrant cobweb. +</p> + +<p> +“Me?” said Raggles, with a seraphic smile, “I feel +fine.” +</p> + +<p> +He had found the heart of his new city. +</p> + +<p> +In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward in the +hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendants heard sounds of +conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggles had assaulted and damaged +a brother convalescent—a glowering transient whom a freight train +collision had sent in to be patched up. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s all this about?” inquired the head nurse. +</p> + +<p> +“He was runnin’ down me town,” said Raggles. +</p> + +<p> +“What town?” asked the nurse. +</p> + +<p> +“Noo York,” said Raggles. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c11" id="c11"></a>VANITY AND SOME SABLES</h2> + +<p> +When “Kid” Brady was sent to the ropes by Molly McKeever’s +blue-black eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a +colleen’s blanderin’ tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you +are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 +o’clock to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you this +morning with a cold nose—a sign of doghealth and your happiness. +</p> + +<p> +The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city called the +“Stovepipe,” which is a narrow and natural extension of the +familiar district known as “Hell’s Kitchen.” The +“Stovepipe” strip of town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues +on the river, and bends a hard and sooty elbow around little, lost homeless +DeWitt Clinton park. Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in any +kitchen and the situation is analyzed. The chefs in “Hell’s +Kitchen” are many, and the “Stovepipe” gang, wears the cordon +blue. +</p> + +<p> +The members of this unchartered but widely known brotherhood appeared to pass +their time on street corners arrayed like the lilies of the conservatory and +busy with nail files and penknives. Thus displayed as a guarantee of good +faith, they carried on an innocuous conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to +the casual observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven +blocks to the east. +</p> + +<p> +But off exhibition the “Stovepipes” were not mere street corner +ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious occupation was the +separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done +by weird and singular tricks without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the +citizen honored by their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully +his objections came to be spread finally upon some police station blotter or +hospital register. +</p> + +<p> +The police held the “Stovepipe” gang in perpetual suspicion and +respect. As the nightingale’s liquid note is heard in the deepest +shadows, so along the “Stovepipe’s” dark and narrow confines +the whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there was +smoke in the “stovepipe” the tasselled men in blue knew there was +fire in “Hell’s Kitchen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Kid” Brady promised Molly to be good. “Kid” was the +vainest, the strongest, the wariest and the most successful plotter in the +gang. Therefore, the boys were sorry to give him up. +</p> + +<p> +But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. For, in the +Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper for a guy to do as his +girl advises. +</p> + +<p> +Black her eye for love’s sake, if you will; but it is all-to-the-good +business to do a thing when she wants you to do it. +</p> + +<p> +“Turn off the hydrant,” said the Kid, one night when Molly, +tearful, besought him to amend his ways. “I’m going to cut out the +gang. You for mine, and the simple life on the side. I’ll tell you, +Moll—I’ll get work; and in a year we’ll get married. +I’ll do it for you. We’ll get a flat and a flute, and a sewing +machine and a rubber plant and live as honest as we can.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Kid,” sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with +her handkerchief, “I’d rather hear you say that than to own all of +New York. And we can be happy on so little!” +</p> + +<p> +The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent leathers with a +suspicion of melancholy. +</p> + +<p> +“It’ll hurt hardest in the rags department,” said he. +“I’ve kind of always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know +how I hate cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in +the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it’s to the misfit +parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won’t have so much coin to hand +over to the little man with the big shears.” +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, Kid. I’ll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I +would in a red automobile.” +</p> + +<p> +Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he had been +compelled to learn the plumber’s art. So now back to this honorable and +useful profession he returned. But it was as an assistant that he engaged +himself; and it is the master plumber and not the assistant, who wears diamonds +as large as hailstones and looks contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of +Senator Clark’s mansion. +</p> + +<p> +Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had +“elapsed” on a theater program. The Kid worked away at his pipes +and solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The Stovepipe gang continued its +piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen’s heads, held up late +travelers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied Fifth +avenue’s cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported itself +according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and faithful to his +Molly, even though the polish was gone from his fingernails and it took him 15 +minutes to tie his purple silk ascot so that the worn places would not show. +</p> + +<p> +One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly’s house. +</p> + +<p> +“Open that, Moll!” he said in his large, quiet way. +“It’s for you.” +</p> + +<p> +Molly’s eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, and in +rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, dishwashy, but an +undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve. +</p> + +<p> +Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew and +enveloped her neck like an anaconda. +</p> + +<p> +“Russian sables,” said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of +Molly’s round cheek against the clinging fur. “The real thing. They +don’t grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll.” +</p> + +<p> +Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the family infants +and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. To make bright eyes, rosy +cheeks and a bewitching smile: Recipe—one set Russian sables. Apply. +</p> + +<p> +When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice of common +sense floating down the full tide of her happiness. +</p> + +<p> +“You’re a bird, all right, Kid,” she admitted gratefully. +“I never had any furs on before in my life. But ain’t Russian +sables awful expensive? Seems to me I’ve heard they were.” +</p> + +<p> +“Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?” asked +the Kid, with calm dignity. “Did you ever notice me leaning on the +remnant counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call that scarf +$250 and the muff $175 and you won’t make any mistake about the price of +Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they look fine on you, +Moll.” +</p> + +<p> +Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile went away +little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the eye sadly and +steadily. +</p> + +<p> +He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint flush upon +his face. +</p> + +<p> +“Cut it out,” he said, with affectionate roughness. “I told +you I was done with that. I bought ’em and paid for ’em, all right, +with my own money.” +</p> + +<p> +“Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure. I been saving up.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let’s see—saved $425 in eight months, Kid?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, let up,” said the Kid, with some heat. “I had some money +when I went to work. Do you think I’ve been holding ’em up again? I +told you I’d quit. They’re paid for on the square. Put ’em on +and come out for a walk.” +</p> + +<p> +Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she went forth +in the streets at the Kid’s side. In all that region of low-lying streets +Russian sables had never been seen before. The word sped, and doors and windows +blossomed with heads eager to see the swell furs Kid Brady had given his girl. +All down the street there were “Oh’s” and +“Ah’s” and the reported fabulous sum paid for the sables was +passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her right elbow sauntered the +Kid with the air of princes. Work had not diminished his love of pomp and show +and his passion for the costly and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the +Stovepipe Gang loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid’s +girl and went on with their calm, unaccented palaver. +</p> + +<p> +Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, of the +Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who could walk +abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair dealing and unafraid +and went there with the hypothesis that the inhabitants were human. Many liked +him, and now and then one would tip off to him something that he was looking +for. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the excitement down the street?” asked Ransom of a +pale youth in a red sweater. +</p> + +<p> +“Dey’re out rubberin’ at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady +staked his girl to,” answered the youth. “Some say he paid $900 for +de skins. Dey’re swell all right enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year,” +said the detective. “He doesn’t travel with the gang any more, does +he?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s workin’, all right,” said the red sweater, +“but—say, sport, are you trailin’ anything in the fur line? A +job in a plumbin’ shop don’ match wid dem skins de Kid’s +girl’s got on.” +</p> + +<p> +Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the river bank. He +touched the Kid’s arm from behind. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me see you a moment, Brady,” he said, quietly. His eye rested +for a second on the long fur scarf thrown stylishly back over Molly’s +left shoulder. The Kid, with his old-time police hating frown on his face, +stepped a yard or two aside with the detective. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote’s on West 7—th street yesterday +to fix a leaky water pipe?” asked Ransom. +</p> + +<p> +“I did,” said the Kid. “What of it?” +</p> + +<p> +“The lady’s $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house +about the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has +on.” +</p> + +<p> +“To h—Harlem with you,” cried the Kid, angrily. “You +know I’ve cut out that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables +yesterday at—” +</p> + +<p> +The Kid stopped short. +</p> + +<p> +“I know you’ve been working straight lately,” said Ransom. +“I’ll give you every chance. I’ll go with you where you say +you bought the furs and investigate. The lady can wear ’em along with us +and nobody’ll be on. That’s fair, Brady.” +</p> + +<p> +“Come on,” agreed the Kid, hotly. And then he stopped suddenly in +his tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly’s distressed and anxious +face. +</p> + +<p> +“No use,” he said, grimly. “They’re the Hethcote +sables, all right. You’ll have to turn ’em over, Moll, but they +ain’t too good for you if they cost a million.” +</p> + +<p> +Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid’s arm. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Kiddy, you’ve broke my heart,” she said. “I was so +proud of you—and now they’ll do you—and where’s our +happiness gone?” +</p> + +<p> +“Go home,” said the Kid, wildly. “Come on, Ransom—take +the furs. Let’s get away from here. Wait a minute—I’ve a good +mind to—no, I’ll be d–––– if I can do +it—run along, Moll—I’m ready, Ransom.” +</p> + +<p> +Around the corner of a lumber-yard came Policeman Kohen on his way to his beat +along the river. The detective signed to him for assistance. Kohen joined the +group. Ransom explained. +</p> + +<p> +“Sure,” said Kohen. “I hear about those saples dat vas stole. +You say you have dem here?” +</p> + +<p> +Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly’s late scarf in his hands and +looked at it closely. +</p> + +<p> +“Once,” he said, “I sold furs in Sixth avenue. Yes, dese are +saples. Dey come from Alaska. Dis scarf is vort $12 and dis muff—” +</p> + +<p> +“Biff!” came the palm of the Kid’s powerful hand upon the +policeman’s mouth. Kohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The +detective threw himself upon Brady and with Kohen’s aid got the nippers +on his wrist. +</p> + +<p> +“The scarf is vort $12 and the muff is vort $9,” persisted the +policeman. “Vot is dis talk about $1,000 saples?” +</p> + +<p> +The Kid sat upon a pile of lumber and his face turned dark red. +</p> + +<p> +“Correct, Solomonski!” he declared, viciously. “I paid $21.50 +for the set. I’d rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, the +swell guy that wouldn’t look at anything cheap! I’m a plain +bluffer. Moll—my salary couldn’t spell sables in Russian.” +</p> + +<p> +Molly cast herself upon his neck. +</p> + +<p> +“What do I care for all the sables and money in the world,” she +cried. “It’s my Kiddy I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy +blockhead!” +</p> + +<p> +“You can take dose nippers off,” said Kohen to the detective. +“Before I leaf de station de report come in dat de lady vind her +saples—hanging in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you dat punch in my +vace—dis von time.” +</p> + +<p> +Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the Kid. She wound the +scarf and threw the end over her left shoulder with a duchess’ grace. +</p> + +<p> +“A gouple of young vools,” said Policeman Kohen to Ransom; +“come on away.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c12" id="c12"></a>THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE</h2> + +<p> +At the stroke of six Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was a +tailor’s apprentice. Are there tailor’s apprentices nowadays? +</p> + +<p> +At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and patched and +sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. But when work was done +Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his firmament let shine. +</p> + +<p> +It was Saturday night, and the boss laid twelve begrimed and begrudged dollars +in his hand. Ikey dabbled discreetly in water, donned coat, hat and collar with +its frazzled tie and chalcedony pin, and set forth in pursuit of his ideals. +</p> + +<p> +For each of us, when our day’s work is done, must seek our ideal, whether +it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of +the musty bookshelves. +</p> + +<p> +Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring “El” +between the rows of reeking sweat-shops. Pallid, stooping, insignificant, +squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body and mind, yet, as he swings +his cheap cane and projects the noisome inhalations from his cigarette you +perceive that he nurtures in his narrow bosom the bacillus of society. +</p> + +<p> +Ikey’s legs carried him to and into that famous place of entertainment +known as the Café Maginnis—famous because it was the rendezvous of Billy +McMahan, the greatest man, the most wonderful man, Ikey thought, that the world +had ever produced. +</p> + +<p> +Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred, and his hand +held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered, McMahan stood, flushed and +triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing concourse of his lieutenants +and constituents. It seems there had been an election; a signal victory had +been won; the city had been swept back into line by a resistless besom of +ballots. +</p> + +<p> +Ikey slunk along the bar and gazed, breath-quickened, at his idol. +</p> + +<p> +How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great, smooth, laughing face; his +gray eye, shrewd as a chicken hawk’s; his diamond ring, his voice like a +bugle call, his prince’s air, his plump and active roll of money, his +clarion call to friend and comrade—oh, what a king of men he was! How he +obscured his lieutenants, though they themselves loomed large and serious, blue +of chin and important of mien, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their +short overcoats! But Billy—oh, what small avail are words to paint for +you his glory as seen by Ikey Snigglefritz! +</p> + +<p> +The Café Maginnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated bartenders +threw themselves featfully upon bottle, cork and glass. From a score of clear +Havanas the air received its paradox of clouds. The leal and the hopeful shook +Billy McMahan’s hand. And there was born suddenly in the worshipful soul +of Ikey Snigglefritz an audacious, thrilling impulse. +</p> + +<p> +He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which majesty moved, and +held out his hand. +</p> + +<p> +Billy McMahan grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled. +</p> + +<p> +Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey threw away his +scabbard and charged upon Olympus. +</p> + +<p> +“Have a drink with me, Billy,” he said familiarly, “you and +your friends?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t mind if I do, old man,” said the great leader, +“just to keep the ball rolling.” +</p> + +<p> +The last spark of Ikey’s reason fled. +</p> + +<p> +“Wine,” he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand. +</p> + +<p> +The corks of three bottles were drawn; the champagne bubbled in the long row of +glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahan took his and nodded, with his beaming +smile, at Ikey. The lieutenants and satellites took theirs and growled +“Here’s to you.” Ikey took his nectar in delirium. All drank. +</p> + +<p> +Ikey threw his week’s wages in a crumpled roll upon the bar. +</p> + +<p> +“C’rect,” said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar +notes. The crowd surged around Billy McMahan again. Some one was telling how +Brannigan fixed ’em over in the Eleventh. Ikey leaned against the bar a +while, and then went out. +</p> + +<p> +He went down Hester street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to where he +lived. And there his women folk, a bibulous mother and three dingy sisters, +pounced upon him for his wages. And at his confession they shrieked and +objurgated him in the pithy rhetoric of the locality. +</p> + +<p> +But even as they plucked at him and struck him Ikey remained in his ecstatic +trance of joy. His head was in the clouds; the star was drawing his wagon. +Compared with what he had achieved the loss of wages and the bray of +women’s tongues were slight affairs. +</p> + +<p> +He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahan. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Billy McMahan had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved the name +“Mrs. William Darragh McMahan.” And there was a certain vexation +attendant upon these cards; for, small as they were, there were houses in which +they could not be inserted. Billy McMahan was a dictator in politics, a +four-walled tower in business, a mogul, dreaded, loved and obeyed among his own +people. He was growing rich; the daily papers had a dozen men on his trail to +chronicle his every word of wisdom; he had been honored in caricature holding +the Tiger cringing in leash. +</p> + +<p> +But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a race of men +from which he stood apart but that he viewed with the eye of Moses looking over +into the promised land. He, too, had ideals, even as had Ikey Snigglefritz; and +sometimes, hopeless of attaining them, his own solid success was as dust and +ashes in his mouth. And Mrs. William Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent +upon her plump but pretty face, and the very rustle of her silks seemed a sigh. +</p> + +<p> +There was a brave and conspicuous assemblage in the dining saloon of a noted +hostelry where Fashion loves to display her charms. At one table sat Billy +McMahan and his wife. Mostly silent they were, but the accessories they enjoyed +little needed the indorsement of speech. Mrs. McMahan’s diamonds were +outshone by few in the room. The waiter bore the costliest brands of wine to +their table. In evening dress, with an expression of gloom upon his smooth and +massive countenance, you would look in vain for a more striking figure than +Billy’s. +</p> + +<p> +Four tables away sat alone a tall, slender man, about thirty, with thoughtful, +melancholy eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly white, thin hands. He was +dining on filet mignon, dry toast and apollinaris. That man was Cortlandt Van +Duyckink, a man worth eighty millions, who inherited and held a sacred seat in +the exclusive inner circle of society. +</p> + +<p> +Billy McMahan spoke to no one around him, because he knew no one. Van Duyckink +kept his eyes on his plate because he knew that every one present was hungry to +catch his. He could bestow knighthood and prestige by a nod, and he was chary +of creating a too extensive nobility. +</p> + +<p> +And then Billy McMahan conceived and accomplished the most startling and +audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked over to Cortlandt +Van Duyckink’s table and held out his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Say, Mr. Van Duyckink,” he said, “I’ve heard you was +talking about starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. +I’m McMahan, you know. Say, now, if that’s straight I’ll do +all I can to help you. And what I says goes in that neck of the woods, +don’t it? Oh, say, I rather guess it does.” +</p> + +<p> +Van Duyckink’s rather sombre eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank height +and grasped Billy McMahan’s hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank you, Mr. McMahan,” he said, in his deep, serious tones. +“I have been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad of +your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with you.” +</p> + +<p> +Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the accolade +bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon him in envy and new +admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan trembled with ecstasy, so that her +diamonds smote the eye almost with pain. And now it was apparent that at many +tables there were those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. +McMahan’s acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became +enveloped in the aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him. +</p> + +<p> +“Wine for that gang!” he commanded the waiter, pointing with his +finger. “Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green bush. +Tell ’em it’s on me. D––––n it! Wine for +everybody!” +</p> + +<p> +The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to carry out the +order, in consideration of the dignity of the house and its custom. +</p> + +<p> +“All right,” said Billy, “if it’s against the rules. I +wonder if ’twould do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, +it’ll flow all right at the caffy to-night, just the same. It’ll be +rubber boots for anybody who comes in there any time up to 2 A. M.” +</p> + +<p> +Billy McMahan was happy. +</p> + +<p> +He had shaken the hand of Cortlandt Van Duyckink.<br /> + +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out of place moving +slowly among the push carts and trash-heaps on the lower east side. So did +Cortlandt Van Duyckink, with his aristocratic face and white, thin hands, as he +steered carefully between the groups of ragged, scurrying youngsters in the +streets. And so did Miss Constance Schuyler, with her dim, ascetic beauty, +seated at his side. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Cortlandt,” she breathed, “isn’t it sad that human +beings have to live in such wretchedness and poverty? And you—how noble +it is of you to think of them, to give your time and money to improve their +condition!” +</p> + +<p> +Van Duyckink turned his solemn eyes upon her. +</p> + +<p> +“It is little,” he said, sadly, “that I can do. The question +is a large one, and belongs to society. But even individual effort is not +thrown away. Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to build soup +kitchens, where no one who is hungry will be turned away. And down this other +street are the old buildings that I shall cause to be torn down and there erect +others in place of those death-traps of fire and disease.” +</p> + +<p> +Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it toddled coveys of +wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children. It stopped before a +crazy brick structure, foul and awry. +</p> + +<p> +Van Duyckink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the leaning +walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who seemed to epitomize +its degradation, squalor and infelicity—a narrow-chested, pale, unsavory +young man, puffing at a cigarette. +</p> + +<p> +Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly grasped the hand +of what seemed to him a living rebuke. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to know you people,” he said, sincerely. “I am going +to help you as much as I can. We shall be friends.” +</p> + +<p> +As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an unaccustomed +glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man. +</p> + +<p> +He had shaken the hand of Ikey Snigglefritz. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c13" id="c13"></a>THE PURPLE DRESS</h2> + +<p> +We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly in repute +among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it for their especial dye. +Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their noses to the genial hue that +follows the commingling of the red and blue. We say of princes that they are +born to the purple; and no doubt they are, for the colic tinges their faces +with the royal tint equally with the snub-nosed countenance of a +woodchopper’s brat. All women love it—when it is the fashion. +</p> + +<p> +And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course other +colors are quite stylish as well—in fact, I saw a lovely thing the other +day in olive green albatross, with a triple-lapped flounce skirt trimmed with +insert squares of silk, and a draped fichu of lace opening over a shirred vest +and double puff sleeves with a lace band holding two gathered frills—but +you see lots of purple too. Oh, yes, you do; just take a walk down Twenty-third +street any afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +Therefore Maida—the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon-colored +hair in the Bee-Hive Store—said to Grace—the girl with the +rhinestone brooch and peppermint-pepsin flavor to her +speech—“I’m going to have a purple dress—a tailor-made +purple dress—for Thanksgiving.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, are you,” said Grace, putting away some 7½ gloves into +the 6¾ box. “Well, it’s me for red. You see more red on +Fifth avenue. And the men all seem to like it.” +</p> + +<p> +“I like purple best,” said Maida. “And old Schlegel has +promised to make it for $8. It’s going to be lovely. I’m going to +have a plaited skirt and a blouse coat trimmed with a band of galloon under a +white cloth collar with two rows of—” +</p> + +<p> +“Sly boots!” said Grace with an educated wink. +</p> + +<p> +“—soutache braid over a surpliced white vest; and a plaited basque +and—” +</p> + +<p> +“Sly boots—sly boots!” repeated Grace. +</p> + +<p> +“—plaited gigot sleeves with a drawn velvet ribbon over an inside +cuff. What do you mean by saying that?” +</p> + +<p> +“You think Mr. Ramsay likes purple. I heard him say yesterday he thought +some of the dark shades of red were stunning.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t care,” said Maida. “I prefer purple, and them +that don’t like it can just take the other side of the street.” +</p> + +<p> +Which suggests the thought that after all, the followers of purple may be +subject to slight delusions. Danger is near when a maiden thinks she can wear +purple regardless of complexions and opinions; and when Emperors think their +purple robes will wear forever. +</p> + +<p> +Maida had saved $18 after eight months of economy; and this had bought the +goods for the purple dress and paid Schlegel $4 on the making of it. On the day +before Thanksgiving she would have just enough to pay the remaining $4. And +then for a holiday in a new dress—can earth offer anything more +enchanting? +</p> + +<p> +Old Bachman, the proprietor of the Bee-Hive Store, always gave a Thanksgiving +dinner to his employees. On every one of the subsequent 364 days, excusing +Sundays, he would remind them of the joys of the past banquet and the hopes of +the coming ones, thus inciting them to increased enthusiasm in work. The dinner +was given in the store on one of the long tables in the middle of the room. +They tacked wrapping paper over the front windows; and the turkeys and other +good things were brought in the back way from the restaurant on the corner. You +will perceive that the Bee-Hive was not a fashionable department store, with +escalators and pompadours. It was almost small enough to be called an emporium; +and you could actually go in there and get waited on and walk out again. And +always at the Thanksgiving dinners Mr. Ramsay— +</p> + +<p> +Oh, bother! I should have mentioned Mr. Ramsay first of all. He is more +important than purple or green, or even the red cranberry sauce. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for him. He +never pinched the girls’ arms when he passed them in dark corners of the +store; and when he told them stories when business was dull and the girls +giggled and said: “Oh, pshaw!” it wasn’t G. Bernard they +meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay was queer and original in +other ways. He was a health crank, and believed that people should never eat +anything that was good for them. He was violently opposed to anybody being +comfortable, and coming in out of snow storms, or wearing overshoes, or taking +medicine, or coddling themselves in any way. Every one of the ten girls in the +store had little pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every night of becoming Mrs. +Ramsay. For, next year old Bachman was going to take him in for a partner. And +each one of them knew that if she should catch him she would knock those cranky +health notions of his sky high before the wedding cake indigestion was over. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had two +Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in the store. +</p> + +<p> +And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsay—one purple and +the other red. Of course, the other eight girls were going to have dresses too, +but they didn’t count. Very likely they’d wear some +shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs—nothing as resplendent as purple or +red. +</p> + +<p> +Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress ready-made. Oh, +what’s the use of bothering with a tailor—when you’ve got a +figger it’s easy to get a fit—the ready-made are intended for a +perfect figger—except I have to have ’em all taken in at the +waist—the average figger is so large waisted. +</p> + +<p> +The night before Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and bright with +the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of purple, but they were +white themselves—the joyous enthusiasm of the young for the pleasures +that youth must have or wither. She knew purple would become her, and—for +the thousandth time she tried to assure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsay +said he liked and not red. She was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a +piece of tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was +going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself. +</p> + +<p> +Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above Maida’s. +</p> + +<p> +At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landlady’s tongue +clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in buttermilk. And +then Grace come down to her room crying with eyes as red as any dress. +</p> + +<p> +“She says I’ve got to get out,” said Grace. “The old +beast. Because I owe her $4. She’s put my trunk in the hall and locked +the door. I can’t go anywhere else. I haven’t got a cent of +money.” +</p> + +<p> +“You had some yesterday,” said Maida. +</p> + +<p> +“I paid it on my dress,” said Grace. “I thought she’d +wait till next week for the rent.” +</p> + +<p> +Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle. +</p> + +<p> +Out came—out it had to come—Maida’s $4. +</p> + +<p> +“You blessed darling,” cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of +sunset. “I’ll pay the mean old thing and then I’m going to +try on my dress. I think it’s heavenly. Come up and look at it. +I’ll pay the money back, a dollar a week—honest I will.” +</p> + +<p> +Thanksgiving. +</p> + +<p> +The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched into +Maida’s room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. Maida sat by +the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist darning a st—. Oh, +doing fancy work. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, goodness me! ain’t you dressed yet?” shrilled the red +one. “How does it fit in the back? Don’t you think these velvet +tabs look awful swell? Why ain’t you dressed, Maida?” +</p> + +<p> +“My dress didn’t get finished in time,” said Maida. +“I’m not going to the dinner.” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s too bad. Why, I’m awfully sorry, Maida. Why +don’t you put on anything and come along—it’s just the store +folks, you know, and they won’t mind.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was set on my purple,” said Maida. “If I can’t have +it I won’t go at all. Don’t bother about me. Run along or +you’ll be late. You look awful nice in red.” +</p> + +<p> +At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the time of the +dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls shrieking over a +pull-bone, could hear old Bachman’s roar over his own deeply-concealed +jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. Bachman, who came to the store only +on Thanksgiving days, could see Mr. Ramsay moving about, alert, kindly, looking +to the comfort of all. +</p> + +<p> +At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless air she +slowly made her way to Schlegel’s shop and told him she could not pay the +$4 due on the dress. +</p> + +<p> +“Gott!” cried Schlegel, angrily. “For what do you look so +glum? Take him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass +mine shop every day in two years? If I make clothes is it that I do not know +how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when you can. Take him +away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in him all right. So. Pay me when +you can.” +</p> + +<p> +Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and hurried away +with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of rain struck upon her face. +She smiled and did not feel it. +</p> + +<p> +Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose wardrobes are +charged to the old man’s account, you cannot begin to +comprehend—you could not understand why Maida did not feel the cold dash +of the Thanksgiving rain. +</p> + +<p> +At five o’clock she went out upon the street wearing her purple dress. +The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her in a steady, wind-blown pour. +People were scurrying home and to cars with close-held umbrellas and tight +buttoned raincoats. Many of them turned their heads to marvel at this +beautiful, serene, happy-eyed girl in the purple dress walking through the +storm as though she were strolling in a garden under summer skies. +</p> + +<p> +I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied wardrobe. +You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual longing for pretty +things—to starve eight months in order to bring a purple dress and a +holiday together. What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? +</p> + +<p> +Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and she walked +abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart must have one crumb +during a year. The rain ran down and dripped from her fingers. +</p> + +<p> +Some one turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. +Ramsay’s eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, Miss Maida,” said he, “you look simply magnificent in +your new dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. And of +all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and intelligence. There +is nothing more healthful and invigorating than braving the weather as you are +doing. May I walk with you?” +</p> + +<p> +And Maida blushed and sneezed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c14" id="c14"></a>THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99</h2> + +<p> +John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was afflicted with what +his comrades called Japanitis. +</p> + +<p> +Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second story of the +engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour of the day or night the +exact positions, conditions and intentions of both the Russian and Japanese +armies. He had little clusters of pins stuck in the map which represented the +opposing forces, and these he moved about from day to day in conformity with +the war news in the daily papers. +</p> + +<p> +Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, and then he +would execute a war dance of delight, and the other firemen would hear him +yell: “Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, huckleberry-eyed, +monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat ’em up, you little sleight-o’-hand, +bow-legged bull terriers—give ’em another of them Yalu looloos, and +you’ll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your Russians—say, +wouldn’t they give you a painsky when it comes to a scrapovitch?” +</p> + +<p> +Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic champion of +the Mikado’s men. Supporters of the Russian cause did well to keep clear +of Engine-House No. 99. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes’s head. That was when +the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his driver’s seat on +the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the finest team in the whole +department—according to the crew of 99. +</p> + +<p> +Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward his +fellow-mortals, the greatest are these—the code of King Arthur’s +Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United States and the +unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The Round Table methods are no +longer practicable since the invention of street cars and breach-of-promise +suits, and our Constitution is being found more and more unconstitutional every +day, so the code of our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden +Rule and Jeffries’s new punch trying for place and show. +</p> + +<p> +The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the Fire +Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, but the law will +not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of which comes perilously near +to being a paradox, and commends itself to the attention of the S. P. C. A. +</p> + +<p> +One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of protozoa +which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A steward kicked him +down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes like a raven, seeking for +trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled ashore and ejected into the city in the +name of Liberty—perhaps, theoretically, thus inoculating against +kingocracy with a drop of its own virus. This hypodermic injection of +Europeanism wandered happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of +a pleased child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its body +was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; its face was +brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was mostly covered by a thick, +ragged, curling beard like the coat of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported +Thing were a few +coins—denarii—scudi—kopecks—pfennigs—pilasters—whatever +the financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been. +</p> + +<p> +Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar and movement +of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates had shunted him, the +alien strayed away from the sea, which he hated, as far as the district covered +by Engine Company No. 99. Light as a cork, he was kept bobbing along by the +human tide, the crudest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into +the reservoir of Liberty. +</p> + +<p> +While crossing Third avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the thunder of +the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of the wheels on the +cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful chord in the uproar—the +musical clanging of a gong and a great shining juggernaut belching fire and +smoke, that people were hurrying to see. +</p> + +<p> +This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the protoplasmic +immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, enraptured, +uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the path of No. 99’s +flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with arms of steel, the reins over +the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe. +</p> + +<p> +The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions or +amendments. It is a simple thing—as simple as the rule of three. There +was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the hose-cart and the iron +pillar of the elevated railroad. +</p> + +<p> +John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The team and cart +swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the pillar. The men on the +cart went flying like skittles. The driver’s strap burst, the pillar rang +with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on the car track with a broken shoulder +twenty feet away, while Erebus—beautiful, raven-black, best-loved +Erebus—lay whickering in his harness with a broken leg. +</p> + +<p> +In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the details will be +lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that day. There +was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and while the ambulance gong +was clearing the way the men of No. 99 heard the crack of the S. P. C. A. +agent’s pistol, and turned their heads away, not daring to look toward +Erebus again. +</p> + +<p> +When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one of them was +dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and grief. They set it in +the middle of the floor and gathered grimly about it. Through its whiskers the +calamitous object chattered effervescently and waved its hands. +</p> + +<p> +“Sounds like a seidlitz powder,” said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, +“and it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man!—that hoss was +worth a steamer full of such two-legged animals. It’s a +immigrant—that’s what it is.” +</p> + +<p> +“Look at the doctor’s chalk mark on its coat,” said Reilly, +the desk man. “It’s just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a +Hun or one of them Finns, I guess. That’s the kind of truck that Europe +unloads onto us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up in +hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city,” groaned another +fireman. “It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned.” +</p> + +<p> +“Somebody go around and get Sloviski,” suggested the engine driver, +“and let’s see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration +of hair and head noises.” +</p> + +<p> +Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third avenue, and was +reputed to be a linguist. +</p> + +<p> +One of the men fetched him—a fat, cringing man, with a discursive eye and +the odors of many kinds of meats upon him. +</p> + +<p> +“Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, +Sloviski,” requested Mike Dowling. “We can’t quite figure out +whether he’s from the Hackensack bottoms or +Hongkong-on-the-Ganges.” +</p> + +<p> +Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in rhythm and +cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle to the opening of a can +of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The immigrant replied in accents +resembling the uncorking of a bottle of ginger ale. +</p> + +<p> +“I have you his name,” reported Sloviski. “You shall not +pronounce it. Writing of it in paper is better.” They gave him paper, and +he wrote, “Demetre Svangvsk.” +</p> + +<p> +“Looks like short hand,” said the desk man. +</p> + +<p> +“He speaks some language,” continued the interpreter, wiping his +forehead, “of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he have +some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the Roumanian, but not +without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not him quite understand.” +</p> + +<p> +“Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?” asked Mike, +frowning at the polyglot description. +</p> + +<p> +“He is a”—answered Sloviski—“he is a—I dink +he come from—I dink he is a fool,” he concluded, impatient at his +linguistic failure, “and if you pleases I will go back at mine +delicatessen.” +</p> + +<p> +“Whatever he is, he’s a bird,” said Mike Dowling; “and +you want to watch him fly.” +</p> + +<p> +Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest of Liberty, +Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and bestowed upon him a kick +hearty enough to convey the entire animus of Company 99. Demetre Svangvsk +hustled away down the sidewalk, turning once to show his ineradicable grin to +the aggrieved firemen. +</p> + +<p> +In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital. With great +gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. “My money on the Japs +every time,” he declared. “Why, look at them +Russians—they’re nothing but wolves. Wipe ’em out, I +say—and the little old jiu jitsu gang are just the cherry blossoms to do +the trick, and don’t you forget it!” +</p> + +<p> +The second day after Byrnes’s reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, the +unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than ever. He managed to +convey the idea that he wished to congratulate the hose-cart driver on his +recovery and to apologize for having caused the accident. This he accomplished +by so many extravagant gestures and explosive noises that the company was +diverted for half an hour. Then they kicked him out again, and on the next day +he came back grinning. How or where he lived no one knew. And then John +Byrnes’s nine-year-old son, Chris, who brought him convalescent +delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Svangvsk, and they allowed him to +loaf about the door of the engine-house occasionally. +</p> + +<p> +One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire Commissioner buzzed up +to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped inside for an informal inspection. +The men kicked Svangvsk out a little harder than usual and proudly escorted the +Deputy around 99, in which everything shone like my lady’s mirror. +</p> + +<p> +The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss of Erebus, +and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that would do him credit. So +they let Joe out of his stall and showed the Deputy how deserving he was of the +finest mate that could be in horsedom. +</p> + +<p> +While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into the +Deputy’s auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a monster +puffing and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. The big auto shot +away, luckily taking a straight course down the street. The boy knew nothing of +its machinery; he sat clutching the cushions and howling. With the power on +nothing could have stopped that auto except a brick house, and there was +nothing for Chris to gain by such a stoppage. +</p> + +<p> +Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another kick when +Chris played his merry little prank. While the others sprang for the door +Demetre sprang for Joe. He glided upon the horse’s bare back like a snake +and shouted something at him like the crack of a dozen whips. One of the +firemen afterward swore that Joe answered him back in the same language. Ten +seconds after the auto started the big horse was eating up the asphalt behind +it like a strip of macaroni. +</p> + +<p> +Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said that the auto +was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the middle of it for Chris, +when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on its back cantered up alongside of +it, and the lizard reached over and picked the black speck out of the noise. +</p> + +<p> +Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk’s last kicking at the hands—or +rather the feet—of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through the +door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he was going to +receive. +</p> + +<p> +Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe’s and made a +noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly through his nostrils, +putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of the delicatessen. +</p> + +<p> +John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be kicked. Byrnes +gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that Demetre grinned anyhow, +conceiving it to be a new form of punishment. +</p> + +<p> +“The heathen rides like a Cossack,” remarked a fireman who had seen +a Wild West show—“they’re the greatest riders in the +world.” +</p> + +<p> +The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever. +</p> + +<p> +“Yas—yas—me Cossack,” he spluttered, striking his +chest. +</p> + +<p> +“Cossack!” repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, “ain’t +that a kind of a Russian?” +</p> + +<p> +“They’re one of the Russian tribes, sure,” said the desk man, +who read books between fire alarms. +</p> + +<p> +Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know of the +runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called to Byrnes: +</p> + +<p> +“Hello there, Jimmy, me boy—how’s the war coming along? Japs +still got the bear on the trot, have they?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t know,” said John Byrnes, argumentatively, +“them Japs haven’t got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets +a good whack at ’em and they won’t be knee-high to a +puddle-ducksky.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c15" id="c15"></a>THE LOST BLEND</h2> + +<p> +Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the dinners of +the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need not listen, if they +choose; there is always the slot restaurant, where a dime dropped into the cold +bouillon aperture will bring forth a dry Martini. +</p> + +<p> +Con Lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Kenealy’s café. You and +I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side and went into voluntary +liquidation with our week’s wages. Opposite danced Con, clean, temperate, +clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, punctual, trustworthy, young, +responsible, and took our money. +</p> + +<p> +The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little +“places” which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited +by laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have nothing to +do with either. +</p> + +<p> +Over the café lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter Katherine had eyes of +dark Irish—but why should you be told? Be content with your Geraldine or +your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; and when she called softly at the foot +of the back stairs for the pitcher of beer for dinner, his heart went up and +down like a milk punch in the shaker. Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; +and if you hurl the last shilling of your fortune upon the bar for whiskey, the +bartender shall take it, and marry his boss’s daughter, and good will +grow out of it. +</p> + +<p> +But not so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and scarlet. He +who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom the claret punch made +loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward +the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood +before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot +avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A +trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest +lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence of his divinity. +</p> + +<p> +There came to Kenealy’s two sunburned men, Riley and McQuirk. They had +conference with Kenealy; and then they took possession of a back room which +they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and druggist’s measuring +glasses. All the appurtenances and liquids of a saloon were there, but they +dispensed no drinks. All day long the two sweltered in there pouring and mixing +unknown brews and decoctions from the liquors in their store. Riley had the +education, and he figured on reams of paper, reducing gallons to ounces and +quarts to fluid drams. McQuirk, a morose man with a red eye, dashed each +unsuccessful completed mixture into the waste pipes with curses gentle, husky +and deep. They labored heavily and untiringly to achieve some mysterious +solution like two alchemists striving to resolve gold from the elements. +</p> + +<p> +Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His +professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar +none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy’s store of liquors to follow +their consuming and fruitless experiments. +</p> + +<p> +Down the back stairs came Katherine with her smile like sunrise on Gweebarra +Bay. +</p> + +<p> +“Good evening, Mr. Lantry,” says she. “And what is the news +to-day, if you please?” +</p> + +<p> +“It looks like r-rain,” stammered the shy one, backing to the wall. +</p> + +<p> +“It couldn’t do better,” said Katherine. “I’m +thinking there’s nothing the worse off for a little water.” In the +back room Riley and McQuirk toiled like bearded witches over their strange +compounds. From fifty bottles they drew liquids carefully measured after +Riley’s figures, and shook the whole together in a great glass vessel. +Then McQuirk would dash it out, with gloomy profanity, and they would begin +again. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down,” said Riley to Con, “and I’ll tell you. +</p> + +<p> +“Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this nation of +Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where there’s nothing +to eat but quinine and nothing to drink but rum. The natives and foreigners lay +down with chills and get up with fevers; and a good mixed drink is +nature’s remedy for all such tropical inconveniences. +</p> + +<p> +“So we lays in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar fixtures +and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on a lime steamer. On the +way me and Tim sees flying fish and plays seven-up with the captain and +steward, and already begins to feel like the high-ball kings of the tropics of +Capricorn. +</p> + +<p> +“When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to introduce +to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over to the starboard +binnacle and recollects a few things. +</p> + +<p> +“‘I forgot to tell you, boys,’ says he, ‘that Nicaragua +slapped an import duty of 48 per cent. ad valorem on all bottled goods last +month. The President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by mistake for +tabasco sauce, and he’s getting even. Barrelled goods is free.’ +</p> + +<p> +“‘Sorry you didn’t mention it sooner,’ says we. And we +bought two forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we +had and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That 48 per cent. would +have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1,200 cocktail rather +than throw the stuff away. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was +something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea soup, and it +tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt makes you take for the +heart trouble you get by picking losers. We gave a nigger four fingers of it to +try it, and he lay under a cocoanut tree three days beating the sand with his +heels and refused to sign a testimonial. +</p> + +<p> +“But the other barrel! Say, bartender, did you ever put on a straw hat +with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a pretty girl with +$8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? That’s what thirty drops +of it would make you feel like. With two fingers of it inside you you would +bury your face in your hands and cry because there wasn’t anything more +worth while around for you to lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the +stuff in that second barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high +life. It was the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark +like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you’ll get a +drink like that across the bar. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it was +enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a hive of bees. If +that barrel had lasted that country would have become the greatest on earth. +When we opened up of mornings we had a line of Generals and Colonels and +ex-Presidents and revolutionists a block long waiting to be served. We started +in at 50 cents silver a drink. The last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It +was wonderful stuff. It gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do +anything; at the same time he didn’t care whether his money was tainted +or fresh from the Ice Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua had +repudiated the National debt, removed the duty on cigarettes and was about to +declare war on the United States and England. +</p> + +<p> +“’Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and +’twill be by good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we’ve +been trying. Small lots at a time, we’ve mixed barrels of all the harmful +ingredients known to the profession of drinking. Ye could have stocked ten bars +with the whiskies, brandies, cordials, bitters, gins and wines me and Tim have +wasted. A glorious drink like that to be denied to the world! ’Tis a +sorrow and a loss of money. The United States as a nation would welcome a drink +of that sort, and pay for it.” +</p> + +<p> +All the while McQuirk had been carefully measuring and pouring together small +quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them, from his latest pencilled +prescription. The completed mixture was of a vile, mottled chocolate color. +McQuirk tasted it, and hurled it, with appropriate epithets, into the waste +sink. +</p> + +<p> +“’Tis a strange story, even if true,” said Con. +“I’ll be going now along to my supper.” +</p> + +<p> +“Take a drink,” said Riley. “We’ve all kinds except the +lost blend.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never drink,” said Con, “anything stronger than water. I +am just after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word. +‘There’s not anything,’ says she, ‘but is better off +for a little water.’” +</p> + +<p> +When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on the back. +</p> + +<p> +“Did ye hear that?” he shouted. “Two fools are we. The six +dozen bottles of ’pollinaris we had on the ship—ye opened them +yourself—which barrel did ye pour them in—which barrel, ye +mudhead?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mind,” said McQuirk, slowly, “’twas in the second +barrel we opened. I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of +it.” +</p> + +<p> +“We’ve got it now,” cried Riley. “’Twas that we +lacked. ’Tis the water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. +Hurry, man, and get two bottles of ’pollinaris from the bar, while I +figure out the proportionments with me pencil.” +</p> + +<p> +An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy’s café. Thus +faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the vicinity where +they labor, drawn by some mysterious attraction. +</p> + +<p> +A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were half +carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. The eyes and faces +of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary and assiduous conflict. Yet +they whooped with strange joy, and directed upon the police the feeble remnants +of their pugnacious madness. +</p> + +<p> +“Began fighting each other in the back room,” explained Kenealy to +Con. “And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much up. But +they’re good men. They’ll pay for everything. Trying to invent some +new kind of cocktail, they was. I’ll see they come out all right in the +morning.” +</p> + +<p> +Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went through +the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs. +</p> + +<p> +“Good evening again, Mr. Lantry,” said she. “And is there no +news from the weather yet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Still threatens r-rain,” said Con, slipping past with red in his +smooth, pale cheek. +</p> + +<p> +Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. Broken bottles +and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of alcohol fumes; the floor was +variegated with spirituous puddles. +</p> + +<p> +On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom of it were +two tablespoonfuls of liquid—a bright golden liquid that seemed to hold +the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths. +</p> + +<p> +Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it. +</p> + +<p> +As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the stairs. +</p> + +<p> +“No news yet, Mr. Lantry?” she asked with her teasing laugh. +</p> + +<p> +Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there. +</p> + +<p> +“The news is,” he said, “that we’re to be +married.” +</p> + +<p> +“Put me down, sir!” she cried indignantly, “or I will— +Oh, Con, where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c16" id="c16"></a>A HARLEM TRAGEDY</h2> + +<p> +Harlem. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy’s flat one flight below. +</p> + +<p> +“Ain’t it a beaut?” said Mrs. Cassidy. +</p> + +<p> +She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye was nearly +closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. Her lip was cut and +bleeding a little and there were red finger-marks on each side of her neck. +</p> + +<p> +“My husband wouldn’t ever think of doing that to me,” said +Mrs. Fink, concealing her envy. +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t have a man,” declared Mrs. Cassidy, “that +didn’t beat me up at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you. +Say! but that last dose Jack gave me wasn’t no homeopathic one. I can see +stars yet. But he’ll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the week +to make up for it. This eye is good for theater tickets and a silk shirt waist +at the very least.” +</p> + +<p> +“I should hope,” said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, “that +Mr. Fink is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, go on, Maggie!” said Mrs. Cassidy, laughing and applying witch +hazel, “you’re only jealous. Your old man is too frappéd and slow +to ever give you a punch. He just sits down and practises physical culture with +a newspaper when he comes home—now ain’t that the truth?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mr. Fink certainly peruses of the papers when he comes home,” +acknowledged Mrs. Fink, with a toss of her head; “but he certainly +don’t ever make no Steve O’Donnell out of me just to amuse +himself—that’s a sure thing.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Cassidy laughed the contented laugh of the guarded and happy matron. With +the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew down the collar of her +kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, maroon-colored, edged with olive +and orange—a bruise now nearly well, but still to memory dear. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink capitulated. The formal light in her eye softened to envious +admiration. She and Mrs. Cassidy had been chums in the downtown paper-box +factory before they had married, one year before. Now she and her man occupied +the flat above Mame and her man. Therefore she could not put on airs with Mame. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t it hurt when he soaks you?” asked Mrs. Fink, +curiously. +</p> + +<p> +“Hurt!”—Mrs. Cassidy gave a soprano scream of delight. +“Well, say—did you ever have a brick house fall on you?—well, +that’s just the way it feels—just like when they’re digging +you out of the ruins. Jack’s got a left that spells two matinees and a +new pair of Oxfords—and his right!—well, it takes a trip to Coney +and six pairs of openwork, silk lisle threads to make that good.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what does he beat you for?” inquired Mrs. Fink, with wide-open +eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Silly!” said Mrs. Cassidy, indulgently. “Why, because +he’s full. It’s generally on Saturday nights.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what cause do you give him?” persisted the seeker after +knowledge. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, didn’t I marry him? Jack comes in tanked up; and I’m +here, ain’t I? Who else has he got a right to beat? I’d just like +to catch him once beating anybody else! Sometimes it’s because supper +ain’t ready; and sometimes it’s because it is. Jack ain’t +particular about causes. He just lushes till he remembers he’s married, +and then he makes for home and does me up. Saturday nights I just move the +furniture with sharp corners out of the way, so I won’t cut my head when +he gets his work in. He’s got a left swing that jars you! Sometimes I +take the count in the first round; but when I feel like having a good time +during the week or want some new rags I come up again for more punishment. +That’s what I done last night. Jack knows I’ve been wanting a black +silk waist for a month, and I didn’t think just one black eye would bring +it. Tell you what, Mag, I’ll bet you the ice cream he brings it +to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink was thinking deeply. +</p> + +<p> +“My Mart,” she said, “never hit me a lick in his life. +It’s just like you said, Mame; he comes in grouchy and ain’t got a +word to say. He never takes me out anywhere. He’s a chair-warmer at home +for fair. He buys me things, but he looks so glum about it that I never +appreciate ’em.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum. “You poor thing!” she +said. “But everybody can’t have a husband like Jack. Marriage +wouldn’t be no failure if they was all like him. These discontented wives +you hear about—what they need is a man to come home and kick their slats +in once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and chocolate creams. +That’d give ’em some interest in life. What I want is a masterful +man that slugs you when he’s jagged and hugs you when he ain’t +jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain’t got the sand to do +neither!” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink sighed. +</p> + +<p> +The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at the kick of +Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame flew and hung about his +neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love light that shines in the eye of the +Maori maid when she recovers consciousness in the hut of the wooer who has +stunned and dragged her there. +</p> + +<p> +“Hello, old girl!” shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and +lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. “I got tickets for Barnum & +Bailey’s, and if you’ll bust the string of one of them bundles I +guess you’ll find that silk waist—why, good evening, Mrs. +Fink—I didn’t see you at first. How’s old Mart coming +along?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s very well, Mr. Cassidy—thanks,” said Mrs. Fink. +“I must be going along up now. Mart’ll be home for supper soon. +I’ll bring you down that pattern you wanted to-morrow, Mame.” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a meaningless cry, +the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a cry from no particular cause, +altogether an absurd cry; the most transient and the most hopeless cry in the +repertory of grief. Why had Martin never thrashed her? He was as big and strong +as Jack Cassidy. Did he not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he came +home and lounged about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly good provider, but +he ignored the spices of life. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink’s ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between plum +duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or stamp his foot on +the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought to sail so merrily, touching +at ports in the Delectable Isles! But now, to vary the figure, she was ready to +throw up the sponge, tired out, without a scratch to show for all those tame +rounds with her sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated +Mame—Mame, with her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; +her stormy voyage with her fighting, brutal, loving mate. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of domesticity. Beyond +the portals of his cozy home he cared not to roam, to roam. He was the man who +had caught the street car, the anaconda that had swallowed its prey, the tree +that lay as it had fallen. +</p> + +<p> +“Like the supper, Mart?” asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it. +</p> + +<p> +“M-m-m-yep,” grunted Mr. Fink. +</p> + +<p> +After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his stocking feet. +</p> + +<p> +Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition for the +man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters of Patience who by +reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, yarn, cotton, lisle thread or +woollen—does not the new canto belong? +</p> + +<p> +The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Fink ceased +for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would parade and otherwise +disport itself. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy’s pattern down early. Mame had on her new +silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday gleam. Jack was +fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious scheme for the day afoot, with +parks and picnics and Pilsener in it. +</p> + +<p> +A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her flat +above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following balm! But was +Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin Fink was as good a man as +Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, +brilliant, breathless idea came to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there +were husbands as able to use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward +as any Jack. +</p> + +<p> +The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink had the +stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks’ wash that had +been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged feet reading a +newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed. +</p> + +<p> +Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink’s heart, and higher still surged an +audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her—if he would not so far +prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in conjugal affairs, he +must be prompted to his duty. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a stockinged toe. He +reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of unblended suet in a pudding. +This was his level Elysium—to sit at ease vicariously girdling the world +in print amid the wifely splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of +breakfast dishes departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his +mind; but the furthest one was the thought of beating his wife. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the suds. Up from +the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It sounded like a taunt, a +flaunting of her own happiness in the face of the unslugged bride above. Now +was Mrs. Fink’s time. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading. +</p> + +<p> +“You lazy loafer!” she cried, “must I work my arms off +washing and toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a +kitchen hound?” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared that he would +not strike—that the provocation had been insufficient. She leaped at him +and struck him fiercely in the face with her clenched hand. In that instant she +felt a thrill of love for him such as she had not felt for many a day. Rise up, +Martin Fink, and come into your kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of his +hand now—just to show that he cared—just to show that he cared! +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Fink sprang to his feet—Maggie caught him again on the jaw with a +wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful, blissful +moment before his blow should come—she whispered his name to +herself—she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it. +</p> + +<p> +In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was powdering +Mame’s eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat above came the +sound of a woman’s voice, high-raised, a bumping, a stumbling and a +shuffling, a chair overturned—unmistakable sounds of domestic conflict. +</p> + +<p> +“Mart and Mag scrapping?” postulated Mr. Cassidy. +“Didn’t know they ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they +need a sponge holder?” +</p> + +<p> +One of Mrs. Cassidy’s eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other twinkled at +least like paste. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, oh,” she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the +feminine ejaculatory manner. “I wonder if—wonder if! Wait, Jack, +till I go up and see.” +</p> + +<p> +Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out from the +kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Maggie,” cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; +“did he? Oh, did he?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum’s shoulder and sobbed +hopelessly. +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie’s face between her hands and lifted it gently. +Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, pink-and-white, +becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, unbruised, unmarred by the +recreant fist of Mr. Fink. +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me, Maggie,” pleaded Mame, “or I’ll go in there +and find out. What was it? Did he hurt you—what did he do?” +</p> + +<p> +Mrs. Fink’s face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her friend. +</p> + +<p> +“For God’s sake don’t open that door, Mame,” she +sobbed. “And don’t ever tell nobody—keep it under your hat. +He—he never touched me, and—he’s—oh, +Gawd—he’s washin’ the clothes—he’s washin’ +the clothes!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c17" id="c17"></a>“THE GUILTY PARTY”</h2> + +<p> +A red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window. He had +just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great satisfaction. He +had removed his shoes and donned a pair of blue, faded carpet-slippers. With +the morbid thirst of the confirmed daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back +the pages of an evening paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black +headlines, to be followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller +type. +</p> + +<p> +In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong bacon and +boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from the vespertine pipe. +</p> + +<p> +Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, as +twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty host of children +danced and ran and played in the street. Some in rags, some in clean white and +beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks, some gentle-faced and +shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words, some listening, awed, but +soon, grown familiar, to embrace—here were the children playing in the +corridors of the House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great +bird. The bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie +street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture. +</p> + +<p> +A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and resting by the +window, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Papa, won’t you play a game of checkers with me if you +aren’t too tired?” +</p> + +<p> +The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window answered, +with a frown. +</p> + +<p> +“Checkers. No, I won’t. Can’t a man who works hard all day +have a little rest when he comes home? Why don’t you go out and play with +the other kids on the sidewalk?” +</p> + +<p> +The woman who was cooking came to the door. +</p> + +<p> +“John,” she said, “I don’t like for Lizzie to play in +the street. They learn too much there that ain’t good for ’em. +She’s been in the house all day long. It seems that you might give up a +little of your time to amuse her when you come home.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let her go out and play like the rest of ’em if she wants to be +amused,” said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, “and +don’t bother me.”<br /> + +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“You’re on,” said Kid Mullaly. “Fifty dollars to $25 I +take Annie to the dance. Put up.” +</p> + +<p> +The Kid’s black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and +challenged. He drew out his “roll” and slapped five tens upon the +bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus “taken” more +slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder, took the +money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an inch-long pencil and +stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash register. +</p> + +<p> +“And, oh, what’ll be done to you’ll be a plenty,” said +a bettor, with anticipatory glee. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s my lookout,” said the “Kid,” sternly. +“Fill ’em up all around, Mike.” +</p> + +<p> +After the round Burke, the “Kid’s” sponge, sponge-holder, +pal, Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon +corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours Social +Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the club’s +President and Secretary for the fifth time that day, Burke spake words of +wisdom to his chief. +</p> + +<p> +“Cut that blond out, ‘Kid,’” was his advice, “or +there’ll be trouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours +for? You’ll never find one that’ll freeze to you like Liz has. +She’s worth a hallful of Annies.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m no Annie admirer!” said the “Kid,” dropping +a cigarette ash on his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony’s +shoulder. “But I want to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. +She’s been bragging that I daren’t speak to another girl. Liz is +all right—in some ways. She’s drinking a little too much lately. +And she uses language that a lady oughtn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“You’re engaged, ain’t you?” asked Burke. +</p> + +<p> +“Sure. We’ll get married next year, maybe.” +</p> + +<p> +“I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer,” said Burke. +“That was two years ago, when she used to come down to the corner of +Chrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort of a kid +then, and couldn’t speak without blushing.” +</p> + +<p> +“She’s a little spitfire, sometimes, now,” said the Kid. +“I hate jealousy. That’s why I’m going to the dance with +Annie. It’ll teach her some sense.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you better look a little out,” were Burke’s last +words. “If Liz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up +with an Annie, I’d want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, +all right.” +</p> + +<p> +Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes searched the +passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she hummed bars of foolish +little songs. Between times she set her small, white teeth together, and spake +crisp words that the east side has added to language. +</p> + +<p> +Liz’s skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink plaid, +well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring of huge imitation +rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the bottom of a silver chain. Her +shoes were run down over twisted high heels, and were strangers to polish. Her +hat would scarcely have passed into a flour barrel. +</p> + +<p> +The “Family Entrance” of the Blue Jay Café received her. At a table +she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her +carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner of +respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied wriggle. +She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited upon. It was all +that her world offered her of the prerogative of woman. +</p> + +<p> +“Whiskey, Tommy,” she said as her sisters further uptown murmur, +“Champagne, James.” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure, Miss Lizzie. What’ll the chaser be?” +</p> + +<p> +“Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven’t saw him to-day.” +</p> + +<p> +Fluently came the “Miss Lizzie,” for the Kid was known to be one +who required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m lookin’ for ’m,” said Liz, after the chaser +had sputtered under her nose. “It’s got to me that he says +he’ll take Annie Karlson to the dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! +I’m lookin’ for ’m. You know me, Tommy. Two years me and the +Kid’s been engaged. Look at that ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let +him take her to the dance. What’ll I do? I’ll cut his heart out. +Another whiskey, Tommy.” +</p> + +<p> +“I wouldn’t listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie,” said the +waiter smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. “Kid +Mullaly’s not the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the +side?” +</p> + +<p> +“Two years,” repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under +the magic of the distiller’s art. “I always used to play out on the +street of evenin’s ’cause there was nothin’ doin’ for +me at home. For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights +and the people goin’ by. And then the Kid came along one evenin’ +and sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first drink he made +me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin’ for makin’ a +noise. And now—say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie Karlson? If it +wasn’t for peroxide the chloroform limit would have put her out long ago. +Oh, I’m lookin’ for ’m. You tell the Kid if he comes in. Me? +I’ll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Another whiskey, Tommy.” +</p> + +<p> +A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz walked up the +avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a curly-haired child sat, puzzling +over the convolutions of a tangled string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a +crooked, shifting smile on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and +artless of a sudden. +</p> + +<p> +“Let me show you how to make a cat’s-cradle, kid,” she said, +tucking her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes. +</p> + +<p> +And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the dance in the +hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the bi-monthly dance, a dress +affair in which the members took great pride and bestirred themselves huskily +to further and adorn. +</p> + +<p> +At 9 o’clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a lady +on his arm. As the Loreley’s was her hair golden. Her “yes” +was softened to a “yah,” but its quality of assent was patent to +the most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, +and—she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly. +</p> + +<p> +And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the thing happened +to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in many studies and libraries. +</p> + +<p> +Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green silk +skirt, under the <i>nom de guerre</i> of “Liz.” Her eyes were hard +and blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly, she cried +out one oath—the Kid’s own favorite oath—and in his own deep +voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went frantically to pieces, +she made good her boast to Tommy, the waiter—made good as far as the +length of her knife blade and the strength of her arm permitted. +</p> + +<p> +And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation—or was it +self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the natural branch? +</p> + +<p> +Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying through a +grove of saplings at dusk. +</p> + +<p> +And then followed the big city’s biggest shame, its most ancient and +rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight and perversion, +its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved and cherished, handed down +from a long-ago century of the basest barbarity—the Hue and Cry. Nowhere +but in the big cities does it survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate +perfection of culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in +the chase. +</p> + +<p> +They pursued—a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and +maidens—howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. Well may +the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may his heart, the +gentler, falter at the siege. +</p> + +<p> +Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the familiar ways +until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the rotting pier. And then +it was but a few more panting steps—and good mother East River took Liz +to her bosom, soothed her muddily but quickly, and settled in five minutes the +problem that keeps lights burning o’ nights in thousands of pastorates +and colleges.<br /> + +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It’s mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call them +visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed the rest of +this story. +</p> + +<p> +I thought I was in the next world. I don’t know how I got there; I +suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking patent +medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries’s nose, or doing some such little +injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there was a great crowd of us +outside the courtroom where the judgments were going on. And every now and then +a very beautiful and imposing court-officer angel would come outside the door +and call another case. +</p> + +<p> +While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether there would +be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming that I lived in New +Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and sang out: +</p> + +<p> +“Case No. 99,852,743.” +</p> + +<p> +Up stepped a plain-clothes man—there were lots of ’em there, +dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just like cops do +on earth—and by the arm he dragged—whom, do you think? Why, Liz! +</p> + +<p> +The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to Mr. Fly-Cop +and inquired about the case. +</p> + +<p> +“A very sad one,” says he, laying the points of his manicured +fingers together. “An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special Terrestrial +Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to me. The girl murdered her +fiance and committed suicide. She had no defense. My report to the court +relates the facts in detail, all of which are substantiated by reliable +witnesses. The wages of sin is death. Praise the Lord.” +</p> + +<p> +The court officer opened the door and stepped out. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor girl,” said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, +with a tear in his eye. “It was one of the saddest cases that I ever met +with. Of course she was”— +</p> + +<p> +“Discharged,” said the court officer. “Come here, Jonesy. +First thing you know you’ll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How would +you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea Islands—hey? Now, +you quit making these false arrests, or you’ll be transferred—see? +The guilty party you’ve got to look for in this case is a red-haired, +unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the window reading, in his stocking feet, +while his children play in the streets. Get a move on you.” +</p> + +<p> +Now, wasn’t that a silly dream? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c18" id="c18"></a>ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS</h2> + +<p> +Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever +being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. +Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at +least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were +typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their +overweening and bumptious civic alma mater. +</p> + +<p> +The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral cataclysms that +sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high and profitable position in +the Police Department, ripping off his badge and buttons and washing into the +hands of his lawyers the solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had +enabled him to accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One +month after his dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck from +his free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from her nest, and +cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after that he acquired a pair +of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and wrote complaining letters to the +newspapers. And then he fought the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who +tried to give him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of +an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex street, and quoting the +words of a song book ballad. +</p> + +<p> +Murray’s fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All the +pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The megaphone man +roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on a grand and revered +avenue. But there had been an awful row about something, and the prince had +been escorted to the door by the butler, which, in said avenue, is equivalent +to the impact of the avuncular shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or +sword, he drifted downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the +crusts of the streets with him. +</p> + +<p> +One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great bulk of +the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase—drawing irony instead of +pity to his petitions for aid—was heaped against the arm of the bench in +a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by tufts of vermilion, week-old +whiskers and topped by a sagging white straw hat, looked, in the gloom, like +one of those structures that you may observe in a dark Third avenue window, +challenging your imagination to say whether it be something recent in the way +of ladies’ hats or a strawberry shortcake. A tight-drawn belt—last +relic of his official spruceness—made a deep furrow in his circumference. +The Captain’s shoes were buttonless. In a smothered bass he cursed his +star of ill-luck. +</p> + +<p> +Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of blue serge. +His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little indistinct, like some ghost +that had been dispossessed. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m hungry,” growled the Captain—“by the top +sirloin of the Bull of Bashan, I’m starving to death. Right now I could +eat a Bowery restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. +Can’t you think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders +scrunched up, giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving his +coach—what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some place we can +get something to chew.” +</p> + +<p> +“You forget, my dear Captain,” said Murray, without moving, +“that our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion.” +</p> + +<p> +“You bet it was,” groaned the Captain, “you bet your life it +was. Have you got any more like that to make—hey?” +</p> + +<p> +“I admit we failed,” sighed Murray. “I was sure Malone would +be good for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the +last time I spent a nickel in his establishment.” +</p> + +<p> +“I had this hand,” said the Captain, extending the unfortunate +member—“I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two +sardine sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us.” +</p> + +<p> +“I was within two inches of the olives,” said Murray. +“Stuffed olives. I haven’t tasted one in a year.” +</p> + +<p> +“What’ll we do?” grumbled the Captain. “We can’t +starve.” +</p> + +<p> +“Can’t we?” said Murray quietly. “I’m glad to +hear that. I was afraid we could.” +</p> + +<p> +“You wait here,” said the Captain, rising heavily and puffily to +his feet. “I’m going to try to make one more turn. You stay here +till I come back, Murray. I won’t be over half an hour. If I turn the +trick I’ll come back flush.” +</p> + +<p> +He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He gave his +fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a pair of black-edged +cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by tightening his belt another hole, +and set off, jaunty as a zoo rhinoceros, across the south end of the park. +</p> + +<p> +When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly eastward. +He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two green lights. +</p> + +<p> +“A police captain named Maroney,” he said to the desk sergeant, +“was dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years +ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the +police?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why are ye asking?” inquired the sergeant, with a frown. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought there might be a reward standing,” explained Murray, +easily. “I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty shady +at present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there should be a +reward—” +</p> + +<p> +“There’s no reward,” interrupted the sergeant, shortly. +“The man’s not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are +frindly with um, and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I’ll +give ye a start.” +</p> + +<p> +Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity. +</p> + +<p> +“I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman,” he +said, severely, “if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of its +offenders.” +</p> + +<p> +Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and shrank +within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment. +</p> + +<p> +Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy and +thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn away; his straw hat +had been twisted and battered; his shirt with ox-blood stripes split to the +waist. And from head to knee he was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy +fluid that loudly proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and +kitchen stuff. +</p> + +<p> +“For Heaven’s sake, Captain,” sniffed Murray, “I doubt +that I would have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to +resort to swill barrels. I”— +</p> + +<p> +“Cheese it,” said the Captain, harshly. “I’m not +hogging it yet. It’s all on the outside. I went around on Essex and +proposed marriage to that Catrina that’s got the fruit shop there. Now, +that business could be built up. She’s a peach as far as a Dago could be. +I thought I had that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what she done to +me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there’s another scheme queered.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t mean to say,” said Murray, with infinite contempt, +“that you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your +disgraceful troubles!” +</p> + +<p> +“Me?” said the Captain. “I’d marry the Empress of China +for one bowl of chop suey. I’d commit murder for a plate of beef stew. +I’d steal a wafer from a waif. I’d be a Mormon for a bowl of +chowder.” +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said Murray, resting his head on his hands, “that +I would play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces of +silver I would”— +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, come now!” exclaimed the Captain in dismay. “You +wouldn’t do that, Murray! I always thought that Kike’s squeal on +his boss was about the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives +his friend away is worse than a pirate.” +</p> + +<p> +Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the electric +light fell. +</p> + +<p> +“Is that you, Mac?” he said, halting before the derelicts. His +diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. He was big +and smooth and well fed. “Yes, I see it’s you,” he continued. +“They told me at Mike’s that I might find you over here. Let me see +you a few minutes, Mac.” +</p> + +<p> +The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie Finnegan had +come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must be something doing. +Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of shadow. +</p> + +<p> +“You know, Mac,” he said, “they’re trying Inspector +Pickering on graft charges.” +</p> + +<p> +“He was my inspector,” said the Captain. +</p> + +<p> +“O’Shea wants the job,” went on Finnegan. “He must have +it. It’s for the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your +testimony will do it. He was your ‘man higher up’ when you were on +the force. His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on +the stand and testify against him.” +</p> + +<p> +“He was”—began the Captain. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait a minute,” said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came +out of his inside pocket. “Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty +on the spot, and the rest”— +</p> + +<p> +“He was my friend, I say,” finished the Captain. “I’ll +see you and the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before +I’ll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I’m down and out; but +I’m no traitor to a man that’s been my friend.” The +Captain’s voice rose and boomed like a split trombone. “Get out of +this park, Charlie Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your +betters; and take your dirty money with you.” +</p> + +<p> +Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his seat. +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t avoid hearing,” said Murray, drearily. “I +think you are the biggest fool I ever saw.” +</p> + +<p> +“What would you have done?” asked the Captain. +</p> + +<p> +“Nailed Pickering to the cross,” said Murray. +</p> + +<p> +“Sonny,” said the Captain, huskily and without heat. “You and +me are different. New York is divided into two parts—above Forty-second +street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both act +according to our lights.” +</p> + +<p> +An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that it lacked +the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and moved away together +as if seized by the same idea. They left the park, struck through a narrow +cross street, and came into Broadway, at this hour as dark, echoing and +de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii. +</p> + +<p> +Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt and +slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he would have +granted them at any other hour and place. For on every street in that part of +the city other unkempt and slinking figures were shuffling and hurrying toward +a converging point—a point that is marked by no monument save that groove +on the pavement worn by tens of thousands of waiting feet. +</p> + +<p> +At Ninth street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a Broadway car +and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray, pounced upon him and dragged +him under a street light. The Captain lumbered slowly to the corner, like a +wounded bear, and waited, growling. +</p> + +<p> +“Jerry!” cried the hatted one. “How fortunate! I was to begin +a search for you to-morrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You’re to +be restored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the office in the morning and +get all the money you want. I’ve liberal instructions in that +respect.” +</p> + +<p> +“And the little matrimonial arrangement?” said Murray, with his +head turned sidewise. +</p> + +<p> +“Why—er—well, of course, your uncle understands—expects +that the engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be”— +</p> + +<p> +“Good night,” said Murray, moving away. +</p> + +<p> +“You madman!” cried the other, catching his arm. “Would you +give up two millions on account of”— +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ever see her nose, old man?” asked Murray, solemnly. +</p> + +<p> +“But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress, +and”— +</p> + +<p> +“Did you ever see it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I admit that her nose isn’t”— +</p> + +<p> +“Good night!” said Murray. “My friend is waiting for me. I am +quoting him when I authorize you to report that there is ‘nothing +doing.’ Good night.” +</p> + +<p> +A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth street far up +Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain and Murray fell in at +the tail of the quivering millipede. +</p> + +<p> +“Twenty feet longer than it was last night,” said Murray, looking +up at his measuring angle of Grace Church. +</p> + +<p> +“Half an hour,” growled the Captain, “before we get our +punk.” +</p> + +<p> +The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward slowly, its +leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a hissing serpent, as +they who had lived according to their lights closed up in the rear. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c19" id="c19"></a>A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT’S DREAM</h2> + +<p class="poem"> +“<i>The knights are dead;<br /> +Their swords are rust.<br /> +Except a few who have to hust-<br /> +Le all the time<br /> +To raise the dust.</i>” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +<span class="smallcaps">Dear Reader</span>: It was summertime. The sun glared +down upon the city with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be +ferocious and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was—oh, bother +thermometers!—who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so hot +that— +</p> + +<p> +The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to get your +gin fizz now—as soon as all the other people got theirs. The hospitals +were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when little, woolly dogs loll +their tongues out and say “woof, woof!” at the fleas that bite +’em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies screech “Mad +dog!” and policemen begin to shoot, somebody is going to get hurt. The +man from Pompton, N.J., who always wears an overcoat in July, had turned up in +a Broadway hotel drinking hot Scotches and enjoying his annual ray from the +calcium. Philanthropists were petitioning the Legislature to pass a bill +requiring builders to make tenement fire-escapes more commodious, so that +families might die all together of the heat instead of one or two at a time. So +many men were telling you about the number of baths they took each day that you +wondered how they got along after the real lessee of the apartment came back to +town and thanked ’em for taking such good care of it. The young man who +called loudly for cold beef and beer in the restaurant, protesting that roast +pullet and Burgundy was really too heavy for such weather, blushed when he met +your eye, for you had heard him all winter calling, in modest tones, for the +same ascetic viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt waists, actors and baseball +excuses grew thinner. Yes, it was summertime. +</p> + +<p> +A man stood at Thirty-fourth street waiting for a downtown car. A man of forty, +gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly dressed, with a harassed look +around the eyes. He wiped his forehead and laughed loudly when a fat man with +an outing look stopped and spoke with him. +</p> + +<p> +“No, siree,” he shouted with defiance and scorn. “None of +your old mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators for +me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do it. New York, +sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep in the shade and watch +your diet, and don’t get too far away from an electric fan. Talk about +your Adirondacks and your Catskills! There’s more solid comfort in the +borough of Manhattan than in all the rest of the country together. No, siree! +No tramping up perpendicular cliffs and being waked up at 4 in the morning by a +million flies, and eating canned goods straight from the city for me. Little +old New York will take a few select summer boarders; comforts and conveniences +of homes—that’s the ad. that I answer every time.” +</p> + +<p> +“You need a vacation,” said the fat man, looking closely at the +other. “You haven’t been away from town in years. Better come with +me for two weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at anything +now that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed a three-pound brown +last week.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” cried the other man. “Go ahead, if you like, and +boggle around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish. When I +want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at you fellows +whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat in the country thinking you +are having a good time. For me Father Knickerbocker’s little improved +farm with the big shady lane running through the middle of it.” +</p> + +<p> +The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who thought New +York was the greatest summer resort in the country boarded a car and went +buzzing down to his office. On the way he threw away his newspaper and looked +up at a ragged patch of sky above the housetops. +</p> + +<p> +“Three pounds!” he muttered, absently. “And Harding +isn’t a liar. I believe, if I could—but it’s +impossible—they’ve got to have another month—another month at +least.” +</p> + +<p> +In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, headforemost, into +the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk, came and added a spray of +letters, memoranda and telegrams. +</p> + +<p> +At 5 o’clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office +chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud: +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder what kind of bait Harding used.”<br /> + +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to Gaines. +Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew that was his +favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire’s son, and that almost laid +him open to the charge of betting on a sure thing. But white was her choice, +and Gaines held up his head with twenty-five’s lordly air. +</p> + +<p> +The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that year. There +were two or three young college men and a couple of artists and a young naval +officer on one side. On the other there were enough beauties among the young +ladies for the correspondent of a society paper to refer to them as a +“bevy.” But the moon among the stars was Mary Sewell. Each one of +the young men greatly desired to arrange matters so that he could pay her +millinery bills, and fix the furnace, and have her do away with the +“Sewell” part of her name forever. Those who could stay only a week +or two went away hinting at pistols and blighted hearts. But Compton stayed +like the mountains themselves, for he could afford it. And Gaines stayed +because he was a fighter and wasn’t afraid of millionaire’s sons, +and—well, he adored the country. +</p> + +<p> +“What do you think, Miss Mary?” he said once. “I knew a +duffer in New York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could +keep cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn’t he an awful silly? +I don’t think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of June.” +</p> + +<p> +“Mamma was thinking of going back week after next,” said Miss Mary +with a lovely frown. +</p> + +<p> +“But when you think of it,” said Gaines, “there are lots of +jolly places in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and +the—er—the roof gardens.” +</p> + +<p> +Deepest blue was the lake that day—the day when they had the mock +tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in a glade in the woods +and caught curtain rings on the end of a lance. Such fun! +</p> + +<p> +Cool and dry as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed forest. The +valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A white mist from hidden +falls blurred the green of a hand’s breadth of tree tops half-way down +the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand with young summer. Nothing on Broadway +like that. +</p> + +<p> +The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad drollery. The +woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and sprites. Gaines caught +most of the rings. His was the privilege to crown the queen of the tournament. +He was the conquering knight—as far as the rings went. On his arm he wore +a white scarf. Compton wore light blue. She had declared her preference for +blue, but she wore white that day. +</p> + +<p> +Gaines looked about for the queen to crown her. He heard her merry laugh, as if +from the clouds. She had slipped away and climbed Chimney Rock, a little +granite bluff, and stood there, a white fairy among the laurels, fifty feet +above their heads. +</p> + +<p> +Instantly he and Compton accepted the implied challenge. The bluff was easily +mounted at the rear, but the front offered small hold to hand or foot. Each man +quickly selected his route and began to climb. A crevice, a bush, a slight +projection, a vine or tree branch—all of these were aids that counted in +the race. It was all foolery—there was no stake; but there was youth in +it, cross reader, and light hearts, and something else that Miss Clay writes so +charmingly about. +</p> + +<p> +Gaines gave a great tug at the root of a laurel and pulled himself to Miss +Mary’s feet. On his arm he carried the wreath of roses; and while the +villagers and summer boarders screamed and applauded below he placed it on the +queen’s brow. +</p> + +<p> +“You are a gallant knight,” said Miss Mary. +</p> + +<p> +“If I could be your true knight always,” began Gaines, but Miss +Mary laughed him dumb, for Compton scrambled over the edge of the rock one +minute behind time. +</p> + +<p> +What a twilight that was when they drove back to the hotel! The opal of the +valley turned slowly to purple, the dark woods framed the lake as a mirror, the +tonic air stirred the very soul in one. The first pale stars came out over the +mountain tops where yet a faint glow of—<br /> + +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +“I beg your pardon, Mr. Gaines,” said Adkins. +</p> + +<p> +The man who believed New York to be the finest summer resort in the world +opened his eyes and kicked over the mucilage bottle on his desk. +</p> + +<p> +“I—I believe I was asleep,” he said. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s the heat,” said Adkins. “It’s something +awful in the city these”— +</p> + +<p> +“Nonsense!” said the other. “The city beats the country ten +to one in summer. Fools go out tramping in muddy brooks and wear themselves out +trying to catch little fish as long as your finger. Stay in town and keep +comfortable—that’s my idea.” +</p> + +<p> +“Some letters just came,” said Adkins. “I thought you might +like to glance at them before you go.” +</p> + +<p> +Let us look over his shoulder and read just a few lines of one of them: +</p> + +<p class="letter"> +<span class="smallcaps">My Dear, Dear Husband</span>: Just received your letter +ordering us to stay another month. … Rita’s cough is almost gone. … +Johnny has simply gone wild like a little Indian … Will be the making of both +children … work so hard, and I know that your business can hardly afford to +keep us here so long … best man that ever … you always pretend that you like +the city in summer … trout fishing that you used to be so fond of … and all to +keep us well and happy … come to you if it were not doing the babies so much +good. … I stood last evening on Chimney Rock in exactly the same spot where I +was when you put the wreath of roses on my head … through all the world … when +you said you would be my true knight … fifteen years ago, dear, just think! … +have always been that to me … ever and ever, +</p> + +<p class="right"> +<span class="smallcaps">Mary</span>. +</p> + +<p> +The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in the country +dropped into a café on his way home and had a glass of beer under an electric +fan. +</p> + +<p> +“Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used,” he said to himself. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c20" id="c20"></a>THE LAST LEAF</h2> + +<p> +In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and +broken themselves into small strips called “places.” These +“places” make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself +a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. +Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in +traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having +been paid on account! +</p> + +<p> +So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting +for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. +Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth +avenue, and became a “colony.” +</p> + +<p> +At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. +“Johnsy” was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other +from California. They had met at the <i>table d’hôte</i> of an Eighth +street “Delmonico’s,” and found their tastes in art, chicory +salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. +</p> + +<p> +That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called +Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy +fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims +by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and +moss-grown “places.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of +a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game +for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she +lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small +Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house. +</p> + +<p> +One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray +eyebrow. +</p> + +<p> +“She has one chance in—let us say, ten,” he said, as he shook +down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. “And that chance is for her +to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of the +undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little lady has made +up her mind that she’s not going to get well. Has she anything on her +mind?” +</p> + +<p> +“She—she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,” said +Sue. +</p> + +<p> +“Paint?—bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about +twice—a man, for instance?” +</p> + +<p> +“A man?” said Sue, with a jew’s-harp twang in her voice. +“Is a man worth—but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the +kind.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it is the weakness, then,” said the doctor. “I will do +all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. +But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession +I subtract 50 per cent. from the curative power of medicines. If you will get +her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will +promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten.” +</p> + +<p> +After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese +napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy’s room with her drawing +board, whistling ragtime. +</p> + +<p> +Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward +the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. +</p> + +<p> +She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine +story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for +magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. +</p> + +<p> +As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle +on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several +times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. +</p> + +<p> +Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and +counting—counting backward. +</p> + +<p> +“Twelve,” she said, and a little later “eleven;” and +then “ten,” and “nine;” and then “eight” +and “seven,” almost together. +</p> + +<p> +Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? There was only +a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty +feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half +way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from +the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling +bricks. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, dear?” asked Sue. +</p> + +<p> +“Six,” said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. “They’re +falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head +ache to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one. There are +only five left now.” +</p> + +<p> +“Five what, dear. Tell your Sudie.” +</p> + +<p> +“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. +I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,” complained Sue, with +magnificent scorn. “What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting +well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don’t be a +goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well +real soon were—let’s see exactly what he said—he said the +chances were ten to one! Why, that’s almost as good a chance as we have +in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to +take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the +editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for +her greedy self.” +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t get any more wine,” said Johnsy, keeping her +eyes fixed out the window. “There goes another. No, I don’t want +any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it +gets dark. Then I’ll go, too.” +</p> + +<p> +“Johnsy, dear,” said Sue, bending over her, “will you promise +me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done +working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I +would draw the shade down.” +</p> + +<p> +“Couldn’t you draw in the other room?” asked Johnsy, coldly. +</p> + +<p> +“I’d rather be here by you,” said Sue. “Besides I +don’t want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Tell me as soon as you have finished,” said Johnsy, closing her +eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, “because I want to +see the last one fall. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of thinking. +I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just +like one of those poor, tired leaves.” +</p> + +<p> +“Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman up to be my +model for the old hermit miner. I’ll not be gone a minute. Don’t +try to move ’till I come back.” +</p> + +<p> +Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was +past sixty and had a Michael Angelo’s Moses beard curling down from the +head of a satyr along the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty +years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of +his Mistress’s robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but +had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and +then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by +serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the +price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming +masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly +at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting +to protect the two young artists in the studio above. +</p> + +<p> +Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den +below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there +for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told +him of Johnsy’s fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and +fragile as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold upon the world grew +weaker. +</p> + +<p> +Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and +derision for such idiotic imaginings. +</p> + +<p> +“Vass!” he cried. “Is dere people in de world mit der +foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not +heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool +hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of +her? Ach, dot poor lettle Miss Johnsy.” +</p> + +<p> +“She is very ill and weak,” said Sue, “and the fever has left +her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do +not care to pose for me, you needn’t. But I think you are a horrid +old—old flibbertigibbet.” +</p> + +<p> +“You are just like a woman!” yelled Behrman. “Who said I will +not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot +I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss +Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go +away. Gott! yes.” +</p> + +<p> +Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the +window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out +the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a +moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with +snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an +upturned kettle for a rock. +</p> + +<p> +When Sue awoke from an hour’s sleep the next morning she found Johnsy +with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. +</p> + +<p> +“Pull it up; I want to see,” she ordered, in a whisper. +</p> + +<p> +Wearily Sue obeyed. +</p> + +<p> +But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured +through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy +leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, but with its +serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely +from a branch some twenty feet above the ground. +</p> + +<p> +“It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely +fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die +at the same time.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear, dear!” said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, +“think of me, if you won’t think of yourself. What would I +do?” +</p> + +<p> +But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when +it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to +possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship +and to earth were loosed. +</p> + +<p> +The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy +leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the +night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the +windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves. +</p> + +<p> +When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be +raised. +</p> + +<p> +The ivy leaf was still there. +</p> + +<p> +Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was +stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve been a bad girl, Sudie,” said Johnsy. “Something +has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to +want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with a little +port in it, and—no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some +pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook.” +</p> + +<p> +An hour later she said. +</p> + +<p> +“Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.” +</p> + +<p> +The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway +as he left. +</p> + +<p> +“Even chances,” said the doctor, taking Sue’s thin, shaking +hand in his. “With good nursing you’ll win. And now I must see +another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is—some kind of an +artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is +acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made +more comfortable.” +</p> + +<p> +The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s out of danger. +You’ve won. Nutrition and care now—that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a +very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, +pillows and all. +</p> + +<p> +“I have something to tell you, white mouse,” she said. “Mr. +Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The +janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs +helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They +couldn’t imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then +they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from +its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow +colors mixed on it, and—look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf +on the wall. Didn’t you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the +wind blew? Ah, darling, it’s Behrman’s masterpiece—he painted +it there the night that the last leaf fell.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c21" id="c21"></a>THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST</h2> + +<p> +One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue +boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young lady, Miss +Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a plain, snuffy-brown +dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed languid, upon her plate. She +lifted her diffident eyelids and shot one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. +Donovan, politely murmured his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan +bowed with the grace and beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him +social, business and political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one +from the tablets of his consideration. +</p> + +<p> +Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps enjoying his cigar. There +was a soft rustle behind and above him, and Andy turned his head—and had +his head turned. +</p> + +<p> +Just coming out the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black dress of +<i>crêpe de</i>—<i>crêpe de</i>—oh, this thin black goods. Her hat +was black, and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a +spider’s web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk gloves. +Not a speck of white or a spot of color about her dress anywhere. Her rich +golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, into a shining, smooth knot low +on her neck. Her face was plain rather than pretty, but it was now illuminated +and made almost beautiful by her large gray eyes that gazed above the houses +across the street into the sky with an expression of the most appealing sadness +and melancholy. +</p> + +<p> +Gather the idea, girls—all black, you know, with the preference for +<i>crêpe de</i>—oh, <i>crêpe de Chine</i>—that’s it. All +black, and that sad, faraway look, and the hair shining under the black veil +(you have to be a blonde, of course), and try to look as if, although your +young life had been blighted just as it was about to give a hop-skip-and-a-jump +over the threshold of life, a walk in the park might do you good, and be sure +to happen out the door at the right moment, and—oh, it’ll fetch +’em every time. But it’s fierce, now, how cynical I am, ain’t +it?—to talk about mourning costumes this way. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Donovan suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of his +consideration. He threw away the remaining inch-and-a-quarter of his cigar, +that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly shifted his center +of gravity to his low cut patent leathers. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a fine, clear evening, Miss Conway,” he said; and if +the Weather Bureau could have heard the confident emphasis of his tones it +would have hoisted the square white signal, and nailed it to the mast. +</p> + +<p> +“To them that has the heart to enjoy it, it is, Mr. Donovan,” said +Miss Conway, with a sigh. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Donovan, in his heart, cursed fair weather. Heartless weather! It should +hail and blow and snow to be consonant with the mood of Miss Conway. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope none of your relatives—I hope you haven’t sustained a +loss?” ventured Mr. Donovan. +</p> + +<p> +“Death has claimed,” said Miss Conway, hesitating—“not +a relative, but one who—but I will not intrude my grief upon you, Mr. +Donovan.” +</p> + +<p> +“Intrude?” protested Mr. Donovan. “Why, say, Miss Conway, +I’d be delighted, that is, I’d be sorry—I mean I’m sure +nobody could sympathize with you truer than I would.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Conway smiled a little smile. And oh, it was sadder than her expression in +repose. +</p> + +<p> +“‘Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and they give you the +laugh,’” she quoted. “I have learned that, Mr. Donovan. I +have no friends or acquaintances in this city. But you have been kind to me. I +appreciate it highly.” +</p> + +<p> +He had passed her the pepper twice at the table. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s tough to be alone in New York—that’s a +cinch,” said Mr. Donovan. “But, say—whenever this little old +town does loosen up and get friendly it goes the limit. Say you took a little +stroll in the park, Miss Conway—don’t you think it might chase away +some of your mullygrubs? And if you’d allow me—” +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I’d be pleased to accept of your escort if +you think the company of one whose heart is filled with gloom could be anyways +agreeable to you.” +</p> + +<p> +Through the open gates of the iron-railed, old, downtown park, where the elect +once took the air, they strolled, and found a quiet bench. +</p> + +<p> +There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age: +youth’s burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age +may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same. +</p> + +<p> +“He was my fiance,” confided Miss Conway, at the end of an hour. +“We were going to be married next spring. I don’t want you to think +that I am stringing you, Mr. Donovan, but he was a real Count. He had an estate +and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. I never saw the +beat of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, and once we eloped, but +papa overtook us, and took us back. I thought sure papa and Fernando would +fight a duel. Papa has a livery business—in P’kipsee, you +know.” +</p> + +<p> +“Finally, papa came ’round, all right, and said we might be married +next spring. Fernando showed him proofs of his title and wealth, and then went +over to Italy to get the castle fixed up for us. Papa’s very proud, and +when Fernando wanted to give me several thousand dollars for my trousseau he +called him down something awful. He wouldn’t even let me take a ring or +any presents from him. And when Fernando sailed I came to the city and got a +position as cashier in a candy store.” +</p> + +<p> +“Three days ago I got a letter from Italy, forwarded from P’kipsee, +saying that Fernando had been killed in a gondola accident.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is why I am in mourning. My heart, Mr. Donovan, will remain forever +in his grave. I guess I am poor company, Mr. Donovan, but I cannot take any +interest in no one. I should not care to keep you from gayety and your friends +who can smile and entertain you. Perhaps you would prefer to walk back to the +house?” +</p> + +<p> +Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and +shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow’s grave. +Young men are grave-robbers by nature. Ask any widow. Something must be done to +restore that missing organ to weeping angels in <i>crêpe de Chine</i>. Dead men +certainly get the worst of it from all sides. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m awfully sorry,” said Mr. Donovan, gently. “No, we +won’t walk back to the house just yet. And don’t say you +haven’t no friends in this city, Miss Conway. I’m awful sorry, and +I want you to believe I’m your friend, and that I’m awful +sorry.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ve got his picture here in my locket,” said Miss Conway, +after wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. “I never showed it to +anybody; but I will to you, Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be a true +friend.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph in the locket +that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count Mazzini was one to command +interest. It was a smooth, intelligent, bright, almost a handsome +face—the face of a strong, cheerful man who might well be a leader among +his fellows. +</p> + +<p> +“I have a larger one, framed, in my room,” said Miss Conway. +“When we return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of +Fernando. But he ever will be present in my heart, that’s a sure +thing.” +</p> + +<p> +A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan,—that of supplanting the unfortunate +Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration for her determined him +to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking did not seem to weigh upon his +spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful friend was the rôle he essayed; and +he played it so successfully that the next half-hour found them conversing +pensively across two plates of ice-cream, though yet there was no diminution of +the sadness in Miss Conway’s large gray eyes. +</p> + +<p> +Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and brought down +the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk scarf. Mr. Donovan +surveyed it with inscrutable eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“He gave me this the night he left for Italy,” said Miss Conway. +“I had the one for the locket made from this.” +</p> + +<p> +“A fine-looking man,” said Mr. Donovan, heartily. “How would +it suit you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney next +Sunday afternoon?” +</p> + +<p> +A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the other +boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black. +</p> + +<p> +A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the downtown +park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim kinetoscopic picture +of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn a look of abstracted gloom all +day. He was so silent to-night that love’s lips could not keep back any +longer the questions that love’s heart propounded. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s the matter, Andy, you are so solemn and grouchy +to-night?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing, Maggie.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know better. Can’t I tell? You never acted this way before. What +is it?” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s nothing much, Maggie.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes it is; and I want to know. I’ll bet it’s some other girl +you are thinking about. All right. Why don’t you go get her if you want +her? Take your arm away, if you please.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you then,” said Andy, wisely, “but I guess +you won’t understand it exactly. You’ve heard of Mike Sullivan, +haven’t you? ‘Big Mike’ Sullivan, everybody calls him.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I haven’t,” said Maggie. “And I don’t want +to, if he makes you act like this. Who is he?” +</p> + +<p> +“He’s the biggest man in New York,” said Andy, almost +reverently. “He can about do anything he wants to with Tammany or any +other old thing in the political line. He’s a mile high and as broad as +East River. You say anything against Big Mike, and you’ll have a million +men on your collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit over to the +old country awhile back, and the kings took to their holes like rabbits. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, Big Mike’s a friend of mine. I ain’t more than +deuce-high in the district as far as influence goes, but Mike’s as good a +friend to a little man, or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him to-day +on the Bowery, and what do you think he does? Comes up and shakes hands. +‘Andy,’ says he, ‘I’ve been keeping cases on you. +You’ve been putting in some good licks over on your side of the street, +and I’m proud of you. What’ll you take to drink?” He takes a +cigar, and I take a highball. I told him I was going to get married in two +weeks. ‘Andy,’ says he, ‘send me an invitation, so I’ll +keep in mind of it, and I’ll come to the wedding.’ That’s +what Big Mike says to me; and he always does what he says. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t understand it, Maggie, but I’d have one of my +hands cut off to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would be the +proudest day of my life. When he goes to a man’s wedding, there’s a +guy being married that’s made for life. Now, that’s why I’m +maybe looking sore to-night.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you invite him, then, if he’s so much to the +mustard?” said Maggie, lightly. +</p> + +<p> +“There’s a reason why I can’t,” said Andy, sadly. +“There’s a reason why he mustn’t be there. Don’t ask me +what it is, for I can’t tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I don’t care,” said Maggie. “It’s something +about politics, of course. But it’s no reason why you can’t smile +at me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Maggie,” said Andy, presently, “do you think as much of me +as you did of your—as you did of the Count Mazzini?” +</p> + +<p> +He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply. And then, suddenly she leaned +against his shoulder and began to cry—to cry and shake with sobs, holding +his arm tightly, and wetting the <i>crêpe de Chine</i> with tears. +</p> + +<p> +“There, there, there!” soothed Andy, putting aside his own trouble. +“And what is it, now?” +</p> + +<p> +“Andy,” sobbed Maggie. “I’ve lied to you, and +you’ll never marry me, or love me any more. But I feel that I’ve +got to tell. Andy, there never was so much as the little finger of a count. I +never had a beau in my life. But all the other girls had; and they talked about +’em; and that seemed to make the fellows like ’em more. And, Andy, +I look swell in black—you know I do. So I went out to a photograph store +and bought that picture, and had a little one made for my locket, and made up +all that story about the Count, and about his being killed, so I could wear +black. And nobody can love a liar, and you’ll shake me, Andy, and +I’ll die for shame. Oh, there never was anybody I liked but you—and +that’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +But instead of being pushed away, she found Andy’s arm folding her +closer. She looked up and saw his face cleared and smiling. +</p> + +<p> +“Could you—could you forgive me, Andy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure,” said Andy. “It’s all right about that. Back to +the cemetery for the Count. You’ve straightened everything out, Maggie. I +was in hopes you would before the wedding-day. Bully girl!” +</p> + +<p> +“Andy,” said Maggie, with a somewhat shy smile, after she had been +thoroughly assured of forgiveness, “did you believe all that story about +the Count?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, not to any large extent,” said Andy, reaching for his cigar +case, “because it’s Big Mike Sullivan’s picture you’ve +got in that locket of yours.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c22" id="c22"></a>THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION</h2> + +<p> +The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then set down +his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is +not—and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow the prolix and +unmapable trail into that mooted country, Bohemia. +</p> + +<p> +Grainger, sub-editor of <i>Doc’s Magazine</i>, closed his roll-top desk, +put on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the “down” button, +and waited for the elevator. +</p> + +<p> +Grainger’s day had been trying. The chief had tried to ruin the magazine +a dozen times by going against Grainger’s ideas for running it. A lady +whose grandfather had fought with McClellan had brought a portfolio of poems in +person. +</p> + +<p> +Grainger was curator of the Lion’s House of the magazine. That day he had +“lunched” an Arctic explorer, a short-story writer, and the famous +conductor of a slaughter-house exposé. Consequently his mind was in a whirl of +icebergs, Maupassant, and trichinosis. +</p> + +<p> +But there was a surcease and a recourse; there was Bohemia. He would seek +distraction there; and, let’s see—he would call by for Mary Adrian. +</p> + +<p> +Half an hour later he threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid-hunter through +the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the “Idealia” +apartment-house. One day the christeners of apartment-houses and the +cognominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there will be some jealous and +sanguinary knifing. +</p> + +<p> +The clerk breathed Grainger’s name so languidly into the house telephone +that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, down to the +janitor’s regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily up to Miss +Adrian’s ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to come up immediately. +</p> + +<p> +A colored maid with an Eliza-crossing-the-ice expression opened the door of the +apartment for him. Grainger walked sideways down the narrow hall. A bunch of +burnt umber hair and a sea-green eye appeared in the crack of a door. A long, +white, undraped arm came out, barring the way. +</p> + +<p> +“So glad you came, Ricky, instead of any of the others,” said the +eye. “Light a cigarette and give it to me. Going to take me to dinner? +Fine. Go into the front room till I finish dressing. But don’t sit in +your usual chair. There’s pie in it—Meringue. Kappelman threw it at +Reeves last evening while he was reciting. Sophy has just come to straighten +up. Is it lit? Thanks. There’s Scotch on the mantel—oh, no, it +isn’t,—that’s chartreuse. Ask Sophy to find you some. I +won’t be long.” +</p> + +<p> +Grainger escaped the meringue. As he waited his spirits sank still lower. The +atmosphere of the room was as vapid as a zephyr wandering over a Vesuvian +lava-bed. Relics of some feast lay about the room, scattered in places where +even a prowling cat would have been surprised to find them. A straggling +cluster of deep red roses in a marmalade jar bowed their heads over tobacco +ashes and unwashed goblets. A chafing-dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet +music supported a stack of sandwiches in a chair. +</p> + +<p> +Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black fabric +whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to summon visions ranging +between the extremes of man’s experience. Spelled with an “ê” +it belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous dreams; with an “a” it +drapes lamentation and woe. +</p> + +<p> +That evening they went to the Café André. And, as people would confide to you +in a whisper that André’s was the only truly Bohemian restaurant in town, +it may be well to follow them. +</p> + +<p> +André began his professional career as a waiter in a Bowery ten-cent +eating-house. Had you seen him there you would have called him tough—to +yourself. Not aloud, for he would have “soaked” you as quickly as +he would have soaked his thumb in your coffee. He saved money and started a +basement <i>table d’hôte</i> in Eighth (or Ninth) Street. One afternoon +André drank too much absinthe. He announced to his startled family that he was +the Grand Llama of Thibet, therefore requiring an empty audience hall in which +to be worshiped. He moved all the tables and chairs from the restaurant into +the back yard, wrapped a red table-cloth around himself, and sat on a +step-ladder for a throne. When the diners began to arrive, madame, in a flurry +of despair, laid cloths and ushered them, trembling, outside. Between the +tables clothes-lines were stretched, bearing the family wash. A party of +Bohemia hunters greeted the artistic innovation with shrieks and acclamations +of delight. That week’s washing was not taken in for two years. When +André came to his senses he had the menu printed on stiffly starched cuffs, and +served the ices in little wooden tubs. Next he took down his sign and darkened +the front of the house. When you went there to dine you fumbled for an electric +button and pressed it. A lookout slid open a panel in the door, looked at you +suspiciously, and asked if you were acquainted with Senator Herodotus Q. +McMilligan, of the Chickasaw Nation. If you were, you were admitted and allowed +to dine. If you were not, you were admitted and allowed to dine. There you have +one of the abiding principles of Bohemia. When André had accumulated $20,000 he +moved up-town, near Broadway, in the fierce light that beats upon the +thrown-down. There we find him and leave him, with customers in pearls and +automobile veils, striving to catch his excellently graduated nod of +recognition. +</p> + +<p> +There is a large round table in the northeast corner of André’s at which +six can sit. To this table Grainger and Mary Adrian made their way. Kappelman +and Reeves were already there. And Miss Tooker, who designed the May cover for +the <i>Ladies’ Notathome Magazine</i>. And Mrs. Pothunter, who never +drank anything but black and white highballs, being in mourning for her +husband, who—oh, I’ve forgotten what he did—died, like as +not. +</p> + +<p> +Spaghetti-weary reader, wouldst take one penny-in-the-slot peep into the fair +land of Bohemia? Then look; and when you think you have seen it you have not. +And it is neither thimbleriggery nor astigmatism. +</p> + +<p> +The walls of the Café André were covered with original sketches by the artists +who furnished much of the color and sound of the place. Fair woman furnished +the theme for the bulk of the drawings. When you say “sirens and +siphons” you come near to estimating the alliterative atmosphere of +André’s. +</p> + +<p> +First, I want you to meet my friend, Miss Adrian. Miss Tooker and Mrs. +Pothunter you already know. While she tucks in the fingers of her elbow gloves +you shall have her daguerreotype. So faint and uncertain shall the portrait be: +</p> + +<p> +Age, somewhere between twenty-seven and highneck evening dresses. Camaraderie +in large bunches—whatever the fearful word may mean. +Habitat—anywhere from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego. Temperament +uncharted—she let Reeves squeeze her hand after he recited one of his +poems; but she counted the change after sending him out with a dollar to buy +some pickled pig’s feet. Deportment 75 out of a possible 100. Morals 100. +</p> + +<p> +Mary was one of the princesses of Bohemia. In the first place, it was a royal +and a daring thing to have been named Mary. There are twenty Fifines and +Heloises to one Mary in the Country of Elusion. +</p> + +<p> +Now her gloves are tucked in. Miss Tooker has assumed a June poster pose; Mrs. +Pothunter has bitten her lips to make the red show; Reeves has several times +felt his coat to make sure that his latest poem is in the pocket. (It had been +neatly typewritten; but he has copied it on the backs of letters with a +pencil.) Kappelman is underhandedly watching the clock. It is ten minutes to +nine. When the hour comes it is to remind him of a story. Synopsis: A French +girl says to her suitor: “Did you ask my father for my hand at nine +o’clock this morning, as you said you would?” “I did +not,” he replies. “At nine o’clock I was fighting a duel with +swords in the Bois de Boulogne.” “Coward!” she hisses. +</p> + +<p> +The dinner was ordered. You know how the Bohemian feast of reason keeps up with +the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with the soup; repartee with the +entrée; brag with the roast; knocks for Whistler and Kipling with the salad; +songs with the coffee; the slapsticks with the cordials. +</p> + +<p> +Between Miss Adrian’s eyebrows was the pucker that shows the intense +strain it requires to be at ease in Bohemia. Pat must come each sally, +<i>mot</i>, and epigram. Every second of deliberation upon a reply costs you a +bay leaf. Fine as a hair, a line began to curve from her nostrils to her mouth. +To hold her own not a chance must be missed. A sentence addressed to her must +be as a piccolo, each word of it a stop, which she must be prepared to seize +upon and play. And she must always be quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle +the light canoe of conversation away from the rocks in the rapids that flow +from the Pierian spring. For, plodding reader, the handwriting on the wall in +the banquet hall of Bohemia is “<i>Laisser faire</i>.” The gray +ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King +Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that holds them in slavery. +</p> + +<p> +As the dinner waned, hands reached for the pepper cruet rather than for the +shaker of Attic salt. Miss Tooker, with an elbow to business, leaned across the +table toward Grainger, upsetting her glass of wine. +</p> + +<p> +“Now while you are fed and in good humor,” she said, “I want +to make a suggestion to you about a new cover.” +</p> + +<p> +“A good idea,” said Grainger, mopping the tablecloth with his +napkin. “I’ll speak to the waiter about it.” +</p> + +<p> +Kappelman, the painter, was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate Athenian wit he +got up from his chair and waltzed down the room with a waiter. That dependent, +no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, worthy, tax-paying, art-despising biped, +released himself from the unequal encounter, carried his professional smile +back to the dumb-waiter and dropped it down the shaft to eternal oblivion. +Reeves began to make Keats turn in his grave. Mrs. Pothunter told the story of +the man who met the widow on the train. Miss Adrian hummed what is still called +a <i>chanson</i> in the cafés of Bridgeport. Grainger edited each individual +effort with his assistant editor’s smile, which meant: “Great! but +you’ll have to send them in through the regular channels. If I were the +chief now—but you know how it is.” +</p> + +<p> +And soon the head waiter bowed before them, desolated to relate that the +closing hour had already become chronologically historical; so out all trooped +into the starry midnight, filling the street with gay laughter, to be barked at +by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed by the dull inhabitants of an uninspired +world. +</p> + +<p> +Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of the Idealia. +After he had gone she came down again carrying a small hand-bag, ’phoned +for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, boarded a 12.55 commuter’s +train, rode four hours with her burnt-umber head bobbing against the red-plush +back of the seat, and landed during a fresh, stinging, glorious sunrise at a +deserted station, the size of a peach crate, called Crocusville. +</p> + +<p> +She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown cottage stood +twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, Calvinistic face and clothes +dyed blacker than a raven in a coal-mine was washing his hands in a tin basin +on the front porch. +</p> + +<p> +“How are you, father?” said Mary timidly. +</p> + +<p> +“I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your mother +in the kitchen.” +</p> + +<p> +In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the forehead, and +pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for breakfast. Mary sat in a +wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a thrill in her heart. +</p> + +<p> +For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and tea. +</p> + +<p> +“You are pursuing the same avocation in the city concerning which you +have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust,” said her father. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Mary, “I am still reviewing books for the same +publication.” +</p> + +<p> +After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat in +straight-back chairs in the bare-floored parlor. +</p> + +<p> +“It is my custom,” said the old man, “on the Sabbath day to +read aloud from the great work entitled the ‘Apology for Authorized and +Set Forms of Liturgy,’ by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered +theologian, Jeremy Taylor.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know it,” said Mary blissfully, folding her hands. +</p> + +<p> +For two hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the notes of an +oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the new sensation of +racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair brought her. Perhaps there is +no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr’s. Jeremy’s minor +chords soothed her like the music of a tom-tom. “Why, oh why,” she +said to herself, “does some one not write words to it?” +</p> + +<p> +At eleven they went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine bench on +which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would have brought St. Simeon +down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The preacher singled her out, and thundered +upon her vicarious head the damnation of the world. At each side of her an +adamant parent held her rigidly to the bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her +neck, but she dared not move. She lowered her eyes before the +congregation—a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through which +her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a delirious, almost +a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and +creed pinioned her with beneficent cruelty, as steel braces bind the feet of a +crippled child. She was hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, strait-jacketed, +silenced, ordered. When they came out the minister stopped to greet them. Mary +could only hang her head and answer “Yes, sir,” and “No, +sir,” to his questions. When she saw that the other women carried their +hymn-books at their waists with their left hands, she blushed and moved hers +there, too, from her right. +</p> + +<p> +She took the three-o’clock train back to the city. At nine she sat at the +round table for dinner in the Café André. Nearly the same crowd was there. +</p> + +<p> +“Where have you been to-day?” asked Mrs. Pothunter. “I +’phoned to you at twelve.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have been away in Bohemia,” answered Mary, with a mystic smile. +</p> + +<p> +There! Mary has given it away. She has spoiled my climax. For I was to have +told you that Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do +not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue +pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills. It is a +hillside that you turn your head to peer at from the windows of the Through +Express. +</p> + +<p> +At exactly half past eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness and slowness +of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. Instantly she slapped +his face with such strength and cold fury that he shrank down, sobered, with +the flaming red print of a hand across his leering features. And all sounds +ceased, as when the shadows of great wings come upon a flock of chattering +sparrows. One had broken the paramount law of sham-Bohemia—the law of +“<i>Laisser faire</i>.” The shock came not from the blow delivered, +but from the blow received. With the effect of a schoolmaster entering the +play-room of his pupils was that blow administered. Women pulled down their +sleeves and laid prim hands against their ruffled side locks. Men looked at +their watches. There was nothing of the effect of a brawl about it; it was +purely the still panic produced by the sound of the ax of the fly cop, +Conscience hammering at the gambling-house doors of the Heart. +</p> + +<p> +With their punctilious putting on of cloaks, with their exaggerated pretense of +not having seen or heard, with their stammering exchange of unaccustomed +formalities, with their false show of a light-hearted exit I must take leave of +my Bohemian party. Mary has robbed me of my climax; and she may go. +</p> + +<p> +But I am not defeated. Somewhere there exists a great vault miles broad and +miles long—more capacious than the champagne caves of France. In that +vault are stored the anticlimaxes that should have been tagged to all the +stories that have been told in the world. I shall cheat that vault of one +deposit. +</p> + +<p> +Minnie Brown, with her aunt, came from Crocusville down to the city to see the +sights. And because she had escorted me to fishless trout streams and exhibited +to me open-plumbed waterfalls and broken my camera while I Julyed in her +village, I must escort her to the hives containing the synthetic clover honey +of town. +</p> + +<p> +Especially did the custom-made Bohemia charm her. The spaghetti wound its +tendrils about her heart; the free red wine drowned her belief in the existence +of commercialism in the world; she was dared and enchanted by the rugose wit +that can be churned out of California claret. +</p> + +<p> +But one evening I got her away from the smell of halibut and linoleum long +enough to read to her the manuscript of this story, which then ended before her +entrance into it. I read it to her because I knew that all the printing-presses +in the world were running to try to please her and some others. And I asked her +about it. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t quite catch the trains,” said she. “How long +was Mary in Crocusville?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ten hours and five minutes,” I replied. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, then, the story may do,” said Minnie. “But if she had +stayed there a week Kappelman would have got his kiss.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c23" id="c23"></a>THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT</h2> + +<p> +At the street corner, as solid as granite in the “rush-hour” tide +of humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had stained him +berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the glaciers. +</p> + +<p> +He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as broad-gauged as +the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara of sound—the crash of +the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding of rubberless tires and the +antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers indulging in scarifying repartee. And +so, with his gold dust cashed in to the merry air of a hundred thousand, and +with the cakes and ale of one week in Gotham turning bitter on his tongue, the +Man from Nome sighed to set foot again in Chilkoot, the exit from the land of +street noises and Dead Sea apple pies. +</p> + +<p> +Up Sixth avenue, with the tripping, scurrying, chattering, bright-eyed, homing +tide came the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s. The Man from Nome looked and saw, +first, that she was supremely beautiful after his own conception of beauty; and +next, that she moved with exactly the steady grace of a dog sled on a level +crust of snow. His third sensation was an instantaneous conviction that he +desired her greatly for his own. This quickly do men from Nome make up their +minds. Besides, he was going back to the North in a short time, and to act +quickly was no less necessary. +</p> + +<p> +A thousand girls from the great department store of Sieber-Mason flowed along +the sidewalk, making navigation dangerous to men whose feminine field of vision +for three years has been chiefly limited to Siwash and Chilkat squaws. But the +Man from Nome, loyal to her who had resurrected his long cached heart, plunged +into the stream of pulchritude and followed her. +</p> + +<p> +Down Twenty-third street she glided swiftly, looking to neither side; no more +flirtatious than the bronze Diana above the Garden. Her fine brown hair was +neatly braided; her neat waist and unwrinkled black skirt were eloquent of the +double virtues—taste and economy. Ten yards behind followed the smitten +Man from Nome. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Claribel Colby, the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s, belonged to that sad +company of mariners known as Jersey commuters. She walked into the waiting-room +of the ferry, and up the stairs, and by a marvellous swift, little run, caught +the ferry-boat that was just going out. The Man from Nome closed up his ten +yards in three jumps and gained the deck close beside her. +</p> + +<p> +Miss Colby chose a rather lonely seat on the outside of the upper-cabin. The +night was not cold, and she desired to be away from the curious eyes and +tedious voices of the passengers. Besides, she was extremely weary and drooping +from lack of sleep. On the previous night she had graced the annual ball and +oyster fry of the West Side Wholesale Fish Dealers’ Assistants’ +Social Club No. 2, thus reducing her usual time of sleep to only three hours. +</p> + +<p> +And the day had been uncommonly troublous. Customers had been inordinately +trying; the buyer in her department had scolded her roundly for letting her +stock run down; her best friend, Mamie Tuthill, had snubbed her by going to +lunch with that Dockery girl. +</p> + +<p> +The Girl from Sieber-Mason’s was in that relaxed, softened mood that +often comes to the independent feminine wage-earner. It is a mood most +propitious for the man who would woo her. Then she has yearnings to be set in +some home and heart; to be comforted, and to hide behind some strong arm and +rest, rest. But Miss Claribel Colby was also very sleepy. +</p> + +<p> +There came to her side a strong man, browned and dressed carelessly in the best +of clothes, with his hat in his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Lady,” said the Man from Nome, respectfully, “excuse me for +speaking to you, but I—I—I saw you on the street, +and—and—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, gee!” remarked the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s, glancing up +with the most capable coolness. “Ain’t there any way to ever get +rid of you mashers? I’ve tried everything from eating onions to using +hatpins. Be on your way, Freddie.” +</p> + +<p> +“I’m not one of that kind, lady,” said the Man from +Nome—“honest, I’m not. As I say, I saw you on the street, and +I wanted to know you so bad I couldn’t help followin’ after you. I +was afraid I wouldn’t ever see you again in this big town unless I spoke; +and that’s why I done so.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Colby looked once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the ferry-boat. No; +he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen swagger of the lady-killer. +Sincerity and modesty shone through his boreal tan. It seemed to her that it +might be good to hear a little of what he had to say. +</p> + +<p> +“You may sit down,” she said, laying her hand over a yawn with +ostentatious politness; “and—mind—don’t get fresh or +I’ll call the steward.” +</p> + +<p> +The Man from Nome sat by her side. He admired her greatly. He more than admired +her. She had exactly the looks he had tried so long in vain to find in a woman. +Could she ever come to like him? Well, that was to be seen. He must do all in +his power to stake his claim, anyhow. +</p> + +<p> +“My name’s Blayden,” said he—“Henry +Blayden.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you real sure it ain’t Jones?” asked the girl, leaning +toward him, with delicious, knowing raillery. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m down from Nome,” he went on with anxious seriousness. +“I scraped together a pretty good lot of dust up there, and brought it +down with me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, say!” she rippled, pursuing persiflage with engaging +lightness, “then you must be on the White Wings force. I thought +I’d seen you somewhere.” +</p> + +<p> +“You didn’t see me on the street to-day when I saw you.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never look at fellows on the street.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I looked at you; and I never looked at anything before that I +thought was half as pretty.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I keep the change?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I reckon so. I reckon you could keep anything I’ve got. I +reckon I’m what you would call a rough man, but I could be awful good to +anybody I liked. I’ve had a rough time of it up yonder, but I beat the +game. Nearly 5,000 ounces of dust was what I cleaned up while I was +there.” +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness!” exclaimed Miss Colby, obligingly sympathetic. “It +must be an awful dirty place, wherever it is.” +</p> + +<p> +And then her eyes closed. The voice of the Man from Nome had a monotony in its +very earnestness. Besides, what dull talk was this of brooms and sweeping and +dust? She leaned her head back against the wall. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss,” said the Man from Nome, with deeper earnestness and +monotony, “I never saw anybody I liked as well as I do you. I know you +can’t think that way of me right yet; but can’t you give me a +chance? Won’t you let me know you, and see if I can’t make you like +me?” +</p> + +<p> +The head of the Girl from Sieber-Mason’s slid over gently and rested upon +his shoulder. Sweet sleep had won her, and she was dreaming rapturously of the +Wholesale Fish Dealers’ Assistants’ ball. +</p> + +<p> +The gentleman from Nome kept his arms to himself. He did not suspect sleep, and +yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to surrender. He was greatly and +blissfully thrilled, but he ended by regarding the head upon his shoulder as an +encouraging preliminary, merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not +to be taken advantage of. +</p> + +<p> +One small speck of alloy discounted the gold of his satisfaction. Had he spoken +too freely of his wealth? He wanted to be liked for himself. +</p> + +<p> +“I want to say, Miss,” he said, “that you can count on me. +They know me in the Klondike from Juneau to Circle City and down the whole +length of the Yukon. Many a night I’ve laid in the snow up there where I +worked like a slave for three years, and wondered if I’d ever have +anybody to like me. I didn’t want all that dust just myself. I thought +I’d meet just the right one some time, and I done it to-day. +Money’s a mighty good thing to have, but to have the love of the one you +like best is better still. If you was ever to marry a man, Miss, which would +you rather he’d have?” +</p> + +<p> +“Cash!” +</p> + +<p> +The word came sharply and loudly from Miss Colby’s lips, giving evidence +that in her dreams she was now behind her counter in the great department store +of Sieber-Mason. +</p> + +<p> +Her head suddenly bobbed over sideways. She awoke, sat straight, and rubbed her +eyes. The Man from Nome was gone. +</p> + +<p> +“Gee! I believe I’ve been asleep,” said Miss Colby. +“Wonder what became of the White Wings!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c24" id="c24"></a>THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER</h2> + +<p> +Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old ten-dollar +bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. Oh, very well! Pass up +this <i>sotto voce</i> autobiography of an X if you like. If you are one of the +kind that prefers to listen to John D’s checkbook roar at you through a +megaphone as it passes by, all right. But don’t forget that small change +can say a word to the point now and then. The next time you tip your +grocer’s clerk a silver quarter to give you extra weight of his +boss’s goods read the four words above the lady’s head. How are +they for repartee? +</p> + +<p> +I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen one in a +friend’s hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture of the bison +Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions of Americans. The +heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn the ends. On my back is the graceful +figure of Liberty or Ceres or Maxine Elliot standing in the centre of the stage +on a conservatory plant. My references is—or are—Section 3,588, +Revised Statutes. Ten cold, hard dollars—I don’t say whether +silver, gold, lead or iron—Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if +you want to cash me in. +</p> + +<p> +I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make—thanks, I +knew you would—got that sneaking little respect and agreeable feeling +toward even an X, haven’t you? You see, a tainted bill doesn’t have +much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I never knew a really +cultured and educated person that could afford to hold a ten-spot any longer +than it would take to do an Arthur Duffy to the nearest That’s All! sign +or delicatessen store. +</p> + +<p> +For a six-year-old, I’ve had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I guess +I’ve paid as many debts as the man who dies. I’ve been owned by a +good many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingy five-dollar +silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to it in the fat and +bad-smelling purse of a butcher. +</p> + +<p> +“Hey, you Sitting Bull,” says I, “don’t scrouge so. +Anyhow, don’t you think it’s about time you went in on a customs +payment and got reissued? For a series of 1899 you’re a sight.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, don’t get crackly just because you’re a Buffalo +bill,” says the fiver. “You’d be limp, too, if you’d +been stuffed down in a thick cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, +and the thermometer not a degree under 85 in the store.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never heard of a pocketbook like that,” says I. “Who +carried you?” +</p> + +<p> +“A shopgirl,” says the five-spot. +</p> + +<p> +“What’s that?” I had to ask. +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll never know till their millennium comes,” says the +fiver. +</p> + +<p> +Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head, spoke up +to the fiver: +</p> + +<p> +“Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain’t lisle thread good enough for yer? If +you was under all cotton like I’ve been to-day, and choked up with +factory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a dozen +times, you’d have some reason to complain.” +</p> + +<p> +That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500 package of +tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania correspondents—and I +haven’t made the acquaintance of any of the five and two spot’s +friends’ pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, every time. +</p> + +<p> +I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands twenty times a +day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for my owner’s every +pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never missed being slapped down +on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, while ones and twos were slid over to +the bartenders folded. I got in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to +soak in a little straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I +could. Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart +peddler’s jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again, for +the future department store owner lived on eight cents’ worth of dog meat +and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one day on account of +having his cart too near a crossing, and I was rescued. I always will feel +grateful to the cop that got me. He changed me at a cigar store near the Bowery +that was running a crap game in the back room. So it was the Captain of the +precinct, after all, that did me the best turn, when he got his. He blew me for +wine the next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as glad to +get back again as an Astor does when he sees the lights of Charing Cross. +</p> + +<p> +A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony once, and +got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes. They were bragging +about the busy times there were in Ossining whenever three girls got hold of +one of them during the ice cream season. But it’s Slow Moving Vehicles +Keep to the Right for the little Bok tips when you think of the way we bison +plasters refuse to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour. +</p> + +<p> +The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good thing with a +Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to buy a stack of blues. +</p> + +<p> +About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk’s and +the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot of other notes and +rolled us into what is termed a “wad” among the money tainters. +</p> + +<p> +“Ticket me for five hundred,” said he to the banker, “and +look out for everything, Charlie. I’m going out for a stroll in the glen +before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody finds the +roof in their way there’s $60,000 wrapped in a comic supplement in the +upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold; everywhere be bold, but be not +bowled over. ’Night.” +</p> + +<p> +I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of ’em says to me: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, old shorthorn, you’re in luck to-night. You’ll see +something of life. Old Jack’s going to make the Tenderloin look like a +hamburg steak.” +</p> + +<p> +“Explain,” says I. “I’m used to joints, but I +don’t care for filet mignon with the kind of sauce you serve.” +</p> + +<p> +“’Xcuse me,” said the twenty. “Old Jack is the +proprietor of this gambling house. He’s going on a whiz to-night because +he offered $50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said +his money was tainted.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is a church?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I forgot,” says the twenty, “that I was talking to a +tenner. Of course you don’t know. You’re too much to put into the +contribution basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church +is—a large building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 +each.” +</p> + +<p> +I don’t care much about chinning with gold certificates. There’s a +streak of yellow in ’em. All is not gold that’s quitters. +</p> + +<p> +Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time to loosen up +he never referred the waiter to an actuary. +</p> + +<p> +By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the wilderness; and all +along Broadway things with cold noses and hot gullets fell in on our trail. The +third Jungle Book was there waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old +Jack’s money may have had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders +for his Camembert piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied +round him; and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then a few +of his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buying souvenirs for so +many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterfly octettes that the head waiters +were ’phoning all over town for Julian Mitchell to please come around and +get them into some kind of order. +</p> + +<p> +At last we floated into an uptown café that I knew by heart. When the +hod-carriers’ union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief goal +kicker called out: +“Six—eleven—forty-two—nineteen—twelve” to +his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we meant Port +Arthur or Portsmouth. But Old Jack wasn’t working for the furniture and +glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang “Ramble” in +a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the twenty told me, because +his offer to the church had been refused. +</p> + +<p> +But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn’t have hammered the +thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the stuff that you +screw out of a bottle with a napkin. +</p> + +<p> +Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the outside of his +roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the proprietor. +</p> + +<p> +“Mike,” says he, “here’s money that the good people +have refused. Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say +it’s tainted.” +</p> + +<p> +“It will,” says Mike, “and I’ll put it in the drawer +next to the bills that was paid to the parson’s daughter for kisses at +the church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson’s daughter to +live in.” +</p> + +<p> +At 1 o’clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up the +front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of the restaurant and +comes up to Old Jack’s table. You’ve seen the kind—black +shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a cross between +Gabriel’s and a sick kitten’s—the kind of woman that’s +always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy squad—and she +stands there without a word and looks at the money. +</p> + +<p> +Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a bow. +</p> + +<p> +“Madam,” says he, just like actors I’ve heard, “here is +a tainted bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a +gentleman’s son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me the +favor to accept it, it is yours.” +</p> + +<p> +The woman took me with a trembling hand. +</p> + +<p> +“Sir,” said she, “I counted thousands of this issue of bills +into packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in the +Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my position. You say +they are tainted now. If you only knew—but I won’t say any more. +Thank you with all my heart, sir—thank you—thank you.” +</p> + +<p> +Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a bakery. Away +from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery. And I get changed, and she +does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away with a dozen rolls and a section of jelly +cake as big as a turbine water-wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I +was snowed up in the bakery, wondering whether I’d get changed at the +drug store the next day in an alum deal or paid over to the cement works. +</p> + +<p> +A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills the baker had +given the woman for change. +</p> + +<p> +“Hallo, E35039669,” says I, “weren’t you in the change +for me in a bakery last Saturday night?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yep,” says the solitaire in his free and easy style. +</p> + +<p> +“How did the deal turn out?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“She blew E17051431 for milk and round steak,” says the one-spot. +“She kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sick kid in +it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and tincture of +formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed some. Don’t get +stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers, where you hear one. She said +something about ‘who giveth to the poor.’ Oh, let’s cut out +the slum talk. I’m certainly tired of the company that keeps me. I wish I +was big enough to move in society with you tainted bills.” +</p> + +<p> +“Shut up,” says I; “there’s no such thing. I know the +rest of it. There’s a ‘lendeth to the Lord’ somewhere in it. +Now look on my back and read what you see there.” +</p> + +<p> +“This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public and +private.” +</p> + +<p> +“This talk about tainted money makes me tired,” says I. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="c25" id="c25"></a>ELSIE IN NEW YORK</h2> + +<p> +No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie series. But +if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there might have been a +chapter in her books not very different from this. +</p> + +<p> +Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan beset +“with pitfall and with gin.” But the civic guardians of the young +have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, and most of the +dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who seek to turn straying ones +away from the peril that menaces them. And this will tell you how they guided +my Elsie safely through all peril to the goal that she was seeking. +</p> + +<p> +Elsie’s father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, on +lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, so a +pot-hunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day when livelier +game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he lay on his bed for a year +and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and a letter from Mr. Otter offering to do +anything he could to help his faithful old employee. The old cutter regarded +this letter as a valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands +with pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off his +thread of life. +</p> + +<p> +That was the landlord’s cue; and forth he came and did his part in the +great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to steal out into, +drawing her little red woollen shawl about her shoulders, but she went out, +regardless of the unities. And as for the red shawl—back to Blaney with +it! Elsie’s fall tan coat was cheap, but it had the style and fit of the +best at Fox & Otter’s. And her lucky stars had given her good looks, +and eyes as blue and innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 +left of the $2.50. And the letter from Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter +from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made plain as we +go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do not sell. +</p> + +<p> +And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to seek her +fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was that it did not bear +the new address of the firm, which had moved about a month before. But Elsie +thought she could find it. She had heard that policemen, when politely +addressed, or thumbscrewed by an investigation committee, will give up +information and addresses. So she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and +Seventy-seventh street and rode south to Forty-second, which she thought must +surely be the end of the island. There she stood against the wall undecided, +for the city’s roar and dash was new to her. Up where she had lived was +rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the morning by the +squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans. +</p> + +<p> +A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past Elsie into +the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the Sunflower Ranch, in Idaho, +on his way home from a visit to the East. Hank’s heart was heavy, for the +Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome place, lacking the presence of a woman. He had +hoped to find one during his visit who would congenially share his prosperity +and home, but the girls of Gotham had not pleased his fancy. But, as he passed +in, he noted, with a jumping of his pulses, the sweet, ingenuous face of Elsie +and her pose of doubt and loneliness. With true and honest Western impulse he +said to himself that here was his mate. He could love her, he knew; and he +would surround her with so much comfort, and cherish her so carefully that she +would be happy, and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where there grew but +one before. +</p> + +<p> +Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never before questioned honesty +of purpose, he approached the girl and removed his soft-brimmed hat. Elsie had +but time to sum up his handsome frank face with one shy look of modest +admiration when a burly cop hurled himself upon the ranchman, seized him by the +collar and backed him against the wall. Two blocks away a burglar was coming +out of an apartment-house with a bag of silverware on his shoulder; but that is +neither here nor there. +</p> + +<p> +“Carry on yez mashin’ tricks right before me eyes, will yez?” +shouted the cop. “I’ll teach yez to speak to ladies on me beat that +ye’re not acquainted with. Come along.” +</p> + +<p> +Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. She had liked +the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned complexion. She walked +southward, thinking herself already in the district where her father used to +work, and hoping to find some one who could direct her to the firm of Fox & +Otter. +</p> + +<p> +But did she want to find Mr. Otter? She had inherited much of the old +cutter’s independence. How much better it would be if she could find work +and support herself without calling on him for aid! +</p> + +<p> +Elsie saw a sign “Employment Agency” and went in. Many girls were +sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were looking +them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling black silk hurried +up to Elsie. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear,” she said in a sweet, gentle voice, “are you +looking for a position? I like your face and appearance so much. I want a young +woman who will be half maid and half companion to me. You will have a good home +and I will pay you $30 a month.” +</p> + +<p> +Before Elsie could stammer forth her gratified acceptance, a young woman with +gold glasses on her bony nose and her hands in her jacket pockets seized her +arm and drew her aside. +</p> + +<p> +“I am Miss Ticklebaum,” said she, “of the Association for the +Prevention of Jobs Being Put Up on Working Girls Looking for Jobs. We prevented +forty-seven girls from securing positions last week. I am here to protect you. +Beware of any one who offers you a job. How do you know that this woman does +not want to make you work as a breaker-boy in a coal mine or murder you to get +your teeth? If you accept work of any kind without permission of our +association you will be arrested by one of our agents.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what am I to do?” asked Elsie. “I have no home or money. +I must do something. Why am I not allowed to accept this kind lady’s +offer?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not know,” said Miss Ticklebaum. “That is the affair of +our Committee on the Abolishment of Employers. It is my duty simply to see that +you do not get work. You will give me your name and address and report to our +secretary every Thursday. We have 600 girls on the waiting list who will in +time be allowed to accept positions as vacancies occur on our roll of Qualified +Employers, which now comprises twenty-seven names. There is prayer, music and +lemonade in our chapel the third Sunday of every month.” +</p> + +<p> +Elsie hurried away after thanking Miss Ticklebaum for her timely warning and +advice. After all, it seemed that she must try to find Mr. Otter. +</p> + +<p> +But after walking a few blocks she saw a sign, “Cashier wanted,” in +the window of a confectionery store. In she went and applied for the place, +after casting a quick glance over her shoulder to assure herself that the +job-preventer was not on her trail. +</p> + +<p> +The proprietor of the confectionery was a benevolent old man with a peppermint +flavor, who decided, after questioning Elsie pretty closely, that she was the +very girl he wanted. Her services were needed at once, so Elsie, with a +thankful heart, drew off her tan coat and prepared to mount the cashier’s +stool. +</p> + +<p> +But before she could do so a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and black +mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing, and exclaimed: +“Young woman, hesitate!” +</p> + +<p> +Elsie hesitated. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know,” said the black-and-steel lady, “that in +accepting this position you may this day cause the loss of a hundred lives in +agonizing physical torture and the sending as many souls to perdition?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, no,” said Elsie, in frightened tones. “How could I do +that?” +</p> + +<p> +“Rum,” said the lady—“the demon rum. Do you know why so +many lives are lost when a theatre catches fire? Brandy balls. The demon rum +lurking in brandy balls. Our society women while in theatres sit grossly +intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. When the fire fiend +sweeps down upon them they are unable to escape. The candy stores are the +devil’s distilleries. If you assist in the distribution of these +insidious confections you assist in the destruction of the bodies and souls of +your fellow-beings, and in the filling of our jails, asylums and almshouses. +Think, girl, ere you touch the money for which brandy balls are sold.” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear me,” said Elsie, bewildered. “I didn’t know there +was rum in brandy balls. But I must live by some means. What shall I do?” +</p> + +<p> +“Decline the position,” said the lady, “and come with me. I +will tell you what to do.” +</p> + +<p> +After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind about the +cashiership she put on her coat and followed the lady to the sidewalk, where +awaited an elegant victoria. +</p> + +<p> +“Seek some other work,” said the black-and-steel lady, “and +assist in crushing the hydra-headed demon rum.” And she got into the +victoria and drove away. +</p> + +<p> +“I guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again,” said Elsie, ruefully, +turning down the street. “And I’m sorry, too, for I’d much +rather make my way without help.” +</p> + +<p> +Near Fourteenth street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a doorway that +read: “Fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on theatrical +costumes. Good pay.” +</p> + +<p> +She was about to enter, when a solemn man, dressed all in black, laid his hand +on her arm. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear girl,” he said, “I entreat you not to enter that +dressing-room of the devil.” +</p> + +<p> +“Goodness me!” exclaimed Elsie, with some impatience. “The +devil seems to have a cinch on all the business in New York. What’s wrong +about the place?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is here,” said the solemn man, “that the regalia of +Satan—in other words, the costumes worn on the stage—are +manufactured. The stage is the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil +your soul by lending the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, my +dear girl, what the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors and actresses go +after the curtain of the playhouse has fallen upon them for the last +time?” +</p> + +<p> +“Sure,” said Elsie. “Into vaudeville. But do you think it +would be wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must get +something to do pretty soon.” +</p> + +<p> +“The flesh-pots of Egypt,” exclaimed the reverend gentleman, +uplifting his hands. “I beseech you, my child, to turn away from this +place of sin and iniquity.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what will I do for a living?” asked Elsie. “I +don’t care to sew for this musical comedy, if it’s as rank as you +say it is; but I’ve got to have a job.” +</p> + +<p> +“The Lord will provide,” said the solemn man. “There is a +free Bible class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next +to the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell.” +</p> + +<p> +Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where factories +abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, “Posey & Trimmer, +Artificial Flowers.” Below it was hung a newly stretched canvas bearing +the words, “Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. Good wages from the +start. Apply one flight up.” +</p> + +<p> +Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups some twenty +or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat tipped down over her eyes +stepped in front of her. +</p> + +<p> +“Say, you’se,” said the girl, “are you’se +goin’ in there after a job?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Elsie; “I must have work.” +</p> + +<p> +“Now don’t do it,” said the girl. “I’m chairman +of our Scab Committee. There’s 400 of us girls locked out just because we +demanded 50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the foreman to +shave off his mustache. You’re too nice a looking girl to be a scab. +Wouldn’t you please help us along by trying to find a job somewhere else, +or would you’se rather have your face pushed in?” +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll try somewhere else,” said Elsie. +</p> + +<p> +She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart leaped to see +the sign, “Fox & Otter,” stretching entirely across the front +of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had led her to it through +the by-ways of her fruitless search for work. +</p> + +<p> +She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her name and the +letter he had written her father. She was shown directly into his private +office. +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands with a +hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of nearly middle age, +a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well dressed, radiating. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, well, and so this is Beatty’s little daughter! Your father +was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? Well, +well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I am sure there is a +vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy work—nothing easier.” +</p> + +<p> +Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nosed clerk thrust a portion of himself inside +the door. +</p> + +<p> +“Send Miss Hawkins in,” said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came. +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Hawkins,” said Mr. Otter, “bring for Miss Beatty to try +on one of those Russian sable coats and—let’s see—one of +those latest model black tulle hats with white tips.” +</p> + +<p> +Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick breath. +Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! she was beautiful. +</p> + +<p> +I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it’s got to +run it out. I didn’t make it up. I’m just repeating it. +</p> + +<p> +I’d like to throw bouquets at the wise cop, and the lady who rescues +Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush brandy balls, +and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage people (there are others), +and all the thousands of good people who are at work protecting young people +from the pitfalls of a great city; and then wind up by pointing out how they +were the means of Elsie reaching her father’s benefactor and her kind +friend and rescuer from poverty. This would make a fine Elsie story of the old +sort. I’d like to do this; but there’s just a word or two to +follow. +</p> + +<p> +While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to the telephone +booth and called up some number. Don’t ask me what it was. +</p> + +<p> +“Oscar,” said he, “I want you to reserve the same table for +me this evening. … What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left of the +shrubbery. … Yes; two. … Yes, the usual brand; and the ’85 Johannisburger +with the roast. If it isn’t the right temperature I’ll break your +neck. … No; not her … No, indeed … A new one—a peacherino, Oscar, a +peacherino!” +</p> + +<p> +Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a paraphrase of +a few words that you will remember were written by him—by him of +Gad’s Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, you shall stand with a +covered pumpkin—aye, sir, a pumpkin. +</p> + +<p> +Lost, Your Excellency. Lost, Associations and Societies. Lost, Right Reverends +and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and Lawmakers, born with +heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with the reverence of money in your +souls. And lost thus around us every day. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following +the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use +of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for +copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very +easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation +of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project +Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may +do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected +by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark +license, especially commercial redistribution. +</div> + +<div style='margin:0.83em 0; font-size:1.1em; text-align:center'>START: FULL LICENSE<br /> +<span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br /> +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</span> +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project +Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person +or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the +Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when +you share it without charge with others. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country other than the United States. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work +on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the +phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: +</div> + +<blockquote> + <div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most + other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions + whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms + of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online + at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you + are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws + of the country where you are located before using this eBook. + </div> +</blockquote> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project +Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg™ License. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format +other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain +Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +provided that: +</div> + +<div style='margin-left:0.7em;'> + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation.” + </div> + + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ + works. + </div> + + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + </div> + + <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> + • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works. + </div> +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of +the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set +forth in Section 3 below. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right +of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™ +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, +Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up +to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website +and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread +public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state +visit <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a>. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate +</div> + +<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Most people start at our website which has the main PG search +facility: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. +</div> + +</div> + +</body> + +</html> diff --git a/3707-h/images/frontis.jpg b/3707-h/images/frontis.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d79d922 --- /dev/null +++ b/3707-h/images/frontis.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aecb29f --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #3707 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3707) diff --git a/old/20010730.zip b/old/20010730.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e631a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/20010730.zip diff --git a/old/20040604-8.zip b/old/20040604-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bbc1c2e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/20040604-8.zip diff --git a/old/20040604-h.zip b/old/20040604-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9f04619 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/20040604-h.zip diff --git a/old/20040604.zip b/old/20040604.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..dc4bfce --- /dev/null +++ b/old/20040604.zip diff --git a/old/3707-8.txt b/old/3707-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a37e0d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/3707-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7246 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Trimmed Lamp, by O. Henry + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Trimmed Lamp + And Other Stories of the Four Million + + +Author: O. Henry + + + +Release Date: July 30, 2001 [eBook #3707] +Most recently updated: March 16, 2010 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP*** + + +E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Greg Weeks, +and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team +and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. + + + +THE TRIMMED LAMP + +And Other Stories of the Four Million + +By + +O. HENRY + +Author of "The Four Million," "The Voioce of the +City," "Strictly Business," "Whirligigs," +"Sixes and Sevens," Etc. + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "Wooed her across the counter with +a king cophetua air." (frontispiece)] + + + + +CONTENTS + + THE TRIMMED LAMP + A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT + THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL + THE PENDULUM + TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN + THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS + THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY + THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON + BRICKDUST ROW + THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER + VANITY AND SOME SABLES + THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE + THE PURPLE DRESS + THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 + THE LOST BLEND + A HARLEM TRAGEDY + "THE GUILTY PARTY"--AN EAST SIDE TRAGEDY + ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS + A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM + THE LAST LEAF + THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST + THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION + THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT + THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER + ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + + + +THE TRIMMED LAMP + + +Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the +other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. +There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that +way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be +fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as +"marriage-girls." + +Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work +because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. +Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, +country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage. + +The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and +respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became +wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months +that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them. +Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou. +While you are shaking hands please take notice--cautiously--of +their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a +stare as a lady in a box at the horse show is. + +Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a +badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too +long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts +will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over. +Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment +radiates from her. + +Nancy you would call a shop-girl--because you have the habit. There +is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so +this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, +and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the +correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air, +but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though +it were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes, remorseless +type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of +silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad +prophecy of the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the +look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian +peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's +face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither +and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer +flowers--with a string tied to them. + +Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery +"See you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, +somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the +housetops to the stars. + +The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou's steady company. +Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a +dozen subpoena servers to find her lamb. + +"Ain't you cold, Nance?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for +working in that old store for $8. a week! I made $18.50 last week. +Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a +counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I +don't know that it's any less respectful work, either." + +"You can have it," said Nancy, with uplifted nose. "I'll take my eight +a week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and swell +people. And look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove girls +married a Pittsburg--steel maker, or blacksmith or something--the +other day worth a million dollars. I'll catch a swell myself some +time. I ain't bragging on my looks or anything; but I'll take my +chances where there's big prizes offered. What show would a girl +have in a laundry?" + +"Why, that's where I met Dan," said Lou, triumphantly. "He came in +for his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board, +ironing. We all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis +was sick that day, and I had her place. He said he noticed my arms +first, how round and white they was. I had my sleeves rolled up. +Some nice fellows come into laundries. You can tell 'em by their +bringing their clothes in suit cases; and turning in the door sharp +and sudden." + +"How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?" said Nancy, gazing down +at the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. +"It shows fierce taste." + +"This waist?" cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. "Why, I paid +$16. for this waist. It's worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be +laundered, and never called for it. The boss sold it to me. It's got +yards and yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that +ugly, plain thing you've got on." + +"This ugly, plain thing," said Nancy, calmly, "was copied from one +that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in +the store last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me +$1.50. Ten feet away you couldn't tell it from hers." + +"Oh, well," said Lou, good-naturedly, "if you want to starve and put +on airs, go ahead. But I'll take my job and good wages; and after +hours give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able +to buy." + +But just then Dan came--a serious young man with a ready-made necktie, +who had escaped the city's brand of frivolity--an electrician earning +30 dollars per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo, +and thought her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should +delight to be caught. + +"My friend, Mr. Owens--shake hands with Miss Danforth," said Lou. + +"I'm mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth," said Dan, with +outstretched hand. "I've heard Lou speak of you so often." + +"Thanks," said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool +ones, "I've heard her mention you--a few times." + +Lou giggled. + +"Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?" +she asked. + +"If I did, you can feel safe in copying it," said Nancy. + +"Oh, I couldn't use it, at all. It's too stylish for me. It's +intended to set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I +get a few and then I'll try it." + +"Learn it first," said Nancy wisely, "and you'll be more likely to +get the rings." + +"Now, to settle this argument," said Dan, with his ready, cheerful +smile, "let me make a proposition. As I can't take both of you up +to Tiffany's and do the right thing, what do you say to a little +vaudeville? I've got the tickets. How about looking at stage +diamonds since we can't shake hands with the real sparklers?" + +The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a +little peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the +inside, slender, and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the +true Van Alstyne Fisher walk--thus they set out for their evening's +moderate diversion. + +I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an +educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was +something like that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things +that breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere +of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or +another's. + +The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and +position in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them +Nancy began to take toll--the best from each according to her view. + +From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an +eloquent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of +carrying a purse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing +"inferiors in station." From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van +Alstyne Fisher, she made requisition for that excellent thing, a +soft, low voice as clear as silver and as perfect in articulation +as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social +refinement and good breeding, it was impossible for her to escape a +deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good +principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good habits. +The teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New England +conscience; but if you sit on a straight-back chair and repeat the +words "prisms and pilgrims" forty times the devil will flee from +you. And when Nancy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt +the thrill of _noblesse oblige_ to her very bones. + +There was another source of learning in the great departmental +school. Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch +and jingle their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently +frivolous conversation, do not think that they are there for the +purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting +may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; but it +has all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first +daughter first put their heads together to make Adam understand his +proper place in the household. It is Woman's Conference for Common +Defense and Exchange of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse +upon and against the World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience +who Persists in Throwing Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most +helpless of the young of any animal--with the fawn's grace but +without its fleetness; with the bird's beauty but without its power +of flight; with the honey-bee's burden of sweetness but without +its--Oh, let's drop that simile--some of us may have been stung. + +During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and +exchange stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the +tactics of life. + +"I says to 'im," says Sadie, "ain't you the fresh thing! Who do you +suppose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what do you +think he says back to me?" + +The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the +answer is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be +used by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, +man. + +Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful +defense means victory. + +The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other +college could have fitted her as well for her life's ambition--the +drawing of a matrimonial prize. + +Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near +enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the +best composers--at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for +appreciation in the social world in which she was vaguely trying +to set a tentative and aspiring foot. She absorbed the educating +influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of adornments +that are almost culture to women. + +The other girls soon became aware of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes +your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man +who looked the rle approached her counter. It got to be a habit of +men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to +stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric +squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty +was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces +before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were +certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to +discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchief +counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the +shoppers in the street below. She looked and perceived that +automobiles differ as well as do their owners. + +Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and +wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had +gone one of the girls said: + +"What's wrong, Nance, that you didn't warm up to that fellow. He +looks the swell article, all right, to me." + +"Him?" said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van +Alstyne Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A +12 H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of +handkerchiefs he bought--silk! And he's got dactylis on him. Give me +the real thing or nothing, if you please." + +Two of the most "refined" women in the store--a forelady and a +cashier--had a few "swell gentlemen friends" with whom they now and +then dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner +took place in a spectacular caf whose tables are engaged for New +Year's eve a year in advance. There were two "gentlemen friends"--one +without any hair on his head--high living ungrew it; and we can prove +it--the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed +upon you in two convincing ways--he swore that all the wine was +corked; and he wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived +irresistible excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and +here was one that added the voice and manners of his high social +world to the franker charms of her own caste. So, on the following +day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious proposal of +marriage over a box of hem-stitched, grass-bleached Irish linens. +Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had been using her +eyes and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she heaped carboys +of upbraidings and horror upon Nancy's head. + +"What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow's a millionaire--he's +a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level, +too. Have you gone crazy, Nance?" + +"Have I?" said Nancy. "I didn't take him, did I? He isn't a millionaire +so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him +$20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him about it +the other night at supper." + +The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes. + +"Say, what do you want?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of +chewing-gum. "Ain't that enough for you? Do you want to be a Mormon, +and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and +the whole bunch? Ain't $20,000 a year good enough for you?" + +Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow +eyes. + +"It wasn't altogether the money, Carrie," she explained. "His friend +caught him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was about +some girl he said he hadn't been to the theater with. Well, I can't +stand a liar. Put everything together--I don't like him; and that +settles it. When I sell out it's not going to be on any bargain day. +I've got to have something that sits up in a chair like a man, +anyhow. Yes, I'm looking out for a catch; but it's got to be able to +do something more than make a noise like a toy bank." + +"The physiopathic ward for yours!" said the brown pompadour, walking +away. + +These high ideas, if not ideals--Nancy continued to cultivate on $8. +per week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown "catch," +eating her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her +face was the faint, soldierly, sweet, grim smile of the preordained +man-hunter. The store was her forest; and many times she raised her +rifle at game that seemed broad-antlered and big; but always some +deep unerring instinct--perhaps of the huntress, perhaps of the +woman--made her hold her fire and take up the trail again. + +Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid +$6. for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her +opportunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared +with Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, +work and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly +and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her +growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted to her through the +conducting metal. + +When the day's work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful +shadow in whatever light she stood. + +Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou's clothes +that increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no +disloyalty; he deprecated the attention they called to her in the +streets. + +And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy +should go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore +the extra burden heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that +Lou furnished the color, Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the +distraction-seeking trio. The escort, in his neat but obviously +ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing, genial, ready-made +wit never startled or clashed. He was of that good kind that you are +likely to forget while they are present, but remember distinctly +after they are gone. + +To Nancy's superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures +was sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a +gourmand, when it cannot be a gourmet. + +"Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away," Lou told her +once. "But why should I? I'm independent. I can do as I please with +the money I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on working +afterward. And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old +store for, and half starve and half dress yourself? I could get you +a place in the laundry right now if you'd come. It seems to me that +you could afford to be a little less stuck-up if you could make a +good deal more money." + +"I don't think I'm stuck-up, Lou," said Nancy, "but I'd rather live +on half rations and stay where I am. I suppose I've got the habit. +It's the chance that I want. I don't expect to be always behind a +counter. I'm learning something new every day. I'm right up against +refined and rich people all the time--even if I do only wait on +them; and I'm not missing any pointers that I see passing around." + +"Caught your millionaire yet?" asked Lou with her teasing laugh. + +"I haven't selected one yet," answered Nancy. "I've been looking +them over." + +"Goodness! the idea of picking over 'em! Don't you ever let one get +by you Nance--even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're +joking--millionaires don't think about working girls like us." + +"It might be better for them if they did," said Nancy, with cool +wisdom. "Some of us could teach them how to take care of their +money." + +"If one was to speak to me," laughed Lou, "I know I'd have a +duck-fit." + +"That's because you don't know any. The only difference between +swells and other people is you have to watch 'em closer. Don't you +think that red silk lining is just a little bit too bright for that +coat, Lou?" + +Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend. + +"Well, no I don't--but it may seem so beside that faded-looking +thing you've got on." + +"This jacket," said Nancy, complacently, "has exactly the cut and +fit of one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day. +The material cost me $3.98. I suppose hers cost about $100. more." + +"Oh, well," said Lou lightly, "it don't strike me as millionaire +bait. Shouldn't wonder if I catch one before you do, anyway." + +Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values +of the theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain +pride and fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with +girls working for the barest living, thumped away gaily with her +iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her +even beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until +sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but +inelegant apparel of Dan--Dan the constant, the immutable, the +undeviating. + +As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels +and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world +of good-breeding and taste--these were made for woman; they are her +equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life +to her, and if she will. She is no traitor to herself, as Esau was; +for she keeps her birthright and the pottage she earns is often very +scant. + +In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her +frugal meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined +and contented mind. She already knew woman; and she was studying +man, the animal, both as to his habits and eligibility. Some day she +would bring down the game that she wanted; but she promised herself +it would be what seemed to her the biggest and the best, and nothing +smaller. + +Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bridegroom +when he should come. + +But, another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard +of values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew +blurred in her mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that +spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just +"kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk +in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, +where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these +times the spear of Nimrod himself grows blunt. + +So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at +its market value by the hearts that it covered. + +One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth +Avenue westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and +Dan to a musical comedy. + +Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was a +queer, strained look on his face. + +"I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her," +he said. + +"Heard from who?" asked Nancy. "Isn't Lou there?" + +"I thought you knew," said Dan. "She hasn't been here or at the +house where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from +there. She told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going +to Europe." + +"Hasn't anybody seen her anywhere?" asked Nancy. + +Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in +his steady gray eyes. + +"They told me in the laundry," he said, harshly, "that they saw her +pass yesterday--in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I +suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about." + +For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand +that trembled slightly on Dan's sleeve. + +"You've no right to say such a thing to me, Dan--as if I had anything +to do with it!" + +"I didn't mean it that way," said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his +vest pocket. + +"I've got the tickets for the show to-night," he said, with a +gallant show of lightness. "If you--" + +Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it. + +"I'll go with you, Dan," she said. + +Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again. + +At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the +border of a little quiet park. She heard her name called, and wheeled +about in time to catch Lou rushing into her arms. + +After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do, +ready to attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on +their swift tongues. And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had +descended upon Lou, manifesting itself in costly furs, flashing +gems, and creations of the tailors' art. + +"You little fool!" cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. "I see you +are still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how +about that big catch you were going to make--nothing doing yet, I +suppose?" + +And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity +had descended upon Nancy--something that shone brighter than gems +in her eyes and redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced +like electricity anxious to be loosed from the tip of her tongue. + +"Yes, I'm still in the store," said Nancy, "but I'm going to leave it +next week. I've made my catch--the biggest catch in the world. You +won't mind now Lou, will you?--I'm going to be married to Dan--to +Dan!--he's my Dan now--why, Lou!" + +Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, +smooth-faced young policemen that are making the force more +endurable--at least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur +coat, and diamond-ringed hands crouching down against the iron fence +of the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender, plainly-dressed +working girl leaned close, trying to console her. But the Gibsonian +cop, being of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice, +for he was wise enough to know that these matters are beyond help so +far as the power he represents is concerned, though he rap the +pavement with his nightstick till the sound goes up to the +furthermost stars. + + + + +A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT + + +To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips +brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there +were two items bearing the same foreign postmark. + +One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The +other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, +absorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and +it contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered +with innuendoes concerning the photographed woman. + +Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out +his expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal +from the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts +when he is housed in a jungle of doubt. + +By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an +enchanted one. For sixteen feet he could travel along it; three +thousand miles was beyond its power to aid. + +Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a +well-oiled genie. + +"Will you dine here, sir, or out?" he asked. + +"Here," said Chalmers, "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to +the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty street. + +"Wait," he said to the disappearing genie. "As I came home across +the end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There +was one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in +rows, and why are they there?" + +"They are homeless men, sir," said Phillips. "The man standing on +the box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come +around to listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the +money will pay for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in +rows; they get sent to bed in order as they come." + +"By the time dinner is served," said Chalmers, "have one of those +men here. He will dine with me." + +"W-w-which--," began Phillips, stammering for the first time during +his service. + +"Choose one at random," said Chalmers. "You might see that he is +reasonably sober--and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be +held against him. That is all." + +It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But +on that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to +melancholy. Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored +and Arabian, he must have to lighten his mood. + +On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the +lamp. The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the +delectable dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily +in the glow of the pink-shaded candles. + +And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal--or held in charge +a burglar--wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the +line of mendicant lodgers. + +It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be +used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through +fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting +hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed--a rite insisted +upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In +the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the +apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes +with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's +comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and +conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were +full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that +is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, +but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner +was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his +chair across the round dining table. + +"If you will oblige me," said the host, "I will be glad to have your +company at dinner." + +"My name is Plumer," said the highway guest, in harsh and aggressive +tones. "If you're like me, you like to know the name of the party +you're dining with." + +"I was going on to say," continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, "that +mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?" + +Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide +the chair beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended +boards before. Phillips set out the anchovies and olives. + +"Good!" barked Plumer; "going to be in courses, is it? All right, +my jovial ruler of Bagdad. I'm your Scheherezade all the way to the +toothpicks. You're the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor +I've struck since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I +finished counting, just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me +to the feast. I had about as much chance of getting a bed to-night +as I have of being the next President. How will you have the sad +story of my life, Mr. Al Raschid--a chapter with each course or the +whole edition with the cigars and coffee?" + +"The situation does not seem a novel one to you," said Chalmers with +a smile. + +"By the chin whiskers of the prophet--no!" answered the guest. "New +York's as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas. +I've been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my +head twenty times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something +for nothing! They spell curiosity and charity with the same set of +building blocks. Lots of 'em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; +and a few of 'em will play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; +but every one of 'em will stand over you till they screw your +autobiography out of you with foot notes, appendix and unpublished +fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward +me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three +times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. +I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand +out vocal harmony for his pre-digested wheaterina and spoopju." + +"I do not ask your story," said Chalmers. "I tell you frankly that +it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to +dine with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity +of mine." + +"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his +soup; "I don't mind it a bit. I'm a regular Oriental magazine +with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. +In fact, we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate +for things of this sort. Somebody's always stopping and wanting +to know what brought us down so low in the world. For a +sandwich and a glass of beer I tell 'em that drink did it. For +corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give 'em the +hard-hearted-landlord--six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story. +A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street +tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This +is the first spread of this kind I've stumbled against. I haven't +got a story to fit it. I'll tell you what, Mr. Chalmers, I'm +going to tell you the truth for this, if you'll listen to it. +It'll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones." + +An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction +while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table. + +"Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?" he asked, with a strange +smile. + +"I remember the name," said Chalmers. "He was a painter, I think, of +a good deal of prominence a few years ago." + +"Five years," said the guest. "Then I went down like a chunk of +lead. I'm Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for +$2,000. After that I couldn't have found a sitter for a gratis +picture." + +"What was the trouble?" Chalmers could not resist asking. + +"Funny thing," answered Plumer, grimly. "Never quite understood it +myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd +and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a +fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever +I finished a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and +look queerly at one another." + +"I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing +out in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. +I don't know how I did it--I painted what I saw--but I know it did +me. Some of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their +pictures. I painted the portrait of a very beautiful and popular +society dame. When it was finished her husband looked at it with a +peculiar expression on his face, and the next week he sued for +divorce." + +"I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I +had his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his +came in to look at it. 'Bless me,' says he, 'does he really look +like that?" I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. 'I +never noticed that expression about his eyes before,' said he; 'I +think I'll drop downtown and change my bank account.' He did drop +down, but the bank account was gone and so was Mr. Banker. + +"It wasn't long till they put me out of business. People don't +want their secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile +and twist their own faces and deceive you, but the picture can't. +I couldn't get an order for another picture, and I had to give +up. I worked as a newspaper artist for a while, and then for a +lithographer, but my work with them got me into the same trouble. If +I drew from a photograph my drawing showed up characteristics and +expressions that you couldn't find in the photo, but I guess they +were in the original, all right. The customers raised lively rows, +especially the women, and I never could hold a job long. So I began +to rest my weary head upon the breast of Old Booze for comfort. And +pretty soon I was in the free-bed line and doing oral fiction for +hand-outs among the food bazaars. Does the truthful statement weary +thee, O Caliph? I can turn on the Wall Street disaster stop if you +prefer, but that requires a tear, and I'm afraid I can't hustle one +up after that good dinner." + +"No, no," said Chalmers, earnestly, "you interest me very much. Did +all of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there +some that did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?" + +"Some? Yes," said Plumer. "Children generally, a good many women and +a sufficient number of men. All people aren't bad, you know. When +they were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don't +explain it, but I'm telling you facts." + +On Chalmers's writing-table lay the photograph that he had received +that day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at +work making a sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the +artist rose and stretched wearily. + +"It's done," he yawned. "You'll excuse me for being so long. I got +interested in the job. Lordy! but I'm tired. No bed last night, you +know. Guess it'll have to be good night now, O Commander of the +Faithful!" + +Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills +into his hand. + +"Oh! I'll take 'em," said Plumer. "All that's included in the fall. +Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I shall sleep on feathers +to-night and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won't turn out to be a dream +in the morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!" + +Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as +far from the table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would +permit. Twice, thrice, he tried to approach it, but failed. He could +see the dun and gold and brown of the colors, but there was a wall +about it built by his fears that kept him at a distance. He sat down +and tried to calm himself. He sprang up and rang for Phillips. + +"There is a young artist in this building," he said. "--a Mr. +Reineman--do you know which is his apartment?" + +"Top floor, front, sir," said Phillips. + +"Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few +minutes." + +Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself. + +"Mr. Reineman," said he, "there is a little pastel sketch on yonder +table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to +its artistic merits and as a picture." + +The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch. +Chalmers half turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair. + +"How--do--you find it?" he asked, slowly. + +"As a drawing," said the artist, "I can't praise it enough. It's the +work of a master--bold and fine and true. It puzzles me a little; I +haven't seen any pastel work near as good in years." + +"The face, man--the subject--the original--what would you say of +that?" + +"The face," said Reineman, "is the face of one of God's own angels. +May I ask who--" + +"My wife!" shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the +astonished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. "She is +traveling in Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture +of your life from it and leave the price to me." + + + + +THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL + + +This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance +lecture and the "Bartender's Guide." Relative to the latter, drink +shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to +the former, not an elbow shall be crooked. + +Bob Babbitt was "off the stuff." Which means--as you will discover +by referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia--that he had +"cut out the booze;" that he was "on the water wagon." The reason +for Bob's sudden attitude of hostility toward the "demon rum"--as +the white ribboners miscall whiskey (see the "Bartender's Guide"), +should be of interest to reformers and saloon-keepers. + +There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or +acknowledge that he was ever drunk. But when a man will say (in the +apt words of the phrase-distiller), "I had a beautiful skate on last +night," you will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for +him. + +One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar +that he liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there +from the downtown offices whom he knew. And then there would be +high-balls and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little +late but feeling good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil +Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some one say: +"Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl." + +Babbitt walked to the bar, and saw in the mirror that his face was +as white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the +eyes. Others had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was +a drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a +pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit +had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a +sot. But, never again! + +"A glass of seltzer," he said to the bartender. + +A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been +expecting him to join them. + +"Going off the stuff, Bob?" one of them asked politely and with more +formality than the highballs ever called forth. + +"Yes," said Babbitt. + +Some one of the group took up the unwashed thread of a story he had +been telling; the bartender shoved over a dime and a nickel change +from the quarter, ungarnished with his customary smile; and Babbitt +walked out. + +Now, Babbitt had a home and a wife--but that is another story. And I +will tell you that story, which will show you a better habit and a +worse story than you could find in the man who invented the phrase. + +It began away up in Sullivan County, where so many rivers and so +much trouble begins--or begin; how would you say that? It was July, +and Jessie was a summer boarder at the Mountain Squint Hotel, and +Bob, who was just out of college, saw her one day--and they were +married in September. That's the tabloid novel--one swallow of +water, and it's gone. + +But those July days! + +Let the exclamation point expound it, for I shall not. For +particulars you might read up on "Romeo and Juliet," and Abraham +Lincoln's thrilling sonnet about "You can fool some of the people," +&c., and Darwin's works. + +But one thing I must tell you about. Both of them were mad over +Omar's Rubaiyat. They knew every verse of the old bluffer by +heart--not consecutively, but picking 'em out here and there as you +fork the mushrooms in a fifty-cent steak la Bordelaise. Sullivan +County is full of rocks and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them, +and--please be good--used to sit on the rocks; and Bob had a way of +standing behind her with his hands over her shoulders holding her +hands, and his face close to hers, and they would repeat over and +over their favorite verses of the old tent-maker. They saw only the +poetry and philosophy of the lines then--indeed, they agreed that +the Wine was only an image, and that what was meant to be celebrated +was some divinity, or maybe Love or Life. However, at that time +neither of them had tasted the stuff that goes with a sixty-cent +_table d'hote_. + +Where was I? Oh, they married and came to New York. Bob showed his +college diploma, and accepted a position filling inkstands in a +lawyer's office at $15 a week. At the end of two years he had worked +up to $50, and gotten his first taste of Bohemia--the kind that +won't stand the borax and formaldehyde tests. + +They had two furnished rooms and a little kitchen. To Jess, +accustomed to the mild but beautiful savor of a country town, the +dreggy Bohemia was sugar and spice. She hung fish seines on the +walls of her rooms, and bought a rakish-looking sideboard, and +learned to play the banjo. Twice or thrice a week they dined at +French or Italian _tables d'hote_ in a cloud of smoke, and brag and +unshorn hair. Jess learned to drink a cocktail in order to get the +cherry. At home she smoked a cigarette after dinner. She learned to +pronounce Chianti, and leave her olive stones for the waiter to pick +up. Once she essayed to say la, la, la! in a crowd but got only as +far as the second one. They met one or two couples while dining out +and became friendly with them. The sideboard was stocked with Scotch +and rye and a liqueur. They had their new friends in to dinner and +all were laughing at nothing by 1 A. M. Some plastering fell in the +room below them, for which Bob had to pay $4.50. Thus they footed it +merrily on the ragged frontiers of the country that has no boundary +lines or government. + +And soon Bob fell in with his cronies and learned to keep his foot +on the little rail six inches above the floor for an hour or so +every afternoon before he went home. Drink always rubbed him the +right way, and he would reach his rooms as jolly as a sandboy. +Jessie would meet him at the door, and generally they would dance +some insane kind of a rigadoon about the floor by way of greeting. +Once when Bob's feet became confused and he tumbled headlong over a +foot-stool Jessie laughed so heartily and long that he had to throw +all the couch pillows at her to make her hush. + +In such wise life was speeding for them on the day when Bob Babbitt +first felt the power that the giftie gi'ed him. + +But let us get back to our lamb and mint sauce. + +When Bob got home that evening he found Jessie in a long apron +cutting up a lobster for the Newburg. Usually when Bob came in +mellow from his hour at the bar his welcome was hilarious, though +somewhat tinctured with Scotch smoke. + +By screams and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of +domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot +on the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton +into her ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and +favor of these spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false +Bohemia gradually encompassed her she came to accept them as love's +true and proper greeting. + +Bob came in without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but +noiselessly, took up a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old +maid held her two plugs of cotton poised, filled with anxiety. + +Jessie dropped lobster and knife and ran to him with frightened +eyes. + +"What's the matter, Bob, are you ill?" + +"Not at all, dear." + +"Then what's the matter with you?" + +"Nothing." + +Hearken, brethren. When She-who-has-a-right-to-ask interrogates you +concerning a change she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her +that you, in a sudden rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her +that you have robbed orphans and that remorse has stricken you; tell +her your fortune is swept away; that you are beset by enemies, by +bunions, by any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, if peace and +happiness are worth as much as a grain of mustard seed to you--do +not answer her "Nothing." + +Jessie went back to the lobster in silence. She cast looks of +darkest suspicion at Bob. He had never acted that way before. + +When dinner was on the table she set out the bottle of Scotch and +the glasses. Bob declined. + +"Tell you the truth, Jess," he said. "I've cut out the drink. Help +yourself, of course. If you don't mind I'll try some of the seltzer +straight." + +"You've stopped drinking?" she said, looking at him steadily and +unsmilingly. "What for?" + +"It wasn't doing me any good," said Bob. "Don't you approve of the +idea?" + +Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly. + +"Entirely," she said with a sculptured smile. "I could not +conscientiously advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on +Sunday." + +The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk, +but his efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt +miserable, and once or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but +each time the scathing words of his bibulous friend sounded in his +ear, and his mouth set with determination. + +Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to +have departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the +unnatural excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived +had dropped away in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole +curious and forlorn glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty +look of at least a wife-beater or a family tyrant. + +After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such +chores cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable +countenance, brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and +a bowl of cracked ice and set them on the table. + +"May I ask," she said, with some of the ice in her tones, "whether +I am to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, I'll +make one for myself. It's rather chilly this evening, for some +reason." + +"Oh, come now, Jess," said Bob good-naturedly, "don't be too rough +on me. Help yourself, by all means. There's no danger of your +overdoing it. But I thought there was with me; and that's why I +quit. Have yours, and then let's get out the banjo and try over that +new quickstep." + +"I've heard," said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, "that drinking +alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing +this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the +evil habit of banjo-playing, too." + +She took up a book and sat in her little willow rocker on the other +side of the table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour. + +And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent +look on his face and went behind her chair and reached over her +shoulders, taking her hands in his, and laid his face close to hers. + +In a moment to Jessie the walls of the seine-hung room vanished, and +she saw the Sullivan County hills and rills. Bob felt her hands +quiver in his as he began the verse from old Omar: + + "Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring + The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: + The Bird of Time has but a little way + To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!" + +And then he walked to the table and poured a stiff drink of Scotch +into a glass. + +But in that moment a mountain breeze had somehow found its way in +and blown away the mist of the false Bohemia. + +Jessie leaped and with one fierce sweep of her hand sent the bottle +and glasses crashing to the floor. The same motion of her arm +carried it around Bob's neck, where it met its mate and fastened +tight. + +"Oh, my God, Bobbie--not that verse--I see now. I wasn't always such +a fool, was I? The other one, boy--the one that says: 'Remould it to +the Heart's Desire.' Say that one--'to the Heart's Desire.'" + +"I know that one," said Bob. "It goes: + + "'Ah! Love, could you and I with Him conspire + To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire + Would not we--'" + +"Let me finish it," said Jessie. + + "'Would not we shatter it to bits--and then + Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!'" + +"It's shattered all right," said Bob, crunching some glass under his +heel. + +In some dungeon below the accurate ear of Mrs. Pickens, the landlady, +located the smash. + +"It's that wild Mr. Babbitt coming home soused again," she said. +"And he's got such a nice little wife, too!" + + + + +THE PENDULUM + + +"Eighty-first street--let 'em out, please," yelled the shepherd in +blue. + +A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled +aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled +away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with +the released flock. + +John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon +of his daily life there was no such word as "perhaps." There are no +surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in +a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy +and downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous +day. + +Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream +and butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized +lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs +slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot +roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or +injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry +marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its +label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy +quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. +At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture +to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the +flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly +at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the +flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium +tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that +Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week +contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get +out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in +the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor +would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the +Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would +trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and +letter-box--and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be +under way. + +John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a +quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, +and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone: + +"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" + +"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," he would answer, "and play a +game or two of pool with the fellows." + +Of late such had been John Perkins's habit. At ten or eleven he +would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, +ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating +from the wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid +will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his +victims from the Frogmore flats. + +To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the +commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her +affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in +portentous disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in +the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder +box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs--this was not Katy's +way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of +her brown hair among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation +must have possessed her, for she always carefully placed these +combings in the little blue vase on the mantel to be some day formed +into the coveted feminine "rat." + +Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper. +John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus: + + + Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. + I am going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet + me at the depot there. There is cold mutton in the ice box. I + hope it isn't her quinzy again. Pay the milkman 50 cents. She + had it bad last spring. Don't forget to write to the company + about the gas meter, and your good socks are in the top drawer. + I will write to-morrow. + + Hastily, KATY. + + +Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been +separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a +dumbfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never +varied, and it left him dazed. + +There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, +the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting +the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in +her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butter-scotch lay with +its string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping +rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. +Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its +soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains +with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart. + +He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched +her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He +had never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had +become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the +air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without +warning, she was gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had +never existed. Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most +a week or two, but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had +pointed a finger at his secure and uneventful home. + +John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat +down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade's +shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings +now appeared to him the ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan +polish dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law +had knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal +John sat at a front window. + +He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come +join in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might +go forth unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as +any gay bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his +fling until dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy +waiting for him, bearing the chalice that held the dregs of his joy. +He might play pool at McCloskey's with his roistering friends until +Aurora dimmed the electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings +that had curbed him always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon +him were loosened. Katy was gone. + +John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as +he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the +keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to +his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by +the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss +of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and +sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced +bird has flown--or in other no less florid and true utterances? + +"I'm a double-dyed dub," mused John Perkins, "the way I've been +treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the +boys instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone +with nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, +you're the worst kind of a shine. I'm going to make it up for the +little girl. I'll take her out and let her see some amusement. And +I'll cut out the McCloskey gang right from this minute." + +Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come +dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were +knocking the balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the +nightly game. But no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the +remorseful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his, +lightly held and half scorned, had been taken away from him, and he +wanted it. Backward to a certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim +bounced from the orchard, could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his +descent. + +Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of +it stood Katy's blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of +her contour. Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles +made by the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and +pleasure. A delicate but impelling odor of bluebells came from +it. John took it and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive +grenadine. Katy had never been unresponsive. Tears:--yes, +tears--came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came back things +would be different. He would make up for all his neglect. What +was life without her? + +The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John +stared at her stupidly. + +"My! I'm glad to get back," said Katy. "Ma wasn't sick to amount +to anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little +spell, and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the +next train back. I'm just dying for a cup of coffee." + +Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cog-wheels as the third-floor +front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order +of Things. A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted +and the wheels revolve in their old orbit. + +John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his +hat and walked to the door. + +"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" asked +Katy, in a querulous tone. + +"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," said John, "and play a game or +two of pool with the fellows." + + + + +TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN + + +There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we +Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat +saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old +pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives +it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but don't just remember +who they were. Bet we can lick 'em, anyhow, if they try to land +again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots of us +have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work +in. But somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information +to 'em about these Thanksgiving proclamations. + +The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an +institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the +year on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the +ferries. It is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of +celebration, exclusively American. + +And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have +traditions on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a +much rapider rate than those of England are--thanks to our git-up +and enterprise. + +Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you +enter Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there +promptly at 1 o'clock. For every time he had done so things had +happened to him--Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat +above his heart, and equally on the other side. + +But to-day Stuffy Pete's appearance at the annual trysting place +seemed to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly +hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the +poor at such extended intervals. + +Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast +that had left him of his powers barely those of respiration and +locomotion. His eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded +in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came +in short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a +fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been +sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew +like popcorn, strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a +split shirt front open to the wishbone; but the November breeze, +carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a grateful coolness. +For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric produced by a +super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum +pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and +baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in +the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with +after-dinner contempt. + +The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick +mansion near the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old +ladies of ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even +denied the existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day +was declared solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional +habits was to station a servant at the postern gate with orders to +admit the first hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of +noon had struck, and banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened +to pass by on his way to the park, and the seneschals gathered him +in and upheld the custom of the castle. + +After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he +was conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a +tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his +eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod +ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel. + +For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his +bench. + +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come +there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the +Old Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving +Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a +restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in +England unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years +is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and +considered himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to +become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time +without ever letting it get away from us. Something like collecting +the weekly dimes in industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets. + +The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the +Institution that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy +Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta +or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was +almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible +to New Y--ahem!--America. + +The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in +black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won't stay +on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last +year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with +the crooked handle. + +As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered +like some woman's over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. +He would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not +have separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two +old ladies done their work. + +"Good morning," said the Old Gentleman. "I am glad to perceive that +the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health +about the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of +thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with +me, my man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your +physical being accord with the mental." + +That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving +Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an +Institution. Nothing could be compared with them except the +Declaration of Independence. Always before they had been music in +Stuffy's ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman's face with +tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell +upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little +and turned his back to the wind. + +Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech +rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing +every time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come +there after he was gone--a son who would stand proud and strong +before some subsequent Stuffy, and say: "In memory of my father." +Then it would be an Institution. + +But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms +in one of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the +quiet streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in +a little conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he +walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse +in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of +a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find +some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old +Gentleman's occupations. + +Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless +in his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman's eyes were bright with the +giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his +little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen +was beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully +at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas +bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had +heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed them into +Stuffy's old formula of acceptance. + +"Thankee, sir. I'll go with ye, and much obliged. I'm very hungry, +sir." + +The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy's +mind the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His +Thanksgiving appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred +rights of established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of +Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, +America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must +be a repetend--a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of +steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron, +badly silvered, and tin. + +The Old Gentleman led his annual protege southward to the restaurant, +and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were +recognized. + +"Here comes de old guy," said a waiter, "dat blows dat same bum to a +meal every Thanksgiving." + +The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl +at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped +the table with holiday food--and Stuffy, with a sigh that was +mistaken for hunger's expression, raised knife and fork and carved +for himself a crown of imperishable bay. + +No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an +enemy. Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before +him as fast as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost +when he entered the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused +him to lose his honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a +true knight. He saw the look of beneficent happiness on the Old +Gentleman's face--a happier look than even the fuchsias and the +ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought to it--and he had not the +heart to see it wane. + +In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. "Thankee kindly, +sir," he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; "thankee kindly for a +hearty meal." Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started +toward the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and +pointed him toward the door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out +$1.30 in silver change, leaving three nickels for the waiter. + +They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman +going south, Stuffy north. + +Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. +Then he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his +feathers, and fell to the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse. + +When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed +softly at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a +transfer to the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to +the hospital. There they stretched him on a bed and began to test +him for strange diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some +problem with the bare steel. + +And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. +And they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he +looked good for the bill. + +But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses +whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases. + +"That nice old gentleman over there, now," he said, "you wouldn't +think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I +guess. He told me he hadn't eaten a thing for three days." + + + + +THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS + + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a +pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They +were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven +faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining +their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks. + +Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions +in my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park +Commissioners (around the corner, if necessary), and arrange +for benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women +to sit upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I +might furnish libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build +sanitariums for crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if I +wanted to. + +Women's rights societies have been laboring for many years after +equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they +must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their +highest French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom, +ladies. Get your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of +mental equality. + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That +was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It +is denied us to look further into a man's bosom than the starch on +his shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and +conversation. + +Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a +hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have +no more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter +building on the west side of the square. But Morley would have +enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but +sunrise had always seen them lined. + +First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and +presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to +issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed +up by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance. + +On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a +pale-faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist +and the voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score. + +"Why, Bergman, man," sang Morley, dulcetly, "is this you? I was just +on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my +aunt arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come +up to the corner and I'll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a +walk." + +Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about +Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed +off a call loan at Rothschilds'. When he was penniless his bluff was +pitched half a tone lower, but few are competent to detect the +difference in the notes. + +"You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley," said +Bergman. "Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen +you in dree mont'. Pros't!" + +Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. +The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to +avoid Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that +Bergman ever went home by that route. + +At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley +knocked with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the +length of a six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of +an African guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was +admitted. + +In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung +for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, +and was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the +40 cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. +At the corner he lingered, undecided. + +Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth +gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and +glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, +stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to +which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he +clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously. + +Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech. + +"Me?" said the youngster. "I'm doin' to the drug 'tore for mamma. +She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med'cin." + +"Now, now, now!" said Morley. "Such a big man you are to be doing +errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that +the cars don't run over him. And on the way we'll have some +chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?" + +Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He +presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money. + +On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. + +"Aqua pura, one pint," said he to the druggist. "Sodium chloride, +ten grains. Fiat solution. And don't try to skin me, because I know +all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and +I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes." + +"Fifteen cents," said the druggist, with a wink after he had +compounded the order. "I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is +the regular price." + +"To gulls," said Morley, smilingly. + +He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child's arms and +escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 +cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge. + +"Look out for the cars, sonny," he said, cheerfully, to his small +victim. + +Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the +youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile +messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner +of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky +with vile, cheap candy from the Italian's fruit stand. + +Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of +inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so +genuinely that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had +come his way. + +"Why, no," said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one. +"It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know +what three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in +transactions of all kinds?" + +"Sure," said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by +the careful knot of Morley's tie; "there's the buyers from the dry +goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from +Staten Island, and"-- + +"Wrong!" said Morley, chuckling happily. "The answer is just--men, +women and children. The world--well, say New York and as far +as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island--is full of +greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this +steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois." + +"If yez t'inks it's on de bum," said the waiter, "Oi'll"-- + +Morley lifted his hand in protest--slightly martyred protest. + +"It will do," he said, magnanimously. "And now, green Chartreuse, +frappe and a demi-tasse." + +Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful +arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he +stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the +tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast +his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good +Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. + +A joyful party of four--two women and two men--fell upon him with +cries of delight. There was a dinner party on--where had he been for +a fortnight past?--what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded +and engulfed him--he must join them--tra la la--and the rest. + +One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his +sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: "See +what I can do with him?" and added her queen's command to the +invitations. + +"I leave you to imagine," said Morley, pathetically, "how it +desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of +the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at +8." + +The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an +arc light down the frolicsome way. + +Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and +laughing gleefully to himself. "'Front,'" he chanted under his +breath; "'front' does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it +in! Men, women and children--forgeries, water-and-salt lies--how +they all take it in!" + +An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a +corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street +cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side. + +"Stranger," said he, "excuse me for troubling you, but do you know +anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son, and +I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know +what I done with his street and number." + +"I do not, sir," said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy +in them. "You had better apply to the police." + +"The police!" said the old man. "I ain't done nothin' to call in the +police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story +house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could"-- + +"I told you I did not," said Morley, coldly. "I know no one by the +name of Smithers, and I advise you to"-- + +"Smothers not Smithers," interrupted the old man hopefully. "A +heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth +out, about five foot"-- + +"Oh, 'Smothers!'" exclaimed Morley. "Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in +the next house to me. I thought you said 'Smithers.'" + +Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do +it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the +ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads--according to these +watchmakers--are run by. + +"The Bishop of Long Island," said Morley, "was to meet me here +at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers' Club. But I can't leave +the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. +Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no +name for it! I was about to step across to the other corner and have +a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. +You must let me take you to Sol's house, Mr. Smothers. But, before +we take the car I hope you will join me in"-- + +An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench +in Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips +and $140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, +light-hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon +drifting in and out amidst a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged +man with a low-bowed head sat at the other end of the bench. + +Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In +Morley's appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the +usual nightly occupants of the benches. + +"Kind sir," he whined, "if you could spare a dime or even a few +pennies to one who"-- + +Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar. + +"God bless you!" said the old man. "I've been trying to find work +for"-- + +"Work!" echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. "You are a fool, my +friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an +Aaron and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will +gush out of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to +me whatever I want from it." + +"God has blessed you," said the old man. "It is only work that I +have known. And now I can get no more." + +"I must go home," said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. "I +stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work." + +"May your kindness be rewarded this night," said the old man. + +"Oh," said Morley, "you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I +think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel +across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting +up the city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such +little things as I do. Well, a good-night to you." + +Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He +blew slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman +passing saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was. + +The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on +the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if +homeward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she +was dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and +neither to the right nor the left. + +Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with +her at school. There had been no sentiment between them--nothing but +the friendship of innocent days. + +But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his +suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said +dully: + +"God! I wish I could die." + + + + +THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY + + +It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful +vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of +Navarro & Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at. + +Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with +liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of +this semiprecious metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick +building covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You +can buy of them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile or an +eighty-five dollar, latest style, ladies' tan coat in twenty +different shades. Navarro & Platt first introduced pennies west of +the Colorado River. They had been ranchmen with business heads, who +saw that the world did not necessarily have to cease its revolutions +after free grass went out. + +Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half Spanish, +cosmopolitan, able, polished, had "gone on" to New York to buy +goods. This year he shied at taking up the long trail. He was +undoubtedly growing older; and he looked at his watch several times +a day before the hour came for his siesta. + +"John," he said, to his junior partner, "you shall go on this year +to buy the goods." + +Platt looked tired. + +"I'm told," said he, "that New York is a plumb dead town; but I'll +go. I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and +have some fun." + +Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit--black frock coat, +broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3-4 inch high, +with black, wrought iron necktie--entered the wholesale cloak and +suit establishment of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway. + +Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and +a mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of +the carpenter's rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar +bear, and shook Platt's hand. + +"And how is the good Mr. Navarro in Texas?" he said. "The trip was +too long for him this year, so? We welcome Mr. Platt instead." + +"A bull's eye," said Platt, "and I'd give forty acres of unirrigated +Pecos County land to know how you did it." + +"I knew," grinned Zizzbaum, "just as I know that the rainfall in El +Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and +that therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits +this spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be +to-morrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will +remove from your mouth the taste of the ones you smuggle across the +Rio Grande and like--because they are smuggled." + +It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended, +Zizzbaum left Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the +private office to Son, who was arranging his diamond scarfpin before +a mirror, ready to leave. + +"Abey," he said, "you will have to take Mr. Platt around to-night +and show him things. They are customers for ten years. Mr. Navarro +and I we played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That +is good, but Mr. Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to +New York. He should amuse easily." + +"All right," said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. "I'll +take him on. After he's seen the Flatiron and the head waiter at the +Hotel Astor and heard the phonograph play 'Under the Old Apple Tree' +it'll be half past ten, and Mr. Texas will be ready to roll up in +his blanket. I've got a supper engagement at 11:30, but he'll be all +to the Mrs. Winslow before then." + +The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do +business. He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum +himself waited on him. Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never +failed to take their discount for cash. + +"And what did you think of our little town?" asked Zizzbaum, with +the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite. + +"I shouldn't care to live in it," said the Texan. "Your son and I +knocked around quite a little last night. You've got good water, but +Cactus City is better lit up." + +"We've got a few lights on Broadway, don't you think, Mr. Platt?" + +"And a good many shadows," said Platt. "I think I like your horses +best. I haven't seen a crow-bait since I've been in town." + +Zizzbaum led him up stairs to show the samples of suits. + +"Ask Miss Asher to come," he said to a clerk. + +Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first +time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon +him. He stood still as a granite cliff above the caon of the +Colorado, with his wide-open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his +look and flushed a little, which was contrary to her custom. + +Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the +blond type known as "medium," and her measurements even went +the required 38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at +Zizzbaum's two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but +cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the +famed basilisk, that fabulous monster's gaze would have wavered and +softened first. Incidentally, she knew buyers. + +"Now, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum, "I want you to see these princess +gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. +This first, if you please, Miss Asher." + +Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each +time wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every +change. She posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken +buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated +oilily of the styles. On the model's face was her faint, impersonal +professional smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or +contempt. + +When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a +little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try +elsewhere. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best +building sites in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to +build a house for his wife-to-be--who was just then in the +dressing-room taking off an evening gown of lavender and tulle. + +"Take your time, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum. "Think it over to-night. +You won't find anybody else meet our prices on goods like these. +I'm afraid you're having a dull time in New York, Mr. Platt. A +young man like you--of course, you miss the society of the ladies. +Wouldn't you like a nice young lady to take out to dinner this +evening? Miss Asher, now, is a very nice young lady; she will make +it agreeable for you." + +"Why, she doesn't know me," said Platt, wonderingly. "She doesn't +know anything about me. Would she go? I'm not acquainted with her." + +"Would she go?" repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. "Sure, +she would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go." + +He called Miss Asher loudly. + +She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist +and plain black skirt. + +"Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this +evening," said Zizzbaum, walking away. + +"Sure," said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. "I'd be much +pleased. Nine-eleven West Twentieth street. What time?" + +"Say seven o'clock." + +"All right, but please don't come ahead of time. I room with a +school teacher, and she doesn't allow any gentlemen to call in the +room. There isn't any parlor, so you'll have to wait in the hall. +I'll be ready." + +At half past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway +restaurant. She was dressed in a plain, filmy black. Platt didn't +know that it was all a part of her day's work. + +With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a +respectable dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries. + +Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile. + +"Mayn't I have something to drink?" she asked. + +"Why, certainly," said Platt. "Anything you want." + +"A dry Martini," she said to the waiter. + +When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took +it away. + +"What is this?" he asked. + +"A cocktail, of course." + +"I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You +can't drink this. What is your first name?" + +"To my intimate friends," said Miss Asher, freezingly, "it is +'Helen.'" + +"Listen, Helen," said Platt, leaning over the table. "For many years +every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to +thinking of somebody that I'd never seen or heard of. I knew it was +you the minute I saw you yesterday. I'm going back home to-morrow, +and you're going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when +you first looked at me. You needn't kick, for you've got to fall +into line. Here's a little trick I picked out for you on my way +over." + +He flicked a two-carat diamond solitaire ring across the table. Miss +Asher flipped it back to him with her fork. + +"Don't get fresh," she said, severely. + +"I'm worth a hundred thousand dollars," said Platt. "I'll build you +the finest house in West Texas." + +"You can't buy me, Mr. Buyer," said Miss Asher, "if you had a +hundred million. I didn't think I'd have to call you down. You +didn't look like the others to me at first, but I see you're all +alike." + +"All who?" asked Platt. + +"All you buyers. You think because we girls have to go out to dinner +with you or lose our jobs that you're privileged to say what you +please. Well, forget it. I thought you were different from the +others, but I see I was mistaken." + +Platt struck his fingers on the table with a gesture of sudden, +illuminating satisfaction. + +"I've got it!" he exclaimed, almost hilariously--"the Nicholson +place, over on the north side. There's a big grove of live oaks and +a natural lake. The old house can be pulled down and the new one set +further back." + +"Put out your pipe," said Miss Asher. "I'm sorry to wake you up, but +you fellows might as well get wise, once for all, to where you stand. +I'm supposed to go to dinner with you and help jolly you along so +you'll trade with old Zizzy, but don't expect to find me in any of +the suits you buy." + +"Do you mean to tell me," said Platt, "that you go out this way with +customers, and they all--they all talk to you like I have?" + +"They all make plays," said Miss Asher. "But I must say that you've +got 'em beat in one respect. They generally talk diamonds, while +you've actually dug one up." + +"How long have you been working, Helen?" + +"Got my name pat, haven't you? I've been supporting myself for eight +years. I was a cash girl and a wrapper and then a shop girl until I +was grown, and then I got to be a suit model. Mr. Texas Man, don't +you think a little wine would make this dinner a little less dry?" + +"You're not going to drink wine any more, dear. It's awful to think +how-- I'll come to the store to-morrow and get you. I want you to +pick out an automobile before we leave. That's all we need to buy +here." + +"Oh, cut that out. If you knew how sick I am of hearing such talk." + +After the dinner they walked down Broadway and came upon Diana's +little wooded park. The trees caught Platt's eye at once, and he +must turn along under the winding walk beneath them. The lights +shone upon two bright tears in the model's eyes. + +"I don't like that," said Platt. "What's the matter?" + +"Don't you mind," said Miss Asher. "Well, it's because--well, I +didn't think you were that kind when I first saw you. But you are +all like. And now will you take me home, or will I have to call a +cop?" + +Platt took her to the door of her boarding-house. They stood for a +minute in the vestibule. She looked at him with such scorn in her +eyes that even his heart of oak began to waver. His arm was half way +around her waist, when she struck him a stinging blow on the face +with her open hand. + +As he stepped back a ring fell from somewhere and bounded on the +tiled floor. Platt groped for it and found it. + +"Now, take your useless diamond and go, Mr. Buyer," she said. + +"This was the other one--the wedding ring," said the Texan, holding +the smooth gold band on the palm of his hand. + +Miss Asher's eyes blazed upon him in the half darkness. + +"Was that what you meant?--did you"-- + +Somebody opened the door from inside the house. + +"Good-night," said Platt. "I'll see you at the store to-morrow." + +Miss Asher ran up to her room and shook the school teacher until she +sat up in bed ready to scream "Fire!" + +"Where is it?" she cried. + +"That's what I want to know," said the model. "You've studied +geography, Emma, and you ought to know. Where is a town called +Cac--Cac--Carac--Caracas City, I think, they called it?" + +"How dare you wake me up for that?" said the school teacher. +"Caracas is in Venezuela, of course." + +"What's it like?" + +"Why, it's principally earthquakes and negroes and monkeys and +malarial fever and volcanoes." + +"I don't care," said Miss Asher, blithely; "I'm going there +to-morrow." + + + + +THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON + + +It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another +for the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky +process, this love at first sight, before she has seen him in +Bradstreet or he has seen her in curl papers. But these things do +happen; and one instance must form a theme for this story--though +not, thank Heaven, to the overshadowing of more vital and important +subjects, such as drink, policemen, horses and earldoms. + +During a certain war a troop calling itself the Gentle Riders rode +into history and one or two ambuscades. The Gentle Riders were +recruited from the aristocracy of the wild men of the West and the +wild men of the aristocracy of the East. In khaki there is little +telling them one from another, so they became good friends and +comrades all around. + +Ellsworth Remsen, whose old Knickerbocker descent atoned for his +modest rating at only ten millions, ate his canned beef gayly by the +campfires of the Gentle Riders. The war was a great lark to him, so +that he scarcely regretted polo and planked shad. + +One of the troopers was a well set up, affable, cool young man, who +called himself O'Roon. To this young man Remsen took an especial +liking. The two rode side by side during the famous mooted up-hill +charge that was disputed so hotly at the time by the Spaniards and +afterward by the Democrats. + +After the war Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a well +set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he +and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious +epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy +and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that his +content was only apparent. + +"Get me a job, Remsen," he said. "I've just handed a barber my last +shilling." + +"No trouble at all," said Remsen. "I know a lot of men who have +banks and stores and things downtown. Any particular line you +fancy?" + +"Yes," said O'Roon, with a look of interest. "I took a walk in your +Central Park this morning. I'd like to be one of those bobbies on +horseback. That would be about the ticket. Besides, it's the only +thing I could do. I can ride a little and the fresh air suits me. +Think you could land that for me?" + +Remsen was sure that he could. And in a very short time he did. And +they who were not above looking at mounted policemen might have seen +a well set up, affable, cool young man on a prancing chestnut steed +attending to his duties along the driveways of the park. + +And now at the extreme risk of wearying old gentlemen who carry +leather fob chains, and elderly ladies who--but no! grandmother +herself yet thrills at foolish, immortal Romeo--there must be a hint +of love at first sight. + +It came just as Remsen was strolling into Fifth avenue from his club +a few doors away. + +A motor car was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet +of vehicles that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and +an old gentleman with snowy side whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap +which could not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. +Not even a wine agent would dare do it. But these two were of no +consequence--except, perhaps, for the guiding of the machine and +the paying for it. At the old gentleman's side sat a young lady +more beautiful than pomegranate blossoms, more exquisite than the +first quarter moon viewed at twilight through the tops of oleanders. +Remsen saw her and knew his fate. He could have flung himself under +the very wheels that conveyed her, but he knew that would be the last +means of attracting the attention of those who ride in motor cars. +Slowly the auto passed, and, if we place the poets above the autoists, +carried the heart of Remsen with it. Here was a large city of +millions, and many women who at a certain distance appear to resemble +pomegranate blossoms. Yet he hoped to see her again; for each one +fancies that his romance has its own tutelary guardian and divinity. + +Luckily for Remsen's peace of mind there came a diversion in the +guise of a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were +not many of them--perhaps a score--and there was wassail and +things to eat, and speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in +recapitulation. And when daylight threatened them the survivors +prepared to depart. But some remained upon the battlefield. One of +these was Trooper O'Roon, who was not seasoned to potent liquids. +His legs declined to fulfil the obligations they had sworn to the +police department. + +"I'm stewed, Remsen," said O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they +build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? +They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk +con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've +got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is +up, I tell you." + +"Look at me," said Remsen, who was his smiling self, pointing to his +own face; "whom do you see here?" + +"Goo' fellow," said O'Roon, dizzily, "Goo' old Remsen." + +"Not so," said Remsen. "You see Mounted Policeman O'Roon. Look at +your face--no; you can't do that without a glass--but look at mine, +and think of yours. How much alike are we? As two French _table +d'hote_ dinners. With your badge, on your horse, in your uniform, +will I charm nurse-maids and prevent the grass from growing under +people's feet in the Park this day. I will have your badge and your +honor, besides having the jolliest lark I've been blessed with since +we licked Spain." + +Promptly on time the counterfeit presentment of Mounted Policeman +O'Roon single-footed into the Park on his chestnut steed. In a +uniform two men who are unlike will look alike; two who somewhat +resemble each other in feature and figure will appear as twin +brothers. So Remsen trotted down the bridle paths, enjoying himself +hugely, so few real pleasures do ten-millionaires have. + +Along the driveway in the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a +pair of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, +for the Park is rarely used in the morning except by unimportant +people who love to be healthy, poor and wise. In the vehicle sat an +old gentleman with snowy side-whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which +could not be worn while driving except by a personage. At his side +sat the lady of Remsen's heart--the lady who looked like pomegranate +blossoms and the gibbous moon. + +Remsen met them coming. At the instant of their passing her eyes +looked into his, and but for the ever coward's heart of a true lover +he could have sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for +twenty yards, and then wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway +hoofs. The bays had bolted. + +Remsen sent his chestnut after the victoria like a shot. There was +work cut out for the impersonator of Policeman O'Roon. The chestnut +ranged alongside the off bay thirty seconds after the chase began, +rolled his eye back at Remsen, and said in the only manner open to +policemen's horses: + +"Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not +O'Roon, but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could +reach the reins of that foolish slow-running bay--ah! you're all +right; O'Roon couldn't have done it more neatly!" + +The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen's +tough muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped +reins, jumped from his seat and stood at the heads of the team. +The chestnut, approving his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling +equinely the subdued bays. Remsen, lingering, was dimly conscious of +a vague, impossible, unnecessary old gentleman in a Scotch cap who +talked incessantly about something. And he was acutely conscious of +a pair of violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his +iron pillar--or whatever the allusion is--and of the lady's smile +and look--a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward +heart of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking +his name and bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, +and the Scotch cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the +eloquent appeal was in the eyes of the lady. + +A little thrill of satisfaction ran through Remsen, because he had a +name to give which, without undue pride, was worthy of being spoken +in high places, and a small fortune which, with due pride, he could +leave at his end without disgrace. + +He opened his lips to speak and closed them again. + +Who was he? Mounted Policeman O'Roon. The badge and the honor of +his comrade were in his hands. If Ellsworth Remsen, ten-millionaire +and Knickerbocker, had just rescued pomegranate blossoms and Scotch +cap from possible death, where was Policeman O'Roon? Off his beat, +exposed, disgraced, discharged. Love had come, but before that there +had been something that demanded precedence--the fellowship of men +on battlefields fighting an alien foe. + +Remsen touched his cap, looked between the chestnut's ears, and took +refuge in vernacularity. + +"Don't mention it," he said stolidly. "We policemen are paid to do +these things. It's our duty." + +And he rode away--rode away cursing _noblesse oblige_, but knowing he +could never have done anything else. + +At the end of the day Remsen sent the chestnut to his stable and +went to O'Roon's room. The policeman was again a well set up, +affable, cool young man who sat by the window smoking cigars. + +"I wish you and the rest of the police force and all badges, horses, +brass buttons and men who can't drink two glasses of _brut_ without +getting upset were at the devil," said Remsen feelingly. + +O'Roon smiled with evident satisfaction. + +"Good old Remsen," he said, affably, "I know all about it. They +trailed me down and cornered me here two hours ago. There was a +little row at home, you know, and I cut sticks just to show them. I +don't believe I told you that my Governor was the Earl of Ardsley. +Funny you should bob against them in the Park. If you damaged that +horse of mine I'll never forgive you. I'm going to buy him and take +him back with me. Oh, yes, and I think my sister--Lady Angela, you +know--wants particularly for you to come up to the hotel with me +this evening. Didn't lose my badge, did you, Remsen? I've got to +turn that in at Headquarters when I resign." + + + + +BRICKDUST ROW + + +Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth +would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a +gentleman--a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked +bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of +disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who +was agent for the Blinker estate. + +"I don't see," said Blinker, "why I should be always signing +confounded papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North +Woods this morning. Now I must wait until to-morrow morning. I hate +night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some +unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a +monologueing, thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn't +scratch. I hate pens that scratch." + +"Sit down," said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. "The worst has +not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not +yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you to-morrow at eleven. +You will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless +nose of a Blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a +haircut." + +"If," said Blinker, rising, "the act did not involve more signing of +papers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a +cigar, please." + +"If," said Lawyer Oldport, "I had cared to see an old friend's son +gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered you to +take it away long ago. Now, let's quit fooling, Alexander. Besides +the grinding task of signing your name some thirty times to-morrow, +I must impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business--of +business, and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about +this five years ago, but you would not listen--you were in a hurry +for a coaching trip, I think. The subject has come up again. The +property--" + +"Oh, property!" interrupted Blinker. "Dear Mr. Oldport, I +think you mentioned to-morrow. Let's have it all at one dose +to-morrow--signatures and property and snappy rubber bands and that +smelly sealing-wax and all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I'll try +to remember to drop in at eleven to-morrow. Morning." + +The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the +legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his +little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and +rows of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was +sole heir. They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so +incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport +kept piling up in banks for him to spend. + +In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine. +Nobody was there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to +him with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. +Everybody was out of town. But here he was kept in like a schoolboy +to write his name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were +deep. + +Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward +who had come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe: + +"Symons, I'm going to Coney Island." He said it as one might say: +"All's off; I'm going to jump into the river." + +The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of +the audibility permitted by the laws governing employees. + +"Certainly, sir," he tittered. "Of course, sir, I think I can see +you at Coney, Mr. Blinker." + +Blinker got a pager and looked up the movements of Sunday +steamboats. Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a +North River pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and +bought a ticket, and was trampled upon and shoved forward until, +at last, he found himself on the upper deck of the boat staring +brazenly at a girl who sat alone upon a camp stool. But Blinker did +not intend to be brazen; the girl was so wonderfully good looking +that he forgot for one minute that he was the prince incog, and +behaved just as he did in society. + +She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind +threatened Blinker's straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it +again. The movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and +smiled, and in another instant he was seated at her side. She was +dressed all in white, she was paler than Blinker imagined milkmaids +and girls of humble stations to be, but she was as tidy as a cherry +blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked out from +the intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul. + +"How dare you raise your hat to me?" she asked, with a smile-redeemed +severity. + +"I didn't," Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by +extending it to "I didn't know how to keep from it after I saw you." + +"I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been +introduced," she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. +He rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down +to his chair again. + +"I guess you weren't going far," she declared, with beauty's +magnificent self-confidence. + +"Are you going to Coney Island?" asked Blinker. + +"Me?" She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering surprise. +"Why, what a question! Can't you see that I'm riding a bicycle in +the park?" Her drollery took the form of impertinence. + +"And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney," said Blinker. +"Mayn't we see Coney together? I'm all alone and I've never been +there before." "It depends," said the girl, "on how nicely you +behave. I'll consider your application until we get there." + +Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his +application. He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his +nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of +his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete. +The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity; +and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual +plane of communication from the beginning. + +He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she +trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room +with her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that +a glass of milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that +boils itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good +enough for any one. Florence laughed when she heard "Blinker." + +"Well," she said. "It certainly shows that you have imagination. It +gives the 'Smiths' a chance for a little rest, anyhow." + +They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human +wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland +gone into vaudeville. + +With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment +Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized +delights. Hoi polloi trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket +parties bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his +feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the +booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily won girls on +the other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The +publicity gentlemen with megaphones, each before his own stupendous +attraction, roared like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that +could be tortured from brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the +air to gain space for its vibrations against its competitors. But +what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude, +the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling +itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the +ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures, The +vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of +repression and taste that were held by his caste, repelled him +strongly. + +In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence +by his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy +eyes, as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were +saying that they had the right to be shining and happy, for was +their owner not with her (for the present) Man, her Gentleman Friend +and holder of the keys to the enchanted city of fun? + +Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he +suddenly saw Coney aright. + +He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now +looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their +offenses were wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish +joys of these spangled temples were, he perceived that deep +under the gilt surface they offered saving and apposite balm and +satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here, at least, was the +husk of Romance, the empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the +breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the +magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though +its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no longer +saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic +of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned +yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver +trumpets of joy's heralds. + +Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and +joined the idealists. + +"You are the lady doctor," he said to Florence. "How shall we go +about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?" + +"We will begin there," said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda +on the edge of the sea, "and we will take them all in, one by one." + +They caught the eight o'clock returning boat and sat, filled with +pleasant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the +Italians' fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The +North Woods seemed to him an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss +he had made over signing his name--pooh! he could sign it a hundred +times. And her name was as pretty as she was--"Florence," he said it +to himself a great many times. + +As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled, +drab, foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the +bay. The boat turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered +as if to seek midstream, and then yawed, seemed to increase its +speed and struck the Coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting +into it with a terrifying shock and crash. + +While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling +about the decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the +steamer that it should not back off and leave the rent exposed for +the water to enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage +sawfish and cleaved its heartless way, full speed ahead. + +The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the +slip. The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold. + +Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. +She made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped +off the slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life +preservers. He began to buckle one around Florence. The rotten +canvas split and the fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in +a stream. Florence caught a handful of it and laughed gleefully. + +"It looks like breakfast food," she said. "Take it off. They're no +good." + +She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down +and sat by his side and put her hand in his. "What'll you bet we +don't reach the pier all right?" she said and began to hum a song. + +And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled order. +The boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the +women and children to the bow, where they could land first. The +boat, very low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make +his promise good. + +"Florence," said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, +"I love you." + +"That's what they all say," she replied, lightly. + +"I am not one of 'they all,'" he persisted. "I never knew any one I +could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every +day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you." + +"That's what they all say," said the girl again, weaving the words +into her little, reckless song. + +"Don't say that again," said Blinker in a tone that made her look at +him in frank surprise. + +"Why shouldn't I say it?" she asked calmly. "They all do." + +"Who are 'they'?" he asked, jealous for the first time in his +existence. + +"Why, the fellows I know." + +"Do you know so many?" + +"Oh, well, I'm not a wall flower," she answered with modest +complacency. + +"Where do you see these--these men? At your home?" + +"Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the +boat, sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I'm a pretty +good judge of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who +is likely to get fresh." + +"What do you mean by 'fresh?'" + +"Why, try to kiss you--me, I mean." + +"Do any of them try that?" asked Blinker, clenching his teeth. + +"Sure. All men do. You know that." + +"Do you allow them?" + +"Some. Not many. They won't take you out anywhere unless you do." + +She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes +were as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look in them, +as though she did not understand him. + +"What's wrong about my meeting fellows?" she asked, wonderingly. + +"Everything," he answered, almost savagely. "Why don't you entertain +your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up +Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?" + +She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. "If you could see +the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust +Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks +crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four +years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody +come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet +the men, hasn't she?" + +"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "A girl has got to meet a--has got to meet +the men." + +"The first time one spoke to me on the street," she continued, "I +ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good +many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the +vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a +parlor, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker--are you really sure +it isn't 'Smith,' now?" + +The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking +with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a +corner and held out her hand. + +"I live just one more block over," she said. "Thank you for a very +pleasant afternoon." + +Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a +cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook +his fist at it through the window. + +"I gave you a thousand dollars last, week," he cried under his +breath, "and she meets them in your very doors. There is something +wrong; there is something wrong." + +At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a +new pen provided by Lawyer Oldport. + +"Now let me go to the woods," he said surlily. + +"You are not looking well," said Lawyer Oldport. "The trip will do +you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business +of which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There +are some buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new +five-year leases to be signed. Your father contemplated a change in +the lease provisions, but never made it. He intended that the parlors +of these houses should not be sub-let, but that the tenants should be +allowed to use them for reception rooms. These houses are in the +shopping district, and are mainly tenanted by young working girls. +As it is they are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of +red brick--" + +Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh. + +"Brickdust Row for an even hundred," he cried. "And I own it. Have I +guessed right?" + +"The tenants have some such name for it," said Lawyer Oldport. + +Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes. + +"Do what you please with it," he said harshly. "Remodel it, burn it, +raze it to the ground. But, man, it's too late I tell you. It's too +late. It's too late. It's too late." + + + + +THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER + + +Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a +tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a +philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. +But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a +line of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been +a Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger with the primary +proposition, Raggles was a poet. + +Raggles's specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would have +been sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their +reflections in mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of a +dislocated doll; as the men who write about wild animals study the +cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricks +and mortar, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants; it was +a thing with a soul characteristic and distinct; an individual +conglomeration of life, with its own peculiar essence, flavor and +feeling. Two thousand miles to the north and south, east and west, +Raggles wandered in poetic fervor, taking the cities to his breast. +He footed it on dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars, +counting time as of no account. And when he had found the heart of a +city and listened to its secret confession, he strayed on, restless, +to another. Fickle Raggles!--but perhaps he had not met the civic +corporation that could engage and hold his critical fancy. + +Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are +feminine. So they were to poet Raggles; and his mind carried a +concrete and clear conception of the figure that symbolized and +typified each one that he had wooed. + +Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of +Mrs. Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with +a soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would +awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of +ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad and fish. + +Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness and +inaccuracy in the description; but that is Raggles's fault. He +should have recorded his sensations in magazine poems. + +Pittsburg impressed him as the play of "Othello" performed in the +Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader's minstrels. +A royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though--homely, hearty, +with flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid +slippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and +drink champagne with his pigs' feet and fried potatoes. + +New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He could +see her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, and +that was all. Only once he came face to face with her. It was at +dawn, when she was flushing the red bricks of the banquette with +a pail of water. She laughed and hummed a chansonette and filled +Raggles's shoes with ice-cold water. Allons! + +Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic and +singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that +the city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around +his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. +And, after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the +cloth, becoming wet, tightened its knots and could not be removed. + +Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you will say; but your +disapprobation should be tempered with gratitude, for these are +poets' fancies--and suppose you had come upon them in verse! + +One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city +of Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learn +her note in the scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solve +and label her and arrange her with the other cities that had given +him up the secret of their individuality. And here we cease to be +Raggles's translator and become his chronicler. + +Raggles landed from a ferry-boat one morning and walked into the +core of the town with the blas air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed +with care to play the rle of an "unidentified man." No country, +race, class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association could +have claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to him +piece-meal by citizens of different height, but same number of inches +around the heart, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as +those speciments of raiment, self-measured, that are railroaded to +you by transcontinental tailors with a suit case, suspenders, silk +handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money--as a poet +should be--but with the ardor of an astronomer discovering a new +star in the chorus of the milky way, or a man who has seen ink +suddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles wandered into the great +city. + +Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion +with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, +puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him +as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as +send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster +cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, +impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside +fingering damply in his pocket his ribbon-counter salary. + +The greetings of the other cities he had known--their homespun +kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, +garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference. +This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him. +Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an +eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned +for the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoulder; for +Chicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and +eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass--even for the +precipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis. + +On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood, +bashful, like any country swain. For the first time he experienced +the poignant humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried to +reduce this brilliant, swiftly changing, ice-cold city to a formula +he failed utterly. Poet though he was, it offered him no color +similes, no points of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets, +no handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape and +structure, as he familiarly and often contemptuously had done with +other towns. The houses were interminable ramparts loopholed for +defense; the people were bright but bloodless spectres passing in +sinister and selfish array. + +The thing that weighed heaviest on Raggles's soul and clogged his +poet's fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to +saturate the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one that +he considered appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit. +Humanity was gone from them; they were toddling idols of stone and +varnish, worshipping themselves and greedy for though oblivious of +worship from their fellow graven images. Frozen, cruel, implacable, +impervious, cut to an identical pattern, they hurried on their ways +like statues brought by some miracles to motion, while soul and +feeling lay unaroused in the reluctant marble. + +Gradually Raggles became conscious of certain types. One was an +elderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled +face and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded +youth, who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness and +frigid unconcern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, +clear as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, clothed like the +princesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection of +sunlight on a glacier. And another was a by-product of this town of +marionettes--a broad, swaggering, grim, threateningly sedate fellow, +with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field, the complexion of +a baptized infant and the knuckles of a prize-fighter. This type +leaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frappd +contumely. + +A poet is a sensitive creature, and Raggles soon shrivelled in +the bleak embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, +ironical, illegible, unnatural, ruthless expression of the city left +him downcast and bewildered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, +the scolding of vinegar-faced housewives at back doors, the kindly +spleen of bartenders behind provincial free-lunch counters, the +amiable truculence of rural constables, the kicks, arrests and +happy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud, crude cities than +this freezing heartlessness. + +Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace. +Unheeding, regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelash +to testify that they were conscious of his existence. And then he +said to himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was +without a soul; that its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires +and springs, and that he was alone in a great wilderness. + +Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, a +hissing and a crash as something struck him and hurled him over and +over six yards from where he had been. As he was coming down like +the stick of a rocket the earth and all the cities thereof turned to +a fractured dream. + +Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him--an +odor of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a hand +soft as a falling petal touched his brow. Bending over him was the +woman clothed like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and +humid with human sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silks +and furs. With Raggles's hat in his hand and with his face pinker +than ever from a vehement burst of oratory against reckless driving, +stood the elderly gentleman who personified the city's wealth and +ripeness. From a nearby caf hurried the by-product with the vast +jowl and baby complexion, bearing a glass full of a crimson fluid +that suggested delightful possibilities. + +"Drink dis, sport," said the by-product, holding the glass to +Raggles's lips. + +Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearing +the deepest concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got into +the circle and pressed back the overplus of Samaritans. An old lady +in a black shawl spoke loudly of camphor; a newsboy slipped one +of his papers beneath Raggles's elbow, where it lay on the muddy +pavement. A brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names. + +A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned a lane through +the crowd. A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs. + +"How do you feel, old man?" asked the surgeon, stooping easily to +his task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red drop or two +from Raggles's brow with a fragrant cobweb. + +"Me?" said Raggles, with a seraphic smile, "I feel fine." + +He had found the heart of his new city. + +In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward +in the hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendants +heard sounds of conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggles +had assaulted and damaged a brother convalescent--a glowering +transient whom a freight train collision had sent in to be patched +up. + +"What's all this about?" inquired the head nurse. + +"He was runnin' down me town," said Raggles. + +"What town?" asked the nurse. + +"Noo York," said Raggles. + + + + +VANITY AND SOME SABLES + + +When "Kid" Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McKeever's blue-black +eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of +a colleen's blanderin' tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you +are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 +o'clock to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you +this morning with a cold nose--a sign of doghealth and your +happiness. + +The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city +called the "Stovepipe," which is a narrow and natural extension of +the familiar district known as "Hell's Kitchen." The "Stovepipe" +strip of town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues on the river, +and bends a hard and sooty elbow around little, lost homeless DeWitt +Clinton park. Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in +any kitchen and the situation is analyzed. The chefs in "Hell's +Kitchen" are many, and the "Stovepipe" gang, wears the cordon blue. + +The members of this unchartered but widely known brotherhood +appeared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the +lilies of the conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. +Thus displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an +innocuous conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual +observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven +blocks to the east. + +But off exhibition the "Stovepipes" were not mere street corner +ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious +occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and +valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks +without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honored by +their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully his +objections came to be spread finally upon some police station +blotter or hospital register. + +The police held the "Stovepipe" gang in perpetual suspicion and +respect. As the nightingale's liquid note is heard in the deepest +shadows, so along the "Stovepipe's" dark and narrow confines the +whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there +was smoke in the "stovepipe" the tasselled men in blue knew there +was fire in "Hell's Kitchen." + +"Kid" Brady promised Molly to be good. "Kid" was the vainest, the +strongest, the wariest and the most successful plotter in the gang. +Therefore, the boys were sorry to give him up. + +But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. +For, in the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper +for a guy to do as his girl advises. + +Black her eye for love's sake, if you will; but it is +all-to-the-good business to do a thing when she wants you to do it. + +"Turn off the hydrant," said the Kid, one night when Molly, tearful, +besought him to amend his ways. "I'm going to cut out the gang. You +for mine, and the simple life on the side. I'll tell you, Moll--I'll +get work; and in a year we'll get married. I'll do it for you. We'll +get a flat and a flute, and a sewing machine and a rubber plant and +live as honest as we can." + +"Oh, Kid," sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with her +handkerchief, "I'd rather hear you say that than to own all of New +York. And we can be happy on so little!" + +The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent +leathers with a suspicion of melancholy. + +"It'll hurt hardest in the rags department," said he. "I've kind +of always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate +cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in +the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the +misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin +to hand over to the little man with the big shears." + +"Never mind, Kid. I'll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I +would in a red automobile." + +Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he +had been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now back to this +honorable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an +assistant that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and +not the assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and +looks contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark's +mansion. + +Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had +"elapsed" on a theater program. The Kid worked away at his pipes and +solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The Stovepipe gang continued +its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen's heads, held up +late travelers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied +Fifth avenue's cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported +itself according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and +faithful to his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his +fingernails and it took him 15 minutes to tie his purple silk ascot +so that the worn places would not show. + +One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly's +house. + +"Open that, Moll!" he said in his large, quiet way. "It's for you." + +Molly's eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, +and in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, +dishwashy, but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve. + +Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew +and enveloped her neck like an anaconda. + +"Russian sables," said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of +Molly's round cheek against the clinging fur. "The real thing. They +don't grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll." + +Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the +family infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. +To make bright eyes, rosy checks and a bewitching smile: Recipe--one +set Russian sables. Apply. + +When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice +of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness. + +"You're a bird, all right, Kid," she admitted gratefully. "I never +had any furs on before in my life. But ain't Russian sables awful +expensive? Seems to me I've heard they were." + +"Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?" asked +the Kid, with calm dignity. "Did you ever notice me leaning on the +remnant counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call +that scarf $250 and the muff $175 and you won't make any mistake +about the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they +look fine on you, Moll." + +Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile +went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the +eye sadly and steadily. + +He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint +flush upon his face. + +"Cut it out," he said, with affectionate roughness. "I told you I +was done with that. I bought 'em and paid for 'em, all right, with +my own money." + +"Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?" + +"Sure. I been saving up." + +"Let's see--saved $425 in eight months, Kid?" + +"Ah, let up," said the Kid, with some heat. "I had some money when +I went to work. Do you think I've been holding 'em up again? I told +you I'd quit. They're paid for on the square. Put 'em on and come +out for a walk." + +Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she +went forth in the streets at the Kid's side. In all that region of +low-lying streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The +word sped, and doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see +the swell furs Kid Brady had given his girl. All down the street +there were "Oh's" and "Ah's" and the reported fabulous sum paid for +the sables was passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her +right elbow sauntered the Kid with the air of princes. Work had not +diminished his love of pomp and show and his passion for the costly +and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang +loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and +went on with their calm, unaccented palaver. + +Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, of +the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who +could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair +dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the +inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would +tip off to him something that he was looking for. + +"What's the excitement down the street?" asked Ransom of a pale +youth in a red sweater. + +"Dey're out rubberin' at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady staked his +girl to," answered the youth. "Some say he paid $900 for de skins. +Dey're swell all right enough." + +"I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year," +said the detective. "He doesn't travel with the gang any more, does +he?" + +"He's workin', all right," said the red sweater, "but--say, sport, +are you trailin' anything in the fur line? A job in a plumbin' shop +don' match wid dem skins de Kid's girl's got on." + +Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the +river bank. He touched the Kid's arm from behind. + +"Let me see you a moment, Brady," he said, quietly. His eye rested +for a second on the long fur scarf thrown stylishly back over +Molly's left shoulder. The Kid, with his old-time police hating +frown on his face, stepped a yard or two aside with the detective. + +"Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote's on West 7--th street yesterday to fix +a leaky water pipe?" asked Ransom. + +"I did," said the Kid. "What of it?" + +"The lady's $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house about +the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has +on." + +"To h--Harlem with you," cried the Kid, angrily. "You know I've +cut out that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables yesterday +at--" + +The Kid stopped short. + +"I know you've been working straight lately," said Ransom. "I'll +give you every chance. I'll go with you where you say you bought the +furs and investigate. The lady can wear 'em along with us and +nobody'll be on. That's fair, Brady." + +"Come on," agreed the Kid, hotly. And then he stopped suddenly in +his tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly's distressed and +anxious face. + +"No use," he said, grimly. "They're the Hethcote sables, all right. +You'll have to turn 'em over, Moll, but they ain't too good for you +if they cost a million." + +Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid's arm. + +"Oh, Kiddy, you've broke my heart," she said. "I was so proud of +you--and now they'll do you--and where's our happiness gone?" + +"Go home," said the Kid, wildly. "Come on, Ransom--take the furs. +Let's get away from here. Wait a minute--I've a good mind to--no, +I'll be d---- if I can do it--run along, Moll--I'm ready, Ransom." + +Around the corner of a lumber-yard came Policeman Kohen on his +way to his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for +assistance. Kohen joined the group. Ransom explained. + +"Sure," said Kohen. "I hear about those saples dat vas stole. You +say you have dem here?" + +Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly's late scarf in his hands and +looked at it closely. + +"Once," he said, "I sold furs in Sixth avenue. Yes, dese are saples. +Dey come from Alaska. Dis scarf is vort $12 and dis muff--" + +"Biff!" came the palm of the Kid's powerful hand upon the policeman's +mouth. Kohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The detective +threw himself upon Brady and with Kohen's aid got the nippers on his +wrist. + +"The scarf is vort $12 and the muff is vort $9," persisted the +policeman. "Vot is dis talk about $1,000 saples?" + +The Kid sat upon a pile of lumber and his face turned dark red. + +"Correct, Solomonski!" he declared, viciously. "I paid $21.50 for +the set. I'd rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, +the swell guy that wouldn't look at anything cheap! I'm a plain +bluffer. Moll--my salary couldn't spell sables in Russian." + +Molly cast herself upon his neck. + +"What do I care for all the sables and money in the world," she +cried. "It's my Kiddy I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy +blockhead!" + +"You can take dose nippers off," said Kohen to the detective. +"Before I leaf de station de report come in dat de lady vind her +saples--hanging in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you dat punch +in my vace--dis von time." + +Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the Kid. +She wound the scarf and threw the end over her left shoulder with a +duchess' grace. + +"A gouple of young vools," said Policeman Kohen to Ransom; "come on +away." + + + + +THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE + + +At the stroke of six Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was +a tailor's apprentice. Are there tailor's apprentices nowadays? + +At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and +patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. +But when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his +firmament let shine. + +It was Saturday night, and the boss laid twelve begrimed and +begrudged dollars in his hand. Ikey dabbled discreetly in water, +donned coat, hat and collar with its frazzled tie and chalcedony +pin, and set forth in pursuit of his ideals. + +For each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, +whether it be love or pinochle or lobster la Newburg, or the sweet +silence of the musty bookshelves. + +Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring "El" +between the rows of reeking sweat-shops. Pallid, stooping, +insignificant, squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body +and mind, yet, as he swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome +inhalations from his cigarette you perceive that he nurtures in his +narrow bosom the bacillus of society. + +Ikey's legs carried him to and into that famous place of +entertainment known as the Caf Maginnis--famous because it was the +rendezvous of Billy McMahan, the greatest man, the most wonderful +man, Ikey thought, that the world had ever produced. + +Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred, +and his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered, McMahan +stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing +concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had +been an election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been +swept back into line by a resistless besom of ballots. + +Ikey slunk along the bar and gazed, breath-quickened, at his idol. + +How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great, smooth, laughing +face; his gray eye, shrewd as a chicken hawk's; his diamond ring, +his voice like a bugle call, his prince's air, his plump and active +roll of money, his clarion call to friend and comrade--oh, what a +king of men he was! How he obscured his lieutenants, though they +themselves loomed large and serious, blue of chin and important +of mien, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their short +overcoats! But Billy--oh, what small avail are words to paint for +you his glory as seen by Ikey Snigglefritz! + +The Caf Maginnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated +bartenders threw themselves featfully upon bottle, cork and glass. +From a score of clear Havanas the air received its paradox of +clouds. The leal and the hopeful shook Billy McMahan's hand. And +there was born suddenly in the worshipful soul of Ikey Snigglefritz +an audacious, thrilling impulse. + +He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which majesty +moved, and held out his hand. + +Billy McMahan grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled. + +Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey threw +away his scabbard and charged upon Olympus. + +"Have a drink with me, Billy," he said familiarly, "you and your +friends?" + +"Don't mind if I do, old man," said the great leader, "just to keep +the ball rolling." + +The last spark of Ikey's reason fled. + +"Wine," he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand. + +The corks of three bottles were drawn; the champagne bubbled in +the long row of glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahan took his +and nodded, with his beaming smile, at Ikey. The lieutenants and +satellites took theirs and growled "Here's to you." Ikey took his +nectar in delirium. All drank. + +Ikey threw his week's wages in a crumpled roll upon the bar. + +"C'rect," said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar notes. +The crowd surged around Billy McMahan again. Some one was telling +how Brannigan fixed 'em over in the Eleventh. Ikey leaned against +the bar a while, and then went out. + +He went down Hester street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to +where he lived. And there his women folk, a bibulous mother and +three dingy sisters, pounced upon him for his wages. And at his +confession they shrieked and objurgated him in the pithy rhetoric +of the locality. + +But even as they plucked at him and struck him Ikey remained in his +ecstatic trance of joy. His head was in the clouds; the star was +drawing his wagon. Compared with what he had achieved the loss of +wages and the bray of women's tongues were slight affairs. + +He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahan. + + * * * * * * * + +Billy McMahan had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved +the name "Mrs. William Darragh McMahan." And there was a certain +vexation attendant upon these cards; for, small as they were, there +were houses in which they could not be inserted. Billy McMahan was +a dictator in politics, a four-walled tower in business, a mogul, +dreaded, loved and obeyed among his own people. He was growing rich; +the daily papers had a dozen men on his trail to chronicle his every +word of wisdom; he had been honored in caricature holding the Tiger +cringing in leash. + +But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a +race of men from which he stood apart but that he viewed with the +eye of Moses looking over into the promised land. He, too, had +ideals, even as had Ikey Snigglefritz; and sometimes, hopeless of +attaining them, his own solid success was as dust and ashes in his +mouth. And Mrs. William Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent +upon her plump but pretty face, and the very rustle of her silks +seemed a sigh. + +There was a brave and conspicuous assemblage in the dining saloon +of a noted hostelry where Fashion loves to display her charms. At +one table sat Billy McMahan and his wife. Mostly silent they were, +but the accessories they enjoyed little needed the indorsement of +speech. Mrs. McMahan's diamonds were outshone by few in the room. +The waiter bore the costliest brands of wine to their table. In +evening dress, with an expression of gloom upon his smooth and +massive countenance, you would look in vain for a more striking +figure than Billy's. + +Four tables away sat alone a tall, slender man, about thirty, +with thoughtful, melancholy eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly +white, thin hands. He was dining on filet mignon, dry toast and +apollinaris. That man was Cortlandt Van Duyckink, a man worth eighty +millions, who inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive +inner circle of society. + +Billy McMahan spoke to no one around him, because he knew no one. +Van Duyckink kept his eyes on his plate because he knew that every +one present was hungry to catch his. He could bestow knighthood and +prestige by a nod, and he was chary of creating a too extensive +nobility. + +And then Billy McMahan conceived and accomplished the most startling +and audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked over +to Cortlandt Van Duyckink's table and held out his hand. + +"Say, Mr. Van Duyckink," he said, "I've heard you was talking about +starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. I'm +McMahan, you know. Say, now, if that's straight I'll do all I can to +help you. And what I says goes in that neck of the woods, don't it? +Oh, say, I rather guess it does." + +Van Duyckink's rather sombre eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank +height and grasped Billy McMahan's hand. + +"Thank you, Mr. McMahan," he said, in his deep, serious tones. "I +have been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad +of your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with +you." + +Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the +accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon +him in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan +trembled with ecstasy, so that her diamonds smote the eye almost +with pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were +those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahan's +acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became enveloped +in the aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him. + +"Wine for that gang!" he commanded the waiter, pointing with his +finger. "Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green +bush. Tell 'em it's on me. D----n it! Wine for everybody!" + +The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to +carry out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house +and its custom. + +"All right," said Billy, "if it's against the rules. I wonder if +'twould do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, it'll +flow all right at the caffy to-night, just the same. It'll be rubber +boots for anybody who comes in there any time up to 2 A. M." + +Billy McMahan was happy. + +He had shaken the hand of Cortlandt Van Duyckink. + + * * * * * * * + +The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out +of place moving slowly among the push carts and trash-heaps on +the lower east side. So did Cortlandt Van Duyckink, with his +aristocratic face and white, thin hands, as he steered carefully +between the groups of ragged, scurrying youngsters in the streets. +And so did Miss Constance Schuyler, with her dim, ascetic beauty, +seated at his side. + +"Oh, Cortlandt," she breathed, "isn't it sad that human beings have +to live in such wretchedness and poverty? And you--how noble it is +of you to think of them, to give your time and money to improve +their condition!" + +Van Duyckink turned his solemn eyes upon her. + +"It is little," he said, sadly, "that I can do. The question is a +large one, and belongs to society. But even individual effort is +not thrown away. Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to +build soup kitchens, where no one who is hungry will be turned away. +And down this other street are the old buildings that I shall cause +to be torn down and there erect others in place of those death-traps +of fire and disease." + +Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it toddled +coveys of wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children. +It stopped before a crazy brick structure, foul and awry. + +Van Duyckink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the +leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who +seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity--a +narrow-chested, pale, unsavory young man, puffing at a cigarette. + +Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly +grasped the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke. + +"I want to know you people," he said, sincerely. "I am going to help +you as much as I can. We shall be friends." + +As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an +unaccustomed glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man. + +He had shaken the hand of Ikey Snigglefritz. + + + + +THE PURPLE DRESS + + +We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly +in repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it +for their especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their +noses to the genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and +blue. We say of princes that they are born to the purple; and no +doubt they are, for the colic tinges their faces with the royal tint +equally with the snub-nosed countenance of a woodchopper's brat. All +women love it--when it is the fashion. + +And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course +other colors are quite stylish as well--in fact, I saw a lovely thing +the other day in olive green albatross, with a triple-lapped flounce +skirt trimmed with insert squares of silk, and a draped fichu of lace +opening over a shirred vest and double puff sleeves with a lace band +holding two gathered frills--but you see lots of purple too. Oh, yes, +you do; just take a walk down Twenty-third street any afternoon. + +Therefore Maida--the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon-colored +hair in the Bee-Hive Store--said to Grace--the girl with the +rhinestone brooch and peppermint-pepsin flavor to her speech--"I'm +going to have a purple dress--a tailor-made purple dress--for +Thanksgiving." + +"Oh, are you," said Grace, putting away some 7 gloves into the +6 box. "Well, it's me for red. You see more red on Fifth avenue. +And the men all seem to like it." + +"I like purple best," said Maida. "And old Schlegel has promised to +make it for $8. It's going to be lovely. I'm going to have a plaited +skirt and a blouse coat trimmed with a band of galloon under a white +cloth collar with two rows of--" + +"Sly boots!" said Grace with an educated wink. + +"--soutache braid over a surpliced white vest; and a plaited basque +and--" + +"Sly boots--sly boots!" repeated Grace. + +"--plaited gigot sleeves with a drawn velvet ribbon over an inside +cuff. What do you mean by saying that?" + +"You think Mr. Ramsay likes purple. I heard him say yesterday he +thought some of the dark shades of red were stunning." + +"I don't care," said Maida. "I prefer purple, and them that don't +like it can just take the other side of the street." + +Which suggests the thought that after all, the followers of purple +may be subject to slight delusions. Danger is near when a maiden +thinks she can wear purple regardless of complexions and opinions; +and when Emperors think their purple robes will wear forever. + +Maida had saved $18 after eight months of economy; and this had +bought the goods for the purple dress and paid Schlegel $4 on the +making of it. On the day before Thanksgiving she would have just +enough to pay the remaining $4. And then for a holiday in a new +dress--can earth offer anything more enchanting? + +Old Bachman, the proprietor of the Bee-Hive Store, always gave a +Thanksgiving dinner to his employees. On every one of the subsequent +364 days, excusing Sundays, he would remind them of the joys of the +past banquet and the hopes of the coming ones, thus inciting them +to increased enthusiasm in work. The dinner was given in the store +on one of the long tables in the middle of the room. They tacked +wrapping paper over the front windows; and the turkeys and other +good things were brought in the back way from the restaurant on the +corner. You will perceive that the Bee-Hive was not a fashionable +department store, with escalators and pompadours. It was almost +small enough to be called an emporium; and you could actually go +in there and get waited on and walk out again. And always at the +Thanksgiving dinners Mr. Ramsay-- + +Oh, bother! I should have mentioned Mr. Ramsay first of all. He is +more important than purple or green, or even the red cranberry +sauce. + +Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for +him. He never pinched the girls' arms when he passed them in dark +corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business +was dull and the girls giggled and said: "Oh, pshaw!" it wasn't G. +Bernard they meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay +was queer and original in other ways. He was a health crank, and +believed that people should never eat anything that was good for +them. He was violently opposed to anybody being comfortable, and +coming in out of snow storms, or wearing overshoes, or taking +medicine, or coddling themselves in any way. Every one of the ten +girls in the store had little pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every +night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay. For, next year old Bachman was going +to take him in for a partner. And each one of them knew that if she +should catch him she would knock those cranky health notions of his +sky high before the wedding cake indigestion was over. + +Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had +two Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in +the store. + +And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsay--one +purple and the other red. Of course, the other eight girls were +going to have dresses too, but they didn't count. Very likely +they'd wear some shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs--nothing as +resplendent as purple or red. + +Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress +ready-made. Oh, what's the use of bothering with a tailor--when +you've got a figger it's easy to get a fit--the ready-made are +intended for a perfect figger--except I have to have 'em all taken +in at the waist--the average figger is so large waisted. + +The night before Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and +bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of +purple, but they were white themselves--the joyous enthusiasm of the +young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew +purple would become her, and--for the thousandth time she tried to +assure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsay said he liked and not +red. She was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of +tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was +going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself. + +Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above +Maida's. + +At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landlady's tongue +clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in +buttermilk. And then Grace come down to her room crying with eyes as +red as any dress. + +"She says I've got to get out," said Grace. "The old beast. Because +I owe her $4. She's put my trunk in the hall and locked the door. I +can't go anywhere else. I haven't got a cent of money." + +"You had some yesterday," said Maida. + +"I paid it on my dress," said Grace. "I thought she'd wait till next +week for the rent." + +Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle. + +Out came--out it had to come--Maida's $4. + +"You blessed darling," cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset. +"I'll pay the mean old thing and then I'm going to try on my dress. +I think it's heavenly. Come up and look at it. I'll pay the money +back, a dollar a week--honest I will." + +Thanksgiving. + +The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched +into Maida's room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. +Maida sat by the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist +darning a st--. Oh, doing fancy work. + +"Why, goodness me! ain't you dressed yet?" shrilled the red one. +"How does it fit in the back? Don't you think these velvet tabs look +awful swell? Why ain't you dressed, Maida?" + +"My dress didn't get finished in time," said Maida. "I'm not going +to the dinner." + +"That's too bad. Why, I'm awfully sorry, Maida. Why don't you put on +anything and come along--it's just the store folks, you know, and +they won't mind." + +"I was set on my purple," said Maida. "If I can't have it I won't go +at all. Don't bother about me. Run along or you'll be late. You look +awful nice in red." + +At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the time +of the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls +shrieking over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachman's roar over his +own deeply-concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. +Bachman, who came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see +Mr. Ramsay moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of +all. + +At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless +air she slowly made her way to Schlegel's shop and told him she +could not pay the $4 due on the dress. + +"Gott!" cried Schlegel, angrily. "For what do you look so glum? Take +him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass +mine shop every day in two years? If I make clothes is it that I do +not know how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when +you can. Take him away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in +him all right. So. Pay me when you can." + +Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and +hurried away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of +rain struck upon her face. She smiled and did not feel it. + +Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose +wardrobes are charged to the old man's account, you cannot begin to +comprehend--you could not understand why Maida did not feel the cold +dash of the Thanksgiving rain. + +At five o'clock she went out upon the street wearing her purple +dress. The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her in a +steady, wind-blown pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with +close-held umbrellas and tight buttoned raincoats. Many of them +turned their heads to marvel at this beautiful, serene, happy-eyed +girl in the purple dress walking through the storm as though she +were strolling in a garden under summer skies. + +I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied +wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual +longing for pretty things--to starve eight months in order to bring +a purple dress and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, +hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? + +Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and +she walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart +must have one crumb during a year. The rain ran down and dripped +from her fingers. + +Some one turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. +Ramsay's eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest. + +"Why, Miss Maida," said he, "you look simply magnificent in your +new dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. +And of all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and +intelligence. There is nothing more healthful and invigorating than +braving the weather as you are doing. May I walk with you?" + +And Maida blushed and sneezed. + + + + +THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 + + +John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was +afflicted with what his comrades called Japanitis. + +Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second +story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour +of the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions +of both the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of +pins stuck in the map which represented the opposing forces, and +these he moved about from day to day in conformity with the war news +in the daily papers. + +Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, +and then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other +firemen would hear him yell: "Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, +huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat 'em up, you little +sleight-o'-hand, bow-legged bull terriers--give 'em another of them +Yalu looloos, and you'll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your +Russians--say, wouldn't they give you a painsky when it comes to a +scrapovitch?" + +Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic +champion of the Mikado's men. Supporters of the Russian cause did +well to keep clear of Engine-House No. 99. + +Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes's head. That +was when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his +driver's seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the +finest team in the whole department--according to the crew of 99. + +Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward +his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these--the code of King +Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United +States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The +Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention +of street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is +being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of +our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and +Jeffries's new punch trying for place and show. + +The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the +Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, +but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of +which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself +to the attention of the S. P. C. A. + +One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of +protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A +steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes +like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled +ashore and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty--perhaps, +theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of +its own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered +happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased +child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its +body was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; +its face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was +mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat +of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few +coins--denarii--scudi--kopecks--pfennigs--pilasters--whatever the +financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been. + +Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar +and movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates +had shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he +hated, as far as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99. +Light as a cork, he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the +crudest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into the +reservoir of Liberty. + +While crossing Third avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the +thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of +the wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful +chord in the uproar--the musical clanging of a gong and a great +shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were +hurrying to see. + +This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the +protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, +enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the +path of No. 99's flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with +arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe. + +The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions +or amendments. It is a simple thing--as simple as the rule of three. +There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the +hose-cart and the iron pillar of the elevated railroad. + +John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The +team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the +pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's +strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell +on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while +Erebus--beautiful, raven-black, best-loved Erebus--lay whickering +in his harness with a broken leg. + +In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the +details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be +reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were +sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men +of No. 99 heard the crack of the S. P. C. A. agent's pistol, and +turned their heads away, not daring to look toward Erebus again. + +When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one of +them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and +grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly +about it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered +effervescently and waved its hands. + +"Sounds like a seidlitz powder," said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, +"and it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man!--that hoss +was worth a steamer full of such two-legged animals. It's a +immigrant--that's what it is." + +"Look at the doctor's chalk mark on its coat," said Reilly, the desk +man. "It's just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one +of them Finns, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads +onto us." + +"Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up +in hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city," groaned +another fireman. "It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned." + +"Somebody go around and get Sloviski," suggested the engine driver, +"and let's see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of +hair and head noises." + +Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third avenue, +and was reputed to be a linguist. + +One of the men fetched him--a fat, cringing man, with a discursive +eye and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him. + +"Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski," +requested Mike Dowling. "We can't quite figure out whether he's from +the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong-on-the-Ganges." + +Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in +rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle +to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The +immigrant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of +ginger ale. + +"I have you his name," reported Sloviski. "You shall not pronounce +it. Writing of it in paper is better." They gave him paper, and he +wrote, "Demetre Svangvsk." + +"Looks like short hand," said the desk man. + +"He speaks some language," continued the interpreter, wiping his +forehead, "of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, +he have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the +Roumanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do +not him quite understand." + +"Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?" asked Mike, +frowning at the polyglot description. + +"He is a"--answered Sloviski--"he is a--I dink he come from--I dink +he is a fool," he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, +"and if you pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen." + +"Whatever he is, he's a bird," said Mike Dowling; "and you want to +watch him fly." + +Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the +nest of Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and +bestowed upon him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus +of Company 99. Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, +turning once to show his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen. + +In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital. +With great gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. "My +money on the Japs every time," he declared. "Why, look at them +Russians--they're nothing but wolves. Wipe 'em out, I say--and the +little old jiu jitsu gang are just the cherry blossoms to do the +trick, and don't you forget it!" + +The second day after Byrnes's reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, +the unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than +ever. He managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate +the hose-cart driver on his recovery and to apologize for having +caused the accident. This he accomplished by so many extravagant +gestures and explosive noises that the company was diverted for half +an hour. Then they kicked him out again, and on the next day he came +back grinning. How or where he lived no one knew. And then John +Byrnes's nine-year-old son, Chris, who brought him convalescent +delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Svangvsk, and they +allowed him to loaf about the door of the engine-house occasionally. + +One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire +Commissioner buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped +inside for an informal inspection. The men kicked Svangvsk out a +little harder than usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, +in which everything shone like my lady's mirror. + +The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss +of Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that +would do him credit. So they let Joe out of his stall and showed +the Deputy how deserving he was of the finest mate that could be +in horsedom. + +While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into +the Deputy's auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a +monster puffing and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. +The big auto shot away, luckily taking a straight course down the +street. The boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the +cushions and howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped +that auto except a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to +gain by such a stoppage. + +Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another +kick when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others +sprang for the door Demetre sprang for Joe. He glided upon the +horse's bare back like a snake and shouted something at him like +the crack of a dozen whips. One of the firemen afterward swore that +Joe answered him back in the same language. Ten seconds after the +auto started the big horse was eating up the asphalt behind it like +a strip of macaroni. + +Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said +that the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the +middle of it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on +its back cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over +and picked the black speck out of the noise. + +Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk's last kicking at the hands--or +rather the feet--of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through +the door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he +was going to receive. + +Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe's and +made a noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly +through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, +of the delicatessen. + +John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be +kicked. Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that +Demetre grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of +punishment. + +"The heathen rides like a Cossack," remarked a fireman who had seen +a Wild West show--"they're the greatest riders in the world." + +The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever. + +"Yas--yas--me Cossack," he spluttered, striking his chest. + +"Cossack!" repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, "ain't that a kind of +a Russian?" + +"They're one of the Russian tribes, sure," said the desk man, who +read books between fire alarms. + +Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know +of the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called +to Byrnes: + +"Hello there, Jimmy, me boy--how's the war coming along? Japs still +got the bear on the trot, have they?" + +"Oh, I don't know," said John Byrnes, argumentatively, "them Japs +haven't got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets a good whack +at 'em and they won't be knee-high to a puddle-ducksky." + + + + +THE LOST BLEND + + +Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the +dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need +not listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, +where a dime dropped into the cold bouillon aperture will bring +forth a dry Martini. + +Con Lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Kenealy's caf. +You and I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side and went +into voluntary liquidation with our week's wages. Opposite danced +Con, clean, temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, +punctual, trustworthy, young, responsible, and took our money. + +The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little +"places" which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited +by laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have +nothing to do with either. + +Over the caf lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter Katherine +had eyes of dark Irish--but why should you be told? Be content with +your Geraldine or your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; and when +she called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the pitcher of +beer for dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk punch in the +shaker. Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; and if you hurl +the last shilling of your fortune upon the bar for whiskey, the +bartender shall take it, and marry his boss's daughter, and good +will grow out of it. + +But not so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and +scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom +the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the +obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle +coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was +voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche +of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A +trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, +the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence +of his divinity. + +There came to Kenealy's two sunburned men, Riley and McQuirk. They +had conference with Kenealy; and then they took possession of a +back room which they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and +druggist's measuring glasses. All the appurtenances and liquids of +a saloon were there, but they dispensed no drinks. All day long +the two sweltered in there pouring and mixing unknown brews and +decoctions from the liquors in their store. Riley had the education, +and he figured on reams of paper, reducing gallons to ounces and +quarts to fluid drams. McQuirk, a morose man with a red eye, dashed +each unsuccessful completed mixture into the waste pipes with curses +gentle, husky and deep. They labored heavily and untiringly to +achieve some mysterious solution like two alchemists striving to +resolve gold from the elements. + +Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered +Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult +bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon +Kenealy's store of liquors to follow their consuming and fruitless +experiments. + +Down the back stairs came Katherine with her smile like sunrise on +Gweebarra Bay. + +"Good evening, Mr. Lantry," says she. "And what is the news to-day, +if you please?" + +"It looks like r-rain," stammered the shy one, backing to the wall. + +"It couldn't do better," said Katherine. "I'm thinking there's +nothing the worse off for a little water." In the back room +Riley and McQuirk toiled like bearded witches over their strange +compounds. From fifty bottles they drew liquids carefully measured +after Riley's figures, and shook the whole together in a great glass +vessel. Then McQuirk would dash it out, with gloomy profanity, and +they would begin again. + +"Sit down," said Riley to Con, "and I'll tell you. + +"Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this +nation of Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where +there's nothing to eat but quinine and nothing to drink but rum. The +natives and foreigners lay down with chills and get up with fevers; +and a good mixed drink is nature's remedy for all such tropical +inconveniences. + +"So we lays in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar +fixtures and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on +a lime steamer. On the way me and Tim sees flying fish and plays +seven-up with the captain and steward, and already begins to feel +like the high-ball kings of the tropics of Capricorn. + +"When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to +introduce to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over +to the starboard binnacle and recollects a few things. + +"'I forgot to tell you, boys,' says he, 'that Nicaragua slapped an +import duty of 48 per cent. ad valorem on all bottled goods last +month. The President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by +mistake for tobasco sauce, and he's getting even. Barrelled goods is +free.' + +"'Sorry you didn't mention it sooner,' says we. And we bought two +forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we +had and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That 48 per cent +would have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1,200 +cocktail rather than throw the stuff away. + +"Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was +something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea +soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt +makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We +gave a nigger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a +cocoanut tree three days beating the sand with his heels and refused +to sign a testimonial. + +"But the other barrel! Say, bartender, did you ever put on a straw +hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a +pretty girl with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? +That's what thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two +fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and +cry because there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to +lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second +barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was +the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark +like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll +get a drink like that across the bar. + +"Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it +was enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a +hive of bees. If that barrel had lasted that country would have +become the greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a +line of Generals and Colonels and ex-Presidents and revolutionists a +block long waiting to be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a +drink. The last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful +stuff. It gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything; +at the same time he didn't care whether his money was tainted or +fresh from the Ice Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua +had repudiated the National debt, removed the duty on cigarettes and +was about to declare war on the United States and England. + +"'Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and 'twill +be by good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we've been +trying. Small lots at a time, we've mixed barrels of all the harmful +ingredients known to the profession of drinking. Ye could have +stocked ten bars with the whiskies, brandies, cordials, bitters, +gins and wines me and Tim have wasted. A glorious drink like that +to be denied to the world! 'Tis a sorrow and a loss of money. The +United States as a nation would welcome a drink of that sort, and +pay for it." + +All the while McQuirk had been carefully measuring and pouring +together small quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them, +from his latest pencilled prescription. The completed mixture was of +a vile, mottled chocolate color. McQuirk tasted it, and hurled it, +with appropriate epithets, into the waste sink. + +"'Tis a strange story, even if true," said Con. "I'll be going now +along to my supper." + +"Take a drink," said Riley. "We've all kinds except the lost blend." + +"I never drink," said Con, "anything stronger than water. I am just +after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word. +'There's not anything,' says she, 'but is better off for a little +water.'" + +When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on the +back. + +"Did ye hear that?" he shouted. "Two fools are we. The six dozen +bottles of 'pollinaris we had on the ship--ye opened them +yourself--which barrel did ye pour them in--which barrel, ye +mudhead?" + +"I mind," said McQuirk, slowly, "'twas in the second barrel we +opened. I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it." + +"We've got it now," cried Riley. "'Twas that we lacked. 'Tis the +water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man, +and get two bottles of 'pollinaris from the bar, while I figure out +the proportionments with me pencil." + +An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy's caf. +Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the +vicinity where they labor, drawn by some mysterious attraction. + +A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were +half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. +The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary +and assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and +directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious +madness. + +"Began fighting each other in the back room," explained Kenealy to +Con. "And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much +up. But they're good men. They'll pay for everything. Trying to +invent some new kind of cocktail, they was. I'll see they come out +all right in the morning." + +Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went +through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs. + +"Good evening again, Mr. Lantry," said she. "And is there no news +from the weather yet?" + +"Still threatens r-rain," said Con, slipping past with red in his +smooth, pale cheek. + +Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. +Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of +alcohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles. + +On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom +of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid--a bright golden liquid that +seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths. + +Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it. + +As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the +stairs. + +"No news yet, Mr. Lantry?" she asked with her teasing laugh. + +Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there. + +"The news is," he said, "that we're to be married." + +"Put me down, sir!" she cried indignantly, "or I will-- Oh, Con, +where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?" + + + + +A HARLEM TRAGEDY + + +Harlem. + +Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy's flat one flight below. + +"Ain't it a beaut?" said Mrs. Cassidy. + +She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye +was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. +Her lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red finger-marks +on each side of her neck. + +"My husband wouldn't ever think of doing that to me," said Mrs. +Fink, concealing her envy. + +"I wouldn't have a man," declared Mrs. Cassidy, "that didn't beat me +up at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you. Say! but +that last dose Jack gave me wasn't no homeopathic one. I can see +stars yet. But he'll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the +week to make up for it. This eye is good for theater tickets and a +silk shirt waist at the very least." + +"I should hope," said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, "that Mr. +Fink is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me." + +"Oh, go on, Maggie!" said Mrs. Cassidy, laughing and applying witch +hazel, "you're only jealous. Your old man is too frappd and slow +to ever give you a punch. He just sits down and practises physical +culture with a newspaper when he comes home--now ain't that the +truth?" + +"Mr. Fink certainly peruses of the papers when he comes home," +acknowledged Mrs. Fink, with a toss of her head; "but he certainly +don't ever make no Steve O'Donnell out of me just to amuse +himself--that's a sure thing." + +Mrs. Cassidy laughed the contented laugh of the guarded and happy +matron. With the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew +down the collar of her kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, +maroon-colored, edged with olive and orange--a bruise now nearly +well, but still to memory dear. + +Mrs. Fink capitulated. The formal light in her eye softened to +envious admiration. She and Mrs. Cassidy had been chums in the +downtown paper-box factory before they had married, one year before. +Now she and her man occupied the flat above Mame and her man. +Therefore she could not put on airs with Mame. + +"Don't it hurt when he soaks you?" asked Mrs. Fink, curiously. + +"Hurt!"--Mrs. Cassidy gave a soprano scream of delight. "Well, +say--did you ever have a brick house fall on you?--well, that's just +the way it feels--just like when they're digging you out of the +ruins. Jack's got a left that spells two matinees and a new pair of +Oxfords--and his right!--well, it takes a trip to Coney and six +pairs of openwork, silk lisle threads to make that good." + +"But what does he beat you for?" inquired Mrs. Fink, with wide-open +eyes. + +"Silly!" said Mrs. Cassidy, indulgently. "Why, because he's full. +It's generally on Saturday nights." + +"But what cause do you give him?" persisted the seeker after +knowledge. + +"Why, didn't I marry him? Jack comes in tanked up; and I'm here, +ain't I? Who else has he got a right to beat? I'd just like to catch +him once beating anybody else! Sometimes it's because supper ain't +ready; and sometimes it's because it is. Jack ain't particular about +causes. He just lushes till he remembers he's married, and then +he makes for home and does me up. Saturday nights I just move the +furniture with sharp corners out of the way, so I won't cut my +head when he gets his work in. He's got a left swing that jars you! +Sometimes I take the count in the first round; but when I feel like +having a good time during the week or want some new rags I come up +again for more punishment. That's what I done last night. Jack knows +I've been wanting a black silk waist for a month, and I didn't think +just one black eye would bring it. Tell you what, Mag, I'll bet you +the ice cream he brings it to-night." + +Mrs. Fink was thinking deeply. + +"My Mart," she said, "never hit me a lick in his life. It's just +like you said, Mame; he comes in grouchy and ain't got a word to +say. He never takes me out anywhere. He's a chair-warmer at home for +fair. He buys me things, but he looks so glum about it that I never +appreciate 'em." + +Mrs. Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum. "You poor thing!" +she said. "But everybody can't have a husband like Jack. Marriage +wouldn't be no failure if they was all like him. These discontented +wives you hear about--what they need is a man to come home and kick +their slats in once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and +chocolate creams. That'd give 'em some interest in life. What I want +is a masterful man that slugs you when he's jagged and hugs you when +he ain't jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain't got the sand to +do neither!" + +Mrs. Fink sighed. + +The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at +the kick of Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame +flew and hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love +light that shines in the eye of the Maori maid when she recovers +consciousness in the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged +her there. + +"Hello, old girl!" shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and +lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. "I got tickets for Barnum +& Bailey's, and if you'll bust the string of one of them bundles I +guess you'll find that silk waist--why, good evening, Mrs. Fink--I +didn't see you at first. How's old Mart coming along?" + +"He's very well, Mr. Cassidy--thanks," said Mrs. Fink. "I must be +going along up now. Mart'll be home for supper soon. I'll bring you +down that pattern you wanted to-morrow, Mame." + +Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a +meaningless cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a +cry from no particular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most +transient and the most hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why +had Martin never thrashed her? He was as big and strong as Jack +Cassidy. Did he not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he +came home and lounged about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly +good provider, but he ignored the spices of life. + +Mrs. Fink's ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between +plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or +stamp his foot on the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought +to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But +now, to vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired +out, without a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her +sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated Mame--Mame, with +her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy +voyage with her fighting, brutal, loving mate. + +Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of +domesticity. Beyond the portals of his cozy home he cared not to +roam, to roam. He was the man who had caught the street car, the +anaconda that had swallowed its prey, the tree that lay as it had +fallen. + +"Like the supper, Mart?" asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it. + +"M-m-m-yep," grunted Mr. Fink. + +After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his +stocking feet. + +Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition +for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters +of Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, +yarn, cotton, lisle thread or woollen--does not the new canto belong? + +The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr. +Fink ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would +parade and otherwise disport itself. + +Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy's pattern down early. Mame had on her +new silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday +gleam. Jack was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious +scheme for the day afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it. + +A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her +flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following +balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin +Fink was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always +unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant, breathless idea +came to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as +able to use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any +Jack. + +The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink +had the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks' +wash that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged +feet reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed. + +Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink's heart, and higher still surged +an audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her--if he would +not so far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in +conjugal affairs, he must be prompted to his duty. + +Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a +stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump +of unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium--to sit +at ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely +splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes +departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his +mind; but the furthest one was the thought of beating his wife. + +Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the +suds. Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It +sounded like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face +of the unslugged bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink's time. + +Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading. + +"You lazy loafer!" she cried, "must I work my arms off washing and +toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a +kitchen hound?" + +Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared +that he would not strike--that the provocation had been insufficient. +She leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face with her +clenched hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love for him +such as she had not felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin Fink, and +come into your kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of his hand +now--just to show that he cared--just to show that he cared! + +Mr. Fink sprang to his feet--Maggie caught him again on the jaw with +a wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful, +blissful moment before his blow should come--she whispered his name +to herself--she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it. + +In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was +powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat +above came the sound of a woman's voice, high-raised, a bumping, a +stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned--unmistakable sounds +of domestic conflict. + +"Mart and Mag scrapping?" postulated Mr. Cassidy. "Didn't know they +ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?" + +One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other +twinkled at least like paste. + +"Oh, oh," she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the +feminine ejaculatory manner. "I wonder if--wonder if! Wait, Jack, +till I go up and see." + +Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out +from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink. + +"Oh, Maggie," cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; "did he? +Oh, did he?" + +Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed +hopelessly. + +Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it +gently. Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, +pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, +unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink. + +"Tell me, Maggie," pleaded Mame, "or I'll go in there and find out. +What was it? Did he hurt you--what did he do?" + +Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her +friend. + +"For God's sake don't open that door, Mame," she sobbed. "And don't +ever tell nobody--keep it under your hat. He--he never touched me, +and--he's--oh, Gawd--he's washin' the clothes--he's washin' the +clothes!" + + + + +"THE GUILTY PARTY" + + +A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a +window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with +great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of +blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed +daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening +paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be +followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type. + +In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong +bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from +the vespertine pipe. + +Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, +as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty +host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in +rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as +young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude +and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, +to embrace--here were the children playing in the corridors of the +House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The +bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie +street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture. + +A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and +resting by the window, and said: + +"Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too +tired?" + +The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window +answered, with a frown. + +"Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have a +little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play with +the other kids on the sidewalk?" + +The woman who was cooking came to the door. + +"John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street. +They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in the +house all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your +time to amuse her when you come home." + +"Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be +amused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don't +bother me." + + * * * * * * * + +"You're on," said Kid Mullaly. "Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to +the dance. Put up." + +The Kid's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and +challenged. He drew out his "roll" and slapped five tens upon the +bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus "taken" more +slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder, +took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an +inch-long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash +register. + +"And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty," said a bettor, +with anticipatory glee. + +"That's my lookout," said the "Kid," sternly. "Fill 'em up all +around, Mike." + +After the round Burke, the "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal, +Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the +saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the +Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan +shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that +day, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief. + +"Cut that blond out, 'Kid,'" was his advice, "or there'll be +trouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for? +You'll never find one that'll freeze to you like Liz has. She's +worth a hallful of Annies." + +"I'm no Annie admirer!" said the "Kid," dropping a cigarette ash +on his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony's shoulder. "But I +want to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She's been +bragging that I daren't speak to another girl. Liz is all right--in +some ways. She's drinking a little too much lately. And she uses +language that a lady oughtn't." + +"You're engaged, ain't you?" asked Burke. + +"Sure. We'll get married next year, maybe." + +"I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer," said Burke. +"That was two years ago, when she used to came down to the corner of +Chrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort +of a kid then, and couldn't speak without blushing." + +"She's a little spitfire, sometimes, now," said the Kid. "I hate +jealousy. That's why I'm going to the dance with Annie. It'll teach +her some sense." + +"Well, you better look a little out," were Burke's last words. "If +Liz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an +Annie, I'd want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all +right." + +Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes +searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she +hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her +small, white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east +side has added to language. + +Liz's skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink +plaid, well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring +of huge imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the +bottom of a silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high +heels, and were strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have +passed into a flour barrel. + +The "Family Entrance" of the Blue Jay Caf received her. At a table +she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for +her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced +manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with +a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order +and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the +prerogative of woman. + +"Whiskey, Tommy," she said as her sisters further uptown murmur, +"Champagne, James." + +"Sure, Miss Lizzie. What'll the chaser be?" + +"Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?" + +"Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven't saw him to-day." + +Fluently came the "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one who +required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee. + +"I'm lookin' for 'm," said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under +her nose. "It's got to me that he says he'll take Annie Karlson to +the dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I'm lookin' for 'm. You +know me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid's been engaged. Look at +that ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to the +dance. What'll I do? I'll cut his heart out. Another whiskey, +Tommy." + +"I wouldn't listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie," said the waiter +smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. "Kid Mullaly's not +the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?" + +"Two years," repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under +the magic of the distiller's art. "I always used to play out on the +street of evenin's 'cause there was nothin' doin' for me at home. +For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights +and the people goin' by. And then the Kid came along one evenin' +and sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first +drink he made me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin' +for makin' a noise. And now--say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie +Karlson? If it wasn't for peroxide the chloroform limit would have +put her out long ago. Oh, I'm lookin' for 'm. You tell the Kid if +he comes in. Me? I'll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Another +whiskey, Tommy." + +A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz +walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a +curly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled +string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile +on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a +sudden. + +"Let me show you how to make a cat's-cradle, kid," she said, tucking +her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes. + +And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the +dance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the +bi-monthly dance, a dress affair in which the members took great +pride and bestirred themselves huskily to further and adorn. + +At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a +lady on his arm. As the Loreley's was her hair golden. Her "yes" was +softened to a "yah," but its quality of assent was patent to the +most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, +and--she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly. + +And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the +thing happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in +many studies and libraries. + +Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green +silk skirt, under the _nom de guerre_ of "Liz." Her eyes were hard +and blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly, +she cried out one oath--the Kid's own favorite oath--and in his +own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went +frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the +waiter--made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the +strength of her arm permitted. + +And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation--or was it +self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the +natural branch? + +Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying +through a grove of saplings at dusk. + +And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient +and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight +and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved +and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest +barbarity--the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it +survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of +culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in the +chase. + +They pursued--a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and +maidens--howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. +Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may +his heart, the gentler, falter at the siege. + +Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the +familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the +rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps--and good +mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but +quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights +burning o' nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges. + + * * * * * * * + +It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call +them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed +the rest of this story. + +I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; I +suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking +patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing some +such little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there +was a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgments +were going on. And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing +court-officer angel would come outside the door and call another +case. + +While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether +there would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming +that I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and +sang out: + +"Case No. 99,852,743." + +Up stepped a plain-clothes man--there were lots of 'em there, +dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just +like cops do on earth--and by the arm he dragged--whom, do you +think? Why, Liz! + +The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to +Mr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case. + +"A very sad one," says he, laying the points of his manicured +fingers together. "An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special +Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to +me. The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had no +defense. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of +which are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is +death. Praise the Lord." + +The court officer opened the door and stepped out. + +"Poor girl," said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, +with a tear in his eye. "It was one of the saddest cases that I ever +met with. Of course she was"-- + +"Discharged," said the court officer. "Come here, Jonesy. First +thing you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How +would you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea +Islands--hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'll +be transferred--see? The guilty party you've not to look for in +this case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the +window reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in +the streets. Get a move on you." + +Now, wasn't that a silly dream? + + + + +ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS + + +Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are +forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met +and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their +fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of +respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the +monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and +bumptious civic alma mater. + +The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral +cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high +and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his +badge and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the +solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to +accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month +after his dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck +from his free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from +her nest, and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after +that he acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and +wrote complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought +the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give +him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of +an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex street, and +quoting the words of a song book ballad. + +Murray's fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All +the pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The +megaphone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on +a grand and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about +something, and the prince had been escorted to the door by the +butler, which, in said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the +avuncular shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he +drifted downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the +crusts of the streets with him. + +One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great +bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase--drawing +irony instead of pity to his petitions for aid--was heaped against +the arm of the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by +tufts of vermilion, week-old whiskers and topped by a sagging white +straw hat, looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that +you may observe in a dark Third avenue window, challenging your +imagination to say whether it be something recent in the way of +ladies' hats or a strawberry shortcake. A tight-drawn belt--last +relic of his official spruceness--made a deep furrow in his +circumference. The Captain's shoes were buttonless. In a smothered +bass he cursed his star of ill-luck. + +Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of +blue serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little +indistinct, like some ghost that had been dispossessed. + +"I'm hungry," growled the Captain--"by the top sirloin of the Bull +of Bashan, I'm starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery +restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't +you think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders +scrunched up, giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving +his coach--what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some +place we can get something to chew." + +"You forget, my dear Captain," said Murray, without moving, "that +our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion." + +"You bet it was," groaned the Captain, "you bet your life it was. +Have you got any more like that to make--hey?" + +"I admit we failed," sighed Murray. "I was sure Malone would be good +for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the +last time I spent a nickel in his establishment." + +"I had this hand," said the Captain, extending the unfortunate +member--"I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two +sardine sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us." + +"I was within two inches of the olives," said Murray. "Stuffed +olives. I haven't tasted one in a year." + +"What'll we do?" grumbled the Captain. "We can't starve." + +"Can't we?" said Murray quietly. "I'm glad to hear that. I was +afraid we could." + +"You wait here," said the Captain, rising, heavily and puffily to +his feet. "I'm going to try to make one more turn. You stay here +till I come back, Murray. I won't be over half an hour. If I turn +the trick I'll come back flush." + +He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He +gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a +pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by +tightening his belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo +rhinoceros, across the south end of the park. + +When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly +eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two +green lights. + +"A police captain named Maroney," he said to the desk sergeant, "was +dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years +ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the +police?" + +"Why are ye asking?" inquired the sergeant, with a frown. + +"I thought there might be a reward standing," explained Murray, +easily. "I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty +shady at present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there +should be a reward--" + +"There's no reward," interrupted the sergeant, shortly. "The man's +not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um, +and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a +start." + +Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity. + +"I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman," he +said, severely, "if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of +its offenders." + +Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and +shrank within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment. + +Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy +and thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn +away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with +ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he +was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly +proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and kitchen +stuff. + +"For Heaven's sake, Captain," sniffed Murray, "I doubt that I would +have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to +resort to swill barrels. I"-- + +"Cheese it," said the Captain, harshly. "I'm not hogging it yet. +It's all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed +marriage to that Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now, that +business could be built up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be. +I thought I had that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what +she done to me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there's another scheme +queered." + +"You don't mean to say," said Murray, with infinite contempt, "that +you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your +disgraceful troubles!" + +"Me?" said the Captain. "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl +of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal +a wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder." + +"I think," said Murray, resting his head on his hands, "that I would +play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces +of silver I would"-- + +"Oh, come now!" exclaimed the Captain in dismay. "You wouldn't do +that, Murray! I always thought that Kike's squeal on his boss was +about the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his +friend away is worse than a pirate." + +Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the +electric light fell. + +"Is that you, Mac?" he said, halting before the derelicts. His +diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. +He was big and smooth and well fed. "Yes, I see it's you," he +continued. "They told me at Mike's that I might find you over here. +Let me see you a few minutes, Mac." + +The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie +Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must +be something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of +shadow. + +"You know, Mac," he said, "they're trying Inspector Pickering on +graft charges." + +"He was my inspector," said the Captain. + +"O'Shea wants the job," went on Finnegan. "He must have it. It's for +the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony +will do it. He was your 'man higher up' when you were on the force. +His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the +stand and testify against him." + +"He was"--began the Captain. + +"Wait a minute," said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out +of his inside pocket. "Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty +on the spot, and the rest"-- + +"He was my friend, I say," finished the Captain. "I'll see you and +the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before +I'll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I'm down and out; but I'm +no traitor to a man that's been my friend." The Captain's voice rose +and boomed like a split trombone. "Get out of this park, Charlie +Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; +and take your dirty money with you." + +Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his +seat. + +"I couldn't avoid hearing," said Murray, drearily. "I think you are +the biggest fool I ever saw." + +"What would you have done?" asked the Captain. + +"Nailed Pickering to the cross," said Murray. + +"Sonny," said the Captain, huskily and without heat. "You and me are +different. New York is divided into two parts--above Forty-second +street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both +act according to our lights." + +An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that +it lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and +moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the +park, struck through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway, +at this hour as dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii. + +Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt +and slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he +would have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every +street in that part of the city other unkempt and slinking figures +were shuffling and hurrying toward a converging point--a point that +is marked by no monument save that groove on the pavement worn by +tens of thousands of waiting feet. + +At Ninth street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a +Broadway car and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray, +pounced upon him and dragged him under a street light. The Captain +lumbered slowly to the corner, like a wounded bear, and waited, +growling. + +"Jerry!" cried the hatted one. "How fortunate! I was to begin a +search for you to-morrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You're +to be restored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the office in the +morning and get all the money you want. I've liberal instructions in +that respect." + +"And the little matrimonial arrangement?" said Murray, with his head +turned sidewise. + +"Why.--er--well, of course, your uncle understands--expects that +the engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be"-- + +"Good night," said Murray, moving away. + +"You madman!" cried the other, catching his arm. "Would you give up +two millions on account of"-- + +"Did you ever see her nose, old man?" asked Murray, solemnly. + +"But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress, +and"-- + +"Did you ever see it?" + +"Yes, I admit that her nose isn't"-- + +"Good night!" said Murray. "My friend is waiting for me. I am +quoting him when I authorize you to report that there is 'nothing +doing.' Good night." + +A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth street +far up Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain and +Murray fell in at the tail of the quivering millipede. + +"Twenty feet longer than it was last night," said Murray, looking up +at his measuring angle of Grace Church. + +"Half an hour," growled the Captain, "before we get our punk." + +The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward +slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a +hissing serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights +closed up in the rear. + + + + +A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM + + + "The knights are dead; + Their swords are rust. + Except a few who have to hust- + Le all the time + To raise the dust." + + +DEAR READER: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city +with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious +and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was--oh, bother +thermometers!--who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so +hot that-- + +The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to +get your gin fizz now--as soon as all the other people got theirs. +The hospitals were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when +little, woolly dogs loll their tongues out and say "woof, woof!" +at the fleas that bite 'em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies +screech "Mad dog!" and policemen begin to shoot, somebody is +going to get hurt. The man from Pompton, N.J., who always wears +an overcoat in July, had turned up in a Broadway hotel drinking +hot Scotches and enjoying his annual ray from the calcium. +Philanthropists were petitioning the Legislature to pass a bill +requiring builders to make tenement fire-escapes more commodious, +so that families might die all together of the heat instead of one +or two at a time. So many men were telling you about the number of +baths they took each day that you wondered how they got along after +the real lessee of the apartment came back to town and thanked 'em +for taking such good care of it. The young man who called loudly for +cold beef and beer in the restaurant, protesting that roast pullet +and Burgundy was really too heavy for such weather, blushed when he +met your eye, for you had heard him all winter calling, in modest +tones, for the same ascetic viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt waists, +actors and baseball excuses grew thinner. Yes, it was summertime. + +A man stood at Thirty-fourth street waiting for a downtown car. +A man of forty, gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly +dressed, with a harassed look around the eyes. He wiped his forehead +and laughed loudly when a fat man with an outing look stopped and +spoke with him. + +"No, siree," he shouted with defiance and scorn. "None of your old +mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators +for me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do +it. New York, sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep +in the shade and watch your diet, and don't get too far away from +an electric fan. Talk about your Adirondacks and your Catskills! +There's more solid comfort in the borough of Manhattan than in +all the rest of the country together. No, siree! No tramping up +perpendicular cliffs and being waked up at 4 in the morning by a +million flies, and eating canned goods straight from the city for +me. Little old New York will take a few select summer boarders; +comforts and conveniences of homes--that's the ad. that I answer +every time." + +"You need a vacation," said the fat man, looking closely at the +other. "You haven't been away from town in years. Better come with +me for two weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at +anything now that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed +a three-pound brown last week." + +"Nonsense!" cried the other man. "Go ahead, if you like, and boggle +around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish. +When I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at +you fellows whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat +in the country thinking you are having a good time. For me Father +Knickerbocker's little improved farm with the big shady lane running +through the middle of it." + +The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who +thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country +boarded a car and went buzzing down to his office. On the way he +threw away his newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky +above the housetops. + +"Three pounds!" he muttered, absently. "And Harding isn't a liar. +I believe, if I could--but it's impossible--they've got to have +another month--another month at least." + +In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, +headforemost, into the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk, +came and added a spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams. + +At 5 o'clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office +chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud: + +"I wonder what kind of bait Harding used." + + * * * * * * * + +She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to +Gaines. Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew +that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire's son, +and that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure +thing. But white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with +twenty-five's lordly air. + +The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that +year. There were two or three young college men and a couple of +artists and a young naval officer on one side. On the other there +were enough beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of +a society paper to refer to them as a "bevy." But the moon among the +stars was Mary Sewell. Each one of the young men greatly desired to +arrange matters so that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix +the furnace, and have her do away with the "Sewell" part of her name +forever. Those who could stay only a week or two went away hinting +at pistols and blighted hearts. But Compton stayed like the +mountains themselves, for he could afford it. And Gaines stayed +because he was a fighter and wasn't afraid of millionaire's sons, +and--well, he adored the country. + +"What do you think, Miss Mary?" he said once. "I knew a duffer in +New York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could +keep cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn't he an awful +silly? I don't think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of +June." + +"Mamma was thinking of going back week after next," said Miss Mary +with a lovely frown. + +"But when you think of it," said Gaines, "there are lots of jolly +places in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and +the--er--the roof gardens." + +Deepest blue was the lake that day--the day when they had the mock +tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in a glade in +the woods and caught curtain rings on the end of a lance. Such fun! + +Cool and dry as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed +forest. The valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A +white mist from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand's breadth +of tree tops half-way down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand +with young summer. Nothing on Broadway like that. + +The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad +drollery. The woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and +sprites. Gaines caught most of the rings. His was the privilege to +crown the queen of the tournament. He was the conquering knight--as +far as the rings went. On his arm he wore a white scarf. Compton +wore light blue. She had declared her preference for blue, but she +wore white that day. + +Gaines looked about for the queen to crown her. He heard her merry +laugh, as if from the clouds. She had slipped away and climbed +Chimney Rock, a little granite bluff, and stood there, a white fairy +among the laurels, fifty feet above their heads. + +Instantly he and Compton accepted the implied challenge. The bluff +was easily mounted at the rear, but the front offered small hold +to hand or foot. Each man quickly selected his route and began +to climb, A crevice, a bush, a slight projection, a vine or tree +branch--all of these were aids that counted in the race. It was +all foolery--there was no stake; but there was youth in it, cross +reader, and light hearts, and something else that Miss Clay writes +so charmingly about. + +Gaines gave a great tug at the root of a laurel and pulled himself +to Miss Mary's feet. On his arm he carried the wreath of roses; and +while the villagers and summer boarders screamed and applauded below +he placed it on the queen's brow. + +"You are a gallant knight," said Miss Mary. + +"If I could be your true knight always," began Gaines, but Miss Mary +laughed him dumb, for Compton scrambled over the edge of the rock +one minute behind time. + +What a twilight that was when they drove back to the hotel! The opal +of the valley turned slowly to purple, the dark woods framed the +lake as a mirror, the tonic air stirred the very soul in one. The +first pale stars came out over the mountain tops where yet a faint +glow of-- + + * * * * * * * + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gaines," said Adkins. + +The man who believed New York to be the finest summer resort in the +world opened his eyes and kicked over the mucilage bottle on his +desk. + +"I--I believe I was asleep," he said. + +"It's the heat," said Adkins. "It's something awful in the city +these"-- + +"Nonsense!" said the other. "The city beats the country ten to one +in summer. Fools go out tramping in muddy brooks and wear themselves +out trying to catch little fish as long as your finger. Stay in town +and keep comfortable--that's my idea." + +"Some letters just came," said Adkins. "I thought you might like to +glance at them before you go." + +Let us look over his shoulder and read just a few lines of one of +them: + + + MY DEAR, DEAR HUSBAND: Just received your letter ordering us to + stay another month. . . . Rita's cough is almost gone. . . . Johnny + has simply gone wild like a little Indian . . . Will be the + making of both children . . . work so hard, and I know that your + business can hardly afford to keep us here so long . . . best man + that ever . . . you always pretend that you like the city in + summer . . . trout fishing that you used to be so fond of . . . + and all to keep us well and happy . . . come to you if it were + not doing the babies so much good. . . . I stood last evening on + Chimney Rock in exactly the same spot where I was when you put + the wreath of roses on my head . . . through all the world . . . + when you said you would be my true knight . . . fifteen years + ago, dear, just think! . . . have always been that to me . . . + ever and ever, + + MARY. + + +The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in the +country dropped into a caf on his way home and had a glass of beer +under an electric fan. + +"Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used," he said to himself. + + + + +THE LAST LEAF + + +In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run +crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These +"places" make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself +a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in +this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and +canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself +coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! + +So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came +prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables +and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs +and a chafing dish or two from Sixth avenue, and became a "colony." + +At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their +studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the +other from California. They had met at the _table d'hote_ of an +Eighth street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory +salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio +resulted. + +That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the +doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one +here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this +ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet +trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." + +Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. +A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs +was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. +But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted +iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the +blank side of the next brick house. + +One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a +shaggy, gray eyebrow. + +"She has one chance in--let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down +the mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And that chance is for her +to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of +the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little +lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she +anything on her mind?" + +"She--she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue. + +"Paint?--bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about +twice--a man, for instance?" + +"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man +worth--but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." + +"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all +that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can +accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages +in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent. from the curative +power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about +the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a +one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten." + +After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a +Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room +with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. + +Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her +face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was +asleep. + +She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate +a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by +drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to +pave their way to Literature. + +As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and +a monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a +low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. + +Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and +counting--counting backward. + +"Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven;" and then "ten," and +"nine;" and then "eight" and "seven," almost together. + +Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? +There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of +the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and +decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold +breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its +skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. + +"What is it, dear?" asked Sue. + +"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster +now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head +ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There +are only five left now." + +"Five what, dear. Tell your Sudie." + +"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. +I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" + +"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with +magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting +well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be +a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for +getting well real soon were--let's see exactly what he said--he said +the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as +we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a +new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to +her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port +wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self." + +"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed +out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. +That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it +gets dark. Then I'll go, too." + +"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to +keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done +working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the +light, or I would draw the shade down." + +"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly. + +"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Besides I don't want you to +keep looking at those silly ivy leaves." + +"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her +eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, "because I +want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of +thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing +down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." + +"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for +the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move +'till I come back." + +Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath +them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard +curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. +Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush +without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. +He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet +begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and +then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a +little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony +who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to +excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he +was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in +any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to +protect the two young artists in the studio above. + +Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly +lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that +had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first +line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she +feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float +away when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. + +Old Behrman, with his red eyes, plainly streaming, shouted his +contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. + +"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness +to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not +heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool +hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der +prain of her? Ach, dot poor lettle Miss Johnsy." + +"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her +mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if +you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a +horrid old--old flibbertigibbet." + +"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not +bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to +say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which +one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a +masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes." + +Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade +down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. +In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. +Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A +persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in +his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an upturned +kettle for a rock. + +When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found +Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. + +"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper. + +Wearily Sue obeyed. + +But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had +endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the +brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark +green near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the +yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some +twenty feet above the ground. + +"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall +during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall +die at the same time." + +"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, +"think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?" + +But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is +a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. +The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties +that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed. + +The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the +lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with +the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the +rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low +Dutch eaves. + +When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the +shade be raised. + +The ivy leaf was still there. + +Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to +Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. + +"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that +last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to +want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with +a little port in it, and--no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then +pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook." + +An hour later she said. + +"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples." + +The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into +the hallway as he left. + +"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in +his. "With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case +I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is--some kind of an artist, I +believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is +acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day +to be made more comfortable." + +The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You've +won. Nutrition and care now--that's all." + +And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly +knitting a very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put +one arm around her, pillows and all. + +"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman +died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. +The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room +downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet +through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been +on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still +lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some +scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed +on it, and--look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the +wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the +wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece--he painted it +there the night that the last leaf fell." + + + + +THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST + + +One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue +boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young +lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a +plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed +languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot +one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured +his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the +grace and beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, +business and political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one +from the tablets of his consideration. + +Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps enjoying his +cigar. There was a soft rustle behind and above him, and Andy turned +his head--and had his head turned. + +Just coming out the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black +dress of _crpe de_--_crpe de_--oh, this thin black goods. Her hat +was black, and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as +a spider's web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk +gloves. Not a speck of white or a spot of color about her dress +anywhere. Her rich golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, +into a shining, smooth knot low on her neck. Her face was plain +rather than pretty, but it was now illuminated and made almost +beautiful by her large gray eyes that gazed above the houses across +the street into the sky with an expression of the most appealing +sadness and melancholy. + +Gather the idea, girls--all black, you know, with the preference for +_crpe de_--oh, _crpe de Chine_--that's it. All black, and that +sad, faraway look, and the hair shining under the black veil (you +have to be a blonde, of course), and try to look as if, although +your young life had been blighted just as it was about to give a +hop-skip-and-a-jump over the threshold of life, a walk in the park +might do you good, and be sure to happen out the door at the right +moment, and--oh, it'll fetch 'em every time. But it's fierce, now, +how cynical I am, ain't it?--to talk about mourning costumes this +way. + +Mr. Donovan suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of his +consideration. He threw away the remaining inch-and-a-quarter of his +cigar, that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly +shifted his center of gravity to his low cut patent leathers. + +"It's a fine, clear evening, Miss Conway," he said; and if the +Weather Bureau could have heard the confident emphasis of his tones +it would have hoisted the square white signal, and nailed it to the +mast. + +"To them that has the heart to enjoy it, it is, Mr. Donovan," said +Miss Conway, with a sigh. + +Mr. Donovan, in his heart, cursed fair weather. Heartless weather! +It should hail and blow and snow to be consonant with the mood of +Miss Conway. + +"I hope none of your relatives--I hope you haven't sustained a +loss?" ventured Mr. Donovan. + +"Death has claimed," said Miss Conway, hesitating--"not a relative, +but one who--but I will not intrude my grief upon you, Mr. Donovan." + +"Intrude?" protested Mr. Donovan. "Why, say, Miss Conway, I'd be +delighted, that is, I'd be sorry--I mean I'm sure nobody could +sympathize with you truer than I would." + +Miss Conway smiled a little smile. And oh, it was sadder than her +expression in repose. + +"'Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and they give you the +laugh,'" she quoted. "I have learned that, Mr. Donovan. I have no +friends or acquaintances in this city. But you have been kind to me. +I appreciate it highly." + +He had passed her the pepper twice at the table. + +"It's tough to be alone in New York--that's a cinch," said Mr. +Donovan. "But, say--whenever this little old town does loosen up and +get friendly it goes the limit. Say you took a little stroll in the +park, Miss Conway--don't you think it might chase away some of your +mullygrubs? And if you'd allow me--" + +"Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I'd be pleased to accept of your escort if you +think the company of one whose heart is filled with gloom could be +anyways agreeable to you." + +Through the open gates of the iron-railed, old, downtown park, where +the elect once took the air, they strolled, and found a quiet bench. + +There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old +age: youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; +old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same. + +"He was my fiance," confided Miss Conway, at the end of an hour. "We +were going to be married next spring. I don't want you to think that +I am stringing you, Mr. Donovan, but he was a real Count. He had an +estate and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. +I never saw the beat of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, +and once we eloped, but papa overtook us, and took us back. I +thought sure papa and Fernando would fight a duel. Papa has a livery +business--in P'kipsee, you know." + +"Finally, papa came 'round, all right, and said we might be married +next spring. Fernando showed him proofs of his title and wealth, and +then went over to Italy to get the castle fixed up for us. Papa's +very proud, and when Fernando wanted to give me several thousand +dollars for my trousseau he called him down something awful. He +wouldn't even let me take a ring or any presents from him. And when +Fernando sailed I came to the city and got a position as cashier in +a candy store." + +"Three days ago I got a letter from Italy, forwarded from P'kipsee, +saying that Fernando had been killed in a gondola accident." + +"That is why I am in mourning. My heart, Mr. Donovan, will remain +forever in his grave. I guess I am poor company, Mr. Donovan, but I +cannot take any interest in no one. I should not care to keep you +from gayety and your friends who can smile and entertain you. +Perhaps you would prefer to walk back to the house?" + +Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a +pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other +fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature. Ask any +widow. Something must be done to restore that missing organ to +weeping angels in _crpe de Chine_. Dead men certainly get the worst +of it from all sides. + +"I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Donovan, gently. "No, we won't walk +back to the house just yet. And don't say you haven't no friends in +this city, Miss Conway. I'm awful sorry, and I want you to believe +I'm your friend, and that I'm awful sorry." + +"I've got his picture here in my locket," said Miss Conway, after +wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. "I never showed it to +anybody; but I will to you, Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be +a true friend." + +Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph +in the locket that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count +Mazzini was one to command interest. It was a smooth, intelligent, +bright, almost a handsome face--the face of a strong, cheerful man +who might well be a leader among his fellows. + +"I have a larger one, framed, in my room," said Miss Conway. "When +we return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of +Fernando. But he ever will be present in my heart, that's a sure +thing." + +A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan,--that of supplanting the +unfortunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration +for her determined him to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking +did not seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful +friend was the rle he essayed; and he played it so successfully +that the next half-hour found them conversing pensively across two +plates of ice-cream, though yet there was no diminution of the +sadness in Miss Conway's large gray eyes. + +Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and +brought down the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk +scarf. Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes. + +"He gave me this the night he left for Italy," said Miss Conway. "I +had the one for the locket made from this." + +"A fine-looking man," said Mr. Donovan, heartily. "How would it suit +you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney +next Sunday afternoon?" + +A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the +other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black. + +A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the +downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim +kinetoscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn +a look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that +love's lips could not keep back any longer the questions that love's +heart propounded. + +"What's the matter, Andy, you are so solemn and grouchy to-night?" + +"Nothing, Maggie." + +"I know better. Can't I tell? You never acted this way before. What +is it?" + +"It's nothing much, Maggie." + +"Yes it is; and I want to know. I'll bet it's some other girl you +are thinking about. All right. Why don't you go get her if you want +her? Take your arm away, if you please." + +"I'll tell you then," said Andy, wisely, "but I guess you won't +understand it exactly. You've heard of Mike Sullivan, haven't you? +'Big Mike' Sullivan, everybody calls him." + +"No, I haven't," said Maggie. "And I don't want to, if he makes you +act like this. Who is he?" + +"He's the biggest man in New York," said Andy, almost reverently. +"He can about do anything he wants to with Tammany or any other old +thing in the political line. He's a mile high and as broad as East +River. You say anything against Big Mike, and you'll have a million +men on your collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit +over to the old country awhile back, and the kings took to their +holes like rabbits. + +"Well, Big Mike's a friend of mine. I ain't more than deuce-high in +the district as far as influence goes, but Mike's as good a friend +to a little man, or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him +to-day on the Bowery, and what do you think he does? Comes up and +shakes hands. 'Andy,' says he, 'I've been keeping cases on you. +You've been putting in some good licks over on your side of the +street, and I'm proud of you. What'll you take to drink?" He takes a +cigar, and I take a highball. I told him I was going to get married +in two weeks. 'Andy,' says he, 'send me an invitation, so I'll keep +in mind of it, and I'll come to the wedding.' That's what Big Mike +says to me; and he always does what he says. + +"You don't understand it, Maggie, but I'd have one of my hands +cut off to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would be the +proudest day of my life. When he goes to a man's wedding, there's a +guy being married that's made for life. Now, that's why I'm maybe +looking sore to-night." + +"Why don't you invite him, then, if he's so much to the mustard?" +said Maggie, lightly. + +"There's a reason why I can't," said Andy, sadly. "There's a reason +why he mustn't be there. Don't ask me what it is, for I can't tell +you." + +"Oh, I don't care," said Maggie. "It's something about politics, of +course. But it's no reason why you can't smile at me." + +"Maggie," said Andy, presently, "do you think as much of me as you +did of your--as you did of the Count Mazzini?" + +He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply. And then, suddenly +she leaned against his shoulder and began to cry--to cry and shake +with sobs, holding his arm tightly, and wetting the _crpe de Chine_ +with tears. + +"There, there, there!" soothed Andy, putting aside his own trouble. +"And what is it, now?" + +"Andy," sobbed Maggie. "I've lied to you, and you'll never marry me, +or love me any more. But I feel that I've got to tell. Andy, there +never was so much as the little finger of a count. I never had a +beau in my life. But all the other girls had; and they talked about +'em; and that seemed to make the fellows like 'em more. And, Andy, +I look swell in black--you know I do. So I went out to a photograph +store and bought that picture, and had a little one made for my +locket, and made up all that story about the Count, and about his +being killed, so I could wear black. And nobody can love a liar, and +you'll shake me, Andy, and I'll die for shame. Oh, there never was +anybody I liked but you--and that's all." + +But instead of being pushed away, she found Andy's arm folding her +closer. She looked up and saw his face cleared and smiling. + +"Could you--could you forgive me, Andy?" + +"Sure," said Andy. "It's all right about that. Back to the cemetery +for the Count. You've straightened everything out, Maggie. I was in +hopes you would before the wedding-day. Bully girl!" + +"Andy," said Maggie, with a somewhat shy smile, after she had been +thoroughly assured of forgiveness, "did you believe all that story +about the Count?" + +"Well, not to any large extent," said Andy, reaching for his cigar +case, "because it's Big Mike Sullivan's picture you've got in that +locket of yours." + + + + +THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION + + +The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he +can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, +his conception of what it is not--and lo! his paper is covered. +Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmapable trail into that +mooted country, Bohemia. + +Grainger, sub-editor of _Doc's Magazine_, closed his roll-top desk, +put on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the "down" button, and +waited for the elevator. + +Grainger's day had been trying. The chief had tried to ruin the +magazine a dozen times by going against Grainger's ideas for running +it. A lady whose grandfather had fought with McClellan had brought a +portfolio of poems in person. + +Grainger was curator of the Lion's House of the magazine. That day +he had "lunched" an Arctic explorer, a short-story writer, and the +famous conductor of a slaughter-house expose. Consequently his mind +was in a whirl of icebergs, Maupassant, and trichinosis. + +But there was a surcease and a recourse; there was Bohemia. He would +seek distraction there; and, let's see--he would call by for Mary +Adrian. + +Half an hour later he threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid-hunter +through the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the "Idealia" +apartment-house. One day the christeners of apartment-houses and the +cognominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there will be some +jealous and sanguinary knifing. + +The clerk breathed Grainger's name so languidly into the house +telephone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, +down to the janitor's regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily +up to Miss Adrian's ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to come up +immediately. + +A colored maid with an Eliza-crossing-the-ice expression opened +the door of the apartment for him. Grainger walked sideways down +the narrow hall. A bunch of burnt umber hair and a sea-green eye +appeared in the crack of a door. A long, white, undraped arm came +out, barring the way. + +"So glad you came, Ricky, instead of any of the others," said +the eye. "Light a cigarette and give it to me. Going to take me +to dinner? Fine. Go into the front room till I finish dressing. +But don't sit in your usual chair. There's pie in it--Meringue. +Kappelman threw it at Reeves last evening while he was reciting. +Sophy has just come to straighten up. Is it lit? Thanks. There's +Scotch on the mantel--oh, no, it isn't,--that's chartreuse. Ask +Sophy to find you some. I won't be long." + +Grainger escaped the meringue. As he waited his spirits sank still +lower. The atmosphere of the room was as vapid as a zephyr wandering +over a Vesuvian lava-bed. Relics of some feast lay about the room, +scattered in places where even a prowling cat would have been +surprised to find them. A straggling cluster of deep red roses in +a marmalade jar bowed their heads over tobacco ashes and unwashed +goblets. A chafing-dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet music +supported a stack of sandwiches in a chair. + +Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black +fabric whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to +summon visions ranging between the extremes of man's experience. +Spelled with an "" it belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous +dreams; with an "a" it drapes lamentation and woe. + +That evening they went to the Caf Andr. And, as people would +confide to you in a whisper that Andr's was the only truly Bohemian +restaurant in town, it may be well to follow them. + +Andr began his professional career as a waiter in a Bowery ten-cent +eating-house. Had you seen him there you would have called him +tough--to yourself. Not aloud, for he would have "soaked" you as +quickly as he would have soaked his thumb in your coffee. He saved +money and started a basement _table d'hote_ in Eighth (or Ninth) +Street. One afternoon Andr drank too much absinthe. He announced to +his startled family that he was the Grand Llama of Thibet, therefore +requiring an empty audience hall in which to be worshiped. He moved +all the tables and chairs from the restaurant into the back yard, +wrapped a red table-cloth around himself, and sat on a step-ladder +for a throne. When the diners began to arrive, madame, in a flurry of +despair, laid cloths and ushered them, trembling, outside. Between +the tables clothes-lines were stretched, bearing the family wash. A +party of Bohemia hunters greeted the artistic innovation with shrieks +and acclamations of delight. That week's washing was not taken in for +two years. When Andr came to his senses he had the menu printed on +stiffly starched cuffs, and served the ices in little wooden tubs. +Next he took down his sign and darkened the front of the house. +When you went there to dine you fumbled for an electric button and +pressed it. A lookout slid open a panel in the door, looked at you +suspiciously, and asked if you were acquainted with Senator Herodotus +Q. McMilligan, of the Chickasaw Nation. If you were, you were +admitted and allowed to dine. If you were not, you were admitted and +allowed to dine. There you have one of the abiding principles of +Bohemia. When Andr had accumulated $20,000 he moved up-town, near +Broadway, in the fierce light that beats upon the thrown-down. +There we find him and leave him, with customers in pearls and +automobile veils, striving to catch his excellently graduated nod +of recognition. + +There is a large round table in the northeast corner of Andr's at +which six can sit. To this table Grainger and Mary Adrian made their +way. Kappelman and Reeves were already there. And Miss Tooker, who +designed the May cover for the _Ladies' Notathome Magazine_. And Mrs. +Pothunter, who never drank anything but black and white highballs, +being in mourning for her husband, who--oh, I've forgotten what he +did--died, like as not. + +Spaghetti-weary reader, wouldst take one penny-in-the-slot peep into +the fair land of Bohemia? Then look; and when you think you have +seen it you have not. And it is neither thimbleriggery nor +astigmatism. + +The walls of the Caf Andr were covered with original sketches by +the artists who furnished much of the color and sound of the place. +Fair woman furnished the theme for the bulk of the drawings. When +you say "sirens and siphons" you come near to estimating the +alliterative atmosphere of Andr's. + +First, I want you to meet my friend, Miss Adrian. Miss Tooker and +Mrs. Pothunter you already know. While she tucks in the fingers of +her elbow gloves you shall have her daguerreotype. So faint and +uncertain shall the portrait be: + +Age, somewhere between twenty-seven and highneck evening dresses. +Camaraderie in large bunches--whatever the fearful word may mean. +Habitat--anywhere from Seattle to Terra del Fuego. Temperament +uncharted--she let Reeves squeeze her hand after he recited one of +his poems; but she counted the change after sending him out with a +dollar to buy some pickled pig's feet. Deportment 75 out of a +possible 100. Morals 100. + +Mary was one of the princesses of Bohemia. In the first place, it +was a royal and a daring thing to have been named Mary. There are +twenty Fifines and Heloises to one Mary in the Country of Elusion. + +Now her gloves are tucked in. Miss Tooker has assumed a June poster +pose; Mrs. Pothunter has bitten her lips to make the red show; +Reeves has several times felt his coat to make sure that his latest +poem is in the pocket. (It had been neatly typewritten; but he has +copied it on the backs of letters with a pencil.) Kappelman is +underhandedly watching the clock. It is ten minutes to nine. When +the hour comes it is to remind him of a story. Synopsis: A French +girl says to her suitor: "Did you ask my father for my hand at nine +o'clock this morning, as you said you would?" "I did not," he. +replies. "At nine o'clock I was fighting a duel with swords in the +Bois de Boulogne." "Coward!" she hisses. + +The dinner was ordered. You know how the Bohemian feast of reason +keeps up with the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with the +soup; repartee with the entre; brag with the roast; knocks for +Whistler and Kipling with the salad; songs with the coffee; the +slapsticks with the cordials. + +Between Miss Adrian's eyebrows was the pucker that shows the intense +strain it requires to be at ease in Bohemia. Pat must come each +sally, _mot_, and epigram. Every second of deliberation upon a reply +costs you a bay leaf. Fine as a hair, a line began to curve from her +nostrils to her mouth. To hold her own not a chance must be missed. +A sentence addressed to her must be as a piccolo, each word of it +a stop, which she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she +must always be quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle the light +canoe of conversation away from the rocks in the rapids that flow +from the Pierian spring. For, plodding reader, the handwriting on +the wall in the banquet hall of Bohemia is "_Laisser faire_." The +gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that +of slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that holds them +in slavery. + +As the dinner waned, hands reached for the pepper cruet rather +than for the shaker of Attic salt. Miss Tooker, with an elbow to +business, leaned across the table toward Grainger, upsetting her +glass of wine. + +"Now while you are fed and in good humor," she said, "I want to +make a suggestion to you about a new cover." + +"A good idea," said Grainger, mopping the tablecloth with his +napkin. "I'll speak to the waiter about it." + +Kappelman, the painter, was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate +Athenian wit he got up from his chair and waltzed down the room +with a waiter. That dependent, no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, +worthy, tax-paying, art-despising biped, released himself from +the unequal encounter, carried his professional smile back to the +dumb-waiter and dropped it down the shaft to eternal oblivion. +Reeves began to make Keats turn in his grave. Mrs. Pothunter told +the story of the man who met the widow on the train. Miss Adrian +hummed what is still called a _chanson_ in the cafs of Bridgeport. +Grainger edited each individual effort with his assistant editor's +smile, which meant: "Great! but you'll have to send them in through +the regular channels. If I were the chief now--but you know how it +is." + +And soon the head waiter bowed before them, desolated to relate that +the closing hour had already become chronologically historical; so +out all trooped into the starry midnight, filling the street with +gay laughter, to be barked at by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed +by the dull inhabitants of an uninspired world. + +Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of +the Idealia. After he had gone she came down again carrying a small +hand-bag, 'phoned for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, +boarded a 12.55 commuter's train, rode four hours with her +burnt-umber head bobbing against the red-plush back of the seat, +and landed during a fresh, stinging, glorious sunrise at a deserted +station, the size of a peach crate, called Crocusville. + +She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown +cottage stood twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, +Calvinistic face and clothes dyed blacker than a raven in a +coal-mine was washing his hands in a tin basin on the front porch. + +"How are you, father?" said Mary timidly. + +"I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your +mother in the kitchen." + +In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the +forehead, and pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for +breakfast. Mary sat in a wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a +thrill in her heart. + +For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and +tea. + +"You are pursuing the same avocation in the city concerning which +you have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust," said her +father. + +"Yes," said Mary, "I am still reviewing books for the same +publication." + +After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat +in straight-back chairs in the bare-floored parlor. + +"It is my custom," said the old man, "on the Sabbath day to read +aloud from the great work entitled the 'Apology for Authorized and +Set Forms of Liturgy,' by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered +theologian, Jeremy Taylor." + +"I know it," said Mary blissfully, folding her hands. + +For two hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the +notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating +in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden +chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect +as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of +a tom-tom. "Why, oh why," she said to herself, "does some one not +write words to it?" + +At eleven they went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine +bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would +have brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The +preacher singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious head +the damnation of the world. At each side of her an adamant parent +held her rigidly to the bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her +neck, but she dared not move. She lowered her eyes before the +congregation--a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through +which her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a +delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of +the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned her with beneficent +cruelty, as steel braces bind the feet of a crippled child. She was +hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, strait-jacketed, silenced, +ordered. When they came out the minister stopped to greet them. +Mary could only hang her head and answer "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," +to his questions. When she saw that the other women carried their +hymn-books at their waists with their left hands, she blushed and +moved hers there, too, from her right. + +She took the three-o'clock train back to the city. At nine she sat +at the round table for dinner in the Caf Andr. Nearly the same +crowd was there. + +"Where have you been to-day?" asked Mrs. Pothunter. "I 'phoned to +you at twelve." + +"I have been away in Bohemia," answered Mary, with a mystic smile. + +There! Mary has given it away. She has spoiled my climax. For I +was to have told you that Bohemia is nothing more than the little +country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship +in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and +treasure and move away beyond the hills. It is a hillside that you +turn your head to peer at from the windows of the Through Express. + +At exactly half past eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness +and slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. +Instantly she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that +he shrank down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across +his leering features. And all sounds ceased, as when the shadows of +great wings come upon a flock of chattering sparrows. One had broken +the paramount law of sham-Bohemia--the law of "_Laisser faire_." The +shock came not from the blow delivered, but from the blow received. +With the effect of a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his +pupils was that blow administered. Women pulled down their sleeves +and laid prim hands against their ruffled side locks. Men looked at +their watches. There was nothing of the effect of a brawl about it; +it was purely the still panic produced by the sound of the ax of the +fly cop, Conscience hammering at the gambling-house doors of the +Heart. + +With their punctilious putting on of cloaks, with their exaggerated +pretense of not having seen or heard, with their stammering exchange +of unaccustomed formalities, with their false show of a light-hearted +exit I must take leave of my Bohemian party. Mary has robbed me of my +climax; and she may go. + +But I am not defeated. Somewhere there exists a great vault miles +broad and miles long--more capacious than the champagne caves of +France. In that vault are stored the anticlimaxes that should have +been tagged to all the stories that have been told in the world. I +shall cheat that vault of one deposit. + +Minnie Brown, with her aunt, came from Crocusville down to the city +to see the sights. And because she had escorted me to fishless trout +streams and exhibited to me open-plumbed waterfalls and broken my +camera while I Julyed in her village, I must escort her to the hives +containing the synthetic clover honey of town. + +Especially did the custom-made Bohemia charm her. The spaghetti +wound its tendrils about her heart; the free red wine drowned her +belief in the existence of commercialism in the world; she was +dared and enchanted by the rugose wit that can be churned out of +California claret. + +But one evening I got her away from the smell of halibut and +linoleum long enough to read to her the manuscript of this story, +which then ended before her entrance into it. I read it to her +because I knew that all the printing-presses in the world were +running to try to please her and some others. And I asked her about +it. + +"I didn't quite catch the trains," said she. "How long was Mary in +Crocusville?" + +"Ten hours and five minutes," I replied. + +"Well, then, the story may do," said Minnie. "But if she had stayed +there a week Kappelman would have got his kiss." + + + + +THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT + + +At the street corner, as solid as granite in the "rush-hour" tide +of humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had +stained him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the +glaciers. + +He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as +broad-gauged as the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara +of sound--the crash of the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding +of rubberless tires and the antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers +indulging in scarifying repartee. And so, with his gold dust cashed +in to the merry air of a hundred thousand, and with the cakes and +ale of one week in Gotham turning bitter on his tongue, the Man from +Nome sighed to set foot again in Chilkoot, the exit from the land of +street noises and Dead Sea apple pies. + +Up Sixth avenue, with the tripping, scurrying, chattering, +bright-eyed, homing tide came the Girl from Sieber-Mason's. The Man +from Nome looked and saw, first, that she was supremely beautiful +after his own conception of beauty; and next, that she moved with +exactly the steady grace of a dog sled on a level crust of snow. His +third sensation was an instantaneous conviction that he desired her +greatly for his own. This quickly do men from Nome make up their +minds. Besides, he was going back to the North in a short time, and +to act quickly was no less necessary. + +A thousand girls from the great department store of Sieber-Mason +flowed along the sidewalk, making navigation dangerous to men whose +feminine field of vision for three years has been chiefly limited to +Siwash and Chilkat squaws. But the Man from Nome, loyal to her who +had resurrected his long cached heart, plunged into the stream of +pulchritude and followed her. + +Down Twenty-third street she glided swiftly, looking to neither side; +no more flirtatious than the bronze Diana above the Garden. Her fine +brown hair was neatly braided; her neat waist and unwrinkled black +skirt were eloquent of the double virtues--taste and economy. Ten +yards behind followed the smitten Man from Nome. + +Miss Claribel Colby, the Girl from Sieber-Mason's, belonged to +that sad company of mariners known as Jersey commuters. She walked +into the waiting-room of the ferry, and up the stairs, and by a +marvellous swift, little run, caught the ferry-boat that was just +going out. The Man from Nome closed up his ten yards in three jumps +and gained the deck close beside her. + +Miss Colby chose a rather lonely seat on the outside of the +upper-cabin. The night was not cold, and she desired to be away from +the curious eyes and tedious voices of the passengers. Besides, she +was extremely weary and drooping from lack of sleep. On the previous +night she had graced the annual ball and oyster fry of the West Side +Wholesale Fish Dealers' Assistants' Social Club No. 2, thus reducing +her usual time of sleep to only three hours. + +And the day had been uncommonly troublous. Customers had been +inordinately trying; the buyer in her department had scolded her +roundly for letting her stock run down; her best friend, Mamie +Tuthill, had snubbed her by going to lunch with that Dockery girl. + +The Girl from Sieber-Mason's was in that relaxed, softened mood +that often comes to the independent feminine wage-earner. It is a +mood most propitious for the man who would woo her. Then she has +yearnings to be set in some home and heart; to be comforted, and to +hide behind some strong arm and rest, rest. But Miss Claribel Colby +was also very sleepy. + +There came to her side a strong man, browned and dressed carelessly +in the best of clothes, with his hat in his hand. + +"Lady," said the Man from Nome, respectfully, "excuse me for +speaking to you, but I--I--I saw you on the street, and--and--" + +"Oh, gee!" remarked the Girl from Sieber-Mason's, glancing up with +the most capable coolness. "Ain't there any way to ever get rid +of you mashers? I've tried everything from eating onions to using +hatpins. Be on your way, Freddie." + +"I'm not one of that kind, lady," said the Man from Nome--"honest, +I'm not. As I say, I saw you on the street, and I wanted to know you +so bad I couldn't help followin' after you. I was afraid I wouldn't +ever see you again in this big town unless I spoke; and that's why I +done so." + +Miss Colby looked once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the +ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen +swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his +boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little +of what he had to say. + +"You may sit down," she said, laying her hand over a yawn with +ostentatious politness; "and--mind--don't get fresh or I'll call the +steward." + +The Man from Nome sat by her side. He admired her greatly. He more +than admired her. She had exactly the looks he had tried so long in +vain to find in a woman. Could she ever come to like him? Well, that +was to be seen. He must do all in his power to stake his claim, +anyhow. + +"My name's Blayden," said he--"Henry Blayden." + +"Are you real sure it ain't Jones?" asked the girl, leaning toward +him, with delicious, knowing raillery. + +"I'm down from Nome," he went on with anxious seriousness. "I +scraped together a pretty good lot of dust up there, and brought it +down with me." + +"Oh, say!" she rippled, pursuing persiflage with engaging lightness, +"then you must be on the White Wings force. I thought I'd seen you +somewhere." + +"You didn't see me on the street to-day when I saw you." + +"I never look at fellows on the street." + +"Well, I looked at you; and I never looked at anything before that I +thought was half as pretty." + +"Shall I keep the change?" + +"Yes, I reckon so. I reckon you could keep anything I've got. I +reckon I'm what you would call a rough man, but I could be awful +good to anybody I liked. I've had a rough time of it up yonder, but +I beat the game. Nearly 5,000 ounces of dust was what I cleaned up +while I was there." + +"Goodness!" exclaimed Miss Colby, obligingly sympathetic. "It must +be an awful dirty place, wherever it is." + +And then her eyes closed. The voice of the Man from Nome had a +monotony in its very earnestness. Besides, what dull talk was this +of brooms and sweeping and dust? She leaned her head back against +the wall. + +"Miss," said the Man from Nome, with deeper earnestness and +monotony, "I never saw anybody I liked as well as I do you. I know +you can't think that way of me right yet; but can't you give me a +chance? Won't you let me know you, and see if I can't make you like +me?" + +The head of the Girl from Sieber-Mason's slid over gently and rested +upon his shoulder. Sweet sleep had won her, and she was dreaming +rapturously of the Wholesale Fish Dealers' Assistants' ball. + +The gentleman from Nome kept his arms to himself. He did not +suspect sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to +surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by +regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, +merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken +advantage of. + +One small speck of alloy discounted the gold of his satisfaction. +Had he spoken too freely of his wealth? He wanted to be liked for +himself. + +"I want to say, Miss," he said, "that you can count on me. They know +me in the Klondike from Juneau to Circle City and down the whole +length of the Yukon. Many a night I've laid in the snow up there +where I worked like a slave for three years, and wondered if I'd +ever have anybody to like me. I didn't want all that dust just +myself. I thought I'd meet just the right one some time, and I done +it to-day. Money's a mighty good thing to have, but to have the love +of the one you like best is better still. If you was ever to marry a +man, Miss, which would you rather he'd have?" + +"Cash!" + +The word came sharply and loudly from Miss Colby's lips, giving +evidence that in her dreams she was now behind her counter in the +great department store of Sieber-Mason. + +Her head suddenly bobbed over sideways. She awoke, sat straight, and +rubbed her eyes. The Man from Nome was gone. + +"Gee! I believe I've been asleep," said Miss Colby "Wonder what +became of the White Wings!" + + + + +THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER + + +Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old +ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. +Oh, very well! Pass up this _sotto voce_ autobiography of an X if +you like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John +D's checkbook roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all +right. But don't forget that small change can say a word to the +point now and then. The next time you tip your grocer's clerk a +silver quarter to give you extra weight of his boss's goods read the +four words above the lady's head. How are they for repartee? + +I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen +one in a friend's hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture of +the bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions +of Americans. The heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn the +ends. On my back is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres or +Maxine Elliot standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatory +plant. My references is--or are--Section 3,588, Revised Statutes. +Ten cold, hard dollars--I don't say whether silver, gold, lead or +iron--Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if you want to cash +me in. + +I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make--thanks, +I knew you would--got that sneaking little respect and agreeable +feeling toward even an X, haven't you? You see, a tainted bill +doesn't have much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I +never knew a really cultured and educated person that could afford +to hold a ten-spot any longer than it would take to do an Arthur +Duffy to the nearest That's All! sign or delicatessen store. + +For a six-year-old, I've had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I +guess I've paid as many debts as the man who dies. I've been owned +by a good many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingy +five-dollar silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to +it in the fat and bad-smelling purse of a butcher. + +"Hey, you Sitting Bull," says I, "don't scrouge so. Anyhow, don't +you think it's about time you went in on a customs payment and got +reissued? For a series of 1899 you're a sight." + +"Oh, don't get crackly just because you're a Buffalo bill," says +the fiver. "You'd be limp, too, if you'd been stuffed down in a +thick cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and the +thermometer not a degree under 85 in the store." + +"I never heard of a pocketbook like that," says I. "Who carried +you?" + +"A shopgirl," says the five-spot. + +"What's that?" I had to ask. + +"You'll never know till their millennium comes," says the fiver. + +Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head, +spoke up to the fiver: + +"Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain't lisle thread good enough for yer? If +you was under all cotton like I've been to-day, and choked up with +factory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a +dozen times, you'd have some reason to complain." + +That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500 +package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania +correspondents--and I haven't made the acquaintance of any of the +five and two spot's friends' pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, every +time. + +I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands +twenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for +my owner's every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never +missed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, +while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got +in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little +straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. +Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart +peddler's jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again, +for the future department store owner lived on eight cents' worth +of dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one +day on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I was +rescued. I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me. He +changed me at a cigar store near the Bowery that was running a crap +game in the back room. So it was the Captain of the precinct, after +all, that did me the best turn, when he got his. He blew me for wine +the next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as glad +to get back again as an Astor does when he sees the lights of +Charing Cross. + +A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony +once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes. +They were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossining +whenever three girls got hold of one of them during the ice cream +season. But it's Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for the +little Bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse +to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour. + +The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good +thing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to +buy a stack of blues. + +About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk's +and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot +of other notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among the +money tainters. + +"Ticket me for five hundred," said he to the banker, "and look out +for everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the glen +before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody +finds the roof in their way there's $60,000 wrapped in a comic +supplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold; +everywhere be bold, but be not bowled over. 'Night." + +I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of 'em says to +me: + +"Well, old shorthorn, you're in luck to-night. You'll see something +of life. Old Jack's going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg +steak." + +"Explain," says I. "I'm used to joints, but I don't care for filet +mignon with the kind of sauce you serve." + +"'Xcuse me," said the twenty. "Old Jack is the proprietor of this +gambling house. He's going on a whiz to-night because he offered +$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said +his money was tainted." + +"What is a church?" I asked. + +"Oh, I forgot," says the twenty, "that I was talking to a tenner. Of +course you don't know. You're too much to put into the contribution +basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is--a +large building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each." + +I don't care much about chinning with gold certificates. There's a +streak of yellow in 'em. All is not gold that's quitters. + +Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time to +loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary. + +By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the +wilderness; and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hot +gullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there +waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may have +had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his Camembert +piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him; +and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then a +few of his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buying +souvenirs for so many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterfly +octettes that the head waiters were 'phoning all over town for +Julian Mitchell to please come around and get them into some kind +of order. + +At last we floated into an uptown caf that I knew by heart. When the +hod-carriers' union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief +goal kicker called out: "Six--eleven--forty-two--nineteen--twelve" +to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we +meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't working for the +furniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang +"Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the +twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused. + +But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered +the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the +stuff that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin. + +Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the +outside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the +proprietor. + +"Mike," says he, "here's money that the good people have refused. +Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it's +tainted." + +"I will," says Mike, "and I'll put it in the drawer next to the +bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the +church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter to +live in." + +At 1 o'clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up +the front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of +the restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the +kind--black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a +cross between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's--the kind of woman +that's always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy +squad--and she stands there without a word and looks at the money. + +Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a +bow. + +"Madam," says he, just like actors I've heard, "here is a tainted +bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a +gentleman's son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me +the favor to accept it, it is yours." + +The woman took me with a trembling hand. + +"Sir," said she, "I counted thousands of this issue of bills into +packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in +the Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my +position. You say they are tainted now. If you only knew--but +I won't say any more. Thank you with all my heart, sir--thank +you--thank you." + +Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a +bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery. +And I get changed, and she does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away with +a dozen rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbine +water-wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed +up in the bakery, wondering whether I'd get changed at the drug +store the next day in an alum deal or paid over to the cement +works. + +A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills the +baker had given the woman for change. + +"Hallo, E35039669," says I, "weren't you in the change for me in a +bakery last Saturday night?" + +"Yep," says the solitaire in his free and easy style. + +"How did the deal turn out?" I asked. + +"She blew E17051431 for mills and round steak," says the one-spot. +"She kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sick +kid in it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and +tincture of formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed +some. Don't get stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers, +where you hear one. She said something about 'who giveth to the +poor.' Oh, let's cut out the slum talk. I'm certainly tired of the +company that keeps me. I wish I was big enough to move in society +with you tainted bills." + +"Shut up," says I; "there's no such thing. I know the rest of it. +There's a 'lendeth to the Lord' somewhere in it. Now look on my back +and read what you see there." + +"This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public +and private." + +"This talk about tainted money makes me tired," says I. + + + + +ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + +No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie +series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there +might have been a chapter in her books not very different from this. + +Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan +beset "with pitfall and with gin." But the civic guardians of the +young have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, +and most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who +seek to turn straying ones away from the peril that menaces them. +And this will tell you how they guided my Elsie safely through all +peril to the goal that she was seeking. + +Elsie's father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, +on lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, +so a pot-hunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day +when livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he +lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and +a letter from Mr. Otter offering to do anything he could to help +his faithful old employee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a +valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with +pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off +his thread of life. + +That was the landlord's cue; and forth he came and did his part in +the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie +to steal out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her +shoulders, but she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for +the red shawl--back to Blaney with it! Elsie's fall tan coat was +cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at Fox & Otter's. +And her lucky stars had given her good looks, and eyes as blue and +innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 left of the +$2.50. And the letter from Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter +from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made +plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do +not sell. + +And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to +seek her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was +that it did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved +about a month before. But Elsie thought she could find it. She had +heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an +investigation committee, will give up information and addresses. So +she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh street +and rode south to Forty-second, which she thought must surely be the +end of the island. There she stood against the wall undecided, for +the city's roar and dash was new to her. Up where she had lived +was rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the +morning by the squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans. + +A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past +Elsie into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the +Sunflower Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East. +Hank's heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome +place, lacking the presence of a woman. He had hoped to find one +during his visit who would congenially share his prosperity and +home, but the girls of Gotham had not pleased his fancy. But, as +he passed in, he noted, with a jumping of his pulses, the sweet, +ingenuous face of Elsie and her pose of doubt and loneliness. With +true and honest Western impulse he said to himself that here was his +mate. He could love her, he knew; and he would surround her with so +much comfort, and cherish her so carefully that she would be happy, +and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where there grew but one +before. + +Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never before +questioned honesty of purpose, he approached the girl and removed +his soft-brimmed hat. Elsie had but time to sum up his handsome +frank face with one shy look of modest admiration when a burly cop +hurled himself upon the ranchman, seized him by the collar and +backed him against the wall. Two blocks away a burglar was coming +out of an apartment-house with a bag of silverware on his shoulder; +but that is neither here nor there. + +"Carry on yez mashin' tricks right before me eyes, will yez?" +shouted the cop. "I'll teach yez to speak to ladies on me beat that +ye're not acquainted with. Come along." + +Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. +She had liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned +complexion. She walked southward, thinking herself already in the +district where her father used to work, and hoping to find some one +who could direct her to the firm of Fox & Otter. + +But did she want to find Mr. Otter? She had inherited much of the +old cutter's independence. How much better it would be if she could +find work and support herself without calling on him for aid! + +Elsie saw a sign "Employment Agency" and went in. Many girls were +sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were +looking them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling +black silk hurried up to Elsie. + +"My dear," she said in a sweet, gentle voice, "are you looking for +a position? I like your face and appearance so much. I want a young +woman who will be half maid and half companion to me. You will have +a good home and I will pay you $30 a month." + +Before Elsie could stammer forth her gratified acceptance, a young +woman with gold glasses on her bony nose and her hands in her jacket +pockets seized her arm and drew her aside. + +"I am Miss Ticklebaum," said she, "of the Association for the +Prevention of Jobs Being Put Up on Working Girls Looking for Jobs. +We prevented forty-seven girls from securing positions last week. I +am here to protect you. Beware of any one who offers you a job. How +do you know that this woman does not want to make you work as a +breaker-boy in a coal mine or murder you to get your teeth? If you +accept work of any kind without permission of our association you +will be arrested by one of our agents." + +"But what am I to do?" asked Elsie. "I have no home or money. I must +do something. Why am I not allowed to accept this kind lady's offer?" + +"I do not know," said Miss Ticklebaum. "That is the affair of our +Committee on the Abolishment of Employers. It is my duty simply to +see that you do not get work. You will give me your name and address +and report to our secretary every Thursday. We have 600 girls on +the waiting list who will in time be allowed to accept positions +as vacancies occur on our roll of Qualified Employers, which now +comprises twenty-seven names. There is prayer, music and lemonade +in our chapel the third Sunday of every month." + +Elsie hurried away after thanking Miss Ticklebaum for her timely +warning and advice. After all, it seemed that she must try to find +Mr. Otter. + +But after walking a few blocks she saw a sign, "Cashier wanted," in +the window of a confectionery store. In she went and applied for +the place, after casting a quick glance over her shoulder to assure +herself that the job-preventer was not on her trail. + +The proprietor of the confectionery was a benevolent old man with +a peppermint flavor, who decided, after questioning Elsie pretty +closely, that she was the very girl he wanted. Her services were +needed at once, so Elsie, with a thankful heart, drew off her tan +coat and prepared to mount the cashier's stool. + +But before she could do so a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and +black mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing, and +exclaimed: "Young woman, hesitate!" + +Elsie hesitated. + +"Do you know," said the black-and-steel lady, "that in accepting +this position you may this day cause the loss of a hundred lives in +agonizing physical torture and the sending as many souls to +perdition?" + +"Why, no," said Elsie, in frightened tones. "How could I do that?" + +"Rum," said the lady--"the demon rum. Do you know why so many lives +are lost when a theatre catches fire? Brandy balls. The demon rum +lurking in brandy balls. Our society women while in theatres sit +grossly intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. +When the fire fiend sweeps down upon them they are unable to escape. +The candy stores are the devil's distilleries. If you assist in +the distribution of these insidious confections you assist in the +destruction of the bodies and souls of your fellow-beings, and in +the filling of our jails, asylums and almshouses. Think, girl, ere +you touch the money for which brandy balls are sold." + +"Dear me," said Elsie, bewildered. "I didn't know there was rum in +brandy balls. But I must live by some means. What shall I do?" + +"Decline the position," said the lady, "and come with me. I will +tell you what to do." + +After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind +about the cashiership she put on her coat and followed the lady to +the sidewalk, where awaited an elegant victoria. + +"Seek some other work," said the black-and-steel lady, "and assist +in crushing the hydra-headed demon rum." And she got into the +victoria and drove away. + +"I guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again," said Elsie, ruefully, +turning down the street. "And I'm sorry, too, for I'd much rather +make my way without help." + +Near Fourteenth street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a +doorway that read: "Fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on +theatrical costumes. Good pay." + +She was about to enter, when a solemn man, dressed all in black, +laid his hand on her arm. + +"My dear girl," he said, "I entreat you not to enter that +dressing-room of the devil." + +"Goodness me!" exclaimed Elsie, with some impatience. "The devil +seems to have a cinch on all the business in New York. What's wrong +about the place?" + +"It is here," said the solemn man, "that the regalia of Satan--in +other words, the costumes worn on the stage--are manufactured. The +stage is the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil your +soul by lending the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, +my dear girl, what the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors +and actresses go after the curtain of the playhouse has fallen upon +them for the last time?" + +"Sure," said Elsie. "Into vaudeville. But do you think it would be +wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must +get something to do pretty soon." + +"The flesh-pots of Egypt," exclaimed the reverend gentleman, +uplifting his hands. "I beseech you, my child, to turn away from +this place of sin and iniquity." + +"But what will I do for a living?" asked Elsie. "I don't care to sew +for this musical comedy, if it's as rank as you say it is; but I've +got to have a job." + +"The Lord will provide," said the solemn man. "There is a free Bible +class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next +to the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell." + +Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where +factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, "Posey +& Trimmer, Artificial Flowers." Below it was hung a newly stretched +canvas bearing the words, "Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. +Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up." + +Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups +some twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat +tipped down over her eyes stepped in front of her. + +"Say, you'se," said the girl, "are you'se goin' in there after a +job?" + +"Yes," said Elsie; "I must have work." + +"Now don't do it," said the girl. "I'm chairman of our Scab +Committee. There's 400 of us girls locked out just because we +demanded 50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the +foreman to shave off his mustache. You're too nice a looking girl to +be a scab. Wouldn't you please help us along by trying to find a job +somewhere else, or would you'se rather have your face pushed in?" + +"I'll try somewhere else," said Elsie. + +She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart +leaped to see the sign, "Fox & Otter," stretching entirely across +the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had +led her to it through the by-ways of her fruitless search for work. + +She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her +name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly +into his private office. + +Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands +with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of +nearly middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well +dressed, radiating. + +"Well, well, and so this is Beatty's little daughter! Your father +was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? +Well, well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I +am sure there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy +work--nothing easier." + +Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nosed clerk thrust a portion of +himself inside the door. + +"Send Miss Hawkins in," said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came. + +"Miss Hawkins," said Mr. Otter, "bring for Miss Beatty to try on one +of those Russian sable coats and--let's see--one of those latest +model black tulle hats with white tips." + +Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick +breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! +she was beautiful. + +I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it's +got to run it out. I didn't make it up. I'm just repeating it. + +I'd like to throw bouquets at the wise cop, and the lady who rescues +Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush +brandy balls, and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage +people (there are others), and all the thousands of good people who +are at work protecting young people from the pitfalls of a great +city; and then wind up by pointing out how they were the means of +Elsie reaching her father's benefactor and her kind friend and +rescuer from poverty. This would make a fine Elsie story of the old +sort. I'd like to do this; but there's just a word or two to follow. + +While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to +the telephone booth and called up some number. Don't ask me what it +was. + +"Oscar," said he, "I want you to reserve the same table for me this +evening. . . . What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left +of the shrubbery. . . . Yes; two. . . . Yes, the usual brand; and +the '85 Johannisburger with the roast. If it isn't the right +temperature I'll break your neck. . . . No; not her . . . No, +indeed . . . A new one--a peacherino, Oscar, a peacherino!" + +Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a +paraphrase of a few words that you will remember were written by +him--by him of Gad's Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, +you shall stand with a covered pumpkin--aye, sir, a pumpkin. + +Lost, Your Excellency. Lost Associations and Societies. Lost, Right +Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and +Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with +the reverence of money in your souls. And lost thus around us every +day. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP*** + + +******* This file should be named 3707-8.txt or 3707-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/0/3707 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/old/3707-8.zip b/old/3707-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..39b963a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/3707-8.zip diff --git a/old/3707.txt b/old/3707.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fd2a0e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/3707.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7246 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Trimmed Lamp, by O. Henry + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Trimmed Lamp + And Other Stories of the Four Million + + +Author: O. Henry + + + +Release Date: July 30, 2001 [eBook #3707] +Most recently updated: March 16, 2010 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP*** + + +E-text prepared by Charles Franks, Greg Weeks, +and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team +and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. + + + +THE TRIMMED LAMP + +And Other Stories of the Four Million + +By + +O. HENRY + +Author of "The Four Million," "The Voioce of the +City," "Strictly Business," "Whirligigs," +"Sixes and Sevens," Etc. + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "Wooed her across the counter with +a king cophetua air." (frontispiece)] + + + + +CONTENTS + + THE TRIMMED LAMP + A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT + THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL + THE PENDULUM + TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN + THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS + THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY + THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON + BRICKDUST ROW + THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER + VANITY AND SOME SABLES + THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE + THE PURPLE DRESS + THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 + THE LOST BLEND + A HARLEM TRAGEDY + "THE GUILTY PARTY"--AN EAST SIDE TRAGEDY + ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS + A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM + THE LAST LEAF + THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST + THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION + THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT + THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER + ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + + + +THE TRIMMED LAMP + + +Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the +other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. +There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that +way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be +fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as +"marriage-girls." + +Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work +because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. +Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, +country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage. + +The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and +respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became +wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months +that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them. +Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou. +While you are shaking hands please take notice--cautiously--of +their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a +stare as a lady in a box at the horse show is. + +Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a +badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too +long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts +will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over. +Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment +radiates from her. + +Nancy you would call a shop-girl--because you have the habit. There +is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so +this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, +and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the +correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air, +but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though +it were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes, remorseless +type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of +silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad +prophecy of the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the +look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian +peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's +face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither +and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer +flowers--with a string tied to them. + +Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery +"See you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, +somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the +housetops to the stars. + +The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou's steady company. +Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a +dozen subpoena servers to find her lamb. + +"Ain't you cold, Nance?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for +working in that old store for $8. a week! I made $18.50 last week. +Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a +counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I +don't know that it's any less respectful work, either." + +"You can have it," said Nancy, with uplifted nose. "I'll take my eight +a week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and swell +people. And look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove girls +married a Pittsburg--steel maker, or blacksmith or something--the +other day worth a million dollars. I'll catch a swell myself some +time. I ain't bragging on my looks or anything; but I'll take my +chances where there's big prizes offered. What show would a girl +have in a laundry?" + +"Why, that's where I met Dan," said Lou, triumphantly. "He came in +for his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board, +ironing. We all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis +was sick that day, and I had her place. He said he noticed my arms +first, how round and white they was. I had my sleeves rolled up. +Some nice fellows come into laundries. You can tell 'em by their +bringing their clothes in suit cases; and turning in the door sharp +and sudden." + +"How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?" said Nancy, gazing down +at the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. +"It shows fierce taste." + +"This waist?" cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. "Why, I paid +$16. for this waist. It's worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be +laundered, and never called for it. The boss sold it to me. It's got +yards and yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that +ugly, plain thing you've got on." + +"This ugly, plain thing," said Nancy, calmly, "was copied from one +that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in +the store last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me +$1.50. Ten feet away you couldn't tell it from hers." + +"Oh, well," said Lou, good-naturedly, "if you want to starve and put +on airs, go ahead. But I'll take my job and good wages; and after +hours give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able +to buy." + +But just then Dan came--a serious young man with a ready-made necktie, +who had escaped the city's brand of frivolity--an electrician earning +30 dollars per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo, +and thought her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should +delight to be caught. + +"My friend, Mr. Owens--shake hands with Miss Danforth," said Lou. + +"I'm mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth," said Dan, with +outstretched hand. "I've heard Lou speak of you so often." + +"Thanks," said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool +ones, "I've heard her mention you--a few times." + +Lou giggled. + +"Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?" +she asked. + +"If I did, you can feel safe in copying it," said Nancy. + +"Oh, I couldn't use it, at all. It's too stylish for me. It's +intended to set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I +get a few and then I'll try it." + +"Learn it first," said Nancy wisely, "and you'll be more likely to +get the rings." + +"Now, to settle this argument," said Dan, with his ready, cheerful +smile, "let me make a proposition. As I can't take both of you up +to Tiffany's and do the right thing, what do you say to a little +vaudeville? I've got the tickets. How about looking at stage +diamonds since we can't shake hands with the real sparklers?" + +The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a +little peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the +inside, slender, and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the +true Van Alstyne Fisher walk--thus they set out for their evening's +moderate diversion. + +I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an +educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was +something like that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things +that breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere +of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or +another's. + +The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and +position in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them +Nancy began to take toll--the best from each according to her view. + +From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an +eloquent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of +carrying a purse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing +"inferiors in station." From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van +Alstyne Fisher, she made requisition for that excellent thing, a +soft, low voice as clear as silver and as perfect in articulation +as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social +refinement and good breeding, it was impossible for her to escape a +deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good +principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good habits. +The teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New England +conscience; but if you sit on a straight-back chair and repeat the +words "prisms and pilgrims" forty times the devil will flee from +you. And when Nancy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt +the thrill of _noblesse oblige_ to her very bones. + +There was another source of learning in the great departmental +school. Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch +and jingle their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently +frivolous conversation, do not think that they are there for the +purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting +may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; but it +has all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first +daughter first put their heads together to make Adam understand his +proper place in the household. It is Woman's Conference for Common +Defense and Exchange of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse +upon and against the World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience +who Persists in Throwing Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most +helpless of the young of any animal--with the fawn's grace but +without its fleetness; with the bird's beauty but without its power +of flight; with the honey-bee's burden of sweetness but without +its--Oh, let's drop that simile--some of us may have been stung. + +During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and +exchange stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the +tactics of life. + +"I says to 'im," says Sadie, "ain't you the fresh thing! Who do you +suppose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what do you +think he says back to me?" + +The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the +answer is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be +used by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, +man. + +Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful +defense means victory. + +The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other +college could have fitted her as well for her life's ambition--the +drawing of a matrimonial prize. + +Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near +enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the +best composers--at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for +appreciation in the social world in which she was vaguely trying +to set a tentative and aspiring foot. She absorbed the educating +influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of adornments +that are almost culture to women. + +The other girls soon became aware of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes +your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man +who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of +men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to +stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric +squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty +was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces +before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were +certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to +discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchief +counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the +shoppers in the street below. She looked and perceived that +automobiles differ as well as do their owners. + +Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and +wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had +gone one of the girls said: + +"What's wrong, Nance, that you didn't warm up to that fellow. He +looks the swell article, all right, to me." + +"Him?" said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van +Alstyne Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A +12 H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of +handkerchiefs he bought--silk! And he's got dactylis on him. Give me +the real thing or nothing, if you please." + +Two of the most "refined" women in the store--a forelady and a +cashier--had a few "swell gentlemen friends" with whom they now and +then dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner +took place in a spectacular cafe whose tables are engaged for New +Year's eve a year in advance. There were two "gentlemen friends"--one +without any hair on his head--high living ungrew it; and we can prove +it--the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed +upon you in two convincing ways--he swore that all the wine was +corked; and he wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived +irresistible excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and +here was one that added the voice and manners of his high social +world to the franker charms of her own caste. So, on the following +day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious proposal of +marriage over a box of hem-stitched, grass-bleached Irish linens. +Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had been using her +eyes and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she heaped carboys +of upbraidings and horror upon Nancy's head. + +"What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow's a millionaire--he's +a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level, +too. Have you gone crazy, Nance?" + +"Have I?" said Nancy. "I didn't take him, did I? He isn't a millionaire +so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him +$20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him about it +the other night at supper." + +The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes. + +"Say, what do you want?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of +chewing-gum. "Ain't that enough for you? Do you want to be a Mormon, +and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and +the whole bunch? Ain't $20,000 a year good enough for you?" + +Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow +eyes. + +"It wasn't altogether the money, Carrie," she explained. "His friend +caught him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was about +some girl he said he hadn't been to the theater with. Well, I can't +stand a liar. Put everything together--I don't like him; and that +settles it. When I sell out it's not going to be on any bargain day. +I've got to have something that sits up in a chair like a man, +anyhow. Yes, I'm looking out for a catch; but it's got to be able to +do something more than make a noise like a toy bank." + +"The physiopathic ward for yours!" said the brown pompadour, walking +away. + +These high ideas, if not ideals--Nancy continued to cultivate on $8. +per week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown "catch," +eating her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her +face was the faint, soldierly, sweet, grim smile of the preordained +man-hunter. The store was her forest; and many times she raised her +rifle at game that seemed broad-antlered and big; but always some +deep unerring instinct--perhaps of the huntress, perhaps of the +woman--made her hold her fire and take up the trail again. + +Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid +$6. for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her +opportunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared +with Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, +work and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly +and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her +growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted to her through the +conducting metal. + +When the day's work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful +shadow in whatever light she stood. + +Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou's clothes +that increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no +disloyalty; he deprecated the attention they called to her in the +streets. + +And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy +should go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore +the extra burden heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that +Lou furnished the color, Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the +distraction-seeking trio. The escort, in his neat but obviously +ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing, genial, ready-made +wit never startled or clashed. He was of that good kind that you are +likely to forget while they are present, but remember distinctly +after they are gone. + +To Nancy's superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures +was sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a +gourmand, when it cannot be a gourmet. + +"Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away," Lou told her +once. "But why should I? I'm independent. I can do as I please with +the money I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on working +afterward. And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old +store for, and half starve and half dress yourself? I could get you +a place in the laundry right now if you'd come. It seems to me that +you could afford to be a little less stuck-up if you could make a +good deal more money." + +"I don't think I'm stuck-up, Lou," said Nancy, "but I'd rather live +on half rations and stay where I am. I suppose I've got the habit. +It's the chance that I want. I don't expect to be always behind a +counter. I'm learning something new every day. I'm right up against +refined and rich people all the time--even if I do only wait on +them; and I'm not missing any pointers that I see passing around." + +"Caught your millionaire yet?" asked Lou with her teasing laugh. + +"I haven't selected one yet," answered Nancy. "I've been looking +them over." + +"Goodness! the idea of picking over 'em! Don't you ever let one get +by you Nance--even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're +joking--millionaires don't think about working girls like us." + +"It might be better for them if they did," said Nancy, with cool +wisdom. "Some of us could teach them how to take care of their +money." + +"If one was to speak to me," laughed Lou, "I know I'd have a +duck-fit." + +"That's because you don't know any. The only difference between +swells and other people is you have to watch 'em closer. Don't you +think that red silk lining is just a little bit too bright for that +coat, Lou?" + +Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend. + +"Well, no I don't--but it may seem so beside that faded-looking +thing you've got on." + +"This jacket," said Nancy, complacently, "has exactly the cut and +fit of one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day. +The material cost me $3.98. I suppose hers cost about $100. more." + +"Oh, well," said Lou lightly, "it don't strike me as millionaire +bait. Shouldn't wonder if I catch one before you do, anyway." + +Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values +of the theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain +pride and fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with +girls working for the barest living, thumped away gaily with her +iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her +even beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until +sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but +inelegant apparel of Dan--Dan the constant, the immutable, the +undeviating. + +As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels +and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world +of good-breeding and taste--these were made for woman; they are her +equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life +to her, and if she will. She is no traitor to herself, as Esau was; +for she keeps her birthright and the pottage she earns is often very +scant. + +In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her +frugal meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined +and contented mind. She already knew woman; and she was studying +man, the animal, both as to his habits and eligibility. Some day she +would bring down the game that she wanted; but she promised herself +it would be what seemed to her the biggest and the best, and nothing +smaller. + +Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bridegroom +when he should come. + +But, another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard +of values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew +blurred in her mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that +spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just +"kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk +in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, +where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these +times the spear of Nimrod himself grows blunt. + +So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at +its market value by the hearts that it covered. + +One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth +Avenue westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and +Dan to a musical comedy. + +Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was a +queer, strained look on his face. + +"I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her," +he said. + +"Heard from who?" asked Nancy. "Isn't Lou there?" + +"I thought you knew," said Dan. "She hasn't been here or at the +house where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from +there. She told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going +to Europe." + +"Hasn't anybody seen her anywhere?" asked Nancy. + +Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in +his steady gray eyes. + +"They told me in the laundry," he said, harshly, "that they saw her +pass yesterday--in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I +suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about." + +For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand +that trembled slightly on Dan's sleeve. + +"You've no right to say such a thing to me, Dan--as if I had anything +to do with it!" + +"I didn't mean it that way," said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his +vest pocket. + +"I've got the tickets for the show to-night," he said, with a +gallant show of lightness. "If you--" + +Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it. + +"I'll go with you, Dan," she said. + +Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again. + +At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the +border of a little quiet park. She heard her name called, and wheeled +about in time to catch Lou rushing into her arms. + +After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do, +ready to attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on +their swift tongues. And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had +descended upon Lou, manifesting itself in costly furs, flashing +gems, and creations of the tailors' art. + +"You little fool!" cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. "I see you +are still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how +about that big catch you were going to make--nothing doing yet, I +suppose?" + +And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity +had descended upon Nancy--something that shone brighter than gems +in her eyes and redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced +like electricity anxious to be loosed from the tip of her tongue. + +"Yes, I'm still in the store," said Nancy, "but I'm going to leave it +next week. I've made my catch--the biggest catch in the world. You +won't mind now Lou, will you?--I'm going to be married to Dan--to +Dan!--he's my Dan now--why, Lou!" + +Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, +smooth-faced young policemen that are making the force more +endurable--at least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur +coat, and diamond-ringed hands crouching down against the iron fence +of the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender, plainly-dressed +working girl leaned close, trying to console her. But the Gibsonian +cop, being of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice, +for he was wise enough to know that these matters are beyond help so +far as the power he represents is concerned, though he rap the +pavement with his nightstick till the sound goes up to the +furthermost stars. + + + + +A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT + + +To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips +brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there +were two items bearing the same foreign postmark. + +One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The +other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, +absorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and +it contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered +with innuendoes concerning the photographed woman. + +Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out +his expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal +from the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts +when he is housed in a jungle of doubt. + +By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an +enchanted one. For sixteen feet he could travel along it; three +thousand miles was beyond its power to aid. + +Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a +well-oiled genie. + +"Will you dine here, sir, or out?" he asked. + +"Here," said Chalmers, "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to +the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty street. + +"Wait," he said to the disappearing genie. "As I came home across +the end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There +was one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in +rows, and why are they there?" + +"They are homeless men, sir," said Phillips. "The man standing on +the box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come +around to listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the +money will pay for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in +rows; they get sent to bed in order as they come." + +"By the time dinner is served," said Chalmers, "have one of those +men here. He will dine with me." + +"W-w-which--," began Phillips, stammering for the first time during +his service. + +"Choose one at random," said Chalmers. "You might see that he is +reasonably sober--and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be +held against him. That is all." + +It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But +on that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to +melancholy. Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored +and Arabian, he must have to lighten his mood. + +On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the +lamp. The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the +delectable dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily +in the glow of the pink-shaded candles. + +And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal--or held in charge +a burglar--wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the +line of mendicant lodgers. + +It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be +used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through +fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting +hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed--a rite insisted +upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In +the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the +apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes +with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's +comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and +conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were +full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that +is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, +but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner +was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his +chair across the round dining table. + +"If you will oblige me," said the host, "I will be glad to have your +company at dinner." + +"My name is Plumer," said the highway guest, in harsh and aggressive +tones. "If you're like me, you like to know the name of the party +you're dining with." + +"I was going on to say," continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, "that +mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?" + +Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide +the chair beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended +boards before. Phillips set out the anchovies and olives. + +"Good!" barked Plumer; "going to be in courses, is it? All right, +my jovial ruler of Bagdad. I'm your Scheherezade all the way to the +toothpicks. You're the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor +I've struck since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I +finished counting, just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me +to the feast. I had about as much chance of getting a bed to-night +as I have of being the next President. How will you have the sad +story of my life, Mr. Al Raschid--a chapter with each course or the +whole edition with the cigars and coffee?" + +"The situation does not seem a novel one to you," said Chalmers with +a smile. + +"By the chin whiskers of the prophet--no!" answered the guest. "New +York's as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas. +I've been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my +head twenty times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something +for nothing! They spell curiosity and charity with the same set of +building blocks. Lots of 'em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; +and a few of 'em will play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; +but every one of 'em will stand over you till they screw your +autobiography out of you with foot notes, appendix and unpublished +fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward +me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three +times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. +I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand +out vocal harmony for his pre-digested wheaterina and spoopju." + +"I do not ask your story," said Chalmers. "I tell you frankly that +it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to +dine with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity +of mine." + +"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his +soup; "I don't mind it a bit. I'm a regular Oriental magazine +with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. +In fact, we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate +for things of this sort. Somebody's always stopping and wanting +to know what brought us down so low in the world. For a +sandwich and a glass of beer I tell 'em that drink did it. For +corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give 'em the +hard-hearted-landlord--six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story. +A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street +tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This +is the first spread of this kind I've stumbled against. I haven't +got a story to fit it. I'll tell you what, Mr. Chalmers, I'm +going to tell you the truth for this, if you'll listen to it. +It'll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones." + +An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction +while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table. + +"Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?" he asked, with a strange +smile. + +"I remember the name," said Chalmers. "He was a painter, I think, of +a good deal of prominence a few years ago." + +"Five years," said the guest. "Then I went down like a chunk of +lead. I'm Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for +$2,000. After that I couldn't have found a sitter for a gratis +picture." + +"What was the trouble?" Chalmers could not resist asking. + +"Funny thing," answered Plumer, grimly. "Never quite understood it +myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd +and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a +fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever +I finished a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and +look queerly at one another." + +"I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing +out in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. +I don't know how I did it--I painted what I saw--but I know it did +me. Some of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their +pictures. I painted the portrait of a very beautiful and popular +society dame. When it was finished her husband looked at it with a +peculiar expression on his face, and the next week he sued for +divorce." + +"I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I +had his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his +came in to look at it. 'Bless me,' says he, 'does he really look +like that?" I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. 'I +never noticed that expression about his eyes before,' said he; 'I +think I'll drop downtown and change my bank account.' He did drop +down, but the bank account was gone and so was Mr. Banker. + +"It wasn't long till they put me out of business. People don't +want their secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile +and twist their own faces and deceive you, but the picture can't. +I couldn't get an order for another picture, and I had to give +up. I worked as a newspaper artist for a while, and then for a +lithographer, but my work with them got me into the same trouble. If +I drew from a photograph my drawing showed up characteristics and +expressions that you couldn't find in the photo, but I guess they +were in the original, all right. The customers raised lively rows, +especially the women, and I never could hold a job long. So I began +to rest my weary head upon the breast of Old Booze for comfort. And +pretty soon I was in the free-bed line and doing oral fiction for +hand-outs among the food bazaars. Does the truthful statement weary +thee, O Caliph? I can turn on the Wall Street disaster stop if you +prefer, but that requires a tear, and I'm afraid I can't hustle one +up after that good dinner." + +"No, no," said Chalmers, earnestly, "you interest me very much. Did +all of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there +some that did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?" + +"Some? Yes," said Plumer. "Children generally, a good many women and +a sufficient number of men. All people aren't bad, you know. When +they were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don't +explain it, but I'm telling you facts." + +On Chalmers's writing-table lay the photograph that he had received +that day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at +work making a sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the +artist rose and stretched wearily. + +"It's done," he yawned. "You'll excuse me for being so long. I got +interested in the job. Lordy! but I'm tired. No bed last night, you +know. Guess it'll have to be good night now, O Commander of the +Faithful!" + +Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills +into his hand. + +"Oh! I'll take 'em," said Plumer. "All that's included in the fall. +Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I shall sleep on feathers +to-night and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won't turn out to be a dream +in the morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!" + +Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as +far from the table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would +permit. Twice, thrice, he tried to approach it, but failed. He could +see the dun and gold and brown of the colors, but there was a wall +about it built by his fears that kept him at a distance. He sat down +and tried to calm himself. He sprang up and rang for Phillips. + +"There is a young artist in this building," he said. "--a Mr. +Reineman--do you know which is his apartment?" + +"Top floor, front, sir," said Phillips. + +"Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few +minutes." + +Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself. + +"Mr. Reineman," said he, "there is a little pastel sketch on yonder +table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to +its artistic merits and as a picture." + +The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch. +Chalmers half turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair. + +"How--do--you find it?" he asked, slowly. + +"As a drawing," said the artist, "I can't praise it enough. It's the +work of a master--bold and fine and true. It puzzles me a little; I +haven't seen any pastel work near as good in years." + +"The face, man--the subject--the original--what would you say of +that?" + +"The face," said Reineman, "is the face of one of God's own angels. +May I ask who--" + +"My wife!" shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the +astonished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. "She is +traveling in Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture +of your life from it and leave the price to me." + + + + +THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL + + +This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance +lecture and the "Bartender's Guide." Relative to the latter, drink +shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to +the former, not an elbow shall be crooked. + +Bob Babbitt was "off the stuff." Which means--as you will discover +by referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia--that he had +"cut out the booze;" that he was "on the water wagon." The reason +for Bob's sudden attitude of hostility toward the "demon rum"--as +the white ribboners miscall whiskey (see the "Bartender's Guide"), +should be of interest to reformers and saloon-keepers. + +There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or +acknowledge that he was ever drunk. But when a man will say (in the +apt words of the phrase-distiller), "I had a beautiful skate on last +night," you will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for +him. + +One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar +that he liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there +from the downtown offices whom he knew. And then there would be +high-balls and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little +late but feeling good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil +Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some one say: +"Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl." + +Babbitt walked to the bar, and saw in the mirror that his face was +as white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the +eyes. Others had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was +a drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a +pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit +had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a +sot. But, never again! + +"A glass of seltzer," he said to the bartender. + +A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been +expecting him to join them. + +"Going off the stuff, Bob?" one of them asked politely and with more +formality than the highballs ever called forth. + +"Yes," said Babbitt. + +Some one of the group took up the unwashed thread of a story he had +been telling; the bartender shoved over a dime and a nickel change +from the quarter, ungarnished with his customary smile; and Babbitt +walked out. + +Now, Babbitt had a home and a wife--but that is another story. And I +will tell you that story, which will show you a better habit and a +worse story than you could find in the man who invented the phrase. + +It began away up in Sullivan County, where so many rivers and so +much trouble begins--or begin; how would you say that? It was July, +and Jessie was a summer boarder at the Mountain Squint Hotel, and +Bob, who was just out of college, saw her one day--and they were +married in September. That's the tabloid novel--one swallow of +water, and it's gone. + +But those July days! + +Let the exclamation point expound it, for I shall not. For +particulars you might read up on "Romeo and Juliet," and Abraham +Lincoln's thrilling sonnet about "You can fool some of the people," +&c., and Darwin's works. + +But one thing I must tell you about. Both of them were mad over +Omar's Rubaiyat. They knew every verse of the old bluffer by +heart--not consecutively, but picking 'em out here and there as you +fork the mushrooms in a fifty-cent steak a la Bordelaise. Sullivan +County is full of rocks and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them, +and--please be good--used to sit on the rocks; and Bob had a way of +standing behind her with his hands over her shoulders holding her +hands, and his face close to hers, and they would repeat over and +over their favorite verses of the old tent-maker. They saw only the +poetry and philosophy of the lines then--indeed, they agreed that +the Wine was only an image, and that what was meant to be celebrated +was some divinity, or maybe Love or Life. However, at that time +neither of them had tasted the stuff that goes with a sixty-cent +_table d'hote_. + +Where was I? Oh, they married and came to New York. Bob showed his +college diploma, and accepted a position filling inkstands in a +lawyer's office at $15 a week. At the end of two years he had worked +up to $50, and gotten his first taste of Bohemia--the kind that +won't stand the borax and formaldehyde tests. + +They had two furnished rooms and a little kitchen. To Jess, +accustomed to the mild but beautiful savor of a country town, the +dreggy Bohemia was sugar and spice. She hung fish seines on the +walls of her rooms, and bought a rakish-looking sideboard, and +learned to play the banjo. Twice or thrice a week they dined at +French or Italian _tables d'hote_ in a cloud of smoke, and brag and +unshorn hair. Jess learned to drink a cocktail in order to get the +cherry. At home she smoked a cigarette after dinner. She learned to +pronounce Chianti, and leave her olive stones for the waiter to pick +up. Once she essayed to say la, la, la! in a crowd but got only as +far as the second one. They met one or two couples while dining out +and became friendly with them. The sideboard was stocked with Scotch +and rye and a liqueur. They had their new friends in to dinner and +all were laughing at nothing by 1 A. M. Some plastering fell in the +room below them, for which Bob had to pay $4.50. Thus they footed it +merrily on the ragged frontiers of the country that has no boundary +lines or government. + +And soon Bob fell in with his cronies and learned to keep his foot +on the little rail six inches above the floor for an hour or so +every afternoon before he went home. Drink always rubbed him the +right way, and he would reach his rooms as jolly as a sandboy. +Jessie would meet him at the door, and generally they would dance +some insane kind of a rigadoon about the floor by way of greeting. +Once when Bob's feet became confused and he tumbled headlong over a +foot-stool Jessie laughed so heartily and long that he had to throw +all the couch pillows at her to make her hush. + +In such wise life was speeding for them on the day when Bob Babbitt +first felt the power that the giftie gi'ed him. + +But let us get back to our lamb and mint sauce. + +When Bob got home that evening he found Jessie in a long apron +cutting up a lobster for the Newburg. Usually when Bob came in +mellow from his hour at the bar his welcome was hilarious, though +somewhat tinctured with Scotch smoke. + +By screams and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of +domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot +on the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton +into her ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and +favor of these spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false +Bohemia gradually encompassed her she came to accept them as love's +true and proper greeting. + +Bob came in without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but +noiselessly, took up a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old +maid held her two plugs of cotton poised, filled with anxiety. + +Jessie dropped lobster and knife and ran to him with frightened +eyes. + +"What's the matter, Bob, are you ill?" + +"Not at all, dear." + +"Then what's the matter with you?" + +"Nothing." + +Hearken, brethren. When She-who-has-a-right-to-ask interrogates you +concerning a change she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her +that you, in a sudden rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her +that you have robbed orphans and that remorse has stricken you; tell +her your fortune is swept away; that you are beset by enemies, by +bunions, by any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, if peace and +happiness are worth as much as a grain of mustard seed to you--do +not answer her "Nothing." + +Jessie went back to the lobster in silence. She cast looks of +darkest suspicion at Bob. He had never acted that way before. + +When dinner was on the table she set out the bottle of Scotch and +the glasses. Bob declined. + +"Tell you the truth, Jess," he said. "I've cut out the drink. Help +yourself, of course. If you don't mind I'll try some of the seltzer +straight." + +"You've stopped drinking?" she said, looking at him steadily and +unsmilingly. "What for?" + +"It wasn't doing me any good," said Bob. "Don't you approve of the +idea?" + +Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly. + +"Entirely," she said with a sculptured smile. "I could not +conscientiously advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on +Sunday." + +The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk, +but his efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt +miserable, and once or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but +each time the scathing words of his bibulous friend sounded in his +ear, and his mouth set with determination. + +Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to +have departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the +unnatural excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived +had dropped away in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole +curious and forlorn glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty +look of at least a wife-beater or a family tyrant. + +After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such +chores cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable +countenance, brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and +a bowl of cracked ice and set them on the table. + +"May I ask," she said, with some of the ice in her tones, "whether +I am to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, I'll +make one for myself. It's rather chilly this evening, for some +reason." + +"Oh, come now, Jess," said Bob good-naturedly, "don't be too rough +on me. Help yourself, by all means. There's no danger of your +overdoing it. But I thought there was with me; and that's why I +quit. Have yours, and then let's get out the banjo and try over that +new quickstep." + +"I've heard," said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, "that drinking +alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing +this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the +evil habit of banjo-playing, too." + +She took up a book and sat in her little willow rocker on the other +side of the table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour. + +And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent +look on his face and went behind her chair and reached over her +shoulders, taking her hands in his, and laid his face close to hers. + +In a moment to Jessie the walls of the seine-hung room vanished, and +she saw the Sullivan County hills and rills. Bob felt her hands +quiver in his as he began the verse from old Omar: + + "Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring + The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: + The Bird of Time has but a little way + To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!" + +And then he walked to the table and poured a stiff drink of Scotch +into a glass. + +But in that moment a mountain breeze had somehow found its way in +and blown away the mist of the false Bohemia. + +Jessie leaped and with one fierce sweep of her hand sent the bottle +and glasses crashing to the floor. The same motion of her arm +carried it around Bob's neck, where it met its mate and fastened +tight. + +"Oh, my God, Bobbie--not that verse--I see now. I wasn't always such +a fool, was I? The other one, boy--the one that says: 'Remould it to +the Heart's Desire.' Say that one--'to the Heart's Desire.'" + +"I know that one," said Bob. "It goes: + + "'Ah! Love, could you and I with Him conspire + To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire + Would not we--'" + +"Let me finish it," said Jessie. + + "'Would not we shatter it to bits--and then + Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!'" + +"It's shattered all right," said Bob, crunching some glass under his +heel. + +In some dungeon below the accurate ear of Mrs. Pickens, the landlady, +located the smash. + +"It's that wild Mr. Babbitt coming home soused again," she said. +"And he's got such a nice little wife, too!" + + + + +THE PENDULUM + + +"Eighty-first street--let 'em out, please," yelled the shepherd in +blue. + +A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled +aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled +away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with +the released flock. + +John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon +of his daily life there was no such word as "perhaps." There are no +surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in +a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy +and downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous +day. + +Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream +and butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized +lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs +slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot +roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or +injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry +marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its +label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy +quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand. +At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture +to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the +flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly +at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the +flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium +tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that +Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week +contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get +out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in +the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor +would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the +Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would +trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and +letter-box--and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be +under way. + +John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a +quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, +and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone: + +"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" + +"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," he would answer, "and play a +game or two of pool with the fellows." + +Of late such had been John Perkins's habit. At ten or eleven he +would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, +ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating +from the wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid +will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his +victims from the Frogmore flats. + +To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the +commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her +affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in +portentous disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in +the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder +box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs--this was not Katy's +way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of +her brown hair among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation +must have possessed her, for she always carefully placed these +combings in the little blue vase on the mantel to be some day formed +into the coveted feminine "rat." + +Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper. +John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus: + + + Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. + I am going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet + me at the depot there. There is cold mutton in the ice box. I + hope it isn't her quinzy again. Pay the milkman 50 cents. She + had it bad last spring. Don't forget to write to the company + about the gas meter, and your good socks are in the top drawer. + I will write to-morrow. + + Hastily, KATY. + + +Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been +separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a +dumbfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never +varied, and it left him dazed. + +There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, +the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting +the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in +her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butter-scotch lay with +its string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping +rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. +Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its +soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains +with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart. + +He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched +her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He +had never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had +become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the +air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without +warning, she was gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had +never existed. Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most +a week or two, but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had +pointed a finger at his secure and uneventful home. + +John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat +down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade's +shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings +now appeared to him the ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan +polish dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law +had knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal +John sat at a front window. + +He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come +join in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might +go forth unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as +any gay bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his +fling until dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy +waiting for him, bearing the chalice that held the dregs of his joy. +He might play pool at McCloskey's with his roistering friends until +Aurora dimmed the electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings +that had curbed him always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon +him were loosened. Katy was gone. + +John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as +he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the +keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to +his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by +the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss +of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and +sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced +bird has flown--or in other no less florid and true utterances? + +"I'm a double-dyed dub," mused John Perkins, "the way I've been +treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the +boys instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone +with nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, +you're the worst kind of a shine. I'm going to make it up for the +little girl. I'll take her out and let her see some amusement. And +I'll cut out the McCloskey gang right from this minute." + +Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come +dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were +knocking the balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the +nightly game. But no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the +remorseful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his, +lightly held and half scorned, had been taken away from him, and he +wanted it. Backward to a certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim +bounced from the orchard, could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his +descent. + +Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of +it stood Katy's blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of +her contour. Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles +made by the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and +pleasure. A delicate but impelling odor of bluebells came from +it. John took it and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive +grenadine. Katy had never been unresponsive. Tears:--yes, +tears--came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came back things +would be different. He would make up for all his neglect. What +was life without her? + +The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John +stared at her stupidly. + +"My! I'm glad to get back," said Katy. "Ma wasn't sick to amount +to anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little +spell, and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the +next train back. I'm just dying for a cup of coffee." + +Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cog-wheels as the third-floor +front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order +of Things. A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted +and the wheels revolve in their old orbit. + +John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his +hat and walked to the door. + +"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" asked +Katy, in a querulous tone. + +"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," said John, "and play a game or +two of pool with the fellows." + + + + +TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN + + +There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we +Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat +saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old +pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives +it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but don't just remember +who they were. Bet we can lick 'em, anyhow, if they try to land +again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots of us +have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work +in. But somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information +to 'em about these Thanksgiving proclamations. + +The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an +institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the +year on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the +ferries. It is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of +celebration, exclusively American. + +And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have +traditions on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a +much rapider rate than those of England are--thanks to our git-up +and enterprise. + +Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you +enter Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there +promptly at 1 o'clock. For every time he had done so things had +happened to him--Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat +above his heart, and equally on the other side. + +But to-day Stuffy Pete's appearance at the annual trysting place +seemed to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly +hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the +poor at such extended intervals. + +Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast +that had left him of his powers barely those of respiration and +locomotion. His eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded +in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came +in short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a +fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been +sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew +like popcorn, strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a +split shirt front open to the wishbone; but the November breeze, +carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a grateful coolness. +For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric produced by a +super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum +pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and +baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in +the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with +after-dinner contempt. + +The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick +mansion near the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old +ladies of ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even +denied the existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day +was declared solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional +habits was to station a servant at the postern gate with orders to +admit the first hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of +noon had struck, and banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened +to pass by on his way to the park, and the seneschals gathered him +in and upheld the custom of the castle. + +After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he +was conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a +tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his +eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod +ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel. + +For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his +bench. + +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come +there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the +Old Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving +Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a +restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in +England unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years +is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and +considered himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to +become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time +without ever letting it get away from us. Something like collecting +the weekly dimes in industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets. + +The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the +Institution that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy +Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta +or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was +almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible +to New Y--ahem!--America. + +The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in +black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won't stay +on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last +year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with +the crooked handle. + +As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered +like some woman's over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. +He would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not +have separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two +old ladies done their work. + +"Good morning," said the Old Gentleman. "I am glad to perceive that +the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health +about the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of +thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with +me, my man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your +physical being accord with the mental." + +That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving +Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an +Institution. Nothing could be compared with them except the +Declaration of Independence. Always before they had been music in +Stuffy's ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman's face with +tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell +upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little +and turned his back to the wind. + +Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech +rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing +every time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come +there after he was gone--a son who would stand proud and strong +before some subsequent Stuffy, and say: "In memory of my father." +Then it would be an Institution. + +But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms +in one of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the +quiet streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in +a little conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he +walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse +in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of +a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find +some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old +Gentleman's occupations. + +Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless +in his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman's eyes were bright with the +giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his +little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen +was beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully +at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas +bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had +heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed them into +Stuffy's old formula of acceptance. + +"Thankee, sir. I'll go with ye, and much obliged. I'm very hungry, +sir." + +The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy's +mind the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His +Thanksgiving appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred +rights of established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of +Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, +America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must +be a repetend--a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of +steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron, +badly silvered, and tin. + +The Old Gentleman led his annual protege southward to the restaurant, +and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were +recognized. + +"Here comes de old guy," said a waiter, "dat blows dat same bum to a +meal every Thanksgiving." + +The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl +at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped +the table with holiday food--and Stuffy, with a sigh that was +mistaken for hunger's expression, raised knife and fork and carved +for himself a crown of imperishable bay. + +No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an +enemy. Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before +him as fast as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost +when he entered the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused +him to lose his honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a +true knight. He saw the look of beneficent happiness on the Old +Gentleman's face--a happier look than even the fuchsias and the +ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought to it--and he had not the +heart to see it wane. + +In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. "Thankee kindly, +sir," he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; "thankee kindly for a +hearty meal." Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started +toward the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and +pointed him toward the door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out +$1.30 in silver change, leaving three nickels for the waiter. + +They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman +going south, Stuffy north. + +Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. +Then he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his +feathers, and fell to the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse. + +When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed +softly at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a +transfer to the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to +the hospital. There they stretched him on a bed and began to test +him for strange diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some +problem with the bare steel. + +And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. +And they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he +looked good for the bill. + +But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses +whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases. + +"That nice old gentleman over there, now," he said, "you wouldn't +think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I +guess. He told me he hadn't eaten a thing for three days." + + + + +THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS + + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a +pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They +were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven +faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining +their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks. + +Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions +in my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park +Commissioners (around the corner, if necessary), and arrange +for benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women +to sit upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I +might furnish libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build +sanitariums for crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if I +wanted to. + +Women's rights societies have been laboring for many years after +equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they +must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their +highest French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom, +ladies. Get your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of +mental equality. + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That +was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It +is denied us to look further into a man's bosom than the starch on +his shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and +conversation. + +Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a +hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have +no more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter +building on the west side of the square. But Morley would have +enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but +sunrise had always seen them lined. + +First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and +presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to +issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed +up by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance. + +On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a +pale-faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist +and the voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score. + +"Why, Bergman, man," sang Morley, dulcetly, "is this you? I was just +on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my +aunt arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come +up to the corner and I'll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a +walk." + +Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about +Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed +off a call loan at Rothschilds'. When he was penniless his bluff was +pitched half a tone lower, but few are competent to detect the +difference in the notes. + +"You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley," said +Bergman. "Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen +you in dree mont'. Pros't!" + +Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. +The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to +avoid Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that +Bergman ever went home by that route. + +At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley +knocked with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the +length of a six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of +an African guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was +admitted. + +In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung +for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, +and was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the +40 cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. +At the corner he lingered, undecided. + +Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth +gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and +glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, +stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to +which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he +clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously. + +Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech. + +"Me?" said the youngster. "I'm doin' to the drug 'tore for mamma. +She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med'cin." + +"Now, now, now!" said Morley. "Such a big man you are to be doing +errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that +the cars don't run over him. And on the way we'll have some +chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?" + +Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He +presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money. + +On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. + +"Aqua pura, one pint," said he to the druggist. "Sodium chloride, +ten grains. Fiat solution. And don't try to skin me, because I know +all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and +I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes." + +"Fifteen cents," said the druggist, with a wink after he had +compounded the order. "I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is +the regular price." + +"To gulls," said Morley, smilingly. + +He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child's arms and +escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 +cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge. + +"Look out for the cars, sonny," he said, cheerfully, to his small +victim. + +Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the +youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile +messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner +of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky +with vile, cheap candy from the Italian's fruit stand. + +Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of +inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so +genuinely that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had +come his way. + +"Why, no," said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one. +"It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know +what three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in +transactions of all kinds?" + +"Sure," said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by +the careful knot of Morley's tie; "there's the buyers from the dry +goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from +Staten Island, and"-- + +"Wrong!" said Morley, chuckling happily. "The answer is just--men, +women and children. The world--well, say New York and as far +as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island--is full of +greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this +steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois." + +"If yez t'inks it's on de bum," said the waiter, "Oi'll"-- + +Morley lifted his hand in protest--slightly martyred protest. + +"It will do," he said, magnanimously. "And now, green Chartreuse, +frappe and a demi-tasse." + +Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful +arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he +stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the +tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast +his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good +Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. + +A joyful party of four--two women and two men--fell upon him with +cries of delight. There was a dinner party on--where had he been for +a fortnight past?--what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded +and engulfed him--he must join them--tra la la--and the rest. + +One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his +sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: "See +what I can do with him?" and added her queen's command to the +invitations. + +"I leave you to imagine," said Morley, pathetically, "how it +desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of +the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at +8." + +The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an +arc light down the frolicsome way. + +Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and +laughing gleefully to himself. "'Front,'" he chanted under his +breath; "'front' does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it +in! Men, women and children--forgeries, water-and-salt lies--how +they all take it in!" + +An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a +corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street +cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side. + +"Stranger," said he, "excuse me for troubling you, but do you know +anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son, and +I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know +what I done with his street and number." + +"I do not, sir," said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy +in them. "You had better apply to the police." + +"The police!" said the old man. "I ain't done nothin' to call in the +police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story +house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could"-- + +"I told you I did not," said Morley, coldly. "I know no one by the +name of Smithers, and I advise you to"-- + +"Smothers not Smithers," interrupted the old man hopefully. "A +heavy-set man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth +out, about five foot"-- + +"Oh, 'Smothers!'" exclaimed Morley. "Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in +the next house to me. I thought you said 'Smithers.'" + +Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do +it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the +ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads--according to these +watchmakers--are run by. + +"The Bishop of Long Island," said Morley, "was to meet me here +at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers' Club. But I can't leave +the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. +Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no +name for it! I was about to step across to the other corner and have +a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. +You must let me take you to Sol's house, Mr. Smothers. But, before +we take the car I hope you will join me in"-- + +An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench +in Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips +and $140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, +light-hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon +drifting in and out amidst a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged +man with a low-bowed head sat at the other end of the bench. + +Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In +Morley's appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the +usual nightly occupants of the benches. + +"Kind sir," he whined, "if you could spare a dime or even a few +pennies to one who"-- + +Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar. + +"God bless you!" said the old man. "I've been trying to find work +for"-- + +"Work!" echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. "You are a fool, my +friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an +Aaron and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will +gush out of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to +me whatever I want from it." + +"God has blessed you," said the old man. "It is only work that I +have known. And now I can get no more." + +"I must go home," said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. "I +stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work." + +"May your kindness be rewarded this night," said the old man. + +"Oh," said Morley, "you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I +think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel +across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting +up the city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such +little things as I do. Well, a good-night to you." + +Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He +blew slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman +passing saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was. + +The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on +the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if +homeward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she +was dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and +neither to the right nor the left. + +Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with +her at school. There had been no sentiment between them--nothing but +the friendship of innocent days. + +But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his +suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said +dully: + +"God! I wish I could die." + + + + +THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY + + +It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful +vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of +Navarro & Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at. + +Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with +liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of +this semiprecious metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick +building covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You +can buy of them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile or an +eighty-five dollar, latest style, ladies' tan coat in twenty +different shades. Navarro & Platt first introduced pennies west of +the Colorado River. They had been ranchmen with business heads, who +saw that the world did not necessarily have to cease its revolutions +after free grass went out. + +Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half Spanish, +cosmopolitan, able, polished, had "gone on" to New York to buy +goods. This year he shied at taking up the long trail. He was +undoubtedly growing older; and he looked at his watch several times +a day before the hour came for his siesta. + +"John," he said, to his junior partner, "you shall go on this year +to buy the goods." + +Platt looked tired. + +"I'm told," said he, "that New York is a plumb dead town; but I'll +go. I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and +have some fun." + +Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit--black frock coat, +broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3-4 inch high, +with black, wrought iron necktie--entered the wholesale cloak and +suit establishment of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway. + +Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and +a mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of +the carpenter's rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar +bear, and shook Platt's hand. + +"And how is the good Mr. Navarro in Texas?" he said. "The trip was +too long for him this year, so? We welcome Mr. Platt instead." + +"A bull's eye," said Platt, "and I'd give forty acres of unirrigated +Pecos County land to know how you did it." + +"I knew," grinned Zizzbaum, "just as I know that the rainfall in El +Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and +that therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits +this spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be +to-morrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will +remove from your mouth the taste of the ones you smuggle across the +Rio Grande and like--because they are smuggled." + +It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended, +Zizzbaum left Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the +private office to Son, who was arranging his diamond scarfpin before +a mirror, ready to leave. + +"Abey," he said, "you will have to take Mr. Platt around to-night +and show him things. They are customers for ten years. Mr. Navarro +and I we played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That +is good, but Mr. Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to +New York. He should amuse easily." + +"All right," said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. "I'll +take him on. After he's seen the Flatiron and the head waiter at the +Hotel Astor and heard the phonograph play 'Under the Old Apple Tree' +it'll be half past ten, and Mr. Texas will be ready to roll up in +his blanket. I've got a supper engagement at 11:30, but he'll be all +to the Mrs. Winslow before then." + +The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do +business. He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum +himself waited on him. Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never +failed to take their discount for cash. + +"And what did you think of our little town?" asked Zizzbaum, with +the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite. + +"I shouldn't care to live in it," said the Texan. "Your son and I +knocked around quite a little last night. You've got good water, but +Cactus City is better lit up." + +"We've got a few lights on Broadway, don't you think, Mr. Platt?" + +"And a good many shadows," said Platt. "I think I like your horses +best. I haven't seen a crow-bait since I've been in town." + +Zizzbaum led him up stairs to show the samples of suits. + +"Ask Miss Asher to come," he said to a clerk. + +Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first +time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon +him. He stood still as a granite cliff above the canon of the +Colorado, with his wide-open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his +look and flushed a little, which was contrary to her custom. + +Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the +blond type known as "medium," and her measurements even went +the required 38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at +Zizzbaum's two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but +cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the +famed basilisk, that fabulous monster's gaze would have wavered and +softened first. Incidentally, she knew buyers. + +"Now, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum, "I want you to see these princess +gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. +This first, if you please, Miss Asher." + +Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each +time wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every +change. She posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken +buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated +oilily of the styles. On the model's face was her faint, impersonal +professional smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or +contempt. + +When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a +little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try +elsewhere. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best +building sites in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to +build a house for his wife-to-be--who was just then in the +dressing-room taking off an evening gown of lavender and tulle. + +"Take your time, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum. "Think it over to-night. +You won't find anybody else meet our prices on goods like these. +I'm afraid you're having a dull time in New York, Mr. Platt. A +young man like you--of course, you miss the society of the ladies. +Wouldn't you like a nice young lady to take out to dinner this +evening? Miss Asher, now, is a very nice young lady; she will make +it agreeable for you." + +"Why, she doesn't know me," said Platt, wonderingly. "She doesn't +know anything about me. Would she go? I'm not acquainted with her." + +"Would she go?" repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. "Sure, +she would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go." + +He called Miss Asher loudly. + +She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist +and plain black skirt. + +"Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this +evening," said Zizzbaum, walking away. + +"Sure," said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. "I'd be much +pleased. Nine-eleven West Twentieth street. What time?" + +"Say seven o'clock." + +"All right, but please don't come ahead of time. I room with a +school teacher, and she doesn't allow any gentlemen to call in the +room. There isn't any parlor, so you'll have to wait in the hall. +I'll be ready." + +At half past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway +restaurant. She was dressed in a plain, filmy black. Platt didn't +know that it was all a part of her day's work. + +With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a +respectable dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries. + +Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile. + +"Mayn't I have something to drink?" she asked. + +"Why, certainly," said Platt. "Anything you want." + +"A dry Martini," she said to the waiter. + +When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took +it away. + +"What is this?" he asked. + +"A cocktail, of course." + +"I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You +can't drink this. What is your first name?" + +"To my intimate friends," said Miss Asher, freezingly, "it is +'Helen.'" + +"Listen, Helen," said Platt, leaning over the table. "For many years +every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to +thinking of somebody that I'd never seen or heard of. I knew it was +you the minute I saw you yesterday. I'm going back home to-morrow, +and you're going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when +you first looked at me. You needn't kick, for you've got to fall +into line. Here's a little trick I picked out for you on my way +over." + +He flicked a two-carat diamond solitaire ring across the table. Miss +Asher flipped it back to him with her fork. + +"Don't get fresh," she said, severely. + +"I'm worth a hundred thousand dollars," said Platt. "I'll build you +the finest house in West Texas." + +"You can't buy me, Mr. Buyer," said Miss Asher, "if you had a +hundred million. I didn't think I'd have to call you down. You +didn't look like the others to me at first, but I see you're all +alike." + +"All who?" asked Platt. + +"All you buyers. You think because we girls have to go out to dinner +with you or lose our jobs that you're privileged to say what you +please. Well, forget it. I thought you were different from the +others, but I see I was mistaken." + +Platt struck his fingers on the table with a gesture of sudden, +illuminating satisfaction. + +"I've got it!" he exclaimed, almost hilariously--"the Nicholson +place, over on the north side. There's a big grove of live oaks and +a natural lake. The old house can be pulled down and the new one set +further back." + +"Put out your pipe," said Miss Asher. "I'm sorry to wake you up, but +you fellows might as well get wise, once for all, to where you stand. +I'm supposed to go to dinner with you and help jolly you along so +you'll trade with old Zizzy, but don't expect to find me in any of +the suits you buy." + +"Do you mean to tell me," said Platt, "that you go out this way with +customers, and they all--they all talk to you like I have?" + +"They all make plays," said Miss Asher. "But I must say that you've +got 'em beat in one respect. They generally talk diamonds, while +you've actually dug one up." + +"How long have you been working, Helen?" + +"Got my name pat, haven't you? I've been supporting myself for eight +years. I was a cash girl and a wrapper and then a shop girl until I +was grown, and then I got to be a suit model. Mr. Texas Man, don't +you think a little wine would make this dinner a little less dry?" + +"You're not going to drink wine any more, dear. It's awful to think +how-- I'll come to the store to-morrow and get you. I want you to +pick out an automobile before we leave. That's all we need to buy +here." + +"Oh, cut that out. If you knew how sick I am of hearing such talk." + +After the dinner they walked down Broadway and came upon Diana's +little wooded park. The trees caught Platt's eye at once, and he +must turn along under the winding walk beneath them. The lights +shone upon two bright tears in the model's eyes. + +"I don't like that," said Platt. "What's the matter?" + +"Don't you mind," said Miss Asher. "Well, it's because--well, I +didn't think you were that kind when I first saw you. But you are +all like. And now will you take me home, or will I have to call a +cop?" + +Platt took her to the door of her boarding-house. They stood for a +minute in the vestibule. She looked at him with such scorn in her +eyes that even his heart of oak began to waver. His arm was half way +around her waist, when she struck him a stinging blow on the face +with her open hand. + +As he stepped back a ring fell from somewhere and bounded on the +tiled floor. Platt groped for it and found it. + +"Now, take your useless diamond and go, Mr. Buyer," she said. + +"This was the other one--the wedding ring," said the Texan, holding +the smooth gold band on the palm of his hand. + +Miss Asher's eyes blazed upon him in the half darkness. + +"Was that what you meant?--did you"-- + +Somebody opened the door from inside the house. + +"Good-night," said Platt. "I'll see you at the store to-morrow." + +Miss Asher ran up to her room and shook the school teacher until she +sat up in bed ready to scream "Fire!" + +"Where is it?" she cried. + +"That's what I want to know," said the model. "You've studied +geography, Emma, and you ought to know. Where is a town called +Cac--Cac--Carac--Caracas City, I think, they called it?" + +"How dare you wake me up for that?" said the school teacher. +"Caracas is in Venezuela, of course." + +"What's it like?" + +"Why, it's principally earthquakes and negroes and monkeys and +malarial fever and volcanoes." + +"I don't care," said Miss Asher, blithely; "I'm going there +to-morrow." + + + + +THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON + + +It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another +for the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky +process, this love at first sight, before she has seen him in +Bradstreet or he has seen her in curl papers. But these things do +happen; and one instance must form a theme for this story--though +not, thank Heaven, to the overshadowing of more vital and important +subjects, such as drink, policemen, horses and earldoms. + +During a certain war a troop calling itself the Gentle Riders rode +into history and one or two ambuscades. The Gentle Riders were +recruited from the aristocracy of the wild men of the West and the +wild men of the aristocracy of the East. In khaki there is little +telling them one from another, so they became good friends and +comrades all around. + +Ellsworth Remsen, whose old Knickerbocker descent atoned for his +modest rating at only ten millions, ate his canned beef gayly by the +campfires of the Gentle Riders. The war was a great lark to him, so +that he scarcely regretted polo and planked shad. + +One of the troopers was a well set up, affable, cool young man, who +called himself O'Roon. To this young man Remsen took an especial +liking. The two rode side by side during the famous mooted up-hill +charge that was disputed so hotly at the time by the Spaniards and +afterward by the Democrats. + +After the war Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a well +set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he +and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious +epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy +and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that his +content was only apparent. + +"Get me a job, Remsen," he said. "I've just handed a barber my last +shilling." + +"No trouble at all," said Remsen. "I know a lot of men who have +banks and stores and things downtown. Any particular line you +fancy?" + +"Yes," said O'Roon, with a look of interest. "I took a walk in your +Central Park this morning. I'd like to be one of those bobbies on +horseback. That would be about the ticket. Besides, it's the only +thing I could do. I can ride a little and the fresh air suits me. +Think you could land that for me?" + +Remsen was sure that he could. And in a very short time he did. And +they who were not above looking at mounted policemen might have seen +a well set up, affable, cool young man on a prancing chestnut steed +attending to his duties along the driveways of the park. + +And now at the extreme risk of wearying old gentlemen who carry +leather fob chains, and elderly ladies who--but no! grandmother +herself yet thrills at foolish, immortal Romeo--there must be a hint +of love at first sight. + +It came just as Remsen was strolling into Fifth avenue from his club +a few doors away. + +A motor car was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet +of vehicles that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and +an old gentleman with snowy side whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap +which could not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. +Not even a wine agent would dare do it. But these two were of no +consequence--except, perhaps, for the guiding of the machine and +the paying for it. At the old gentleman's side sat a young lady +more beautiful than pomegranate blossoms, more exquisite than the +first quarter moon viewed at twilight through the tops of oleanders. +Remsen saw her and knew his fate. He could have flung himself under +the very wheels that conveyed her, but he knew that would be the last +means of attracting the attention of those who ride in motor cars. +Slowly the auto passed, and, if we place the poets above the autoists, +carried the heart of Remsen with it. Here was a large city of +millions, and many women who at a certain distance appear to resemble +pomegranate blossoms. Yet he hoped to see her again; for each one +fancies that his romance has its own tutelary guardian and divinity. + +Luckily for Remsen's peace of mind there came a diversion in the +guise of a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were +not many of them--perhaps a score--and there was wassail and +things to eat, and speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in +recapitulation. And when daylight threatened them the survivors +prepared to depart. But some remained upon the battlefield. One of +these was Trooper O'Roon, who was not seasoned to potent liquids. +His legs declined to fulfil the obligations they had sworn to the +police department. + +"I'm stewed, Remsen," said O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they +build hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? +They'll take away my shield and break me. I can think and talk +con-con-consec-sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've +got to go on duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is +up, I tell you." + +"Look at me," said Remsen, who was his smiling self, pointing to his +own face; "whom do you see here?" + +"Goo' fellow," said O'Roon, dizzily, "Goo' old Remsen." + +"Not so," said Remsen. "You see Mounted Policeman O'Roon. Look at +your face--no; you can't do that without a glass--but look at mine, +and think of yours. How much alike are we? As two French _table +d'hote_ dinners. With your badge, on your horse, in your uniform, +will I charm nurse-maids and prevent the grass from growing under +people's feet in the Park this day. I will have your badge and your +honor, besides having the jolliest lark I've been blessed with since +we licked Spain." + +Promptly on time the counterfeit presentment of Mounted Policeman +O'Roon single-footed into the Park on his chestnut steed. In a +uniform two men who are unlike will look alike; two who somewhat +resemble each other in feature and figure will appear as twin +brothers. So Remsen trotted down the bridle paths, enjoying himself +hugely, so few real pleasures do ten-millionaires have. + +Along the driveway in the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a +pair of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, +for the Park is rarely used in the morning except by unimportant +people who love to be healthy, poor and wise. In the vehicle sat an +old gentleman with snowy side-whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which +could not be worn while driving except by a personage. At his side +sat the lady of Remsen's heart--the lady who looked like pomegranate +blossoms and the gibbous moon. + +Remsen met them coming. At the instant of their passing her eyes +looked into his, and but for the ever coward's heart of a true lover +he could have sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for +twenty yards, and then wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway +hoofs. The bays had bolted. + +Remsen sent his chestnut after the victoria like a shot. There was +work cut out for the impersonator of Policeman O'Roon. The chestnut +ranged alongside the off bay thirty seconds after the chase began, +rolled his eye back at Remsen, and said in the only manner open to +policemen's horses: + +"Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not +O'Roon, but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could +reach the reins of that foolish slow-running bay--ah! you're all +right; O'Roon couldn't have done it more neatly!" + +The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen's +tough muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped +reins, jumped from his seat and stood at the heads of the team. +The chestnut, approving his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling +equinely the subdued bays. Remsen, lingering, was dimly conscious of +a vague, impossible, unnecessary old gentleman in a Scotch cap who +talked incessantly about something. And he was acutely conscious of +a pair of violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his +iron pillar--or whatever the allusion is--and of the lady's smile +and look--a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward +heart of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking +his name and bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, +and the Scotch cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the +eloquent appeal was in the eyes of the lady. + +A little thrill of satisfaction ran through Remsen, because he had a +name to give which, without undue pride, was worthy of being spoken +in high places, and a small fortune which, with due pride, he could +leave at his end without disgrace. + +He opened his lips to speak and closed them again. + +Who was he? Mounted Policeman O'Roon. The badge and the honor of +his comrade were in his hands. If Ellsworth Remsen, ten-millionaire +and Knickerbocker, had just rescued pomegranate blossoms and Scotch +cap from possible death, where was Policeman O'Roon? Off his beat, +exposed, disgraced, discharged. Love had come, but before that there +had been something that demanded precedence--the fellowship of men +on battlefields fighting an alien foe. + +Remsen touched his cap, looked between the chestnut's ears, and took +refuge in vernacularity. + +"Don't mention it," he said stolidly. "We policemen are paid to do +these things. It's our duty." + +And he rode away--rode away cursing _noblesse oblige_, but knowing he +could never have done anything else. + +At the end of the day Remsen sent the chestnut to his stable and +went to O'Roon's room. The policeman was again a well set up, +affable, cool young man who sat by the window smoking cigars. + +"I wish you and the rest of the police force and all badges, horses, +brass buttons and men who can't drink two glasses of _brut_ without +getting upset were at the devil," said Remsen feelingly. + +O'Roon smiled with evident satisfaction. + +"Good old Remsen," he said, affably, "I know all about it. They +trailed me down and cornered me here two hours ago. There was a +little row at home, you know, and I cut sticks just to show them. I +don't believe I told you that my Governor was the Earl of Ardsley. +Funny you should bob against them in the Park. If you damaged that +horse of mine I'll never forgive you. I'm going to buy him and take +him back with me. Oh, yes, and I think my sister--Lady Angela, you +know--wants particularly for you to come up to the hotel with me +this evening. Didn't lose my badge, did you, Remsen? I've got to +turn that in at Headquarters when I resign." + + + + +BRICKDUST ROW + + +Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth +would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a +gentleman--a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked +bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of +disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who +was agent for the Blinker estate. + +"I don't see," said Blinker, "why I should be always signing +confounded papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North +Woods this morning. Now I must wait until to-morrow morning. I hate +night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some +unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a +monologueing, thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn't +scratch. I hate pens that scratch." + +"Sit down," said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. "The worst has +not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not +yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you to-morrow at eleven. +You will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless +nose of a Blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a +haircut." + +"If," said Blinker, rising, "the act did not involve more signing of +papers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a +cigar, please." + +"If," said Lawyer Oldport, "I had cared to see an old friend's son +gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered you to +take it away long ago. Now, let's quit fooling, Alexander. Besides +the grinding task of signing your name some thirty times to-morrow, +I must impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business--of +business, and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about +this five years ago, but you would not listen--you were in a hurry +for a coaching trip, I think. The subject has come up again. The +property--" + +"Oh, property!" interrupted Blinker. "Dear Mr. Oldport, I +think you mentioned to-morrow. Let's have it all at one dose +to-morrow--signatures and property and snappy rubber bands and that +smelly sealing-wax and all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I'll try +to remember to drop in at eleven to-morrow. Morning." + +The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the +legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his +little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and +rows of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was +sole heir. They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so +incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport +kept piling up in banks for him to spend. + +In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine. +Nobody was there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to +him with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. +Everybody was out of town. But here he was kept in like a schoolboy +to write his name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were +deep. + +Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward +who had come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe: + +"Symons, I'm going to Coney Island." He said it as one might say: +"All's off; I'm going to jump into the river." + +The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of +the audibility permitted by the laws governing employees. + +"Certainly, sir," he tittered. "Of course, sir, I think I can see +you at Coney, Mr. Blinker." + +Blinker got a pager and looked up the movements of Sunday +steamboats. Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a +North River pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and +bought a ticket, and was trampled upon and shoved forward until, +at last, he found himself on the upper deck of the boat staring +brazenly at a girl who sat alone upon a camp stool. But Blinker did +not intend to be brazen; the girl was so wonderfully good looking +that he forgot for one minute that he was the prince incog, and +behaved just as he did in society. + +She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind +threatened Blinker's straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it +again. The movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and +smiled, and in another instant he was seated at her side. She was +dressed all in white, she was paler than Blinker imagined milkmaids +and girls of humble stations to be, but she was as tidy as a cherry +blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked out from +the intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul. + +"How dare you raise your hat to me?" she asked, with a smile-redeemed +severity. + +"I didn't," Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by +extending it to "I didn't know how to keep from it after I saw you." + +"I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been +introduced," she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. +He rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down +to his chair again. + +"I guess you weren't going far," she declared, with beauty's +magnificent self-confidence. + +"Are you going to Coney Island?" asked Blinker. + +"Me?" She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering surprise. +"Why, what a question! Can't you see that I'm riding a bicycle in +the park?" Her drollery took the form of impertinence. + +"And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney," said Blinker. +"Mayn't we see Coney together? I'm all alone and I've never been +there before." "It depends," said the girl, "on how nicely you +behave. I'll consider your application until we get there." + +Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his +application. He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his +nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of +his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete. +The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity; +and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual +plane of communication from the beginning. + +He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she +trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room +with her best chum Ella, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that +a glass of milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that +boils itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good +enough for any one. Florence laughed when she heard "Blinker." + +"Well," she said. "It certainly shows that you have imagination. It +gives the 'Smiths' a chance for a little rest, anyhow." + +They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human +wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland +gone into vaudeville. + +With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment +Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized +delights. Hoi polloi trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket +parties bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his +feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the +booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily won girls on +the other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The +publicity gentlemen with megaphones, each before his own stupendous +attraction, roared like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that +could be tortured from brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the +air to gain space for its vibrations against its competitors. But +what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude, +the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling +itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the +ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures, The +vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of +repression and taste that were held by his caste, repelled him +strongly. + +In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence +by his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy +eyes, as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were +saying that they had the right to be shining and happy, for was +their owner not with her (for the present) Man, her Gentleman Friend +and holder of the keys to the enchanted city of fun? + +Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he +suddenly saw Coney aright. + +He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now +looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their +offenses were wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish +joys of these spangled temples were, he perceived that deep +under the gilt surface they offered saving and apposite balm and +satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here, at least, was the +husk of Romance, the empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the +breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the +magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though +its journey be through but a few poor yards of space. He no longer +saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic +of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned +yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver +trumpets of joy's heralds. + +Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and +joined the idealists. + +"You are the lady doctor," he said to Florence. "How shall we go +about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?" + +"We will begin there," said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda +on the edge of the sea, "and we will take them all in, one by one." + +They caught the eight o'clock returning boat and sat, filled with +pleasant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the +Italians' fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The +North Woods seemed to him an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss +he had made over signing his name--pooh! he could sign it a hundred +times. And her name was as pretty as she was--"Florence," he said it +to himself a great many times. + +As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled, +drab, foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the +bay. The boat turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered +as if to seek midstream, and then yawed, seemed to increase its +speed and struck the Coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting +into it with a terrifying shock and crash. + +While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling +about the decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the +steamer that it should not back off and leave the rent exposed for +the water to enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage +sawfish and cleaved its heartless way, full speed ahead. + +The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the +slip. The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold. + +Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. +She made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped +off the slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life +preservers. He began to buckle one around Florence. The rotten +canvas split and the fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in +a stream. Florence caught a handful of it and laughed gleefully. + +"It looks like breakfast food," she said. "Take it off. They're no +good." + +She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down +and sat by his side and put her hand in his. "What'll you bet we +don't reach the pier all right?" she said and began to hum a song. + +And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled order. +The boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the +women and children to the bow, where they could land first. The +boat, very low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make +his promise good. + +"Florence," said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, +"I love you." + +"That's what they all say," she replied, lightly. + +"I am not one of 'they all,'" he persisted. "I never knew any one I +could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every +day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you." + +"That's what they all say," said the girl again, weaving the words +into her little, reckless song. + +"Don't say that again," said Blinker in a tone that made her look at +him in frank surprise. + +"Why shouldn't I say it?" she asked calmly. "They all do." + +"Who are 'they'?" he asked, jealous for the first time in his +existence. + +"Why, the fellows I know." + +"Do you know so many?" + +"Oh, well, I'm not a wall flower," she answered with modest +complacency. + +"Where do you see these--these men? At your home?" + +"Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the +boat, sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I'm a pretty +good judge of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who +is likely to get fresh." + +"What do you mean by 'fresh?'" + +"Why, try to kiss you--me, I mean." + +"Do any of them try that?" asked Blinker, clenching his teeth. + +"Sure. All men do. You know that." + +"Do you allow them?" + +"Some. Not many. They won't take you out anywhere unless you do." + +She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes +were as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look in them, +as though she did not understand him. + +"What's wrong about my meeting fellows?" she asked, wonderingly. + +"Everything," he answered, almost savagely. "Why don't you entertain +your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up +Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?" + +She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. "If you could see +the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust +Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks +crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four +years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody +come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet +the men, hasn't she?" + +"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "A girl has got to meet a--has got to meet +the men." + +"The first time one spoke to me on the street," she continued, "I +ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good +many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the +vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a +parlor, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker--are you really sure +it isn't 'Smith,' now?" + +The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking +with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a +corner and held out her hand. + +"I live just one more block over," she said. "Thank you for a very +pleasant afternoon." + +Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a +cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook +his fist at it through the window. + +"I gave you a thousand dollars last, week," he cried under his +breath, "and she meets them in your very doors. There is something +wrong; there is something wrong." + +At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a +new pen provided by Lawyer Oldport. + +"Now let me go to the woods," he said surlily. + +"You are not looking well," said Lawyer Oldport. "The trip will do +you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business +of which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There +are some buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new +five-year leases to be signed. Your father contemplated a change in +the lease provisions, but never made it. He intended that the parlors +of these houses should not be sub-let, but that the tenants should be +allowed to use them for reception rooms. These houses are in the +shopping district, and are mainly tenanted by young working girls. +As it is they are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of +red brick--" + +Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh. + +"Brickdust Row for an even hundred," he cried. "And I own it. Have I +guessed right?" + +"The tenants have some such name for it," said Lawyer Oldport. + +Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes. + +"Do what you please with it," he said harshly. "Remodel it, burn it, +raze it to the ground. But, man, it's too late I tell you. It's too +late. It's too late. It's too late." + + + + +THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER + + +Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a +tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a +philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. +But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a +line of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been +a Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger with the primary +proposition, Raggles was a poet. + +Raggles's specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would have +been sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their +reflections in mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of a +dislocated doll; as the men who write about wild animals study the +cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricks +and mortar, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants; it was +a thing with a soul characteristic and distinct; an individual +conglomeration of life, with its own peculiar essence, flavor and +feeling. Two thousand miles to the north and south, east and west, +Raggles wandered in poetic fervor, taking the cities to his breast. +He footed it on dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars, +counting time as of no account. And when he had found the heart of a +city and listened to its secret confession, he strayed on, restless, +to another. Fickle Raggles!--but perhaps he had not met the civic +corporation that could engage and hold his critical fancy. + +Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are +feminine. So they were to poet Raggles; and his mind carried a +concrete and clear conception of the figure that symbolized and +typified each one that he had wooed. + +Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of +Mrs. Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with +a soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would +awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of +ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad and fish. + +Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness and +inaccuracy in the description; but that is Raggles's fault. He +should have recorded his sensations in magazine poems. + +Pittsburg impressed him as the play of "Othello" performed in the +Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader's minstrels. +A royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though--homely, hearty, +with flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid +slippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and +drink champagne with his pigs' feet and fried potatoes. + +New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He could +see her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her fan, and +that was all. Only once he came face to face with her. It was at +dawn, when she was flushing the red bricks of the banquette with +a pail of water. She laughed and hummed a chansonette and filled +Raggles's shoes with ice-cold water. Allons! + +Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic and +singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that +the city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around +his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. +And, after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the +cloth, becoming wet, tightened its knots and could not be removed. + +Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you will say; but your +disapprobation should be tempered with gratitude, for these are +poets' fancies--and suppose you had come upon them in verse! + +One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city +of Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learn +her note in the scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solve +and label her and arrange her with the other cities that had given +him up the secret of their individuality. And here we cease to be +Raggles's translator and become his chronicler. + +Raggles landed from a ferry-boat one morning and walked into the +core of the town with the blase air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed +with care to play the role of an "unidentified man." No country, +race, class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association could +have claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to him +piece-meal by citizens of different height, but same number of inches +around the heart, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as +those speciments of raiment, self-measured, that are railroaded to +you by transcontinental tailors with a suit case, suspenders, silk +handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money--as a poet +should be--but with the ardor of an astronomer discovering a new +star in the chorus of the milky way, or a man who has seen ink +suddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles wandered into the great +city. + +Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion +with a look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, +puzzled, discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him +as long primer to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as +send-price-of-subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster +cocktails to swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, +impossible as a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside +fingering damply in his pocket his ribbon-counter salary. + +The greetings of the other cities he had known--their homespun +kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, +garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference. +This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him. +Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an +eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned +for the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoulder; for +Chicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and +eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass--even for the +precipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis. + +On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood, +bashful, like any country swain. For the first time he experienced +the poignant humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried to +reduce this brilliant, swiftly changing, ice-cold city to a formula +he failed utterly. Poet though he was, it offered him no color +similes, no points of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets, +no handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape and +structure, as he familiarly and often contemptuously had done with +other towns. The houses were interminable ramparts loopholed for +defense; the people were bright but bloodless spectres passing in +sinister and selfish array. + +The thing that weighed heaviest on Raggles's soul and clogged his +poet's fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to +saturate the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one that +he considered appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit. +Humanity was gone from them; they were toddling idols of stone and +varnish, worshipping themselves and greedy for though oblivious of +worship from their fellow graven images. Frozen, cruel, implacable, +impervious, cut to an identical pattern, they hurried on their ways +like statues brought by some miracles to motion, while soul and +feeling lay unaroused in the reluctant marble. + +Gradually Raggles became conscious of certain types. One was an +elderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled +face and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded +youth, who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness and +frigid unconcern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, +clear as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, clothed like the +princesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection of +sunlight on a glacier. And another was a by-product of this town of +marionettes--a broad, swaggering, grim, threateningly sedate fellow, +with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field, the complexion of +a baptized infant and the knuckles of a prize-fighter. This type +leaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frapped +contumely. + +A poet is a sensitive creature, and Raggles soon shrivelled in +the bleak embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, +ironical, illegible, unnatural, ruthless expression of the city left +him downcast and bewildered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, +the scolding of vinegar-faced housewives at back doors, the kindly +spleen of bartenders behind provincial free-lunch counters, the +amiable truculence of rural constables, the kicks, arrests and +happy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud, crude cities than +this freezing heartlessness. + +Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace. +Unheeding, regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelash +to testify that they were conscious of his existence. And then he +said to himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was +without a soul; that its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires +and springs, and that he was alone in a great wilderness. + +Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, a +hissing and a crash as something struck him and hurled him over and +over six yards from where he had been. As he was coming down like +the stick of a rocket the earth and all the cities thereof turned to +a fractured dream. + +Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him--an +odor of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a hand +soft as a falling petal touched his brow. Bending over him was the +woman clothed like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and +humid with human sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silks +and furs. With Raggles's hat in his hand and with his face pinker +than ever from a vehement burst of oratory against reckless driving, +stood the elderly gentleman who personified the city's wealth and +ripeness. From a nearby cafe hurried the by-product with the vast +jowl and baby complexion, bearing a glass full of a crimson fluid +that suggested delightful possibilities. + +"Drink dis, sport," said the by-product, holding the glass to +Raggles's lips. + +Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearing +the deepest concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got into +the circle and pressed back the overplus of Samaritans. An old lady +in a black shawl spoke loudly of camphor; a newsboy slipped one +of his papers beneath Raggles's elbow, where it lay on the muddy +pavement. A brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names. + +A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned a lane through +the crowd. A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs. + +"How do you feel, old man?" asked the surgeon, stooping easily to +his task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red drop or two +from Raggles's brow with a fragrant cobweb. + +"Me?" said Raggles, with a seraphic smile, "I feel fine." + +He had found the heart of his new city. + +In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward +in the hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendants +heard sounds of conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggles +had assaulted and damaged a brother convalescent--a glowering +transient whom a freight train collision had sent in to be patched +up. + +"What's all this about?" inquired the head nurse. + +"He was runnin' down me town," said Raggles. + +"What town?" asked the nurse. + +"Noo York," said Raggles. + + + + +VANITY AND SOME SABLES + + +When "Kid" Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McKeever's blue-black +eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of +a colleen's blanderin' tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you +are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 +o'clock to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you +this morning with a cold nose--a sign of doghealth and your +happiness. + +The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city +called the "Stovepipe," which is a narrow and natural extension of +the familiar district known as "Hell's Kitchen." The "Stovepipe" +strip of town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues on the river, +and bends a hard and sooty elbow around little, lost homeless DeWitt +Clinton park. Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in +any kitchen and the situation is analyzed. The chefs in "Hell's +Kitchen" are many, and the "Stovepipe" gang, wears the cordon blue. + +The members of this unchartered but widely known brotherhood +appeared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the +lilies of the conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. +Thus displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an +innocuous conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual +observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven +blocks to the east. + +But off exhibition the "Stovepipes" were not mere street corner +ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious +occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and +valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks +without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honored by +their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully his +objections came to be spread finally upon some police station +blotter or hospital register. + +The police held the "Stovepipe" gang in perpetual suspicion and +respect. As the nightingale's liquid note is heard in the deepest +shadows, so along the "Stovepipe's" dark and narrow confines the +whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there +was smoke in the "stovepipe" the tasselled men in blue knew there +was fire in "Hell's Kitchen." + +"Kid" Brady promised Molly to be good. "Kid" was the vainest, the +strongest, the wariest and the most successful plotter in the gang. +Therefore, the boys were sorry to give him up. + +But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life without protest. +For, in the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper +for a guy to do as his girl advises. + +Black her eye for love's sake, if you will; but it is +all-to-the-good business to do a thing when she wants you to do it. + +"Turn off the hydrant," said the Kid, one night when Molly, tearful, +besought him to amend his ways. "I'm going to cut out the gang. You +for mine, and the simple life on the side. I'll tell you, Moll--I'll +get work; and in a year we'll get married. I'll do it for you. We'll +get a flat and a flute, and a sewing machine and a rubber plant and +live as honest as we can." + +"Oh, Kid," sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with her +handkerchief, "I'd rather hear you say that than to own all of New +York. And we can be happy on so little!" + +The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent +leathers with a suspicion of melancholy. + +"It'll hurt hardest in the rags department," said he. "I've kind +of always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate +cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in +the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the +misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin +to hand over to the little man with the big shears." + +"Never mind, Kid. I'll like you just as much in a blue jumper as I +would in a red automobile." + +Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he +had been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now back to this +honorable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an +assistant that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and +not the assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and +looks contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark's +mansion. + +Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had +"elapsed" on a theater program. The Kid worked away at his pipes and +solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The Stovepipe gang continued +its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen's heads, held up +late travelers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied +Fifth avenue's cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported +itself according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and +faithful to his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his +fingernails and it took him 15 minutes to tie his purple silk ascot +so that the worn places would not show. + +One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly's +house. + +"Open that, Moll!" he said in his large, quiet way. "It's for you." + +Molly's eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, +and in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, +dishwashy, but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve. + +Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew +and enveloped her neck like an anaconda. + +"Russian sables," said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of +Molly's round cheek against the clinging fur. "The real thing. They +don't grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll." + +Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the +family infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. +To make bright eyes, rosy checks and a bewitching smile: Recipe--one +set Russian sables. Apply. + +When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice +of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness. + +"You're a bird, all right, Kid," she admitted gratefully. "I never +had any furs on before in my life. But ain't Russian sables awful +expensive? Seems to me I've heard they were." + +"Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?" asked +the Kid, with calm dignity. "Did you ever notice me leaning on the +remnant counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call +that scarf $250 and the muff $175 and you won't make any mistake +about the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they +look fine on you, Moll." + +Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile +went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the +eye sadly and steadily. + +He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint +flush upon his face. + +"Cut it out," he said, with affectionate roughness. "I told you I +was done with that. I bought 'em and paid for 'em, all right, with +my own money." + +"Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?" + +"Sure. I been saving up." + +"Let's see--saved $425 in eight months, Kid?" + +"Ah, let up," said the Kid, with some heat. "I had some money when +I went to work. Do you think I've been holding 'em up again? I told +you I'd quit. They're paid for on the square. Put 'em on and come +out for a walk." + +Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she +went forth in the streets at the Kid's side. In all that region of +low-lying streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The +word sped, and doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see +the swell furs Kid Brady had given his girl. All down the street +there were "Oh's" and "Ah's" and the reported fabulous sum paid for +the sables was passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her +right elbow sauntered the Kid with the air of princes. Work had not +diminished his love of pomp and show and his passion for the costly +and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang +loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and +went on with their calm, unaccented palaver. + +Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, of +the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who +could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair +dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the +inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would +tip off to him something that he was looking for. + +"What's the excitement down the street?" asked Ransom of a pale +youth in a red sweater. + +"Dey're out rubberin' at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady staked his +girl to," answered the youth. "Some say he paid $900 for de skins. +Dey're swell all right enough." + +"I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year," +said the detective. "He doesn't travel with the gang any more, does +he?" + +"He's workin', all right," said the red sweater, "but--say, sport, +are you trailin' anything in the fur line? A job in a plumbin' shop +don' match wid dem skins de Kid's girl's got on." + +Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the +river bank. He touched the Kid's arm from behind. + +"Let me see you a moment, Brady," he said, quietly. His eye rested +for a second on the long fur scarf thrown stylishly back over +Molly's left shoulder. The Kid, with his old-time police hating +frown on his face, stepped a yard or two aside with the detective. + +"Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote's on West 7--th street yesterday to fix +a leaky water pipe?" asked Ransom. + +"I did," said the Kid. "What of it?" + +"The lady's $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house about +the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has +on." + +"To h--Harlem with you," cried the Kid, angrily. "You know I've +cut out that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables yesterday +at--" + +The Kid stopped short. + +"I know you've been working straight lately," said Ransom. "I'll +give you every chance. I'll go with you where you say you bought the +furs and investigate. The lady can wear 'em along with us and +nobody'll be on. That's fair, Brady." + +"Come on," agreed the Kid, hotly. And then he stopped suddenly in +his tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly's distressed and +anxious face. + +"No use," he said, grimly. "They're the Hethcote sables, all right. +You'll have to turn 'em over, Moll, but they ain't too good for you +if they cost a million." + +Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid's arm. + +"Oh, Kiddy, you've broke my heart," she said. "I was so proud of +you--and now they'll do you--and where's our happiness gone?" + +"Go home," said the Kid, wildly. "Come on, Ransom--take the furs. +Let's get away from here. Wait a minute--I've a good mind to--no, +I'll be d---- if I can do it--run along, Moll--I'm ready, Ransom." + +Around the corner of a lumber-yard came Policeman Kohen on his +way to his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for +assistance. Kohen joined the group. Ransom explained. + +"Sure," said Kohen. "I hear about those saples dat vas stole. You +say you have dem here?" + +Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly's late scarf in his hands and +looked at it closely. + +"Once," he said, "I sold furs in Sixth avenue. Yes, dese are saples. +Dey come from Alaska. Dis scarf is vort $12 and dis muff--" + +"Biff!" came the palm of the Kid's powerful hand upon the policeman's +mouth. Kohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The detective +threw himself upon Brady and with Kohen's aid got the nippers on his +wrist. + +"The scarf is vort $12 and the muff is vort $9," persisted the +policeman. "Vot is dis talk about $1,000 saples?" + +The Kid sat upon a pile of lumber and his face turned dark red. + +"Correct, Solomonski!" he declared, viciously. "I paid $21.50 for +the set. I'd rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, +the swell guy that wouldn't look at anything cheap! I'm a plain +bluffer. Moll--my salary couldn't spell sables in Russian." + +Molly cast herself upon his neck. + +"What do I care for all the sables and money in the world," she +cried. "It's my Kiddy I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy +blockhead!" + +"You can take dose nippers off," said Kohen to the detective. +"Before I leaf de station de report come in dat de lady vind her +saples--hanging in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you dat punch +in my vace--dis von time." + +Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the Kid. +She wound the scarf and threw the end over her left shoulder with a +duchess' grace. + +"A gouple of young vools," said Policeman Kohen to Ransom; "come on +away." + + + + +THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE + + +At the stroke of six Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was +a tailor's apprentice. Are there tailor's apprentices nowadays? + +At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and +patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. +But when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his +firmament let shine. + +It was Saturday night, and the boss laid twelve begrimed and +begrudged dollars in his hand. Ikey dabbled discreetly in water, +donned coat, hat and collar with its frazzled tie and chalcedony +pin, and set forth in pursuit of his ideals. + +For each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, +whether it be love or pinochle or lobster a la Newburg, or the sweet +silence of the musty bookshelves. + +Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring "El" +between the rows of reeking sweat-shops. Pallid, stooping, +insignificant, squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body +and mind, yet, as he swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome +inhalations from his cigarette you perceive that he nurtures in his +narrow bosom the bacillus of society. + +Ikey's legs carried him to and into that famous place of +entertainment known as the Cafe Maginnis--famous because it was the +rendezvous of Billy McMahan, the greatest man, the most wonderful +man, Ikey thought, that the world had ever produced. + +Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred, +and his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered, McMahan +stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing +concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had +been an election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been +swept back into line by a resistless besom of ballots. + +Ikey slunk along the bar and gazed, breath-quickened, at his idol. + +How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great, smooth, laughing +face; his gray eye, shrewd as a chicken hawk's; his diamond ring, +his voice like a bugle call, his prince's air, his plump and active +roll of money, his clarion call to friend and comrade--oh, what a +king of men he was! How he obscured his lieutenants, though they +themselves loomed large and serious, blue of chin and important +of mien, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their short +overcoats! But Billy--oh, what small avail are words to paint for +you his glory as seen by Ikey Snigglefritz! + +The Cafe Maginnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated +bartenders threw themselves featfully upon bottle, cork and glass. +From a score of clear Havanas the air received its paradox of +clouds. The leal and the hopeful shook Billy McMahan's hand. And +there was born suddenly in the worshipful soul of Ikey Snigglefritz +an audacious, thrilling impulse. + +He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which majesty +moved, and held out his hand. + +Billy McMahan grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled. + +Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey threw +away his scabbard and charged upon Olympus. + +"Have a drink with me, Billy," he said familiarly, "you and your +friends?" + +"Don't mind if I do, old man," said the great leader, "just to keep +the ball rolling." + +The last spark of Ikey's reason fled. + +"Wine," he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand. + +The corks of three bottles were drawn; the champagne bubbled in +the long row of glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahan took his +and nodded, with his beaming smile, at Ikey. The lieutenants and +satellites took theirs and growled "Here's to you." Ikey took his +nectar in delirium. All drank. + +Ikey threw his week's wages in a crumpled roll upon the bar. + +"C'rect," said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar notes. +The crowd surged around Billy McMahan again. Some one was telling +how Brannigan fixed 'em over in the Eleventh. Ikey leaned against +the bar a while, and then went out. + +He went down Hester street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to +where he lived. And there his women folk, a bibulous mother and +three dingy sisters, pounced upon him for his wages. And at his +confession they shrieked and objurgated him in the pithy rhetoric +of the locality. + +But even as they plucked at him and struck him Ikey remained in his +ecstatic trance of joy. His head was in the clouds; the star was +drawing his wagon. Compared with what he had achieved the loss of +wages and the bray of women's tongues were slight affairs. + +He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahan. + + * * * * * * * + +Billy McMahan had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved +the name "Mrs. William Darragh McMahan." And there was a certain +vexation attendant upon these cards; for, small as they were, there +were houses in which they could not be inserted. Billy McMahan was +a dictator in politics, a four-walled tower in business, a mogul, +dreaded, loved and obeyed among his own people. He was growing rich; +the daily papers had a dozen men on his trail to chronicle his every +word of wisdom; he had been honored in caricature holding the Tiger +cringing in leash. + +But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a +race of men from which he stood apart but that he viewed with the +eye of Moses looking over into the promised land. He, too, had +ideals, even as had Ikey Snigglefritz; and sometimes, hopeless of +attaining them, his own solid success was as dust and ashes in his +mouth. And Mrs. William Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent +upon her plump but pretty face, and the very rustle of her silks +seemed a sigh. + +There was a brave and conspicuous assemblage in the dining saloon +of a noted hostelry where Fashion loves to display her charms. At +one table sat Billy McMahan and his wife. Mostly silent they were, +but the accessories they enjoyed little needed the indorsement of +speech. Mrs. McMahan's diamonds were outshone by few in the room. +The waiter bore the costliest brands of wine to their table. In +evening dress, with an expression of gloom upon his smooth and +massive countenance, you would look in vain for a more striking +figure than Billy's. + +Four tables away sat alone a tall, slender man, about thirty, +with thoughtful, melancholy eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly +white, thin hands. He was dining on filet mignon, dry toast and +apollinaris. That man was Cortlandt Van Duyckink, a man worth eighty +millions, who inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive +inner circle of society. + +Billy McMahan spoke to no one around him, because he knew no one. +Van Duyckink kept his eyes on his plate because he knew that every +one present was hungry to catch his. He could bestow knighthood and +prestige by a nod, and he was chary of creating a too extensive +nobility. + +And then Billy McMahan conceived and accomplished the most startling +and audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked over +to Cortlandt Van Duyckink's table and held out his hand. + +"Say, Mr. Van Duyckink," he said, "I've heard you was talking about +starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. I'm +McMahan, you know. Say, now, if that's straight I'll do all I can to +help you. And what I says goes in that neck of the woods, don't it? +Oh, say, I rather guess it does." + +Van Duyckink's rather sombre eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank +height and grasped Billy McMahan's hand. + +"Thank you, Mr. McMahan," he said, in his deep, serious tones. "I +have been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad +of your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with +you." + +Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the +accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon +him in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan +trembled with ecstasy, so that her diamonds smote the eye almost +with pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were +those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahan's +acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became enveloped +in the aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him. + +"Wine for that gang!" he commanded the waiter, pointing with his +finger. "Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green +bush. Tell 'em it's on me. D----n it! Wine for everybody!" + +The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to +carry out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house +and its custom. + +"All right," said Billy, "if it's against the rules. I wonder if +'twould do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, it'll +flow all right at the caffy to-night, just the same. It'll be rubber +boots for anybody who comes in there any time up to 2 A. M." + +Billy McMahan was happy. + +He had shaken the hand of Cortlandt Van Duyckink. + + * * * * * * * + +The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out +of place moving slowly among the push carts and trash-heaps on +the lower east side. So did Cortlandt Van Duyckink, with his +aristocratic face and white, thin hands, as he steered carefully +between the groups of ragged, scurrying youngsters in the streets. +And so did Miss Constance Schuyler, with her dim, ascetic beauty, +seated at his side. + +"Oh, Cortlandt," she breathed, "isn't it sad that human beings have +to live in such wretchedness and poverty? And you--how noble it is +of you to think of them, to give your time and money to improve +their condition!" + +Van Duyckink turned his solemn eyes upon her. + +"It is little," he said, sadly, "that I can do. The question is a +large one, and belongs to society. But even individual effort is +not thrown away. Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to +build soup kitchens, where no one who is hungry will be turned away. +And down this other street are the old buildings that I shall cause +to be torn down and there erect others in place of those death-traps +of fire and disease." + +Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it toddled +coveys of wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children. +It stopped before a crazy brick structure, foul and awry. + +Van Duyckink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the +leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who +seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity--a +narrow-chested, pale, unsavory young man, puffing at a cigarette. + +Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly +grasped the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke. + +"I want to know you people," he said, sincerely. "I am going to help +you as much as I can. We shall be friends." + +As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an +unaccustomed glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man. + +He had shaken the hand of Ikey Snigglefritz. + + + + +THE PURPLE DRESS + + +We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly +in repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it +for their especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their +noses to the genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and +blue. We say of princes that they are born to the purple; and no +doubt they are, for the colic tinges their faces with the royal tint +equally with the snub-nosed countenance of a woodchopper's brat. All +women love it--when it is the fashion. + +And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of course +other colors are quite stylish as well--in fact, I saw a lovely thing +the other day in olive green albatross, with a triple-lapped flounce +skirt trimmed with insert squares of silk, and a draped fichu of lace +opening over a shirred vest and double puff sleeves with a lace band +holding two gathered frills--but you see lots of purple too. Oh, yes, +you do; just take a walk down Twenty-third street any afternoon. + +Therefore Maida--the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon-colored +hair in the Bee-Hive Store--said to Grace--the girl with the +rhinestone brooch and peppermint-pepsin flavor to her speech--"I'm +going to have a purple dress--a tailor-made purple dress--for +Thanksgiving." + +"Oh, are you," said Grace, putting away some 7-1/2 gloves into the +6-3/4 box. "Well, it's me for red. You see more red on Fifth avenue. +And the men all seem to like it." + +"I like purple best," said Maida. "And old Schlegel has promised to +make it for $8. It's going to be lovely. I'm going to have a plaited +skirt and a blouse coat trimmed with a band of galloon under a white +cloth collar with two rows of--" + +"Sly boots!" said Grace with an educated wink. + +"--soutache braid over a surpliced white vest; and a plaited basque +and--" + +"Sly boots--sly boots!" repeated Grace. + +"--plaited gigot sleeves with a drawn velvet ribbon over an inside +cuff. What do you mean by saying that?" + +"You think Mr. Ramsay likes purple. I heard him say yesterday he +thought some of the dark shades of red were stunning." + +"I don't care," said Maida. "I prefer purple, and them that don't +like it can just take the other side of the street." + +Which suggests the thought that after all, the followers of purple +may be subject to slight delusions. Danger is near when a maiden +thinks she can wear purple regardless of complexions and opinions; +and when Emperors think their purple robes will wear forever. + +Maida had saved $18 after eight months of economy; and this had +bought the goods for the purple dress and paid Schlegel $4 on the +making of it. On the day before Thanksgiving she would have just +enough to pay the remaining $4. And then for a holiday in a new +dress--can earth offer anything more enchanting? + +Old Bachman, the proprietor of the Bee-Hive Store, always gave a +Thanksgiving dinner to his employees. On every one of the subsequent +364 days, excusing Sundays, he would remind them of the joys of the +past banquet and the hopes of the coming ones, thus inciting them +to increased enthusiasm in work. The dinner was given in the store +on one of the long tables in the middle of the room. They tacked +wrapping paper over the front windows; and the turkeys and other +good things were brought in the back way from the restaurant on the +corner. You will perceive that the Bee-Hive was not a fashionable +department store, with escalators and pompadours. It was almost +small enough to be called an emporium; and you could actually go +in there and get waited on and walk out again. And always at the +Thanksgiving dinners Mr. Ramsay-- + +Oh, bother! I should have mentioned Mr. Ramsay first of all. He is +more important than purple or green, or even the red cranberry +sauce. + +Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for +him. He never pinched the girls' arms when he passed them in dark +corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business +was dull and the girls giggled and said: "Oh, pshaw!" it wasn't G. +Bernard they meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay +was queer and original in other ways. He was a health crank, and +believed that people should never eat anything that was good for +them. He was violently opposed to anybody being comfortable, and +coming in out of snow storms, or wearing overshoes, or taking +medicine, or coddling themselves in any way. Every one of the ten +girls in the store had little pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every +night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay. For, next year old Bachman was going +to take him in for a partner. And each one of them knew that if she +should catch him she would knock those cranky health notions of his +sky high before the wedding cake indigestion was over. + +Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had +two Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in +the store. + +And here were two dresses being conceived to charm Ramsay--one +purple and the other red. Of course, the other eight girls were +going to have dresses too, but they didn't count. Very likely +they'd wear some shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs--nothing as +resplendent as purple or red. + +Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress +ready-made. Oh, what's the use of bothering with a tailor--when +you've got a figger it's easy to get a fit--the ready-made are +intended for a perfect figger--except I have to have 'em all taken +in at the waist--the average figger is so large waisted. + +The night before Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and +bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of +purple, but they were white themselves--the joyous enthusiasm of the +young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew +purple would become her, and--for the thousandth time she tried to +assure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsay said he liked and not +red. She was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of +tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was +going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself. + +Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above +Maida's. + +At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landlady's tongue +clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in +buttermilk. And then Grace come down to her room crying with eyes as +red as any dress. + +"She says I've got to get out," said Grace. "The old beast. Because +I owe her $4. She's put my trunk in the hall and locked the door. I +can't go anywhere else. I haven't got a cent of money." + +"You had some yesterday," said Maida. + +"I paid it on my dress," said Grace. "I thought she'd wait till next +week for the rent." + +Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle. + +Out came--out it had to come--Maida's $4. + +"You blessed darling," cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset. +"I'll pay the mean old thing and then I'm going to try on my dress. +I think it's heavenly. Come up and look at it. I'll pay the money +back, a dollar a week--honest I will." + +Thanksgiving. + +The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched +into Maida's room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. +Maida sat by the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist +darning a st--. Oh, doing fancy work. + +"Why, goodness me! ain't you dressed yet?" shrilled the red one. +"How does it fit in the back? Don't you think these velvet tabs look +awful swell? Why ain't you dressed, Maida?" + +"My dress didn't get finished in time," said Maida. "I'm not going +to the dinner." + +"That's too bad. Why, I'm awfully sorry, Maida. Why don't you put on +anything and come along--it's just the store folks, you know, and +they won't mind." + +"I was set on my purple," said Maida. "If I can't have it I won't go +at all. Don't bother about me. Run along or you'll be late. You look +awful nice in red." + +At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the time +of the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls +shrieking over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachman's roar over his +own deeply-concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. +Bachman, who came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see +Mr. Ramsay moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of +all. + +At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless +air she slowly made her way to Schlegel's shop and told him she +could not pay the $4 due on the dress. + +"Gott!" cried Schlegel, angrily. "For what do you look so glum? Take +him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass +mine shop every day in two years? If I make clothes is it that I do +not know how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when +you can. Take him away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in +him all right. So. Pay me when you can." + +Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and +hurried away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of +rain struck upon her face. She smiled and did not feel it. + +Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose +wardrobes are charged to the old man's account, you cannot begin to +comprehend--you could not understand why Maida did not feel the cold +dash of the Thanksgiving rain. + +At five o'clock she went out upon the street wearing her purple +dress. The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her in a +steady, wind-blown pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with +close-held umbrellas and tight buttoned raincoats. Many of them +turned their heads to marvel at this beautiful, serene, happy-eyed +girl in the purple dress walking through the storm as though she +were strolling in a garden under summer skies. + +I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied +wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual +longing for pretty things--to starve eight months in order to bring +a purple dress and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, +hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? + +Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and +she walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart +must have one crumb during a year. The rain ran down and dripped +from her fingers. + +Some one turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. +Ramsay's eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest. + +"Why, Miss Maida," said he, "you look simply magnificent in your +new dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. +And of all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and +intelligence. There is nothing more healthful and invigorating than +braving the weather as you are doing. May I walk with you?" + +And Maida blushed and sneezed. + + + + +THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 + + +John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was +afflicted with what his comrades called Japanitis. + +Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second +story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour +of the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions +of both the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of +pins stuck in the map which represented the opposing forces, and +these he moved about from day to day in conformity with the war news +in the daily papers. + +Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, +and then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other +firemen would hear him yell: "Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, +huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat 'em up, you little +sleight-o'-hand, bow-legged bull terriers--give 'em another of them +Yalu looloos, and you'll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your +Russians--say, wouldn't they give you a painsky when it comes to a +scrapovitch?" + +Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic +champion of the Mikado's men. Supporters of the Russian cause did +well to keep clear of Engine-House No. 99. + +Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes's head. That +was when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his +driver's seat on the swaying cart, guiding Erebus and Joe, the +finest team in the whole department--according to the crew of 99. + +Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward +his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these--the code of King +Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United +States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The +Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention +of street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is +being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of +our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and +Jeffries's new punch trying for place and show. + +The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the +Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, +but the law will not allow itself to be construed otherwise. All of +which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself +to the attention of the S. P. C. A. + +One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of +protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A +steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes +like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled +ashore and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty--perhaps, +theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of +its own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered +happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased +child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its +body was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; +its face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was +mostly covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat +of a spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few +coins--denarii--scudi--kopecks--pfennigs--pilasters--whatever the +financial nomenclature of his unknown country may have been. + +Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar +and movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut-rates +had shunted him, the alien strayed away from the sea, which he +hated, as far as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99. +Light as a cork, he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the +crudest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into the +reservoir of Liberty. + +While crossing Third avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the +thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of +the wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful +chord in the uproar--the musical clanging of a gong and a great +shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were +hurrying to see. + +This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the +protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, +enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the +path of No. 99's flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with +arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe. + +The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions +or amendments. It is a simple thing--as simple as the rule of three. +There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the +hose-cart and the iron pillar of the elevated railroad. + +John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The +team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the +pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's +strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell +on the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while +Erebus--beautiful, raven-black, best-loved Erebus--lay whickering +in his harness with a broken leg. + +In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the +details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be +reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were +sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men +of No. 99 heard the crack of the S. P. C. A. agent's pistol, and +turned their heads away, not daring to look toward Erebus again. + +When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one of +them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and +grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly +about it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered +effervescently and waved its hands. + +"Sounds like a seidlitz powder," said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, +"and it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man!--that hoss +was worth a steamer full of such two-legged animals. It's a +immigrant--that's what it is." + +"Look at the doctor's chalk mark on its coat," said Reilly, the desk +man. "It's just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one +of them Finns, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads +onto us." + +"Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up +in hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city," groaned +another fireman. "It ought to be taken down to the dock and drowned." + +"Somebody go around and get Sloviski," suggested the engine driver, +"and let's see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of +hair and head noises." + +Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third avenue, +and was reputed to be a linguist. + +One of the men fetched him--a fat, cringing man, with a discursive +eye and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him. + +"Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski," +requested Mike Dowling. "We can't quite figure out whether he's from +the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong-on-the-Ganges." + +Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in +rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle +to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The +immigrant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of +ginger ale. + +"I have you his name," reported Sloviski. "You shall not pronounce +it. Writing of it in paper is better." They gave him paper, and he +wrote, "Demetre Svangvsk." + +"Looks like short hand," said the desk man. + +"He speaks some language," continued the interpreter, wiping his +forehead, "of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, +he have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the +Roumanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do +not him quite understand." + +"Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?" asked Mike, +frowning at the polyglot description. + +"He is a"--answered Sloviski--"he is a--I dink he come from--I dink +he is a fool," he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, +"and if you pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen." + +"Whatever he is, he's a bird," said Mike Dowling; "and you want to +watch him fly." + +Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the +nest of Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and +bestowed upon him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus +of Company 99. Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, +turning once to show his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen. + +In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital. +With great gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. "My +money on the Japs every time," he declared. "Why, look at them +Russians--they're nothing but wolves. Wipe 'em out, I say--and the +little old jiu jitsu gang are just the cherry blossoms to do the +trick, and don't you forget it!" + +The second day after Byrnes's reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, +the unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than +ever. He managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate +the hose-cart driver on his recovery and to apologize for having +caused the accident. This he accomplished by so many extravagant +gestures and explosive noises that the company was diverted for half +an hour. Then they kicked him out again, and on the next day he came +back grinning. How or where he lived no one knew. And then John +Byrnes's nine-year-old son, Chris, who brought him convalescent +delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Svangvsk, and they +allowed him to loaf about the door of the engine-house occasionally. + +One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire +Commissioner buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped +inside for an informal inspection. The men kicked Svangvsk out a +little harder than usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, +in which everything shone like my lady's mirror. + +The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss +of Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that +would do him credit. So they let Joe out of his stall and showed +the Deputy how deserving he was of the finest mate that could be +in horsedom. + +While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into +the Deputy's auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a +monster puffing and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. +The big auto shot away, luckily taking a straight course down the +street. The boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the +cushions and howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped +that auto except a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to +gain by such a stoppage. + +Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again with a grin for another +kick when Chris played his merry little prank. While the others +sprang for the door Demetre sprang for Joe. He glided upon the +horse's bare back like a snake and shouted something at him like +the crack of a dozen whips. One of the firemen afterward swore that +Joe answered him back in the same language. Ten seconds after the +auto started the big horse was eating up the asphalt behind it like +a strip of macaroni. + +Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said +that the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the +middle of it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on +its back cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over +and picked the black speck out of the noise. + +Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk's last kicking at the hands--or +rather the feet--of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through +the door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he +was going to receive. + +Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe's and +made a noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly +through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, +of the delicatessen. + +John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be +kicked. Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that +Demetre grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of +punishment. + +"The heathen rides like a Cossack," remarked a fireman who had seen +a Wild West show--"they're the greatest riders in the world." + +The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever. + +"Yas--yas--me Cossack," he spluttered, striking his chest. + +"Cossack!" repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, "ain't that a kind of +a Russian?" + +"They're one of the Russian tribes, sure," said the desk man, who +read books between fire alarms. + +Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know +of the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called +to Byrnes: + +"Hello there, Jimmy, me boy--how's the war coming along? Japs still +got the bear on the trot, have they?" + +"Oh, I don't know," said John Byrnes, argumentatively, "them Japs +haven't got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets a good whack +at 'em and they won't be knee-high to a puddle-ducksky." + + + + +THE LOST BLEND + + +Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the +dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need +not listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, +where a dime dropped into the cold bouillon aperture will bring +forth a dry Martini. + +Con Lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Kenealy's cafe. +You and I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side and went +into voluntary liquidation with our week's wages. Opposite danced +Con, clean, temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, +punctual, trustworthy, young, responsible, and took our money. + +The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little +"places" which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited +by laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have +nothing to do with either. + +Over the cafe lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter Katherine +had eyes of dark Irish--but why should you be told? Be content with +your Geraldine or your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; and when +she called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the pitcher of +beer for dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk punch in the +shaker. Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; and if you hurl +the last shilling of your fortune upon the bar for whiskey, the +bartender shall take it, and marry his boss's daughter, and good +will grow out of it. + +But not so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and +scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom +the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the +obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle +coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was +voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche +of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A +trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, +the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence +of his divinity. + +There came to Kenealy's two sunburned men, Riley and McQuirk. They +had conference with Kenealy; and then they took possession of a +back room which they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and +druggist's measuring glasses. All the appurtenances and liquids of +a saloon were there, but they dispensed no drinks. All day long +the two sweltered in there pouring and mixing unknown brews and +decoctions from the liquors in their store. Riley had the education, +and he figured on reams of paper, reducing gallons to ounces and +quarts to fluid drams. McQuirk, a morose man with a red eye, dashed +each unsuccessful completed mixture into the waste pipes with curses +gentle, husky and deep. They labored heavily and untiringly to +achieve some mysterious solution like two alchemists striving to +resolve gold from the elements. + +Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered +Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult +bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon +Kenealy's store of liquors to follow their consuming and fruitless +experiments. + +Down the back stairs came Katherine with her smile like sunrise on +Gweebarra Bay. + +"Good evening, Mr. Lantry," says she. "And what is the news to-day, +if you please?" + +"It looks like r-rain," stammered the shy one, backing to the wall. + +"It couldn't do better," said Katherine. "I'm thinking there's +nothing the worse off for a little water." In the back room +Riley and McQuirk toiled like bearded witches over their strange +compounds. From fifty bottles they drew liquids carefully measured +after Riley's figures, and shook the whole together in a great glass +vessel. Then McQuirk would dash it out, with gloomy profanity, and +they would begin again. + +"Sit down," said Riley to Con, "and I'll tell you. + +"Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this +nation of Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where +there's nothing to eat but quinine and nothing to drink but rum. The +natives and foreigners lay down with chills and get up with fevers; +and a good mixed drink is nature's remedy for all such tropical +inconveniences. + +"So we lays in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar +fixtures and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on +a lime steamer. On the way me and Tim sees flying fish and plays +seven-up with the captain and steward, and already begins to feel +like the high-ball kings of the tropics of Capricorn. + +"When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to +introduce to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over +to the starboard binnacle and recollects a few things. + +"'I forgot to tell you, boys,' says he, 'that Nicaragua slapped an +import duty of 48 per cent. ad valorem on all bottled goods last +month. The President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by +mistake for tobasco sauce, and he's getting even. Barrelled goods is +free.' + +"'Sorry you didn't mention it sooner,' says we. And we bought two +forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we +had and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That 48 per cent +would have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1,200 +cocktail rather than throw the stuff away. + +"Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was +something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea +soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt +makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We +gave a nigger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a +cocoanut tree three days beating the sand with his heels and refused +to sign a testimonial. + +"But the other barrel! Say, bartender, did you ever put on a straw +hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a +pretty girl with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? +That's what thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two +fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and +cry because there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to +lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second +barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was +the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark +like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll +get a drink like that across the bar. + +"Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it +was enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a +hive of bees. If that barrel had lasted that country would have +become the greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a +line of Generals and Colonels and ex-Presidents and revolutionists a +block long waiting to be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a +drink. The last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful +stuff. It gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything; +at the same time he didn't care whether his money was tainted or +fresh from the Ice Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua +had repudiated the National debt, removed the duty on cigarettes and +was about to declare war on the United States and England. + +"'Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and 'twill +be by good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we've been +trying. Small lots at a time, we've mixed barrels of all the harmful +ingredients known to the profession of drinking. Ye could have +stocked ten bars with the whiskies, brandies, cordials, bitters, +gins and wines me and Tim have wasted. A glorious drink like that +to be denied to the world! 'Tis a sorrow and a loss of money. The +United States as a nation would welcome a drink of that sort, and +pay for it." + +All the while McQuirk had been carefully measuring and pouring +together small quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them, +from his latest pencilled prescription. The completed mixture was of +a vile, mottled chocolate color. McQuirk tasted it, and hurled it, +with appropriate epithets, into the waste sink. + +"'Tis a strange story, even if true," said Con. "I'll be going now +along to my supper." + +"Take a drink," said Riley. "We've all kinds except the lost blend." + +"I never drink," said Con, "anything stronger than water. I am just +after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word. +'There's not anything,' says she, 'but is better off for a little +water.'" + +When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on the +back. + +"Did ye hear that?" he shouted. "Two fools are we. The six dozen +bottles of 'pollinaris we had on the ship--ye opened them +yourself--which barrel did ye pour them in--which barrel, ye +mudhead?" + +"I mind," said McQuirk, slowly, "'twas in the second barrel we +opened. I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it." + +"We've got it now," cried Riley. "'Twas that we lacked. 'Tis the +water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man, +and get two bottles of 'pollinaris from the bar, while I figure out +the proportionments with me pencil." + +An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy's cafe. +Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the +vicinity where they labor, drawn by some mysterious attraction. + +A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were +half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. +The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary +and assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and +directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious +madness. + +"Began fighting each other in the back room," explained Kenealy to +Con. "And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much +up. But they're good men. They'll pay for everything. Trying to +invent some new kind of cocktail, they was. I'll see they come out +all right in the morning." + +Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went +through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs. + +"Good evening again, Mr. Lantry," said she. "And is there no news +from the weather yet?" + +"Still threatens r-rain," said Con, slipping past with red in his +smooth, pale cheek. + +Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. +Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of +alcohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles. + +On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom +of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid--a bright golden liquid that +seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths. + +Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it. + +As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the +stairs. + +"No news yet, Mr. Lantry?" she asked with her teasing laugh. + +Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there. + +"The news is," he said, "that we're to be married." + +"Put me down, sir!" she cried indignantly, "or I will-- Oh, Con, +where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?" + + + + +A HARLEM TRAGEDY + + +Harlem. + +Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy's flat one flight below. + +"Ain't it a beaut?" said Mrs. Cassidy. + +She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye +was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. +Her lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red finger-marks +on each side of her neck. + +"My husband wouldn't ever think of doing that to me," said Mrs. +Fink, concealing her envy. + +"I wouldn't have a man," declared Mrs. Cassidy, "that didn't beat me +up at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you. Say! but +that last dose Jack gave me wasn't no homeopathic one. I can see +stars yet. But he'll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the +week to make up for it. This eye is good for theater tickets and a +silk shirt waist at the very least." + +"I should hope," said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, "that Mr. +Fink is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me." + +"Oh, go on, Maggie!" said Mrs. Cassidy, laughing and applying witch +hazel, "you're only jealous. Your old man is too frapped and slow +to ever give you a punch. He just sits down and practises physical +culture with a newspaper when he comes home--now ain't that the +truth?" + +"Mr. Fink certainly peruses of the papers when he comes home," +acknowledged Mrs. Fink, with a toss of her head; "but he certainly +don't ever make no Steve O'Donnell out of me just to amuse +himself--that's a sure thing." + +Mrs. Cassidy laughed the contented laugh of the guarded and happy +matron. With the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew +down the collar of her kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, +maroon-colored, edged with olive and orange--a bruise now nearly +well, but still to memory dear. + +Mrs. Fink capitulated. The formal light in her eye softened to +envious admiration. She and Mrs. Cassidy had been chums in the +downtown paper-box factory before they had married, one year before. +Now she and her man occupied the flat above Mame and her man. +Therefore she could not put on airs with Mame. + +"Don't it hurt when he soaks you?" asked Mrs. Fink, curiously. + +"Hurt!"--Mrs. Cassidy gave a soprano scream of delight. "Well, +say--did you ever have a brick house fall on you?--well, that's just +the way it feels--just like when they're digging you out of the +ruins. Jack's got a left that spells two matinees and a new pair of +Oxfords--and his right!--well, it takes a trip to Coney and six +pairs of openwork, silk lisle threads to make that good." + +"But what does he beat you for?" inquired Mrs. Fink, with wide-open +eyes. + +"Silly!" said Mrs. Cassidy, indulgently. "Why, because he's full. +It's generally on Saturday nights." + +"But what cause do you give him?" persisted the seeker after +knowledge. + +"Why, didn't I marry him? Jack comes in tanked up; and I'm here, +ain't I? Who else has he got a right to beat? I'd just like to catch +him once beating anybody else! Sometimes it's because supper ain't +ready; and sometimes it's because it is. Jack ain't particular about +causes. He just lushes till he remembers he's married, and then +he makes for home and does me up. Saturday nights I just move the +furniture with sharp corners out of the way, so I won't cut my +head when he gets his work in. He's got a left swing that jars you! +Sometimes I take the count in the first round; but when I feel like +having a good time during the week or want some new rags I come up +again for more punishment. That's what I done last night. Jack knows +I've been wanting a black silk waist for a month, and I didn't think +just one black eye would bring it. Tell you what, Mag, I'll bet you +the ice cream he brings it to-night." + +Mrs. Fink was thinking deeply. + +"My Mart," she said, "never hit me a lick in his life. It's just +like you said, Mame; he comes in grouchy and ain't got a word to +say. He never takes me out anywhere. He's a chair-warmer at home for +fair. He buys me things, but he looks so glum about it that I never +appreciate 'em." + +Mrs. Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum. "You poor thing!" +she said. "But everybody can't have a husband like Jack. Marriage +wouldn't be no failure if they was all like him. These discontented +wives you hear about--what they need is a man to come home and kick +their slats in once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and +chocolate creams. That'd give 'em some interest in life. What I want +is a masterful man that slugs you when he's jagged and hugs you when +he ain't jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain't got the sand to +do neither!" + +Mrs. Fink sighed. + +The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at +the kick of Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame +flew and hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love +light that shines in the eye of the Maori maid when she recovers +consciousness in the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged +her there. + +"Hello, old girl!" shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and +lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. "I got tickets for Barnum +& Bailey's, and if you'll bust the string of one of them bundles I +guess you'll find that silk waist--why, good evening, Mrs. Fink--I +didn't see you at first. How's old Mart coming along?" + +"He's very well, Mr. Cassidy--thanks," said Mrs. Fink. "I must be +going along up now. Mart'll be home for supper soon. I'll bring you +down that pattern you wanted to-morrow, Mame." + +Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a +meaningless cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a +cry from no particular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most +transient and the most hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why +had Martin never thrashed her? He was as big and strong as Jack +Cassidy. Did he not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he +came home and lounged about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly +good provider, but he ignored the spices of life. + +Mrs. Fink's ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between +plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or +stamp his foot on the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought +to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But +now, to vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired +out, without a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her +sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated Mame--Mame, with +her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy +voyage with her fighting, brutal, loving mate. + +Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of +domesticity. Beyond the portals of his cozy home he cared not to +roam, to roam. He was the man who had caught the street car, the +anaconda that had swallowed its prey, the tree that lay as it had +fallen. + +"Like the supper, Mart?" asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it. + +"M-m-m-yep," grunted Mr. Fink. + +After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his +stocking feet. + +Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition +for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters +of Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, +yarn, cotton, lisle thread or woollen--does not the new canto belong? + +The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr. +Fink ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would +parade and otherwise disport itself. + +Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy's pattern down early. Mame had on her +new silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday +gleam. Jack was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious +scheme for the day afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it. + +A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her +flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following +balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin +Fink was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always +unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant, breathless idea +came to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as +able to use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any +Jack. + +The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink +had the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks' +wash that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged +feet reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed. + +Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink's heart, and higher still surged +an audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her--if he would +not so far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in +conjugal affairs, he must be prompted to his duty. + +Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a +stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump +of unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium--to sit +at ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely +splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes +departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his +mind; but the furthest one was the thought of beating his wife. + +Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the +suds. Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It +sounded like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face +of the unslugged bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink's time. + +Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading. + +"You lazy loafer!" she cried, "must I work my arms off washing and +toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a +kitchen hound?" + +Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared +that he would not strike--that the provocation had been insufficient. +She leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face with her +clenched hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love for him +such as she had not felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin Fink, and +come into your kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of his hand +now--just to show that he cared--just to show that he cared! + +Mr. Fink sprang to his feet--Maggie caught him again on the jaw with +a wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful, +blissful moment before his blow should come--she whispered his name +to herself--she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it. + +In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was +powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat +above came the sound of a woman's voice, high-raised, a bumping, a +stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned--unmistakable sounds +of domestic conflict. + +"Mart and Mag scrapping?" postulated Mr. Cassidy. "Didn't know they +ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?" + +One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other +twinkled at least like paste. + +"Oh, oh," she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the +feminine ejaculatory manner. "I wonder if--wonder if! Wait, Jack, +till I go up and see." + +Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out +from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink. + +"Oh, Maggie," cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; "did he? +Oh, did he?" + +Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed +hopelessly. + +Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it +gently. Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, +pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, +unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink. + +"Tell me, Maggie," pleaded Mame, "or I'll go in there and find out. +What was it? Did he hurt you--what did he do?" + +Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her +friend. + +"For God's sake don't open that door, Mame," she sobbed. "And don't +ever tell nobody--keep it under your hat. He--he never touched me, +and--he's--oh, Gawd--he's washin' the clothes--he's washin' the +clothes!" + + + + +"THE GUILTY PARTY" + + +A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a +window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with +great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of +blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed +daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening +paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be +followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type. + +In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong +bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from +the vespertine pipe. + +Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, +as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty +host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in +rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as +young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude +and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, +to embrace--here were the children playing in the corridors of the +House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The +bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie +street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture. + +A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and +resting by the window, and said: + +"Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too +tired?" + +The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window +answered, with a frown. + +"Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have a +little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play with +the other kids on the sidewalk?" + +The woman who was cooking came to the door. + +"John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street. +They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in the +house all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your +time to amuse her when you come home." + +"Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be +amused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don't +bother me." + + * * * * * * * + +"You're on," said Kid Mullaly. "Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to +the dance. Put up." + +The Kid's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and +challenged. He drew out his "roll" and slapped five tens upon the +bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus "taken" more +slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder, +took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an +inch-long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash +register. + +"And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty," said a bettor, +with anticipatory glee. + +"That's my lookout," said the "Kid," sternly. "Fill 'em up all +around, Mike." + +After the round Burke, the "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal, +Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the +saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the +Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan +shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that +day, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief. + +"Cut that blond out, 'Kid,'" was his advice, "or there'll be +trouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for? +You'll never find one that'll freeze to you like Liz has. She's +worth a hallful of Annies." + +"I'm no Annie admirer!" said the "Kid," dropping a cigarette ash +on his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony's shoulder. "But I +want to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She's been +bragging that I daren't speak to another girl. Liz is all right--in +some ways. She's drinking a little too much lately. And she uses +language that a lady oughtn't." + +"You're engaged, ain't you?" asked Burke. + +"Sure. We'll get married next year, maybe." + +"I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer," said Burke. +"That was two years ago, when she used to came down to the corner of +Chrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort +of a kid then, and couldn't speak without blushing." + +"She's a little spitfire, sometimes, now," said the Kid. "I hate +jealousy. That's why I'm going to the dance with Annie. It'll teach +her some sense." + +"Well, you better look a little out," were Burke's last words. "If +Liz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an +Annie, I'd want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all +right." + +Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes +searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she +hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her +small, white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east +side has added to language. + +Liz's skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink +plaid, well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring +of huge imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the +bottom of a silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high +heels, and were strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have +passed into a flour barrel. + +The "Family Entrance" of the Blue Jay Cafe received her. At a table +she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for +her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced +manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with +a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order +and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the +prerogative of woman. + +"Whiskey, Tommy," she said as her sisters further uptown murmur, +"Champagne, James." + +"Sure, Miss Lizzie. What'll the chaser be?" + +"Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?" + +"Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven't saw him to-day." + +Fluently came the "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one who +required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee. + +"I'm lookin' for 'm," said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under +her nose. "It's got to me that he says he'll take Annie Karlson to +the dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I'm lookin' for 'm. You +know me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid's been engaged. Look at +that ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to the +dance. What'll I do? I'll cut his heart out. Another whiskey, +Tommy." + +"I wouldn't listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie," said the waiter +smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. "Kid Mullaly's not +the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?" + +"Two years," repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under +the magic of the distiller's art. "I always used to play out on the +street of evenin's 'cause there was nothin' doin' for me at home. +For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights +and the people goin' by. And then the Kid came along one evenin' +and sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first +drink he made me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin' +for makin' a noise. And now--say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie +Karlson? If it wasn't for peroxide the chloroform limit would have +put her out long ago. Oh, I'm lookin' for 'm. You tell the Kid if +he comes in. Me? I'll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Another +whiskey, Tommy." + +A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz +walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a +curly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled +string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile +on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a +sudden. + +"Let me show you how to make a cat's-cradle, kid," she said, tucking +her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes. + +And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the +dance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the +bi-monthly dance, a dress affair in which the members took great +pride and bestirred themselves huskily to further and adorn. + +At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a +lady on his arm. As the Loreley's was her hair golden. Her "yes" was +softened to a "yah," but its quality of assent was patent to the +most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, +and--she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly. + +And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the +thing happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in +many studies and libraries. + +Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green +silk skirt, under the _nom de guerre_ of "Liz." Her eyes were hard +and blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly, +she cried out one oath--the Kid's own favorite oath--and in his +own deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went +frantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the +waiter--made good as far as the length of her knife blade and the +strength of her arm permitted. + +And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation--or was it +self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the +natural branch? + +Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flying +through a grove of saplings at dusk. + +And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient +and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight +and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved +and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest +barbarity--the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it +survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of +culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in the +chase. + +They pursued--a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and +maidens--howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. +Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may +his heart, the gentler, falter at the siege. + +Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the +familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the +rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps--and good +mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily but +quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights +burning o' nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges. + + * * * * * * * + +It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call +them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed +the rest of this story. + +I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; I +suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking +patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing some +such little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there +was a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgments +were going on. And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing +court-officer angel would come outside the door and call another +case. + +While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether +there would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming +that I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and +sang out: + +"Case No. 99,852,743." + +Up stepped a plain-clothes man--there were lots of 'em there, +dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just +like cops do on earth--and by the arm he dragged--whom, do you +think? Why, Liz! + +The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to +Mr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case. + +"A very sad one," says he, laying the points of his manicured +fingers together. "An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special +Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to +me. The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had no +defense. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of +which are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is +death. Praise the Lord." + +The court officer opened the door and stepped out. + +"Poor girl," said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, +with a tear in his eye. "It was one of the saddest cases that I ever +met with. Of course she was"-- + +"Discharged," said the court officer. "Come here, Jonesy. First +thing you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How +would you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea +Islands--hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'll +be transferred--see? The guilty party you've not to look for in +this case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the +window reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in +the streets. Get a move on you." + +Now, wasn't that a silly dream? + + + + +ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS + + +Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are +forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met +and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their +fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of +respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the +monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and +bumptious civic alma mater. + +The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral +cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high +and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his +badge and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the +solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to +accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month +after his dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck +from his free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from +her nest, and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after +that he acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and +wrote complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought +the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give +him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of +an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex street, and +quoting the words of a song book ballad. + +Murray's fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All +the pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The +megaphone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on +a grand and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about +something, and the prince had been escorted to the door by the +butler, which, in said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the +avuncular shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he +drifted downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the +crusts of the streets with him. + +One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great +bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase--drawing +irony instead of pity to his petitions for aid--was heaped against +the arm of the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by +tufts of vermilion, week-old whiskers and topped by a sagging white +straw hat, looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that +you may observe in a dark Third avenue window, challenging your +imagination to say whether it be something recent in the way of +ladies' hats or a strawberry shortcake. A tight-drawn belt--last +relic of his official spruceness--made a deep furrow in his +circumference. The Captain's shoes were buttonless. In a smothered +bass he cursed his star of ill-luck. + +Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of +blue serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little +indistinct, like some ghost that had been dispossessed. + +"I'm hungry," growled the Captain--"by the top sirloin of the Bull +of Bashan, I'm starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery +restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't +you think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders +scrunched up, giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving +his coach--what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some +place we can get something to chew." + +"You forget, my dear Captain," said Murray, without moving, "that +our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion." + +"You bet it was," groaned the Captain, "you bet your life it was. +Have you got any more like that to make--hey?" + +"I admit we failed," sighed Murray. "I was sure Malone would be good +for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the +last time I spent a nickel in his establishment." + +"I had this hand," said the Captain, extending the unfortunate +member--"I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two +sardine sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us." + +"I was within two inches of the olives," said Murray. "Stuffed +olives. I haven't tasted one in a year." + +"What'll we do?" grumbled the Captain. "We can't starve." + +"Can't we?" said Murray quietly. "I'm glad to hear that. I was +afraid we could." + +"You wait here," said the Captain, rising, heavily and puffily to +his feet. "I'm going to try to make one more turn. You stay here +till I come back, Murray. I won't be over half an hour. If I turn +the trick I'll come back flush." + +He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He +gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a +pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by +tightening his belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo +rhinoceros, across the south end of the park. + +When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly +eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two +green lights. + +"A police captain named Maroney," he said to the desk sergeant, "was +dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years +ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the +police?" + +"Why are ye asking?" inquired the sergeant, with a frown. + +"I thought there might be a reward standing," explained Murray, +easily. "I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty +shady at present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there +should be a reward--" + +"There's no reward," interrupted the sergeant, shortly. "The man's +not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um, +and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a +start." + +Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity. + +"I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman," he +said, severely, "if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of +its offenders." + +Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and +shrank within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment. + +Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy +and thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn +away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with +ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he +was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly +proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and kitchen +stuff. + +"For Heaven's sake, Captain," sniffed Murray, "I doubt that I would +have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to +resort to swill barrels. I"-- + +"Cheese it," said the Captain, harshly. "I'm not hogging it yet. +It's all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed +marriage to that Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now, that +business could be built up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be. +I thought I had that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what +she done to me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there's another scheme +queered." + +"You don't mean to say," said Murray, with infinite contempt, "that +you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your +disgraceful troubles!" + +"Me?" said the Captain. "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl +of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal +a wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder." + +"I think," said Murray, resting his head on his hands, "that I would +play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces +of silver I would"-- + +"Oh, come now!" exclaimed the Captain in dismay. "You wouldn't do +that, Murray! I always thought that Kike's squeal on his boss was +about the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his +friend away is worse than a pirate." + +Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the +electric light fell. + +"Is that you, Mac?" he said, halting before the derelicts. His +diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. +He was big and smooth and well fed. "Yes, I see it's you," he +continued. "They told me at Mike's that I might find you over here. +Let me see you a few minutes, Mac." + +The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie +Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must +be something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of +shadow. + +"You know, Mac," he said, "they're trying Inspector Pickering on +graft charges." + +"He was my inspector," said the Captain. + +"O'Shea wants the job," went on Finnegan. "He must have it. It's for +the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your testimony +will do it. He was your 'man higher up' when you were on the force. +His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You must go on the +stand and testify against him." + +"He was"--began the Captain. + +"Wait a minute," said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out +of his inside pocket. "Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty +on the spot, and the rest"-- + +"He was my friend, I say," finished the Captain. "I'll see you and +the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before +I'll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I'm down and out; but I'm +no traitor to a man that's been my friend." The Captain's voice rose +and boomed like a split trombone. "Get out of this park, Charlie +Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; +and take your dirty money with you." + +Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain returned to his +seat. + +"I couldn't avoid hearing," said Murray, drearily. "I think you are +the biggest fool I ever saw." + +"What would you have done?" asked the Captain. + +"Nailed Pickering to the cross," said Murray. + +"Sonny," said the Captain, huskily and without heat. "You and me are +different. New York is divided into two parts--above Forty-second +street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both +act according to our lights." + +An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that +it lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and +moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the +park, struck through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway, +at this hour as dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii. + +Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt +and slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he +would have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every +street in that part of the city other unkempt and slinking figures +were shuffling and hurrying toward a converging point--a point that +is marked by no monument save that groove on the pavement worn by +tens of thousands of waiting feet. + +At Ninth street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a +Broadway car and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray, +pounced upon him and dragged him under a street light. The Captain +lumbered slowly to the corner, like a wounded bear, and waited, +growling. + +"Jerry!" cried the hatted one. "How fortunate! I was to begin a +search for you to-morrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You're +to be restored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the office in the +morning and get all the money you want. I've liberal instructions in +that respect." + +"And the little matrimonial arrangement?" said Murray, with his head +turned sidewise. + +"Why.--er--well, of course, your uncle understands--expects that +the engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be"-- + +"Good night," said Murray, moving away. + +"You madman!" cried the other, catching his arm. "Would you give up +two millions on account of"-- + +"Did you ever see her nose, old man?" asked Murray, solemnly. + +"But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress, +and"-- + +"Did you ever see it?" + +"Yes, I admit that her nose isn't"-- + +"Good night!" said Murray. "My friend is waiting for me. I am +quoting him when I authorize you to report that there is 'nothing +doing.' Good night." + +A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth street +far up Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain and +Murray fell in at the tail of the quivering millipede. + +"Twenty feet longer than it was last night," said Murray, looking up +at his measuring angle of Grace Church. + +"Half an hour," growled the Captain, "before we get our punk." + +The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward +slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a +hissing serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights +closed up in the rear. + + + + +A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM + + + "The knights are dead; + Their swords are rust. + Except a few who have to hust- + Le all the time + To raise the dust." + + +DEAR READER: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city +with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious +and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was--oh, bother +thermometers!--who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so +hot that-- + +The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to +get your gin fizz now--as soon as all the other people got theirs. +The hospitals were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when +little, woolly dogs loll their tongues out and say "woof, woof!" +at the fleas that bite 'em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies +screech "Mad dog!" and policemen begin to shoot, somebody is +going to get hurt. The man from Pompton, N.J., who always wears +an overcoat in July, had turned up in a Broadway hotel drinking +hot Scotches and enjoying his annual ray from the calcium. +Philanthropists were petitioning the Legislature to pass a bill +requiring builders to make tenement fire-escapes more commodious, +so that families might die all together of the heat instead of one +or two at a time. So many men were telling you about the number of +baths they took each day that you wondered how they got along after +the real lessee of the apartment came back to town and thanked 'em +for taking such good care of it. The young man who called loudly for +cold beef and beer in the restaurant, protesting that roast pullet +and Burgundy was really too heavy for such weather, blushed when he +met your eye, for you had heard him all winter calling, in modest +tones, for the same ascetic viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt waists, +actors and baseball excuses grew thinner. Yes, it was summertime. + +A man stood at Thirty-fourth street waiting for a downtown car. +A man of forty, gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly +dressed, with a harassed look around the eyes. He wiped his forehead +and laughed loudly when a fat man with an outing look stopped and +spoke with him. + +"No, siree," he shouted with defiance and scorn. "None of your old +mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators +for me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do +it. New York, sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep +in the shade and watch your diet, and don't get too far away from +an electric fan. Talk about your Adirondacks and your Catskills! +There's more solid comfort in the borough of Manhattan than in +all the rest of the country together. No, siree! No tramping up +perpendicular cliffs and being waked up at 4 in the morning by a +million flies, and eating canned goods straight from the city for +me. Little old New York will take a few select summer boarders; +comforts and conveniences of homes--that's the ad. that I answer +every time." + +"You need a vacation," said the fat man, looking closely at the +other. "You haven't been away from town in years. Better come with +me for two weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at +anything now that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed +a three-pound brown last week." + +"Nonsense!" cried the other man. "Go ahead, if you like, and boggle +around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish. +When I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at +you fellows whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat +in the country thinking you are having a good time. For me Father +Knickerbocker's little improved farm with the big shady lane running +through the middle of it." + +The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who +thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country +boarded a car and went buzzing down to his office. On the way he +threw away his newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky +above the housetops. + +"Three pounds!" he muttered, absently. "And Harding isn't a liar. +I believe, if I could--but it's impossible--they've got to have +another month--another month at least." + +In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, +headforemost, into the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk, +came and added a spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams. + +At 5 o'clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office +chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud: + +"I wonder what kind of bait Harding used." + + * * * * * * * + +She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to +Gaines. Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew +that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire's son, +and that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure +thing. But white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with +twenty-five's lordly air. + +The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that +year. There were two or three young college men and a couple of +artists and a young naval officer on one side. On the other there +were enough beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of +a society paper to refer to them as a "bevy." But the moon among the +stars was Mary Sewell. Each one of the young men greatly desired to +arrange matters so that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix +the furnace, and have her do away with the "Sewell" part of her name +forever. Those who could stay only a week or two went away hinting +at pistols and blighted hearts. But Compton stayed like the +mountains themselves, for he could afford it. And Gaines stayed +because he was a fighter and wasn't afraid of millionaire's sons, +and--well, he adored the country. + +"What do you think, Miss Mary?" he said once. "I knew a duffer in +New York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could +keep cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn't he an awful +silly? I don't think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of +June." + +"Mamma was thinking of going back week after next," said Miss Mary +with a lovely frown. + +"But when you think of it," said Gaines, "there are lots of jolly +places in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and +the--er--the roof gardens." + +Deepest blue was the lake that day--the day when they had the mock +tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in a glade in +the woods and caught curtain rings on the end of a lance. Such fun! + +Cool and dry as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed +forest. The valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A +white mist from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand's breadth +of tree tops half-way down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand +with young summer. Nothing on Broadway like that. + +The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad +drollery. The woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and +sprites. Gaines caught most of the rings. His was the privilege to +crown the queen of the tournament. He was the conquering knight--as +far as the rings went. On his arm he wore a white scarf. Compton +wore light blue. She had declared her preference for blue, but she +wore white that day. + +Gaines looked about for the queen to crown her. He heard her merry +laugh, as if from the clouds. She had slipped away and climbed +Chimney Rock, a little granite bluff, and stood there, a white fairy +among the laurels, fifty feet above their heads. + +Instantly he and Compton accepted the implied challenge. The bluff +was easily mounted at the rear, but the front offered small hold +to hand or foot. Each man quickly selected his route and began +to climb, A crevice, a bush, a slight projection, a vine or tree +branch--all of these were aids that counted in the race. It was +all foolery--there was no stake; but there was youth in it, cross +reader, and light hearts, and something else that Miss Clay writes +so charmingly about. + +Gaines gave a great tug at the root of a laurel and pulled himself +to Miss Mary's feet. On his arm he carried the wreath of roses; and +while the villagers and summer boarders screamed and applauded below +he placed it on the queen's brow. + +"You are a gallant knight," said Miss Mary. + +"If I could be your true knight always," began Gaines, but Miss Mary +laughed him dumb, for Compton scrambled over the edge of the rock +one minute behind time. + +What a twilight that was when they drove back to the hotel! The opal +of the valley turned slowly to purple, the dark woods framed the +lake as a mirror, the tonic air stirred the very soul in one. The +first pale stars came out over the mountain tops where yet a faint +glow of-- + + * * * * * * * + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gaines," said Adkins. + +The man who believed New York to be the finest summer resort in the +world opened his eyes and kicked over the mucilage bottle on his +desk. + +"I--I believe I was asleep," he said. + +"It's the heat," said Adkins. "It's something awful in the city +these"-- + +"Nonsense!" said the other. "The city beats the country ten to one +in summer. Fools go out tramping in muddy brooks and wear themselves +out trying to catch little fish as long as your finger. Stay in town +and keep comfortable--that's my idea." + +"Some letters just came," said Adkins. "I thought you might like to +glance at them before you go." + +Let us look over his shoulder and read just a few lines of one of +them: + + + MY DEAR, DEAR HUSBAND: Just received your letter ordering us to + stay another month. . . . Rita's cough is almost gone. . . . Johnny + has simply gone wild like a little Indian . . . Will be the + making of both children . . . work so hard, and I know that your + business can hardly afford to keep us here so long . . . best man + that ever . . . you always pretend that you like the city in + summer . . . trout fishing that you used to be so fond of . . . + and all to keep us well and happy . . . come to you if it were + not doing the babies so much good. . . . I stood last evening on + Chimney Rock in exactly the same spot where I was when you put + the wreath of roses on my head . . . through all the world . . . + when you said you would be my true knight . . . fifteen years + ago, dear, just think! . . . have always been that to me . . . + ever and ever, + + MARY. + + +The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in the +country dropped into a cafe on his way home and had a glass of beer +under an electric fan. + +"Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used," he said to himself. + + + + +THE LAST LEAF + + +In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run +crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These +"places" make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself +a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in +this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and +canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself +coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! + +So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came +prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables +and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs +and a chafing dish or two from Sixth avenue, and became a "colony." + +At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their +studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the +other from California. They had met at the _table d'hote_ of an +Eighth street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory +salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio +resulted. + +That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the +doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one +here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this +ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet +trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." + +Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. +A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs +was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. +But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted +iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the +blank side of the next brick house. + +One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a +shaggy, gray eyebrow. + +"She has one chance in--let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down +the mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And that chance is for her +to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of +the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little +lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she +anything on her mind?" + +"She--she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue. + +"Paint?--bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about +twice--a man, for instance?" + +"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man +worth--but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." + +"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all +that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can +accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages +in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent. from the curative +power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about +the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a +one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten." + +After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a +Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room +with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. + +Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her +face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was +asleep. + +She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate +a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by +drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to +pave their way to Literature. + +As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and +a monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a +low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. + +Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and +counting--counting backward. + +"Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven;" and then "ten," and +"nine;" and then "eight" and "seven," almost together. + +Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? +There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of +the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and +decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold +breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its +skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. + +"What is it, dear?" asked Sue. + +"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster +now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head +ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There +are only five left now." + +"Five what, dear. Tell your Sudie." + +"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. +I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" + +"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with +magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting +well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be +a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for +getting well real soon were--let's see exactly what he said--he said +the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as +we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a +new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to +her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port +wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self." + +"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed +out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. +That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it +gets dark. Then I'll go, too." + +"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to +keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done +working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the +light, or I would draw the shade down." + +"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly. + +"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Besides I don't want you to +keep looking at those silly ivy leaves." + +"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her +eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, "because I +want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of +thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing +down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." + +"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for +the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move +'till I come back." + +Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath +them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard +curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. +Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush +without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. +He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet +begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and +then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a +little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony +who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to +excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he +was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in +any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to +protect the two young artists in the studio above. + +Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly +lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that +had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first +line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she +feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float +away when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. + +Old Behrman, with his red eyes, plainly streaming, shouted his +contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. + +"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness +to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not +heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool +hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der +prain of her? Ach, dot poor lettle Miss Johnsy." + +"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her +mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if +you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a +horrid old--old flibbertigibbet." + +"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not +bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to +say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which +one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a +masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes." + +Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade +down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. +In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. +Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A +persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in +his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an upturned +kettle for a rock. + +When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found +Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. + +"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper. + +Wearily Sue obeyed. + +But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had +endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the +brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark +green near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the +yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some +twenty feet above the ground. + +"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall +during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall +die at the same time." + +"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, +"think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?" + +But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is +a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. +The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties +that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed. + +The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the +lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with +the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the +rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low +Dutch eaves. + +When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the +shade be raised. + +The ivy leaf was still there. + +Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to +Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. + +"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that +last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to +want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with +a little port in it, and--no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then +pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook." + +An hour later she said. + +"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples." + +The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into +the hallway as he left. + +"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in +his. "With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case +I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is--some kind of an artist, I +believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is +acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day +to be made more comfortable." + +The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You've +won. Nutrition and care now--that's all." + +And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly +knitting a very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put +one arm around her, pillows and all. + +"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman +died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. +The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room +downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet +through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been +on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still +lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some +scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed +on it, and--look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the +wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the +wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece--he painted it +there the night that the last leaf fell." + + + + +THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST + + +One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue +boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young +lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a +plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed +languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot +one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured +his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the +grace and beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, +business and political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one +from the tablets of his consideration. + +Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps enjoying his +cigar. There was a soft rustle behind and above him, and Andy turned +his head--and had his head turned. + +Just coming out the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black +dress of _crepe de_--_crepe de_--oh, this thin black goods. Her hat +was black, and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as +a spider's web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk +gloves. Not a speck of white or a spot of color about her dress +anywhere. Her rich golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, +into a shining, smooth knot low on her neck. Her face was plain +rather than pretty, but it was now illuminated and made almost +beautiful by her large gray eyes that gazed above the houses across +the street into the sky with an expression of the most appealing +sadness and melancholy. + +Gather the idea, girls--all black, you know, with the preference for +_crepe de_--oh, _crepe de Chine_--that's it. All black, and that +sad, faraway look, and the hair shining under the black veil (you +have to be a blonde, of course), and try to look as if, although +your young life had been blighted just as it was about to give a +hop-skip-and-a-jump over the threshold of life, a walk in the park +might do you good, and be sure to happen out the door at the right +moment, and--oh, it'll fetch 'em every time. But it's fierce, now, +how cynical I am, ain't it?--to talk about mourning costumes this +way. + +Mr. Donovan suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of his +consideration. He threw away the remaining inch-and-a-quarter of his +cigar, that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly +shifted his center of gravity to his low cut patent leathers. + +"It's a fine, clear evening, Miss Conway," he said; and if the +Weather Bureau could have heard the confident emphasis of his tones +it would have hoisted the square white signal, and nailed it to the +mast. + +"To them that has the heart to enjoy it, it is, Mr. Donovan," said +Miss Conway, with a sigh. + +Mr. Donovan, in his heart, cursed fair weather. Heartless weather! +It should hail and blow and snow to be consonant with the mood of +Miss Conway. + +"I hope none of your relatives--I hope you haven't sustained a +loss?" ventured Mr. Donovan. + +"Death has claimed," said Miss Conway, hesitating--"not a relative, +but one who--but I will not intrude my grief upon you, Mr. Donovan." + +"Intrude?" protested Mr. Donovan. "Why, say, Miss Conway, I'd be +delighted, that is, I'd be sorry--I mean I'm sure nobody could +sympathize with you truer than I would." + +Miss Conway smiled a little smile. And oh, it was sadder than her +expression in repose. + +"'Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and they give you the +laugh,'" she quoted. "I have learned that, Mr. Donovan. I have no +friends or acquaintances in this city. But you have been kind to me. +I appreciate it highly." + +He had passed her the pepper twice at the table. + +"It's tough to be alone in New York--that's a cinch," said Mr. +Donovan. "But, say--whenever this little old town does loosen up and +get friendly it goes the limit. Say you took a little stroll in the +park, Miss Conway--don't you think it might chase away some of your +mullygrubs? And if you'd allow me--" + +"Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I'd be pleased to accept of your escort if you +think the company of one whose heart is filled with gloom could be +anyways agreeable to you." + +Through the open gates of the iron-railed, old, downtown park, where +the elect once took the air, they strolled, and found a quiet bench. + +There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old +age: youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; +old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same. + +"He was my fiance," confided Miss Conway, at the end of an hour. "We +were going to be married next spring. I don't want you to think that +I am stringing you, Mr. Donovan, but he was a real Count. He had an +estate and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. +I never saw the beat of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, +and once we eloped, but papa overtook us, and took us back. I +thought sure papa and Fernando would fight a duel. Papa has a livery +business--in P'kipsee, you know." + +"Finally, papa came 'round, all right, and said we might be married +next spring. Fernando showed him proofs of his title and wealth, and +then went over to Italy to get the castle fixed up for us. Papa's +very proud, and when Fernando wanted to give me several thousand +dollars for my trousseau he called him down something awful. He +wouldn't even let me take a ring or any presents from him. And when +Fernando sailed I came to the city and got a position as cashier in +a candy store." + +"Three days ago I got a letter from Italy, forwarded from P'kipsee, +saying that Fernando had been killed in a gondola accident." + +"That is why I am in mourning. My heart, Mr. Donovan, will remain +forever in his grave. I guess I am poor company, Mr. Donovan, but I +cannot take any interest in no one. I should not care to keep you +from gayety and your friends who can smile and entertain you. +Perhaps you would prefer to walk back to the house?" + +Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a +pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other +fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature. Ask any +widow. Something must be done to restore that missing organ to +weeping angels in _crepe de Chine_. Dead men certainly get the worst +of it from all sides. + +"I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Donovan, gently. "No, we won't walk +back to the house just yet. And don't say you haven't no friends in +this city, Miss Conway. I'm awful sorry, and I want you to believe +I'm your friend, and that I'm awful sorry." + +"I've got his picture here in my locket," said Miss Conway, after +wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. "I never showed it to +anybody; but I will to you, Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be +a true friend." + +Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph +in the locket that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count +Mazzini was one to command interest. It was a smooth, intelligent, +bright, almost a handsome face--the face of a strong, cheerful man +who might well be a leader among his fellows. + +"I have a larger one, framed, in my room," said Miss Conway. "When +we return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of +Fernando. But he ever will be present in my heart, that's a sure +thing." + +A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan,--that of supplanting the +unfortunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration +for her determined him to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking +did not seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful +friend was the role he essayed; and he played it so successfully +that the next half-hour found them conversing pensively across two +plates of ice-cream, though yet there was no diminution of the +sadness in Miss Conway's large gray eyes. + +Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and +brought down the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk +scarf. Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes. + +"He gave me this the night he left for Italy," said Miss Conway. "I +had the one for the locket made from this." + +"A fine-looking man," said Mr. Donovan, heartily. "How would it suit +you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney +next Sunday afternoon?" + +A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the +other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black. + +A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the +downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim +kinetoscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn +a look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that +love's lips could not keep back any longer the questions that love's +heart propounded. + +"What's the matter, Andy, you are so solemn and grouchy to-night?" + +"Nothing, Maggie." + +"I know better. Can't I tell? You never acted this way before. What +is it?" + +"It's nothing much, Maggie." + +"Yes it is; and I want to know. I'll bet it's some other girl you +are thinking about. All right. Why don't you go get her if you want +her? Take your arm away, if you please." + +"I'll tell you then," said Andy, wisely, "but I guess you won't +understand it exactly. You've heard of Mike Sullivan, haven't you? +'Big Mike' Sullivan, everybody calls him." + +"No, I haven't," said Maggie. "And I don't want to, if he makes you +act like this. Who is he?" + +"He's the biggest man in New York," said Andy, almost reverently. +"He can about do anything he wants to with Tammany or any other old +thing in the political line. He's a mile high and as broad as East +River. You say anything against Big Mike, and you'll have a million +men on your collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit +over to the old country awhile back, and the kings took to their +holes like rabbits. + +"Well, Big Mike's a friend of mine. I ain't more than deuce-high in +the district as far as influence goes, but Mike's as good a friend +to a little man, or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him +to-day on the Bowery, and what do you think he does? Comes up and +shakes hands. 'Andy,' says he, 'I've been keeping cases on you. +You've been putting in some good licks over on your side of the +street, and I'm proud of you. What'll you take to drink?" He takes a +cigar, and I take a highball. I told him I was going to get married +in two weeks. 'Andy,' says he, 'send me an invitation, so I'll keep +in mind of it, and I'll come to the wedding.' That's what Big Mike +says to me; and he always does what he says. + +"You don't understand it, Maggie, but I'd have one of my hands +cut off to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would be the +proudest day of my life. When he goes to a man's wedding, there's a +guy being married that's made for life. Now, that's why I'm maybe +looking sore to-night." + +"Why don't you invite him, then, if he's so much to the mustard?" +said Maggie, lightly. + +"There's a reason why I can't," said Andy, sadly. "There's a reason +why he mustn't be there. Don't ask me what it is, for I can't tell +you." + +"Oh, I don't care," said Maggie. "It's something about politics, of +course. But it's no reason why you can't smile at me." + +"Maggie," said Andy, presently, "do you think as much of me as you +did of your--as you did of the Count Mazzini?" + +He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply. And then, suddenly +she leaned against his shoulder and began to cry--to cry and shake +with sobs, holding his arm tightly, and wetting the _crepe de Chine_ +with tears. + +"There, there, there!" soothed Andy, putting aside his own trouble. +"And what is it, now?" + +"Andy," sobbed Maggie. "I've lied to you, and you'll never marry me, +or love me any more. But I feel that I've got to tell. Andy, there +never was so much as the little finger of a count. I never had a +beau in my life. But all the other girls had; and they talked about +'em; and that seemed to make the fellows like 'em more. And, Andy, +I look swell in black--you know I do. So I went out to a photograph +store and bought that picture, and had a little one made for my +locket, and made up all that story about the Count, and about his +being killed, so I could wear black. And nobody can love a liar, and +you'll shake me, Andy, and I'll die for shame. Oh, there never was +anybody I liked but you--and that's all." + +But instead of being pushed away, she found Andy's arm folding her +closer. She looked up and saw his face cleared and smiling. + +"Could you--could you forgive me, Andy?" + +"Sure," said Andy. "It's all right about that. Back to the cemetery +for the Count. You've straightened everything out, Maggie. I was in +hopes you would before the wedding-day. Bully girl!" + +"Andy," said Maggie, with a somewhat shy smile, after she had been +thoroughly assured of forgiveness, "did you believe all that story +about the Count?" + +"Well, not to any large extent," said Andy, reaching for his cigar +case, "because it's Big Mike Sullivan's picture you've got in that +locket of yours." + + + + +THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION + + +The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he +can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, +his conception of what it is not--and lo! his paper is covered. +Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmapable trail into that +mooted country, Bohemia. + +Grainger, sub-editor of _Doc's Magazine_, closed his roll-top desk, +put on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the "down" button, and +waited for the elevator. + +Grainger's day had been trying. The chief had tried to ruin the +magazine a dozen times by going against Grainger's ideas for running +it. A lady whose grandfather had fought with McClellan had brought a +portfolio of poems in person. + +Grainger was curator of the Lion's House of the magazine. That day +he had "lunched" an Arctic explorer, a short-story writer, and the +famous conductor of a slaughter-house expose. Consequently his mind +was in a whirl of icebergs, Maupassant, and trichinosis. + +But there was a surcease and a recourse; there was Bohemia. He would +seek distraction there; and, let's see--he would call by for Mary +Adrian. + +Half an hour later he threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid-hunter +through the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the "Idealia" +apartment-house. One day the christeners of apartment-houses and the +cognominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there will be some +jealous and sanguinary knifing. + +The clerk breathed Grainger's name so languidly into the house +telephone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, +down to the janitor's regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily +up to Miss Adrian's ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to come up +immediately. + +A colored maid with an Eliza-crossing-the-ice expression opened +the door of the apartment for him. Grainger walked sideways down +the narrow hall. A bunch of burnt umber hair and a sea-green eye +appeared in the crack of a door. A long, white, undraped arm came +out, barring the way. + +"So glad you came, Ricky, instead of any of the others," said +the eye. "Light a cigarette and give it to me. Going to take me +to dinner? Fine. Go into the front room till I finish dressing. +But don't sit in your usual chair. There's pie in it--Meringue. +Kappelman threw it at Reeves last evening while he was reciting. +Sophy has just come to straighten up. Is it lit? Thanks. There's +Scotch on the mantel--oh, no, it isn't,--that's chartreuse. Ask +Sophy to find you some. I won't be long." + +Grainger escaped the meringue. As he waited his spirits sank still +lower. The atmosphere of the room was as vapid as a zephyr wandering +over a Vesuvian lava-bed. Relics of some feast lay about the room, +scattered in places where even a prowling cat would have been +surprised to find them. A straggling cluster of deep red roses in +a marmalade jar bowed their heads over tobacco ashes and unwashed +goblets. A chafing-dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet music +supported a stack of sandwiches in a chair. + +Mary came in, dressed and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black +fabric whose name through the change of a single vowel seems to +summon visions ranging between the extremes of man's experience. +Spelled with an "e" it belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous +dreams; with an "a" it drapes lamentation and woe. + +That evening they went to the Cafe Andre. And, as people would +confide to you in a whisper that Andre's was the only truly Bohemian +restaurant in town, it may be well to follow them. + +Andre began his professional career as a waiter in a Bowery ten-cent +eating-house. Had you seen him there you would have called him +tough--to yourself. Not aloud, for he would have "soaked" you as +quickly as he would have soaked his thumb in your coffee. He saved +money and started a basement _table d'hote_ in Eighth (or Ninth) +Street. One afternoon Andre drank too much absinthe. He announced to +his startled family that he was the Grand Llama of Thibet, therefore +requiring an empty audience hall in which to be worshiped. He moved +all the tables and chairs from the restaurant into the back yard, +wrapped a red table-cloth around himself, and sat on a step-ladder +for a throne. When the diners began to arrive, madame, in a flurry of +despair, laid cloths and ushered them, trembling, outside. Between +the tables clothes-lines were stretched, bearing the family wash. A +party of Bohemia hunters greeted the artistic innovation with shrieks +and acclamations of delight. That week's washing was not taken in for +two years. When Andre came to his senses he had the menu printed on +stiffly starched cuffs, and served the ices in little wooden tubs. +Next he took down his sign and darkened the front of the house. +When you went there to dine you fumbled for an electric button and +pressed it. A lookout slid open a panel in the door, looked at you +suspiciously, and asked if you were acquainted with Senator Herodotus +Q. McMilligan, of the Chickasaw Nation. If you were, you were +admitted and allowed to dine. If you were not, you were admitted and +allowed to dine. There you have one of the abiding principles of +Bohemia. When Andre had accumulated $20,000 he moved up-town, near +Broadway, in the fierce light that beats upon the thrown-down. +There we find him and leave him, with customers in pearls and +automobile veils, striving to catch his excellently graduated nod +of recognition. + +There is a large round table in the northeast corner of Andre's at +which six can sit. To this table Grainger and Mary Adrian made their +way. Kappelman and Reeves were already there. And Miss Tooker, who +designed the May cover for the _Ladies' Notathome Magazine_. And Mrs. +Pothunter, who never drank anything but black and white highballs, +being in mourning for her husband, who--oh, I've forgotten what he +did--died, like as not. + +Spaghetti-weary reader, wouldst take one penny-in-the-slot peep into +the fair land of Bohemia? Then look; and when you think you have +seen it you have not. And it is neither thimbleriggery nor +astigmatism. + +The walls of the Cafe Andre were covered with original sketches by +the artists who furnished much of the color and sound of the place. +Fair woman furnished the theme for the bulk of the drawings. When +you say "sirens and siphons" you come near to estimating the +alliterative atmosphere of Andre's. + +First, I want you to meet my friend, Miss Adrian. Miss Tooker and +Mrs. Pothunter you already know. While she tucks in the fingers of +her elbow gloves you shall have her daguerreotype. So faint and +uncertain shall the portrait be: + +Age, somewhere between twenty-seven and highneck evening dresses. +Camaraderie in large bunches--whatever the fearful word may mean. +Habitat--anywhere from Seattle to Terra del Fuego. Temperament +uncharted--she let Reeves squeeze her hand after he recited one of +his poems; but she counted the change after sending him out with a +dollar to buy some pickled pig's feet. Deportment 75 out of a +possible 100. Morals 100. + +Mary was one of the princesses of Bohemia. In the first place, it +was a royal and a daring thing to have been named Mary. There are +twenty Fifines and Heloises to one Mary in the Country of Elusion. + +Now her gloves are tucked in. Miss Tooker has assumed a June poster +pose; Mrs. Pothunter has bitten her lips to make the red show; +Reeves has several times felt his coat to make sure that his latest +poem is in the pocket. (It had been neatly typewritten; but he has +copied it on the backs of letters with a pencil.) Kappelman is +underhandedly watching the clock. It is ten minutes to nine. When +the hour comes it is to remind him of a story. Synopsis: A French +girl says to her suitor: "Did you ask my father for my hand at nine +o'clock this morning, as you said you would?" "I did not," he. +replies. "At nine o'clock I was fighting a duel with swords in the +Bois de Boulogne." "Coward!" she hisses. + +The dinner was ordered. You know how the Bohemian feast of reason +keeps up with the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with the +soup; repartee with the entree; brag with the roast; knocks for +Whistler and Kipling with the salad; songs with the coffee; the +slapsticks with the cordials. + +Between Miss Adrian's eyebrows was the pucker that shows the intense +strain it requires to be at ease in Bohemia. Pat must come each +sally, _mot_, and epigram. Every second of deliberation upon a reply +costs you a bay leaf. Fine as a hair, a line began to curve from her +nostrils to her mouth. To hold her own not a chance must be missed. +A sentence addressed to her must be as a piccolo, each word of it +a stop, which she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she +must always be quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle the light +canoe of conversation away from the rocks in the rapids that flow +from the Pierian spring. For, plodding reader, the handwriting on +the wall in the banquet hall of Bohemia is "_Laisser faire_." The +gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that +of slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that holds them +in slavery. + +As the dinner waned, hands reached for the pepper cruet rather +than for the shaker of Attic salt. Miss Tooker, with an elbow to +business, leaned across the table toward Grainger, upsetting her +glass of wine. + +"Now while you are fed and in good humor," she said, "I want to +make a suggestion to you about a new cover." + +"A good idea," said Grainger, mopping the tablecloth with his +napkin. "I'll speak to the waiter about it." + +Kappelman, the painter, was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate +Athenian wit he got up from his chair and waltzed down the room +with a waiter. That dependent, no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, +worthy, tax-paying, art-despising biped, released himself from +the unequal encounter, carried his professional smile back to the +dumb-waiter and dropped it down the shaft to eternal oblivion. +Reeves began to make Keats turn in his grave. Mrs. Pothunter told +the story of the man who met the widow on the train. Miss Adrian +hummed what is still called a _chanson_ in the cafes of Bridgeport. +Grainger edited each individual effort with his assistant editor's +smile, which meant: "Great! but you'll have to send them in through +the regular channels. If I were the chief now--but you know how it +is." + +And soon the head waiter bowed before them, desolated to relate that +the closing hour had already become chronologically historical; so +out all trooped into the starry midnight, filling the street with +gay laughter, to be barked at by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed +by the dull inhabitants of an uninspired world. + +Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of +the Idealia. After he had gone she came down again carrying a small +hand-bag, 'phoned for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, +boarded a 12.55 commuter's train, rode four hours with her +burnt-umber head bobbing against the red-plush back of the seat, +and landed during a fresh, stinging, glorious sunrise at a deserted +station, the size of a peach crate, called Crocusville. + +She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown +cottage stood twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, +Calvinistic face and clothes dyed blacker than a raven in a +coal-mine was washing his hands in a tin basin on the front porch. + +"How are you, father?" said Mary timidly. + +"I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your +mother in the kitchen." + +In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the +forehead, and pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for +breakfast. Mary sat in a wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a +thrill in her heart. + +For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and +tea. + +"You are pursuing the same avocation in the city concerning which +you have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust," said her +father. + +"Yes," said Mary, "I am still reviewing books for the same +publication." + +After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat +in straight-back chairs in the bare-floored parlor. + +"It is my custom," said the old man, "on the Sabbath day to read +aloud from the great work entitled the 'Apology for Authorized and +Set Forms of Liturgy,' by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered +theologian, Jeremy Taylor." + +"I know it," said Mary blissfully, folding her hands. + +For two hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the +notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating +in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden +chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect +as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of +a tom-tom. "Why, oh why," she said to herself, "does some one not +write words to it?" + +At eleven they went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine +bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would +have brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The +preacher singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious head +the damnation of the world. At each side of her an adamant parent +held her rigidly to the bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her +neck, but she dared not move. She lowered her eyes before the +congregation--a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through +which her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a +delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of +the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned her with beneficent +cruelty, as steel braces bind the feet of a crippled child. She was +hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, strait-jacketed, silenced, +ordered. When they came out the minister stopped to greet them. +Mary could only hang her head and answer "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," +to his questions. When she saw that the other women carried their +hymn-books at their waists with their left hands, she blushed and +moved hers there, too, from her right. + +She took the three-o'clock train back to the city. At nine she sat +at the round table for dinner in the Cafe Andre. Nearly the same +crowd was there. + +"Where have you been to-day?" asked Mrs. Pothunter. "I 'phoned to +you at twelve." + +"I have been away in Bohemia," answered Mary, with a mystic smile. + +There! Mary has given it away. She has spoiled my climax. For I +was to have told you that Bohemia is nothing more than the little +country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship +in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and +treasure and move away beyond the hills. It is a hillside that you +turn your head to peer at from the windows of the Through Express. + +At exactly half past eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness +and slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. +Instantly she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that +he shrank down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across +his leering features. And all sounds ceased, as when the shadows of +great wings come upon a flock of chattering sparrows. One had broken +the paramount law of sham-Bohemia--the law of "_Laisser faire_." The +shock came not from the blow delivered, but from the blow received. +With the effect of a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his +pupils was that blow administered. Women pulled down their sleeves +and laid prim hands against their ruffled side locks. Men looked at +their watches. There was nothing of the effect of a brawl about it; +it was purely the still panic produced by the sound of the ax of the +fly cop, Conscience hammering at the gambling-house doors of the +Heart. + +With their punctilious putting on of cloaks, with their exaggerated +pretense of not having seen or heard, with their stammering exchange +of unaccustomed formalities, with their false show of a light-hearted +exit I must take leave of my Bohemian party. Mary has robbed me of my +climax; and she may go. + +But I am not defeated. Somewhere there exists a great vault miles +broad and miles long--more capacious than the champagne caves of +France. In that vault are stored the anticlimaxes that should have +been tagged to all the stories that have been told in the world. I +shall cheat that vault of one deposit. + +Minnie Brown, with her aunt, came from Crocusville down to the city +to see the sights. And because she had escorted me to fishless trout +streams and exhibited to me open-plumbed waterfalls and broken my +camera while I Julyed in her village, I must escort her to the hives +containing the synthetic clover honey of town. + +Especially did the custom-made Bohemia charm her. The spaghetti +wound its tendrils about her heart; the free red wine drowned her +belief in the existence of commercialism in the world; she was +dared and enchanted by the rugose wit that can be churned out of +California claret. + +But one evening I got her away from the smell of halibut and +linoleum long enough to read to her the manuscript of this story, +which then ended before her entrance into it. I read it to her +because I knew that all the printing-presses in the world were +running to try to please her and some others. And I asked her about +it. + +"I didn't quite catch the trains," said she. "How long was Mary in +Crocusville?" + +"Ten hours and five minutes," I replied. + +"Well, then, the story may do," said Minnie. "But if she had stayed +there a week Kappelman would have got his kiss." + + + + +THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT + + +At the street corner, as solid as granite in the "rush-hour" tide +of humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had +stained him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the +glaciers. + +He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as +broad-gauged as the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara +of sound--the crash of the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding +of rubberless tires and the antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers +indulging in scarifying repartee. And so, with his gold dust cashed +in to the merry air of a hundred thousand, and with the cakes and +ale of one week in Gotham turning bitter on his tongue, the Man from +Nome sighed to set foot again in Chilkoot, the exit from the land of +street noises and Dead Sea apple pies. + +Up Sixth avenue, with the tripping, scurrying, chattering, +bright-eyed, homing tide came the Girl from Sieber-Mason's. The Man +from Nome looked and saw, first, that she was supremely beautiful +after his own conception of beauty; and next, that she moved with +exactly the steady grace of a dog sled on a level crust of snow. His +third sensation was an instantaneous conviction that he desired her +greatly for his own. This quickly do men from Nome make up their +minds. Besides, he was going back to the North in a short time, and +to act quickly was no less necessary. + +A thousand girls from the great department store of Sieber-Mason +flowed along the sidewalk, making navigation dangerous to men whose +feminine field of vision for three years has been chiefly limited to +Siwash and Chilkat squaws. But the Man from Nome, loyal to her who +had resurrected his long cached heart, plunged into the stream of +pulchritude and followed her. + +Down Twenty-third street she glided swiftly, looking to neither side; +no more flirtatious than the bronze Diana above the Garden. Her fine +brown hair was neatly braided; her neat waist and unwrinkled black +skirt were eloquent of the double virtues--taste and economy. Ten +yards behind followed the smitten Man from Nome. + +Miss Claribel Colby, the Girl from Sieber-Mason's, belonged to +that sad company of mariners known as Jersey commuters. She walked +into the waiting-room of the ferry, and up the stairs, and by a +marvellous swift, little run, caught the ferry-boat that was just +going out. The Man from Nome closed up his ten yards in three jumps +and gained the deck close beside her. + +Miss Colby chose a rather lonely seat on the outside of the +upper-cabin. The night was not cold, and she desired to be away from +the curious eyes and tedious voices of the passengers. Besides, she +was extremely weary and drooping from lack of sleep. On the previous +night she had graced the annual ball and oyster fry of the West Side +Wholesale Fish Dealers' Assistants' Social Club No. 2, thus reducing +her usual time of sleep to only three hours. + +And the day had been uncommonly troublous. Customers had been +inordinately trying; the buyer in her department had scolded her +roundly for letting her stock run down; her best friend, Mamie +Tuthill, had snubbed her by going to lunch with that Dockery girl. + +The Girl from Sieber-Mason's was in that relaxed, softened mood +that often comes to the independent feminine wage-earner. It is a +mood most propitious for the man who would woo her. Then she has +yearnings to be set in some home and heart; to be comforted, and to +hide behind some strong arm and rest, rest. But Miss Claribel Colby +was also very sleepy. + +There came to her side a strong man, browned and dressed carelessly +in the best of clothes, with his hat in his hand. + +"Lady," said the Man from Nome, respectfully, "excuse me for +speaking to you, but I--I--I saw you on the street, and--and--" + +"Oh, gee!" remarked the Girl from Sieber-Mason's, glancing up with +the most capable coolness. "Ain't there any way to ever get rid +of you mashers? I've tried everything from eating onions to using +hatpins. Be on your way, Freddie." + +"I'm not one of that kind, lady," said the Man from Nome--"honest, +I'm not. As I say, I saw you on the street, and I wanted to know you +so bad I couldn't help followin' after you. I was afraid I wouldn't +ever see you again in this big town unless I spoke; and that's why I +done so." + +Miss Colby looked once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the +ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen +swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his +boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little +of what he had to say. + +"You may sit down," she said, laying her hand over a yawn with +ostentatious politness; "and--mind--don't get fresh or I'll call the +steward." + +The Man from Nome sat by her side. He admired her greatly. He more +than admired her. She had exactly the looks he had tried so long in +vain to find in a woman. Could she ever come to like him? Well, that +was to be seen. He must do all in his power to stake his claim, +anyhow. + +"My name's Blayden," said he--"Henry Blayden." + +"Are you real sure it ain't Jones?" asked the girl, leaning toward +him, with delicious, knowing raillery. + +"I'm down from Nome," he went on with anxious seriousness. "I +scraped together a pretty good lot of dust up there, and brought it +down with me." + +"Oh, say!" she rippled, pursuing persiflage with engaging lightness, +"then you must be on the White Wings force. I thought I'd seen you +somewhere." + +"You didn't see me on the street to-day when I saw you." + +"I never look at fellows on the street." + +"Well, I looked at you; and I never looked at anything before that I +thought was half as pretty." + +"Shall I keep the change?" + +"Yes, I reckon so. I reckon you could keep anything I've got. I +reckon I'm what you would call a rough man, but I could be awful +good to anybody I liked. I've had a rough time of it up yonder, but +I beat the game. Nearly 5,000 ounces of dust was what I cleaned up +while I was there." + +"Goodness!" exclaimed Miss Colby, obligingly sympathetic. "It must +be an awful dirty place, wherever it is." + +And then her eyes closed. The voice of the Man from Nome had a +monotony in its very earnestness. Besides, what dull talk was this +of brooms and sweeping and dust? She leaned her head back against +the wall. + +"Miss," said the Man from Nome, with deeper earnestness and +monotony, "I never saw anybody I liked as well as I do you. I know +you can't think that way of me right yet; but can't you give me a +chance? Won't you let me know you, and see if I can't make you like +me?" + +The head of the Girl from Sieber-Mason's slid over gently and rested +upon his shoulder. Sweet sleep had won her, and she was dreaming +rapturously of the Wholesale Fish Dealers' Assistants' ball. + +The gentleman from Nome kept his arms to himself. He did not +suspect sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to +surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by +regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, +merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken +advantage of. + +One small speck of alloy discounted the gold of his satisfaction. +Had he spoken too freely of his wealth? He wanted to be liked for +himself. + +"I want to say, Miss," he said, "that you can count on me. They know +me in the Klondike from Juneau to Circle City and down the whole +length of the Yukon. Many a night I've laid in the snow up there +where I worked like a slave for three years, and wondered if I'd +ever have anybody to like me. I didn't want all that dust just +myself. I thought I'd meet just the right one some time, and I done +it to-day. Money's a mighty good thing to have, but to have the love +of the one you like best is better still. If you was ever to marry a +man, Miss, which would you rather he'd have?" + +"Cash!" + +The word came sharply and loudly from Miss Colby's lips, giving +evidence that in her dreams she was now behind her counter in the +great department store of Sieber-Mason. + +Her head suddenly bobbed over sideways. She awoke, sat straight, and +rubbed her eyes. The Man from Nome was gone. + +"Gee! I believe I've been asleep," said Miss Colby "Wonder what +became of the White Wings!" + + + + +THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER + + +Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old +ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. +Oh, very well! Pass up this _sotto voce_ autobiography of an X if +you like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John +D's checkbook roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all +right. But don't forget that small change can say a word to the +point now and then. The next time you tip your grocer's clerk a +silver quarter to give you extra weight of his boss's goods read the +four words above the lady's head. How are they for repartee? + +I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen +one in a friend's hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture of +the bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions +of Americans. The heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn the +ends. On my back is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres or +Maxine Elliot standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatory +plant. My references is--or are--Section 3,588, Revised Statutes. +Ten cold, hard dollars--I don't say whether silver, gold, lead or +iron--Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if you want to cash +me in. + +I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make--thanks, +I knew you would--got that sneaking little respect and agreeable +feeling toward even an X, haven't you? You see, a tainted bill +doesn't have much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I +never knew a really cultured and educated person that could afford +to hold a ten-spot any longer than it would take to do an Arthur +Duffy to the nearest That's All! sign or delicatessen store. + +For a six-year-old, I've had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I +guess I've paid as many debts as the man who dies. I've been owned +by a good many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingy +five-dollar silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to +it in the fat and bad-smelling purse of a butcher. + +"Hey, you Sitting Bull," says I, "don't scrouge so. Anyhow, don't +you think it's about time you went in on a customs payment and got +reissued? For a series of 1899 you're a sight." + +"Oh, don't get crackly just because you're a Buffalo bill," says +the fiver. "You'd be limp, too, if you'd been stuffed down in a +thick cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and the +thermometer not a degree under 85 in the store." + +"I never heard of a pocketbook like that," says I. "Who carried +you?" + +"A shopgirl," says the five-spot. + +"What's that?" I had to ask. + +"You'll never know till their millennium comes," says the fiver. + +Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head, +spoke up to the fiver: + +"Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain't lisle thread good enough for yer? If +you was under all cotton like I've been to-day, and choked up with +factory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a +dozen times, you'd have some reason to complain." + +That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500 +package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania +correspondents--and I haven't made the acquaintance of any of the +five and two spot's friends' pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, every +time. + +I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands +twenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for +my owner's every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never +missed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, +while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got +in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little +straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. +Once I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart +peddler's jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again, +for the future department store owner lived on eight cents' worth +of dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one +day on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I was +rescued. I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me. He +changed me at a cigar store near the Bowery that was running a crap +game in the back room. So it was the Captain of the precinct, after +all, that did me the best turn, when he got his. He blew me for wine +the next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as glad +to get back again as an Astor does when he sees the lights of +Charing Cross. + +A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony +once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes. +They were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossining +whenever three girls got hold of one of them during the ice cream +season. But it's Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for the +little Bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse +to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour. + +The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good +thing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to +buy a stack of blues. + +About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk's +and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised took me and a lot +of other notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among the +money tainters. + +"Ticket me for five hundred," said he to the banker, "and look out +for everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the glen +before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody +finds the roof in their way there's $60,000 wrapped in a comic +supplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold; +everywhere be bold, but be not bowled over. 'Night." + +I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of 'em says to +me: + +"Well, old shorthorn, you're in luck to-night. You'll see something +of life. Old Jack's going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg +steak." + +"Explain," says I. "I'm used to joints, but I don't care for filet +mignon with the kind of sauce you serve." + +"'Xcuse me," said the twenty. "Old Jack is the proprietor of this +gambling house. He's going on a whiz to-night because he offered +$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said +his money was tainted." + +"What is a church?" I asked. + +"Oh, I forgot," says the twenty, "that I was talking to a tenner. Of +course you don't know. You're too much to put into the contribution +basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is--a +large building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each." + +I don't care much about chinning with gold certificates. There's a +streak of yellow in 'em. All is not gold that's quitters. + +Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time to +loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary. + +By and by it got around that he was smiting the rock in the +wilderness; and all along Broadway things with cold noses and hot +gullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there +waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may have +had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his Camembert +piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him; +and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then a +few of his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buying +souvenirs for so many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterfly +octettes that the head waiters were 'phoning all over town for +Julian Mitchell to please come around and get them into some kind +of order. + +At last we floated into an uptown cafe that I knew by heart. When the +hod-carriers' union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the chief +goal kicker called out: "Six--eleven--forty-two--nineteen--twelve" +to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear whether we +meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't working for the +furniture and glass factories that night. He sat down quiet and sang +"Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the +twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused. + +But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered +the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the +stuff that you screw out of a bottle with a napkin. + +Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the +outside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the +proprietor. + +"Mike," says he, "here's money that the good people have refused. +Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it's +tainted." + +"I will," says Mike, "and I'll put it in the drawer next to the +bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the +church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter to +live in." + +At 1 o'clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up +the front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of +the restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the +kind--black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a +cross between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's--the kind of woman +that's always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy +squad--and she stands there without a word and looks at the money. + +Old Jack gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a +bow. + +"Madam," says he, just like actors I've heard, "here is a tainted +bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a +gentleman's son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me +the favor to accept it, it is yours." + +The woman took me with a trembling hand. + +"Sir," said she, "I counted thousands of this issue of bills into +packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in +the Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my +position. You say they are tainted now. If you only knew--but +I won't say any more. Thank you with all my heart, sir--thank +you--thank you." + +Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a +bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery. +And I get changed, and she does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away with +a dozen rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbine +water-wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed +up in the bakery, wondering whether I'd get changed at the drug +store the next day in an alum deal or paid over to the cement +works. + +A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills the +baker had given the woman for change. + +"Hallo, E35039669," says I, "weren't you in the change for me in a +bakery last Saturday night?" + +"Yep," says the solitaire in his free and easy style. + +"How did the deal turn out?" I asked. + +"She blew E17051431 for mills and round steak," says the one-spot. +"She kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sick +kid in it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and +tincture of formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed +some. Don't get stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers, +where you hear one. She said something about 'who giveth to the +poor.' Oh, let's cut out the slum talk. I'm certainly tired of the +company that keeps me. I wish I was big enough to move in society +with you tainted bills." + +"Shut up," says I; "there's no such thing. I know the rest of it. +There's a 'lendeth to the Lord' somewhere in it. Now look on my back +and read what you see there." + +"This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public +and private." + +"This talk about tainted money makes me tired," says I. + + + + +ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + +No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie +series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there +might have been a chapter in her books not very different from this. + +Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan +beset "with pitfall and with gin." But the civic guardians of the +young have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, +and most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who +seek to turn straying ones away from the peril that menaces them. +And this will tell you how they guided my Elsie safely through all +peril to the goal that she was seeking. + +Elsie's father had been a cutter for Fox & Otter, cloaks and furs, +on lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, +so a pot-hunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day +when livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he +lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and +a letter from Mr. Otter offering to do anything he could to help +his faithful old employee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a +valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with +pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off +his thread of life. + +That was the landlord's cue; and forth he came and did his part in +the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie +to steal out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her +shoulders, but she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for +the red shawl--back to Blaney with it! Elsie's fall tan coat was +cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at Fox & Otter's. +And her lucky stars had given her good looks, and eyes as blue and +innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 left of the +$2.50. And the letter from Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter +from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made +plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do +not sell. + +And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to +seek her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was +that it did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved +about a month before. But Elsie thought she could find it. She had +heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an +investigation committee, will give up information and addresses. So +she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh street +and rode south to Forty-second, which she thought must surely be the +end of the island. There she stood against the wall undecided, for +the city's roar and dash was new to her. Up where she had lived +was rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the +morning by the squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans. + +A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past +Elsie into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the +Sunflower Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East. +Hank's heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome +place, lacking the presence of a woman. He had hoped to find one +during his visit who would congenially share his prosperity and +home, but the girls of Gotham had not pleased his fancy. But, as +he passed in, he noted, with a jumping of his pulses, the sweet, +ingenuous face of Elsie and her pose of doubt and loneliness. With +true and honest Western impulse he said to himself that here was his +mate. He could love her, he knew; and he would surround her with so +much comfort, and cherish her so carefully that she would be happy, +and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where there grew but one +before. + +Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never before +questioned honesty of purpose, he approached the girl and removed +his soft-brimmed hat. Elsie had but time to sum up his handsome +frank face with one shy look of modest admiration when a burly cop +hurled himself upon the ranchman, seized him by the collar and +backed him against the wall. Two blocks away a burglar was coming +out of an apartment-house with a bag of silverware on his shoulder; +but that is neither here nor there. + +"Carry on yez mashin' tricks right before me eyes, will yez?" +shouted the cop. "I'll teach yez to speak to ladies on me beat that +ye're not acquainted with. Come along." + +Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. +She had liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned +complexion. She walked southward, thinking herself already in the +district where her father used to work, and hoping to find some one +who could direct her to the firm of Fox & Otter. + +But did she want to find Mr. Otter? She had inherited much of the +old cutter's independence. How much better it would be if she could +find work and support herself without calling on him for aid! + +Elsie saw a sign "Employment Agency" and went in. Many girls were +sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were +looking them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling +black silk hurried up to Elsie. + +"My dear," she said in a sweet, gentle voice, "are you looking for +a position? I like your face and appearance so much. I want a young +woman who will be half maid and half companion to me. You will have +a good home and I will pay you $30 a month." + +Before Elsie could stammer forth her gratified acceptance, a young +woman with gold glasses on her bony nose and her hands in her jacket +pockets seized her arm and drew her aside. + +"I am Miss Ticklebaum," said she, "of the Association for the +Prevention of Jobs Being Put Up on Working Girls Looking for Jobs. +We prevented forty-seven girls from securing positions last week. I +am here to protect you. Beware of any one who offers you a job. How +do you know that this woman does not want to make you work as a +breaker-boy in a coal mine or murder you to get your teeth? If you +accept work of any kind without permission of our association you +will be arrested by one of our agents." + +"But what am I to do?" asked Elsie. "I have no home or money. I must +do something. Why am I not allowed to accept this kind lady's offer?" + +"I do not know," said Miss Ticklebaum. "That is the affair of our +Committee on the Abolishment of Employers. It is my duty simply to +see that you do not get work. You will give me your name and address +and report to our secretary every Thursday. We have 600 girls on +the waiting list who will in time be allowed to accept positions +as vacancies occur on our roll of Qualified Employers, which now +comprises twenty-seven names. There is prayer, music and lemonade +in our chapel the third Sunday of every month." + +Elsie hurried away after thanking Miss Ticklebaum for her timely +warning and advice. After all, it seemed that she must try to find +Mr. Otter. + +But after walking a few blocks she saw a sign, "Cashier wanted," in +the window of a confectionery store. In she went and applied for +the place, after casting a quick glance over her shoulder to assure +herself that the job-preventer was not on her trail. + +The proprietor of the confectionery was a benevolent old man with +a peppermint flavor, who decided, after questioning Elsie pretty +closely, that she was the very girl he wanted. Her services were +needed at once, so Elsie, with a thankful heart, drew off her tan +coat and prepared to mount the cashier's stool. + +But before she could do so a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and +black mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing, and +exclaimed: "Young woman, hesitate!" + +Elsie hesitated. + +"Do you know," said the black-and-steel lady, "that in accepting +this position you may this day cause the loss of a hundred lives in +agonizing physical torture and the sending as many souls to +perdition?" + +"Why, no," said Elsie, in frightened tones. "How could I do that?" + +"Rum," said the lady--"the demon rum. Do you know why so many lives +are lost when a theatre catches fire? Brandy balls. The demon rum +lurking in brandy balls. Our society women while in theatres sit +grossly intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. +When the fire fiend sweeps down upon them they are unable to escape. +The candy stores are the devil's distilleries. If you assist in +the distribution of these insidious confections you assist in the +destruction of the bodies and souls of your fellow-beings, and in +the filling of our jails, asylums and almshouses. Think, girl, ere +you touch the money for which brandy balls are sold." + +"Dear me," said Elsie, bewildered. "I didn't know there was rum in +brandy balls. But I must live by some means. What shall I do?" + +"Decline the position," said the lady, "and come with me. I will +tell you what to do." + +After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind +about the cashiership she put on her coat and followed the lady to +the sidewalk, where awaited an elegant victoria. + +"Seek some other work," said the black-and-steel lady, "and assist +in crushing the hydra-headed demon rum." And she got into the +victoria and drove away. + +"I guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again," said Elsie, ruefully, +turning down the street. "And I'm sorry, too, for I'd much rather +make my way without help." + +Near Fourteenth street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a +doorway that read: "Fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on +theatrical costumes. Good pay." + +She was about to enter, when a solemn man, dressed all in black, +laid his hand on her arm. + +"My dear girl," he said, "I entreat you not to enter that +dressing-room of the devil." + +"Goodness me!" exclaimed Elsie, with some impatience. "The devil +seems to have a cinch on all the business in New York. What's wrong +about the place?" + +"It is here," said the solemn man, "that the regalia of Satan--in +other words, the costumes worn on the stage--are manufactured. The +stage is the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil your +soul by lending the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, +my dear girl, what the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors +and actresses go after the curtain of the playhouse has fallen upon +them for the last time?" + +"Sure," said Elsie. "Into vaudeville. But do you think it would be +wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must +get something to do pretty soon." + +"The flesh-pots of Egypt," exclaimed the reverend gentleman, +uplifting his hands. "I beseech you, my child, to turn away from +this place of sin and iniquity." + +"But what will I do for a living?" asked Elsie. "I don't care to sew +for this musical comedy, if it's as rank as you say it is; but I've +got to have a job." + +"The Lord will provide," said the solemn man. "There is a free Bible +class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next +to the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell." + +Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where +factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, "Posey +& Trimmer, Artificial Flowers." Below it was hung a newly stretched +canvas bearing the words, "Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. +Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up." + +Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups +some twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat +tipped down over her eyes stepped in front of her. + +"Say, you'se," said the girl, "are you'se goin' in there after a +job?" + +"Yes," said Elsie; "I must have work." + +"Now don't do it," said the girl. "I'm chairman of our Scab +Committee. There's 400 of us girls locked out just because we +demanded 50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the +foreman to shave off his mustache. You're too nice a looking girl to +be a scab. Wouldn't you please help us along by trying to find a job +somewhere else, or would you'se rather have your face pushed in?" + +"I'll try somewhere else," said Elsie. + +She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart +leaped to see the sign, "Fox & Otter," stretching entirely across +the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had +led her to it through the by-ways of her fruitless search for work. + +She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her +name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly +into his private office. + +Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands +with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of +nearly middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well +dressed, radiating. + +"Well, well, and so this is Beatty's little daughter! Your father +was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? +Well, well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I +am sure there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy +work--nothing easier." + +Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nosed clerk thrust a portion of +himself inside the door. + +"Send Miss Hawkins in," said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came. + +"Miss Hawkins," said Mr. Otter, "bring for Miss Beatty to try on one +of those Russian sable coats and--let's see--one of those latest +model black tulle hats with white tips." + +Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick +breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! +she was beautiful. + +I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it's +got to run it out. I didn't make it up. I'm just repeating it. + +I'd like to throw bouquets at the wise cop, and the lady who rescues +Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush +brandy balls, and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage +people (there are others), and all the thousands of good people who +are at work protecting young people from the pitfalls of a great +city; and then wind up by pointing out how they were the means of +Elsie reaching her father's benefactor and her kind friend and +rescuer from poverty. This would make a fine Elsie story of the old +sort. I'd like to do this; but there's just a word or two to follow. + +While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to +the telephone booth and called up some number. Don't ask me what it +was. + +"Oscar," said he, "I want you to reserve the same table for me this +evening. . . . What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left +of the shrubbery. . . . Yes; two. . . . Yes, the usual brand; and +the '85 Johannisburger with the roast. If it isn't the right +temperature I'll break your neck. . . . No; not her . . . No, +indeed . . . A new one--a peacherino, Oscar, a peacherino!" + +Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a +paraphrase of a few words that you will remember were written by +him--by him of Gad's Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, +you shall stand with a covered pumpkin--aye, sir, a pumpkin. + +Lost, Your Excellency. Lost Associations and Societies. Lost, Right +Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and +Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with +the reverence of money in your souls. And lost thus around us every +day. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRIMMED LAMP*** + + +******* This file should be named 3707.txt or 3707.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/0/3707 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://www.gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +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 + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: +http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/old/3707.zip b/old/3707.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..88923b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/3707.zip diff --git a/old/tlamp10.txt b/old/tlamp10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f6fe44d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tlamp10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7239 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Trimmed Lamp, et al by O Henry +#12 in our series by O Henry + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. The words +are carefully chosen to provide users with the information they +need about what they can legally do with the texts. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below, including for donations. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) +organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541 + + + +Title: The Trimmed Lamp + +Author: O Henry + +Contains: +THE TRIMMED LAMP +A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT +THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL +THE PENDULUM +TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN +THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS +THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY +THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON +BRICKDUST ROW +THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER +VANITY AND SOME SABLES +THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE +THE PURPLE DRESS +THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 +THE LOST BLEND +A HARLEM TRAGEDY +"THE GUILTY PARTY"--AN EAST SIDE TRAGEDY +ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS +A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM +THE LAST LEAF +THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST +THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION +THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT +THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER +ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + + +Release Date: February, 2003 [Etext #3707] +[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule] +[The actual date this file first posted = 07/30/01] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Trimmed Lamp, et al by O Henry +*******This file should be named tlamp10.txt or tlamp10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, tlamp11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, tlamp10a.txt + +This etext was produced by Charles Franks, Greg Weeks and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any +of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our books one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to send us error messages even years after +the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our sites at: +http://gutenberg.net +http://promo.net/pg + + +Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement +can surf to them as follows, and just download by date; this is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 +or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release fifty new Etext +files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 3000+ +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third +of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts unless we +manage to get some real funding. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of July 12, 2001 contributions are only being solicited from people in: +Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, +Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, +Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North +Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, +Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, +Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, +additions to this list will be made and fund raising +will begin in the additional states. Please feel +free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork +to legally request donations in all 50 states. If +your state is not listed and you would like to know +if we have added it since the list you have, just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in +states where we are not yet registered, we know +of no prohibition against accepting donations +from donors in these states who approach us with +an offer to donate. + + +International donations are accepted, +but we don't know ANYTHING about how +to make them tax-deductible, or +even if they CAN be made deductible, +and don't have the staff to handle it +even if there are ways. + +All donations should be made to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3) +organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541, +and has been approved as a 501(c)(3) organization by the US Internal +Revenue Service (IRS). Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum +extent permitted by law. As the requirements for other states are met, +additions to this list will be made and fund raising will begin in the +additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org +if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if +it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . . + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +*** + + +Example command-line FTP session: + +ftp ftp.ibiblio.org +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg +cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext02, etc. +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] +GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this etext, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.07/27/01*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by Charles Franks, Greg Weeks and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team. + + + + + +THE TRIMMED LAMP + +AND OTHER STORIES OF + +THE FOUR MILLION + +By + +O HENRY + + + + +CONTENTS + +THE TRIMMED LAMP +A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT +THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL +THE PENDULUM +TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN +THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS +THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY +THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON +BRICKDUST ROW +THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER +VANITY AND SOME SABLES +THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE +THE PURPLE DRESS +THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 +THE LOST BLEND +A HARLEM TRAGEDY +"THE GUILTY PARTY"--AN EAST SIDE TRAGEDY +ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS +A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM +THE LAST LEAF +THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST +THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION +THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT +THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER +ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + + + +THE TRIMMED LAMP + + +Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the +other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. +There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. +But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We +do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as "marriage- +girls." + +Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work +because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. +Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, +country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage. + +The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and +respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage- +earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months that I +would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them. Meddlesome +Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou. While you are +shaking hands please take notice--cautiously--of their attire. Yes, +cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a stare as a lady in a +box at the horse show is. + +Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a +badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too +long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts +will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over. +Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment +radiates from her. + +Nancy you would call a shop-girl because you have the habit. There +is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so +this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, +and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the +correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air, +but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though it +were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes, remorseless type- +seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of silent +but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad prophecy +of the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the look is +still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian +peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's +face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither +and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer +flowers--with a string tied to them. + +Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery "See +you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, +somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the +housetops to the stars. + +The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou's steady company. +Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a +dozen subpoena servers to find her lamb. + +"Ain't you cold, Nance?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for +working in that old store for $8. a week! I made $l8.50 last week. +Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a +counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I +don't know that it's any less respectful work, either." + +"You can have it," said Nancy, with uplifted nose. "I'll take my +eight a week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and +swell people. And look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove +girls married a Pittsburg--steel maker, or blacksmith or something-- +the other day worth a million dollars. I'll catch a swell myself +some time. I ain't bragging on my looks or anything; but I'll take +my chances where there's big prizes offered. What show would a girl +have in a laundry?" + +"Why, that's where I met Dan," said Lou, triumphantly. "He came in +for his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board, +ironing. We all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis +was sick that day, and I had her place. He said he noticed any arms +first, how round and white they was. I had my sleeves rolled up. +Some nice fellows come into laundries. You can tell 'em by their +bringing their clothes in suit cases; and turning in the door sharp +and sudden." + +"How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?" said Nancy, gazing down +at the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. +"It shows fierce taste." + +"This waist?" cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. "Why, I paid +$16. for this waist. It's worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be +laundered, and never called for it. The boss sold it to me. It's got +yards and yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that +ugly, plain thing you've got on." + +"This ugly, plain thing," said Nancy, calmly, "was copied from one +that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in +the store last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me +$1.50. Ten feet away you couldn't tell it from hers." + +"Oh, well," said Lou, good-naturedly, "if you want to starve and put +on airs, go ahead. But I'll take my job and good wages; and after +hours give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able +to buy." + +But just then Dan came--a serious young man with a ready-made +necktie, who had escaped the city's brand of frivolity--an +electrician earning 30 dollars per week who looked upon Lou with the +sad eyes of Romeo, and thought her embroidered waist a web in which +any fly should delight to be caught. + +"My friend, Mr. Owens--shake hands with Miss Danforth," said Lou. + +"I'm mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth," said Dan, with +outstretched hand. "I've heard Lou speak of you so often." + +"Thanks," said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool +ones, "I've heard her mention you--a few times." + +Lou giggled. + +"Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?" +she asked. + +"If I did, you can feel safe in copying it," said Nancy. + +"Oh, I couldn't use it, at all. It's too stylish for me. It's +intended to set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I +get a few and then I'll try it." + +"Learn it first," said Nancy wisely, "and you'll be more likely to +get the rings." + +"Now, to settle this argument," said Dan, with his ready, cheerful +smile, "let me make a proposition. As I can't take both of you up to +Tiffany's and do the right thing, what do you say to a little +vaudeville? I've got the rickets. How about looking at stage +diamonds since we can't shake hands with the real sparklers?" + +The faithful squire tools his place close to the curb; Lou next, a +little peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the +inside, slender, and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the +true Van Alstyne Fisher walk--thus they set out for their evening's +moderate diversion. + +I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an +educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was +something like that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things +that breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere +of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or +another's. + +The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and +position in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them +Nancy began to take toll--the best from each according to her view. + +From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an +eloquent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of +carrying a purse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing +"inferiors in station." From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van +Alstyne Fisher, she made requisition for that excellent thing, a +soft, low voice as clear as silver and as perfect in articulation as +the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social +refinement and good breeding, it was impossible for her to escape a +deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good +principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good habits. +The teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New England +conscience; but if you sit on a straigh-back chair and repeat the +words "prisms and pilgrims" forty times the devil will flee from +you. And when Nancy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt +the thrill of noblesse oblige to her very bones. + +There was another source of learning in the great departmental +school. Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch +and jingle their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently +frivolous conversation, do not think that they are there for the +purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting +may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; but it has +all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first +daughter first put their heads together to make Adam understand his +proper place in the household. It is Woman's Conference for Common +Defense and Exchange of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse +upon and against the World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience +who Persists in Throwing Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most +helpless of the young of any animal--with the fawn's grace but +without its fleetness; with the bird's beauty but without its power +of flight; with the honey-bee's burden of sweetness but without its- +-Oh, let's drop that simile--some of us may have been stung. + +During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and +exchange stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the +tactics of life. + +"I says to 'im," says Sadie, "ain't you the fresh thing! Who do you +suppose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what do you +think he says back to me?" + +The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the +answer is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be +used by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, +man. + +Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful +defense means victory. + +The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other +college could have fitted her as well for her life's ambition--the +drawing of a matrimonial prize. + +Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near +enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the +best composers--at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for +appreciation in the social world in which she was vaguely trying to +set a tentative and aspiring foot. She absorbed the educating +influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of adornments +that are almost culture to women. + +The other girls soon became aware of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes +your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man +who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of +men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to +stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric +squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty +was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces +before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were +certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to +discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchief +counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the +shoppers in the street below. She looked and perceived that +automobiles differ as well as do their owners. + +Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and +wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had +gone one of the girls said: + +"What's wrong, Nance, that you didn't warm up to that fellow. He +looks the swell article, all right, to me." + +"Him?" said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van +Alstyne Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A +12 H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of +handkerchiefs he bought--silk! And he's got dactylis on him. Give me +the real thing or nothing, if you please." + +Two of the most "refined" women in the store--a forelady and a +cashier--had a few "swell gentlemen friends" with whom they now and +then dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner +took place in a spectacular cafe whose tables are engaged for New +Year's eve a year in advance. There were two "gentlemen friends"-- +one without any hair on his head--high living ungrew it; and we can +prove it--the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he +impressed upon you in two convincing ways--he swore that all the +wine was corked; and he wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man +perceived irresistible excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop- +girls; and here was one that added the voice and manners of his high +social world to the franker charms of her own caste. So, on the +following day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious +proposal of marriage over a box of hem-stitched, grass-bleached +Irish linens. Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had +been using her eyes and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she +heaped carboys of upbraidings and horror upon Nancy's head. + +"What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow's a millionaire-- +he's a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the +level, too. Have you gone crazy, Nance?" + +"Have I?" said Nancy. "I didn't take him, did I? He isn't a +millionaire so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family +only allows him $20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was +guying him about it the other night at supper." + +The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes. + +"Say, what do you want?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of +chewing-gum. "Ain't that enough for you? Do you want to be a Mormon, +and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and +the whole bunch? Ain't $20,000 a year good enough for you?" + +Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow +eyes. + +"It wasn't altogether the money, Carrie," she explained. "His friend +caught him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was about +some girl he said he hadn't been to the theater with. Well, I can't +stand a liar. Put everything together--I don't like him; and that +settles it. When I sell out it's not going to be on any bargain day. +I've got to have something that sits up in a chair like a man, +anyhow. Yes, I'm looking out for a catch; but it's got to be able to +do something more than make a noise like a toy bank." + +"The physiopathic ward for yours!" said the brown pompadour, walking +away. + +These high ideas, if not ideals--Nancy continued to cultivate on $8. +per week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown "catch," +eating her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her face +was the faint, soldierly, sweet, grim smile of the preordained man- +hunter. The store was her forest; and many times she raised her +rifle at game that seemed broad-antlered and big; but always some +deep unerring instinct--perhaps of the huntress, perhaps of the +woman--made her hold her fire and take up the trail again. + +Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid +$6. for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her +opportunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared +with Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work, +work and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly +and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her +growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted to her through the +conducting metal. + +When the day's work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful +shadow in whatever light she stood. + +Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou's clothes +that increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no +disloyalty; he deprecated the attention they called to her in the +streets. + +And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy +should go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore +the extra burden heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that +Lou furnished the color, Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the +distraction-seeking trio. The escort, in his neat but obviously +ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing, genial, ready- +made wit never startled or clashed. He was of that good kind that +you are likely to forget while they are present, but remember +distinctly after they are gone. + +To Nancy's superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures +was sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a +gourmand, when it cannot be a gourmet. + +"Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away," Lou told her +once. "But why should I? I'm independent. I can do as I please with +the money I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on working +afterward. And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old +store for, and half starve and half dress yourself? I could get you +a place in the laundry right now if you'd come. It seems to me that +you could afford to be a little less stuck-up if you could make a +good deal more money." + +"I don't think I'm stuck-up, Lou," said Nancy, "but I'd rather live +on half rations and stay where I am. I suppose I've got the habit. +It's the chance that I want. I don't expect to be always behind a +counter. I'm learning something new every day. I'm right up against +refined and rich people all the time--even if I do only wait on +them; and I'm not missing any pointers that I see passing around." + +"Caught your millionaire yet?" asked Lou with her teasing laugh. + +"I haven't selected one yet," answered Nancy. "I've been looking +them over." + +"Goodness! the idea of picking over 'em! Don't you ever let one get +by you Nance--even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're +joking--millionaires don't think about working girls like us." + +"It might be better for them if they did," said Nancy, with cool +wisdom. "Some of us could teach them how to take care of their +money." + +"If one was to speak to me," laughed Lou, "I know I'd have a duck- +fit." + +"That's because you don't know any. The only difference between +swells and other people is you have to watch 'em closer. Don't you +think that red silk lining is just a little bit too bright for that +coat, Lou?" + +Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend. + +"Well, no I don't--but it may seem so beside that faded-looking +thing you've got on." + +"This jacket," said Nancy, complacently, "has exactly the cut and +fit of one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day. +The material cost me $3.98. I suppose hers cost about $100. more." + +"Oh, well," said Lou lightly, "it don't strike me as millionaire +bait. Shouldn't wonder if I catch one before you do, anyway." + +Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values of +the theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain +pride and fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with +girls working for the barest living, thumped away gaily with her +iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her even +beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until +sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but +inelegant apparel of Dan--Dan the constant, the immutable, the +undeviating. + +As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels +and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world +of good-breeding and taste--these were made for woman; they are her +equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life +to her, and if she will. She is no traitor to herself, as Esau was; +for she keeps he birthright and the pottage she earns is often very +scant. + +In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her +frugal meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined +and contented mind. She already knew woman; and she was studying +man, the animal, both as to his habits and eligibility. Some day she +would bring down the game that she wanted; but she promised herself +it would be what seemed to her the biggest and the best, and nothing +smaller. + +Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bridegroom +when he should come. + +But, another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard +of values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew +blurred in her mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that +spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just +"kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk +in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered, +where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these +times the spear of Nimrod himself grows blunt. + +So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at +its market value by the hearts that it covered. + +One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth +Avenue westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and +Dan to a musical comedy. + +Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was a +queer, strained look on his face. + +"I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her," +he said. + +"Heard from who?" asked Nancy. "Isn't Lou there?" + +"I thought you knew," said Dan. "She hasn't been here or at the +house where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from +there. She told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going +to Europe." + +"Hasn't anybody seen her anywhere?" asked Nancy. + +Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in +his steady gray eyes. + +"They told me in the laundry," he said, harshly, "that they saw her +pass yesterday--in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I +suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about." + +For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand +that trembled slightly on Dan's sleeve. + +"You've no right to say such a thing to me, Dan--as if I had +anything to do with it!" + +"I didn't mean it that way," said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his +vest pocket. + +"I've got the tickets for the show to-night," he said, with a +gallant show of lightness. "If you--" + +Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it. + +"I'll go with you, Dan," she said. + +Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again. + +At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the +border of a little quiet park. She heard her name called, and +wheeled about in time to catch Lou rushing into her arms. + +After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do, +ready to attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on +their swift tongues. And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had +descended upon Lou, manifesting itself in costly furs, flashing +gems, and creations of the tailors' art. + +"You little fool!" cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. "I see you +are still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how +about that big catch you were going to make--nothing doing yet, I +suppose?" + +And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity +lead descended upon Nancy--something that shone brighter than gems +in her eyes and redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced +like electricity anxious to be loosed from the tip of her tongue. + +"Yes, I'm still in the store," said Nancy, "but I'm going to leave +it next week. I've made my catch--the biggest catch in the world. +You won't mind now Lou, will you?--I'm going to be married to Dan-- +to Dan!--he's my Dan now--why, Lou!" + +Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, +smooth-faced young policemen that are making the force more +endurable--at least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur +coat, and diamond-ringed hands crouching down against the iron fence +of the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender, plainly-dressed +working girl leaned close, trying to console her. but the Gibsonian +cop, being of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice, +for he was wise enough to know that these matters are beyond help so +far as the power he represents is concerned, though he rap the +pavement with his nightstick till the sound goes up to the +furthermost stars. + + + + +A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT + + +To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips +brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there +were two items bearing the same foreign postmark. + +One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The +other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung, +absorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and it +contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered +with innuendoes concerning the photographed woman. + +Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out +his expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal +from the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts +when he is housed in a jungle of doubt. + +By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an +enchanted one. For sixteen feet he could travel along it; three +thousand miles was beyond its power to aid. + +Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a +well-oiled genie. + +"Will you dine here, sir, or out?" he asked. + +"Here," said Chalmers, "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to +the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty street. + +"Wait," he said to the disappearing genie. "As I came home across +the end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There +was one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in +rows, and why are they there?" + +"They are homeless men, sir," said Phillips. "The man standing on +the box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come +around to listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the +money will pay for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in +rows; they get sent to bed in order as they come." + +"By the time dinner is served," said Chalmers, "have one of those +men here. He will dine with me." + +"W-w-which--," began Phillips, stammering for the first time during +his service. + +"Choose one at random," said Chalmers. "You might see that he is +reasonably sober--and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be +held against him. That is all." + +It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But +on that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to +melancholy. Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored +and Arabian, he must have to lighten his mood. + +On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the +lamp. The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the +delectable dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily +in the glow of the pink-shaded candles. + +And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal--or held in charge +a burglar--wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the +line of mendicant lodgers. + +It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be +used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through +fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting +hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed--a rite insisted +upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In +the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the +apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes +with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's +comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and +conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were +full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that +is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high, +but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner +was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his +chair across the round dining table. + +"If you will oblige me," said the host, "I will be glad to have your +company at dinner." + +"My name is Plumer," said the highway guest, in harsh and aggressive +tones. "If you're like me, you like to know the name of the party +you're dining with." + +"I was going on to say," continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, "that +mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?" + +Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide +the chair beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended +boards before. Phillips set out the anchovies and olives. + +"Good!" barked Plumer; "going to be in courses, is it? All right, my +jovial ruler of Bagdad. I'm your Scheherezade all the way to the +toothpicks. You're the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor +I've struck since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I +finished counting, just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me +to the feast. I had about as much chance of getting a bed to-night +as I have of being the next President. How will you have the sad +story of my life, Mr. Al Raschid--a chapter with each course or the +whole edition with the cigars and coffee?" + +"The situation does not seem a novel one to you," said Chalmers with +a smile. + +"By the chin whiskers of the prophet--no!" answered the guest. "Now +York's as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas. +I've been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my head +twenty times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something for +nothing! They spell curiosity and charity with the same set of +building blocks. Lots of 'em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey; +and a few of 'em will play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin; but +every one of 'em will stand over you till they screw your +autobiography out of you with foot notes, appendix and unpublished +fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward +me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three +times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper. I +claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand out +vocal harmony for his pre-digested wheaterina and spoopju." + +"I do not ask your story," said Chalmers. "I tell you frankly that +it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to +dine with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity +of mine." + +"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his +soup; "I don't mind it a bit. I'm a regular Oriental magazine with a +red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad. In fact, +we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate for things of +this sort. Somebody's always stopping and wanting to know what +brought us down so low in the world. For a sandwich and a glass of +beer I tell 'em that drink did it. For corned beef and cabbage and a +cup of coffee I give 'em the hard-hearted-landlord--six-months-in- +the-hospital-lost-job story. A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed +gets the Wall Street tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the +gradual descent. This is the first spread of this kind I've stumbled +against. I haven't got a story to fit it. I'll tell you what, Mr. +Chalmers, I'm going to tell you the truth for this, if you'll listen +to it. It'll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones." + +An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction +while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table. + +"Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?" he asked, with a strange +smile. + +"I remember the name," said Chalmers. "He was a painter, I think, of +a good deal of prominence a few years ago." + +"Five years," said the guest. "Then I went down like a chunk of +lead. I'm Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for +$2,000. After that I couldn't have found a sitter for a gratis +picture." + +"What was the trouble?" Chalmers could not resist asking. + +"Funny thing," answered Plumer, grimly. "Never quite understood it +myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd +and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a +fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever +I finished a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and +look queerly at one another." + +"I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing +out in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original. +I don't know how I did it--I painted what I saw--but I know it did +me. Some of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their +pictures. I painted the portrait of a very beautiful and popular +society dame. When it was finished her husband looked at it with a +peculiar expression on his face, and the next week he sued for +divorce." + +"I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I +had his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his +came in to look at it. 'Bless me,' says he, 'does he really look +like that?" I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. 'I +never noticed that expression about his eyes before,' said he; 'I +think I'll drop downtown and change my bank account.' He did drop +down, but the bank account was gone and so was Mr. Banker. + +"It wasn't long till they put me out of business. People don't want +their secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile and +twist their own faces and deceive you, but the picture can't. I +couldn't get an order for another picture, and I had to give up. I +worked as a newspaper artist for a while, and then for a +lithographer, but my work with them got me into the same trouble. If +I drew from a photograph my drawing showed up characteristics and +expressions that you couldn't find in the photo, but I guess they +were in the original, all right. The customers raised lively rows, +especially the women, and I never could hold a job long. So I began +to rest my weary head upon the breast of Old Booze for comfort. And +pretty soon I was in the free-bed line and doing oral fiction for +hand-outs among the food bazaars. Does the truthful statement weary +thee, O Caliph? I can turn on the Wall Street disaster stop if you +prefer, but that requires a tear, and I'm afraid I can't hustle one +up after that good dinner." + +"No, no," said Chalmers, earnestly, "you interest me very much. Did +all of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there +some that did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?" + +"Some? Yes," said Plumer. "Children generally, a good many women and +a sufficient number of men. All people aren't bad, you know. When +they were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don't +explain it, but I'm telling you facts." + +On Chalmers's writing-table lay the photograph that he had received +that day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at +work making a sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the +artist rose and stretched wearily. + +"It's done," he yawned. "You'll excuse me for being so long. I got +interested in the job. Lordy! but I'm tired. No bed last night, you +know. Guess it'll have to be good night now, O Commander of the +Faithful!" + +Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills +into his hand. + +"Oh! I'll take 'em," said Plumer. "All that's included in the fall. +Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I shall sleep on feathers to- +night and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won't turn out to be a dream in +the morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!" + +Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as +far from the table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would +permit. Twice, thrice, he tried to approach it, but failed. He could +see the dun and gold and brown of the colors, but there was a wall +about it built by his fears that kept him at a distance. He sat down +and tried to calm himself. He sprang up and rang for Phillips. + +"There is a young artist in this building," he said. "--a Mr. +Reineman--do you know which is his apartment?" + +"Top floor, front, sir," said Phillips. + +"Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few +minutes." + +Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself. + +"Mr. Reineman," said he, "there is a little pastel sketch on yonder +table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to +its artistic merits and as a picture." + +The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch. +Chalmers half turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair. + +"How--do--you find it?" he asked, slowly. + +"As a drawing," said the artist, "I can't praise it enough. It's the +work of a master--bold and fine and true. It puzzles me a little; I +haven't seen any pastel work near as good in years." + +"The face, man--the subject--the original--what would you say of +that?" + +"The face," said Reineman, "is the face of one of God's own angels. +May I ask who--" + +"My wife!" shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the +astonished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. "She is +traveling in Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint. the picture +of your life from it and leave the price to me." + + + + +THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL + + +This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance +lecture and the "Bartender's Guide." Relative to the latter, drink +shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to +the former, not an elbow shall be crooked. + +Bob Babbitt was "off the stuff." Which means--as you will discover +by referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia--that he had +"cut out the booze;" that he was "on the water wagon." The reason +for Bob's sudden attitude of hostility toward the "demon rum"--as +the white ribboners miscall whiskey (see the "Bartender's Guide"), +should be of interest to reformers and saloon-keepers. + +There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or +acknowledge that he was ever drunk. But when a man will say (in the +apt words of the phrase-distiller), "I had a beautiful skate on last +night," you will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for +him. + +One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar +that he liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there +from the downtown offices whom he knew. And then there would be +high-balls and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little +late but feeling good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil +Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some one say: +"Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl." + +Babbitt walked to the bar, and saw in the mirror that his face was +as white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the +eyes. Others had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was +a drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a +pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit +had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a +sot. But, never again! + +"A glass of seltzer," he said to the bartender. + +A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been +expecting him to join them. + +"Going off the stuff, Bob?" one of them asked politely and with more +formality than the highballs ever called forth. + +"Yes," said Babbitt. + +Some one of the group took up the unwashed thread of a story he had +been telling; the bartender shoved over a dime and a nickel change +from the quarter, ungarnished with his customary smile; and Babbitt +walked out. + +Now, Babbitt had a home and a wife--but that is another story. And I +will tell you that story, which will show you a better habit and a +worse story than you could find in the man who invented the phrase. + +It began away up in Sullivan County, where so many rivers and so +much trouble begins--or begin; how would you say that? It was July, +and Jessie was a summer boarder at the Mountain Squint Hotel, and +Bob, who was just out of college, saw her one day--and they were +married in September. That's the tabloid novel--one swallow of +water, and it's gone. But those July days! + +Let the exclamation point expound it, for I shall not. For +particulars you might read up on "Romeo and Juliet," and Abraham +Lincoln's thrilling sonnet about "You can fool some of the people," +-c., and Darwin's works. + +But one thing I must tell you about. Both of them were mad over +Omar's Rubaiyat. They knew every verse of the old bluffer by heart-- +not consecutively, but picking 'em out here and there as you fork +the mushrooms in a fifty-cent steak a la Bordelaise. Sullivan County +is full of rocks and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them, and-- +please be good--used to sit on the rocks; and Bob had a way of +standing behind her with his hands over her shoulders holding her +hands, and his face close to hers, and they would repeat over and +over their favorite verses of the old tent-maker. They saw only the +poetry and philosophy of the lines then--indeed, they agreed that +the Wine was only an image, and that what was meant to be celebrated +was some divinity, or maybe Love or Life. However, at that time +neither of them had tasted the stuff that goes with a sixty-cent +table d'hote. + +Where was I? Oh, they married and came to New York. Bob showed his +college diploma, and accepted a position filling inkstands in a +lawyer's office at $15 a week. At the end of two years he had worked +up to $50, and gotten his first taste of Bohemia--the kind that +won't stand the borax and formaldehyde tests. + +They had two furnished rooms and a little kitchen. To Jess, +accustomed to the mild but beautiful savor of a country town, the +dreggy Bohemia was sugar and spice. She hung fish seines on the +walls of her rooms, and bought a rakish-looking sideboard, and +learned to play the banjo. Twice or thrice a week they dined at +French or Italian tables d'hote in a cloud of smoke, and brag and +unshorn hair. Jess learned to drink a cocktail in order to get the +cherry. At home she smoked a cigarette after dinner. She learned to +pronounce Chianti, and leave her olive stones for the waiter to pick +up. Once she essayed to say la, la, la! in a crowd but got only as +far as the second one. They met one or two couples while dining out +and became friendly with them. The sideboard was stocked with Scotch +and rye and a liqueur. They had their new friends in to dinner and +all were laughing at nothing by 1 A. M. Some plastering fell in the +room below them, for which Bob had to pay $4.50. Thus they footed it +merrily on the ragged frontiers of the country that has no boundary +lines or government. + +And soon Bob fell in with his cronies and learned to keep his foot +on the little rail six inches above the floor for an hour or so +every afternoon before he went home. Drink always rubbed him the +right way, and he would reach his rooms as jolly as a sandboy. +Jessie would meet him at the door, and generally they would dance +some insane kind of a rigadoon about the floor by way of greeting. +Once when Bob's feet became confused and he tumbled headlong over a +foot-stool Jessie laughed so heartily and long that he had to throw +all the couch pillows at her to make her hush. + +In such wise life was speeding for them on the day when Bob Babbitt +first felt the power that the giftie gi'ed him. + +But let us get back to our lamb and mint sauce. + +When Bob got home that evening he found Jessie in a long apron +cutting up a lobster for the Newburg. Usually when Bob came in +mellow from his hour at the bar his welcome was hilarious, though +somewhat tinctured with Scotch smoke. + +By screams and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of +domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot +on the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton +into her ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and +favor of these spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false +Bohemia gradually encompassed her she came to accept them as love's +true and proper greeting. + +Bob came in without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but +noiselessly, took up a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old +maid held her two plugs of cotton poised, filled with anxiety. + +Jessie dropped lobster and knife and ran to him with frightened +eyes. + +"What's the matter, Bob, are you ill?" + +"Not at all, dear." + +"Then what's the matter with you?" + +"Nothing." + +Hearken, brethren. When She-who-has-a-right-to-ask interrogates you +concerning a change she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her +that you, in a sudden rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her +that you have robbed orphans and that remorse has stricken you; tell +her your fortune is swept away; that you are beset by enemies, by +bunions, by any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, if peace and +happiness are worth as much as a grain of mustard seed to you--do +not answer her "Nothing." + +Jessie went back to the lobster in silence. She cast looks of +darkest suspicion at Bob. He had never acted that way before. + +When dinner was on the table she set out the bottle of Scotch and +the glasses. Bob declined. + +"Tell you the truth, Jess," he said. "I've cut out the drink. Help +yourself, of course. If you don't mind I'll try some of the seltzer +straight." + +"You've stopped drinking?" she said, looking at him steadily and +unsmilingly. "What for?" + +"It wasn't doing me any good," said Bob. "Don't you approve of the +idea?" + +Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly. + +"Entirely," she said with a sculptured smile. "I could not +conscientiously advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on +Sunday." + +The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk, but +his efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt +miserable, and once or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but +each time the scathing words of his bibulous friend sounded in his +ear, and his mouth set with determination. + +Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to +have departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the +unnatural excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived +had dropped away in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole +curious and forlorn glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty +look of at least a wife-beater or a family tyrant. + +After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such +chores cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable +countenance, brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and a +bowl of cracked ice and set them on the table. + +"May I ask," she said, with some of the ice in her tones, "whether I +am to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, I'll +make one for myself. It's rather chilly this evening, for some +reason." + +"Oh, come now, Jess," said Bob good-naturedly, "don't be too rough +on me. Help yourself, by all means. There's no danger of your +overdoing it. But I thought there was with me; and that's why I +quit. Have yours, and then let's get out the banjo and try over that +new quickstep." + +"I've heard," said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, "that drinking +alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing +this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the +evil habit of banjo-playing, too." + +She took up a book and sat in her little willow rocker on the other +side of the table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour. + +And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent +look on his face and went behind her chair and reached over her +shoulders, taking her hands in his, and laid his face close to hers. + +In a moment to Jessie the walls of the seine-hung room vanished, and +she saw the Sullivan County hills and rills. Bob felt her hands +quiver in his as he began the verse from old Omar: + + "Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring + The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: + The Bird of Time has but a little way + To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!" + +And then he walked to the table and poured a stiff drink of Scotch +into a glass. + +But in that moment a mountain breeze had somehow found its way in +and blown away the mist of the false Bohemia. + +Jessie leaped and with one fierce sweep of her hand sent the bottle +and glasses crashing to the floor. The same motion of her arm +carried it around Bob's neck, where it met its mate and fastened +tight. + +"Oh, my God, Bobbie--not that verse--I see now. I wasn't always such +a fool, was I? The other one, boy--the one that says: 'Remould it to +the Heart's Desire.' Say that one--'to the Heart's Desire.'" + +"I know that one," said Bob. "It goes:" + + "'Ah! Love, could you and I with Him conspire + To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire + Would not we--'" + +"Let me finish it," said Jessie. + + "'Would not we shatter it to bits--and then + Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!'" + +"It's shattered all right," said Bob, crunching some glass under his +heel. + +In some dungeon below the accurate ear of Mrs. Pickens, the +landlady, located the smash. + +"It's that wild Mr. Babbitt coming home soused again," she said. +"And he's got such a nice little wife, too!" + + + + +THE PENDULUM + + +"Eighty-first street--let 'em out, please," yelled the shepherd in +blue. + +A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled +aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled +away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with +the released flock. + +John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon +of his daily life there was no such word as "perhaps." There are no +surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in +a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy +and downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous +day. + +Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream +and butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized +lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs +slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot +roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or +injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry +marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its +label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy +quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in- +hand. At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the +furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat +man in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture +exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey--Mooney, of the vaudeville team +(unbooked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle +influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the +delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred- +dollar-a-week contract. Then the gent at the window across the air- +shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal +forth to frolic in the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its +trolley; the janitor would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children +once more across the Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the +Skye terrier would trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over +her bell and letter-box--and the evening routine of the Frogmore +flats would be under way. + +John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a +quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, +and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone: + +"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" + +"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," he would answer, "and play a +game or two of pool with the fellows." + +Of late such had been John Perkins's habit. At ten or eleven he +would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, +ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating +from the wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid +will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his +victims from the Frogmore flats. + +To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the +commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her +affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in +portentous disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in +the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder +box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs--this was not Katy's +way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of +her brown hair among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation +must have possessed her, for she always carefully placed these +combings in the little blue vase on the mantel to be some day formed +into the coveted feminine "rat." + +Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper. +John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus: + +"Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick. I am +going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the +depot there. There is cold mutton in the ice box. I hope it isn't +her quinzy again. Pay the milkman 50 cents. She had it bad last +spring. Don't forget to write to the company about the gas meter, +and your good socks are in the top drawer. I will write to-morrow. +Hastily, KATY." + +Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been +separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a +dumbfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never +varied, and it left him dazed. + +There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless, +the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting +the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in +her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butterscotch lay with +its string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping, +rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. +Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its +soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains +with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart. + +He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched +her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He +had never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had +become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the +air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without +warning, she was gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had +never existed. Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most +a week or two, but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had +pointed a finger at his secure and uneventful home. + +John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat +down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade's +shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings +now appeared to him the ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan +polish dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law +had knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal +John sat at a front window. + +He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come +join in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might +go forth unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as +any gay bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his +fling until dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy +waiting for him, bearing the chalice that held the dregs of his joy. +He might play pool at McCloskey's with his roistering friends until +Aurora dimmed the electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings +that had curbed him always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon +him were loosened. Katy was gone. + +John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he +sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the +keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to +his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by +the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss +of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and +sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced +bird has flown--or in other no less florid and true utterances? + +"I'm a double-dyed dub," mused John Perkins, "the way I've been +treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the +boys instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone +with nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins, +you're the worst kind of a shine. I'm going to make it up for the +little girl. I'll take her out and let her see some amusement. And +I'll cut out the McCloskey gang right from this minute." + +Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come +dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were +knocking the balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the +nightly game. But no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the +remorseful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his, +lightly held and half scorned, had been taken away from him, and he +wanted it. Backward to a certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim +bounced from the orchard, could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his +descent. + +Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of it +stood Katy's blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of her +contour. Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles made +by the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and +pleasure. A delicate but impelling odor of bluebells came from it. +John took it and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive +grenadine. Katy had never been unresponsive. Tears:--yes, tears-- +came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came back things would be +different. He would make up for all his neglect. What was life +without her? + +The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John +stared at her stupidly. + +"My! I'm glad to get back," said Katy. "Ma wasn't sick to amount to +anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little +spell, and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the +next train back. I'm just dying for a cup of coffee." + +Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cog-wheels as the third- +floor front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the +Order of Things. + +A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted and the +wheels revolve in their old orbit. + +John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his +hat and walked to the door. + +"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" asked +Katy, in a querulous tone. + +"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," said John, "and play a game or +two of pool with the fellows." + + + + +TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN + + +There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we +Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat +saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old +pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives +it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but don't just remember +who they were. Bet we can lick 'em, anyhow, if they try to land +again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots of us +have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work +in. But somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information to +'em about these Thanksgiving proclamations. The big city east of the +cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an institution. The last +Thursday in November is the only day in the year on which it +recognizes the part of America lying across the ferries. It is the +one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of celebration, +exclusively American. + +And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have +traditions on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a +much rapider rate than those of England are--thanks to our git-up +and enterprise. + +Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you +enter Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there +promptly at 1 o'clock. For every time he had done so things had +happened to him--Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat +above his heart, and equally on the other side. + +But to-day Stuffy Pete's appearance at the annual trysting place +seemed to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly +hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the +poor at such extended intervals. + +Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast that +had left him of his powers barely those of respiration and +locomotion. His eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded +in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came in +short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a +fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been +sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew +like popcorn; strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a +split shirt front open to the wishbone; but the November breeze, +carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a grateful coolness. For +Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric produced by a +superbountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum +pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and +baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in the +world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with +after-dinner contempt. + +The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick +mansion near the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old +ladies of ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even +denied the existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day +was declared solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional +habits was to station a servant at the postern gate with orders to +admit the first hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of +noon had struck, and banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened +to pass by on his way to the park, and the seneschals gathered him +in and upheld the custom of the castle. + +After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he +was conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a +tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his +eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod +ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel. + +For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his +bench. + +Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come +there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the +Old Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving +Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a +restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in +England unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years +is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and +considered himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to +become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time +without ever letting it get away from us. Something like collecting +the weekly dimes in industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets. + +The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the +Institution that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeling of Stuffy +Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta +or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was +almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible +to New Y--ahem!--America. + +The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in +black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won't stay on +your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last +year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with +the crooked handle. + +As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered +like some woman's over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. +He would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not +have separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two +old ladies done their work. + +"Good morning," said the Old Gentleman. "I am glad to perceive that +the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health +about the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of +thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with +me, my man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your +physical being accord with the mental." + +That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving +Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an +Institution. Nothing could be compared with them except the +Declaration of Independence. Always before they had been music in +Stuffy's ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman's face with +tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell +upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little +and turned his back to the wind. + +Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech +rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing +every time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come +there after he was gone--a son who would stand proud and strong +before some subsequent Stuffy, and say: "In memory of my father." +Then it would be an Institution. + +But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in +one of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the +quiet streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in +a little conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he +walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse +in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of a +butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some +day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old +Gentleman's occupations. + +Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless +in his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman's eyes were bright with the +giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his +little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen +was beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully +at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas +bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had +heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed them into +Stuffy's old formula of acceptance. + +"Thankee, sir. I'll go with ye, and much obliged. I'm very hungry, +sir." + +The coma of repletion had not; prevented from entering Stuffy's mind +the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His +Thanksgiving appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred +rights of established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of +Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, +America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must +be a repetend--a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of +steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron, +badly silvered, and tin. + +The Old Gentleman led his annual protege southward to the +restaurant, and to the table where the feast had always occurred. +They were recognized. + +"Here comes de old guy," said a waiter, "dat blows dat same bum to a +meal every Thanksgiving." + +The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl +at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped +the table with holiday food--and Stuffy, with a sigh that was +mistaken for hunger's expression, raised knife and fork and carved +for himself a crown of imperishable bay. + +No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an +enemy. Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before +him as fast as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost +when he entered the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused +him to lose his honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a true +knight. He saw the look of beneficent happiness on the Old +Gentleman's face--a happier look than even the fuchsias and the +ornithoptera aniphrisins had ever brought to it--and he had not the +heart to see it wane. + +In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. "Thankee kindly, +sir," he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; "thankee kindly for a +hearty meal." Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started +toward the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and +pointed him toward the door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out +$1.30 in silver change, leaving three nickels for the waiter. + +They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman +going south, Stuffy north. + +Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. +Then he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his +feathers, and fell to the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse. + +When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed +softly at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a +transfer to the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to +the hospital. There they stretched him on a bed and began to test +him for strange diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some +problem with the bare steel. + +And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. +And they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he +looked good for the bill. + +But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses +whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases. + +"That nice old gentleman over there, now," he said, "you wouldn't +think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I +guess. He told me he hadn't eaten a thing for three days." + + + + +THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS + + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a +pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They +were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven +faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining +their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks. + +Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions in +my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park +Commissioners (around the corner, if necessary), and arrange for +benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women to sit +upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I might +furnish libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build +sanitariums for crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if I wanted +to. + +Women's rights societies have been laboring for many years after +equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they +must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their +highest French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom, +ladies. Get your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of +mental equality. + +Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That was +the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It is +denied us to look further into a man's bosom than the starch on his +shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and +conversation. + +Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a +hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have +no more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter +building on the west side of the square. But Morley would have +enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but +sunrise had always seen them lined. + +First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and +presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to +issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed up +by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance. + +On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a pale- +faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist and the +voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score. + +"Why, Bergman, man," sang Morley, dulcetly, "is this you? I was just +on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my +aunt arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come +up to the corner and I'll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a +walk." + +Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about +Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed +off a call loan at Rothschilds'. When he was penniless his bluff was +pitched half a tone lower, but few are competent to detect the +difference in the notes. + +"You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley," said +Bergman. "Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen +you in dree mont'. Pros't!" + +Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face. +The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to +avoid Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that +Bergman ever went home by that route. + +At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley +knocked with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the +length of a six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of +an African guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was +admitted. + +In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung +for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept, +and was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the +40 cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital. +At the corner lie lingered, undecided. + +Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth +gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and +glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary, +stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to +which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he +clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously. + +Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech. + +"Me?" said the youngster. "I'm doin' to the drug 'tore for mamma. +She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med'cin." + +"Now, now, now!" said Morley. "Such a big man you are to be doing +errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that +the cars don't run over him. And on the way we'll have some +chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?" + +Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He +presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money. + +On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound. + +"Aqua pura, one pint," said he to the druggist. "Sodium chloride, +ten grains. Fiat solution. And don't try to skin me, because I know +all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and +I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes." + +"Fifteen cents," said the druggist, with a wink after he had +compounded the order. "I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is +the regular price." + +"To gulls," said Morley, smilingly. + +He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child's arms and +escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85 +cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge. + +"Look out for the cars, sonny," he said, cheerfully, to his small +victim. + +Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the +youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile +messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner +of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky +with vile, cheap candy from the Italian's fruit stand. + +Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of +inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so +genuinely that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had +come his way. + +"Why, no," said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one. +"It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know +what three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in +transactions of all kinds?" + +"Sure," said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by +the careful knot of Morley's tie; "there's the buyers from the dry +goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from +Staten Island, and"-- + +"Wrong!" said Morley, chuckling happily. "The answer is just--men, +women and children. The world--well, say New York and as far as +summer boarders can swim out from Long Island--is full of +greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this +steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois." + +"If yez t'inks it's on de bum," said the waiter, "Oi'll"-- + +Morley lifted his hand in protest--slightly martyred protest. + +"It will do," he said, magnanimously. "And now, green Chartreuse, +frappe and a demi-tasse." + +Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful +arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he +stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the +tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast +his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good +Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore. + +A joyful party of four--two women and two men--fell upon him with +cries of delight. There was a dinner party on--where had he been for +a fortnight past?--what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded +and engulfed him--he must join them--tra la la--and the rest. + +One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his +sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: "See +what I can do with him?" and added her queen's command to the +invitations. + +"I leave you to imagine," said Morley, pathetically, "how it +desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of +the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at +8." + +The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an +arc light down the frolicsome way. + +Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and +laughing gleefully to himself. "'Front,'" he chanted under his +breath; "'front' does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it +in! Men, women and children--forgeries, water-and-salt lies--how +they all take it in!" + +An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a +corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street +cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side. + +"Stranger," said he, "excuse me for troubling you, but do you know +anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son, and +I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know +what I done with his street and number." + +"I do not, sir," said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy +in them. "You had better apply to the police." + +"The police!" said the old man. "I ain't done nothin' to call in the +police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story +house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could"-- + +"I told you I did not," said Morley, coldly. "I know no one by the +name of Smithers, and I advise you to"-- + +"Smothers not Smithers," interrupted the old man hopefully. "A +heavy-sot man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth +out, about five foot"-- + +"Oh, 'Smothers!'" exclaimed Morley. "Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in +the next house to me. I thought you said `Smithers.'" + +Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it for +a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the ninety- +eight-cent one that the railroads--according to these watchmakers-- +are run by. + +"The Bishop of Long Island," said Morley, "was to meet me here at 8 +to dine with me at the Kingfishers' Club. But I can't leave the +father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. +Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no +name for it! I was about to step across to the other corner and have +a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. +You must let me take you to Sol's house, Mr. Smothers. But, before +we take the car I hope you will join me in"-- + +An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench in +Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips and +$140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content, light- +hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon drifting +in and out amidst a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged man with a +low-bowed head sat at the other end of the bench. + +Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In +Morley's appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the +usual nightly occupants of the benches. + +"Kind sir," he whined, "if you could spare a dime or even a few +pennies to one who"-- + +Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar. + +"God bless you!" said the old man. "I've been trying to find work +for"-- + +"Work!" echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. "You are a fool, my +friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an +Aaron and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will +gush out of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to +me whatever I want from it." + +"God has blessed you," said the old man. "It is only work that I +have known. And now I can get no more." + +"I must go home," said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. "I +stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work." + +"May your kindness be rewarded this night," said the old man. + +"Oh," said Morley, "you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I +think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel +across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting up +the city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such +little things as I do. Well, a goodnight to you." Morley walked to +the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He blew slow streams +of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman passing saluted to +his benign nod. What a fine moon it was. + +The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on +the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if +homeward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she +was dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and +neither to the right nor the left. + +Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench +with her at school. There had been no sentiment between them-- +nothing but the friendship of innocent days. + +But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his +suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said +dully: + +"God! I wish I could die." + + + + +THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY + + +It is well that, hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful +vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of +Navarro--Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at. + +Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with +liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of +this semiprecious metal goes to Navarro--Platt. Their huge brick +building covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You +can buy of them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile or an +eighty-five dollar, latest style, ladies' tan coat in twenty +different shades. Navarro--Platt first introduced pennies, west of +the Colorado River. They had been ranchmen with business heads, who +saw that the world did not necessarily have to cease its revolutions +after free grass went out. + +Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half Spanish, +cosmopolitan, able, polished, had "gone on" to New York, to buy +goods. This year he shied at taking up the long trail. He was +undoubtedly growing older; and he looked at his watch several times +a day before the hour came for his siesta. + +"John," he said, to his junior partner, "you shall go on this year +to buy the goods." + +Platt looked tired. + +"I'm told," said he, "that New York is a plumb dead town; but I'll +go. I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and +have some fun." + +Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit--black frock coat, +broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3-4 inch high, +with black, wrought iron necktie--entered tile wholesale cloak and +suit establishment of Zizzbaum--Son, on lower Broadway. + +Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and +a mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of +the carpenter's rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar +bear, and shook Platt's hand. + +"And how is the good Mr. Navarro in Texas?" he said. "The trip was +too long for him this year, so? We welcome Mr. Platt instead." + +"A bull's eye," said Platt, "and I'd give forty acres of unirrigated +Pecos County land to know how you did it." + +"I knew," grinned Zizzbaum, "just as I know that the rainfall in El +Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and +that therefore Navarro--Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits +this spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be +tomorrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will +remove from your mouth the taste of the ones you smuggle across the +Rio Grande and like--because they are smuggled." + +It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended, +Zizzbaum left Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the +private office to Son, who was arranging his diamond scarfpin before +a mirror, ready to leave. + +"Abey," lie said, "you will have to take Mr. Platt around to-night +and show him things. They are customers for ten years. Mr. Navarro +and I we played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That +is good, but Mr. Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to +New York. He should amuse easily." + +"All right," said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. "I'll +take him on. After he's seen the Flatiron and the head waiter at the +Hotel Astor and heard the phonograph play 'Under the Old Apple Tree' +it'll be half past ten, and Mr. Texas will be ready to roll up in +his blanket. I've got a supper engagement at 11:30, but he'll be all +to the Mrs. Winslow before then." + +The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do +business. He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum +himself waited on him. + +Navarro--Platt were good customers, and never failed to take their +discount for cash. + +"And what did you think of our little town?" asked Zizzbaum, with +the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite. + +"I shouldn't care to live in it," said the Texan. "Your son and I +knocked around quite a little last night. You've got good water, but +Cactus City is better lit up." + +"We've got a few lights on Broadway, don't you think, Mr. Platt?" + +"And a good many shadows," said Platt. "I think I like your horses +best. I haven't seen a crowbait since I've been in town." + +Zizzbaum led him up stairs to show the samples of suits. + +"Ask Miss Asher to come," he said to a clerk. + +Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro--Platt, felt for the first +time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon +him. He stood still as a granite cliff above the canon of the +Colorado, with his wide-open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his +look and flushed a little, which was contrary to her custom. + +Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum--Son. She was of the +blond type known as "medium," and her measurements even went the +required 38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at +Zizzbaum's two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but +cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the +famed basilisk, that fabulous monster's gaze would have wavered and +softened first. Incidentally, she knew buyers. + +"Now, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum, "I want you to see these princess +gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate. +This first, if you please, Miss Asher." + +Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each +time wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every +change. She posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken +buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated +oilily of the styles. On the model's face was her faint, impersonal +professional smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or +contempt. + +When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a +little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try +elsewhere. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best +building sites in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to +build a house for his wife-to-be--who was just then in the dressing- +room taking off an evening gown of lavender and tulle. + +"Take your time, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum. "Think it over to-night. +You won't find anybody else meet our prices on goods like these. I'm +afraid. you're having a dull time in New York, Mr. Platt. A young +man like you--of course, you miss the society of the ladies. +Wouldn't you like a nice young lady to take out to dinner this +evening? Miss Asher, now, is a very nice young lady; she will make +it agreeable for you." + +"Why, she doesn't know me," said Platt, wonderingly. "She doesn't +know anything about me. Would she go? I'm not acquainted with her." + +"Would she go?" repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. "Sure, +she would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go." + +He called Miss Asher loudly. + +She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist +and plain black skirt. + +"Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this +evening," said Zizzbaum, walking away. + +"Sure," said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. "I'd be much +pleased. Nine-eleven West Twentieth street. What time?" + +"Say seven o'clock." + +"All right, but please don't come ahead of time. I room with a +school teacher, and she doesn't allow any gentlemen to call in the +room. There isn't any parlor, so you'll have to wait in the hall. +I'll be ready." + +At half past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway +restaurant. She was dressed in a plain, filmy black. Platt didn't +know that it was all a part of her day's work. + +With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a +respectable dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries. + +Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile. + +"Mayn't I have something to drink?" she asked. + +"Why, certainly," said Platt. "Anything you want." + +"A dry Martini," she said to the waiter. + +When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took +it away. + +"What is this?" he asked. + +"A cocktail, of course." + +"I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You +can't drink this. What is your first name?" + +"To my intimate friends," said Miss Asher, freezingly, "it is +'Helen.'" + +"Listen, Helen," said Platt, leaning over the table. "For many years +every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to +thinking of somebody that I'd never seen or heard of. I knew it was +you the minute I saw you yesterday. I'm going back home to-morrow, +and you're going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when +you first looked at me. You needn't kick, for you've got to fall +into line. Here's a little trick I picked out for you on my way +over." + +He flicked a two-carat diamond solitaire ring across the table. Miss +Asher flipped it back to him with her fork. + +"Don't get fresh," she said, severely. + +"I'm worth a hundred thousand dollars," said Platt. "I'll build you +the finest house in West Texas." + +"You can't buy me, Mr. Buyer," said Miss Asher, "if you had a +hundred million. I didn't think I'd have to call you down. You +didn't look like the others to me at first, but I see you're all +alike." + +"All who?" asked Platt. + +"All you buyers. You think because we girls have to go out to dinner +with you or lose our jobs that you're privileged to say what you +please. Well, forget it. I thought you were different from the +others, but I see I was mistaken." + +Platt struck his fingers on the table with a gesture of sudden, +illuminating satisfaction. + +"I've got it!" he exclaimed, almost hilariously--"the Nicholson +place, over on the north side. There's a big grove of live oaks and +a natural lake. The old house can be pulled down and the new one set +further back." + +"Put out your pipe," said Miss Asher. "I'm sorry to wake you up, but +you fellows might as well get wise, once for all, to where you +stand. I'm supposed to go to dinner with you and help jolly you +along so you'll trade with old Zizzy, but don't expect to find me in +any of the suits you buy." + +"Do you mean to tell me," said Platt, "that you go out this way with +customers, and they all--they all talk to you like I have?" + +"They all make plays," said Miss Asher." But I must say that you've +got 'em beat in one respect. They generally talk diamonds, while +you've actually dug one up." + +"How long have you been working, Helen?" + +"Got my name pat, haven't you? I've been supporting myself for eight +years. I was a cash girl and a wrapper and then a shop girl until I +was grown, and then I got to be a suit model. Mr. Texas Man, don't +you think a little wine would make this dinner a little less dry?" + +"You're not going to drink wine any more, dear. It's awful to think +how--I'll come to the store to-morrow and get you. I want you to +pick out an automobile before we leave. That's all we need to buy +here." + +"Oh, cut that out. If you knew how sick I am of hearing such talk." + +After the dinner they walked down Broadway and came upon Diana's +little wooded park. The trees caught Platt's eye at once, and he +must turn along under the winding walk beneath them. The lights +shone upon two bright tears in the model's eyes. + +"I don't like that," said Platt. "What's the matter?" + +"Don't you mind," said Miss Asher. "Well, it's because--well, I +didn't think you were that kind when I first saw you. But you are +all like. And now will you take me home, or will I have to call a +cop?" + +Platt took her to the door of her boarding-house. They stood for a +minute in the vestibule. She looked at him with such scorn in her +eyes that even his heart of oak began to waver. His arm was half way +around her waist, when she struck him a stinging blow on the face +with her open hand. + +As he stepped back a ring fell from somewhere and bounded on the +tiled floor. Platt groped for it and found it. + +"Now, take your useless diamond and go, Mr. Buyer," she said. + +"This was the other one--the wedding ring," said the Texan, holding +the smooth gold band on the palm of his hand. + +Miss Asher's eyes blazed upon him in the half darkness. + +"Was that what you meant?--did you"-- + +Somebody opened the door from inside the house. + +"Good-night," said Platt. "I'll see you at the store to-morrow." + +Miss Asher ran up to her room and shook the school teacher until she +sat up in bed ready to scream "Fire!" + +"Where is it?" she cried. + +"That's what I want to know," said the model. "You've studied +geography, Emma, and you ought to know. Where is a town called Cac-- +Cac--Carac-Caracas City, I think, they called it?" + +"How dare you wake me up for that?" said the school teacher." +Caracas is in Venezuela, of course." + +"What's it like?" + +"Why, it's principally earthquakes and negroes and monkeys and +malarial fever and volcanoes." + +"I don't care," said Miss Asher, blithely; "I'm going there to- +morrow." + + + +THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON + + +It cannot be denied that men and women have looked upon one another +for the first time and become instantly enamored. It is a risky +process, this love at first sight, before she has seen him in +Bradstreet or he has seen her in curl papers. But these things do +happen; and one instance must form a theme for this story--though +not, thank Heaven, to the overshadowing of more vital and important +subjects, such as drink, policemen, horses and earldoms. + +During a certain war a troop calling itself the Gentle Riders rode +into history and one or two ambuscades. The Gentle Riders were +recruited from the aristocracy of the wild men of the West and the +wild men of the aristocracy of the East. In khaki there is little +telling them one from another, so they became good friends and +comrades all around. + +Ellsworth Remsen, whose old Knickerbocker descent atoned for his +modest rating at only ten millions, ate his canned beef gayly by the +campfires of the Gentle Riders. The war was a great lark to him, so +that he scarcely regretted polo and planked shad. + +One of the troopers was a well set up, affable, cool young man, who +called himself O'Roon. To this young man Remsen took an especial +liking. The two rode side by side during the famous mooted up-hill +charge that was disputed so hotly at the time by the Spaniards and +afterward by the Democrats. + +After the war Remsen came back to his polo and shad. One day a well +set up, affable, cool young man disturbed him at his club, and he +and O'Roon were soon pounding each other and exchanging opprobrious +epithets after the manner of long-lost friends. O'Roon looked seedy +and out of luck and perfectly contented. But it seemed that his +content was only apparent. + +"Get me a job, Remsen," he said. "I've just handed a barber my last +shilling." + +"No trouble at all," said Remsen. "I know a lot of men who have +banks and stores and things downtown. Any particular line you +fancy?" + +"Yes," said O'Roon, with a look of interest. "I took a walk in your +Central Park this morning. I'd like to be one of those bobbies on +horseback. That would be about the ticket. Besides, it's the only +thing I could do. I can ride a little and the fresh air suits me. +Think you could land that for me?" + +Remsen was sure that he could. And in a very short time he did. And +they who were not above looking at mounted policemen might have seen +a well set up, affable, cool young man on a prancing chestnut steed +attending to his duties along the driveways of the park. + +And now at the extreme risk of wearying old gentlemen who carry +leather fob chains, and elderly ladies who--but no! grandmother +herself yet thrills at foolish, immortal Romeo--there must be a hint +of love at first sight. + +It came just as Remsen was strolling into Fifth avenue from his club +a few doors away. + +A motor car was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet of +vehicles that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and an +old gentleman with snowy side whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which +could not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. Not even +a wine agent would dare do it. But these two were of no consequence- +-except, perhaps, for the guiding of the machine and the paying for +it. At the old gentleman's side sat a young lady more beautiful than +pomegranate blossoms, more exquisite than the first quarter moon +viewed at twilight through the tops of oleanders. Remsen saw her and +knew his fate. He could have flunk himself under the very wheels +that conveyed her, but he knew that would be the last means of +attracting the attention of those who ride in motor cars. Slowly the +auto passed, and, if we place the poets above the autoists, carried +the heart of Remsen with it. Here was a large city of millions, and +many women who at a certain distance appear to resemble pomegranate +blossoms. Yet he hoped to see her again; for each one fancies that +his romance has its own tutelary guardian and divinity. + +Luckily for Remsen's peace of mind there came a diversion in the +guise of a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were not +many of them--perhaps a score--and there was wassail and things to +eat, and speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in +recapitulation. And when daylight threatened them the survivors +prepared to depart. But some remained upon the battlefield. One of +these was Trooper O'Roon, who was not seasoned to potent liquids. +His legs declined to fulfil the obligations they had sworn to the +police department. + +"I'm stewed, Remsen," said O'Roon to his friend. "Why do they build +hotels that go round and round like catherine wheels? They'll take +away my shield and break me. I can think and talk con-con-consec- +sec-secutively, but I s-s-stammer with my feet. I've got to go on +duty in three hours. The jig is up, Remsen. The jig is up, I tell +you." + +"Look at me," said Remsen, who was his smiling self, pointing to his +own face; "whom do you see here?" + +"Goo' fellow," said O'Roon, dizzily, "Goo' old Remsen." + +"Not so," said Remsen. "You see Mounted Policeman O'Roon. Look at +your face--no; you can't do that without a glass--but look at mine, +and think of yours. How much alike are we? As two French table +d'hote dinners. With your badge, on your horse, in your uniform, +will I charm nurse-maids and prevent the grass from growing, under +people's feet in the Park this day. I will have your badge and your +honor, besides having the jolliest lark I've been blessed with since +we licked Spain." + +Promptly on time the counterfeit presentment of Mounted Policeman +O'Roon single-footed into the Park on his chestnut steed. In a +uniform two men who are unlike will look alike; two who somewhat +resemble each other in feature and figure will appear as twin +brothers. So Remsen trotted down the bridle paths, enjoying himself +hugely, so few real pleasures do ten-millionaires have. + +Along the driveway in the early morning spun a victoria drawn by a +pair of fiery bays. There was something foreign about the affair, +for the Park is rarely used in the morning except by unimportant +people who love to be healthy, poor and wise. In the vehicle sat an +old gentleman with snowy side-whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which +could not be worn while driving except by a personage. At his side +sat the lady of Remsen's heart--the lady who looked like pomegranate +blossoms and the gibbous moon. + +Remsen met them coming. At the instant of their passing her eyes +looked into his, and but for the ever coward's heart of a true lover +he could have sworn that she flushed a faint pink. He trotted on for +twenty yards, and then wheeled his horse at the sound of runaway +hoofs. The bays had bolted. + +Remsen sent his chestnut after the victoria like a shot. There was +work cut out for the impersonator of Policeman O'Roon. The chestnut +ranged alongside the off bay thirty seconds after the chase began, +rolled his eye back at Remsen, and said in the only manner open to +policemen's horses: + +"Well, you duffer, are you going to do your share? You're not +O'Roon, but it seems to me if you'd lean to the right you could +reach the reins of that foolish slow-running bay--ah! you're all +right; O'Roon couldn't have done it more neatly!" + +The runaway team was tugged to an inglorious halt by Remsen's tough +muscles. The driver released his hands from the wrapped reins, +jumped from his seat and stood at the heads of the team. The +chestnut, approving his new rider, danced and pranced, reviling +equinely the subdued bays. Remsen, lingering, was dimly conscious of +a vague, impossible, unnecessary old gentleman in a Scotch cap who +talked incessantly about something. And he was acutely conscious of +a pair of violet eyes that would have drawn Saint Pyrites from his +iron pillar--or whatever the allusion is--and of the lady's smile +and look--a little frightened, but a look that, with the ever coward +hears of a true lover, he could not yet construe. They were asking +his name and bestowing upon him wellbred thanks for his heroic deed, +and the Scotch cap was especially babbling and insistent. But the +eloquent appeal was in the eyes of the lady. + +A little thrill of satisfaction ran through Remsen, because he had a +name to give which, without undue pride, was worthy of being spoken +in high places, and a small fortune which, with due pride, he could +leave at his end without disgrace. + +He opened his lips to speak and closed them again. + +Who was he? Mounted Policeman O'Roon. The badge and the honor of his +comrade were in his hands. If Ellsworth Remsen, ten-millionaire and +Knickerbocker, had just rescued pomegranate blossoms and Scotch cap +from possible death, where was Policeman O'Roon? Off his beat, +exposed, disgraced, discharged. Love had come, but before that there +had been something that demanded precedence--the fellowship of men +on battlefields fighting an alien foe. + +Remsen touched his cap, looked between the chestnut's ears, and took +refuge in vernacularity. + +"Don't mention it," he said stolidly. "We, policemen are paid to do +these things. It's our duly." + +And he rode away--rode away cursing noblesse oblige, but knowing he +could never have clone anything else. + +At the end of the day Remsen sent the chestnut to his stable and +went to O'Roon's room. The policeman was again a well set up, +affable, cool young man who sat by the window smoking cigars. + +"I wish you and the rest of the police force and all badges, horses, +brass buttons and men who can't drink two glasses of BRUT without +getting upset were at the devil," said Remsen feelingly. + +O'Roon smiled with evident satisfaction. + +"Good old Remsen," he said, affably, "I know all about it. They +trailed me down and cornered me here two hours ago. There was a +little row at home, you know, and I cut sticks just to show them. I +don't believe I told you that my Governor was the Earl of Ardsley. +Funny you should bob against them in the Park. If you damaged that +horse of mine I'll never forgive you. I'm going to buy him and take +him back with me. Oh, yes, and I think my sister--Lady Angela, you +know--wants particularly for you to come up to the hotel with me +this evening. Didn't lose my badge, did you, Remsen? I've got to +turn that in at Headquarters when I resign." + + + + +BRICKDUST ROW + + +Blinker was displeased. A man of less culture and poise and wealth +would have sworn. But Blinker always remembered that he was a +gentleman--a thing that no gentleman should do. So he merely looked +bored and sardonic while he rode in a hansom to the center of +disturbance, which was the Broadway office of Lawyer Oldport, who +was agent for the Blinker estate. + +"I don't see," said Blinker, "why I should be always signing +confounded papers. I am packed, and was to have left for the North +Woods this morning. Now I must wait until to-morrow morning. I hate +night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some +unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a +monologueing, thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn't +scratch. I hate pens that scratch." + +"Sit down," said double-chinned, gray Lawyer Oldport. "The worst has +not been told you. Oh, the hardships of the rich! The papers are not +yet ready to sign. They will be laid before you to-morrow at eleven. +You will miss another day. Twice shall the barber tweak the helpless +nose of a Blinker. Be thankful that your sorrows do not embrace a +haircut." + +"If," said Blinker, rising, "the act did not involve more signing of +papers I would take my business out of your hands at once. Give me a +cigar, please." + +"If," said Lawyer Oldport, "I had cared to see an old friend's son +gulped down at one mouthful by sharks I would have ordered you to +take it away long ago. Now, let's quit fooling, Alexander. Besides +the grinding task of signing your name some thirty times to-morrow, +I must impose upon you the consideration of a matter of business--of +business, and I may say humanity or right. I spoke to you about this +five years ago, but you would not listen--you were in a hurry for a +coaching trip, I think. The subject has come up again. The property- +-" + +"Oh, property!" interrupted Blinker. "Dear Mr. Oldport, I think you +mentioned to-morrow. Let's have it all at one dose to-morrow-- +signatures and property and snappy rubber bands and that smelly +sealing-wax and all. Have luncheon with me? Well, I'll try to +remember to drop in at eleven to-morrow. Morning." + +The Blinker wealth was in lands, tenements and hereditaments, as the +legal phrase goes. Lawyer Oldport had once taken Alexander in his +little pulmonary gasoline runabout to see the many buildings and +rows of buildings that he owned in the city. For Alexander was sole +heir. They had amused Blinker very much. The houses looked so +incapable of producing the big sums of money that Lawyer Oldport +kept pilling up in banks for him to spend. + +In the evening Blinker went to one of his clubs, intending to dine. +Nobody was there except some old fogies playing whist who spoke to +him with grave politeness and glared at him with savage contempt. +Everybody was out of town. But here he was kept in like a schoolboy +to write his name over and over on pieces of paper. His wounds were +deep. + +Blinker turned his back on the fogies, and said to the club steward +who had come forward with some nonsense about cold fresh salmon roe: + +"Symons, I'm going to Coney Island." He said it as one might say: +"All's off; I'm going to jump into the river." + +The joke pleased Symons. He laughed within a sixteenth of a note of +the audibility permitted by the laws governing employees. + +"Certainly, sir," he tittered. "Of course, sir, I think I can see +you at Coney, Mr. Blinker." + +Blinker got a pager and looked up the movements of Sunday +steamboats. Then he found a cab at the first corner and drove to a +North River pier. He stood in line, as democratic as you or I, and +bought a ticket, and was trampled upon and shoved forward until, at +last, he found himself on the upper deck of the boat staring +brazenly at a girl who sat alone upon a camp stool. But Blinker did +not intend to be brazen; the girl was so wonderfully good looking +that he forgot for one minute that he was the prince incog, and +behaved just as he did in society. + +She was looking at him, too, and not severely. A puff of wind +threatened Blinker's straw hat. He caught it warily and settled it +again. The movement gave the effect of a bow. The girl nodded and +smiled, and in another instant he was seated at her side. She was +dressed all in white, she was paler than Blinker imagined milkmaids +and girls of humble stations to be, but she was as tidy as a cherry +blossom, and her steady, supremely frank gray eyes looked out from +the intrepid depths of an unshadowed and untroubled soul. + +"How dare you raise your hat to me?" she asked, with a smile- +redeemed severity. + +"I didn't," Blinker said, but he quickly covered the mistake by +extending it to "I didn't know how to keep from it after I saw you." + +"I do not allow gentlemen to sit by me to whom I have not been +introduced," she said, with a sudden haughtiness that deceived him. +He rose reluctantly, but her clear, teasing laugh brought him down +to his chair again. + +"I guess you weren't going far," she declared, with beauty's +magnificent self-confidence. + +"Are you going to Coney Island?" asked Blinker. + +"Me?" She turned upon him wide-open eyes full of bantering surprise. +"Why, what a question! Can't you see that I'm riding a bicycle in +the park?" + +Her drollery took the form of impertinence. + +"And I am laying brick on a tall factory chimney," said Blinker. +"Mayn't we see Coney together? I'm all alone and I've never been +there before." "It depends," said the girl, "on how nicely you +behave. I'll consider your application until we get there." + +Blinker took pains to provide against the rejection of his +application. He strove to please. To adopt the metaphor of his +nonsensical phrase, he laid brick upon brick on the tall chimney of +his devoirs until, at length, the structure was stable and complete. +The manners of the best society come around finally to simplicity; +and as the girl's way was that naturally, they were on a mutual +plane of communication from the beginning. + +He learned that she was twenty, and her name was Florence; that she +trimmed hats in a millinery shop; that she lived in a furnished room +with her best chum Elia, who was cashier in a shoe store; and that a +glass of milk from the bottle on the window-sill and an egg that +boils itself while you twist up your hair makes a breakfast good +enough for any one. Florence laughed when she heard "Blinker." + +"Well," she said. "It certainly slows that you have imagination. It +gives the 'Smiths' a chance for a little rest, anyhow." + +They landed at Coney, and were dashed on the crest of a great human +wave of mad pleasure-seekers into the walks and avenues of Fairyland +gone into vaudeville. + +With a curious eye, a critical mind and a fairly withheld judgment +Blinker considered the temples, pagodas and kiosks of popularized +delights. Hoi polloi trampled, hustled and crowded him. Basket +parties bumped him; sticky children tumbled, howling, under his +feet, candying his clothes. Insolent youths strolling among the +booths with hard-won canes under one arm and easily won girls on the +other, blew defiant smoke from cheap cigars into his face. The +publicity gentlemen with megaphones, each before his own stupendous +attraction, roared like Niagara in his ears. Music of all kinds that +could be tortured from brass, reed, hide or string, fought in the +air to grain space for its vibrations against its competitors. But +what held Blinker in awful fascination was the mob, the multitude, +the proletariat shrieking, struggling, hurrying, panting, hurling +itself in incontinent frenzy, with unabashed abandon, into the +ridiculous sham palaces of trumpery and tinsel pleasures, The +vulgarity of it, its brutal overriding of all the tenets of +repression and taste that were held by his caste, repelled him +strongly. + +In the midst of his disgust he turned and looked down at Florence by +his side. She was ready with her quick smile and upturned, happy +eyes, as bright and clear as the water in trout pools. The eyes were +saying that they had the right to be shining and happy, for was +their owner not with her (for the present) Man, her Gentleman Friend +and holder of the keys to the enchanted city of fun? + +Blinker did not read her look accurately, but by some miracle he +suddenly saw Coney aright. + +He no longer saw a mass of vulgarians seeking gross joys. He now +looked clearly upon a hundred thousand true idealists. Their +offenses were wiped out. Counterfeit and false though the garish +joys of these spangled temples were, he perceived that deep under +the gilt surface they offered saving and apposite balm and +satisfaction to the restless human heart. Here, at least, was the +husk of Romance, the empty but shining casque of Chivalry, the +breath-catching though safe-guarded dip and flight of Adventure, the +magic carpet that transports you to the realms of fairyland, though +its journey be trough but a few poor yards of space. He no longer +saw a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. There was no magic +of poesy here or of art; but the glamour of their imagination turned +yellow calico into cloth of gold and the megaphones into the silver +trumpets of joy's heralds. + +Almost humbled, Blinker rolled up the shirt sleeves of his mind and +joined the idealists. + +"You are the lady doctor," he said to Florence. "How shall we go +about doing this jolly conglomeration of fairy tales, incorporated?" + +"We will begin there," said the Princess, pointing to a fun pagoda +on the edge of the sea, "and we will take there all in, one by one." + +They caught the eight o'clock returning boat and sat, filled with +pleasant fatigue, against the rail in the bow, listening to the +Italians' fiddle and harp. Blinker had thrown off all care. The +North Woods seemed to him an uninhabitable wilderness. What a fuss +he had made over signing his name--pooh! he could sign it a hundred +times. And her name was as pretty as she was--"Florence," he said it +to himself a great many times. + +As the boat was nearing its pier in the North River a two-funnelled, +drab, foreign-looking sea-going steamer was dropping down toward the +bay. The boat turned its nose in toward its slip. The steamer veered +as if to seek midstream, and then yawed, seemed to increase its +speed and struck the Coney boat on the side near the stern, cutting +into it with a terrifying shock and crash. + +While the six hundred passengers on the boat were mostly tumbling +about the decks in a shrieking panic the captain was shouting at the +steamer that it should not back off and leave the rent exposed for +the water to enter. But the steamer tore its way out like a savage +sawfish and cleaved its heartless way, full speed ahead. + +The boat began to sink at its stern, but moved slowly toward the +slip. The passengers were a frantic mob, unpleasant to behold. + +Blinker held Florence tightly until the boat had righted itself. She +made no sound or sign of fear. He stood on a camp stool, ripped off +the slats above his head and pulled down a number of the life +preservers. He began to buckle one around Florence. The rotten +canvas split and the fraudulent granulated cork came pouring out in +a stream. Florence caught a handful of it and laughed gleefully. + +"It looks like breakfast food," she said. "Take it off. They're no +good." + +She unbuckled it and threw it on the deck. She made Blinker sit down +and sat by his side and put her hand in his. "What'll you bet we +don't reach the pier all right?" she said and began to hum a song. + +And now the captain moved among the passengers and compelled order. +The boat would undoubtedly make her slip, he said, and ordered the +women and children to the bow, where they could land first. The +boat, very low in the water at the stern, tried gallantly to make +his promise good. + +"Florence," said Blinker, as she held him close by an arm and hand, +"I love you." + +"That's what they all say," she replied, lightly. + +"I am not one of 'they all,'" he persisted. "I never knew any one I +could love before. I could pass my life with you and be happy every +day. I am rich. I can make things all right for you." + +"That's what they all say," said the girl again, weaving the words +into her little, reckless song. + +"Don't say that again," said Blinker in a tone that made her look at +him in frank surprise. + +"Why shouldn't I say it?" she asked calmly. "They all do." + +"Who are 'they'?" he asked, jealous for the first time in his +existence. + +"Why, the fellows I know." + +"Do you know so many?" + +"Oh, well, I'm not a wall flower," she answered with modest +complacency. + +"Where do you see these--these men? At your home?" + +"Of course not. I meet them just as I did you. Sometimes on the +boat, sometimes in the park, sometimes on the street. I'm a pretty +good judge of a man. I can tell in a minute if a fellow is one who +is likely to get fresh." + +"What do you mean by 'fresh?'" + +"Why, try to kiss you--me, I mean." + +"Do any of them try that?" asked Blinker, clenching his teeth. + +"Sure. All men do. You know that." + +"Do you allow them?" + +"Some. Not many. They won't take you out anywhere unless you do." + +She turned her head and looked searchingly at Blinker. Her eyes were +as innocent as a child's. There was a puzzled look in them, as +though she did not understand him. + +"What's wrong about my meeting fellows?" she asked, wonderingly. + +"Everything," he answered, almost savagely. "Why don't you entertain +your company in the house where you live? Is it necessary to pick up +Tom, Dick and Harry on the streets?" + +She kept her absolutely ingenuous eyes upon his. "If you could see +the place where I live you wouldn't ask that. I live in Brickdust +Row. They call it that because there's red dust from the bricks +crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more than four +years. There's no place to receive company. You can't have anybody +come to your room. What else is there to do? A girl has got to meet +the men, hasn't she?" + +"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "A girl has got to meet a--has got to meet +the men." + +"The first time one spoke to me on the street," she continued, "I +ran home and cried all night. But you get used to it. I meet a good +many nice fellows at church. I go on rainy days and stand in the +vestibule until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there was a +parlor, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker--are you really sure +it isn't 'Smith,' now?" + +The boat landed safely. Blinker had a confused impression of walking +with the girl through quiet crosstown streets until she stopped at a +corner and held out her hand. + +"I live just one more block over," she said. "Thank you for a very +pleasant afternoon." + +Blinker muttered something and plunged northward till he found a +cab. A big, gray church loomed slowly at his right. Blinker shook +his fist at it through the window. + +"I gave you a thousand dollars last, week," he cried under his +breath, "and she meets them in your very doors. There is something +wrong; there is something wrong." + +At eleven the next day Blinker signed his name thirty times with a +new pen provided by Lawyer Oldport. + +"Now let me go to the woods," he said surlily. + +"You are not looking well," said Lawyer Oldport. "The trip will do +you good. But listen, if you will, to that little matter of business +of which I spoke to you yesterday, and also five years ago. There +are some buildings, fifteen in number, of which there are new five- +year leases to be signed. Your father contemplated a change in the +lease provisions, but never made it. He intended that the parlors of +these houses should not be sub-let, but that the tenants should be +allowed to use them for reception rooms. These houses are in the +shopping district, and are mainly tenanted by young working girls. +As it is they are forced to seek companionship outside. This row of +red brick--" + +Blinker interrupted him with a loud, discordant laugh. + +"Brickdust Row for an even hundred," he cried. "And I own it. Have I +guessed right?" + +"The tenants have some such name for it," said Lawyer Oldport. + +Blinker arose and jammed his hat down to his eyes. + +"Do what you please with it," he said harshly. "Remodel it, burn it, +raze it to the ground. But, man, it's too late I tell you. It's too +late. It's too late. It's too late." + + + + +THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER + + +Besides many other things, Raggles was a poet. He was called a +tramp; but that was only an elliptical way of saying that he was a +philosopher, an artist, a traveller, a naturalist and a discoverer. +But most of all he was a poet. In all his life he never wrote a line +of verse; he lived his poetry. His Odyssey would have been a +Limerick, had it been written. But, to linger with the primary +proposition, Raggles was a poet. + +Raggles's specialty, had he been driven to ink and paper, would have +been sonnets to the cities. He studied cities as women study their +reflections in mirrors; as children study the glue and sawdust of a +dislocated doll; as the men who write about wild animals study the +cages in the zoo. A city to Raggles was not merely a pile of bricks +and mortar, peopled by a certain number of inhabitants; it was a +thing with a soul characteristic and distinct; an individual +conglomeration of life, with its own peculiar essence, flavor and +feeling. Two thousand miles to the north and south, east and west, +Raggles wandered in poetic fervor, taking the cities to his breast. +He footed it on dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars, +counting time as of no account. And when he had found the heart of a +city and listened to its secret confession, he strayed on, restless, +to another. Fickle Raggles!--but perhaps he had not met the civic +corporation that could engage and hold his critical fancy. + +Through the ancient poets we have learned that the cities are +feminine. So they were to poet Raggles; and his mind carried a +concrete and clear conception of the figure that symbolized and +typified each one that he had wooed. + +Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy suggestion of +Mrs. Partington, plumes and patchouli, and to disturb his rest with +a soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But Raggles would +awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting impression of +ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad and fish. + +Thus Chicago affected him. Perhaps there is a vagueness and +inaccuracy in the description; but that is Raggles's fault. He +should have recorded his sensations in magazine poems. + +Pittsburg impressed hint as the play of "Othello" performed in the +Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader's minstrels. A +royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though--homely, hearty, with +flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk dress and white kid +slippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the roaring fireplace and +drink champagne with his pigs' feet and fried potatoes. + +New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. He could +see her pensive, starry eves and catch the flutter of her fan, and +that was all. Only once he came face to face with her. It was at +dawn, when she was flushing the red bricks of the banquette with a +pail of water. She laughed and hummed a chansonette and filled +Raggles's shoes with ice-cold water. Allons! + +Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic and +singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that +the city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around +his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. +And, after all, he came to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the +cloth, becoming wet, tightened its knots and could not be removed. + +Indefinite and unintelligible ideas, you will say; but your +disapprobation should be tempered with gratitude, for these are +poets' fancies--and suppose you had come upon them in verse! + +One day Raggles came and laid siege to the heart of the great city +of Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learn +her note in the scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solve +and label her and arrange her with the other cities that had given +him up the secret of their individuality. And here we cease to be +Raggles's translator and become his chronicler. + +Raggles landed from a ferry-boat one morning and walked into the +core of the town with the blase air of a cosmopolite. He was dressed +with care to play the role of an "unidentified man." No country, +race, class, clique, union, party clan or bowling association could +have claimed him. His clothing, which had been donated to him piece- +meal by citizens of different height, but same number of inches +around the heart, was not yet as uncomfortable to his figure as +those speciments of raiment, self-measured, that are railroaded to +you by transcontinental tailors with a suit case, suspenders, sills +handkerchief and pearl studs as a bonus. Without money--as a poet +should be--but with the ardor of an astronomer discovering a new +star in the chorus of the milky way, or a man who has seen ink +suddenly flow from his fountain pen, Raggles wandered into the great +city. + +Late in the afternoon he drew out of the roar and commotion with a +look of dumb terror on his countenance. He was defeated, puzzled, +discomfited, frightened. Other cities had been to him as long primer +to read; as country maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of- +subscription-with-answer rebuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to +swallow; but here was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as +a four-carat diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering damply +in his pocket his ribbon-counter salary. + +The greetings of the other cities he had known--their homespun +kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, +garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference. +This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him. +Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an +eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned +for the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoulder; for +Chicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and +eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass--even for the +precipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. Louis. + +On Broadway Raggles, successful suitor of many cities, stood, +bashful, like any country swain. For the first time he experienced +the poignant humiliation of being ignored. And when he tried to +reduce this brilliant, swiftly changing, ice-cold city to a formula +he failed utterly. Poet though he was, it offered him no color +similes, no points of comparison, no flaw in its polished facets, no +handle by which he could hold it up and view its shape and +structure, as he familiarly and often contemptuously had done with +other towns. The houses were interminable ramparts loopholed for +defense; the people were bright but bloodless spectres passing in +sinister and selfish array. + +The thing that weighed heaviest on Raggles's soul and clogged his +poet's fancy was the spirit of absolute egotism that seemed to +saturate the people as toys are saturated with paint. Each one that +he considered appeared a monster of abominable and insolent conceit. +Humanity was gone from them; they were toddling idols of stone and +varnish, worshipping themselves and greedy for though oblivious of +worship from their fellow graven images. Frozen, cruel, implacable, +impervious, cut to an identical pattern, they hurried on their ways +like statues brought by some miracles to motion, while soul and +feeling lay unaroused in the reluctant marble. + +Gradually Raggles became conscious of certain types. One was an +elderly gentleman with a snow-white, short beard, pink, unwrinkled +face and stony, sharp blue eyes, attired in the fashion of a gilded +youth, who seemed to personify the city's wealth, ripeness and +frigid unconcern. Another type was a woman, tall, beautiful, clear +as a steel engraving, goddess-like, calm, clothed like the +princesses of old, with eyes as coldly blue as the reflection of +sunlight on a glacier. And another was a by-product of this town of +marionettes--a broad, swaggering, grim, threateningly sedate fellow, +with a jowl as large as a harvested wheat field, the complexion of a +baptized infant and the knuckles of a prize-fighter. This type +leaned against cigar signs and viewed the world with frapped +contumely. + +A poet is a sensitive creature, and Raggles soon shrivelled in the +bleak embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, +ironical, illegible, unnatural, ruthless expression of the city left +him downcast and bewildered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, +the scolding of vinegar-faced housewives at back doors, the kindly +spleen of bartenders behind provincial free-lunch counters, the +amiable truculence of rural constables, the kicks, arrests and +happy-go-lucky chances of the other vulgar, loud, crude cities than +this freezing heartlessness. + +Raggles summoned his courage and sought alms from the populace. +Unheeding, regardless, they passed on without the wink of an eyelash +to testify that they were conscious of his existence. And then he +said to himself that this fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was +without a soul; that its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires +and springs, and that he was alone in a great wilderness. + +Raggles started to cross the street. There was a blast, a roar, a +hissing and a crash as something struck him and hurled him over and +over six yards from where he had been. As he was coming down like +the stick of a rocket the earth and all the cities thereof turned to +a fractured dream. + +Raggles opened his eyes. First an odor made itself known to him--an +odor of the earliest spring flowers of Paradise. And then a hand +soft as a falling petal touched his brow. Bending over him was the +woman clothed like the princess of old, with blue eyes, now soft and +humid with human sympathy. Under his head on the pavement were silks +and furs. With Raggles's hat in his hand and with his face pinker +than ever from a vehement burst of oratory against reckless driving, +stood the elderly gentleman who personified the city's wealth and +ripeness. From a nearby cafe hurried the by-product with the vast +jowl and baby complexion, bearing a glass full of a crimson fluid +that suggested delightful possibilities. + +"Drink dis, sport," said the by-product, holding the glass to +Raggles's lips. + +Hundreds of people huddled around in a moment, their faces wearing +the deepest concern. Two flattering and gorgeous policemen got into +the circle and pressed back the overplus of Samaritans. An old lady +in a black shawl spoke loudly of camphor; a newsboy slipped one of +his papers beneath Raggles's elbow, where it lay on the muddy +pavement. A brisk young man with a notebook was asking for names. + +A bell clanged importantly, and the ambulance cleaned a lane through +the crowd. A cool surgeon slipped into the midst of affairs. + +"How do you feel, old man?" asked the surgeon, stooping easily to +his task. The princess of silks and satins wiped a red drop or two +from Raggles's brow with a fragrant cobweb. + +"Me?" said Raggles, with a seraphic smile, "I feel fine." + +He had found the heart of his new city. + +In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent ward +in the hospital. He had been in there an hour when the attendants +heard sounds of conflict. Upon investigation they found that Raggles +had assaulted and damaged a brother convalescent--a glowering +transient whom a freight train collision had sent in to be patched +up. + +"What's all this about?" inquired the head nurse. + +"He was runnin' down me town," said Raggles. + +"What town?" asked the nurse. + +"Noo York," said Raggles. + + + + +VANITY AND SOME SABLES + + +When "Kid" Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McKeever's blue-black +eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a +colleen's blanderin' tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you +are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 +o'clock to-morrow; if you are a woman, may your Pomeranian greet you +this morning with a cold nose--a sign of doghealth and your +happiness. + +The Stovepipe Gang borrowed its name from a sub-district of the city +called the "Stovepipe," which is a narrow and natural extension of +the familiar district known as "Hell's Kitchen." The "Stovepipe" +strip of town runs along Eleventh and Twelfth avenues on the river, +and bends a hard and sooty elbow around little, lost homeless DeWitt +Clinton park. Consider that a stovepipe is an important factor in +any kitchen and the situation is analyzed. Tae chefs in "Hell's +Kitchen" are many, and the "Stovepipe" gang, wears the cordon blue. + +The members of this unchartered but widely known brotherhood +appeared to pass their time on street corners arrayed like the +lilies of the conservatory and busy with nail files and penknives. +Thus displayed as a guarantee of good faith, they carried on an +innocuous conversation in a 200-word vocabulary, to the casual +observer as innocent and immaterial as that heard in clubs seven +blocks to the east. + +But off exhibition the "Stovepipes" were not mere street corner +ornaments addicted to posing and manicuring. Their serious +occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and +valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks +without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honored by +their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully his +objections came to be spread finally upon some police station +blotter or hospital register. + +The police held the "Stovepipe" gang in perpetual suspicion and +respect. As the nightingale's liquid note is heard in the deepest +shadows, so along the "Stovepipe's" dark and narrow confess the +whistle for reserves punctures the dull ear of night. Whenever there +was smoke in the "stovepipe" the tasselled men in blue knew there +was fire in "Hell's Kitchen." + +"Kid" Brady promised Molly to be good. "Kid" was the vainest, the +strongest, the wariest and the most successful plotter in the gang. +Therefore, the boys were sorry to give him up. + +But they witnessed his fall to a virtuous life with-out protest. +For, in the Kitchen it is considered neither unmanly nor improper +for a guy to do as his girl advises. + +Black her eye for love's sake, if you will; but it is all-to-the- +good business to do a thing when she wants you to do it. + +"Turn off the hydrant," said the Kid, one night when Molly, tearful, +besought him to amend his ways. "I'm going to cut out the gang. You +for mine, and the simple life on the side. I'll tell you, Moll--I'll +get work; and in a year we'll get married. I'll do it for you. We'll +get a flat and a flute, and a sewing machine and a rubber plant and +live as honest as we can." + +"Oh, Kid," sighed Molly, wiping the powder off his shoulder with her +handkerchief, "I'd rather hear you say that than to own all of New +York. And we can be happy on so little!" + +The Kid looked down at his speckless cuffs and shining patent +leathers with a suspicion of melancholy. + +"It'll hurt hardest in the rags department," said he. "I've kind of +always liked to rig out swell when I could. You know how I hate +cheap things, Moll. This suit set me back sixty-five. Anything in +the wearing apparel line has got to be just so, or it's to the +misfit parlors for it, for mine. If I work I won't have so much coin +to hand over to the little roan with the big shears." + +"Never mind, Kid. I'll like you just as much in a, blue jumper as I +would in a red automobile." + +Before the Kid had grown large enough to knock out his father he had +been compelled to learn the plumber's art. So now back to this +honorable and useful profession he returned. But it was as an +assistant that he engaged himself; and it is the master plumber and +not the assistant, who wears diamonds as large as hailstones and +looks contemptuously upon the marble colonnades of Senator Clark's +mansion. + +Eight months went by as smoothly and surely as though they had +"elapsed" on a theater program. The Kid worked away at his pipes and +solder with no symptoms of backsliding. The Stovepipe gang continued +its piracy on the high avenues, cracked policemen's heads, held up +late travelers, invented new methods of peaceful plundering, copied +Fifth avenue's cut of clothes and neckwear fancies and comported +itself according to its lawless bylaws. But the Kid stood firm and +faithful to his Molly, even though the polish was gone from his +fingernails and it took him 15 minutes to tie his purple silk ascot +so that the worn places would not show. + +One evening he brought a mysterious bundle with him to Molly's +house. + +"Open that, Moll!" he said in his large, quiet way. "It's for you." + +Molly's eager fingers tore off the wrappings. She shrieked aloud, +and in rushed a sprinkling of little McKeevers, and Ma McKeever, +dishwashy, but an undeniable relative of the late Mrs. Eve. + +Again Molly shrieked, and something dark and long and sinuous flew +and enveloped her neck like an anaconda. + +"Russian sables," said the Kid, pridefully, enjoying the sight of +Molly's round cheek against the clinging fur. "The real thing. They +don't grow anything in Russia too good for you, Moll." + +Molly plunged her hands into the muff, overturned a row of the +family infants and flew to the mirror. Hint for the beauty column. +To make bright eyes, rosy checks and a bewitching smile: Recipe--one +set Russian sables. Apply. + +When they were alone Molly became aware of a small cake of the ice +of common sense floating down the full tide of her happiness. + +"You're a bird, all right, Kid," she admitted gratefully. "I never +had any furs on before in my life. But ain't Russian sables awful +expensive? Seems to me I've heard they were." + +"Have I ever chucked any bargain-sale stuff at you, Moll?" asked the +Kid, with calm dignity. "Did you ever notice me leaning on the +remnant counter or peering in the window of the five-and-ten? Call +that scarf $250 and the muff $175 and you won't make any mistake +about the price of Russian sables. The swell goods for me. Say, they +look fine on you, Moll." + +Molly hugged the sables to her bosom in rapture. And then her smile +went away little by little, and she looked the Kid straight in the +eye sadly and steadily. + +He knew what every look of hers meant; and he laughed with a faint +flush upon his face. + +"Cut it out," he said, with affectionate roughness. "I told you I +was done with that. I bought 'em and paid for 'em, all right, with +my own money." + +"Out of the money you worked for, Kid? Out of $75 a month?" + +"Sure. I been saving up." + +"Let's see--saved $425 in eight months, Kid?" + +"Ah, let up," said the Kid, with some heat. "I had some money when I +went to work. Do you think I've been holding 'em up again? I told +you I'd quit. They're paid for on the square. Put 'em. on and come +out for a walk." + +Molly calmed her doubts. Sables are soothing. Proud as a queen she +went forth in the streets at the Kid's side. In all that region of +low-lying streets Russian sables had never been seen before. The +word sped, and doors and windows blossomed with heads eager to see +the swell furs Kid Brady had given his girl. All down the street +there were "Oh's" and "Ah's" and the reported fabulous sum paid for +the sables was passed from lip to lip, increasing as it went. At her +right elbow sauntered the Kid with the air of princes. Work had not +diminished his love of pomp and show and his passion for the costly +and genuine. On a corner they saw a group of the Stovepipe Gang +loafing, immaculate. They raised their hats to the Kid's girl and +went on with their calm, unaccented palaver. + +Three blocks behind the admired couple strolled Detective Ransom, of +the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who +could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair +dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the +inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and then one would +tip off to him something that he was looking for. + +"What's the excitement down the street?" asked Ransom of a pale +youth in a red sweater. + +"Dey're out rubberin' at a set of buffalo robes Kid Brady staked his +girl to," answered the youth. "Some say he paid $900 for de skins. +Dey're swell all right enough." + +"I hear Brady has been working at his old trade for nearly a year," +said the detective. "He doesn't travel with the gang any more, does +he?" + +"He's workin', all right," said the red sweater, "but--say, sport, +are you trailin' anything in the fur line? A job in a plumbin' shop +don' match wid dem skins de Kid's girl's got on." + +Ransom overtook the strolling couple on an empty street near the +river bank. He touched the Kid's arm from behind. + +"Let me see you a moment, Brady," he said, quietly. His eye rested +for a second on the long fur scarf thrown stylishly back over +Molly's left shoulder. The Kid, with his old-time police hating +frown on his face, stepped a yard or two aside with the detective. + +"Did you go to Mrs. Hethcote's on West 7--th street yesterday to fix +a leaky water pipe?" asked Ransom. + +"I did," said the Kid. "What of it?" + +"The lady's $1,000 set of Russian sables went out of the house about +the same time you did. The description fits the ones this lady has +on." "To h--Harlem with you," cried the Kid, angrily. "You know I've +cut out that sort of thing, Ransom. I bought them sables yesterday +at--" + +The Kid stopped short. + +"I know you've been working straight lately," said Ransom. "I'll +give you every chance. I'll go with you where you say you bought the +furs and investigate. The lady can wear 'em along with us and +nobody'll be on. That's fair, Brady." + +"Come on," agreed the Kid, hotly. And then he stopped suddenly in +his tracks and looked with an odd smile at Molly's distressed and +anxious face. + +"No use," he said, grimly. "They're the Hethcote sables, all right. +You'll have to turn 'em over, Moll, but they ain't too good for you +if they cost a million." + +Molly, with anguish in her face, hung upon the Kid's arm. + +"Oh, Kiddy, you've broke my heart," she said. "I was so proud of +you--and now they'll do you--and where's our happiness gone?" + +"Go home," said the Kid, wildly. "Come on, Ransom--take the furs. +Let's get away from here. Wait a minute--I've a good mind to--no, +I'll be d--if I can do it--run along, Moll--I'm ready, Ransom." + +Around the corner of a lumber-yard came Policeman Kohen on his way +to his beat along the river. The detective signed to him for +assistance. Kohen joined the group. Ransom explained. + +"Satre," said Kohen. "I hear about those saples dat vas stole. You +say you have dem here?" + +Policeman Kohen took the end of Molly's late scarf in his hands and +looked at it closely. + +"Once," he said, "I sold furs in Sixth avenue. Yes, dese are saples. +Dey come from Alaska. Dis scarf is vort $12 and dis muff--" + +"Biff!" came the palm of the Kid's powerful hand upon the +policeman's mouth. Kohen staggered and rallied. Molly screamed. The +detective threw him-self upon Brady and with Kohen's aid got the +nippers on his wrist. + +"The scarf is vort $12 and the muff is vort $9," persisted the +policeman. "Vot is dis talk about $1,000 saples?" + +The Kid sat upon a pile of lumber and his face turned dark red. + +"Correct, Solomonski!" he declared, viciously. "I paid $21.50 for +the set. I'd rather have got six months and not have told it. Me, +the swell guy that wouldn't look at anything cheap! I'm a plain +bluffer. Moll--my salary couldn't spell sables in Russian." + +Molly cast herself upon his neck. + +"What do I care for all the sables and money in the world," she +cried. "It's my Kiddy I want. Oh, you dear, stuck-up, crazy +blockhead!" + +"You can take dose nippers off," said Kohen to the detective." +Before I leaf de station de report come in dat de lady vind her +saples--hanging in her wardrobe. Young man, I excuse you dat punch +in my vace--dis von time." + +Ransom handed Molly her furs. Her eyes were smiling upon the Kid. +She wound the scarf and threw the end over her left shoulder with a +duchess' grace. + +"A gouple of young vools," said Policeman Kohen to Ransom; "come on +away." + + + + +THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE + + +At the stroke of six Ikey Snigglefritz laid down his goose. Ikey was +a tailor's apprentice. Are there tailor's apprentices nowadays? + +At any rate, Ikey toiled and snipped and basted and pressed and +patched and sponged all day in the steamy fetor of a tailor-shop. +But when work was done Ikey hitched his wagon to such stars as his +firmament let shine. + +It was Saturday night, and the boss laid twelve begrimed and +begrudged dollars in his hand. Ikey dabbled discreetly in water, +donned coat, hat and collar with its frazzled tie and chalcedony +pin, and set forth in pursuit of his ideals. + +For each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, +whether it be love or pinochle or lobster a la Newburg, or the sweet +silence of the musty bookshelves. + +Behold Ikey as he ambles up the street beneath the roaring "El" +between the rows of reeking sweatshops. Pallid, stooping, +insignificant, squalid, doomed to exist forever in penury of body +and mind, yet, as he swings his cheap cane and projects the noisome +inhalations from his cigarette you perceive that he nurtures in his +narrow bosom the bacillus of society. + +Ikey's legs carried him to and into that famous place of +entertainment known as the Cafe Maginnis--famous because it was the +rendezvous of Billy McMahan, the greatest man, the most wonderful +man, Ikey thought, that the world had ever produced. + +Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred, +and his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered, McMahan +stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the centre of a huzzaing +concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had +been an election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been +swept back into line by a resistless besom of ballots. + +Ikey slunk along the bar and gazed, breath-quickened, at his idol. + +How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great, smooth, laughing +face; his gray eye, shrewd as a chicken hawk's; his diamond ring, +his voice like a bugle call, his prince's air, his plump and active +roll of money, his clarion call to friend and comrade--oh, what a +king of men he was! How he obscured his lieutenants, though they +themselves loomed large and serious, blue of chin and important of +mien, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their short +overcoats! But Billy--oh, what small avail are words to paint for +you his glory as seen by Ikey Snigglefritz! + +The Cafe Maginnis rang to the note of victory. The white-coated +bartenders threw themselves featfully upon bottle, cork and glass. +From a score of clear Havanas the air received its paradox of +clouds. The leal and the hopeful shook Billy McMahan's hand. And +there was born suddenly in the worshipful soul of Ikey Snigglefritz +an audacious, thrilling impulse. + +He stepped forward into the little cleared space in which majesty +moved, and held out his hand. + +Billy McMahan grasped it unhesitatingly, shook it and smiled. + +Made mad now by the gods who were about to destroy him, Ikey threw +away his scabbard and charged upon Olympus. + +"Have a drink with me, Billy," he said familiarly, "you and your +friends?" + +"Don't mind if I do, old man," said the great leader, "just to keep +the ball rolling." + +The last spark of Ikey's reason fled. + +"Wine," he called to the bartender, waving a trembling hand. + +The corks of three bottles were drawn; the champagne bubbled in the +long row of glasses set upon the bar. Billy McMahan took his and +nodded, with his beaming smile, at Ikey. The lieutenants and +satellites took theirs and growled "Here's to you." Ikey took his +nectar in delirium. All drank. + +Ikey threw his week's wages in a crumpled roll upon the bar. + +"C'rect," said the bartender, smoothing the twelve one-dollar notes. +The crowd surged around Billy McMahan again. Some one was telling +how Brannigan fixed 'em over in the Eleventh. Ikey leaned against +the bar a while, and then went out. + +He went down Hester street and up Chrystie, and down Delancey to +where he lived. And there his women folk, a bibulous mother and +three dingy sisters, pounced upon him for his wages. And at his +confession they shrieked and objurgated him in the pithy rhetoric of +the locality. + +But even as they plucked at him and struck him Ikey remained in his +ecstatic trance of joy. His head was in the clouds; the star was +drawing his wagon. Compared with what he had achieved the loss of +wages and the bray of women's tongues were slight affairs. + +He had shaken the hand of Billy McMahan. + + * * * * * * * + +Billy McMahan had a wife, and upon her visiting cards was engraved +the name "Mrs. William Darragh McMahan." And there was a certain +vexation attendant upon these cards; for, small as they were, there +were houses in which they could not be inserted. Billy McMahan was a +dictator in politics, a four-walled tower in business, a mogul, +dreaded, loved and obeyed among his own people. He was growing rich; +the daily papers had a dozen men on his trail to chronicle his every +word of wisdom; he had been honored in caricature holding the Tiger +cringing in leash. + +But the heart of Billy was sometimes sore within him. There was a +race of men from which he stood apart but that he viewed with the +eye of Moses looking over into the promised land. He, too, had +ideals, even as had Ikey Snigglefritz; and sometimes, hopeless of +attaining them, his own solid success was as dust and ashes in his +mouth. And Mrs. William Darragh McMahan wore a look of discontent +upon her plump but pretty face, and the very rustle of her silks +seemed a sigh. + +There was a brave and conspicuous assemblage in the dining saloon of +a noted hostelry where Fashion loves to display her charms. At one +table sat Billy McMahan and his wife. Mostly silent they were, but +the accessories they enjoyed little needed the indorsement of +speech. Mrs. McMahan's diamonds were outshone by few in the room. +The waiter bore the costliest brands of wine to their table. In +evening dress, with an expression of gloom upon his smooth and +massive countenance, you would look in vain for a more striking +figure than Billy's. + +Four tables away sat alone a tall, slender man, about thirty, with +thoughtful, melancholy eyes, a Van Dyke beard and peculiarly white, +thin hands. He was dining on filet mignon, dry toast and +apollinaris. That man was Cortlandt Van Duyckink, a man worth eighty +millions, who inherited and held a sacred seat in the exclusive +inner circle of society. + +Billy McMahan spoke to no one around him, because he knew no one. +Van Duyckink kept his eyes on his plate because he knew that every +one present was hungry to catch his. He could bestow knighthood and +prestige by a nod, and he was chary of creating a too extensive +nobility. + +And then Billy McMahan conceived and accomplished the most startling +and audacious act of his life. He rose deliberately and walked over +to Cortlandt Van Duyckink's table and held out his hand. + +"Say, Mr. Van Duyckink," he said, "I've heard you was talking about +starting some reforms among the poor people down in my district. I'm +McMahan, you know. Say, now, if that's straight I'll do all I can to +help you. And what I says goes in that neck of the woods, don't it? +Oh, say, I rather guess it does." + +Van Duyckink's rather sombre eyes lighted up. He rose to his lank +height and grasped Billy McMahan's hand. + +"Thank you, Mr. McMahan," he said, in his deep, serious tones. "I +have been thinking of doing some work of that sort. I shall be glad +of your assistance. It pleases me to have become acquainted with +you." + +Billy walked back to his seat. His shoulder was tingling from the +accolade bestowed by royalty. A hundred eyes were now turned upon +him in envy and new admiration. Mrs. William Darragh McMahan +trembled with ecstasy, so that her diamonds smote the eye almost +with pain. And now it was apparent that at many tables there were +those who suddenly remembered that they enjoyed Mr. McMahan's +acquaintance. He saw smiles and bows about him. He became enveloped +in the aura of dizzy greatness. His campaign coolness deserted him. + +"Wine for that gang!" he commanded the waiter, pointing with his +finger. "Wine over there. Wine to those three gents by that green +bush. Tell 'em it's on me. D--n it! Wine for everybody!" + +The waiter ventured to whisper that it was perhaps inexpedient to +carry out the order, in consideration of the dignity of the house +and its custom. + +"All right," said Billy, "if it's against the rules. I wonder if +'twould do to send my friend Van Duyckink a bottle? No? Well, it'll +flow all right at the caffy to-night, just the same. It'll be rubber +boots for anybody who comes in there any time up to 2 A. M." + +Billy McMahan was happy. + +He had shaken the hand of Cortlandt Van Duyckink. + + * * * * * * * + +The big pale-gray auto with its shining metal work looked out of +place moving slowly among the push carts and trash-heaps on the +lower east side. So did Cortlandt Van Duyckink, with his +aristocratic face and white, thin hands, as he steered carefully +between the groups of ragged, scurrying youngsters in the streets. +And so did Miss Constance Schuyler, with her dim, ascetic beauty, +seated at his side. + +"Oh, Cortlandt," she breathed, "isn't it sad that human beings have +to live in such wretchedness and poverty? And you--how noble it is +of you to think of them, to give your time and money to improve +their condition!" + +Van Duyckink turned his solemn eyes upon her. + +"It is little," he said, sadly, "that I can do. The question is a +large one, and belongs to society. But even individual effort is not +thrown away. Look, Constance! On this street I have arranged to +build soup kitchens, where no one who is hungry will be turned away. +And down this other street are the old buildings that I shall cause +to be torn down and there erect others in place of those death-traps +of fire and disease." + +Down Delancey slowly crept the pale-gray auto. Away from it toddled +coveys of wondering, tangle-haired, barefooted, unwashed children. +It stopped before a crazy brick structure, foul and awry. + +Van Duyckink alighted to examine at a better perspective one of the +leaning walls. Down the steps of the building came a young man who +seemed to epitomize its degradation, squalor and infelicity--a +narrow-chested, pale, unsavory young man, puffing at a cigarette. + +Obeying a sudden impulse, Van Duyckink stepped out and warmly +grasped the hand of what seemed to him a living rebuke. + +"I want to know you people," he said, sincerely. "I am going to help +you as much as I can. We shall be friends." + +As the auto crept carefully away Cortlandt Van Duyckink felt an +unaccustomed glow about his heart. He was near to being a happy man. + +He had shaken the hand of Ikey Snigglefritz. + + + + +THE PURPLE DRESS + + +We are to consider the shade known as purple. It is a color justly +in repute among the sons and daughters of man. Emperors claim it for +their especial dye. Good fellows everywhere seek to bring their +noses to the genial hue that follows the commingling of the red and +blue. We say of princes that they are born to the purple; and no +doubt they are, for the colic tinges their faces with the royal tint +equally with the snub-nosed countenance of a woodchopper's brat. All +women love it--when it is the fashion. + +And now purple is being worn. You notice it on the streets. Of +course other colors are quite stylish as well--in fact, I saw a +lovely thing the other day in olive green albatross, with a triple- +lapped flounce skirt trimmed with insert squares of silk, and a +draped fichu of lace opening over a shirred vest and double puff +sleeves with a lace band holding two gathered frills--but you see +lots of purple too. Oh, yes, you do; just take a walk down Twenty- +third street any afternoon. + +Therefore Maida--the girl with the big brown eyes and cinnamon- +colored hair in the Bee-Hive Store--said to Grace--the girl with the +rhinestone brooch and peppermint-pepsin flavor to her speech--"I'm +going to have a purple dress--a tailor-made purple dress-for +Thanksgiving." + +"Oh, are you," said Grace, putting away some 7-1/2 gloves into the +6-3/4 box. "Well, it's me for red. You see more red on Fifth avenue. +And the men all seem to like it." + +"I like purple best," said Maida. "And old Schlegel has promised to +make it for $8. It's going to be lovely. I'm going to have a plaited +skirt and a blouse coat trimmed with a band of galloon under a white +cloth collar with two rows of--" + +"Sly boots!" said Grace with an educated wink. + +"--soutache braid over a surpliced white vest; and a plaited basque +and--" + +"Sly boots--sly boots!" repeated Grace. + +"--plaited gigot sleeves with a drawn velvet ribbon over an inside +cuff. What do you mean by saying that?" + +"You think Mr. Ramsay likes purple. I heard him say yesterday he +thought some of the dark shades of red were stunning." + +"I don't care," said Maida. "I prefer purple, and them that don't +like it can just take the other side of the street." + +Which suggests the thought that after all, the followers of purple +may be subject to slight delusions. Danger is near when a maiden +thinks she can wear purple regardless of complexions and opinions; +and when Emperors think their purple robes will wear forever. + +Maida had saved $18 after eight months of economy; and this had +bought the goods for the purple dress and paid Schlegel $4 on the +making of it. On the day before Thanksgiving she would have just +enough to pay the remaining $4. And then for a holiday in a new +dress--can earth offer anything more enchanting? + +Old Bachman, the proprietor of the Bee-Hive Store, always gave a +Thanksgiving dinner to his employees. On every one of the subsequent +364 days, excusing Sundays, he would remind them of the joys of the +past banquet and the hopes of the coming ones, thus inciting them to +increased enthusiasm in work. The dinner was given in the store on +one of the long tables in the middle of the room. They tacked +wrapping paper over the front windows; and the turkeys and other +good things were brought in the back way from the restaurant on the +corner. You will perceive that the Bee-Hive was not a fashionable +department store, with escalators and pompadours. It was almost +small enough to be called an emporium; and you could actually go in +there and get waited on and walk out again. And always at the +Thanksgiving dinners Mr. Ramsay-- + +Oh, bother! I should have mentioned Mr. Ramsay first of all. He is +more important than purple or green, or even the red cranberry +sauce. + +Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for +him. He never pinched the girls' arms when he passed them in dark +corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business +was dull and the girls giggled and said: "Oh, pshaw!" it wasn't G. +Bernard they meant at all. Besides being a gentleman, Mr. Ramsay was +queer and original in other ways. He was a health crank, and +believed that people should never eat anything that was good for +them. He was violently opposed to anybody being comfortable, and +coming in out of snow storms, or wearing overshoes, or taking +medicine, or coddling themselves in any way. Every one of the ten +girls in the store had little pork-chop-and-fried-onion dreams every +night of becoming Mrs. Ramsay. For, next year old Bachman was going +to take him in for a partner. And each one of them knew that if she +should catch him she would knock those cranky health notions of his +sky high before the wedding cake indigestion was over. + +Mr. Ramsay was master of ceremonies at the dinners. Always they had +two Italians in to play a violin and harp and had a little dance in +the store. + +And here were two dresses being conceived to charm. Ramsay--one +purple and the other red. Of course, the other eight girls were +going to have dresses too, but they didn't count. Very likely they'd +wear some shirt-waist-and-black-skirt-affairs--nothing as +resplendent as purple or red. + +Grace had saved her money, too. She was going to buy her dress +ready-made. Oh, what's the use of bothering with a tailor--when +you've got a figger it's easy to get a fit--the ready-made are +intended for a perfect figger--except I have to have 'em all taken +in at the waist--the average figger is so large waisted. + +The night before Thanksgiving came. Maida hurried home, keen and +bright with the thoughts of the blessed morrow. Her thoughts were of +purple, but they were white themselves--the joyous enthusiasm of the +young for the pleasures that youth must have or wither. She knew +purple would become her, and--for the thousandth time she tried to +assure herself that it was purple Mr. Ramsay said he liked and not +red. She was going home first to get the $4 wrapped in a piece of +tissue paper in the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then she was +going to pay Schlegel and take the dress home herself. + +Grace lived in the same house. She occupied the hall room above +Maida's. + +At home Maida found clamor and confusion. The landlady's tongue +clattering sourly in the halls like a churn dasher dabbing in +buttermilk. And then Grace come down to her room crying with eyes as +red as any dress. + +"She says I've got to get out," said Grace. "The old beast. Because +I owe her $4. She's put my trunk in the hall and locked the door. I +can't go anywhere else. I haven't got a cent of money." + +"You had some yesterday," said Maida. + +"I paid it on my dress," said Grace. "I thought she'd wait till next +week for the rent." + +Sniffle, sniffle, sob, sniffle. + +Out came--out it had to come--Maida's $4. + +"You blessed darling," cried Grace, now a rainbow instead of sunset. +"I'll pay the mean old thing and then I'm going to try on my dress. +I think it's heavenly. Come up and look at it. I'll pay the money +back, a dollar a week--honest I will." + +Thanksgiving. + +The dinner was to be at noon. At a quarter to twelve Grace switched +into Maida's room. Yes, she looked charming. Red was her color. +Maida sat by the window in her old cheviot skirt and blue waist +darning a st--. Oh, doing fancy work. + +"Why, goodness me! ain't you dressed yet?" shrilled the red one. +"How does it fit in the back? Don't you think these velvet tabs look +awful swell? Why ain't you dressed, Maida?" + +"My dress didn't get finished in time," said Maida. "I'm not going +to the dinner." + +"That's too bad. Why, I'm awfully sorry, Maida. Why don't you put on +anything and come along--it's just the store folks, you know, and, +they won't mind." + +"I was set on my purple," said Maida. "If I can't have it I won't go +at all. Don't bother about me. Run along or you'll be late. You look +awful nice in red." + +At her window Maida sat through the long morning and past the time +of the dinner at the store. In her mind she could hear the girls +shrieking over a pull-bone, could hear old Bachman's roar over his +own deeply-concealed jokes, could see the diamonds of fat Mrs. +Bachman, who came to the store only on Thanksgiving days, could see +Mr. Ramsay moving about, alert, kindly, looking to the comfort of +all. + +At four in the afternoon, with an expressionless face and a lifeless +air she slowly made her way to Schlegel's shop and told him she +could not pay the $4 due on the dress. + +"Gott!" cried Schlegel, angrily. "For what do you look so glum? Take +him away. He is ready. Pay me some time. Haf I not seen you pass +mine shop every day in two years? If I make clothes is it that I do +not know how to read beoples because? You will pay me some time when +you can. Take him away. He is made goot; and if you look bretty in +him all right. So. Pay me when you can." + +Maida breathed a millionth part of the thanks in her heart, and +hurried away with her dress. As she left the shop a smart dash of +rain struck upon her face. She smiled and did not feel it. + +Ladies who shop in carriages, you do not understand. Girls whose +wardrobes are charged to the old man's account, you cannot begin to +comprehend--you could not understand why Maida did not feel the cold +dash of the Thanksgiving rain. + +At five o'clock she went out upon the street wearing her purple +dress. The rain had increased, and it beat down upon her in a +steady, wind-blown pour. People were scurrying home and to cars with +close-held umbrellas and tight buttoned raincoats. Many of them +turned their heads to marvel at this beautiful, serene, happy-eyed +girl in the purple dress walking through the storm as though she +were strolling in a garden under summer skies. + +I say you do not understand it, ladies of the full purse and varied +wardrobe. You do not know what it is to live with a perpetual +longing for pretty things--to starve eight months in order to bring +a purple dress and a holiday together. What difference if it rained, +hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? + +Maida had no umbrella nor overshoes. She had her purple dress and +she walked abroad. Let the elements do their worst. A starved heart +must have one crumb during a year. The rain ran down and dripped +from her fingers. + +Some one turned a corner and blocked her way. She looked up into Mr. +Ramsay's eyes, sparkling with admiration and interest. + +"Why, Miss Maida," said he, "you look simply magnificent in your new +dress. I was greatly disappointed not to see you at our dinner. And +of all the girls I ever knew, you show the greatest sense and +intelligence. There is nothing more healthful and invigorating than +braving the weather as you are doing. May I walk with you?" + +And Maida blushed and sneezed. + + + + +THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99 + + +John Byrnes, hose-cart driver of Engine Company No. 99, was +afflicted with what his comrades called Japanits. + +Byrnes had a war map spread permanently upon a table in the second +story of the engine-house, and he could explain to you at any hour +of the day or night the exact positions, conditions and intentions +of both the Russian and Japanese armies. He had little clusters of +pins stuck in the map which represented the opposing forces, and +these be moved about from day to day in conformity with the war news +in the daily papers. + +Wherever the Japs won a victory John Byrnes would shift his pins, +and then he would execute a war dance of delight, and the other +firemen would hear him yell: "Go it, you blamed little, sawed-off, +huckleberry-eyed, monkey-faced hot tamales! Eat 'em up, you little +sleight-o'-hand, bow-legged bull terriers--give 'em another of them +Yalu looloos, and you'll eat rice in St. Petersburg. Talk about your +Russians--say, wouldn't they give you a painsky when it comes to a +scrapovitch?" + +Not even on the fair island of Nippon was there a more enthusiastic +champion of the Mikado's men. Supporters of the Russian cause did +well to keep clear of Engine-House No. 99. + +Sometimes all thoughts of the Japs left John Byrnes's head. That was +when the alarm of fire had sounded and he was strapped in his +driver's seat on the swaying cart, guilding Erebus and Joe, the +finest team in the whole department--according to the crew of 99. + +Of all the codes adopted by man for regulating his actions toward +his fellow-mortals, the greatest are these--the code of King +Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, the Constitution of the United +States and the unwritten rules of the New York Fire Department. The +Round Table methods are no longer practicable since the invention of +street cars and breach-of-promise suits, and our Constitution is +being found more and more unconstitutional every day, so the code of +our firemen must be considered in the lead, with the Golden Rule and +Jeffries's new punch trying for place and show. + +The Constitution says that one man is as good as another; but the +Fire Department says he is better. This is a too generous theory, +but the law will not tallow itself to be construed otherwise. All of +which comes perilously near to being a paradox, and commends itself +to the attention of the S. P. C. A. + +One of the transatlantic liners dumped out at Ellis Island a lump of +protozoa which was expected to evolve into an American citizen. A +steward kicked him down the gangway, a doctor pounced upon his eyes +like a raven, seeking for trachoma or ophthalmia; he was hustled +ashore and ejected into the city in the name of Liberty--perhaps, +theoretically, thus inoculating against kingocracy with a drop of +its own virus. This hypodermic injection of Europeanism wandered +happily into the veins of the city with the broad grin of a pleased +child. It was not burdened with baggage, cares or ambitions. Its +body was lithely built and clothed in a sort of foreign fustian; its +face was brightly vacant, with a small, flat nose, and was mostly +covered by a thick, ragged, curling beard like the coat of a +spaniel. In the pocket of the imported Thing were a few coins-- +denarii--sendi--kopecks--pfennigs--pilasters--whatever the financial +nomenclature of his unknown country nay have been. + +Prattling to himself, always broadly grinning, pleased by the roar +and movement of the barbarous city into which the steamship cut- +rates had shunted him, the alien strayed away from the, sea, which +he hated, as far as the district covered by Engine Company No. 99. +Light as a cork, he was kept bobbing along by the human tide, the +cruelest atom in all the silt of the stream that emptied into the +reservoir of Liberty. + +While crossing Third avenue he slowed his steps, enchanted by the +thunder of the elevated trains above him and the soothing crash of +the wheels on the cobbles. And then there was a new, delightful +chord in the uproar--the musical clanging of a gong and a great +shining juggernaut belching fire and smoke, that people were +hurrying to see. + +This beautiful thing, entrancing to the eye, dashed past, and the +protoplasmic immigrant stepped into the wake of it with his broad, +enraptured, uncomprehending grin. And so stepping, stepped into the +path of No. 99's flying hose-cart, with John Byrnes gripping, with +arms of steel, the reins over the plunging backs of Erebus and Joe. + +The unwritten constitutional code of the fireman has no exceptions +or amendments. It is a simple thing--as simple as the rule of three. +There was the heedless unit in the right of way; there was the hose- +cart and the iron pillar of the elevated railroad. + +John Byrnes swung all his weight and muscle on the left rein. The +team and cart swerved that way and crashed like a torpedo into the +pillar. The men on the cart went flying like skittles. The driver's +strap burst, the pillar rang with the shock, and John Byrnes fell on +the car track with a broken shoulder twenty feet away, while Erebus- +-beautiful, raven-black, best-loved Erebus--lay whickering in his +harness with a broken leg. + +In consideration for the feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the +details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be +reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were +sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men +of No. 99 heard the crack of the S.P.C.A. agent's pistol, and turned +their heads away, not daring to look toward Erebus again. + +When the firemen got back to the engine-house they found that one of +them was dragging by the collar the cause of their desolation and +grief. They set it in the middle of the floor and gathered grimly +about it. Through its whiskers the calamitous object chattered +effervescently and waved its hands. + +"Sounds like a seidlitz powder," said Mike Dowling, disgustedly, +"and it makes me sicker than one. Call that a man!--that hoss was +worth a steamer full of such two-legged animals. It's a immigrant-- +that's what it is." + +"Look at the doctor's chalk mark on its coat," said Reilly, the desk +man. "It's just landed. It must be a kind of a Dago or a Hun or one +of them Finns, I guess. That's the kind of truck that Europe unloads +onto us." + +"Think of a thing like that getting in the way and laying John up in +hospital and spoiling the best fire team in the city," groaned +another fireman. "It ought to be taken down to the dock and +drowned." + +"Somebody go around and get Sloviski," suggested the engine driver, +"and let's see what nation is responsible for this conglomeration of +hair and head noises." + +Sloviski kept a delicatessen store around the corner on Third +avenue, and was reputed to be a linguist. + +One of the men fetched him--a fat, cringing man, with a discursive +eye and the odors of many kinds of meats upon him. + +"Take a whirl at this importation with your jaw-breakers, Sloviski," +requested Mike Dowling. "We can't quite figure out whether he's from +the Hackensack bottoms or Hongkong-on-the-Ganges." + +Sloviski addressed the stranger in several dialects that ranged in +rhythm and cadence from the sounds produced by a tonsilitis gargle +to the opening of a can of tomatoes with a pair of scissors. The +immigrant replied in accents resembling the uncorking of a bottle of +ginger ale. + +"I have you his name," reported Sloviski. "You shall not pronounce +it. Writing of it in paper is better." They gave him paper, and he +wrote, "Demetre Svangvsk." + +"Looks like short hand," said the desk man. + +"He speaks some language," continued the interpreter, wiping his +forehead, "of Austria and mixed with a little Turkish. And, den, he +have some Magyar words and a Polish or two, and many like the +Roumanian, but not without talk of one tribe in Bessarabia. I do not +him quite understand." + +"Would you call him a Dago or a Polocker, or what?" asked Mike, +frowning at the polyglot description. + +"He is a"--answered Sloviski--"he is a--I dink he come from--I dink +he is a fool," he concluded, impatient at his linguistic failure, +"and if you pleases I will go back at mine delicatessen." + +"Whatever he is, he's a bird," said Mike Dowling; "and you want to +watch him fly." + +Taking by the wing the alien fowl that had fluttered into the nest +of Liberty, Mike led him to the door of the engine-house and +bestowed upon him a kick hearty enough to convey the entire animus +of Company 99. Demetre Svangvsk hustled away down the sidewalk, +turning once to show his ineradicable grin to the aggrieved firemen. + +In three weeks John Byrnes was back at his post from the hospital. +With great gusto he proceeded to bring his war map up to date. "My +money on the Japs every time," he declared. "Why, look at them +Russians--they're nothing but wolves. Wipe 'em out, I say--and the +little old jiu jitsu gang are just the cherry blossoms to do the +trick, and don't you forget it!" + +The second day after Byrnes's reappearance came Demetre Svangvsk, +the unidentified, to the engine-house, with a broader grin than +ever. He managed to convey the idea that he wished to congratulate +the hose-cart driver on his recovery and to apologize for having +caused the accident. This he accomplished by so many extravagant +gestures and explosive noises that the company was diverted for half +an hour. Then they kicked him out again, and on the next day he came +back grinning. How or where he lived no one knew. And then John +Byrnes's nine-year-old son, Chris, who brought him convalescent +delicacies from home to eat, took a fancy to Svangvsk, and they +allowed him to loaf about the door of the engine-house occasionally. + +One afternoon the big drab automobile of the Deputy Fire +Commissioner buzzed up to the door of No. 99 and the Deputy stepped +inside for an informal inspection. The men kicked Svangvsk out a +little harder than usual and proudly escorted the Deputy around 99, +in which everything shone like my lady's mirror. + +The Deputy respected the sorrow of the company concerning the loss +of Erebus, and he had come to promise it another mate for Joe that +would do him credit. So they let Joe out of his stall and showed the +Deputy how deserving he was of the finest mate that could be in +horsedom. + +While they were circling around Joe confabbing, Chris climbed into +the Deputy's auto and threw the power full on. The men heard a +monster puffing and a shriek from the lad, and sprang out too late. +The big, auto shot away, luckily taking a straight course down the +street. The boy knew nothing of its machinery; he sat clutching the +cushions and howling. With the power on nothing could have stopped +that auto except a brick house, and there was nothing for Chris to +gain by such a stoppage. Demetre Svangvsk was just coming in again +with a grin for another kick when Chris played his merry little +prank. While the others sprang for the door Demetre sprang for Joe. +He glided upon the horse's bare back like a snake and shouted +something at him like the crack of a dozen whips. One of the firemen +afterward swore that Joe answered him back in the same language. Ten +seconds after the auto started the big horse was eating up the +asphalt behind it like a strip of macaroni. + +Some people two blocks and a half away saw the rescue. They said +that the auto was nothing but a drab noise with a black speck in the +middle of it for Chris, when a big bay horse with a lizard lying on +its back cantered up alongside of it, and the lizard reached over +and picked the black speck out of the noise. + +Only fifteen minutes after Svangvsk's last kicking at the hands--or +rather the feet--of Engine Company No. 99 he rode Joe back through +the door with the boy safe, but acutely conscious of the licking he +was going to receive. + +Svangvsk slipped to the floor, leaned his head against Joe's and +made a noise like a clucking hen. Joe nodded and whistled loudly +through his nostrils, putting to shame the knowledge of Sloviski, of +the delicatessen. + +John Byrnes walked up to Svangvsk, who grinned, expecting to be +kicked. Byrnes gripped the outlander so strongly by the hand that +Demetre grinned anyhow, conceiving it to be a new form of +punishment. + +"The heathen rides like a Cossack," remarked a fireman who had seen +a Wild West show--"they're the greatest riders in the world." + +The word seemed to electrify Svangvsk. He grinned wider than ever. + +"Yas--yas--me Cossack," he spluttered, striking his chest. + +"Cossack!" repeated John Byrnes, thoughtfully, "ain't that a kind of +a Russian?" + +"They're one of the Russian tribes, sure," said the desk man, who +read books between fire alarms. + +Just then Alderman Foley, who was on his way home and did not know +of the runaway, stopped at the door of the engine-house and called +to Byrnes: + +"Hello there, Jimmy, me boy--how's the war coming along? Japs still +got the bear on the trot, have they?" + +"Oh, I don't know," said John Byrnes, argumentatively, "them Japs +haven't got any walkover. You wait till Kuropatkin gets a good whack +at 'em and they won't be knee-high to a puddle-ducksky." + + + + +THE LOST BLEND + + +Since the bar has been blessed by the clergy, and cocktails open the +dinners of the elect, one may speak of the saloon. Teetotalers need +not listen, if they choose; there is always the slot restaurant, +where a dime dropped into the cold bouillon aperture will bring +forth a dry Martini. + +Con Lantry worked on the sober side of the bar in Kenealy's cafe. +You and I stood, one-legged like geese, on the other side and went +into voluntary liquidation with our week's wages. Opposite danced +Con, clean, temperate, clear-headed, polite, white-jacketed, +punctual, trustworthy, young, responsible, and took our money. + +The saloon (whether blessed or cursed) stood in one of those little +"places" which are parallelograms instead of streets, and inhabited +by laundries, decayed Knickerbocker families and Bohemians who have +nothing to do with either. + +Over the cafe lived Kenealy and his family. His daughter Katherine +had eyes of dark Irish--but why should you be told? Be content with +your Geraldine or your Eliza Ann. For Con dreamed of her; and when +she called softly at the foot of the back stairs for the pitcher of +beer for dinner, his heart went up and down like a milk punch in the +shaker. Orderly and fit are the rules of Romance; and if you hurl +the last shilling of your fortune upon the bar for whiskey, the +bartender shall take it, and marry his boss's daughter, and good +will grow out of it. + +But not so Con. For in the presence of woman he was tongue-tied and +scarlet. He who would quell with his eye the sonorous youth whom the +claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the +obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle +coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was +voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of +bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A +trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, +the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence +of his divinity. + +There came to Kenealy's two sunburned men, Riley and McQuirk. They +had conference with Kenealy; and then they took possession of a back +room which they filled with bottles and siphons and jugs and +druggist's measuring glasses. All the appurtenances and liquids of a +saloon were there, but they dispensed no drinks. All day long the +two sweltered in there pouring and mixing unknown brews and +decoctions from the liquors in their store. Riley had the education, +and he figured on reams of paper, reducing gallons to ounces and +quarts to fluid drams. McQuirk, a morose man with a red eye, dashed +each unsuccessful completed mixture into the waste pipes with curses +gentle, husky and deep. They labored heavily and untiringly to +achieve some mysterious solution like two alchemists striving to +resolve gold from the elements. + +Into this back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered +Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult +bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon +Kenealy's store of liquors to follow their consuming and fruitless +experiments. + +Down the back stairs came Katherine with her smile like sunrise on +Gweebarra Bay. + +"Good evening, Mr. Lantry," says she. "And what is the news to-day, +if you please?" + +"It looks like r-rain," stammered the shy one, backing to the wall. + +"It couldn't do better," said Katherine. "I'm thinking there's +nothing the worse off for a little water." In the back room Riley +and McQuirk toiled like bearded witches over their strange +compounds. From fifty bottles they drew liquids carefully measured +after Riley's figures, and shook the whole together in a great glass +vessel. Then McQuirk would dash it out, with gloomy profanity, and +they would begin again. + +"Sit down," said Riley to Con, "and I'll tell you." + +"Last summer me and Tim concludes that an American bar in this +nation of Nicaragua would pay. There was a town on the coast where +there's nothing to eat but quinine and nothing to drink but rum. The +natives and foreigners lay down with chills and get up with fevers; +and a good mixed drink is nature's remedy for all such tropical +inconveniences." + +"So we lays in a fine stock of wet goods in New York, and bar +fixtures and glassware, and we sails for that Santa Palma town on a +lime steamer. On the way me and Tim sees flying fish and plays +seven-up with the captain and steward, and already begins to feel +like the high-ball kings of the tropics of Capricorn." + +"When we gets in five hours of the country that we was going to +introduce to long drinks and short change the captain calls us over +to the starboard binnacle and recollects a few things." + +"I forgot to tell you, boys," says he, "that Nicaragua slapped an +import duty of 48 per cent. ad valorem on all bottled goods last +month. The President took a bottle of Cincinnati hair tonic by +mistake for tobasco sauce, and he's getting even. Barrelled goods is +free." + +"Sorry you didn't mention it sooner," says we. And we bought two +forty-two gallon casks from the captain, and opened every bottle we +had and dumped the stuff all together in the casks. That 48 per cent +would have ruined us; so we took the chances on making that $1,200 +cocktail rather than throw the stud away." + +"Well, when we landed we tapped one of the barrels. The mixture was +something heartrending. It was the color of a plate of Bowery pea +soup, and it tasted like one of those coffee substitutes your aunt +makes you take for the heart trouble you get by picking losers. We +gave a nigger four fingers of it to try it, and he lay under a +cocoanut tree three days beating the sand with his heels and refused +to sign a testimonial." + +"But the other barrel! Say, bartender, did you ever put on a straw +hat with a yellow band around it and go up in a balloon with a +pretty girl with $8,000,000 in your pocket all at the same time? +That's what thirty drops of it would make you feel like. With two +fingers of it inside you you would bury your face in your hands and +cry because there wasn't anything more worth while around for you to +lick than little Jim Jeffries. Yes, sir, the stuff in that second +barrel was distilled elixir of battle, money and high life. It was +the color of gold and as clear as glass, and it shone after dark +like the sunshine was still in it. A thousand years from now you'll +get a drink like that across the bar." + +"Well, we started up business with that one line of drinks, and it +was enough. The piebald gentry of that country stuck to it like a +hive of bees. If that barrel had lasted that country would have +become the greatest on earth. When we opened up of mornings we had a +line of Generals and Colonels and ex-Presidents and revolutionists a +block long waiting to be served. We started in at 50 cents silver a +drink. The last ten gallons went easy at $5 a gulp. It was wonderful +stuff. It gave a man courage and ambition and nerve to do anything; +at the same time he didn't care whether his money was tainted or +fresh from the Ice Trust. When that barrel was half gone Nicaragua +had repudiated the National debt, removed the duty on cigarettes and +was about to declare war on the United States and England." + +"'Twas by accident we discovered this king of drinks, and 'twill be +by good luck if we strike it again. For ten months we've been +trying. Small lots at a time, we've mixed barrels of all the harmful +ingredients known to the profession of drinking. Ye could have +stocked ten bars with the whiskies, brandies, cordials, bitters, +gins and wines me and Tim have wasted. A glorious drink like that to +be denied to the world! 'Tis a sorrow and a loss of money. The +United States as a nation would welcome a drink of that sort, and +pay for it." + +All the while McQuirk lead been carefully measuring and pouring +together small quantities of various spirits, as Riley called them, +from his latest pencilled prescription. The completed mixture was of +a vile, mottled chocolate color. McQuirk tasted it, and hurled it, +with appropriate epithets, into the waste sink. + +"'Tis a strange story, even if true," said Con. "I'll be going now +along to my supper." + +"Take a drink," said Riley. "We've all kinds except the lost blend." + +"I never drink," said Con, "anything stronger than water. I am just +after meeting Miss Katherine by the stairs. She said a true word. +`There's not anything,' says she, `but is better off for a little +water.'" + +When Con had left them Riley almost felled McQuirk by a blow on the +back. + +"Did ye hear that?" he shouted. "Two fools are we. The six dozen +bottles of 'pollinaris we had on the slip--ye opened them yourself-- +which barrel did ye pour them in--which barrel, ye mudhead?" + +"I mind," said McQuirk, slowly, "'twas in the second barrel we +opened. I mind the blue piece of paper pasted on the side of it." + +"We've got it now," cried Riley. "'Twas that we lacked. 'Tis the +water that does the trick. Everything else we had right. Hurry, man, +and get two bottles of 'pollinaris from the bar, while I figure out +the proportionments with me pencil." + +An hour later Con strolled down the sidewalk toward Kenealy's cafe. +Thus faithful employees haunt, during their recreation hours, the +vicinity where they labor, drawn by some mysterious attraction. + +A police patrol wagon stood at the side door. Three able cops were +half carrying, half hustling Riley and McQuirk up its rear steps. +The eyes and faces of each bore the bruises and cuts of sanguinary +and assiduous conflict. Yet they whooped with strange joy, and +directed upon the police the feeble remnants of their pugnacious +madness. + +"Began fighting each other in the back room," explained Kenealy to +Con. "And singing! That was worse. Smashed everything pretty much +up. But they're good men. They'll pay for everything. Trying to +invent some new kind of cocktail, they was. I'll see they come out +all right in the morning." + +Con sauntered into the back room to view the battlefield. As he went +through the hall Katherine was just coming down the stairs. + +"Good evening again, Mr. Lantry," said she. "And is there no news +from the weather yet?" + +"Still threatens r-rain," said Con, slipping past with red in his +smooth, pale cheek. + +Riley and McQuirk had indeed waged a great and friendly battle. +Broken bottles and glasses were everywhere. The room was full of +alcohol fumes; the floor was variegated with spirituous puddles. + +On the table stood a 32-ounce glass graduated measure. In the bottom +of it were two tablespoonfuls of liquid--a bright golden liquid that +seemed to hold the sunshine a prisoner in its auriferous depths. + +Con smelled it. He tasted it. He drank it. + +As he returned through the hall Katherine was just going up the +stairs. + +"No news yet, Mr. Lantry?" she asked with her teasing laugh. + +Con lifted her clear from the floor and held her there. + +"The news is," he said, "that we're to be married." + +"Put me down, sir!" she cried indignantly, "or I will--Oh, Con, +where, oh, wherever did you get the nerve to say it?" + + + + +A HARLEM TRAGEDY + + +Harlem. + +Mrs. Fink had dropped into Mrs. Cassidy's flat one flight below. + +"Ain't it a beaut?" said Mrs. Cassidy. + +She turned her face proudly for her friend Mrs. Fink to see. One eye +was nearly closed, with a great, greenish-purple bruise around it. +Her lip was cut and bleeding a little and there were red finger- +marks on each side of her neck. + +"My husband wouldn't ever think of doing that to me," said Mrs. +Fink, concealing her envy. + +"I wouldn't have a man," declared Mrs. Cassidy, "that didn't beat me +up at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you. Say! but +that last dose Jack gave me wasn't no homeopathic one. I can see +stars yet. But he'll be the sweetest man in town for the rest of the +week to make up for it. This eye is good for theater tickets and a +silk shirt waist at the very least." + +"I should hope," said Mrs. Fink, assuming complacency, "that Mr. +Fink is too much of a gentleman ever to raise his hand against me." + +"Oh, go on, Maggie!" said Mrs. Cassidy, laughing and applying witch +hazel, "you're only jealous. Your old man is too frapped and slow to +ever give you a punch. He just sits down and practises physical +culture with a newspaper when he comes home--now ain't that the +truth?" + +"Mr. Fink certainly peruses of the papers when he comes home," +acknowledged Mrs. Fink, with a toss of her head; "but he certainly +don't ever make no Steve O'Donnell out of me just to amuse himself-- +that's a sure thing." + +Mrs. Cassidy laughed the contented laugh of the guarded and happy +matron. With the air of Cornelia exhibiting her jewels, she drew +down the collar of her kimono and revealed another treasured bruise, +maroon-colored, edged with olive and orange--a bruise now nearly +well, but still to memory dear. + +Mrs. Fink capitulated. The formal light in her eye softened to +envious admiration. She and Mrs. Cassidy had been chums in the +downtown paper-box factory before they had married, one year before. +Now she and her man occupied the flat above Mame and her man. +Therefore she could not put on airs with Mame. + +"Don't it hurt when he soaks you?" asked Mrs. Fink, curiously. + +"Hurt!"--Mrs. Cassidy gave a soprano scream of delight. "Well, say-- +did you ever have a brick house fall on you?--well, that's just the +way it feels--just like when they're digging you out of the ruins. +Jack's got a left that spells two matinees and a new pair of +Oxfords--and his right!--well, it takes a trip to Coney and six +pairs of openwork, silk lisle threads to make that good." + +"But what does he beat you for?" inquired Mrs. Fink, with wide-open +eyes. + +"Silly!" said Mrs. Cassidy, indulgently. "Why, because he's full. +It's generally on Saturday nights." + +"But what cause do you give him?" persisted the seeker after +knowledge. + +"Why, didn't I marry him? Jack comes in tanked up; and I'm here, +ain't I? Who else has he got a right to beat? I'd just like to catch +him once beating anybody else! Sometimes it's because supper ain't +ready; and sometimes it's because it is. Jack ain't particular about +causes. He just lushes till he remembers he's married, and then he +makes for home and does me up. Saturday nights I just move the +furniture with sharp corners out of the way, so I won't cut my head +when he gets his work in. He's got a left swing that jars you! +Sometimes I take the count in the first round; but when I feel like +having a good time during the week or want some new rags I come up +again for more punishment. That's what I done last night. Jack knows +I've been wanting a black silk waist for a month, and I didn't think +just one black eye would bring it. Tell you what, Mag, I'll bet you +the ice cream he brings it to-night." + +Mrs. Fink was thinking deeply. + +"My Mart, "she said, "never hit me a lick in his life. It's just +like you said, Mame; he comes in grouchy and ain't got a word to +say. He never takes me out anywhere. He's a chair-warmer at home for +fair. He buys me things, but he looks so glum about it that I never +appreciate 'em." + +Mrs. Cassidy slipped an arm around her chum. "You poor thing!" she +said. "But everybody can't have a husband like Jack. Marriage +wouldn't be no failure if they was all like him. These discontented +wives you hear about--what they need is a man to come home and kick +their slats in once a week, and then make it up in kisses, and +chocolate creams. That'd give 'em some interest in life. What I want +is a masterful man that slugs you when he's jagged and hugs you when +he ain't jagged. Preserve me from the man that ain't got the sand to +do neither!" + +Mrs. Fink sighed. + +The hallways were suddenly filled with sound. The door flew open at +the kick of Mr. Cassidy. His arms were occupied with bundles. Mame +flew and hung about his neck. Her sound eye sparkled with the love +light that shines in the eye of the Maori maid when she recovers +consciousness in the hut of the wooer who has stunned and dragged +her there. + + "Hello, old girl!" shouted Mr. Cassidy. He shed his bundles and +lifted her off her feet in a mighty hug. "I got tickets for Barnum-- +Bailey's, and if you'll bust the string of one of them bundles I +guess you'll find that silk waist--why, good evening, Mrs. Fink--I +didn't see you at first. How's old Mart coming along?" + +"He's very well, Mr. Cassidy--thanks," said Mrs. Fink. "I must be +going along up now. Mart'll be home for supper soon. I'll bring you +down that pattern you wanted to-morrow, Mame." + +Mrs. Fink went up to her flat and had a little cry. It was a +meaningless cry, the kind of cry that only a woman knows about, a +cry from no particular cause, altogether an absurd cry; the most +transient and the most hopeless cry in the repertory of grief. Why +had Martin never thrashed her? He was as big and strong as Jack +Cassidy. Did he not care for her at all? He never quarrelled; he +came home and lounged about, silent, glum, idle. He was a fairly +good provider, but he ignored the spices of life. + +Mrs. Fink's ship of dreams was becalmed. Her captain ranged between +plum duff and his hammock. If only he would shiver his timbers or +stamp his foot on the quarter-deck now and then! And she had thought +to sail so merrily, touching at ports in the Delectable Isles! But +now, to vary the figure, she was ready to throw up the sponge, tired +out, without a scratch to show for all those tame rounds with her +sparring partner. For one moment she almost hated Mame--Mame, with +her cuts and bruises, her salve of presents and kisses; her stormy +voyage with her fighting, brutal, loving mate. + +Mr. Fink came home at 7. He was permeated with the curse of +domesticity. Beyond the portals of his cozy home he cared not to +roam, to roam. He was the man who had caught the street car, the +anaconda that had swallowed its prey, the tree that lay as it had +fallen. + +"Like the supper, Mart?" asked Mrs. Fink, who had striven over it. + +"M-m-m-yep," grunted Mr. Fink. + +After supper he gathered his newspapers to read. He sat in his +stocking feet. + +Arise, some new Dante, and sing me the befitting corner of perdition +for the man who sitteth in the house in his stockinged feet. Sisters +of Patience who by reason of ties or duty have endured it in silk, +yarn, cotton, lisle thread or woollen--does not the new canto +belong? + +The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr. +Fink ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would +parade and otherwise disport itself. + +Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy's pattern down early. Maine had on her +new silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday +gleam. Jack was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious +scheme for the day afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it. + +A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her +flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick-following +balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin +Fink was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always +unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant, breathless idea +came to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as +able to use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any +Jack. + +The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink +had the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks' +wash that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged +feet reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed. + +Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink's heart, and higher still surged +an audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her--if he would +not so far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in +conjugal affairs, he must be prompted to his duty. + +Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a +stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of +unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium--to sit at +ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely +splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes +departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his mind; +but the furthest one was the thought of beating his wife. + +Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the +suds. Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It +sounded like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face +of the unslugged bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink's time. + +Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading. + +"You lazy loafer!" she cried, "must I work my arms off washing and +toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a +kitchen hound?" + +Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared +that he would not strike--that the provocation had been +insufficient. She leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face +with her clenched hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love +for hire such as she had not felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin +Fink, and come into your kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of +his hand now--just to show that he cared--just to show that he +cared! + +Mr. Fink sprang to his feet--Maggie caught him again on the jaw with +a wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful, +blissful moment before his blow should come--she whispered his name +to herself--she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it. + +In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was +powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat +above came the sound of a woman's voice, high-raised, a bumping, a +stumbling and a shufing, a chair overturned--unmistakable sounds of +domestic conflict. + +"Mart and Mag scrapping?" postulated Mr. Cassidy. "Didn't know they +ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge +holder?" + +One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other +twinkled at least like paste. + +"Oh, oh," she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the +feminine ejaculatory manner. "I wonder if--wonder if! Wait, Jack, +till I go up and see." + +Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out +from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink. + +"Oh, Maggie," cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; "did he? +Oh, did he?" + +Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed +hopelessly. + +Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it +gently. Tear-stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, +pink-and-white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, +unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink. + +"Tell me, Maggie," pleaded Mame, "or I'll go in there and find out. +What was it? Did he hurt you--what did he do?" + +Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her +friend. + +"For God's sake don't open that door, Mame," she sobbed. "And don't +ever tell nobody--keep it under your hat. He--he never touched me, +and--he's--oh, Gawd--he's washin' the clothes--he's washin' the +clothes!" + + + + +"THE GUILTY PARTY" + + +A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a +window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with +great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of +blue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed +daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening +paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be +followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type. + +In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong +bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes from +the vespertine pipe. + +Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, +as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty +host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in +rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as +young hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude +and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to +embrace--here were the children playing in the corridors of the +House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The +bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie +street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture. + +A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and +resting by the window, and said: + +"Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too +tired?" + +The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window +answered, with a frown. + +"Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have a +little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play with +the other kids on the sidewalk?" + +The woman who was cooking came to the door. + +"John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street. +They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in the +house all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your +time to amuse her when you come home." + +"Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be +amused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don't +bother me." + +* * * + +"You're on," said Kid Mullaly. "Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to +the dance. Put up." + +The Kid's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and +challenged. He drew out his "roll" and slapped five tens upon the +bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus "taken" more +slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder, +took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an +inch-long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash +register. + +"And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty," said a bettor, +with anticipatory glee. + +"That's my lookout," said the "Kid," sternly. "Fill 'em up all +around, Mike." + +After the round Burke, the "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal, +Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the +saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the +Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan +shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that +day, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief. + +"Cut that blond out, 'Kid,'" was his advice, "or there'll be +trouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for? +You'll never find one that'll freeze to you like Liz has. She's +worth a hallful of Annies." + +"I'm no Annie admirer!" said the "Kid," dropping a cigarette ash on +his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony's shoulder. "But I want +to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She's been +bragging that I daren't speak to another girl. Liz is all right--in +some ways. She's drinking a little too much lately. And she uses +language that a lady oughtn't." + +"You're engaged, ain't you?" asked Burke. + +"Sure. We'll get married next year, maybe." + +"I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer," said Burke. +"That was two years ago, when she used to came down to the corner of +Chrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sort +of a kid then, and couldn't speak without blushing." + +"She's a little spitfire, sometimes, now," said the Kid. "I hate +jealousy. That's why I'm going to the dance with Annie. It'll teach +her some sense." + +"Well, you better look a little out," were Burke's last words. "If +Liz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an +Annie, I'd want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all +right." + +Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes +searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she +hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her +small, white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east +side has added to language. + +Liz's skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink +plaid, well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring +of huge imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the +bottom of a silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high +heels, and were strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have +passed into a flour barrel. + +The "Family Entrance" of the Blue Jay Cafe received her. At a table +she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for +her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced +manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with +a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order +and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the +prerogative of woman. + +"Whiskey, Tommy," she said as her sisters further uptown murmur, +"Champagne, James." + +"Sure, Miss Lizzie. What'll the chaser be?" + +"Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?" + +"Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven't saw him to-day." + +Fluently came the "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one who +required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee. + +"I'm lookin' for 'm, "said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under +her nose. "It's got to me that he says he'll take Annie Karlson to +the dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I'm lookin' for 'm. You +know me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid's been engaged. Look at +that ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to the +dance. What'll I do? I'll cut his heart out. Another whiskey, +Tommy." + +"I wouldn't listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie," said the waiter +smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. "Kid Mullaly's not +the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?" + +"Two years," repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under the +magic of the distiller's art. "I always used to play out on the +street of evenin's 'cause there was nothin' doin' for me at home. +For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights and +the people goin' by. And then the Kid came along one evenin' and +sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first drink +he made me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin' for +makin' a noise. And now--say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie +Karlson? If it wasn't for peroxide the chloroform limit would have +put her out long ago. Oh, I'm lookin' for 'm. You tell the Kid if he +comes in. Me? I'll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Another +whiskey, Tommy." + +A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz +walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a curly- +haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled +string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile +on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a +sudden. + +"Let me show you how to make a cat's-cradle, kid," she said, tucking +her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes. + +And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the +dance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the bi- +monthly dance, a dress affair in which the members took great pride +and bestirred themselves huskily to further and adorn. + +At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a +lady on his arm. As the Loreley's was her hair golden. Her "yes" was +softened to a "yah," but its quality of assent was patent to the +most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, and- +-she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly. + +And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, the +thing happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly in +many studies and libraries. + +Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a green +silk skirt, under the nom de guerre of "Liz." Her eyes were hard and +blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly, she +cried out one oath--the Kid's own favorite oath--and in his own deep +voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club went frantically +to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, the waiter--made good +as far as the length of her knife blade and the strength of her arm +permitted. + +And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation--or was it +self-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on the +natural branch? + +Liz ran out and down the street swift, and true as a woodcock flying +through a grove of saplings at dusk. + +And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient and +rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight and +perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved and +cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest +barbarity--the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it +survive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection of +culture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in the +chase. + +They pursued--a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and +maidens--howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. +Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may +his heart, the gentler, falter at the siege. + +Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down the +familiar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of the +rotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps--and good +mother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily taut +quickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lights +burning o' nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges. + +It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets call +them visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamed +the rest of this story. + +I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; I +suppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or taking +patent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing some +such little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and there +was a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgments +were going on. And every now and then a very beautiful and imposing +court-officer angel would come outside the door and call another +case. + +While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whether +there would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claiming +that I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door and +sang out: + +"Case No. 99,852,743." + +Up stepped a plain-clothes man--there were lots of 'em there, +dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just +like cops do on earth--and by the arm he dragged--whom, do you +think? Why, Liz! + +The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to +Mr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case. + +"A very sad one," says he, laying the points of his manicured +fingers together. "An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special +Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to me. +The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had no +defense. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of +which are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is +death. Praise the Lord." + +The court officer opened the door and stepped out. + +"Poor girl," said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, +with a tear in his eye. "It was one of the saddest cases that I ever +met with. Of course she was"-- + +"Discharged," said the court officer. "Come here, Jonesy. First +thing you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. How would +you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea Islands-- +hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'll be +transferred--see? The guilty party you've not to look for in this +case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the window +reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in the +streets. Get a move on you." + +Now, wasn't that a silly dream? + + + + +ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS + + +Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are +forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met +and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their +fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of +respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the +monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and +bumptious civic alma mater. + +The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral +cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high +and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his +badge and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the +solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to +accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month +after his dishabilitation a saloon-keeper plucked him by the neck +from his free-lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from +her nest, and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after +that he acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and +wrote complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought the +attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give him a +bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of an +Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex street, and +quoting the words of a song book ballad. + +Murray's fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All the +pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The +megaphone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on +a grand and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about +something, and the prince had been escorted to the door by the +butler, which, in said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the +avuncular shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he +drifted downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the +crusts of the streets with him. + +One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great +bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase--drawing +irony instead of pity to his petitions for aid--was heaped against +the arm of the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by +tufts of vermilion, week-old whiskers and topped by a sagging white +straw hat, looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that +you may observe in a dark Third avenue window, challenging your +imagination to say whether it be something recent in the way of +ladies' hats or a strawberry shortcake. A tight-drawn belt--last +relic of his official spruceness--made a deep furrow in his +circumference. The Captain's shoes were buttonless. In a smothered +bass he cursed his star of ill-luck. + +Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of +blue serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little +indistinct, like some ghost that had been dispossessed. + +"I'm hungry," growled the Captain--"by the top sirloin of the Bull +of Bashan, I'm starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery +restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't you +think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders +scrunched up, giving an irritation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving +his coach--what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some +place we can get something to chew." + +"You forget, my dear Captain," said Murray, without moving, "that +our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion." + +"You bet it was," groaned the Captain, "you bet your life it was. +Have you got any more like that to make--hey?" + +"I admit we failed," sighed Murray. "I was sure Malone would be good +for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the +last time I spent a nickel in his establishment." + +"I had this hand," said the Captain, extending the unfortunate +member--"I had this hand on the drum stick of a turkey and two +sardine sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us." + +"I was within two inches of the olives," said Murray. "Stuffed +olives. I haven't tasted one in a year." + +"What'll we do?" grumbled the Captain. "We can't starve." + +"Can't we?" said Murray quietly. "I'm glad to hear that. I was +afraid we could." + +"You wait here," said the Captain, rising, heavily and puffily to +his feet. "I'm going to try to make one more turn. You stay here +till I come back, Murray. I won't be over half an hour. If I turn +the trick I'll come back flush." + +He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He +gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a +pair of black-edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by +tightening his belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo +rhinoceros, across the south end of the park. + +When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly +eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two +green lights. + +"A police captain named Maroney," he said to the desk sergeant, "was +dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years +ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the +police?" + +"Why are ye asking?" inquired the sergeant, with a frown. + +"I thought there might be a reward standing," explained Murray, +easily. "I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty +shady at present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there +should be a reward--" + + "There's no reward," interrupted the sergeant, shortly. "The man's +not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um, +and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a +start." + +Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity. + +"I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman," he +said, severely, "if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of +its ofenders." + +Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and +shrank within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment. + +Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy +and thunderous as a clog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn +away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with +ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he was +drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly +proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and kitchen +stuff. + +"For Heaven's sake, Captain," sniffed Murray, "I doubt that I would +have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to +resort to swill barrels. I"-- + +"Cheese it," said the Captain, harshly. "I'm not hogging it yet. +It's all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed +marriage to that Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now, that +business could be built up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be. +I thought I had that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what +she done to me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there's another scheme +queered." + +"You don't mean to say," said Murray, with infinite contempt, "that +you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your +disgraceful troubles!" + +"Me?" said the Captain. "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl +of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal +a wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder." + +"I think," said Murray, resting his head on his hands, "that I would +play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces +of silver I would"-- + +"Oh, come now!" exclaimed the Captain in dismay. "You wouldn't do +that, Murray! I always thought that Kike's squeal on his boss was +about the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his +friend away is worse than a pirate." + +Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the +electric light fell. + +"Is that you, Mac?" he said, halting before the derelicts. His +diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted. He +was big and smooth and well fed. "Yes, I see it's you," he +continued. "They told me at Mike's that I might find you over here. +Let me see you a few minutes, Mac." + +The Captain lifted himself with a grunt of alacrity. If Charlie +Finnegan had come down in the bottomless pit to seek him there must +be something doing. Charlie guided him by an arm into a patch of +shadow. + +"You know, Mac," he said, "they're trying Inspector Pickering on +graft charges." + +"He was my inspector," said the Captain. + +"O'Shea wants the job," went on Finnegan. "He must have it. It's for +the good of the organization. Pickering must go under. Your +testimony will do it. He was your `man higher up' when you were on +the force. His share of the boodle passed through your hands. You +must go on the stand and testify against him." + +"He was"--began the Captain. + +"Wait a minute," said Finnegan. A bundle of yellowish stuff came out +of his inside pocket. "Five hundred dollars in it for you. Two-fifty +on the spot, and the rest"-- + +"He was my friend, I say," finished the Captain. "I'll see you and +the gang, and the city, and the party in the flames of Hades before +I'll take the stand against Dan Pickering. I'm down and out; but I'm +no traitor to a man that's been my friend." The Captain's voice rose +and boomed like a split trombone. "Get out of this park, Charlie +Finnegan, where us thieves and tramps and boozers are your betters; +and take your dirty money with you." + +Finnegan drifted out by another walk. The Captain turned to his +seat. + +"I couldn't avoid hearing," said Murray, drearily. "I think you are +the biggest fool I ever saw." + +"What would you have done?" asked the Captain. + +"Nailed Pickering to the cross," said Murray. + +"Sonny," said the Captain, huskily and without heat. "You and me are +different. New York is divided into two parts--above Forty-second +street, and below Fourteenth. You come from the other part. We both +act according to our lights." + +An illuminated clock above the trees retailed the information that +it lacked the half hour of twelve. Both men rose from the bench and +moved away together as if seized by the same idea. They left the +park, struck through a narrow cross street, and came into Broadway, +at this hour as dark, echoing and de-peopled as a byway in Pompeii. + +Northward they turned; and a policeman who glanced at their unkempt +and slinking figures withheld the attention and suspicion that he +would have granted them at any other hour and place. For on every +street in that part of the city other unkempt and slinking figures +were shuffling and hurrying toward a converging point--a point that +is marked by no monument save that groove on the pavement worn by +tens of thousands of waiting feet. + +At Ninth street a tall man wearing an opera hat alighted from a +Broadway car and turned his face westward. But he saw Murray, +pounced upon him and dragged him under a street light. The Captain +lumbered slowly to the corner, like a wounded bear, and waited, +growling. + +"Jerry!" cried the hatted one. "How fortunate! I was to begin a +search for you to-morrow. The old gentleman has capitulated. You're +to be restored to favor. Congratulate you. Come to the office in the +morning and get all the money you want. I've liberal instructions in +that respect." + +"And the little matrimonial arrangement?" said Murray, with his head +turned sidewise. + +"Why.--er--well, of course, your uncle under-stands--expects that +the engagement between you and Miss Vanderhurst shall be"-- + +"Good night," said Murray, moving away. + +"You madman!" cried the other, catching his arm. "Would you give up +two millions on account of"-- + +"Did you ever see her nose, old man?" asked Murray, solemnly. + +"But, listen to reason, Jerry. Miss Vanderhurst is an heiress, and"- +- + +"Did you ever see it?" + +"Yes, I admit that her nose isn't"-- + +"Good night!" said Murray. "My friend is waiting for me. I am +quoting him when I authorize you to report that there is `nothing +doing.' Good night." + +A wriggling line of waiting men extended from a door in Tenth street +far up Broadway, on the outer edge of the pavement. The Captain and +Murray fell in at the tail of the quivering millipede. + +"Twenty feet longer than it was last night," said Murray, looking up +at his measuring angle of Grace Church. + +"Half an hour," growled the Captain, "before we get our punk." + +The city clocks began to strike 12; the Bread Line moved forward +slowly, its leathern feet sliding on the stones with the sound of a +hissing serpent, as they who had lived according to their lights +closed up in the rear. + + + + +A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM + + +"The knights are dead; +Their swords are rust. +Except a few who haze to hust- +Le all the time +To raise the dust." + +Dear Reader: It was summertime. The sun glared down upon the city +with pitiless ferocity. It is difficult for the sun to be ferocious +and exhibit compunction simultaneously. The heat was--oh, bother +thermometers!--who cares for standard measures, anyhow? It was so +hot that-- + +The roof gardens put on so many extra waiters that you could hope to +get your gin fizz now--as soon as all the other people got theirs. +The hospitals were putting in extra cots for bystanders. For when +little, woolly dogs loll their tongues out and say "woof, woof!" at +the fleas that bite 'em, and nervous old black bombazine ladies +screech "Mad dog!" and policemen begin to shoot, somebody is going +to get hurt. The man from Pompton, N.J.., who always wears an +overcoat in July, had turned up in a Broadway hotel drinking hot +Scotches and enjoying his annual ray from the calcium. +Philanthropists were petitioning the Legislature to pass a bill +requiring builders to make tenement fire-escapes more commodious, so +that families might die all together of the heat instead of one or +two at a time. So many men were telling you about the number of +baths they took each day that you wondered how they got along after +the real lessee of the apartment came back to town and thanked 'em +for taking such good care of it. The young man who called loudly for +cold beef and beer in the restaurant, protesting that roast pullet +and Burgundy was really too heavy for such weather, blushed when he +met your eye, for you had heard him all winter calling, in modest +tones, for the same ascetic viands. Soup, pocketbooks, shirt waists, +actors and baseball excuses grew thinner. Yes, it was summertime. + +A man stood at Thirty-fourth street waiting for a downtown car. A +man of forty, gray-haired, pink-faced, keen, nervous, plainly +dressed, with a harassed look around the eyes. He wiped his forehead +and laughed loudly when a fat man with an outing look stopped and +spoke with him. + +"No, siree," he shouted with defiance and scorn. "None of your old +mosquito-haunted swamps and skyscraper mountains without elevators +for me. When I want to get away from hot weather I know how to do +it. New York, sir, is the finest summer resort in the country. Keep +in the shade and watch your diet, and don't get too far away from an +electric fan. Talk about your Adirondacks and your Catskills! +There's more solid comfort in the borough of Manhattan than in all +the rest of the country together. No, siree! No tramping up +perpendicular cliffs and being waked up at 4 in the morning by a +million flies, and eating canned goods straight from the city for +me. Little old New York will take a few select summer boarders; +comforts and conveniences of homes--that's the ad. that I answer +every time." + +"You need a vacation," said the fat man, looking closely at the +other. "You haven't been away from town in years. Better come with +me for two weeks, anyhow. The trout in the Beaverkill are jumping at +anything now that looks like a fly. Harding writes me that he landed +a three-pound brown last week." + +"Nonsense!" cried the other man. "Go ahead, if you like, and boggle +around in rubber boots wearing yourself out trying to catch fish. +When I want one I go to a cool restaurant and order it. I laugh at +you fellows whenever I think of you hustling around in the heat in +the country thinking you are having a good time. For me Father +Knickerbocker's little improved farm with the big shady lane running +through the middle of it." + +The fat man sighed over his friend and went his way. The man who +thought New York was the greatest summer resort in the country +boarded a car and went buzzing down to his office. On the way he +threw away his newspaper and looked up at a ragged patch of sky +above the housetops. + +"Three pounds!" he muttered, absently. "And Harding isn't a liar. I +believe, if I could--but it's impossible--they've got to have +another month--another month at least." + +In his office the upholder of urban midsummer joys dived, +headforemost, into the swimming pool of business. Adkins, his clerk, +came and added a spray of letters, memoranda and telegrams. + +At 5 o'clock in the afternoon the busy man leaned back in his office +chair, put his feet on the desk and mused aloud: + +"I wonder what kind of bait Harding used." + + * * * * * * * + +She was all in white that day; and thereby Compton lost a bet to +Gaines. Compton had wagered she would wear light blue, for she knew +that was his favorite color, and Compton was a millionaire's son, +and that almost laid him open to the charge of betting on a sure +thing. But white was her choice, and Gaines held up his head with +twenty-five's lordly air. + +The little summer hotel in the mountains had a lively crowd that +year. There were two or three young college men and a couple of +artists and a young naval officer on one side. On the other there +were enough beauties among the young ladies for the correspondent of +a society paper to refer to them as a "bevy." But the moon among the +stars was Mary Sewell. Each one of the young men greatly desired to +arrange matters so that he could pay her millinery bills, and fix +the furnace, and have her do away with the "Sewell" part of her name +forever. Those who could stay only a week or two went away hinting +at pistols and blighted hearts. But Compton stayed like the +mountains themselves, for he could afford it. And Gaines stayed +because he was a fighter and wasn't afraid of millionaire's sons, +and--well, he adored the country. + +"What do you think, Miss Mary?" he said once. "I knew a duffer in +New York who claimed to like it in the summer time. Said you could +keep cooler there than you could in the woods. Wasn't he an awful +silly? I don't think I could breathe on Broadway after the 1st of +June." + +"Mamma was thinking of going back week after next," said Miss Mary +with a lovely frown. + +"But when you think of it," said Gaines, "there are lots of jolly +places in town in the summer. The roof gardens, you know, and the-- +er--the roof gardens." + +Deepest blue was the lake that day--the day when they had the mock +tournament, and the men rode clumsy farm horses around in a glade in +the woods and caught curtain rings on the end of a lance. Such fun! + +Cool and dry as the finest wine came the breath of the shadowed +forest. The valley below was a vision seen through an opal haze. A +white mist from hidden falls blurred the green of a hand's breadth +of tree tops half-way down the gorge. Youth made merry hand-in-hand +with young summer. Nothing on Broadway like that. + +The villagers gathered to see the city folks pursue their mad +drollery. The woods rang with the laughter of pixies and naiads and +sprites. Gaines caught most of the rings. His was the privilege to +crown the queen of the tournament. He was the conquering knight--as +far as the rings went. On his arm he wore a white scarf. Compton +wore light blue. She had declared her preference for blue, but she +wore white that day. + +Gaines looked about for the queen to crown her. He heard her merry +laugh, as if from the clouds. She had slipped away and climbed +Chimney Rock, a little granite bluff, and stood there, a white fairy +among the laurels, fifty feet above their heads. + +Instantly he and Compton accepted the implied challenge. The bluff +was easily mounted at the rear, but the front offered small hold to +hand or foot. Each man quickly selected his route and began to +climb, A crevice, a bush, a slight projection, a vine or tree +branch--all of these were aids that counted in the race. It was all +foolery--there was no stake; but there was youth in it, cross +reader, and light hearts, and something else that Miss Clay writes +so charmingly about. + +Gaines gave a great tug at the root of a laurel and pulled himself +to Miss Mary's feet. On his arm he carried the wreath of roses; and +while the villagers and summer boarders screamed and applauded below +he placed it on the queen's brow. + +"You are a gallant knight," said Miss Mary. + +"If I could be your true knight always," began Gaines, but Miss Mary +laughed him dumb, for Compton scrambled over the edge of the rock +one minute behind time. + +What a twilight that was when they drove back to the hotel! The opal +of the valley turned slowly to purple, the dark woods framed the +lake as a mirror, the tonic air stirred the very soul in one. The +first pale stars came out over the mountain tops where yet a faint +glow of-- + + * * * * * * * + +"I beg your pardon, Mr. Gaines," said Adkins. + +The man who believed New York to be the finest summer resort in the +world opened his eyes and kicked over the mucilage bottle on his +desk. + +"I--I believe I was asleep," he said. + +"It's the heat," said Adkins. "It's something awful in the city +these"-- + +"Nonsense!" said the other. "The city beats the country ten to one +in summer. Fools go out tramping in muddy brooks and wear themselves +out trying to catch little fish as long as your finger. Stay in town +and keep comfortable--that's my idea." + +"Some letters just came," said Adkins. "I thought you might like to +glance at them before you go." + +Let us look over his shoulder and read just a few lines of one of +them: + + My Dear, Dear Husband: Just received your letter ordering us to +stay another month. . . .Rita's cough is almost gone. . . . Johnny +has simply gone wild like a little Indian . . . Will be the making +of both children . . . work so hard, and I know that your business +can hardly afford to keep us here so long . . . best man that ever +. . . you always pretend that you like the city in summer . . . +trout +fishing that you used to be so fond of . . . and all to keep us well +and happy . . . come to you if it were not doing the babies so much +good. . . . I stood last evening on Chimney Rock in exactly the same +spot where I was when you put the wreath of roses on my head . . . +through all the world . . . when you said you would be my true +knight . . . fifteen years ago, dear, just think! . . .have always +been that to me . . . ever and ever, + +MARY. + +The man who said he thought New York the finest summer resort in the +country dropped into a cafe on his way home and had a glass of beer +under an electric fan. + +"Wonder what kind of a fly old Harding used," he said to himself. + + + + +THE LAST LEAF + + +In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run +crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These +"places" make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a +time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in +this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and +canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself +coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! + +So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came +prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables +and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs +and a chafing dish or two from Sixth avenue, and became a "colony." + +At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their +studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the +other from California. They had met at the table d'hote of an Eighth +street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad +and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. + +That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the +doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one +here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this +ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet +trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." + +Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. +A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs +was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. +But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted +iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the +blank side of the next brick house. + +One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a +shaggy, gray eyebrow. + +"She has one chance in--let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down +the mercury in his clinical thermometer. "And that chance is for her +to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the side of +the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little +lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she +anything on her mind?" + +"She--she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day," said Sue. + +"Paint?--bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about +twice--a man, for instance?" + +"A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man +worth--but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." + +"Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all +that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can +accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in +her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent. from the curative +power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about +the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in- +five chance for her, instead of one in ten." + +After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a +Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room +with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. + +Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her +face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was +asleep. + +She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate +a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by +drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to +pave their way to Literature. + +As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and +a monocle on the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a +low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. + +Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and +counting--counting backward. + +"Twelve," she said, and a little later "eleven;" and then "ten," and +"nine;" and then "eight" and "seven," almost together. + +Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? +There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of +the brick house twenty feet, away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and +decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold +breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its +skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. + +"What is it, dear?" asked Sue. + +"Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster +now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head +ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There +are only five left now." + +"Five what, dear. Tell your Sudie." + +"Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. +I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" + +"Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with +magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting +well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be +a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for +getting well real soon were--let's see exactly what he said--he said +the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as +we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a +new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to +her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port +wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self." + +"You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed +out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. +That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it +gets dark. Then I'll go, too." + +"Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to +keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done +working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the +light, or I would draw the shade down." + +"Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly. + +"I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Besides I don't want you to +keep looking at those silly ivy leaves." + +"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her +eyes, and lying white and still as a fallen statue, "because I want +to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of +thinking. I went to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing +down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." + +"Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for +the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move +'till I come back." + +Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath +them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard +curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an imp. +Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush +without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. +He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet +begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and +then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a +little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony +who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to +excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he +was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any +one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to +protect the two young artists in the studio above. + +Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly +lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that +had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first +line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she +feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float +away when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. + +Old Behrman, with his red eyes, plainly streaming, shouted his +contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. + +"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to +die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not +heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool +hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der +prain of her? Ach, dot poor lettle Miss Johnsy." + +"She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her +mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if +you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a +horrid old--old flibbertigibbet." + +"You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not +bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to +say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one +so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a +masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes." + +Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade +down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. +In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then +they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A +persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in +his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an upturned +kettle for a rock. + +When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found +Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. + +"Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper. + +Wearily Sue obeyed. + +But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had +endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the +brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark +green near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the +yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from a branch some +twenty feet above the ground. + +"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall +during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall +die at the same time." + +"Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, +"think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?" + +But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is +a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. +The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties +that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed. + +The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the +lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with +the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the +rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low +Dutch eaves. + +When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the +shade be raised. + +The ivy leaf was still there. + +Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to +Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. + +"I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that +last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to +want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with +a little port in it, and--no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then +pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook." + +An hour later she said. + +"Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples." + +The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into +the hallway as he left. + +"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in +his. "With good nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case +I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is--some kind of an artist, I +believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is +acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day +to be made more comfortable." + +The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You've +won. Nutrition and care now--that's all." + +And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly +knitting a very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put +one arm around her, pillows and all. + +"I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman +died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. +The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room +downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet +through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on +such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, +and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some +scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed +on it, and--look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the +wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the +wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece--he painted it +there the night that the last leaf fell." + + + + +THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST + + +One evening when Andy Donovan went to dinner at his Second Avenue +boarding-house, Mrs. Scott introduced him to a new boarder, a young +lady, Miss Conway. Miss Conway was small and unobtrusive. She wore a +plain, snuffy-brown dress, and bestowed her interest, which seemed +languid, upon her plate. She lifted her diffident eyelids and shot +one perspicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Donovan, politely murmured +his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Donovan bowed with the +grace and beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, +business and political advancement, and erased the snuffy-brown one +from the tablets of his consideration. + +Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps enjoying his +cigar. There was a soft rustle behind and above him, and Andy turned +his head---and had his head turned. + +Just coming out the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night-black +dress of crepe de--crepe de--oh, this thin black goods. Her hat was +black, and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a +spider's web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk +gloves. Not a speck of white or a spot of color about her dress +anywhere. Her rich golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, +into a shining, smooth knot low on her neck. Her face was plain +rather than pretty, but it was now illuminated and made almost +beautiful by her large gray eyes that gazed above the houses across +the street into the sky with an expression of the most appealing +sadness and melancholy. + +Gather the idea, girls--all black, you know, with the preference for +crepe de--oh, crepe de Chine-that's it. All black, and that sad, +faraway look, and the hair shining under the black veil (you have to +be a blonde, of course), and try to look as if, although your young +life had been blighted just as it was about to give a hop-skip-and- +a-jump over the threshold of life, a walk in the park might do you +good, and be sure to happen out the door at the right moment, and-- +oh, it'll fetch 'em every time. But it's fierce, now, how cynical I +am, ain't it?--to talk about mourning costumes this way. + +Mr. Donovan suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of his +consideration. He threw away the remaining inch-and-a-quarter of his +cigar, that would have been good for eight minutes yet, and quickly +shifted his center of gravity to his low cut patent leathers. + +"It's a fine, clear evening, Miss Conway," he said; and if the +Weather Bureau could have heard the confident emphasis of his tones +it would have hoisted the square white signal, and nailed it to the +mast. + +"To them that has the heart to enjoy it, it is, Mr. Donovan," said +Miss Conway, with a sigh. + +Mr. Donovan, in his heart, cursed fair weather. Heartless weather! +It should hail and blow and snow to be consonant with the mood of +Miss Conway. + +"I hope none of your relatives--I hope you haven't sustained a +loss?" ventured Mr. Donovan. + +"Death has claimed," said Miss Conway, hesitating--"not a relative, +but one who--but I will not intrude my brief upon you, Mr. Donovan." + +"Intrude?" protested Mr. Donovan. "Why, say, Miss Conway, I'd be +delighted, that is, I'd be sorry--I mean I'm sure nobody could +sympathize with you truer than I would." + +Miss Conway smiled a little smile. And oh, it was sadder than her +expression in repose. + +"'Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and they give you the +laugh,'" she quoted. "I have learned that, Mr. Donovan. I have no +friends or acquaintances in this city. But you have been kind to me. +I appreciate it highly." + +He had passed her the pepper twice at the table. + +"It's tough to be alone in New York--that's a cinch," said Mr. +Donovan. "But, say--whenever this little old town does loosen up and +get friendly it goes the limit. Say you took a little stroll in the +park, Miss Conway--don't you think it might chase away some of your +mullygrubs? And if you'd allow me--" + +"Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I'd be pleased to accept of your escort if you +think the company of one whose heart is filled with gloom could be +anyways agreeable to you." + +Through the open gates of the iron-railed, old, downtown park, where +the elect once took the air, they strolled, and found a quiet bench. + +There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old +age: youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; +old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same. + +"He was my fiance," confided Miss Conway, at the end of an hour. "We +were going to be married next spring. I don't want you to think that +I am stringing you, Mr. Donovan, but he was a real Count. He had an +estate and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. I +never saw the beat of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, +and once we eloped, but papa overtook us, and took us back. I +thought sure papa and Fernando would fight a duel. Papa has a livery +business--in P'kipsee, you know." + +"Finally, papa came 'round, all right, and said we might be married +next spring. Fernando showed him proofs of his title and wealth, and +then went over to Italy to get the castle fixed up for us. Papa's +very proud, and when Fernando wanted to give me several thousand +dollars for my trousseau he called him down something awful. He +wouldn't even let me take a ring or any presents from him. And when +Fernando sailed I came to the city and got a position as cashier in +a candy store." + +"Three days ago I got a letter from Italy, forwarded from P'kipsee, +saying that Fernando had been killed in a gondola accident." + +"That is why I am in mourning. My heart, Mr. Donovan, will remain +forever in his grave. I guess I am poor company, Mr. Donovan, but I +cannot take any interest in no one. I should not care to keep you +from gayety and your friends who can smile and entertain you. +Perhaps you would prefer to walk back to the house?" + +Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a +pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other +fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature. Ask any +widow. Something must be done to restore that missing organ to +weeping angels in crepe de Chine. Dead men certainly get the worst +of it from all sides. + +"I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Donovan, gently. "No, we won't walk +back to the house just yet. And don't say you haven't no friends in +this city, Miss Conway. I'm awful sorry, and I want you to believe +I'm your friend, and that I'm awful sorry." + +"I've got his picture here in my locket," said Miss Conway, after +wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. "I never showed it to +anybody; but I will to you, Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be +a true friend." + +Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph in +the locket that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count +Mazzini was one to command interest. It was a smooth, intelligent, +bright, almost a handsome face--the face of a strong, cheerful man +who might well be a leader among his fellows. + +"I have a larger one, framed, in my room," said Miss Conway. "When +we return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of +Fernando. But he ever will be present in my heart, that's a sure +thing." + +A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan,--that of supplanting the +unfortunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration +for her determined him to do. But the magnitude or the undertaking +did not seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful +friend was the role he essayed; and he played it so successfully +that the next half-hour found them conversing pensively across two +plates of ice-cream, though yet there wars no diminution of the +sadness in Miss Conway's large gray eyes. + +Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and +brought down the framed photograph wrapped lovingly in a white silk +scarf. Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes. + +"He gave me this the night he left for Italy," said Miss Conway. "I +had the one for the locket made from this." + +"A fine-looking man," said Mr. Donovan, heartily. "How would it suit +you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney +next Sunday afternoon?" + +A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the +other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black. + +A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the +downtown park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim +kinetoscopic picture of them in the moonlight. But Donovan had worn +a look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that +love's lips could not keep back any longer the questions that love's +heart propounded. + +"What's the matter, Andy, you are so solemn and grouchy to-night?" + +"Nothing, Maggie." + +"I know better. Can't I tell? You never acted this way before. What +is it?" + +"It's nothing much, Maggie." + +"Yes it is; and I want to know. I'll bet it's some other girl you +are thinking about. All right. Why don't you go get her if you want +her? Take your arm away, if you please." + +"I'll tell you then," said Andy, wisely, "but I guess you won't +understand it exactly. You've heard of Mike Sullivan, haven't you? +'Big Mike' Sullivan, everybody calls him." + +"No, I haven't," said Maggie. "And I don't want to, if he makes you +act like this. Who is he?" + +"He's the biggest man in New York," said Andy, almost reverently. +"He can about do anything he wants to with Tammany or any other old +thing in the political line. He's a mile high and as broad as East +River. You say anything against Big Mike, and you'll have a million +men on your collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit +over to the old country awhile back, and the kings took to their +holes like rabbits." + +"Well, Big Mike's a friend of mine. I ain't more than deuce-high in +the district as far as influence goes, but Mike's as good a friend +to a little man, or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him to- +day on the Bowery, and what do you think he does? Comes up and +shakes hands. 'Andy,' says he, 'I've been keeping cases on you. +You've been putting in some good licks over on your side of the +street, and I'm proud of you. What'll you take to drink?" He takes a +cigar, and I take a highball. I told him I was going to get married +in two weeks. 'Andy,' says he, 'send me an invitation, so I'll keep +in mind of it, and I'll come to the wedding.' That's what Big Mike +says to me; and he always does what he says. + +"You don't understand it, Maggie, but I'd have one of my hands cut +off to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would be the +proudest day of my life. When he goes to a man's wedding, there's a +guy being married that's made for life. Now, that's why I'm maybe +looking sore to-night." + +"Why don't you invite him, then, if he's so much to the mustard?" +said Maggie, lightly. + +"There's a reason why I can't," said Andy, sadly. "There's a reason +why he mustn't be there. Don't ask me what it is, for I can't tell +you." + +"Oh, I don't care," said Maggie. "It's something about politics, of +course. But it's no reason why you can't smile at me." + +"Maggie," said Andy, presently, "do you think as much of me as you +did of your--as you did of the Count Mazzini?" + +He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply. And then, suddenly +she leaned against his shoulder and began to cry--to cry and shake +with sobs, holding his arm tightly, and wetting the crepe de Chine +with tears. + +"There, there, there!" soothed Andy, putting aside his own trouble. +"And what is it, now?" + +"Andy," sobbed Maggie. "I've lied to you, and you'll never marry me, +or love me any more. But I feel that I've got to tell. Andy, there +never was so much as the little finger of a count. I never had a +beau in my life. But all the other girls had; and they talked about +'em; and that seemed to make the fellows like 'em more. And, Andy, I +look swell in black--you know I do. So I went out to a photograph +store and bought that picture, and had a little one made for my +locket, and made up all that story about the Count, and about his +being killed, so I could wear black. And nobody can love a liar, and +you'll shake me, Andy, and I'll die for shame. Oh, there never was +anybody I liked but you--and that's all." + +But instead of being pushed away, she found Andy's arm folding her +closer. She looked up and saw his face cleared and smiling. + +"Could you--could you forgive me, Andy?" + +"Sure," said Andy. "It's all right about that. Back to the cemetery +for the Count. You've straightened everything out, Maggie. I was in +hopes you would before the wedding-day. Bully girl!" + +"Andy," said Maggie, with a somewhat shy smile, after she had been +thoroughly assured of forgiveness, "did you believe all that story +about the Count?" + +"Well, not to any large extent," said Andy, reaching for his cigar +case, "because it's Big Mike Sullivan's picture you've got in that +locket of yours." + + + + +THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION + + +The cunning writer will choose an indefinable subject, for he can +then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his +conception of what it is not--and lo! his paper is covered. +Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmapable trail into that +mooted country, Bohemia. + +Grainger, sub-editor of Doc's Magazine, closed his roll-top desk, +put on his hat, walked into the hall, punched the "down" button, and +waited for the elevator. + +Grainger's day had been trying. The chief had tried to ruin the +magazine a dozen times by going against Grainger's ideas for running +it. A lady whose grandfather had fought with McClellan had brought a +portfolio of poems in person. + +Grainger was curator of the Lion's House of the magazine. That day +he had "lunched" an Arctic explorer, a short-story writer, and the +famous conductor of a slaughter-house expose. Consequently his mind +was in a whirl of icebergs, Maupassant, and trichinosis. + +But there was a surcease and a recourse; there was Bohemia. He would +seek distraction there; and, let's see--he would call by for Mary +Adrian. + +Half an hour later he threaded his way like a Brazilian orchid- +hunter through the palm forest in the tiled entrance hall of the +"Idealia" apartment-house. One day the christeners of apartment- +houses and the cognominators of sleeping-cars will meet, and there +will be some jealous and sanguinary knifing. + +The clerk breathed Grainger's name so languidly into the house +telephone that it seemed it must surely drop, from sheer inertia, +down to the janitor's regions. But, at length, it soared dilatorily +up to Miss Adrian's ear. Certainly, Mr. Grainger was to come up +immediately. + +A colored maid with an Eliza-crossing-the-ice expression opened the +door of the apartment for him. Grainger walked sideways down the +narrow hall. A bunch of burnt umber hair and a sea-green eye +appeared in the crack of a door. A long, white, undraped arm came +out, barring the way. + +"So glad you came, Ricky, instead of any of the others," said the +eye. "Light a cigarette and give it to me. Going to take me to +dinner? Fine. Go into the front room till I finish dressing. But +don't sit in your usual chair. There's pie in it--Meringue. +Kappelman threw it at Reeves last evening while he was reciting. +Sophy has just come to straighten up. Is it lit? Thanks. There's +Scotch on the mantel--oh, no, it isn't,--that's chartreuse. Ask +Sophy to find you some. I won't be long." + +Grainger escaped the meringue. As he waited his spirits sank, still +lower. The atmosphere of the room was as vapid as a zephyr wandering +over a Vesuvian lava-bed. Relics of some feast lay about the room, +scattered in places where even a prowling cat would have been +surprised to find them. A straggling cluster of deep red roses in a +marmalade jar bowed their heads over tobacco ashes and unwashed +goblets. A chafing-dish stood on the piano; a leaf of sheet music +supported a stack of sandwiches in a chair. Mary came in, dressed +and radiant. Her gown was of that thin, black fabric whose name +through the change of a single vowel seems to summon visions ranging +between the extremes of man's experience. Spelled with an "^e" it +belongs to Gallic witchery and diaphanous dreams; with an "e" it +drapes lamentation and woe. + +That evening they went to the Cafe Andre. And, as people would +confide to you in a whisper that Andre's was the only truly Bohemian +restaurant in town, it may be well to follow them. + +Andre began his professional career as a waiter in a Bowery ten-cent +eating-house. Had you seen him there you would have called him +tough--to yourself. + +Not aloud, for he would have "soaked" you as quickly as he would +have soaked his thumb in your coffee. He saved money and started a +basement table d'hote in Eighth (or Ninth) Street. One afternoon +Andre drank too much absinthe. He announced to his startled family +that he was the Grand Llama of Thibet, therefore requiring an empty +audience hall in which to be worshiped. He moved all the tables and +chairs from the restaurant into the back yard, wrapped a red table- +cloth around himself, and sat on a step-ladder for a throne. When +the diners began to arrive, madame, in a flurry of despair, laid +cloths and ushered them, trembling, outside. Between the tables +clothes-lines were stretched, bearing the family wash. A party of +Bohemia hunters greeted the artistic innovation with shrieks and +acclamations of delight. That week's washing was not taken in for +two years. When Andre came to his senses he had the menu printed on +stiffly starched cuffs, and served the ices in little wooden tubs. +Next he took down his sign and darkened the front of the house. When +you went there to dine you fumbled for an electric button and +pressed it. A lookout slid open a panel in the door, looked at you +suspiciously, and asked if you were acquainted with Senator +Herodotus Q. McMilligan, of the Chickasaw Nation. If you were, you +were admitted and allowed to dine. If you were not, you were +admitted and allowed to dine. There you have one of the abiding +principles of Bohemia. When Andre had accumulated $20,000 he moved +up-town, near Broadway, in the fierce light that beats upon the +thrown-down. There we find him and leave him, with customers in +pearls and automobile veils, striving to catch his excellently +graduated nod of recognition. + +There is a large round table in the northeast corner of Andre's at +which six can sit. To this table Grainger and Mary Adrian made their +way. Kappelman and Reeves were already there. And Miss Tooker, who +designed the May cover for the Ladies' Notathome Magazine. And Mrs. +Pothunter, who never drank anything but black and white highballs, +being in mourning for her husband, who--oh, I've forgotten what he +did--died, like as not. + +Spaghetti-weary reader, wouldst take one penny-in-the-slot peep into +the fair land of Bohemia? Then look; and when you think you have +seen it you have not. And it is neither thimbleriggery nor +astigmatism. + +The walls of the Cafe Andre were covered with original sketches by +the artists who furnished much of the color and sound of the place. +Fair woman furnished the theme for the bulk of the drawings. When +you say "sirens and siphons" you come near to estimating the +alliterative atmosphere of Andre's. + +First, I want you to meet my friend, Miss Adrian. Miss Tooker and +Mrs. Pothunter you already know. While she tucks in the fingers of +her elbow gloves you shall have her daguerreotype. So faint and +uncertain shall the portrait be: + +Age, somewhere between twenty-seven and highneck evening dresses. +Camaraderie in large bunches--whatever the fearful word may mean. +Habitat--anywhere from Seattle to Terra del Fuego. Temperament +uncharted--she let Reeves squeeze her hand after he recited one of +his poems; but she counted the change after sending him out with a +dollar to buy some pickled pig's feet. Deportment 75 out of a +possible 100. Morals 100. + +Mary was one of the princesses of Bohemia. In the first place, it +was a royal and a daring thing to have been named Mary. There are +twenty Fifines and Heloises to one Mary in the Country of Elusion. + +Now her gloves are tucked in. Miss Tooker has assumed a June poster +pose; Mrs. Pothunter has bitten her lips to make the red show; +Reeves has several times felt his coat to make sure that his latest +poem is in the pocket. (It had been neatly typewritten; but he has +copied it on the backs of letters with a pencil.) Kappelman is +underhandedly watching the clock. It is ten minutes to nine. When +the hour comes it is to remind him of a story. Synopsis: A French +girl says to her suitor: "Did you ask my father for my hand at nine +o'clock this morning, as you said you would?" "I did not," he. +replies. "At nine o'clock I was fighting a duel with swords in the +Bois de Boulogne." "Coward!" she hisses. + +The dinner was ordered. You know how the Bohemian feast of reason +keeps up with the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with the +soup; repartee with the entree; brag with the roast; knocks for +Whistler and Kipling with the salad; songs with the coffee; the +slapsticks with the cordials. + +Between Miss Adrian's eyebrows was the pucker that shows the intense +strain it requires to be at ease in Bohemia. Pat must come each +sally, mot, and epigram. Every second of deliberation upon a reply +costs you a bay leaf. Fine as a hair, a line began to curve from her +nostrils to her mouth. To hold her own not a chance must be missed. +A sentence addressed to her must be as a piccolo, each word of it a +stop, which she must be prepared to seize upon and play. And she +must always be quicker than a Micmac Indian to paddle the light +canoe of conversation away from the rocks in the rapids that flow +from the Pierian spring. For, plodding reader, the handwriting on +the wall in the banquet hall of Bohemia is "Laisser faire." The gray +ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of +slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that holds them in +slavery. + +As the dinner waned, hands reached for the pepper eruct rather than +for the shaker of Attic salt. Miss Tooker, with an elbow to +business, leaned across the table toward Grainger, upsetting her +glass of wine. + +"Now while you are fed and in good humor," she said, "I want to make +a suggestion to you about a new cover." + +"A good idea," said Grainger, mopping the tablecloth with his +napkin. "I'll speak to the waiter about it." + +Kappelman, the painter, was the cut-up. As a piece of delicate +Athenian wit he got up from his chair and waltzed down the room with +a waiter. That dependent, no doubt an honest, pachydermatous, +worthy, tax-paying, art-despising biped, released himself from the +unequal encounter, carried his professional smile back to the dumb- +waiter and dropped it down the shaft to eternal oblivion. Reeves +began to make Keats turn in his grave. Mrs. Pothunter told the story +of the man who met the widow on the train. Miss Adrian hummed what +is still called a CHANSON in the cafes of Bridgeport. Grainger +edited each individual effort with his assistant editor's smile, +which meant: "Great! but you'll have to send them in through the +regular channels. If I were the chief now--but you know how it is." + +And soon the head waiter bowed before them, desolated to relate that +the closing hour had already become chronologically historical; so +out all trooped into the starry midnight, falling the street with +gay laughter, to be barked at by hopeful cabmen and enviously eyed +by the dull inhabitants of an uninspired world. + +Grainger left Mary at the elevator in the trackless palm forest of +the Idealia. After he had gone she came down again carrying a small +hand-bag, 'phoned for a cab, drove to the Grand Central Station, +boarded a 12.55 commuter's train, rode four hours with her burnt- +umber head bobbing against the red-plush back of the seat, and +landed during a fresh, stinging, glorious sunrise at a deserted +station, the size of a peach crate, called Crocusville. + +She walked a mile and clicked the latch of a gate. A bare, brown +cottage stood twenty yards back; an old man with a pearl-white, +Calvinistic face and clothes dyed blacker than a raven in a coal- +mine was washing his hands in a tin basin on the front porch. "How +are you, father?" said Mary timidly. + +"I am as well as Providence permits, Mary Ann. You will find your +mother in the kitchen." + +In the kitchen a cryptic, gray woman kissed her glacially on the +forehead, and pointed out the potatoes which were not yet peeled for +breakfast. Mary sat in a wooden chair and decorticated spuds, with a +thrill in her heart. + +For breakfast there were grace, cold bread, potatoes, bacon, and +tea. + +"You are pursuing the same avocation in the city concerning which +you have advised us from time to time by letter, I trust," said her +father. + +"Yes," said Mary, "I am still reviewing books for the same +publication." + +After breakfast she helped wash the dishes, and then all three sat +in straigh-back chairs in the bare-floored parlor. + +"It is my custom," said the old man, "on the Sabbath day to read +aloud from the great work entitled the 'Apology for Authorized and +Set Forms of Liturgy,' by the ecclesiastical philosopher and revered +theologian, Jeremy Taylor." + +"I know it," said Mary blissfully, folding her hands. + +For two hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the +notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in +the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden +chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect +as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of +a tom-tom. "Why, oh why," she said to herself, "does some one not +write words to it?" + +At eleven they went to church in Crocusville. The back of the pine +bench on which she sat had a penitential forward tilt that would +have brought St. Simeon down, in jealousy, from his pillar. The +preacher singled her out, and thundered upon her vicarious head the +damnation of the world. At each side of her an adamant parent held +her rigidly to the bar of judgment. An ant crawled upon her neck, +but she dared not move. She lowered her eyes before the +congregation--a hundred-eyed Cerberus that watched the gates through +which her sins were fast thrusting her. Her soul was filled with a +delirious, almost a fanatic joy. For she was out of the clutch of +the tyrant, Freedom. Dogma and creed pinioned her with beneficent +cruelty, as steel braces bind the feet of a crippled child. She was +hedged, adjured, shackled, shored up, strait-jacketed, silenced, +ordered. When they came out the minister stopped to greet them. Mary +could only hang her head and answer "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," to +his questions. When she saw that the other women carried their hymn- +books at their waists with their left hands, she blushed and moved +hers there, too, from her right. + +She took the three-o'clock train back to the city. At nine she sat +at the round table for dinner in the Cafe Andre. Nearly the same +crowd was there. + +"Where have you been to-day?" asked Mrs. Pothunter. "I 'phoned to +you at twelve." + +"I have been away in Bohemia," answered Mary, with a mystic smile. + +There! Mary has given it away. She has spoiled my climax. For I was +to have told you that Bohemia is nothing more than the little +country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship +in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and +treasure and move away beyond the hills. It is a hillside that you +turn your head to peer at from the windows of the Through Express. + +At exactly half past eleven Kappelman, deceived by a new softness +and slowness of riposte and parry in Mary Adrian, tried to kiss her. +Instantly she slapped his face with such strength and cold fury that +he shrank down, sobered, with the flaming red print of a hand across +his leering features. And all sounds ceased, as when the shadows of +great wings come upon a flock of chattering sparrows. One had broken +the paramount law of sham-Bohemia--the law of "Laisser faire." The +shock came not from the blow delivered, but from the blow received. +With the effect of a schoolmaster entering the play-room of his +pupils was that blow administered. Women pulled down their sleeves +and laid prim hands against their ruffled side locks. Men looked at +their watches. There was nothing of the effect of a brawl about it; +it was purely the still panic produced by the sound of the ax of the +fly cop, Conscience hammering at the gambling-house doors of the +Heart. + +With their punctilious putting on of cloaks, with their exaggerated +pretense of not having seen or heard, with their stammering exchange +of unaccustomed formalities, with their false show of a light- +hearted exit I must take leave of my Bohemian party. Mary has robbed +me of my climax; and she may go. + +But I am not defeated. Somewhere there exists a great vault miles +broad and miles long--more capacious than the champagne caves of +France. In that vault are stored the anticlimaxes that should have +been tagged to all the stories that have been told in the world. I +shall cheat that vault of one deposit. + +Minnie Brown, with her aunt, came from Crocusville down to the city +to see the sights. And because she had escorted me to fishless trout +streams and exhibited to me open-plumbed waterfalls and broken my +camera while I Julyed in her village, I must escort her to the hives +containing the synthetic clover honey of town. + +Especially did the custom-made Bohemia charm her. The spaghetti +wound its tendrils about her heart; the free red wine drowned her +belief in the existence of commercialism in the world; she was dared +and enchanted by the rugose wit that can be churned out of +California claret. + +But one evening I got her away from the smell of halibut and +linoleum long enough to read to her the manuscript of this story, +which then ended before her entrance into it. I read it to her +because I knew that all the printing-presses in the world were +running to try to please her and some others. And I asked her about +it. + + "I didn't quite catch the trains," said she. "How long was Mary in +Crocusville?" + +"Ten hours and five minutes," I replied. + +"Well, then, the story may do," said Minnie. + +"But if she had stayed there a week Kappelman would have got his +kiss." + + + + +THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT + + +At the street corner, as solid as granite in the "rush-hour" tide of +humanity, stood the Man from Nome. The Arctic winds and sun had +stained him berry-brown. His eye still held the azure glint of the +glaciers. + +He was as alert as a fox, as tough as a caribou cutlet and as broad- +gauged as the aurora borealis. He stood sprayed by a Niagara of +sound--the crash of the elevated trains, clanging cars, pounding of +rubberless tires and the antiphony of the cab and truck-drivers +indulging in scarifying repartee. And so, with his gold dust cashed +in to the merry air of a hundred thousand, and with the cakes and +ale of one week in Gotham turning bitter on his tongue, the Man from +Nome sighed to set foot again in Chilkoot, the exit from the land of +street noises and Dead Sea apple pies. + +Up Sixth avenue, with the tripping, scurrying, chattering, bright- +eyed, homing tide came the Girl from Sieber-Mason's. The Man from +Nome looked and saw, first, that she was supremely beautiful after +his own conception of beauty; and next, that she moved with exactly +the steady grace of a dog sled on a level crust of snow. His third +sensation was an instantaneous conviction that he desired her +greatly for his own. This quickly do men from Nome make up their +minds. Besides, he was going back to the North in a short time, and +to act quickly was no less necessary. + +A thousand girls from the great department store of Sieber-Mason +flowed along the sidewalk, making navigation dangerous to men whose +feminine field of vision for three years has been chiefly limited to +Siwash and Chilkat squaws. But the Man from Nome, loyal to her who +had resurrected his long cached heart, plunged into the stream of +pulchritude and followed her. + +Down Twenty-third street she glided swiftly, looking to neither +side; no more flirtatious than the bronze Diana above the Garden. +Her fine brown hair was neatly braided; her neat waist and +unwrinkled black skirt were eloquent of the double virtues--taste +and economy. Ten yards behind followed the smitten Man from Nome. + +Miss Claribel Colby, the Girl from Sieber-Mason's, belonged to that +sad company of mariners known as Jersey commuters. She walked into +the waiting-room of the ferry, and up the stairs, and by a +marvellous swift, little run, caught the ferry-boat that was just +going out. The Man from Nome closed up his ten yards in three jumps +and gained the deck close beside her. + +Miss Colby chose a rather lonely seat on the outside of the upper- +cabin. The night was not cold, and she desired to be away from the +curious eyes and tedious voices of the passengers. Besides, she was +extremely weary and drooping from lack of sleep. On the previous +night she had graced the annual ball and oyster fry of the West Side +Wholesale Fish Dealers' Assistants' Social Club No. 2, thus reducing +her usual time of sleep to only three hours. + +And the day had been uncommonly troublous. Customers had been +inordinately trying; the buyer in her department had scolded her +roundly for letting her stock run down; her best friend, Mamie +Tuthill, had snubbed her by going to lunch with that Dockery girl. + +The Girl from Sieber-Mason's was in that relaxed, softened mood that +often comes to the independent feminine wage-earner. It is a mood +most propitious for the man who would woo her. Then she has +yearnings to be set in some home and heart; to be comforted, and to +hide behind some strong arm and rest, rest. But Miss Claribel Colby +was also very sleepy. + +There came to her side a strong man, browned and dressed carelessly +in the best of clothes, with his hat in his hand. + +"Lady," said the Man from Nome, respectfully, "excuse me for +speaking to you, but I--I--I saw you on the street, and--and--" + +"Oh, gee!" remarked the Girl from Sieber-Mason's, glancing up with +the most capable coolness. "Ain't there any way to ever get rid of +you mashers? I've tried everything from eating onions to using +hatpins. Be on your way, Freddie." + +"I'm not one of that kind, lady," said the Man from Nome--"honest, +I'm not. As I say, I saw you on the street, and I wanted to know you +so bad I couldn't help followin' after you. I was afraid I wouldn't +ever see you again in this big town unless I spoke; and that's why I +done so." + +Miss Colby looked once shrewdly at him in the dim light on the +ferry-boat. No; he did not have the perfidious smirk or the brazen +swagger of the lady-killer. Sincerity and modesty shone through his +boreal tan. It seemed to her that it might be good to hear a little +of what he had to say. + +"You may sit down," she said, laying her hand over a yawn with +ostentatious politness; "and--mind--don't get fresh or I'll call the +steward." + +The Man from Nome sat by her side. He admired her greatly. He more +than admired her. She had exactly the looks he had tried so long in +vain to find in a woman. Could she ever come to like him? Well, that +was to be seen. He must do all in his power to stake his claim, +anyhow. + +"My name's Blayden," said he--"Henry Blayden." + +"Are you real sure it ain't Jones?" asked the girl, leaning toward +him, with delicious, knowing raillery. + +"I'm down from Nome," he went on with anxious seriousness. "I +scraped together a pretty good lot of dust up there, and brought it +down with me." + +"Oh, say!" she rippled, pursuing persiflage with engaging lightness, +"then you must be on the White Wings force. I thought I'd seen you +somewhere." + +"You didn't see me on the street to-day when I saw you." + +"I never look at fellows on the street." + +"Well, I looked at you; and I never looked at anything before that I +thought was half as pretty." + +"Shall I keep the change?" + +"Yes, I reckon so. I reckon you could keep anything I've got. I +reckon I'm what you would call a rough man, but I could be awful +good to anybody I liked. I've had a rough time of it up yonder, but +I beat the game. Nearly 5,000 ounces of dust was what I cleaned um +while I was there." + +"Goodness!" exclaimed Miss Colby, obligingly sympathetic. "It must +be an awful dirty place, wherever it is." + +And then her eyes closed. The voice of the Man from Nome had a +monotony in its very earnestness. Besides, what dull talk was this +of brooms and sweeping and dust? She leaned her head back against +the wall. + +"Miss," said the Man from Nome, with deeper earnestness and +monotony, "I never saw anybody I liked as well as I do you. I know +you can't think that way of me right yet; but can't you give me a +chance? Won't you let me know you, and see if I can't make you like +me?" + +The head of the Girl from Sieber-Mason's slid over gently and rested +upon his shoulder. Sweet sleep had won her, and she was dreaming +rapturously of the Wholesale Fish Dealers' Assistants' ball. + +The gentleman from Nome kept his arms to himself. He did not suspect +sleep, and yet he was too wise to attribute the movement to +surrender. He was greatly and blissfully thrilled, but he ended by +regarding the head upon his shoulder as an encouraging preliminary, +merely advanced as a harbinger of his success, and not to be taken +advantage of. + +One small speck of alloy discounted the gold of his satisfaction. +Had he spoken too freely of his wealth? He wanted to be liked for +himself. + +"I want to say, Miss," he said, "that you can count on me. They know +me in the Klondike from Juneau to Circle City and down the whole +length of the Yukon. Many a night I've laid in the snow up there +where I worked like a slave for three years, and wondered if I'd +ever have anybody to like me. I didn't want all that dust just +myself. I thought I'd meet just the right one some tine, and I done +it to-day. Money's a mighty good thing to have, but to have the love +of the one you like best is better still. If you was ever to marry a +man, Miss, which would you rather he'd have?" + +"Cash!" + +The word came sharply and loudly from Miss Colby's lips, giving +evidence that in her dreams she was now behind her counter in the +great department store of Sieber-Mason. + +Her head suddenly bobbed over sideways. She awoke, sat straight, and +rubbed her eyes. The Man from Nome was gone. + +"Gee! I believe I've been asleep," said Miss Colby "Wonder what +became of the White Wings!" + + + + +THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER + + +Money talks. But you may think that the conversation of a little old +ten-dollar bill in New York would be nothing more than a whisper. +Oh, very well! Pass up this sotto voce autobiography of an X if you +like. If you are one of the kind that prefers to listen to John D's +checkbook roar at you through a megaphone as it passes by, all +right. But don't forget that small change can say a word to the +point now and then. The next time you tip your grocer's clerk a +silver quarter to give you extra weight of his boss's goods read the +four words above the lady's head. How are they for repartee? + +I am a ten-dollar Treasury note, series of 1901. You may have seen +one in a friend's hand. On my face, in the centre, is a picture of +the bison Americanus, miscalled a buffalo by fifty or sixty millions +of Americans. The heads of Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark adorn the +ends. On my back is the graceful figure of Liberty or Ceres or +Maxine Elliot standing in the centre of the stage on a conservatory +plant. My references is--or are---Section 3,588, Revised Statutes. +Ten cold, hard dollars--I don't say whether silver, gold, lead or +iron--Uncle Sam will hand you over his counter if you want to cash +me in. + +I beg you will excuse any conversational breaks that I make--thanks, +I knew you would--got that sneaking little respect and agreeable +feeling toward even an X, haven't you? You see, a tainted bill +doesn't have much chance to acquire a correct form of expression. I +never knew a really cultured and educated person that could afford +to hold a ten-spot any longer than it would take to do an Arthur +Duffy to the nearest That's All! sign or delicatessen store. + +For a six-year-old, I've had a lively and gorgeous circulation. I +guess I've paid as many debts as the man who dies. I've been owned +by a good many kinds of people. But a little old ragged, damp, dingy +five-dollar silver certificate gave me a jar one day. I was next to +it in the fat and bad-smelling purse of a butcher. + +"Hey, you Sitting Bull," says I, "don't scrouge so. Anyhow, don't +you think it's about time you went in on a customs payment and got +reissued? For a series of 1899 you're a sight." + +"Oh, don't get crackly just because you're a Buffalo bill," says the +fiver. "You'd be limp, too, if you'd been stuffed down in a thick +cotton-and-lisle-thread under an elastic all day, and the +thermometer not a degree under 85 in the store." + +"I never heard of a pocketbook like that," says I. "Who carried +you?" + +"A shopgirl," says the five-spot. + +"What's that?" I had to ask. + +"You'll never know till their millennium comes," says the fiver. + +Just then a two-dollar bill behind me with a George Washington head, +spoke up to the fiver: + +"Aw, cut out yer kicks. Ain't lisle thread good enough for yer? If +you was under all cotton like I've been to-day, and choked up with +factory dust till the lady with the cornucopia on me sneezed half a +dozen times, you'd have some reason to complain." + +That was the next day after I arrived in New York. I came in a $500 +package of tens to a Brooklyn bank from one of its Pennsylvania +correspondents--and I haven't made the acquaintance of any of the +five and two spot's friends' pocketbooks yet. Silk for mine, every +time. + +I was lucky money. I kept on the move. Sometimes I changed hands +twenty times a day. I saw the inside of every business; I fought for +my owner's every pleasure. It seemed that on Saturday nights I never +missed being slapped down on a bar. Tens were always slapped down, +while ones and twos were slid over to the bartenders folded. I got +in the habit of looking for mine, and I managed to soak in a little +straight or some spilled Martini or Manhattan whenever I could. Once +I got tied up in a great greasy roll of bills in a pushcart +peddler's jeans. I thought I never would get in circulation again, +for the future department store owner lived on eight cents' worth of +dog meat and onions a day. But this peddler got into trouble one day +on account of having his cart too near a crossing, and I was +rescued. I always will feel grateful to the cop that got me. He +changed me at a cigar store near the Bowery that was running a crap +game in the back room. So it was the Captain of the precinct, after +all, that did me the best turn, when he got his. He blew me for wine +the next evening in a Broadway restaurant; and I really felt as glad +to get back again as an Astor does when he sees the lights of +Charing Cross. + +A tainted ten certainly does get action on Broadway. I was alimony +once, and got folded in a little dogskin purse among a lot of dimes. +They were bragging about the busy times there were in Ossining +whenever three girls got hold of one of them during the ice cream +season. But it's Slow Moving Vehicles Keep to the Right for the +little Bok tips when you think of the way we bison plasters refuse +to stick to anything during the rush lobster hour. + +The first I ever heard of tainted money was one night when a good +thing with a Van to his name threw me over with some other bills to +buy a stack of blues. + +About midnight a big, easy-going man with a fat face like a monk's +and the eye of a janitor with his wages raised tooks me and a lot of +other notes and rolled us into what is termed a "wad" among the +money tainters. + +"Ticket me for five hundred," said he to the banker, "and look out +for everything, Charlie. I'm going out for a stroll in the glen +before the moonlight fades from the brow of the cliff. If anybody +finds the roof in their way there's $60,000 wrapped in a comic +supplement in the upper left-hand corner of the safe. Be bold; +everywhere be bold, but be not bowled over. 'Night." + +I found myself between two $20 gold certificates. One of 'em says to +me: + +"Well, old shorthorn, you're in luck to-night. You'll see something +of life. Old Jack's going to make the Tenderloin look like a hamburg +steak." + +"Explain," says I. "I'm used to joints, but I don't care for filet +mignon with the kind of sauce you serve." + +"`Xcuse me," said the twenty. "Old Jack is the proprietor of this +gambling house. He's going on a whiz to-night because he offered +$50,000 to a church and it refused to accept it because they said +his money was tainted." + +"What is a church?" I asked. + +"Oh, I forgot," says the twenty, "that I was talking to a tenner. Of +course you don't know. You're too much to put into the contribution +basket, and not enough to buy anything at a bazaar. A church is--a +large building in which penwipers and tidies are sold at $20 each." + +I don't care much about chinning with gold certificates. There's a +streak of yellow in 'em. All is not gold that's quitters. + +Old Jack certainly was a gild-edged sport. When it came his time to +loosen up he never referred the waiter to an actuary. + +By and by it got around that be was smiting the rock in the +wilderness; and all along Broadway things With cold noses and hot +gullets fell in on our trail. The third Jungle Book was there +waiting for somebody to put covers on it. Old Jack's money may have +had a taint to it, but all the same he had orders for his Camembert +piling up on him every minute. First his friends rallied round him; +and then the fellows that his friends knew by sight; and then a few +of his enemies buried the hatchet; and finally he was buying +souvenirs for so many Neapolitan fisher maidens and butterfly +octettes that the head waiters were 'phoning all over town for +Julian Mitchell to please come around and get them into some kind of +order. + +At last we floated into an uptown cafe that I knew by heart. When +the hod-carriers' union in jackets and aprons saw us coming the +chief goal kicker called out: "Six--eleven--forty-two--nineteen-- +twelve" to his men, and they put on nose guards till it was clear +whether we meant Port Arthur or Portsmouth. But old Jack wasn't +working for the furniture and glass factories that night. He sat +down quiet and sang "Ramble" in a half-hearted way. His feelings had +been hurt, so the twenty told me, because his offer to the church +had been refused. But the wassail went on; and Brady himself +couldn't have hammered the thirst mob into a better imitation of the +real penchant for the stuff that you screw out of a bottle with a +napkin. + +Old Jack paid the twenty above me for a round, leaving me on the +outside of his roll. He laid the roll on the table and sent for the +proprietor. + +"Mike," says he, "here's money that the good people have refused. +Will it buy of your wares in the name of the devil? They say it's +tainted." + +"I will," says Mike, "and I'll put it in the drawer next to the +bills that was paid to the parson's daughter for kisses at the +church fair to build a new parsonage for the parson's daughter to +live in." + +At 1 o'clock when the hod-carriers were making ready to close up the +front and keep the inside open, a woman slips in the door of the +restaurant and comes up to Old Jack's table. You've seen the kind-- +black shawl, creepy hair, ragged skirt, white face, eyes a cross +between Gabriel's and a sick kitten's--the kind of woman that's +always on the lookout for an automobile or the mendicancy squad--and +she stands there without a word and looks at the money. + +Old Jack, gets up, peels me off the roll and hands me to her with a +bow. + +"Madam," says he, just like actors I've heard, "here is a tainted +bill. I am a gambler. This bill came to me to-night from a +gentleman's son. Where he got it I do not know. If you will do me +the favor to accept it, it is yours." + +The woman took me with a trembling hand. + +"Sir," said she, "I counted thousands of this issue of bills into +packages when they were virgin from the presses. I was a clerk in +the Treasury Department. There was an official to whom I owed my +position. You say they are tainted now. If you only knew--but I +won't say any more. Thank you with all my heart, sir--thank you-- +thank you." + +Where do you suppose that woman carried me almost at a run? To a +bakery. Away from Old Jack and a sizzling good time to a bakery. And +I get changed, and she does a Sheridan-twenty-miles-away with a +dozen rolls and a section of jelly cake as big as a turbine water- +wheel. Of course I lost sight of her then, for I was snowed up in +the bakery, wondering whether I'd get changed at the drug store the +next day in an alum deal or paid over to the cement works. + +A week afterward I butted up against one of the one-dollar bills the +baker had given the woman for change. + +"Hallo, E35039669," says I, "weren't you in the change for me in a +bakery last, Saturday night?" + +"Yep," says the solitaire in his free and easy style. + +"How did the deal turn out?" I asked. + +"She blew E17051431 for mills and round steak," says the one-spot. +"She kept me till the rent man came. It was a bum room with a sick +kid in it. But you ought to have seen him go for the bread and +tincture of formaldehyde. Half-starved, I guess. Then she prayed +some. Don't get stuck up, tenner. We one-spots hear ten prayers, +where you hear one. She said something about 'who giveth to the +poor.' Oh, let's cut out the slum talk. I'm certainly tired of the +company that keeps me. I wish I was big enough to move in society +with you tainted bills." + +"Shut up," says I; "there's no such thing. I know the rest of it. +There's a 'lendeth to the Lord' somewhere in it. Now look on my back +and read what you see there." + +"This note is a legal tender at its face value for all debts public +and private." + +"This talk about tainted money makes me tired," says I. + + + + +ELSIE IN NEW YORK + + +No, bumptious reader, this story is not a continuation of the Elsie +series. But if your Elsie had lived over here in our big city there +might have been a chapter in her books not very different from this. + +Especially for the vagrant feet of youth are the roads of Manhattan +beset "with pitfall and with gin." But the civic guardians of the +young have made themselves acquainted with the snares of the wicked, +and most of the dangerous paths are patrolled by their agents, who +seek to turn straying ones away from the peril that menaces them. +And this will tell you how they guided my Elsie safely through all +peril to the goal that she was seeking. + +Elsie's father had been a cutter for Fox--Otter, cloaks and furs, +on lower Broadway. He was an old man, with a slow and limping gait, +so a pot-hunter of a newly licensed chauffeur ran him down one day +when livelier game was scarce. They took the old man home, where he +lay on his bed for a year and then died, leaving $2.50 in cash and a +letter from Mr. Otter offering to do anything he could to help his +faithful old employee. The old cutter regarded this letter as a +valuable legacy to his daughter, and he put it into her hands with +pride as the shears of the dread Cleaner and Repairer snipped off +his thread of life. + +That was the landlord's cue; and forth he came and did his part in +the great eviction scene. There was no snowstorm ready for Elsie to +steal out into, drawing her little red woollen shawl about her +shoulders, but she went out, regardless of the unities. And as for +the red shawl--back to Blaney with it! Elsie's fall tan coat was +cheap, but it had the style and fit of the best at Fox--Otter's. +And her lucky stars had given her good looks, and eyes as blue and +innocent as the new shade of note paper, and she had $1 left of the +$2.50. And the letter from Mr. Otter. Keep your eye on the letter +from Mr. Otter. That is the clue. I desire that everything be made +plain as we go. Detective stories are so plentiful now that they do +not sell. + +And so we find Elsie, thus equipped, starting out in the world to +seek her fortune. One trouble about the letter from Mr. Otter was +that it did not bear the new address of the firm, which had moved +about a month before. But Elsie thought she could find it. She had +heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an +investigation committee, will give up information and addresses. So +she boarded a downtown car at One Hundred and Seventy-seventh street +and rode south to Forty-second, which she thought must surely be the +end of the island. There she stood against the wall undecided, for +the city's roar and dash was new to her. Up where she had lived was +rural New York, so far out that the milkmen awaken you in the +morning by the squeaking of pumps instead of the rattling of cans. + +A kind-faced, sunburned young man in a soft-brimmed hat went past +Elsie into the Grand Central Depot. That was Hank Ross, of the +Sunflower Ranch, in Idaho, on his way home from a visit to the East. +Hank's heart was heavy, for the Sunflower Ranch was a lonesome +place, lacking the presence of a woman. He had hoped to find one +during his visit who would congenially share his prosperity and +home, but the girls of Gotham had not pleased his fancy. But, as he +passed in, he noted, with a jumping of his pulses, the sweet, +ingenuous face of Elsie and her pose of doubt and loneliness. With +true and honest Western impulse he said to himself that here was his +mate. He could love her, he knew; and he would surround her with so +much comfort, and cherish her so carefully that she would be happy, +and make two sunflowers grow on the ranch where there grew but one +before. + +Hank turned and went back to her. Backed by his never before +questioned honesty of purpose, he approached the girl and removed +his soft-brimmed hat. Elsie had but time to sum up his handsome +frank face with one shy look of modest admiration when a burly cop +hurled himself upon the ranchman, seized him by the collar and +backed him against the wall. Two blocks away a burglar was coming +out of an apartment-house with a bag of silverware on his shoulder; +but that is neither here nor there. + +"Carry on yez mashin' tricks right before me eyes, will yez?" +shouted the cop. "I'll teach yez to speak to ladies on me beat that +ye're not acquainted with. Come along." + +Elsie turned away with a sigh as the ranchman was dragged away. She +had liked the effect of his light blue eyes against his tanned +complexion. She walked southward, thinking herself already in the +district where her father used to work, and hoping to find some one +who could direct her to the firm of Fox-Otter. + +But did she want to find Mr. Otter? She had inherited much of the +old cutter's independence. How much better it would be if she could +find work and support herself without calling on him for aid! + +Elsie saw a sign "Employment Agency" and went in. Many girls were +sitting against the wall in chairs. Several well-dressed ladies were +looking them over. One white-haired, kind-faced old lady in rustling +black silk hurried up to Elsie. + +"My dear," she said in a sweet, gentle voice, "are you looking for a +position? I like your face and appearance so much. I want a young +woman who will be half maid and half companion to me. You will have +a good home and I will pay you $30 a month." + +Before Elsie could stammer forth her gratified acceptance, a young +woman with gold glasses on her bony nose and her hands in her jacket +pockets seized her arm and drew her aside. + +"I am Miss Ticklebaum," said she, "of the Association for the +Prevention of Jobs Being Put Up on Working Girls Looking for Jobs. +We prevented forty-seven girls from securing positions last week. I +am here to protect you. Beware of any one who offers you a job. How +do you know that this woman does not want to make you work as a +breaker-boy in a coal mine or murder you to get your teeth? If you +accept work of any kind without permission of our association you +will be arrested by one of our agents." + +"But what am I to do?" asked Elsie. "I have no home or money. I must +do something. Why am I not allowed to accept this kind lady's +offer?" + +"I do not know," said Miss Ticklebaum. "That is the affair of our +Committee on the Abolishment of Employers. It is my duty simply to +see that you do not get work. You will give me your name and address +and report to our secretary every Thursday. We have 600 girls on the +waiting list who will in time be allowed to accept positions as +vacancies occur on our roll of Qualified Employers, which now +comprises twenty-seven names. There is prayer, music and lemonade in +our chapel the third Sunday of every month." + +Elsie hurried away after thanking Miss Ticklebaum for her timely +warning and advice. After all, it seemed that she must try to find +Mr. Otter. + +But after walking a few blocks she saw a sign, "Cashier wanted," in +the window of a confectionery store. In she went and applied for the +place, after casting a quick glance over her shoulder to assure +herself that the job-preventer was not on her trail. + +The proprietor of the confectionery was a benevolent old man with a +peppermint flavor, who decided, after questioning Elsie pretty +closely, that she was the very girl he wanted. Her services were +needed at once, so Elsie, with a thankful heart, drew off her tan +coat and prepared to mount the cashier's stool. + +But before she could do so a gaunt lady wearing steel spectacles and +black mittens stood before her, with a long finger pointing, and +exclaimed: "Young woman, hesitate!" + +Elsie hesitated. + +"Do you know," said the black-and-steel lady, "that in accepting +this position you may this day cause the loss of a hundred lives in +agonizing physical torture and the sending as many souls to +perdition?" + +"Why, no," said Elsie, in frightened tones. "How could I do that?" + +"Ruin," said the lady--"the demon rum. Do you know why so many lives +are lost when a theatre catches fire? Brandy balls. The demon rum +lurking in brandy balls. Our society women while in theatres sit +grossly intoxicated from eating these candies filled with brandy. +When the fire fiend sweeps down upon them they are unable to escape. +The candy stores are the devil's distilleries. If you assist in the +distribution of these insidious confections you assist in the +destruction of the bodies and souls of your fellow-beings, and in +the filling of our jails, asylums and almshouses. Think, girl, ere +you touch the money for which brandy balls are sold." + +"Dear me," said Elsie, bewildered. "I didn't know there was rum in +brandy balls. But I must live by some means. What shall I do?" + +"Decline the position," said the lady, "and come with me. I will +tell you what to do." + +After Elsie had told the confectioner that she had changed her mind +about the cashiership she put on her coat and followed the lady to +the sidewalk, where awaited an elegant victoria. + +"Seek some other work," said the black-and-steel lady, "and assist +in crushing the hydra-headed demon rum." And she got into the +victoria and drove away. + +"I guess that puts it up to Mr. Otter again," said Elsie, ruefully, +turning down the street. "And I'm sorry, too, for I'd much rather +make my way without help." + +Near Fourteenth street Elsie saw a placard tacked on the side of a +doorway that read: "Fifty girls, neat sewers, wanted immediately on +theatrical costumes. Good pay." + +She was about to enter, when a solemn man, dressed all in black, +laid his hand on her arm. + +"My dear girl," he said, "I entreat you not to enter that dressing- +room of the devil." + +"Goodness me!" exclaimed Elsie, with some impatience. "The devil +seems to have a cinch on all the business in New York. What's wrong +about the place?" + +"It is here," said the solemn man, "that the regalia of Satan--in +other words, the costumes worn on the stage--are manufactured. The +stage is the road to ruin and destruction. Would you imperil your +soul by lending the work of your hands to its support? Do you know, +my dear girl, what the theatre leads to? Do you know where actors +and actresses go after the curtain of the playhouse has fallen upon +them for the last time?" + +"Sure," said Elsie. "Into vaudeville. But do you think it would be +wicked for me to make a little money to live on by sewing? I must +get something to do pretty soon." + +"The flesh-pots of Egypt," exclaimed the reverend gentleman, +uplifting his hands. "I beseech you, my child, to turn away from +this place of sin and iniquity." + +"But what will I do for a living?" asked Elsie. "I don't care to sew +for this musical comedy, if it's as rank as you say it is; but I've +got to have a job." + +"The Lord will provide," said the solemn man. "There is a free Bible +class every Sunday afternoon in the basement of the cigar store next +to the church. Peace be with you. Amen. Farewell." + +Elsie went on her way. She was soon in the downtown district where +factories abound. On a large brick building was a gilt sign, "Posey- +Trimmer, Artificial Flowers." Below it was hung a newly stretched +canvas hearing the words, "Five hundred girls wanted to learn trade. +Good wages from the start. Apply one flight up." + +Elsie started toward the door, near which were gathered in groups +some twenty or thirty girls. One big girl with a black straw hat +tipped down over her eyes stepped in front of her. + +"Say, you'se," said the girl, "are you'se goin' in there after a +job?" + +"Yes," said Elsie; "I must have work." + +"Now don't do it," said the girl. "I'm chairman of our Scab +Committee. There's 400 of us girls locked out just because we +demanded 50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the +foreman to shave off his mustache. You're too nice a looking girl to +be a scab. Wouldn't you please help us along by trying to find a job +somewhere else, or would you'se rather have your face pushed in?" + +"I'll try somewhere else," said Elsie. + +She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart +leaped to see the sign, "Fox-Otter," stretching entirely across +the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had +led her to it through the by-ways of her fruitless search for work. + +She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her +name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown +directly into his private office. + +Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands +with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of +nearly middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well +dressed, radiating. + +"Well, well, and so this is Beatty's little daughter! Your father +was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing? +Well, well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I am +sure there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy work-- +nothing easier." + +Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nosed clerk thrust a portion of +himself inside the door. + +"Send Miss Hawkins in," said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came. + +"Miss Hawkins," said Mr. Otter, "bring for Miss Beatty to try on one +of those Russian sable coats and--let's see--one of those latest +model black tulle hats with white tips." + +Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick +breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas! +she was beautiful. + +I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it's +got to run it out. I didn't make it up. I'm just repeating it. + +I'd like to throw bouquets at the wise cop, and the lady who rescues +Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush +brandy balls, and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage +people (there are others), and all the thousands of good people who +are at work protecting young people from the pitfalls of a great +city; and then wind up by pointing out how they were the means of +Elsie reaching her father's benefactor and her kind friend and +rescuer from poverty. This would make a fine Elsie story of the old +sort. I'd like to do this; but there's just a word or two to follow. + +While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to +the telephone booth and called up some number. Don't ask me what it +was. + +"Oscar," said he, "I want you to reserve the same table for me this +evening. . . . What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left +of the shrubbery. . . . Yes; two. . . . Yes, the usual brand; and +the '85 Johannisburger with the roast. If it isn't the right +temperature I'll break your neck. No; not her. . . No, indeed. . . A +new one--a peacherino, Oscar, a peacherino!" + +Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a +paraphrase of a few words that you will remember were written by +him--by him of Gad's Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat, +you shall stand with a covered pumpkin--aye, sir, a pumpkin. + +Lost, Your Excellency. Lost Associations and Societies. Lost, Right +Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and +Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with +the reverence of money in your souls. And lost thus around us every day. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Trimmed Lamp, et al by O Henry + diff --git a/old/tlamp10.zip b/old/tlamp10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b35adac --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tlamp10.zip |
