Strictly Business
More Stories of the Four Milllion

by O Henry




CONTENTS

I.     STRICTLY BUSINESS
II.    THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED
III.   BABES IN THE JUNGLE
IV.    THE DAY RESURGENT
V.     THE FIFTH WHEEL
VI.    THE POET AND THE PEASANT
VII.   THE ROBE OF PEACE
VIII.  THE GIRL AND THE GRAFT
IX.    THE CALL OF THE TAME
X.     THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY
XI.    THE THING'S THE PLAY
XII.   A RAMBLE IN APHASIA
XIII.  A MUNICIPAL REPORT
XIV.   PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER
XV.    A BIRD OF BAGDAD
XVI.   COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON
XVII.  A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA
XVIII. THE GIRL AND THE HABIT
XIX.   PROOF OF THE PUDDING
XX.    PAST ONE AT RODNEY'S
XXI.   THE VENTURERS
XXII.  THE DUEL
XXIII. "WHAT YOU WANT"




I

STRICTLY BUSINESS

I suppose you know all about the stage and stage people.  You've 
been touched with and by actors, and you read the newspaper 
criticisms and the jokes in the weeklies about the Rialto and the 
chorus girls and the long-haired tragedians.  And I suppose that a 
condensed list of your ideas about the mysterious stageland would 
boil down to something like this:

Leading ladies have five husbands, paste diamonds, and figures no 
better than your own (madam) if they weren't padded.  Chorus 
girls are inseparable from peroxide, Panhards and Pittsburg.  All 
shows walk back to New York on tan oxford and railroad ties.  
Irreproachable actresses reserve the comic-landlady part for their 
mothers on Broadway and their step-aunts on the road.  Kyrle 
Bellew's real name is Boyle O'Kelley.  The ravings of John 
McCullough in the phonograph were stolen from the first sale of 
the Ellen Terry memoirs.  Joe Weber is funnier than E. H. Sothern; 
but Henry Miller is getting older than he was.

All theatrical people on leaving the theatre at night drink 
champagne and eat lobsters until noon the next day.  After all, the 
moving pictures have got the whole bunch pounded to a pulp.

Now, few of us know the real life of the stage people.  If we did, 
the profession might be more overcrowded than it is.  We look 
askance at the players with an eye full of patronizing superiority--
and we go home and practise all sorts of elocution and gestures in 
front of our looking glasses.

Latterly there has been much talk of the actor people in a new 
light.  It seems to have been divulged that instead of being 
motoring bacchanalias and diamond-hungry _loreleis_ they are 
businesslike folk, students and ascetics with childer and homes 
and libraries, owning real estate, and conducting their private 
affairs in as orderly and unsensational a manner as any of us good 
citizens who are bound to the chariot wheels of the gas, rent, coal, 
ice, and wardmen.

Whether the old or the new report of the sock-and-buskiners be the 
true one is a surmise that has no place here.  I offer you merely this 
little story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you 
only the dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door 
of Keetor's old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push 
of gloved hands too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch--
and where I last saw Cherry whisking through like a swallow into 
her nest, on time to the minute, as usual, to dress for her act.

The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration.  But 
Hart had been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits 
for four years with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three 
lightning changes with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated 
imitators, and a buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of 
approval from the bass-viol player in more than one house--than 
which no performer ever received more satisfactory evidence of 
good work.

The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful 
performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage.  In 
order to give himself this pleausre he will often forsake the 
sunniest Broadway corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth 
to attend a matin'ee offering by his less gifted brothers.  Once 
during the lifetime of a minstrel joke one comes to scoff and 
remains to go through with that most difficult exercise of Thespian 
muscles--the audible contact of the palm of one hand against the 
palm of the other.

One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known 
vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and 
got his d. h. coupon for an orchestra seat.

A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces 
and passed into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into 
gloom.  Others of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and 
applauded; but Bob Hart, "All the Mustard and a Whole Show in 
Himself," sat with his face as long and his hands as far apart as a 
boy holding a hank of yarn for his grandmother to wind into a ball.

But when H came on, "The Mustard" suddenly sat up straight.  H 
was the happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in 
Character Songs and Impersonations.  There were scarcely more 
than two bites to Cherry; but she delivered the merchandise tied 
with a pink cord and charged to the old man's account.  She first 
showed you a deliciously dewy and ginghamy country girl with a 
basket of property daisies who informed you ingenuously that 
there were other things to be learned at the old log school-house 
besides cipherin' and nouns, especially "When the Teach-er Kept 
Me in."  Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham apron-strings, 
she reappeared in considerably less than a "trice" as a fluffy 
"Parisienne"--so near does Art bring the old red mill to the Moulin 
Rouge.  And then--

But you know the rest.  And so did Bob Hart; but he saw 
somebody else.  he thought he saw that Cherry was the only 
professional on the short order stage that he had seen who seemed 
exactly to fit the part of "Helen Grimes" in the sketch he had 
written and kept tucked away in the tray of his trunk.  Of course 
Bob Hart, as well as every other normal actor, grocer, newspaper 
man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a play tucked away 
somewhere.  They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks of trees, 
desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit vaults, 
handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call.  
They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds.

But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar.  He 
called it "Mice Will Play."  He had kept it quiet and hidden away 
ever since he wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his 
conception of "Helen Grimes."  And here was "Helen" herself, 
with all the innocent abandon, the youth, the sprightliness, and the 
flawless stage art that his critical taste demanded.

After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, 
and got Cherry's address.  At five the next afternoon he called at 
the musty old house in the West Forties and sent up his 
professional card.

By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain _voile_ skirt, with 
her hair curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry 
might have been playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's 
daughter, in the great (unwritten) New England drama not yet 
entitled anything.

"I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his 
card carefully.  "What did you wish to see me about?"

"I saw you work last night," said Hart.  "I've written a sketch that 
I've been saving up.  It's for two; and I think you can do the other 
part.  I thought I'd see you about it."

"Come in the parlor," said Miss Cherry.  "I've been wishing for 
something of the sort.  I think I'd like to act instead of doing 
turns."

Bob Hart drew his cherished "Mice Will Play" from his pocket, 
and read it to her.

"Read it again, please," said Miss Cherry.

And then she pointed out to him clearly how it could be improved 
by introducing a messenger instead of a telephone call, and cutting 
the dialogue just before the climax while they were struggling with 
the pistol, and by completely changing the lines and business of 
Helen Grimes at the point where her jealousy overcomes her.  Hart 
yielded to all her strictures without argument.  She had at once put 
her finger on the sketch's weaker points.  That was her woman's 
intuition that he had lacked.  At the end of their talk Hart was 
willing to stake the judgment, experience, and savings of his four 
years of vaudeville that "Mice Will Play" would blossom into a 
perennial flower in the garden of the circuits.  Miss Cherry was 
slower to decide.  After many puckerings of her smooth young 
brow and tappings on her small, white teeth with the end of a lead 
pencil she gave out her dictum.

"Mr. Hart," said she, "I believe your sketch is going to win out.  
That Grimes part fits me like a shrinkable flannel after its first trip 
to a handless hand laundry.  I can make it stand out like the 
colonel of the Forty-fourth Regiment at a Little Mothers' Bazaar.  
And I've seen you work.  I know what you can do with the other 
part.  But business is business.  How much do you get a week for 
the stunt you do now?"

"Two hundred," answered Hart.

"I get one hundred for mine," said Cherry.  "That's about the 
natural discount for a woman.  But I live on it and put a few 
simoleons every week under the loose brick in the old kitchen 
hearth.  The stage is all right.  I love it; but there's something else I 
love better--that's a little country home, some day, with Plymouth 
Rock chickens and six ducks wandering around the yard.

"Now, let me tell you, Mr. Hart, I am STRICTLY BUSINESS.  If 
you want me to play the opposite part in your sketch, I'll do it.  
And I believe we can make it go.  And there's something else I 
want to say:  There's no nonsense in my make-up; I'm _on the 
level_, and I'm on the stage for what it pays me, just as other girls 
work in stores and offices.  I'm going to save my money to keep 
me when I'm past doing my stunts.  No Old Ladies' Home or 
Retreat for Imprudent Actresses for me.

"If you want to make this a business partnership, Mr. Hart, with all 
nonsense cut out of it, I'm in on it.  I know something about 
vaudeville teams in general; but this would have to be one in 
particular.  I want you to know that I'm on the stage for what I can 
cart away from it every pay-day in a little manila envelope with 
nicotine stains on it, where the cashier has licked the flap.  It's 
kind of a hobby of mine to want to cravenette myself for plenty of 
rainy days in the future.  I want you to know just how I am.  I don't 
know what an all-night restaurant looks like; I drink only weak 
tea; I never spoke to a man at a stage entrance in my life, and I've 
got money in five savings banks."

"Miss Cherry," said Bob Hart in his smooth, serious tones, "you're 
in on your own terms.  I've got 'strictly business' pasted in my hat 
and stenciled on my make-up box.  When I dream of nights I 
always see a five-room bungalow on the north shore of Long 
Island, with a Jap cooking clam broth and duckling in the kitchen, 
and me with the title deeds to the place in my pongee coat pocket, 
swinging in a hammock on the side porch, reading Stanleys 
'Explorations into Africa.'  And nobody else around.  You never 
was interested in Africa, was you, Miss Cherry?"

"Not any," said Cherry.  "What I'm going to do with my money is 
to bank it.  You can get four per cent. on deposits.  Even at the 
salary I've been earning, I've figured out that in ten years I'd have 
an income of about $50 a month just from the interest alone.  
Well, I might invest some of the principal in a little business--say, 
trimming hats or a beauty parlor, and make more."

"Well," said Hart, "You've got the proper idea all right, all right, 
anyhow.  There are mighty few actors that amount to anything at 
all who couldn't fix themselves for the wet days to come if they'd 
save their money instead of blowing it.  I'm glad you've got the 
correct business idea of it, Miss Cherry.  I think the same way; and 
I believe this sketch will more than double what both of us earn 
now when we get it shaped up."

The subsequent history of "Mice Will Play" is the history of all 
successful writings for the stage.  Hart & Cherry cut it, pieced it, 
remodeled it, performed surgical operations on the dialogue and 
business, changed the lines, restored 'em, added more, cut 'em out, 
renamed it, gave it back the old name, rewrote it, substituted a 
dagger for the pistol, restored the pistol--put the sketch through all 
the known processes of condensation and improvement.

They rehearsed it by the old-fashioned boardinghouse clock in the 
rarely used parlor until its warning click at five minutes to the hour 
would occur every time exactly half a second before the click of 
the unloaded revolver that Helen Grimes used in rehearsing the 
thrilling climax of the sketch.

Yes, that was a thriller and a piece of excellent work.  In the act a 
real 32-caliber revolver was used loaded with a real cartridge.  
Helen Grimes, who is a Western girl of decidedly Buffalo Billish 
skill and daring, is tempestuously in love with Frank Desmond, the 
private secretary and confidential prospective son-in-law of her 
father, "Arapahoe" Grimes, quarter-million-dollar cattle king, 
owning a ranch that, judging by the scenery, is in either the Bad 
Lands or Amagensett, L. I.  Desmond (in private life Mr. Bob 
Hart) wears puttees and Meadow Brook Hunt riding trousers, and 
gives his address as New York, leaving you to wonder why he 
comes to the Bad Lands or Amagansett (as the case may be) and at 
the same time to conjecture mildly why a cattleman should want 
puttees about his ranch with a secretary in 'em.

Well, anyhow, you know as well as I do that we all like that kind 
of play, whether we admit it or not--something along in between 
"Bluebeard, Jr.," and "Cymbeline" played in the Russian.

There were only two parts and a half in "Mice Will Play."  Hart 
and Cherry were the two, of course; and the half was a minor part 
always played by a stage hand, who merely came in once in a 
Tuxedo coat and a panic to announce that the house was 
surrounded by Indians, and to turn down the gas fire in the grate 
by the manager's orders.

There was another girl in the sketch--a Fifth Avenue society 
swelless--who was visiting the ranch and who had sirened Jack 
Valentine when he was a wealthy club-man on lower Third 
Avenue before he lost his money.  This girl appeared on the stage 
only in the photographic state--Jack had her Sarony stuck up on 
the mantel of the Amagan--of the Bad Lands droring room.  Helen 
was jealous, of course.

And now for the thriller.  Old "Arapahoe" Grimes dies of angina 
pectoris one night--so Helen informs us in a stage-ferryboat 
whisper over the footlights--while only his secretary was present.  
And that same day he was known to have had $647,000 in cash in 
his (ranch) library just received for the sale of a drove of beeves in 
the East (that accounts for the price we pay for steak!).  The cash 
disappears at the same time.  Jack Valentine was the only person 
with the ranchman when he made his (alleged) croak.

"Gawd knows I love him; but if he has done this deed--" you sabe, 
don't you?  And then there are some mean things said about the 
Fifth Avenue Girl--who doesn't come on the stage--and can we 
blame her, with the vaudeville trust holding down prices until one 
actually must be buttoned in the back by a call boy, maids cost so 
much?

But, wait.  Here's the climax.  Helen Grimes, chaparralish as she 
can be, is goaded beyond imprudence.  She convinces herself that 
Jack Valentine is not only a falsetto, but a financier.  To lose at 
one fell swoop $647,000 and a lover in riding trousers with angles 
in the sides like the variations on the chart of a typhoid-fever 
patient is enough to make any perfect lady mad.  So, then!

They stand in the (ranch) library, which is furnished with mounted 
elk heads (didn't the Elks have a fish fry in Amagensett once?), 
and the d'enouement begins.  I know of no more interesting time in 
the run of a play unless it be when the prologue ends.

Helen thinks Jack has taken the money.  Who else was there to 
take it?  The box-office manager was at the front on his job; the 
orchestra hadn't left their seats; and no man could get past "Old 
Jimmy," the stage door-man, unless he could show a Skye terrier 
or an automobile as a guarantee of eligibility.

Goaded beyond imprudence (as before said), Helen says to Jack 
Valentine:  "Robber and thief--and worse yet, stealer of trusting 
hearts, this should be your fate!"

With that out she whips, of course, the trusty 32-caliber.

"But I will be merciful," goes on Helen.  "You shall live--that will 
be your punishment.  I will show you how easily I could have sent 
you to the death that you deserve.  There is _her_ picture on the 
mantel.  I will send through her more beautiful face the bullet that 
should have pierced your craven heart."

And she does it.  And there's no fake blank cartridges or assistants 
pulling strings.  Helen fires.  The bullet--the actual bullet--goes 
through the face of the photograph--and then strikes the hidden 
spring of the sliding panel in the wall--and lo! the panel slides, and 
there is the missing $647,000 in convincing stacks of currency and 
bags of gold.  It's great.  You know how it is.  Cherry practised for 
two months at a target on the roof of her boarding house.  It took 
good shooting.  In the sketch she had to hit a brass disk only three 
inches in diameter, covered by wall paper in the panel; and she 
had to stand in exactly the same spot every night, and the photo 
had to be in exactly the same spot, and she had to shoot steady and 
true every time.

Of course old "Arapahoe" had tucked the funds away there in the 
secret place; and, of course, Jack hadn't taken anything except his 
salary (which really might have come under the head of "obtaining 
money under"; but that is neither here nor there); and, of course, 
the New York girl was really engaged to a concrete house 
contractor in the Bronx; and, necessarily, Jack and Helen ended in 
a half-Nelson--and there you are.

After Hart and Cherry had gotten "Mice Will Play" flawless, they 
had a try-out at a vaudeville house that accommodates.  The sketch 
was a house wrecker.  It was one of those rare strokes of talent that 
inundates a theatre from the roof down.  The gallery wept; and the 
orchestra seats, being dressed for it, swam in tears.

After the show the booking agents signed blank checks and 
pressed fountain pens upon Hart and Cherry.  Five hundred dollars 
a week was what it panned out.

That night at 11:30 Bob Hart took off his hat and bade Cherry 
good night at her boarding-house door.

"Mr. Hart," said she thoughtfully, "come inside just a few minutes.  
We've got our chance now to make good and make money.  What 
we want to do is to cut expenses every cent we can, and save all 
we can."

"Right," said Bob.  "It's business with me.  You've got your 
scheme for banking yours; and I dream every night of that 
bungalow with the Jap cook and nobody around to raise trouble.  
Anything to enlarge the net receipts will engage my attention."

"Come inside just a few minutes," repeated Cherry, deeply 
thoughtful.  "I've got a proposition to make to you that will reduce 
our expenses a lot and help you work out your own future and help 
me work out mine--and all on business principles."


"Mice Will Play" had a tremendously successful run in New York 
for ten weeks--rather neat for a vaudeville sketch--and then it 
started on the circuits.  Without following it, it may be said that it 
was a solid drawing card for two years without a sign of abated 
popularity.

Sam Packard, manager of one of Keetor's New York houses, said 
of Hart & Cherry:

"As square and high-toned a little team as ever came over the 
circuit.  It's a pleasure to read their names on the booking list.  
Quiet, hard workers, no Johnny and Mabel nonsense, on the job to 
the minute, straight home after their act, and each of 'em as 
gentlemanlike as a lady.  I don't expect to handle any attractions 
that give me less trouble or more respect for the profession."

And now, after so much cracking of a nutshell, here is the kernel 
of the story:

At the end of its second season "Mice Will Play" came back to 
New York for another run at the roof gardens and summer 
theatres.  There was never any trouble in booking it at the top-
notch price.  Bob Hart had his bungalow nearly paid for, and 
Cherry had so many savings-deposit bank books that she had 
begun to buy sectional bookcases on the instalment plan to hold 
them.

I tell you these things to assure you, even if you can't believe it, 
that many, very many of the stage people are workers with abiding 
ambitions--just the same as the man who wants to be president, or 
the grocery clerk who wants a home in Flatbush, or a lady who is 
anxious to flop out of the Count-pan into the Prince-fire.  And I 
hope I may be allowed to say, without chipping into the 
contribution basket, that they often move in a mysterious way their 
wonders to perform.

But, listen.

At the first performance of "Mice Will Play" in New York at the 
Westphalia (no hams alluded to) Theatre, Winona Cherry was 
nervous.  When she fired at the photograph of the Eastern beauty 
on the mantel, the bullet, instead of penetrating the photo and then 
striking the disk, went into the lower left side of Bob Hart's neck.  
Not expecting to get it there, Hart collapsed neatly, while Cherry 
fainted in a most artistic manner.

The audience, surmising that they viewed a comedy instead of a 
tragedy in which the principals were married or reconciled, 
applauded with great enjoyment.  The Cool Head, who always 
graces such occasions, rang the curtain down, and two platoons of 
scene shifters respectively and more or less respectfully removed 
Hart & Cherry from the stage.  The next turn went on, and all went 
as merry as an alimony bell.

The stage hands found a young doctor at the stage entrance who 
was waiting for a patient with a decoction of Am. B'ty roses.  The 
doctor examined Hart carefully and laughed heartily.

"No headlines for you, Old Sport," was his diagnosis.  "If it had 
been two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid 
artery as far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back 
Again.  As it is, you just get the property man to bind it up with a 
flounce torn from any one of the girls' Valenciennes and go home 
and get it dressed by the parlor-floor practitioner on your block, 
and you'll be all right.  Excuse me; I've got a serious case outside 
to look after."

After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better.  And then to where 
he lay came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line.  
Vincente, a solemn man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs 
at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters 
from every town he played.  Vincente had moved on the same 
circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their peripatetic friend.

"Bob," said Vincente in his serious way, "I'm glad it's no worse.  
The little lady is wild about you."

"Who?" asked Hart.

"Cherry," said the juggler.  "We didn't know how bad you were 
hurt; and we kept her away.  It's taking the manager and three girls 
to hold her."

"It was an accident, of course," said Hart.  "Cherry's all right.  She 
wasn't feeling in good trim or she couldn't have done it.  There's no 
hard feelings.  She's strictly business.  The doctor says I'll be on 
the job again in three days.  Don't let her worry."

"Man," said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old, smooth, lined 
face, "are you a chess automaton or a human pincushion?  Cherry's 
crying her heart out for you--calling 'Bob, Bob,' every second, with 
them holding her hands and keeping her from coming to you."

"What's the matter with her?" asked Hart, with wide-open eyes.  
"The sketch'll go on again in three days.  I'm not hurt bad, the 
doctor says.  She won't lose out half a week's salary.  I know it was 
an accident.  What's the matter with her?"

"You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool," said Vincente.  "The 
girl loves you and is almost mad about your hurt.  What's the 
matter with _you_?  Is she nothing to you?  I wish you could hear 
her call you."

"Loves me?" asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on 
which he lay.  "Cherry loves me?  Why, it's impossible."

"I wish you could see her and hear her," said Griggs.

"But, man," said Bob Hart, sitting up, "it's impossible.  It's 
impossible, I tell you.  I never dreamed of such a thing."

"No human being," said the Tramp Juggler, "could mistake it.  
She's wild for love of you.  How have you been so blind?"

"But, my God," said Bob Hart, rising to his feet, "it's _too late_.  
It's too late, I tell you, Sam; _it's too late_.  It can't be.  You must 
be wrong.  It's _impossible_.  There's some mistake.

"She's crying for you," said the Tramp Juggler.  "For love of you 
she's fighting three, and calling your name so loud they don't dare 
to raise the curtain.  Wake up, man."

"For love of me?" said Bob Hart with staring eyes.  "Don't I tell 
you it's too late?  It's too late, man.  Why, _Cherry and I have been 
married two years!_"




II

THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito.  It 
bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your 
conscience.  Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with 
it.  All is not gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the 
stopper in his bottle of testing acid.

Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square presided over by 
George the Veracious is the Little Rialto.  Here stand the actors of 
that quarter, and this is their shibboleth:  "'Nit,' says I to Frohman, 
'you can't touch me for a kopeck less than two-fifty per,' and out I 
walks."

Westward and southward from the Thespian glare are one or two 
streets where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little 
tropical warmth in the nipping North.  The centre of life in this 
precinct is "El Refugio," a caf'e and restaurant that caters to the 
volatile exiles from the South.  Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, 
the rolling republics of Central America and the ireful islands of 
the Western Indies flit the cloaked and sombreroed se~nores, who 
are scattered like burning lava by the political eruptions of their 
several countries.

Hither they come to lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit 
funds, to enlist filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and 
ammunitions, to play the game at long taw.  In El Refugio, they 
find the atmosphere in which they thrive.

In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to 
the palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer.  Altruism must 
halt the story thus long.  On, diner, weary of the culinary 
subterfuges of the Gallic chef, hie thee to El Refugio!  There only 
will you find a fish--bluefish, shad or pompano from the Gulf--
baked after the Spanish method.  Tomatoes give it color, 
individuality and soul; chili colorado bestows upon it zest, 
originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy and 
mystery, and--but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence.  
Around it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity--but never in it--
hovers an ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and ddelicate that 
only the Society for Psychical Research could note its origin.  Do 
not say that garlic is in the fish at El Refugio.  It is not otherwise 
than as if the spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that 
lingers in the parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in 
life, "by hopeless fancy feigned on lips that are for others."  And 
then, when Conchito, the waiter, brings you a plate of brown 
frijoles and carafe of wine that has never stood still between 
Oporto and El Refugio--ah, Dios!

One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 
Gen. Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from 
Cartagena.  The General was between a claybank and bay in 
complexion, had a 42-inch waist and stood 5 feet 4 with his Du 
Barry heels.  He had the mustache of a shooting-gallery proprietor, 
he wore the full dress of a Texas congressman and had the 
important aspect of an uninstructed delegate.

Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to enable him to 
inquire his way to the street in which El Refugio stood.  When he 
reached that neighborhood he saw a sign before a respectable red-
brick house that read, "Hotel Espa~nol."  In the window was a 
card in Spanish, "Aqui se habla Espa~nol."  The General entered, 
sure of a congenial port.

In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress.  She had 
blond--oh, unimpeachably blond hair.  For the rest she was 
amiability, and ran largely to inches around.  Gen. Falcon brushed 
the floor with his broad-brimmed hat, and emitted a quantity of 
Spanish, the syllables sounding like firecrackers gently popping 
their way down the string of a bunch.

"Spanish or Dago?" asked Mrs. O'Brien, pleasantly.

"I am a Colombian, madam," said the General, proudly.  "I speak 
the Spanish.  The advisment in your window say the Spanish he is 
spoken here.  How is that?"

"Well, you've been speaking it, ain't you?" said the madam.  "I'm 
sure I can't."

At the Hotel Espa~nol General Falcon engaged rooms and 
established himself.  At dusk he sauntered out upon the streets to 
view the wonders of this roaring city of the North.  As he walked 
he thought of the wonderful golden hair of Mme. O'Brien.  "It is 
here," said the General to himself, no doubt in his own language, 
"that one shall find the most beautiful se~noras in the world.  I 
have not in my Colombia viewed among our beauties one so fair.  
But no!  It is not for the General Falcon to think of beauty.  It is 
my country that claims my devotion."

At the corner of Broadway and the Little Rialto the General 
became involved.  The street cars bewildered him, and the fender 
of one upset him against a pushcart laden with oranges.  A cab 
driver missed him an inch with a hub, and poured barbarous 
execrations upon his head.  He scrambled to the sidewalk and 
skipped again in terror when the whistle of a peanut-roaster puffed 
a hot scream in his ear.  V'algame Dios!  What devil's city is this?"

As the General fluttered out of the streamers of passers like a 
wounded snipe he was marked simultaneously as game by two 
hunters.  One was "Bully" McGuire, whose system of sport 
required the use of a strong arm and the misuse of an eight-inch 
piece of lead pipe.  The other Nimrod of the asphalt was "Spider" 
Kelley, a sportsman with more refined methods.

In pouncing upon their self-evident prey, Mr. Kelley was a shade 
the quicker.  His elbow fended accurately the onslaught of Mr. 
McGuire.

"G'wan!" he commanded harshly.  "I saw it first."  McGuire slunk 
away, awed by superior intelligence.

"Pardon me," said Mr. Kelley, to the General, "but you got balled 
up in the shuffle, didn't you?  Let me assist you."  He picked up 
the General's hat and brushed the dust from it.

The ways of Mr. Kelley could not but succeed.  The General, 
bewildered and dismayed by the resounding streets, welcomed his 
deliverer as a caballero with a most disinterested heart.

"I have a desire," said the General, "to return to the hotel of 
O'Brien, in which I am stop.  Caramba! se~nor, there is a loudness 
and rapidness of going and coming in the city of this Nueva 
York."

Mr. Kelley's politeness would not suffer the distinguished 
Colombian to brave the dangers of the return unaccompanied.  At 
the door of the Hotel Espa~nol they paused.  A little lower down 
on the opposite side of the street shone the modest illuminated 
sign of El Refugio.  Mr. Kelley, to whom few streets were 
unfamiliar, knew the place exteriorly as a "Dago joint."  All 
foreigners, Mr. Kelley classed under the two heads of "Dagoes" 
and Frenchmen.  He proposed to the General that they repair 
thither and substantiate their acquaintance with a liquid 
foundation.

An hour later found General Falcon and Mr. Kelley seated at a 
table in the conspirator's corner of El Refugio.  Bottles and glasses 
were between them.  For the tenth time the General confided the 
secret of his mission to the Estados Unidos.  He was here, he 
declared, to purchase arms--2,000 stands of Winchester rifles--for 
the Colombian revolutionists.  He had drafts in his pocket drawn 
by the Cartagena Bank on its New York correspondent for 
$25,000.  At other tables other revolutionists were shouting their 
political secrets to their fellow-plotters; but none was as loud as 
the General.  He pounded the table; he hallooed for some wine; he 
roared to his friend that his errand was a secret one, and not to be 
hinted at to a living soul.  Mr. Kelley himself was stirred to 
sympathetic enthusiasm.  He grasped the General's hand across the 
table.

"Monseer," he said, earnestly, "I don't know where this country of 
yours is, but I'm for it.  I guess it must be a branch of the United 
States, though, for the poetry guys and the schoolmarms call us 
Columbia, too, sometimes.  It's a lucky thing for you that you 
butted into me to-night.  I'm the only man in New York that can 
get this gun deal through for you.  The Secretary of War of the 
United States is me best friend.  He's in the city now, and I'll see 
him for you to-morrow.  In the meantime, monseer, you keep them 
drafts tight in your inside pocket.  I'll call for you to-morrow, and 
take you to see him.  Say! that ain't the District of Columbia you're 
talking about, is it?" concluded Mr. Kelley, with a sudden qualm.  
"You can't capture that with no 2,000 guns--it's been tried with 
more."

"No, no, no!" exclaimed the General.  "It is the Republic of 
Colombia--it is a g-r-reat republic on the top side of America of 
the South.  Yes.  Yes."

"All right," said Mr. Kelley, reassured.  "Now suppose we trek 
along home and go by-by.  I'll write to the Secretary to-night and 
make a date with him.  It's a ticklish job to get guns out of New 
York.  McClusky himself can't do it."

They parted at the door of the Hotel Espa~nol.  The General rolled 
his eyes at the moon and sighed.

"It is a great country, your Nueva York," he said.  "Truly the cars 
in the streets devastate one, and the engine that cooks the nuts 
terribly makes a squeak in the ear.  But, ah, Se~nor Kelley--the 
se~noras with hair of much goldness, and admirable fatness--they 
are magnificas!  Muy magnificas!"

Kelley went to the nearest telephone booth  and called up 
McCrary's caf'e, far up on Broadway.  He asked for Jimmy Dunn.

"Is that Jimmy Dunn?"  asked Kelley.

"Yes," came the answer.

"You're a liar," sang back Kelley, joyfully.  "Your'e the Secretary 
of War.  Wait there till I come up.  I've got the finest thing down 
here in the way of a fish you ever baited for.  It's a Colorado-
maduro, with a gold band around it and free coupons enough to 
buy a red hall lamp and a statuette of Psyche rubbering in the 
brook.  I'll be up on the next car."

Jimmy Dunn was an A. M. of Crookdom.  He was an artist in the 
confidence line.  He never saw a bludgeon in his life; and he 
scorned knockout drops.  In fact, he would have set nothing before 
an intended victim but the purest of drinks, if it had been possible 
to procure such a thing in New York.  It was the ambition of 
"Spider" Kelley to elevate himself into Jimmy's class.

These two gentlemen held a conference that night at McCrary's.  
Kelley explained.

"He's as easy as a gumshoe.  He's from the Island of Colombia, 
where there's a strike, or a feud, or something going on, and 
they've sent him up here to buy 2,000 Winchesters to arbitrate the 
thing with.  He showed me two drafts for $10,000 each, and one 
for $5,000 on a bank here.  'S truth, Jimmy, I felt real mad with 
him because he didn't have it in thousand-dollar bills, and hand it 
to me on a silver waiter.  Now, we've got to wait till he goes to the 
bank and gets the money for us."

They talked it over for two hours, and then Dunn said;  "Bring him 
to No. __ Broadway, at four o'clock to-morrow afternoon."

In due time Kelley called at the Hotel Espa~nol for the General.  
He found the wily warrior engaged in delectable conversation with 
Mrs. O'Brien.

"The Secretary of War is waitin' for us," said Kelley.

The General tore himself away with an effort.

"Ay, se~nor," he said, with a sigh, "duty makes a call.  But, 
se~nor, the se~noras of your Estados Unidos--how beauties!  For 
exemplification, take you la Madame O'Brien--que magnifica!  
She is one goddess--one Juno--what you call one ox-eyed Juno."

Now Mr. Kelley was a wit; and better men have been shriveled by 
the fire of their own imagination.

"Sure!" he said with a grin; "but you mean a peroxide Juno, don't 
you?"

Mrs. O'Brien heard, and lifted an auriferous head.  Her 
businesslike eye rested for an instant upon the disappearing form 
of Mr. Kelley.  Except in street cars one should never be 
unnecessarily rude to a lady.

When the gallant Colombian and his escort arrived at the 
Broadway address, they were held in an anteroom for half an hour, 
and then admitted into a well-equipped office where a 
distinguished looking man, with a smooth face, wrote at a desk.  
General Falcon was presented to the Secretary of War of the 
United States, and his mission made known by his old friend, Mr. 
Kelley.

 "Ah--Colombia!" said the Secretary, significantly, when he was 
made to understand; "I'm afraid there will be a little difficutly in 
that case.  The President and I differ in our sympathies there.  He 
prefers the established government, while I--" the secretary gave 
the General a mysterious but encouraging smile.  "You, of course, 
know, General Falcon, that since the Tammany war, an act of 
Congress has been passed requiring all manufactured arms and 
ammunition exported from this country to pass through the War 
Department.  Now, if I can do anything for you I will be glad to do 
so to oblige my old friend, Mr. Kelley.  But it must be in absolute 
secrecy, as the President, as I have said, does not regard favorably 
the efforts of your revolutionary party in Colombia.  I will have my 
orderly bring a list of the available arms now in the warehouse."

The Secretary struck a bell, and an orderly with the letters A. D. T. 
on his cap stepped promptly into the room.

"Bring me Schedule B of the small arms inventory," said the 
Secretary.

The orderly quickly returned with a printed paper.  The Secretary 
studied it closely.

"I find," he said, "that in Warehouse 9, of Government stores, there 
is shipment of 2,000 stands of Winchester rifles that were ordered 
by the Sultan of Morocco, who forgot to send the cash with his 
order.  Our rule is that legal-tender must be paid down at the time 
of purchase.  My dear Kelley, your friend, General Falcon, shall 
have this lot of arms, if he desires it, at the manufacturer's price.  
And you will forgive me, I am sure, if I curtail our interview.  I am 
expecting the Japanese Minister and Charles Murphy every 
moment!"

As one result of this interview, the General was deeply grateful to 
his esteemed friend, Mr. Kelley.  As another, the nimble Secretary 
of War was extremely busy during the next two days buying empty 
rifle cases and filling them with bricks, which were then stored in 
a warehouse rented for that purpose.  As still another, when the 
General returned to the Hotel Espa~nol, Mrs. O'Brien went up to 
him, plucked a thread from his lapel, and said:

"Say, se~nor, I don't want to 'butt in,' but what does that monkey-
faced, cat-eyed, rubber-necked tin horn tough want with you?"

"Sangre de mi vida!" exclaimed the General.  "Impossible it is that 
you speak of my good friend, Se~nor kelley."

"Come into the summer garden," said Mrs. O'Brien.  "I want to 
have a talk with you."

Let us suppose that an hour has elapsed.

"And you say," said the General, "that for the sum of $18,000 can 
be purchased the furnishment of the house and the lease of one 
year with this garden so lovely--so resembling unto the patios of 
my cara Colombia?"

"And dirt cheap at that," sighed the lady.

"Ah, Dios!" breathed General Falcon.  "What to me is war and 
politics?  This spot is one paradise.  My country it have other 
brave heroes to continue the fighting.  What to me should be glory 
and the shooting of mans?  Ah! no.  It is here I have found one 
angel.  Let us buy the Hotel Espa~nol and you shall be mine, and 
the money shall not be waste on guns."

Mrs. O'Brien rested her blond pompadour against the shoulder of 
the Colombian patriot.

"Oh, se~nor," she sighed, happily, "ain't you terrible!"

Two days later was the time appointed for the delivery of the arms 
to the General.  The boxes of supposed rifles were stacked in the 
rented warehouse, and the Secretary of War sat upon them, waiting 
for his friend Kelley to fetch the victim.

Mr. Kelley hurried, at the hour, to the Hotel Espa~nol.  He found 
the General behind the desk adding up accounts.

"I have decide," said the General, "to buy not guns.  I have to-day 
buy the insides of this hotel, and there shall be marrying of the 
General Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon with la Madame 
O'Brien."

Mr. Kelley almost strangled.

"Say, you old bald-headed bottle of shoe polish," he spluttered, 
"you're a swindler--that's what you are!  You've bought a boarding 
house with money belonging to your infernal country, wherever it 
is."

"Ah," said the General, footing up a column, "that is what you call 
politics.  War and revolution they are not nice.  Yes.  It is not best 
that one shall always follow Minerva.  No.  It is of quite desirable 
to keep hotels and be with that Juno--that ox-eyed Juno.  Ah! what 
hair of the gold it is that she have!"

Mr. Kelley choked again.

"Ah, Senor Kelley!" said the General, feelingly and finally, "is it 
that you have never eaten of the corned beef hash that Madame 
O'Brien she make?"





III

BABES IN THE JUNGLE

Montague Silver, the finest street man and art grafter in the West, 
says to me once in Little Rock:  "If you ever lose your mind, Billy, 
and get too old to do honest swindling among grown men, go to 
New York.  In the West a sucker is born every minute; but in New 
York they appear in chunks of roe--you can't count 'em!"

Two years afterward I found that I couldn't remember the names of 
the Russian admirals, and I noticed some gray hairs over my left 
ear; so I knew the time had arrived for me to take Silver's advice.

I struck New York about noon one day, and took a walk up 
Broadway.  And I run against Silver himself, all encompassed up 
in a spacious kind of haberdashery, leaning against a hotel and 
rubbing the half-moons on his nails with a silk handkerchief.

"Paresis or superannuated?" I asks him.

"Hello, Billy," says Silver; "I'm glad to see you.  Yes, it seemed to 
me that the West was accumulating a little too much wiseness.  
I've been saving New York for dessert.  I know it's a low-down 
trick to take things from these people.  They only know this and 
that and pass to and fro and think ever and anon.  I'd hate for my 
mother to know I was skinning these weak-minded ones.  She 
raised me better."

"Is there a crush already in the waiting rooms of the old doctor that 
does skin grafting?"  I asks.

"Well, no," says Silver; "you needn't back Epidermis to win to-
day.  I've only been here a month.  But I'm ready to begin; and the 
members of Willie Manhattan's Sunday School class, each of 
whom has volunteered to contribute a portion of cuticle toward 
this rehabilitation, may as well send their photos to the _Evening 
Daily_.

"I've been studying the town," says Silver, "and reading the papers 
every day, and I know it as well as the cat in the City Hall knows 
an O'Sullivan.  People here lie down on the floor and scream and 
kick when you are the least bit slow about taking money from 
them.  Come up in my room and I'll tell you.  We'll work the town 
together, Billy, for the sake of old times."

Silver takes me up in a hotel.  He has a quantity of irrelevant 
objects lying about.

"There's more ways of getting money from these metropolitan 
hayseeds," says Silver, "than there is of cooking rice in Charleston, 
S. C.  They'll bite at anything.  The brains of most of 'em 
commute.  The wiser they are in intelligence the less perception of 
cognizance they have.  Why, didin't a man the other day sell J. P. 
Morgan an oil portrait of Rockefeller, Jr., for Andrea del Sarto's 
celebrated painting of the young Saint John!

"You see that bundle of printed stuff in the corner, Billy?  That's 
gold mining stock.  I started out one day to sell that, but I quit it in 
two hours.  Why?  Got arrested for blocking the street.  People 
fought to buy it.  I sold the policeman a block of it on the way to 
the station-house, and then I took it off the market.  I don't want 
people to give me their money.  I want some little consideration 
connected with the transaction to keep my pride from being hurt.  I 
want 'em to guess the missing letter in Chic-go, or draw to a pair 
of nines before they pay me a cent of money.

"Now there's another little scheme that worked so easy I had to 
quit it.  You see that bottle of blue ink on the table?  I tattooed an 
anchor on the back of my hand and went to a bank and told 'em I 
was Admiral Dewey's nephew.  They offered to cash my draft on 
him for a thousand, but I didn't know my uncle's first name.  It 
shows, though, what an easy town it is.  As for burglars, they won't 
go in a house now unless there's a hot supper ready and a few 
college students to wait on 'em.  They're slugging citizens all over 
the upper part of the city and I guess, taking the town from end to 
end, it's a plain case of assault and Battery."

"Monty," says I, when Silver had slacked, up, "you may have 
Manhattan correctly discriminated in your perorative, but I doubt 
it.  I've only been in town two hours, but it don't dawn upon me 
that it's ours with a cherry in it.  There ain't enough rus in urbe 
about it to suit me.  I'd be a good deal much better satisfied if the 
citizens had a straw or more in their hair, and run more to 
velveteen vests and buckeye watch charms.  They don't look easy 
to me."

"You've got it, Billy," says Silver.  "All emigrants have it.  New 
York's bigger than Little Rock or Europe, and it frightens a 
foreigner.  You'll be all right.  I tell you I feel like slapping the 
people here because they don't send me all their money in laundry 
baskets, with germicide sprinkled over it.  I hate to go down on the 
street to get it.  Who wears the diamonds in this town?  Why, 
Winnie, the Wiretapper's wife, and Bella, the Buncosteerer's bride.  
New Yorkers can be worked easier than a blue rose on a tidy.  The 
only thing that bothers me is I know I'll break the cigars in my vest 
pocket when I get my clothes all full of twenties."

"I hope you are right, Monty," says I; "but I wish all the same I had 
been satisfied with a small business in Little Rock.  The crop of 
farmers is never so short out there but what you can get a few of 
'em to sign a petition for a new post office that you can discount 
for $200 at the county bank.  The people hear appear to possess 
instincts of self-preservation and illiberality.  I fear me that we are 
not cultured enough to tackle this game."

"Don't worry," says Silver.  "I've got this Jayville-near-Tarrytown 
correctly estimated as sure as North River is the Hudson and East 
River ain't a river.  Why, there are people living in four blocks of 
Broadway who never saw any kind of a building except a 
skyscraper in their lives!  A good, live hustling Western man ought 
to get conspicuous enough here inside of three months to incur 
either Jerome's clemency or Lawson's displeasure."

"Hyperbole aside," says I, "do you know of any immediate system 
of buncoing the community out of a dollar or two except by 
applying to the Salvation Army or having a fit on Miss Helen 
Gould's doorsteps?"

"Dozens of 'em," says Silver.  "How much capital have you got, 
Billy?"

"A thousand," I told him.

"I've got $1,200," says he.  "We'll pool and do a big piece of 
business.  There's so many ways we can make a million that I don't 
know how to begin."

The next morning Silver meets me at the hotel and he is all 
sonorous and stirred with a kind of silent joy.

"We're to meet J. P. Morgan this afternoon," says he.  "A man I 
know in the hotel wants to introduce us.  He's a friend of his.  He 
says he likes to meet people from the West."

"That sounds nice and plausible," says I.  "I'd like to know Mr. 
Morgan."

"It won't hurt us a bit," says Silver, "to get acquainted with a few 
finance kings.  I kind of like the social way New York has with 
strangers."

The man Silver knew was named Klein.  At three o'clock Klein 
brought his Wall Street friend to see us in Silver's room.  "Mr. 
Morgan" looked some like his pictures, and he had a Turkish towel 
wrapped around his left foot, and he walked with a cane.

"Mr. Silver and Mr. Pescud," says Klein.  "It sounds superfluous," 
says he, "to mention the name of the greatest financial--"

"Cut it out, Klein," says Mr. Morgan.  "I'm glad to know you 
gents; I take great interest in the West.  Klein tells me you're from 
Little Rock.  I think I've a railroad or two out there somewhere.  If 
either of you guys would like to deal a hand or two of stud poker I-
-"

"Now, Pierpont," cuts in Klein, "you forget!"

"Excuse me, gents!" says Morgan; "since I've had the gout so bad I 
sometimes play a social game of cards at my house.  Neither of 
you never knew One-eyed Peters, did you, while you was around 
Little Rock?  He lived in Seattle, New Mexico."

Before we could answer, Mr. Morgan hammers on the floor with 
his can and begins to walk up and down, swearing in a loud tone 
of voice.

"They have been pounding your stocks to-day on the Street, 
Pierpont?"  asks Klein, smiling.

"Stocks!  No!" roars Mr. Morgan.  "It's that picture I sent an agent 
to Europe to buy.  I just thought about it.  He cabled me to-day 
that it ain't to be found in all Italy.  I'd pay $50,000 to-morrow for 
that picture--yes, $75,000.  I give the agent a la carte in purchasing 
it.  I cannot understand why the art galleries will allow a De 
Vinchy to--"

"Why, Mr. Morgan," says klein; "I thought you owned all of the 
De Vinchy paintings."

"What is the picture like, Mr. Morgan?" asks Silver.  "It must be as 
big as the side of the Flatiron Building."

"I'm afraid your art education is on the bum, Mr. Silver," says 
Morgan.  "The picture is 27 inches by 42; and it is called 'Love's 
Idle Hour.'  It represents a number of cloak models doing the two-
step on the bank of a purple river.  The cablegram said it might 
have been brought to this country.  My collection will never be 
complete without that picture.  Well, so long, gents; us financiers 
must keep early hours."

Mr. Morgan and Klein went away together in a cab.  Me and 
Silver talked about how simple and unsuspecting great people was; 
and Silver said what a shame it would be to try to rob a man like 
Mr. Morgan; and I said I thought it would be rather imprudent, 
myself.  Klein proposes a stroll after dinner; and me and him and 
Silver walks down toward Seventh Avenue to see the sights.  Klein 
sees a pair of cuff links that instigate his admiration in a pawnshop 
window, and we all go in while he buys 'em.

After we got back to the hotel and Klein had gone, Silver jumps at 
me and waves his hands.

"Did you see it?" says he.  "Did you see it, Billy?"

"What?" I asks.

"Why, that picture that Morgan wants.  It's hanging in that 
pawnshop, behind the desk.  I didn't say anything because Klein 
was there.  It's the article sure as you live.  The girls are as natural 
as paint can make them, all measuring 36 and 25 and 42 skirts, if 
they had any skirts, and they're doing a buck-and-wing on the 
bank of a river with the blues.  What did Mr. Morgan say he'd give 
for it?  Oh, don't make me tell you.  They can't know what it is in 
that pawnshop."

When the pawnshop opened the next morning me and Silver was 
standing there as anxious as if we wanted to soak our Sunday suit 
to buy a drink.  We sauntered inside, and began to look at watch-
chains.

"That's a violent specimen of a chromo you've got up there," 
remarked Silver, casual, to the pawnbroker.  "But I kind of enthuse 
over the girl with the shoulderblades and red bunting.  Would an 
offer of $2.25 for it cause you to knock over any fragile articles of 
your stock in hurrying it off the nail?"

The pawnbroker smiles and goes on showing us plate watch-
chains.

"That picture," says he, "was pledged a year ago by an Italian 
gentleman.  I loaned him $500 on it.  It is called 'Love's Idle Hour,' 
and it is by Leonardo de Vinchy.  Two days ago the legal time 
expired, and it became an unredeemed pledge.  Here is a style of 
chain that is worn a great deal now."

At the end of half an hour me and Silver paid the pawnbroker 
$2,000 and walked out with the picture.  Silver got into a cab with 
it and started for Morgan's office.  I goes to the hotel and waits for 
him.  In two hours Silver comes back.

"Did you see Mr. Morgan?" I asks.  "How much did he pay you for 
it?"

Silver sits down and fools with a tassel on the table cover.

"I never exactly saw Mr. Morgan," he says, "because Mr. Morgan's 
been in Europe for a month.  But what's worrying me, Billy, is 
this:  The department stores have all got that same picture on sale, 
framed, for $3.48.  And they charge $3.50 for the frame alone--
that's what I can't understand."









IV

THE DAY RESURGENT

I can see the artist bite the end of his pencil and frown when it 
comes to drawing his Easter picture; for his legitimate pictorial 
conceptions of figures pertinent to the festival are but four in 
number.

First comes Easter, pagan goddess of spring.  Here his fancy may 
have free play.  A beautiful maiden with decorative hair and the 
proper number of toes will fill the bill.  Miss Clarice St. Vavasour, 
the well-known model, will pose for it in the "Lethergogallagher," 
or whatever it was that Trilby called it.

Second--the melancholy lady with upturned eyes in a framework 
of lilies.  This is magazine-covery, but reliable.

Third--Miss Manhattan in the Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday parade.

Fourth--Maggie Murphy with a new red feather in her old straw 
hat, happy and self-conscious, in the Grand Street turnout.

Of course, the rabbits do not count.  Nor the Easter eggs, since the 
higher criticism has hard-boiled them.

The limited field of its pictorial possibilities proves that Easter, of 
all our festival days, is the most vague and shifting in our 
conception.  It belongs to all religions, although the pagans 
invented it.  Going back still further to the first spring, we can see 
Eve choosing with pride a new green leaf from the tree _ficus 
carica_.

Now, the object of this critical and learned preamble is to set forth 
the theorem that Easter is neither a date, a season, a festival, a 
holiday nor an occasion.  What it is you shall find out if you 
follow in the footsteps of Danny McCree.

Easter Sunday dawned as it should, bright and early, in its place 
on the calendar between Saturday and Monday.  At 5:24 the sun 
rose, and at 10:30 Danny followed its example.  He went into the 
kitchen and washed his face at the sink.  His mother was frying 
bacon.  She looked at his hard, smooth, knowing countenance as 
he juggled with the round cake of soap, and thought of his father 
when she first saw him stopping a hot grounder between second 
and third twenty-two years before on a vacant lot in Harlem, where 
the La Paloma apartment house now stands.  In the front room of 
the flat Danny's father sat by an open window smoking his pipe, 
with his dishevelled gray hair tossed about by the breeze.  He still 
clung to his pipe, although his sight had been taken from him two 
years before by a precocious blast of giant powder that went off 
without permission.  Very few blind men care for smoking, for the 
reason that they cannot see the smoke.  Now, could you enjoy 
having the news read to you from an evening newspaper unless 
you could see the colors of the headlines?

"'Tis Easter Day," said Mrs. McCree.

"Scramble mine," said Danny.

After breakfast he dressed himself in the Sabbath morning 
costume of the Canal Street importing house dray chauffeur--frock 
coat, striped trousers, patent leathers, gilded trace chain across 
front of vest, and wing collar, rolled-brim derby and butterfly bow 
from Schonstein's (between Fourteenth Street and Tony's fruit 
stand) Saturday night sale.

"You'll be goin' out this day, of course, Danny," said old man 
McCree, a little wistfully.  "'Tis a kind of holiday, they say.  Well, 
it's fine spring weather.  I can feel it in the air."

"Why should I not be going out?" demanded Danny in his 
grumpiest chest tones.  "Should I stay in?  Am I as good as a 
horse?  One day of rest my team has a week.  Who earns the 
money for the rent and the breakfast you've just eat, I'd like to 
know?  Answer me that!"

"All right, lad," said the old man.  "I'm not complainin'.  While me 
two eyes was good there was nothin' better to my mind than a 
Sunday out.  There's a smell of turf and burnin' brush comin' in the 
windy.  I have me tobaccy.  A good fine day and rist to ye, lad.  
Times I wish your mother had larned to read, so I might hear the 
rest about the hippopotamus--but let that be."

"Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?" asked 
Danny of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen.  "Have you 
been taking him to the Zoo?  And for what?"

"I have not," said Mrs. McCree.  "He sets by the windy all day.  
'Tis little recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all.  I'm 
thinkin' they wander in their minds at times.  One day he talks of 
grease without stoppin' for the most of an hour.  I looks to see if 
there's lard burnin' in the fryin' pan.  There is not.  He says I do not 
understand.  'Tis weary days, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a 
blind man, Danny.  There was no better nor stronger than him 
when he had his two eyes.  'Tis a fine day, son.  Injoy yeself ag'inst 
the morning.  There will be cold supper at six."

"Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus?" asked Danny of 
Mike, the janitor, as he went out the door downstairs.

"I have not," said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher.  "But 'tis 
the only subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages 
that I've not been compained to about these two days.  See the 
landlord.  Or else move out if ye like.  Have ye hippopotamuses in 
the lease?  No, then?"

"It was the old man who spoke of it," said Danny.  "Likely there's 
nothing in it."

Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck 
northward into the heart of the district where Easter--modern 
Easter, in new, bright raiment--leads the pascal march.  Out of 
towering brown churches came the blithe music of anthems from 
the choirs.  The broad sidewalks were moving parterres of living 
flowers--so it seemed when your eye looked upon the Ester girl.

Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the 
background of the tradition.  Children carried lilies in their hands.  
The windows of the brownstone mansions were packed with the 
most opulent creations of flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies.

Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, 
walked Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb.  Danny knew him.

"Why, Corrigan," he asked, "is Easter?  I know it comes the first 
you're full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March--but 
why?  Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor 
appoint it out of politics?"

"'Tis an annual celebration," said Corrigan, with the judicial air of 
the Third Deputy Police Commissioner, "peculiar to New York.  It 
extends up to Harlem.  Sometimes they has the reserves out at One 
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street.  In my opinion 'tis not political."

"Thanks," said Danny.  "And say--did you ever hear a man 
complain of hippopotamuses?  When not specially in drink, I 
mean."

"Nothing larger than sea turtles," said Corrigan, reflecting, "and 
there was wood alcohol in that."

Danny wandered.  The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying 
simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his.

The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily.  They are worn so 
often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-
made garments.  That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find 
in the griefs of the common people their most striking models.  
But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of 
Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers.  Therefore, Danny 
set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly.

The family entrance of Dugan's caf'e was feasible; so Danny 
yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock.  Seated in a 
dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still 
groped after the mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee.

"Say, Tim," he said to the waiter, "why do they have Easter?"

"Skiddoo!" said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye.  "Is that a new 
one?  All right.  Tony Pastor's for you last night, I guess.  I give it 
up.  What's the answer--two apples or a yard and a half?"

From Dugan's Danny turned back eastward.  The April sun seemed 
to stir in him a vague feeling that he could not construe.  He made 
a wrong diagnosis and decided that it was Katy Conlon.

A block from her house on Avenue A he met her going to church.  
They pumped hands on the corner.

"Gee! but you look dumpish and dressed up," said Katy.  "What's 
wrong?  Come away with me to church and be cheerful."

"What's doing at church?" asked Danny.

"Why, it's Easter Sunday.  Silly!  I waited till after eleven expectin' 
you might come around to go."

"What does this Easter stand for, Katy," asked Danny gloomily.  
"Nobody seems to know."

"Nobody as blind as you," said Katy with spirit.  "You haven't 
even looked at my new hat.  And skirt.  Why, it's when all the girls 
put on new spring clothes.  Silly!  Are you coming to church with 
me?"

"I will," said Danny.  "If this Easter is pulled off there, they ought 
to be able to give some excuse for it.  Not that the hat ain't a 
beauty.  The green roses are great."

At church the preacher did some expounding with no pounding.  
He spoke rapidly, for he was in a hurry to get home to his early 
Sabbath dinner; but he knew his business.  There was one word 
that controlled his theme--resurrection.  Not a new creation; but a 
new life arising out of the old.  The congregation had heard it 
often before.  But there was a wonderful hat, a combination of 
sweet peas and lavender, in the sixth pew from the pulpit.  It 
attracted much attention.

After church Danny lingered on a corner while Katy waited, with 
pique in her sky-blue eyes.

"Are you coming along to the house?" she asked.  "But don't mind 
me.  I'll get there all right.  You seem to be studyin' a lot about 
something.  All right.  Will I see you at any time specially, Mr. 
McCree?"

"I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning 
and crossing the street.

Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly.  
Danny stopped two blocks away.  He stood still with his hands in 
his pockets, at the curb on the corner.  His face was that of a 
graven image.  Deep in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, 
so keen and leavening that his hard fibres did not recognize it.  It 
was something more tender than the April day, more subtle than 
the call of the senses, purer and deeper-rooted than the love of 
woman--for had he not turned away from green roses and eyes that 
had kept him chained for a year?  And Danny did not know what it 
was.  The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his dinner, had 
told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow the 
drowsy intonation.  But the preacher spoke the truth.

Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of 
delight.

"Hippopotamus!" he shouted to an elevated road pillar.  "Well, 
how is that for a bum guess?  Why, blast my skylights!  I know 
what he was driving at now.

"Hippopotamus!  Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx!  It's been a 
year since he heard it; and he didn't miss it so very far.  We quit at 
469 B. C., and this comes next.  Well, a wooden man wouldn't 
have guessed what he was trying to get out of him."

Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his 
labor supported.

Old man McCree was still sitting by the window.  His extinct pipe 
lay on the sill.

"Will that be you, lad?" he asked.

Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at the 
outset of committing a good deed.

"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" 
he snapped, viciously.  "Have I no right to come in?"

"Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh.  "Is it 
evening yet?"

Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled 
in gilt letters, "The History of Greece."  Dust was on it half an inch 
thick.  He laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a 
strip of paper.  And then he gave a short roar at the top of his 
voice, and said:

"Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?"

"Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree.  "Many and 
weary be the months since my lad has read it to me.  I dinno; but I 
took a great likings to them Greeks.  Ye left off at a place.  'Tis a 
fine day outside, lad.  Be out and take rest from your work.  I have 
gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe."

"Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not 
hippopotamus," said Danny.  "The war began there.  It kept 
something doing for thirty years.  The headlines says that a guy 
named Philip of Macedon, in 338 B. C., got to be boss of Greece 
by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronaea.  I'll read 
it."

With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man 
McCree sat for an hour, listening.

Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen.  Mrs. 
McCree was slicing cold meat.  She looked up.  Tears were 
running from old man McCree's eyes.

"Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said.  "There is none finer 
in the land.  My two eyes have come back to me again."

After supper he said to Danny:  "'Tis a happy day, this Easter.  
And now ye will be off to see Katy in the evening.  Well enough."

"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?" 
said Danny, angrily.  "Have I no right to stay in it?  After supper 
there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B. C., 
when the kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of 
the Roman Empire.  Am I nothing in this house?"








V

THE FIFTH WHEEL

The ranks of the Bed Line moved closer together; for it was cold.  
They were alluvial deposit of the stream of life lodged in the delta 
of Fifth Avenue and Broadway.  The Bed Liners stamped their 
freezing feet, looked at the empty benches in Madison Square 
whence Jack Frost had evicted them, and muttered to one another 
in a confusion of tongues.  The Flatiron Building, with its impious, 
cloud-piercing architecture looming mistily above them on the 
opposite delta, might well have stood for the tower of Babel, 
whence these polyglot idlers had been called by the winged 
walking delegate of the Lord.

Standing on a pine box a head higher than his flock of goats, the 
Preacher exhorted whatever transient and shifting audience the 
north wind doled out to him.  It was a slave market.  Fifteen cents 
bought you a man.  You deeded him to Morpheus; and the 
recording angel gave you credit.

The preacher was incredibly earnest and unwearied.  he had 
looked over the list of things one may do for one's fellow man, and 
had assumed for himself the task of putting to bed all who might 
apply at his soap box on the nights of Wednesday and Sunday.  
That left but five nights for other philanthropists to handle; and 
had they done their part as well, this wicked city might have 
become a vast Arcadian dormitory where all might snooze and 
snore the happy hours away, letting problem plays and the rent 
man and business go to the deuce.

The hour of eight was but a little while past; sightseers in a small, 
dark mass of pay ore were gathered in the shadow of General 
Worth's monument.  Now and then, shyly, ostentatiously, 
carelessly, or with conscientious exactness one would step forward 
and bestow upon the Preacher small bills or silver.  Then a 
lieutenant of Scandinavian coloring and enthusiasm would march 
away to a lodging house with a squad of the redeemed.  All the 
while the Preacher exhorted the crowd in terms beautifully devoid 
of eloquence--splendid with the deadly, accusative monotony of 
truth.  Before the picture of the Bed Liners fades you must hear 
one phrase of the Preacher's--the one that formed his theme that 
night.  It is worthy of being stenciled on all the white ribbons in 
the world.

_"No man ever learned to be a drunkard on five-cent whisky."_

Think of it, tippler.  It covers the ground from the sprouting rye to 
the Potter's Field.

A clean-profiled, erect young man in the rear rank of the bedless 
emulated the terrapin, drawing his head far down into the shell of 
his coat collar.  It was a well-cut tweed coat; and the trousers still 
showed signs of having flattened themselves beneath the 
compelling goose.  But, conscientiously, I must warn the milliner's 
apprentice who reads this, expecting a Reginald Montressor in 
straits, to peruse no further.  The young man was no other than 
Thomas McQuade, ex-coachman, discharged for drunkenness one 
month before, and now reduced to the grimy ranks of the one-
night bed seekers.

If you live in smaller New York you must know the Van Smuythe 
family carriage, drawn by the two 1,500-pound, 100 to 1-shot 
bays.  The carriage is shaped like a bath-tub.  In each end of it 
reclines an old lady Van Smuythe holding a black sunshade the 
size of a New Year's Eve feather tickler.  Before his downfall 
Thomas McQuade drove the Van Smuythe bays and was himself 
driven by Annie, the Van Smuythe lady's maid.  But it is one of 
the saddest things about romance that a tight shoe or an empty 
commissary or an aching tooth will make a temporary heretic of 
any Cupid-worshiper.  And Thomas's physical troubles were not 
few.  Therefore, his soul was less vexed with thoughts of his lost 
lady's maid than it was by the fancied presence of certain non-
existent things that his racked nerves almost convinced him were 
flying, dancing, crawling, and wriggling on the asphalt and in the 
air above and around the dismal campus of the Bed Line army.  
Nearly four weeks of straight whisky and a diet limited to 
crackers, bologna, and pickles often guarantees a psycho-
zoological sequel.  Thus desperate, freezing, angry, beset by 
phantoms as he was, he felt the need of human sympathy and 
intercourse.

The Bed Liner standing at his right was a young man of about his 
own age, shabby but neat.

"What's the diagnosis of your case, Freddy?" asked Thomas, with 
the freemasonic familiarity of the damned--"Booze?  That's mine.  
You don't look like a panhandler.  Neither am I.  A month ago I 
was pushing the lines over the backs of the finest team of 
Percheron buffaloes that ever made their mile down Fifth Avenue 
in 2.85.  And look at me now!  Say; how do you come to be at this 
bed bargain-counter rummage sale."

The other young man seemed to welcome the advances of the airy 
ex-coachman.

"No," said he, "mine isn't exactly a case of drink.  Unless we allow 
that Cupid is a bartender.  I married unwisely, according to the 
opinion of my unforgiving relatives.  I've been out of work for a 
year because I don't know how to work; and I've been sick in 
Bellevue and other hospitals for months.  My wife and kid had to 
go back to her mother.  I was turned out of the hospital yesterday.  
And I haven't a cent.  That's my tale of woe."

"Tough luck," said Thomas.  "A man alone can pull through all 
right.  But I hate to see the women and kids get the worst of it."

Just then there hummed up Fifth Avenue a motor car so splendid, 
so red, so smoothly running, so craftily demolishing the speed 
regulations that it drew the attention even of the listless Bed 
Liners.  Suspended and pinioned on its left side was an extra tire.

When opposite the unfortunate company the fastenings of this tire 
became loosed.  It fell to the asphalt, bounded and rolled rapidly in 
the wake of the flying car.

Thomas McQuade, scenting an opportunity, darted from his place 
among the Preacher's goats.  In thirty seconds he had caught the 
rolling tire, swung it over his shoulder, and was trotting smartly 
after the car.  On both sides of the avenue people were shouting, 
whistling, and waving canes at the red car, pointing to the 
enterprising Thomas coming up with the lost tire.

One dollar, Thomas had estimated, was the smallest guerdon that 
so grand an automobilist could offer for the service he had 
rendered, and save his pride.

Two blocks away the car had stopped.  There was a little, brown, 
muffled chauffeur driving, and an imposing gentleman wearing a 
magnificent sealskin coat and a silk hat on a rear seat.

Thomas proffered the captured tire with his best ex-coachman 
manner and a look in the brighter of his reddened eyes that was 
meant to be suggestive to the extent of a silver coin or two and 
receptive up to higher denominations.

But the look was not so construed.  The sealskinned gentleman 
received the tire, placed it inside the car, gazed intently at the ex-
coachman, and muttered to himself inscrutable words.

"Strange--strange!" said he.  "Once or twice even I, myself, have 
fancied that the Chaldean Chiroscope has availed.  Could it be 
possible?"

Then he addressed less mysterious words to the waiting and 
hopeful Thomas.

"Sir, I thank you for your kind rescue of my tire.  And I would ask 
you, if I may, a question.  Do you know the family of Van 
Smuythes living in Washington Square North?"

"Oughtn't I to?" replied Thomas.  "I lived there.  Wish I did yet."

The sealskinned gentleman opened a door of the car.

"Step in please," he said.  "You have been expected."

Thomas McQuade obeyed with surprise but without hesitation.  A 
seat in a motor car seemed better than standing room in the Bed 
Line.  But after the lap-robe had been tucked about him and the 
auto had sped on its course, the peculiarity of the invitation 
lingered in his mind.

"Maybe the guy hasn't got any change," was his diagnosis.  "Lots 
of these swell rounders don't lug about any ready money.  Guess 
he'll dump me out when he gets to some joint where he can get 
cash on his mug.  Anyhow, it's a cinch that I've got that open-air 
bed convention beat to a finish."

Submerged in his greatcoat, the mysterious automobilist seemed, 
himself, to marvel at the surprises of life.  "Wonderful! amazing! 
strange!" he repeated to himself constantly.

When the car had well entered the crosstown Seventies, it swung 
eastward a half block and stopped before a row of high-stooped, 
brownstone-front houses.

"Be kind enough to enter my house with me," said the sealskinned 
gentleman when they had alighted.  "He's going to dig up, sure," 
reflected Thomas, following him inside.

There was a dim light in the hall.  His host conducted him through 
a door to the left, closing it after him and leaving them in absolute 
darkness.  Suddenly a luminous globe, strangely decorated, shone 
faintly in the centre of an immense room that seemed to Thomas 
more splendidly appointed than any he had ever seen on the stage 
or read of in fairy tales.

The walls were hidden by gorgeous red hangings embroidered with 
fantastic gold figures.  At the rear end of the room were draped 
porti`eres of dull gold spangled with silver crescents and stars.  
The furniture was of the costliest and rarest styles.  The ex-
coachman's feet sank into rugs as fleecy and deep as snowdrifts.  
There were three or four oddly shaped stands or tables covered 
with black velvet drapery.

Thomas McQuade took in the splendors of this palatial apartment 
with one eye.  With the other he looked for his imposing 
conductor--to find that he had disappeared.

"B'gee!" muttered Thomas, "this listens like a spook shop.  
Shouldn't wonder if it ain't one of these Moravian Nights' 
adventures that you read about.  Wonder what became of the furry 
guy."

Suddenly a stuffed owl that stood on an ebony perch near the 
illuminated globe slowly raised his wings and emitted from his 
eyes a brilliant electric glow.

With a fright-born imprecation, Thomas seized a bronze statuette 
of Hebe from a cabinet near by and hurled it with all his might at 
the terrifying and impossible fowl.  The owl and his perch went 
over with a crash.  With the sound there was a click, and the room 
was flooded with light from a dozen frosted globes along the walls 
and ceiling.  The gold porti`eres parted and closed, and the 
mysterious automobilist entered the room.  He was tall and wore 
evening dress of perfect cut and accurate taste.  A Vandyke beard 
of glossy, golden brown, rather long and wavy hair, smoothly 
parted, and large, magnetic, orientally occult eyes gave him a most 
impressive and striking appearance.  If you can conceive a Russian 
Grand Duke in a Rajah's throneroom advancing to greet a visiting 
Emperor, you will gather something of the majesty of his manner.  
But Thomas McQuade was too near his _d t's_ to be mindful of 
his _p's_ and _q's_.  When he viewed this silken, polished, and 
somewhat terrifying host he thought vaguely of dentists.

"Say, doc," said he resentfully, "that's a hot bird you keep on tap.  I 
hope I didn't break anything.  But I've nearly got the williwalloos, 
and when he threw them 32-candle-power-lamps of his on me, I 
took a snap-shot at him with that little brass Flatiron Girl that 
stood on the sideboard."

"That is merely a mechanical toy," said the gentleman with a wave 
of his hand.  "May I ask you to be seated while I explain why I 
brought you to my house.  Perhaps you would not understand nor 
be in sympathy with the psychological prompting that caused me 
to do so.  So I will come to the point at once by venturing to refer 
to your admission that you know the Van Smuythe family, of 
Washington Square North."

"Any silver missing," asked Thomas tartly.  "Any joolry displaced?  
Of course I know 'em.  Any of the old ladies' sunshades 
disappeared?  Well, I know 'em.  And then what?"

The Grand Duke rubbed his white hands together softly.

"Wonderful!" he murmured.  "Wonderful!  Shall I come to believe 
in the Chaldean Chiroscope myself?  Let me assure you," he 
continued, "that there is nothing for you to fear.  Instead, I think I 
can promise you that very good fortune awaits you.  We will see."

"Do they want me back?" asked Thomas, with something of his 
old professional pride in his voice.  "I'll promise to cut out the 
booze and do the right thing if they'll try me again.  But how did 
you get wise, doc?  B'gee, it's the swellest employment agency I 
was ever in, with its flashlight owls and so forth."

With an indulgent smile the gracious host begged to be excused 
for two minutes.  He went out to the sidewalk and gave an order to 
the chauffeur, who still waited with the car.  Returning to the 
mysterious apartment, he sat by his guest and began to entertain 
him so well by his witty and genial converse that the poor Bed 
Liner almost forgot the cold streets from which he had been so 
recently and so singularly rescued.  A servant brought some tender 
cold fowl and tea biscuits and a glass of miraculous wine; and 
Thomas felt the glamour of Arabia envelop him.  Thus half an 
hour sped quickly; and then the honk of the returned motor car at 
the door suddenly drew the Grand Duke to his feet, with another 
soft petition for a brief absence.

Two women, well muffled against the cold, were admitted at the 
front door and suavely conducted by the master of the house down 
the hall through another door to the left and into a smaller room, 
which was screened and segregated from the larger front room by 
heavy, double porti`eres.  here the furnishings were even more 
elegant and exquisitely tasteful than in the other.  On a gold-inlaid 
rosewood table were scattered sheets of white paper and a queer, 
triangular instrument or toy, apparently of gold, standing on little 
wheels.

The taller woman threw back her black veil and loosened her 
cloak.  She was fifty, with a wrinkled and sad face.  The other, 
young and plump, took a chair a little distance away and to the 
rear as a servant or an attendant might have done.

"You sent for me, Professor Cherubusco," said the elder woman, 
wearily.  "I hope you have something more definite than usual to 
say.  I've about lost the little faith I had in your art.  I would not 
have responded to your call this evening if my sister had not 
insisted upon it."

"Madam," said the professor, with his princeliest smile, "the true 
Art cannot fail.  To find the true psychic and potential branch 
sometimes requires time.  We have not succeeded, I admint, with 
the cards, the crystal, the stars, the magic formulae of Zarazin, nor 
the Oracle of Po.  But we have at last discovered the true psychic 
route.  The Chaldean Chiroscope has been successful in our 
search."

The professor's voice had a ring that seemed to proclaim his belief 
in his own words.  The elderly lady looked at him with a little 
more interest.

"Why, there was no sense in those words that it wrote with my 
hands on it," she said.  "What do you mean?"

"The words were these," said Professor Cherubusco, rising to his 
full magnificent height:  _"By the fifth wheel of the chariot he 
shall come."_

"I haven't seen many chariots," said the lady, "but I never saw one 
with five wheels."

"Progress," said the professor--"progress in science and mechanics 
has accomplished it--though, to be exact, we may speak of it only 
as an extra tire.  Progress in occult art has advanced in proportion.  
Madam, I repeat that the Chaldean Chiroscope has succeeded.  I 
can not only answer the question that you have propounded, but I 
can produce before your eyes the proof thereof."

And now the lady was disturbed both in her disbelief and in her 
poise.

"O professor!" she cried anxiously--"When?--where?  Has he been 
found?  Do not keep me in suspense."

"I beg you will excuse me for a very few minutes," said Professor 
Cherubusco, "and I think I can demonstrate to you the efficacy of 
the true Art."

Thomas was contentedly munching the last crumbs of the bread 
and fowl when the enchanter appeared suddenly at his side.

"Are you willing to return to your old home if you are assured of a 
welcome and restoration to favor?" he asked, with his courteous, 
royal smile.

"Do I look bughouse?" answered Thomas.  "Enough of the 
footback life for me.  But will they have me again?  The old lady is 
as fixed in her ways as a nut on a new axle."

"My dear young man," said the other, "she has been searching for 
you everywhere."

"Great!" said Thomas.  "I'm on the job.  That team of dropsical 
domedaries they call horses is a handicap for a first-class 
coachman like myself; but I'll take the job back, sure, doc.  They're 
good people to be with."

And now a change came o'er the suave countenance of the Caliph 
of Bagdad.  He looked keenly and suspiciously at the ex-
coachman.

"May I ask what your name is?" he said shortly.

"You've been looking for me," said Thomas, "and don't know my 
name?  You're a funny kind of sleuth.  You must be one of the 
Central Office gumshoers.  I'm Thomas McQuade, of course; and 
I've been chauffeur of the Van Smuythe elephant team for a year.  
They fired me a month ago for--well, doc, you saw what I did to 
your old owl.  I went broke on booze, and when I saw the tire drop 
off your whiz wagon I was standing in that squad of hoboes at the 
Worth monument waiting for a free bed.  Now, what's the prize for 
the best answer to all this?"

To his intense surprise Thomas felt himself lifted by the collar and 
dragged, without a word of explanation, to the front door.  This 
was opened, and he was kicked forcibly down the steps with one 
heavy, disillusionizing, humiliating impact of the stupendous 
Arabian's shoe.

As soon as the ex-coachman had recovered his feet and his wits he 
hastened as fast as he could eastward toward Broadway.

"Crazy guy," was his estimate of the mysterious automobilist.  
"Just wanted to have some fun kiddin', I guess.  He might have 
dug up a dollar, anyhow.  Now I've got to hurry up and get back to 
that gang of bum bed hunters before they all get preached to 
sleep."

When Thomas reached the end of his two-mile walk he found the 
ranks of the homeless reduced to a squad of perhaps eight or ten.  
He took the proper place of a newcomer at the left end of the rear 
rank.  In a file in front of him was the young man who had spoken 
to him of hospitals and something of a wife and child.

"Sorry to see you back again," said the young man, turning to 
speak to him.  "I hoped you had struck something better than this."

"Me?" said Thomas.  "Oh, I just took a run around the block to 
keep warm!  I see the public ain't lending to the Lord very fast to-
night."

"In this kind of weather," said the young man, "charity avails itself 
of the proverb, and both begins and ends at home."

And the Preacher and his vehement lieutenant struck up a last 
hymn of petition to Providence and man.  Those of the Bed Liners 
whose windpipes still registered above 32 degrees hopelessly and 
tunelessly joined in.

In the middle of the second verse Thomas saw a sturdy girl with 
wind-tossed drapery battling against the breeze and coming 
straight toward him from the opposite sidewalk.  "Annie!" he 
yelled, and ran toward her.

"You fool, you fool!" she cried, weeping and laughing, and 
hanging upon his neck, "why did you do it?"

"The Stuff," explained Thomas briefly.  "You know.  But 
subsequently nit.  Not a drop."  He led her to the curb.  "How did 
you happen to see me?"

"I came to find you," said Annie, holding tight to his sleeve.  "Oh, 
you big fool!  Professor Cherubusco told us that we might find you 
here."

"Professor Ch--  Dont' know the guy.  What saloon does he work 
in?"

"He's a clairvoyant, Thomas; the greatest in the world.  He found 
you with the Chaldean telescope, he said."

"He's a liar," said Thomas.  "I never had it.  He never saw me have 
anybody's telescope."

"And he said you came in a chariot with five wheels or 
something."

"Annie," said Thoms solicitously, "you're giving me the wheels 
now.  If I had a chariot I'd have gone to bed in it long ago.  And 
without any singing and preaching for a nightcap, either."

"Listen, you big fool.  The Missis says she'll take you back.  I 
begged her to.  But you must behave.  And you can go up to the 
house to-night; and your old room over the stable is ready."

"Great!" said Thomas earnestly.  "You are It, Annie.  But when did 
these stunts happen?"

"To-night at Professor Cherubusco's.  He sent his automobile for 
the Missis, and she took me along.  I've been there with her 
before."

"What's the professor's line?"

"He's a clairvoyant and a witch.  The Missis consults him.  He 
knows everything.  But he hasn't done the Missis any good yet, 
though she's paid him hundreds of dollars.  But he told us that the 
stars told him we could find you here."

"What's the old lady want this cherry-buster to do?"

"That's a family secret," said Annie.  "And now you've asked 
enough questions.  Come on home, you big fool."

They had moved but a little way up the street when Thomas 
stopped.

"Got any dough with you, Annie?" he asked.

Annie looked at him sharply.

"Oh, I know what that look means," said Thomas.  "You're wrong.  
Not another drop.  But there's a guy that was standing next to me 
in the bed line over there that's in bad shape.  He's the right kind, 
and he's got wives or kids or something, and he's on the sick list.  
No booze.  If you could dig up half a dollar for him so he could get 
a decent bed I'd like it."

Annie's fingers began to wiggle in her purse.

"Sure, I've got money," said she.  "Lots of it.  Twelve dollars."  
And then she added, with woman's ineradicable suspicion of 
vicarious benevolence:  "Bring him here and let me see him first."

Thomas went on his mission.  The wan Bed Liner came readily 
enough.  As the two drew near, Annie looked up from her purse 
and screamed:

"Mr. Walter-- Oh--Mr. Walter!:

"Is that you, Annie?" said the young man meekly.

"Oh, Mr. Walter!--and the Missis hunting high and low for you!"

"Does mother want to see me?" he asked, with a flush coming out 
on his pale cheek.

"She's been hunting for you high and low.  Sure, she wants to see 
you.  She wants you to come home.  She's tried police and 
morgues and lawyers and advertising and detectives and rewards 
and everything.  And then she took up clearvoyants.  You'll go 
right home, won't you, Mr. Walter?"

"Gladly, if she wants me," said the young man.  "Three years is a 
long time.  I suppose I'll have to walk up, though, unless the street 
cars are giving free rides.  I used to walk and beat that old plug 
team of bays we used to drive to the carriage.  Have they got them 
yet?"

"They have," said Thomas, feelingly.  "And they'll have 'em ten 
years from now.  The life of the royal elephantibus truckhorseibus 
is one hundred and forty-nine years.  I'm the coachman.  Just got 
my reappointment five minutes ago.  Let's all ride up in a surface 
car--that is--er--if Annie will pay the fares."

On the Broadway car Annie handed each one of the prodigals a 
nickel to pay the conductor.

"Seems to me you are mighty reckless the way you throw large 
sums of money around," said Thomas sarcastically.

"In that purse," said Annie decidedly, "is exactly $11.85.  I shall 
take every cent of it to-morrow and give it to professor 
Cherubusco, the greatest man in the world."

"Well," said Thomas, "I guess he must be a pretty fly guy to pipe 
off things the way he does.  I'm glad his spooks told him where 
you could find me.  If you'll give me his address, some day I'll go 
up there, myself, and shake his hand."

Presently Thomas moved tentatively in his seat, and thoughtfully 
felt an abrasion or two on his knees and his elbows.

"Say, Annie," said he confidentially, maybe it's one of the last 
dreams of booze, but I've a kind of a recollection of riding in 
authomobile with a swell guy that took me to a house full of eagles 
and arc lights.  He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked 
me down the front steps.  If it was the _d t's_, why am I so sore?"

"Shut up, you fool," said Annie.

"If I could find that funny guy's house, said Thomas, in 
conclusion, "I'd go up there some day and punch his nose for him."









VI

THE POET AND THE PEASANT

The other day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close 
communion with nature all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an 
editor.

It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine breath of the fields, the 
song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams.

When the poet called again to see about it, with hopes of a 
beefsteak dinner in his heart, it was handed back to him with the 
comment:

"Too artificial."

Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess County chianti, and 
swallowed indignation with slippery forkfuls.

And there we dug a pit for the editor.  With us was Conant, a well-
arrived writer of fiction--a man who had trod on asphalt all his life, 
and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with 
sensations of disgust from the windows of express trains.

Conant wrote a poem and called it "The Doe and the Brook."  It 
was a fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a 
poet who had strayed with Amaryllis only as far as the florist's 
windows, and whose sole ornithological discussion had been 
carried on with a waiter.  Conant signed this poem, and we sent it 
to the same editor.

But this has very little to do with the story.

Just as the editor was reading the first line of the poem, on the next 
morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat, and loped 
slowly up Forty-second Street.

The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging lip 
and hair the exact color of the little orphan's (afterward discovered 
to be the earl's daughter) in one of Mr. Blaney's plays.  His 
trousers were corduroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the 
middle of his back.  One bootleg was outside the corduroys.  You 
looked expectantly, though in vain, at his straw hat for ear holes, 
its shape inaugurating the suspicion that it had been ravaged from 
a former equine possessor.  In his hand was a valise--description of 
it is an impossible task; a Boston man would not have carried his 
lunch and law books to his office in it.  And above one ear, in his 
hair, was a wisp of hay--the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of 
innocence, the last clinging touch of the Garden of Eden lingering 
to shame the gold-brick men.

Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by.  They saw 
the raw stranger stand in the gutter and stretch his neck at the tall 
buildings.  At this they ceased to smile, and even to look at him.  It 
had been done so often.  A few glanced at the antique valise to see 
what Coney "attraction" or brand of chewing gum he might be 
thus dinning into his memory.  But for the most part he was 
ignored.  Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like 
a circus clown out of the way of cabs and street cars.

At Eighth Avenue stood "Bunco Harry," with his dyed mustache 
and shiny, good-natured eyes.  Harry was too good an artist not to 
be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part.  He edged up 
to the countryman, who had stopped to open his mouth at a 
jewelry store window, and shook his head.

"Too thick, pal," he said, critically--"too thick by a couple of 
inches.  I don't know what your lay is; but you've got the properties 
too thick.  That hay, now--why, they don't even allow that on 
Proctor's circuit any more."

"I don't understand you, mister," said the green one.  "I'm not 
lookin' for any circus.  I've just run down from Ulster County to 
look at the town, bein' that the hayin's over with.  Gosh! but it's a 
whopper.  I thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here 
town is five times as big."

"Oh, well," said "Bunco Harry," raising his eyebrows, "I didn't 
mean to butt in.  You don't have to tell.  I thought you ought to 
tone down a little, so I tried to put you wise.  Wish you success at 
your graft, whatever it is.  Come and have a drink, anyhow."

"I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer," acknowledged the 
other.

They went to a caf'e frequented by men with smooth faces and 
shifty eyes, and sat at their drinks.

"I'm glad I come across you, mister," said Haylocks.  "How'd you 
like to play a game or two of seven-up?  I've got the keerds."

He fished them out of Noah's valise--a rare, inimitable deck, 
greasy with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields.

"Bunco Harry" laughed loud and briefly.

"Not for me, sport," he said, firmly.  "I don't go against that make-
up of yours for a cent.  But I still say you've overdone it.  The 
Reubs haven't dressed like that since '79.  I doubt if you could 
work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch with that layout."

"Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money," boasted Haylocks.  
He drew forth a tightly rolled mass of bills as large as a teacup, 
and laid it on the table.

"Got that for my share of grandmother's farm," he announced.  
"There's $950 in that roll.  Thought I'd come to the city and look 
around for a likely business to go into."

"Bunco Harry" took up the roll of money and looked at it with 
almost respect in his smiling eyes.

"I've seen worse," he said, critically.  "But you'll never do it in 
them clothes.  You want to get light tan shoes and a black suit and 
a straw hat with a colored band, and talk a good deal about 
Pittsburg and freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in 
order to work off phony stuff like that."

"What's his line?" asked two or three shifty-eyed men of "Bunco 
Harry" after Haylocks had gathered up his impugned money and 
departed.

"The queer, I guess," said Harry.  "Or else he's one of Jerome's 
men.  Or some guy with a new graft.  He's too much hayseed.  
Maybe that his--I wonder now--oh, no, it couldn't have been real 
money."

Haylocks wandered on.  Thirst probably assailed him again, for he 
dived into a dark groggery on a side street and bought beer.  At 
first sight of him their eyes brightened; but when his insistent and 
exaggerated rusticity became apparent their expressions changed 
to wary suspicion.

Haylocks swung his valise across the bar.

"Keep that a while for me, mister," he said, chewing at the end of a 
virulent claybank cigar.  "I'll be back after I knock around a spell.  
And keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though 
maybe you wouldn't think so to look at me."

Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band piece, and 
Haylocks was off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle 
of his back.

"Divvy, Mike," said the men hanging upon the bar, winking 
openly at one another.

"Honest, now," said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side.  
"You don't think I'd fall to that, do you?  Anybody can see he ain't 
no jay.  One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess.  He's a shine if 
he made himself up.  There ain't no parts of the country now where 
they dress like that since they run rural free delivery to Providence, 
Rhode Island.  If he's got nine-fifty in that valise it's a ninety-eight 
cent Waterbury that's stopped at ten minutes to ten."

When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to 
amuse he returned for his valise.  And then down Broadway he 
gallivanted, culling the sights with his eager blue eyes.  But still 
and evermore Broadway rejected him with curt glances and 
sardonic smiles.  He was the oldest of the "gags" that the city must 
endure.  He was so flagrantly impossible, so ultra rustic, so 
exaggerated beyond the most freakish products of the barnyard, 
the hayfield and the vaudeville stage, that he excited only 
weariness and suspicion.  And the wisp of hay in his hair was so 
genuine, so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so clamorously 
rural that even a shellgame man would have put up his peas and 
folded his table at the sight of it.

Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once 
more exhumed his roll of yellow-backs from the valise.  The outer 
one, a twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a newsboy.

"Son," said he, "run somewhere and get this changed for me.  I'm 
mighty nigh out of chicken feed.  I guess you'll get a nickel if 
you'll hurry up."

A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face.

"Aw, watchert'ink!  G'wan and get yer funny bill changed yerself.  
Dey ain't no farm clothes yer got on.  G'wan wit yer stage money."

On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gambling-house.  He 
was Haylocks, and his expression suddenly grew cold and 
virtuous.

"Mister," said the rural one.  "I've heard of places in this here town 
where a fellow could have a good game of old sledge or peg a card 
at keno.  I got $950 in this valise, and I come down from old 
Ulster to see the sights.  Know where a fellow could get action on 
about $9 or $10?  I'm goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll 
buy out a business of some kind."

The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his 
left forefinger nail.

"Cheese it, old man," he murmured, reproachfully.  "The Central 
Office must be bughouse to send you out looking like such a gillie.  
You couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in 
them Tony Pastor props.  The recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley 
has got you beat a crosstown block in the way of Elizabethan 
scenery and mechanical accessories.  Let it be skiddoo for yours.  
Nay, I know of no gilded halls where one may bet a patrol wagon 
on the ace."

Rebuffed once again by the great city that is so swift to detect 
artificialities, Haylocks sat upon the curb and presented his 
thoughts to hold a conference.

"It's my clothes," said he; "durned if it ain't.  They think I'm a 
hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me.  Nobody never 
made fun of this hat in Ulster County.  I guess if you want folks to 
notice you in New York you must dress up like they do."

So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake 
through their noses and rubbed their hands and ran the tape line 
ecstatically over the buldge in his inside pocket where reposed a 
red nubbin of corn with an even number of rows.  And messengers 
bearing parcels and boxes streamed to his hotel on Broadway 
within the lights of Long Acre.

At 9 o'clock in the evening one descended to the sidewalk whom 
Ulster County would have foresworn.  Bright tan were his shoes; 
his hat the latest block.  His light gray trousers were deeply 
creased; a gay blue silk handkerchief flapped from the breast 
pocket of his elegant English walking coat.  His collar might have 
graced a laundry window; his blond hair was trimmed close; the 
wisp of hay was gone.

For an instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely air of a 
boulevardier concocting in his mind the route for his evening 
pleasures.  And then he turned down the gay, bright street with the 
easy and graceful tread of a millionaire.

But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes in 
the city had enveloped him in their field of vision.  A stout man 
with gray eyes picked two of his friends with a lift of his eyebrows 
from the row of loungers in front of the hotel.

"The juiciest jay I've seen in six months," said the man with gray 
eyes.  "Come along."

It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West Forty-
seventh Street Police Station with the story of his wrongs.

"Nine hundred and fifty dollars," he gasped, "all my share of 
grandmother's farm."

The desk seargeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue, of 
Locust Valley farm, Ulster County, and then bagan to take 
descriptions of the strong-arm gentlemen.

When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he 
was received over the head of the office boy into the inner office 
that is decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J. G. Brown.

"When I read the first line of 'The Doe and the Brook,'" said the 
editor, "I knew it to be the work of one whose life has been heart to 
heart with Nature.  The finished art of the line did not blind me to 
that fact.  To use a somewhat homely comparison, it was as if a 
wild, free child of the woods and fields were to don the garb of 
fashion and walk down Broadway.  Beneath the apparel the man 
would show."

"Thanks," said Conant.  "I suppose the check will be round on 
Thursday, as usual."

The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed.  You can 
take your choice of "Stay on the Farm" or "Don't Write Poetry."









VII

THE ROBE OF PEACE

Mysteries follow one another so closely in a great city that the 
reading public and the friends of Johnny Bellchambers have 
ceased to marvel at his sudden and unexplained disappearance 
nearly a year ago.  This particular mystery has now been cleared 
up, but the solution is so strange and incredible to the mind of the 
average man that only a select few who were in close touch with 
Bellchambers will give it full credence.

Johnny Bellchambers, as is well known, belonged to the 
intrinsically inner circle of the _'elite_.  Without any of the 
ostentation of the fashionable ones who endeavor to attract notice 
by eccentric display of wealth and show he still was _au fait_ in 
everything that gave deserved lustre to his high position in the 
ranks of society.

Especially did he shine in the matter of dress.  In this he was the 
despair of imitators.  Always correct, exquisitely groomed, and 
possessed of an unlimited wardrobe, he was conceded to be the 
best-dressed man in New York, and, therefore, in America.  There 
was not a tailor in Gotham who would not have deemed it a 
precious boon to have been granted the privilege of making 
Bellchambers' clothes without a cent of pay.  As he wore them, 
they would have been a priceless advertisement.  Trousers were his 
special passion.  Here nothing but perfection would he notice.  He 
would have worn a patch as quickly as he would have overlooked 
a wrinkle.  He kept a man in his apartments always busy pressing 
his ample supply.  His friends said that three hours was the limit of 
time that he would wear these garments without exchanging.

Bellchambers disappeared very suddenly.  For three days his 
absence brought no alarm to his friends, and then they began to 
operate the usual methods of inquiry.  All of them failed.  He had 
left absolutely no trace behind.  Then the search for a motive was 
instituted, but none was found.  He had no enemies, he had no 
debts, there was no woman.  There were several thousand dollars 
in his bank to his credit.  He had never showed any tendency 
toward mental eccentricity; in fact, he was of a particularly calm 
and well-balanced temperament.  Every means of tracing the 
vanished man was made use of, but without avail.  It was one of 
those cases--more numerous in late years--where men seem to 
have gone out like the flame of a candle, leaving not even a trail of 
smoke as a witness.

In May, Tom Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam, two of Bellchambers' 
old friends, went for a little run on the other side.  While pottering 
around in Italy and Switzerland, they happened, one day, to hear of 
a monastery in the Swiss Alps that promised something outside of 
the ordinary tourist-beguiling attractions.  The monastery was 
almost inaccessible to the average sightseer, being on an extremely 
rugged and precipitous spur of the mountains.  The attractions it 
possessed but did not advertise were, first, an exclusive and divine 
cordial made by the monks that was said to far surpass benedictine 
and chartreuse.  Next a huge brass bell so purely and accurately 
cast that it had not ceased sounding since it was first rung three 
hundred years ago.  Finally, it was asserted that no Englishman 
had ever set foot within its walls.  Eyres and Gilliam decided that 
these three reports called for investigation.

It took them two days with the aid of two guides to reach the 
monastery of St. Gondrau.  It stood upon a frozen, wind-swept 
crag with the snow piled about it in treacherous, drifting masses.  
They were hospitably received by the brothers whose duty it was 
to entertain the infrequent guest.  They drank of the precious 
cordial, finding it rarely potent and reviving.  They listened to the 
great, ever-echoing bell, and learned that they were pioneer 
travelers, in those gray stone walls, over the Englishman whose 
restless feet have trodden nearly every corner of the earth.

At three o'clock on the afternoon they arrived, the two young 
Gothamites stood with good Brother Cristofer in the great, cold 
hallway of the monastery to watch the monks march past on their 
way to the refectory.  They came slowly, pacing by twos, with their 
heads bowed, treading noiselessly with sandaled feet upon the 
rough stone flags.  As the procession slowly filed past, Eyres 
suddenly gripped Gilliam by the arm.  "Look," he whispered, 
eagerly, "at the one just opposite you now--the one on this side, 
with his hand at his waist--if that isn't Johnny Bellchambers then I 
never saw him!"

Gilliam saw and recognized the lost glass of fashion.

"What the deuce," said he, wonderingly, "is old Bell doing here?  
Tommy, it surely can't be he!  Never heard of Bell having a turn 
for the religious.  Fact is, I've heard him say things when a four-in-
hand didn't seem to tie up just right that would bring him up for 
court-martial before any church."

"It's Bell, without a doubt," said Eyres, firmly, "or I'm pretty badly 
in need of an oculist.  But think of Johnny Bellchambers, the 
Royal High Chancellor of swell togs and the Mahatma of pink 
teas, up here in cold storage doing penance in a snuff-colored 
bathrobe!  I can't get it straight in my mind.  Let's ask the jolly old 
boy that's doing honors."

Brother Cristofer was appealed to for information.  By that time 
the monks had passed into the refectory.  He could not tell to 
which one they referred.  Bellchambers?  Ah, the brothers of St. 
Gondrau abandoned their worldly names when they took the vows.  
Did the gentlemen wish to speak with one of the brothers?  If they 
would come to the refectory and indicate the one they wished to 
see, the reverend abbot in authority would, doubtless, permit it.

Eyres and Gilliam went into the dining hall and pointed out to 
Brother Cristofer the man they had seen.  Yes, it was Johnny 
Bellchambers.  They saw his face plainly now, as he sat among the 
dingy brothers, never looking up, eating broth from a coarse, 
brown bowl.

Permission to speak to one of the brothers was granted to the two 
travelers by the abbot, and they waited in a reception room for him 
to come.  When he did come, treading softly in his sandals, both 
Eyres and Gilliam looked at him in perplexity and astonishment.  
It was Johnny Bellchambers, but he had a different look.  Upon his 
smooth-shaven face was an expression of ineffable peace, of 
rapturous attainment, of perfect and complete happiness.  His form 
was proudly erect, his eyes shone with a serene and gracious light.  
He was as neat and well-groomed as in the old New York days, but 
how differently was he clad!  Now he seemed clothed in but a 
single garment--a long robe of rough brown cloth, gathered by a 
cord at the waist, and falling in straight, loose folds nearly to his 
feet.  He shook hands with his visitors with his old ease and grace 
of manner.  If there was any embarrassment in that meeting it was 
not manifested by Johnny Bellchambers.  The room had no seats; 
they stood to converse.

"Glad to see you, old man," said Eyres, somewhat awkwardly.  
"Wasn't expecting to find you up here.  Not a bad idea though, 
after all.  Society's an awful sham.  Must be a relief to shake the 
giddy whirl and retire to--er--contemplation and--er--prayer and 
hymns, and those things.

"Oh, cut that, Tommy," said Bellchambers, cheerfully.  "Don't be 
afraid that I'll pass around the plate.  I go through these thing-um-
bobs with the rest of these old boys because they are the rules.  I'm 
Brother Ambrose here, you know.  I'm given just ten minutes to 
talk to you fellows.  That's rather a new design in waistcoats you 
have on, isn't it, Gilliam?  Are they wearing those things on 
Broadway now?"

"It's the same old Johnny," said Gilliam, joyfully.  "What the devil-
-I mean why-- Oh, confound it! what did you do it for, old man?"

"Peel the bathrobe," pleaded Eyres, almost tearfully, "and go back 
with us.  The old crowd'll go wild to see you.  This isn't in your 
line, Bell.  I know half a dozen girls that wore the willow on the 
quiet when you shook us in that unaccountable way.  Hand in your 
resignation, or get a dispensation, or whatever you have to do to 
get a release from this ice factory.  You'll get catarrh here, Johnny-
-and-- My God! you haven't any socks on!"

Bellchambers looked down at his sandaled feet and smiled.

"You fellows don't understand," he said, soothingly.  "It's nice of 
you to want me to go back, but the old life will never know me 
again.  I have reached here the goal of all my ambitions.  I am 
entirely happy and contented.  Here I shall remain for the 
remainder of my days.  You see this robe that I wear?"  
Bellchambers caressingly touched the straight-hanging garment:  
"At last I have found something that will not bag at the knees.  I 
have attained--"

At that moment the deep boom of the great brass bell reverberated 
through the monastery.  It must have been a summons to 
immediate devotions, for Brother Ambrose bowed his head, turned 
and left the chamber without another word.  A slight wave of his 
hand as he passed through the stone doorway seemed to say a 
farewell to his old friends.  They left the monastery without seeing 
him again.

And this is the story that Tommy Eyres and Lancelot Gilliam 
brought back with them from their latest European tour.










VIII

THE GIRL AND THE GRAFT

The other day I ran across my old friend Ferguson Pogue.  Pogue is 
a conscientious grafter of the highest type.  His headquarters is the 
Western Hemisphere, and his line of business is anything from 
speculating in town lots on the Great Staked Plains to selling 
wooden toys in Connecticut, made by hydraulic pressure from 
nutmegs ground to a pulp.

Now and then when Pogue has made a good haul he comes to New 
York for a rest.  He says the jug of wine and loaf of bread and 
Thou in the wilderness business is about as much rest and pleasure 
to him as sliding down the bumps at Coney would be to President 
Taft.  "Give me," says Pogue, "a big city for my vacation.  
Especially New York.  I'm not much fond of New Yorkers, and 
Manhattan is about the only place on the globe where I don't find 
any."

While in the metropolis Pogue can always be found at one of two 
places.  One is a little second-hand bookshop on Fourth Avenue, 
where he reads books about his hobbies, Mahometanism and 
taxidermy.  I found him at the other--his hall bedroom in 
Eighteenth Street--where he sat in his stocking feet trying to pluck 
"The Banks of the Wabash" out of a small zither.  Four years he 
has practised this tune without arriving near enough to cast the 
longest trout line to the water's edge.  On the dresser lay a blued-
steel Colt's forty-five and a tight roll of tens and twenties large 
enough around to belong to the spring rattlesnake-story class.  A 
chambermaid with a room-cleaning air fluttered nearby in the hall, 
unable to enter or to flee, scandalized by the stocking feet, aghast 
at the Colt's, yet powerless, with her metropolitan instincts, to 
remove herself beyond the magic influence of the yellow-hued roll.

I sat on his trunk while Ferguson Pogue talked.  No one could be 
franker or more candid in his conversation.  Beside his expression 
the cry of Henry James for lacteal nourishment at the age of one 
month would have seemed like a Chaldean cryptogram.  He told 
me stories of his profession with pride, for he considered it an art.  
And I was curious enough to ask him whether he had known any 
women who followed it.

"Ladies?" said Pogue, with Western chivalry.  "Well, not to any 
great extent.  They don't amount to much in special lines of graft, 
because they're all so busy in general lines.  What?  Why, they 
have to.  Who's got the money in the world?  The men.  Did you 
ever know a man to give a woman a dollar without any 
consideration?  A man will shell out his dust to another man free 
and easy and gratis.  But if he drops a penny in one of the 
machines run by the Madam Eve's Daughters' Amalgamated 
Association and the pineapple chewing gum don't fall out when he 
pulls the lever you can hear him kick to the superintendent four 
blocks away.  Man is the hardest proposition a woman has to go 
up against.  He's the low-grade one, and she has to work overtime 
to make him pay.  Two times out of five she's salted.  She can't put 
in crushers and costly machinery.  He'd notice 'em and be onto the 
game.  They have to pan out what they get, and it hurts their tender 
hands. Some of 'em are natural sluice troughs and can carry out 
$1,000 to the ton.  The dry-eyed ones have to depend on signed 
letters, false hair, sympathy, the kangaroo walk, cowhide whips, 
ability to cook, sentimental juries, conversational powers, silk 
underskirts, ancestry, rouge, anonymous letters, violet sachet 
powders, witnesses, revolvers, pneumatic forms, carbolic acid, 
moonlight, cold cream and the evening newspapers."

"You are outrageous, Ferg," I said.  "Surely there is none of this 
'graft' as you call it, in a perfect and harmonious matrimonial 
union!"

"Well," said Pogue, "nothing that would justify you every time in 
calling Police Headquarters and ordering out the reserves and a 
vaudeville manager on a dead run.  But it's this way:  Suppose 
you're a Fifth Avenue millionaire, soaring high, on the right side of 
copper and cappers.

"You come home at night and bring a $9,000,000 diamond brooch 
to the lady who's staked your for a claim.  You hand it over.  She 
says, 'Oh, George!' and looks to see if it's backed.  She comes up 
and kisses you.  You've waited for it.  You get it.  All right.  It's 
graft.

"But I'm telling you about Artemisia Blye.  She was from Kansas 
and she suggested corn in all of its phases.  Her hair was as yellow 
as the silk; her form was as tall and graceful as a stalk in the low 
grounds during a wet summer; her eyes were as big and startling as 
bunions, and green was her favorite color.

"On my last trip into the cool recesses of your sequestered city I 
met a human named Vaucross.  He was worth--that is, he had a 
million.  He told me he was in business on the street.  'A sidewalk 
merchant?' says I, sarcastic.  'Exactly,' says he, 'Senior partner of a 
paving concern.'

"I kind of took to him.  For this reason, I met him on Broadway 
one night when I was out of heart, luck, tobacco and place.  He 
was all silk hat, diamonds and front.  He was all front.  If you had 
gone behind him you would have only looked yourself in the face.  
I looked like a cross between Count Tolstoy and a June lobster.  I 
was out of luck.  I had--but let me lay my eyes on that dealer 
again.

"Vaucross stopped and talked to me a few minutes and then he 
took me to a high-toned restaurant to eat dinner.  There was music, 
and then some Beethoven, and Bordelaise sauce, and cussing in 
French, and frangipangi, and some hauteur and cigarettes.  When I 
am flush I know them places.

"I declare, I must have looked as bad as a magazine artist sitting 
there without any money and my hair all rumpled like I was 
booked to read a chapter from 'Elsie's School Days' at a Brooklyn 
Bohemian smoker.  But Vaucross treated me like a bear hunter's 
guide.  He wasn't afraid of hurting the waiter's feelings.

"'Mr. Pogue,' he explains to me, 'I am using you.'

"'Go on,' says I; 'I hope you don't wake up.'

"And then he tells me, you know, the kind of man he was.  He was 
a New Yorker.  His whole ambition was to be noticed.  He wanted 
to be conspicuous.  He wanted people to point him out and bow to 
him, and tell others who he was.  He said it had been the desire of 
his life always.  He didn't have but a million, so he couldn't attract 
attention by spending money.  He said he tried to get into public 
notice one time by planting a little public square on the east side 
with garlic for free use of the poor; but Carnegie heard of it, and 
covered it over at once with a library in the Gaelic language.  
Three times he had jumped in the way of automibiles; but the only 
result was five broken ribs and a notice in the papers that an 
unknown man, five feet ten, with four amalgam-filled teeth, 
supposed to be the last of the famous Red Leary gang had been run 
over.

"'Ever try the reporters,' I asked him.

"'Last month,' says Mr. Vaucross, 'my expenditure for lunches to 
reporters was $124.80.'

"'Get anything out of that?' I asks.

"'That reminds me,' says he; 'add $8.50 for perpsin.  Yes, I got 
indigestion.'

"'How am I supposed to push along your scramble for prominence?'
I inquires.  'Contrast?'

"'Something of that sort to-night,' says Vaucross.  'It grieves me; 
but I am forced to resort to eccentricity.'  And here he drops his 
napkin in his soup and rises up and bows to a gent who is 
devastating a potato under a palm across the room.

"'The Police Commissioner,' says my climber, gratified.  'Friend', 
says I, in a hurry, 'have ambitions but don't kick a rung out of your 
ladder.  When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police 
you spoil my appetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and 
incriminated.  Be thoughtful.'

"At the Quaker City squab en casserole the idea about Artemisia 
Blye comes to me.

"'Suppose I can manage to get you in the papers,' says I--'a column 
or two every day in all of 'em and your picture in most of 'em for a 
week.  How much would it be worth to you?'

"'Ten thousand dollars,' says Vaucross, warm in a minute.  'But no 
murder,' says he; 'and I won't wear pink pants at a cotillon.'

"'I wouldn't ask you to,' says I.  'This is honorable, stylish and 
uneffiminate.  Tell the waiter to bring a demi tasse and some other 
beans, and I will disclose to you the opus moderandi.'

"We closed the deal an hour later in the rococo rouge et noise 
room.  I telegraphed that night to Miss Artemisia in Salina.  She 
took a couple of photographs and an autograph letter to an elder in 
the Fourth Presbyterian Church in the morning, and got some 
transportation and $80.  She stopped in Topeka long enough to 
trade a flashlight interior and a valentine to the vice-president of a 
trust company for a mileage book and a package of five-dollar 
notes with $250 scrawled on the band.

"The fifth evening after she got my wire she was waiting, all 
d'ecollet'ee and dressed up, for me and Vaucross to take her to 
dinner in one of these New York feminine apartment houses where 
a man can't get in unless he plays bezique and smokes depilatory 
powder cigarettes.

"'She's a stunner,' says Vaucross when he saw her.  'They'll give 
her a two-column cut sure.'

"This was the scheme the three of us concocted.  It was business 
straight through.  Vaucross was to rush Miss Blye with all the style 
and display and emotion he could for a month.  Of course, that 
amounted to nothing as far as his ambitions were concerned.  The 
sight of a man in a white tie and patent leather pumps pouring 
greenbacks through the large end of a cornucopia to purchase 
nutriment and heartsease for tall, willowy blondes in New York is 
as common a sight as blue turtles in delirium tremens.  But he was 
to write her love letters--the worst kind of love letters, such as your 
wife publishes after you are dead--every day.  At the end of the 
month he was to drop her, and she would bring suit for $100,000 
for breach of promise.

"Miss Artemisia was to get $10,000.  If she won the suit that was 
all; and if she lost she was to get it anyhow.  There was a signed 
contract to that effect.

"Sometimes they had me out with 'em, but not often.  I couldn't 
keep up to their style.  She used to pull out his notes and criticize 
them like bills of lading.

"'Say, you!' she'd say.  'What do you call this--letter to a Hardware 
Merchant from His Nephew on Learning that His Aunt Has 
Nettlerash?  You Eastern duffers know as much about writing love 
letters as a Kansas grasshopper does about tugboats.  "My dear 
Miss Blye!"--wouldn't that put pink icing and a little red sugar bird 
on your bridal cake?  How long do you expect to hold an audience 
in a court-room with that kind of stuff?  You want to get down to 
business, and call me "Tweedlums Babe" and "Honeysuckle," and 
sing yourself "Mama's Own Big Bad Puggy Wuggy Boy" if you 
want any limelight to concentrate upon your sparse gray hairs.  Get 
sappy.'

"After that Vaucross dipped his pen in the indelible tabasco.  His 
notes read like something or other in the original.   I could see a 
jury sitting up, and women tearing one another's hats to hear 'em 
read.  And I could see piling up for Mr. Vaucross as much 
notoriousness as Archbishop Crammer or the Brooklyn Bridge or 
cheese-on-salad ever enjoyed.  He seemed mighty pleased at the 
prospects.

"They agreed on a night; and I stood on Fifth Avenue outside a 
solemn restaurant and watched 'em.  A process-server walked in 
and handed Vaucross the papers at this table.  Everybody looked at 
'em; and he looked as proud as Cicero.  I went back to my room 
and lit a five-cent cigar, for I knew the $10,000 was as good as 
ours.

"About two hours later somebody knocked at my door.  There stood 
Vaucross and Miss Artemisia, and she was clinging--yes, sir, 
clinging--to his arm.  And they tells me they'd been out and got 
married.  And they articulated some trivial cadences about love 
and such.  And they laid down a bundle on the table and said 
'Good night' and left.

"And that's why I say," concluded Ferguson Pogue, "that a woman is 
too busy occupied with her natural vocation and instinct of graft 
such as is given her for self-preservation and amusement to make 
any great success in special lines."

"What was in the bundle they left?" I asked, with my usual 
curiosity.

"Why," said Ferguson, "there was a scalper's railroad ticket as far 
as Kansas City and two pairs of Mr. Vaucross's old pants."








IX

THE CALL OF THE TAME

When the inauguration was accomplished--the proceedings were made 
smooth by the presence of the Rough Riders--it is well known that 
a herd of those competent and loyal ex-warrriors paid a visit 
to the big city.  The newspaper reporters dug out of their trunks 
the old broad-brimmed hats and leather belts that they wear to 
North Beach fish fries, and mixed with the visitors.  No damage 
was done beyond the employment of the wonderful plural "tenderfeet" 
in each of the scribe's stories.  The Westerners mildly 
contemplated the skyscrapers as high as the third story, yawned at 
Broadway, hunched down in the big chairs in hotel corridors, and 
altogether looked as bored and dejected as a member of Ye 
Ancient and Honorable Artillery separated during a sham battle 
from his valet.

Out of this sightseeing delegations of good King Teddy's 
Gentlemen of the Royal Bear-hounds dropped one Greenbrier Nye, 
of Pin Feather, Ariz.

The daily cyclone of Sixth Avenue's rush hour swept him away 
from the company of his pardners true.  The dust from a thousand 
rustling skirts filled his eyes.  The mighty roar of trains rushing 
across the sky deafened him.  The lightning-flash of twice ten 
hundred beaming eyes confused his vision.

The storm was so sudden and tremendous that Greenbrier's first 
impulse was to lie down and grab a root.  And then he remembered 
that the disturbance was human, and not elemental; and he backed 
out of it with a grin into a doorway.

The reporters had written that but for the widebrimmed hats the 
West was not visible upon these gauchos of the North.  Heaven 
sharpen their eyes!  The suit of black diagonal, wrinkled in 
impossible places; the bright blue four-in-hand, factory tied; the 
low, turned-down collar, pattern of the days of Seymour and Blair, 
white glazed as the letters on the window of the open-day-and-
night-except-Sunday restaurants; the out-curve at the knees from 
the saddle grip; the peculiar spread of the half-closed right thumb 
and fingers from the stiff hold upon the circling lasso; the deeply 
absorbed weather tan that the hottest sun of Cape May can never 
equal; the seldom-winking blue eyes that unconsciously divided 
the rushing crowds into fours, as though they were being counted 
out of a corral; the segregated loneliness and solemnity of 
expression, as of an Emperor or of one whose horizons have not 
intruded upon him nearer than a day's ride--these brands of the 
West were set upon Greenbrier Nye.  Oh, yes; he wore a 
broadbrimmed hat, gentle reader--just like those the Madison 
Square Post Office mail carriers wear when they go up to Bronx 
Park on Sunday afternoons.

Suddenly Greenbrier Nye jumped into the drifting herd of 
metropolitan cattle, seized upon a man, dragged him out of the 
stream and gave him a buffet upon his collarbone that sent him 
reeling against a wall.

The victim recovered his hat, with the angry look of a New Yorker 
who has suffered an outrage and intends to write to the Trib. about 
it.  But he looked at his assailant, and knew that the blow was in 
consideration of love and affection after the manner of the West, 
which greets its friends with contumely and uproar and pounding 
fists, and receives its enemies in decorum and order, such as the 
judicious placing of the welcoming bullet demands.

"God in the mountains!" cried Greenbrier, holding fast to the 
foreleg of his cull.  "Can this be Longhorn Merritt?"

The other man was--oh, look on Broadway any day for the pattern-
-business man--latest rolled-brim derby--good barber, business, 
digestion and tailor.

"Greenbrier Nye!" he exclaimed, grasping the hand that had 
smitten him.  "My dear fellow!  So glad to see you!  How did you 
come to--oh, to be sure--the inaugural ceremonies--I remember 
you joined the Rough Riders.  You must come and have luncheon 
with me, of course."

Greenbrier pinned him sadly but firmly to the wall with a hand the 
size, shape and color of a McClellan saddle.

"Longy," he said, in a melancholy voice that disturbed traffic, 
"what have they been doing to you?  You act just like a citizen.  
They done made you into an inmate of the city directory.  You 
never made no such Johnny Branch execration of yourself as that 
out on the Gila.  'Come and have lunching with me!'  You never 
defined grub by any such terms of reproach in them days."

"I've been living in New York seven years," said Merritt.  "It's 
been eight since we punched cows together in Old Man Garcia's 
outfit.  Well, let's go to a caf'e, anyhow.  It sounds good to hear it 
called 'grub' again."

They picked their way through the crowd to a hotel, and drifted, as 
by a natural law, to the bar.

"Speak up," invited Greenbrier.

"A dry Martini," said Merritt.

"Oh, Lord!" cried Greenbrier; "and yet me and you once saw the 
same pink Gila monsters crawling up the walls of the same hotel in 
Ca~non Diablo!  A dry--but let that pass.  Whiskey straight--and 
they're on you."

Merritt smiled, and paid.

They lunched in a small extension of the dining room that 
connected with the caf'e.  Merritt dexterously diverted his friend's 
choice, that hovered over ham and eggs, to a pur'ee of celery, a 
salmon cutlet, a partridge pie and a desirable salad.

"On the day," said Greenbrier, grieved and thunderous, "when I 
can't hold but one drink before eating when I meet a friend I ain't 
seen in eight years at a 2 by 4 table in a thirty-cent town at 1 
o'clock on the third day of the week, I want nine broncos to kick 
me forty times over a 640-acre section of land.  Get them 
statistics?"

"Right, old man," laughed Merritt.  "Waiter, bring an absinthe 
frapp'e and--what's yours, Greenbrier?"

"Whiskey straight," mourned Nye.  "Out of the neck of a bottle you 
used to take it, Longy--straight out of the neck of a bottle on a 
galloping pony--Arizona redeye, not this ab--oh, what's the use?  
They're on you."

Merritt slipped the wine card under his glass.

"All right.  I suppose you think I'm spoiled by the city.  I'm as good 
a Westerner as you are, Greenbrier; but, somehow, I can't make up 
my mind to go back out there.  New York is comfortable--
comfortable.  I make a good living, and I live it.  No more wet 
blankets and riding herd in snowstorms, and bacon and cold 
coffee, and blowouts once in six months for me.  I reckon I'll hang 
out here in the future.  We'll take in the theatre to-night, 
Greenbrier, and after that we'll dine at--"

"I'll tell you what you are. Merritt," said Greenbrier, laying one 
elbow in his salad and the other in his butter.  "You are a 
concentrated, effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared 
Miss Sally Walker.  God made you perpendicular and suitable to 
ride straddle and use cuss words in the original.  Wherefore you 
have suffered his handiwork to elapse by removing yourself to 
New York and putting on little shoes tied with strings, and making 
faces when you talk.  I've seen you rope and tie a steer in 42 1/2.  
If you was to see one now you'd write to the Police Commissioner 
about it.  And these flapdoodle drinks that you inoculate your 
system with--these little essences of cowslip with acorns in 'em, 
and paregoric flip--they ain't anyways in assent with the cordiality 
of manhood.  I hate to see you this way."

"Well, Mr. Greenbrier," said Merritt, with apology in his tone, "in 
a way you are right.  Sometimes I do feel like I was being raised on 
the bottle.  But, I tell you, New York is comfortable--comfortable.  
There's something about it--the sights and the crowds, and the way 
it changes every day, and the very air of it that seems to tie a one-
mile-long stake rope around a man's neck, with the other end 
fastened somewhere about Thirty-fourth Street.  I don't know what 
it is."

"God knows," said Greenbrier sadly, "and I know.  The East has 
gobbled you up.  You was venison, and now you're veal.  You put 
me in mind of a japonica in a window.  You've been signed, sealed 
and diskivered.  Requiescat in hoc signo.  You make me thirsty."

"A green chartreuse here," said Merritt to the waiter.

"Whiskey straight," sighed Greenbrier, "and they're on you, you 
renegade of the round-ups."

"Guilty, with an application for mercy," said Merritt.  "You don't 
know how it is, Greenbrier.  It's so comfortable here that--"

"Please loan me your smelling salts," pleaded Greenbrier.  "If I 
hadn't seen you once bluff three bluffers from Mazatzal City with 
an empty gun in Phoenix--"

Greenbrier's voice died away in pure grief.

"Cigars!" he called harshly to the waiter, to hide his emotion.

"A pack of Turkish cigarettes for mine," said Merritt.

"They're on you," chanted Greenbrier, struggling to conceal his 
contempt.

At seven they dined in the Where-to-Dine-Well column.

That evening a galaxy had assembled there.  Bright shone the 
lights o'er fair women and br--let it go, anyhow--brave men.  The 
orchestra played charmingly.  Hardly had a tip from a diner been 
placed in its hands by a waiter when it would burst forth into 
soniferousness.  The more beer you contributed to it the more 
Meyerbeer it gave you.  Which is reciprocity.

Merritt put forth exertions on the dinner.  Greenbrier was his old 
friend, and he liked him.  He persuaded him to drink a cocktail.

"I take the horehound tea," said Greenbrier, "for old times' sake.  
But I'd prefer whiskey straight.  They're on you."

"Right!" said Merritt.  "Now, run your eye down that bill of fare 
and see if it seems to hitch on any of these items."

"Lay me on my lava bed!" said Greenbrier, with bulging eyes.  "All 
these specimens of nutriment in the grub wagon!  What's this?  
Horse with the heaves?  I pass.  But look along!  Here's truck for 
twenty roundups all spelled out in different directions.  Wait till I 
see."

The viands ordered, Merritt turned to the wine list.

"This Medoc isn't bad," he suggested.

"You're the doc," said Greenbrier.  "I'd rather have whiskey 
straight.  It's on you."

Greenbrier looked around the room.  The waiter brought things 
and took dishes away.  He was observing.  He saw a New York 
restaurant crowd enjoying itself.

"How was the range when you left the Gila?" asked Merritt.

"Fine," said Greenbrier.  "You see that lady in the red speckled silk 
at that table.  Well, she could warm over her beans at my campfire.  
Yes, the range was good.  She looks as nice as a white mustang I 
see once on Black River."

When the coffee came, Greenbrier put one foot on the seat of the 
chair next to him.

"You said it was a comfortable town, Longy," he said, meditatively.  
"Yes, it's a comfortable town.  It's different from the plains in 
a blue norther.  What did you call that mess in the crock with the 
handle, Longy?  Oh, yes, squabs in a cash roll.  They're worth the 
roll.  That white mustang had just such a way of turning his head 
and shaking his mane--look at her, Longy.  If I thought I could 
sell out my ranch at a fair price, I believe I'd--

"Gyar--song!"  he suddenly cried, in a voice that paralyzed every 
knife and fork in the restaurant.

The waiter dived toward the table.

"Two more of them cocktail drinks," ordered Greenbrier.

Merritt looked at him and smiled significantly.

"They're on me," said Greenbrier, blowing a puff of smoke to the 
ceiling.












X

THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY

The poet Longfellow--or was it Confucius, the inventor of 
wisdom?--remarked:

  "Life is real, life is earnest;
  And things are not what they seem."

As mathematics are--or is:  thanks, old subscriber!--the only just 
rule by which questions of life can be measured, let us, by all 
means, adjust our theme to the straight edge and the balanced 
column of the great goddess Two-and-Two-Makes-Four.  Figures--
unassailable sums in addition--shall be set over against whatever 
oposing element there may be.

A mathematician, after scanning the above two lines of poetry, 
would say:  "Ahem! young gentlemen, if we assume that X plus--
that is, that life is real--then things (all of which life includes) are 
real.  Anything that is real is what it seems.  Then if we consider 
the proposition that 'things are not what they seem,' why--"

But this is heresy, and not poesy.  We woo the sweet nymph 
Algebra; we would conduct you into the presence of the elusive, 
seductive, pursued, satisfying, mysterious X.

Not long before the beginning of this century, Septimus 
Kinsolving, an old New Yorker, invented an idea.  He originated 
the discovery that bread is made from flour and not from wheat 
futures.  Perceiving that the flour crop was short, and that the 
Stock Exchange was having no perceptible effect on the growing 
wheat, Mr. Kinsolving cornered the flour market.

The result was that when you or my landlady (before the war she 
never had to turn her hand to anything; Southerners accomodated) 
bought a five-cent load of bread you laid down an additional two 
cents, which went to Mr. Kinsolving as a testimonial to his 
perspicacity.

A second result was that Mr. Kinsolving quit the game with 
$2,000,000 prof--er--rake-off.

Mr. Kinsolving's son Dan was at college when the mathematical 
experiment in breadstuffs was made.  Dan came home during 
vacation, and found the old gentleman in a red dressing-gown 
reading "Little Dorrit" on the porch of his estimable red brick 
mansion in Washington Square.  He had retired from business 
with enough extra two-cent pieces from bread buyers to reach, if 
laid side by side, fifteen times around the earth and lap as far as 
the public debt of Paraguay.

Dan shook hands with his father, and hurried over to Greenwich 
Village to see his old high-school friend, Kenwitz.  Dan had 
always admired Kenwitz.  Kenwitz was pale, curly-haired, intense, 
serious, mathematical, studious, altruistic, socialistic, and the 
natural foe of oligarchies.  Kenwitz had foregone college, and was 
learning watch-making in his father's jewelry store.  Dan was 
smiling, jovial, easy-tempered and tolerant alike of kings and 
ragpickers.  The two foregathered joyously, being opposites.  And 
then Dan went back to college, and Kenwitz to his mainsprings--
and to his private library in the rear of the jewelry shop.

Four years later Dan came back to Washington Square with the 
accumulations of B. A. and two years of Europe thick upon him.  
He took a filial look at Septimus Kinsolving's elaborate tombstone 
in Greenwood and a tedious excursion through typewritten 
documents with the family lawyer; and then, feeling himself a 
lonely and hopeless millionaire, hurried down to the old jewelry 
store across Sixth Avenue.

Kenwitz unscrewed a magnifying glass from his eye, routed out 
his parent from a dingy rear room, and abandoned the interior of 
watches for outdoors.  He went with Dan, and they sat on a bench 
in Washington Square.  Dan had not changed much; he was 
stalwart, and had a dignity that was inclined to relax into a grin.  
Kenwitz was more serious, more intense, more learned, 
philosophical and socialistic.

"I know about it now," said Dan, finally.  "I pumped it out of the 
eminent legal lights that turned over to me poor old dad's 
collections of bonds and boodle.  It amounts to $2,000,000, Ken.  
And I am told that he squeezed it out of the chaps that pay their 
pennies for loaves of bread at little bakeries around the corner.  
You've studied economics, Dan, and you know all about monopolies, 
and the masses, and octopuses, and the rights of laboring people.  
I never thought about those things before.  Football and trying 
to be white to my fellowman were about the extent of my college 
curriculum.

"But since I came back and found out how dad made his money 
I've been thinking.  I'd like awfully well to pay back those chaps 
who had to give up too much money for bread.  I know it would 
buck the line of my income for a good many yards; but I'd like to 
make it square with 'em.  Is there any way it can be done, old 
Ways and Means?"

Kenwitz's big black eyes glowed fierily.  His thin, intellectual face 
took on almost a sardonic cast.  He caught Dan's arm with the grip 
of a friend and a judge.

"You can't do it!" he said, emphatically.  "One of the chief 
punishments of you men of ill-gotten wealth is that when you do 
repent you find that you have lost the power to make reparation or 
restitution.  I admire your good intentions, Dan, but you can't do 
anything.  Those people were robbed of their precious pennies.  It's 
too late to remedy the evil.  You can't pay them back"

"Of course," said Dan, lighting his pipe, "we couldn't hunt up 
every one of the duffers and hand 'em back the right change.  
There's an awful lot of 'em buying bread all the time.  Funny taste 
they have--I never cared for bread especially, except for a toasted 
cracker with the Roquefort.  But we might find a few of 'em and 
chuck some of dad's cash back where it came from  I'd feel better 
if I could.  It seems tough for people to be held up for a soggy 
thing like bread.  One wouldn't mind standing a rise in broiled 
lobsters or deviled crabs.  Get to work and think, Ken.  I want to 
pay back all that money I can."

"There are plenty of charities," said Kenwitz, mechanically.

"Easy enough," said Dan, in a cloud of smoke.  "I suppose I could 
give the city a park, or endow an asparagus bed in a hospital.  But 
I don't want Paul to get away with the proceeds of the gold brick 
we sold Peter.  It's the bread shorts I want to cover, Ken."

The thin fingers of Kenwitz moved rapidly.

"Do you know how much money it would take to pay back the 
losses of consumers during that corner in flour?" he asked.

"I do not." said Dan, stoutly.  "My lawyer tells me that I have two 
millions."

"If you had a hundred millions," said Kenwitz, vehemently, "you 
couldn't repair a thousandth part of the damage that has been done.  
You cannot conceive of the accumulated evils produced by 
misapplied wealth.  Each penny that was wrung from the lean 
purses of the poor reacted a thousandfold to their harm.  You do 
not understand.  You do not see how hopeless is your desire to 
make restitution.  Not in a single instance can it be done."

"Back up, philosopher!" said Dan.  "The penny has no sorrow that 
the dollar cannot heal."

"Not in one instance," repeated Kenwitz.  "I will give you one, and 
let us see.  Thomas Boyne had a little bakery over there in Varick 
Street.  He sold bread to the poorest people.  When the price of 
flour went up he had to raise the price of bread.  His customers 
were too poor to pay it, Boyne's business failed and he lost his 
$1,000 capital--all he had in the world."

Dan Kinsolving struck the park bench a mighty blow with his fist.

"I accept the instance," he cried.  "Take me to Boyne.  I will repay 
his thousand dollars and buy him a new bakery."

"Write your check," said Kenwitz, without moving, "and then 
begin to write checks in payment of the train of consequences.  
Draw the next one for $50,000.  Boyne went insane after his 
failure and set fire to the building from which he was about to be 
evicted.  The loss amounted to that much.  Boyne died in an 
asylum."

"Stick to the instance," said Dan.  "I haven't noticed any insurance 
companies on my charity list."

"Draw your next check for $100,000," went on Kenwitz.  "Boyne's 
son fell into bad way after the bakery closed, and was accused of 
murder.  he was acquitted last week after a three years' legal battle, 
and the state draws upon taxpayers for that much expense."

"Back to the bakery!" exclaimed Dan, impatiently.  "The 
Government doesn't need to stand in the bread line."

"The last item of the instance is--come and I will show you," said 
Kenwitz, rising.

The Socialistic watchmaker was happy.  He was a millionaire-
baiter by nature and a pessimist by trade.  Kenwitz would assure 
you in one breath that money was but evil and corruption, and that 
your brand-new watch needed cleaning and a new ratchet-wheel.

He conducted Kinsolving southward out of the square and into 
ragged, poverty-haunted Varick Street.  Up the narrow stairway of 
a squalid brick tenement he led the penitent offspring of the 
Octupus.  He knocked on a door, and a clear voice called to them 
to enter.

In that almost bare room a young woman sat sewing at a machine.  
She nodded to Kenwitz as to a familiar acquaintance.  One little 
stream of sunlight through the dingy window burnished her heavy 
hair to the color of an ancient Tuscan's shield.  She flashed a 
rippling smile at Kenwitz and a look of somewhat flustered 
inquiry.

Kinsolving stood regarding her clear and pathetic beauty in heart-
throbbing silence.  Thus they came into the presence of the last 
item of the Instance.

"How many this week, Miss Mary?" asked the watchmaker.  A 
mountain of coarse gray shirts lay upon the floor.

"Nearly thirty dozen," said the young woman cheerfully.  "I've 
made almost $4.  I'm improving, Mr. Kenwitz.  I hardly know what 
to do with so much money."  Her eyes turned, brightly soft, in the 
direction of Dan.  A little pink spot came out on her round, pale 
cheek.

Kenwitz chuckled like a diabolic raven.

"Miss Boyne," he said, "let me present Mr. Kinsolving, the son of 
the man who put bread up five years ago.  He thinks he would like 
to do something to aid those who where inconvenienced by that 
act."

The smile left the young woman's face.  She rose and pointed her 
forefinger toward the door.  This time she looked Kinsolving 
straight in the eye, but it was not a look that gave delight.

The two men went down Varick Street.  Kenwitz, letting all his 
pessimism and rancor and hatred of the Octopus come to the 
surface, gibed at the moneyed side of his friend in an acrid torrent 
of words.  Dan appeared to be listening, and then turned to 
Kenwitz and shook hands with him warmly.

"I'm obliged to you, Ken, old man," he said, vaguely--"a thousand 
times obliged."

"Mein Gott! you are crazy!" cried the watchmaker, dropping his 
spectacles for the first time in years.

Two months afterward Kenwitz went into a large bakery on lower 
Broadway with a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses that he had 
mended for the proprietor.

A lady was giving an order to a clerk as Kenwitz passed her.

"These loaves are ten cents," said the clerk.

"I always get them at eight cents uptown," said the lady.  "You 
need not fill the order.  I will drive by there on my way home."

The voice was familiar.  The watchmaker paused.

"Mr. Kenwitz!" cried the lady, heartily.  "How do you do?"

Kenwitz was trying to train his socialistic and economic 
comprehension on her wonderful fur boa and the carriage waiting 
outside.

"Why, Miss Boyne!" he began.

"Mrs. Kinsolving," she corrected.  "Dan and I were married a 
month ago."








XI

THE THING'S THE PLAY

Being acquainted with a newspaper reporter who had a couple of 
free passes, I got to see the performance a few nights ago at one of 
the popular vaudeville houses.

One of the numbers was a violin solo by a striking-looking man 
not much past forty, but with very gray thick hair.  Not being 
afflicted with a taste for music, I let the system of noises drift past 
my ears while I regarded the man.

"There was a story about that chap a month or two ago," said the 
reporter.  "They gave me the assignment.  It was to run a column 
and was to be on the extremely light and joking order.  The old 
man seems to like the funny touch I give to local happenings.  Oh, 
yes, I'm working on a farce comedy now.  Well, I went down to the 
house and got all the details; but I certainly fell down on that job.  
I went back and turned in a comic write-up of an east side funeral 
instead.  Why?  Oh, I couldn't seem to get hold of it with my funny 
hooks, somehow.  Maybe you could make a one-act tragedy out of 
it for a curtain-raiser.  I'll give you the details."

After the performance my friend, the reporter, recited to me the 
facts over W"urzburger.

"I see no reason," said I, when he had concluded, "why that 
shouldn't make a rattling good funny story.  Those three people 
couldn't have acted in a more absurd and preposterous manner if 
they had been real actors in a real theatre.  I'm really afraid that all 
the stage is a world, anyhow, and all the players men and women. 
'The thing's the play,' is the way I quote Mr. Shakespeare."

"Try it," said the reporter.

"I will," said I; and I did, to show him how he could have made a 
humorous column of it for his paper.

There stands a house near Abingdon Square.  On the ground floor 
there has been for twenty-five years a little store where toys and 
notions and stationery are sold.

One night twenty years ago there was a wedding in the rooms 
above the store.  The Widow Mayo owned the house and store.  
Her daughter Helen was married to Frank Barry.  John Delaney 
was best man.  Helen was eighteen, and her picture had been 
printed in a morning paper next to the headlines of a "Wholesale 
Female Murderess" story from Butte, Mont.  But after your eye 
and intelligence had rejected the connection, you seized your 
magnifying glass and read beneath the portrait her description as 
one of a series of Prominent Beauties and Belles of the lower west 
side.

Frank Barry and John Delaney were "prominent" young beaux of 
the same side, and bosom friends, whom you expected to turn 
upon each other every time the curtain went up.  One who pays his 
money for orchestra seats and fiction expects this.  That is the first 
funny idea that has turned up in the story yet.  Both had made a 
great race for Helen's hand.  When Frank won, John shook his 
hand and congratulated him--honestly, he did.

After the ceremony Helen ran upstairs to put on her hat.  She was 
getting married in a traveling dress.  She and Frank were going to 
Old Point Comfort for a week.  Downstairs the usual horde of 
gibbering cave-dwellers were waiting with their hands full of old 
Congress gaiters and paper bags of hominy.

Then there was a rattle of the fire-escape, and into her room jumps 
the mad and infatuated John Delaney, with a damp curl drooping 
upon his forehead, and made violent and reprehensible love to his 
lost one, entreating her to flee or fly with him to the Riviera, or the 
Bronx, or any old place where there are Italian skies and _dolce far 
niente_.

It would have carried Blaney off his feet to see Helen repulse him.  
With blazing and scornful eyes she fairly withered him by 
demanding whatever he meant by speaking to respectable people 
that way.

In a few moments she had him going.  The manliness that had 
possessed him departed.  He bowed low, and said something about 
"irresistible impulse" and "forever carry in his heart the memory 
of"--and she suggested that he catch the first fire-escape going 
down.

"I will away," said John Delaney, "to the furthermost parts of the 
earth.  I cannot remain near you and know that you are another's.  I 
will to Africa, and there amid other scenes strive to for--"

"For goodness sake, get out," said Helen.  "Somebody might come 
in."

He knelt upon one knee, and she extended him one white hand that 
he might give it a farewell kiss.

Girls, was this choice boon of the great little god Cupid ever 
vouchsafed you--to have the fellow you want hard and fast, and 
have the one you don't want come with a damp curl on his 
forehead and kneel to you and babble of Africa and love which, in 
spite of everything, shall forever bloom, an amaranth, in his heart?  
To know your power, and to feel the sweet security of your own 
happy state; to send the unlucky one, broken-hearted, to foreign 
climes, while you congratulate yourself as he presses his last kiss 
upon your knuckles, that your nails are well manicured--say, girls, 
it's galluptious--don't ever let it get by you.

And then, of course--how did you guess it?--the door opened and 
in stalked the bridegroom, jealous of slow-tying bonnet strings.

The farewell kiss was imprinted upon Helen's hand, and out of the 
window and down the fire-escape sprang John Delaney, Africa 
bound.

A little slow music, if you please--faint violin, just a breath in the 
clarinet and a touch of the 'cello.  Imagine the scene.  Frank, 
white-hot, with the cry of a man wounded to death bursting from 
him.  Helen, rushing and clinging to him, trying to explain.  He 
catches her wrists and tears them from his shoulders--once, twice, 
thrice he sways her this way and that--the stage manager will show 
you how--and throws her from him to the floor a huddled, crushed, 
moaning thing.  Never, he cries, will he look upon her face again, 
and rushes from the house through the staring groups of 
astonished guests.

And, now because it is the Thing instead of the Play, the audience 
must stroll out into the real lobby of the world and marry, die, 
grow gray, rich, poor, happy or sad during the intermission of 
twenty years which must precede the rising of the curtain again.

Mrs. Barry inherited the shop and the house.  At thirty-eight she 
could have bested many an eighteen-year-old at a beauty show on 
points and general results.  Only a few people remembered her 
wedding comedy, but she made of it no secret.  She did not pack it 
in lavender or moth balls, nor did she sell it to a magazine.

One day a middle-aged money-making lawyer, who bought his 
legal cap and ink of her, asked her across the counter to marry 
him.

"I'm really much obliged to you," said Helen, cheerfully, "but I 
married another man twenty years ago.  he was more a goose than 
a man, but I think I love him yet.  I have never seen him since 
about half an hour after the ceremony.  Was it copying ink that 
you wanted or just writing fluid?"

The lawyer bowed over the counter with old-time grace and left a 
respectful kiss on the back of her hand.  Helen sighed.  Parting 
salutes, however romantic, may be overdone.  Here she was at 
thirty-eight, beautiful and admired; and all that she seemed to have 
got from her lovers were approaches and adieus.  Worse still, in 
the last one she had lost a customer, too.

Business languished, and she hung out a Room to Let card.  Two 
large rooms on the third floor were prepared for desirable tenants.  
Roomers came, and went regretfully, for the house of Mrs. Barry 
was the abode of neatness, comfort and taste.

One day came Ramonti, the violinist, and engaged the front room 
above.  The discord and clatter uptown offended his nice ear; so a 
friend had sent him to this oasis in the desert of noise.

Ramonti, with his still youthful face, his dark eyebrows, his short, 
pointed, foreign, brown beard, his distinguished head of gray hair, 
and his artist's temperament--revealed in his light, gay and 
sympathetic manner--was a welcome tenant in the old house near 
Abingdon Square.

Helen lived on the floor above the store.  The architecture of it was 
singular and quaint.  The hall was large and almost square.  Up 
one side of it, and then across the end of it ascended an open 
stairway to the floor above.  This hall space she had furnished as a 
sitting room and office combined.  There she kept her desk and 
wrote her business letters; and there she sat of evenings by a warm 
fire and a bright red light and sewed or read.  Ramonti found the 
atmosphere so agreeable that he spent much time there, describing 
to Mrs. Barry the wonders of Paris, where he had studied with a 
particularly notorious and noisy fiddler.

Next comes lodger No. 2, a handsome, melancholy man in the 
early 40's, with a brown, mysterious beard, and strangely pleading, 
haunting eyes.  He, too, found the society of Helen a desirable 
thing.  With the eyes of Romeo and Othello's tongue, he charmed 
her with tales of distant climes and wooed her by respectful 
innuendo.

From the first Helen felt a marvelous and compelling thrill in the 
presence of this man.  His voice somehow took her swiftly back to 
the days of her youth's romance.  This feeling grew, and she gave 
way to it, and it led her to an instinctive belief that he had been a 
factor in that romance.  And then with a woman's reasoning (oh, 
yes, they do, sometimes) she leaped over common syllogism and 
theory, and logic, and was sure that her husband had come back to 
her.  For she saw in his eyes love, which no woman can mistake, 
and a thousand tons of regret and remorse, which aroused pity, 
which is perilously near to love requited, which is the _sine qua 
non_ in the house that Jack built.

But she made no sign.  A husband who steps around the corner for 
twenty years and then drops in again should not expect to find his 
slippers laid out too conveniently near nor a match ready lighted 
for his cigar.  There must be expiation, explanation, and possibly 
execration.  A little purgatory, and then, maybe, if he were 
properly humble, he might be trusted with a harp and crown.  And 
so she made no sign that she knew or suspected.

And my friend, the reporter, could see nothing funny in this!  Sent 
out on an assignment to write up a roaring, hilarious, brilliant 
joshing story of--but I will not knock a brother--let us go on with 
the story.

One evening Ramonti stopped in Helen's hall-office-reception-
room and told his love with the tenderness and ardor of the 
enraptured artist.  His words were a bright flame of the divine fire 
that glows in the heart of a man who is a dreamer and doer 
combined.

"But before you give me an answer," he went on, before she could 
accuse him of suddenness, "I must tell you that 'Ramonti' is the 
only name I have to offer you.  My manager gave me that.  I do not 
know who I am or where I came from.  My first recollection is of 
opening my eyes in a hospital.  I was a young man, and I had been 
there for weeks.  My life before that is a blank to me.  They told 
me that I was found lying in the street with a wound on my head 
and was brought there in an ambulance.  They thought I must have 
fallen and struck my head upon the stones.  There was nothing to 
show who I was.  I have never been able to remember.  After I was 
discharged from the hospital, I took up the violin.  I have had 
success.  Mrs. Barry--I do not know your name except that--I love 
you; the first time I saw you I realized that you were the one 
woman in the world for me--and"--oh, a lot of stuff like that.

Helen felt young again.  First a wave of pride and a sweet little 
thrill of vanity went all over her; and then she looked Ramonti in 
the eyes, and a tremendous throb went through her heart.  She 
hadn't expected that throb.  It took her by surprise.  The musician 
had become a big factor in her life, and she hadn't been aware of 
it.

"Mr. Ramonti," she said sorrowfully (this was not on the stage, 
remember; it was in the old home near Abingdon Square), "I'm 
awfully sorry, but I'm a married woman."

And then she told him the sad story of her life, as a heroine must 
do, sooner or later, either to a theatrical manager or to a reporter.

Ramonti took her hand, bowed low and kissed it, and went up to 
his room.

Helen sat down and looked mournfully at her hand.  Well she 
might.  Three suitors had kissed it, mounted their red roan steeds 
and ridden away.

In an hour entered the mysterious stranger with the haunting eyes.  
Helen was in the willow rocker, knitting a useless thing in cotton-
wool.  He ricocheted from the stairs and stopped for a chat.  
Sitting across the table from her, he also poured out his narrative 
of love.  And then he said:  "Helen, do you not remember me?  I 
think I have seen it in your eyes.  Can you forgive the past and 
remember the love that has lasted for twenty years?  I wronged you 
deeply--I was afraid to come back to you--but my love 
overpowered my reason.  Can you, will you, forgive me?"

Helen stood up.  The mysterious stranger held one of her hands in 
a strong and trembling clasp.

There she stood, and I pity the stage that it has not acquired a 
scene like that and her emotions to portray.

For she stood with a divided heart.  The fresh, unforgettable, 
virginal love for her bridegroom was hers; the treasured, sacred, 
honored memory of her first choice filled half her soul.  She leaned 
to that pure feeling.  Honor and faith and sweet, abiding romance 
bound her to it.  But the other half of her heart and soul was filled 
with something else--a later, fuller, nearer influence.  And so the 
old fought against the new.

And while she hesitated, from the room above came the soft, 
racking, petitionary music of a violin.  The hag, music, bewitches 
some of the noblest.  The daws may peck upon one's sleeve 
without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon his tympanum 
gets it not far from the neck.

This music and the musician caller her, and at her side honor and 
the old love held her back.

"Forgive me," he pleaded.

"Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say 
you love," she declared, with a purgatorial touch.

"How could I tell?" he begged.  "I will conceal nothing from you.  
That night when he left I followed him.  I was mad with jealousy.  
On a dark street I struck him down.  he did not rise.  I examined 
him.  His head had struck a stone.  I did not intend to kill him.  
I was mad with love and jealousy.  I hid near by and saw an 
ambulance take him away.  Although you married him, Helen--"

"_Who are you?_" cried the woman, with wide-open eyes, 
snatching her hand away.

"Don't you remember me, Helen--the one who has always loved 
you best?  I am John Delaney.  If you can forgive--"

But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the 
stairs toward the music and him who had forgotten, but who had 
known her for his in each of his two existences, and as she 
climbed up she sobbed, cried and sang:  "Frank!  Frank!  Frank!"

Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard 
balls, and my friend, the reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it!






XII

A RAMBLE IN APHASIA

My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual 
manner.  She left her second cup of tea to follow me to the front 
door.  There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint 
(the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me 
to take care of my cold.  I had no cold.  Next came her kiss of 
parting--the lever kiss of domesticity flavored with Young Hyson.  
There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her 
infinite custom.  With the deft touch of long malpractice, she 
dabbed awry my well-set scarf pin; and then, as I closed the door, I 
heard her morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea.

When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to 
occur.  The attack came suddenly.

For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a 
famous railroad law case that I won triumphantly but a few days 
previously.  In fact, I had been digging away at the law almost 
without cessation for many years.  Once or twice good Doctor 
Volney, my friend and physician, had warned me.

"If you don't slacken up, Belford," he said, "you'll go suddenly to 
pieces.  Either your nerves or your brain will give way.  Tell me, 
does a week pass in which you do not read in the papers of a case 
of aphasia--of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past 
and his identity blotted out--and all from that little brain clot 
made by overwork or worry?"

"I always thought," said I, "that the clot in those instances was 
really to be found on the brains of the newspaper reporters."

Doctor Volney shook his head.

"The disease exists," he said.  "You need a change or a rest.  
Court-room, office and home--there is the only route you travel.  
For recreation you--read law books.  Better take warning in time."

"On Thursday nights," I said, defensively, "my wife and I play 
cribbage.  On Sundays she reads to me the weekly letter from her 
mother.  That law books are not a recreation remains yet to be 
established."

That morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's words.  
I was feeling as well as I usually did--possibly in better 
spirits than usual.


I woke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on 
the incommodious seat of a day coach.  I leaned my head against 
the seat and tried to think.  After a long time I said to myself:  
"I must have a name of some sort."  I searched my pockets.  Not 
a card; not a letter; not a paper or monogram could I find.  
But I found in my coat pocket nearly $3,000 in bills of large 
denomination.  "I must be some one, of course," I repeated to 
myself, and began again to consider.

The car was well crowded with men, among whom, I told myself, 
there must have been some common interest, for they intermingled 
freely, and seemed in the best good humor and spirits.  One of 
them--a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odor 
of cinnamon and aloes--took the vacant half of my seat with a 
friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper.  In the intervals between 
his periods of reading, we conversed, as travelers will, on current 
affairs.  I found myself able to sustain the conversation on such 
subjects with credit, at least to my memory.  By and by my 
companion said:

"You are one of us, of course.  Fine lot of men the West sends in 
this time.  I'm glad they held the convention in New York; I've 
never been East before.  My name's R. P. Bolder--Bolder & Son, 
of Hickory Grove, Missouri."

Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will when put 
to it.  Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson 
and parent.  My senses came to the rescue of my slower brain.  
The insistent odor of drugs from my compainion supplied one 
idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous 
advertisement, assisted me further.

"My name," said I, glibly, "is Edward Pinkhammer.  I am a 
druggist, and my home is in Cornopolis, Kansas."

"I knew you were a druggist," said my fellow traveler, affably.  "I 
saw the callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of 
the pestle rubs.  Of course, you are a delegate to our National 
Convention."

"Are all these men druggists?" I asked, wonderingly.

"They are.  This car came through from the West.  And they're 
your old-time druggists, too--none of your patent tablet-and-
granule pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a 
prescription desk.  We percolate our own paregoric and roll our 
own pills, and we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in the 
spring, and carrying a side line of confectionery and shoes.  I tell 
you Hampinker, I've got an idea to spring on this convention--new 
ideas is what they want.  Now, you know the shelf bottles of tartar 
emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart.--
one's poison, you know, and the other's harmless.  It's easy to 
mistake one label for the other.  Where do druggists mostly keep 
'em?  Why, as far apart as possible, on different shelves.  That's 
wrong.  I say keep 'em side by side, so when you want one you can 
always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes.  Do you 
catch the idea?"

"It seems to me a very good one," I said.

"All right!  When I spring it on the convention you back it up.  
We'll make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-
cream professors that think they're the only lozenges in the market 
look like hypodermic tablets."

"If I can be of any aid," I said, warming, "the two bottles of--er--"

"Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of soda and potash."

"Shall henceforth sit side by side," I concluded, firmly.

"Now, there's another thing," said Mr. Bolder.  "For an excipient 
in manipulating a pill mass which do you prefer--the magnesia 
carbonate or the pulverised glycerrhiza radix?"

"The--er--magnesia," I said.  It was easier to say than the other 
word.

Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully through his spectacles.

"Give me the glycerrhiza," said he.  "Magnesia cakes."

"Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases," he said, 
presently, handing me his newspaper, and laying his finger upon 
an article.  "I don't believe in 'em.  I put nine out of ten of 'em 
down as frauds.  A man gets sick of his business and his folks and 
wants to have a good time.  He skips out somewhere, and when 
they find him he pretends to have lost his memory--don't know his 
own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on his 
wife's left shoulder.  Aphasia!  Tut!  Why can't they stay at home 
and forget?"

I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the 
following:

"DENVER, June 12.--Elwyn C. Belford, a prominent lawyer, is 
mysteriously missing from his home since three days ago, and all 
efforts to locate him have been in vain.  Mr. Bellford is a well-
known citizen of the highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and 
lucrative law practice.  He is married and owns a fine home and 
the most extensive private library in the State.  On the day of his 
disappearance, he drew quite a large sum of money from his bank.  
No one can be found who saw him after he left the bank.  Mr. Bellford 
was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find 
his happiness in his home and profession.  If any clue at all exists 
to his strange disappearance, it my be found in the fact that 
for some months he has been deeply absorbed in an important law case 
in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company.  It is feared 
that overwork may have affected his mind.  Every effort is being made 
to discover the whereabouts of the missing man."

"It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical, Mr. Bolder," 
I said, after I had read the despatch.  "This has the sound, to me, 
of a genuine case.  Why should this man, prosperous, happily 
married, and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything?  
I know that these lapses of memory do occur, and that men do find 
themselves adrift without a name, a history or a home."

"Oh, gammon and jalap!" said Mr. Bolder.  "It's larks they're after.  
There's too much education nowadays.  Men know about aphasia, 
and they use it for an excuse.  The women are wise, too.  When it's 
all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and 
say:  'He hypnotized me.'"

Thus Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid, me with his comments 
and philosophy.

We arrived in New York about ten at night.  I rode in a cab to a 
hotel, and I wrote my name "Edward Pinkhammer" in the register.  
As I did so I felt pervade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating 
buoyancy--a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained 
possibilities.  I was just born into the world.  The old fetters--
whatever they had been--were stricken from my hands and feet.  
The future lay before me a clear road such as an infant enters, 
and I could set out upon it equipped with a man's learning 
and experience.

I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long.  I had 
no baggage.

"The Druggists' Convention,"  I said.  "My trunk has somehow 
failed to arrive."  I drew out a roll of money.

"Ah!" said he, showing an auriferous tooth, "we have quite a number 
of the Western delegates stopping here."  He struck a bell 
for the boy.

I endeavored to give color to my r^ole.

"There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners," I 
said, "in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the 
bottles containing the tartrate of antimoney and potash, and the 
tartrate of sodium and potash be kept in a contiguous position on 
the shelf."

"Gentleman to three-fourteen," said the clerk, hastily.  I was 
whisked away to my room.

The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and began to live 
the life of Edward Pinkhammer.  I did not tax my brain with 
endeavors to solve problems of the past.

It was a piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held 
up to my lips.  I drank of it gratefully.  The keys of Manhattan 
belong to him who is able to bear them.  You must be either the 
city's guest or its victim.

The following few days were as gold and silver.  Edward 
Pinkhammer, yet counting back to his birth by hours only, knew 
the rare joy of having come upon so diverting a world full-fledged 
and unrestrained.  I sat entranced on the magic carpets provided in 
theatres and roof-gardens, that transported one into strange and 
delightful lands full of frolicsome music, pretty girls and grotesque 
drolly extravagant parodies upon human kind.  I went here and 
there at my own dear will, bound by no limits of space, time or 
comportment.  I dined in weird cabarets, at weirder _tables 
d'h^ote_ to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild shouts of 
mercurial artists and sculptors.  Or, again, where the night life 
quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture, and the 
millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones whom they 
adorn, and the men who make all three possible are met for good 
cheer and the spectacular effect.  And among all these scenes that I 
have mentioned I learned one thing that I never knew before.  And 
that is that the key to liberty is not in the hands of License, but 
Convention holds it.  Comity has a toll-gate at which you must 
pay, or you may not enter the land of Freedom.  In all the glitter, 
the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, 
unobtrusive, yet like iron, prevail.  Therefore, in Manhattan you 
must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the 
free.  If you decline to be bound by them, you put on shackles.

Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly 
murmuring palm rooms, redolent with high-born life and delicate 
restraint, in which to dine.  Again I would go down to the 
waterways in steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, 
unchecked love-making clerks and shop-girls to their crude 
pleasures on the island shores.  And there was always Broadway--
glistening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable Broadway--growing 
upon one like an opium habit.

One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose 
and a black mustache blocked my way in the corridor.  When I 
would have passed around him, he greet me with offensive 
familiarity.

"Hello, Bellford!" he cried, loudly.  "What the deuce are you doing 
in New York?  Didn't know anything could drag you away from 
that old book den of yours.  Is Mrs. B. along or is this a little 
business run alone, eh?"

"You have made a mistake, sir," I said, coldly, releasing my hand 
from his grasp.  "My name is Pinkhammer.  You will excuse me."

The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished.  As I walked 
to the clerk's desk I heard him call to a bell boy and say something 
about telegraph blanks.

"You will give me my bill," I said to the clerk, "and have my 
baggage brought down in half an hour.  I do not care to remain 
where I am annoyed by confidence men."

I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned 
one on lower Fifth Avenue.

There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one could 
be served almost _al fresco_ in a tropic array of screening flora.  
Quiet and luxury and a perfect service made it an ideal place in 
which to take luncheon or refreshment.  One afternoon I was there 
picking my way to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve 
caught.

"Mr. Bellford!" exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice.

I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone--a lady of about thirty, 
with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I 
had been her very dear friend.

"You were about to pass me," she said, accusingly.  "Don't tell me 
you do not know me.  Why should we not shake hands--at least 
once in fifteen years?"

I shook hands with her at once.  I took a chair opposite her at the 
table.  I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter.  The lady 
was philandering with an orange ice.  I ordered a _cr`eme de 
menthe_.  Her hair was reddish bronze.  You could not look at it, 
because you could not look away from her eyes.  But you were 
conscious of it as you are conscious of sunset while you look into 
the profundities of a wood at twilight.

"Are you sure you know me?" I asked.

"No," she said, smiling.  "I was never sure of that."

"What would you think," I said, a little anxiously, "if I were 
to tell you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, from Cornopolis, 
Kansas?"

"What would I think?" she repeated, with a merry glance.  "Why, 
that you had not brought Mrs. Bellford to New York with you, of 
course.  I do wish you had.  I would have liked to see Marian."  
Her voice lowered slightly--"You haven't changed much, Elwyn."

I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more closely.

"Yes, you have," she amended, and there was a soft, exultant note 
in her latest tones; "I see it now.  You haven't forgotten.  You 
haven't forgotten for a year or a day or an hour.  I told you you 
never could."

I poked my straw anxiously in the _cr`eme de menthe_.

"I'm sure I beg your pardon," I said, a little uneasy at her gaze.  
"But that is just the trouble.  I have forgotten.  I've forgotten 
everything."

She flouted my denial.  She laughed deliciously at something she 
seemed to see in my face.

"I've heard of you at times," she went on.  "You're quite a big 
lawyer out West--Denver, isn't it, or Los Angeles?  Marian must be 
very proud of you.  You knew, I suppose, that I married six months 
after you did.  You may have seen it in the papers.  The flowers 
alone cost two thousand dollars."

She had mentioned fifteen years.  Fifteen years is a long time.

"Would it be too late," I asked, somewhat timorously, "to offer you 
congratulations?"

"Not if you dare do it," she answered, with such fine intrepidity 
that I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with 
my thumb nail.

"Tell me one thing," she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly--
"a thing I have wanted to know for many years--just from a woman's 
curiosity, of course--have you ever dared since that night to touch, 
smell or look at white roses--at white roses wet with rain and 
dew?"

I took a sip of _cr`eme de menthe_.

"It would be useless, I suppose," I said, with a sigh, "for me to 
repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things.  My 
memory is completely at fault.  I need not say how much I regret 
it."

The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes 
disdained my words and went traveling by their own route direct 
to my soul.  She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the 
sound--it was a laugh of happiness--yes, and of content--and of 
misery.  I tried to look away from her.

"You lie, Elwyn Bellford," she breathed, blissfully.  "Oh, I know 
you lie!"

I gazed dully into the ferns.

"My name is Edward Pinkhammer," I said.  "I came with the 
delegates to the Druggists' National Convention.  There is a 
movement on foot for arranging a new position for the bottles of 
tartrate of antimony and tartrate of potash, in which, very likely, 
you would take little interest."

A shining landau stopped before the entrance.  The lady rose.  I 
took her hand, and bowed.

"I am deeply sorry," I said to her, "that I cannot remember.  I could 
explain, but fear you would not understand.  You will not concede 
Pinkhammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the--the roses 
and other things."

"Good-by, Mr. Bellford," she said, with her happy, sorrowful 
smile, as she stepped into her carriage.

I attended the theatre that night.  When I returned to my hotel, 
a quiet man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his 
finger nails with a silk handkerchief, appeared, magically, at my 
side.

 "Mr. Pinkhammer," he said, giving the bulk of his attention to his 
forefinger, "may I request you to step aside with me for a little 
conversation?  There is a room here."

"Certainly," I answered.

He conducted me into a small, private parlor.  A lady and a 
gentleman were there.  The lady, I surmised, would have been 
unusually good-looking had her features not been clouded by an 
expression of keen worry and fatigue.  She was of a style of figure 
and possessed coloring and features that were agreeable to my 
fancy.  She was in a traveling dress; she fixed upon me an earnest 
look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an unsteady hand to her 
bosom.  I think she would have started forward, but the gentleman 
arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of his hand.  
He then came, himself, to meet me.  He was a man of forty, a little 
gray about the temples, and with a strong, thoughtful face.

"Bellford, old man," he said, cordially, "I'm glad to see you again.  
Of course we know everything is all right.  I warned you, you 
know, that you were overdoing it.  Now, you'll go back with us, 
and be yourself again in no time."

I smiled ironically.

"I havae been 'Bellforded' so often," I said, "that it has lost its 
edge.  Still, in the end, it may grow wearisome.  Would you be 
willing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward 
Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before in my life?"

Before the man could reply a wailing cry came from the woman.  
She sprang past his detaining arm.  "Elwyn!" she sobbed, and cast 
herself upon me, and clung tight.  "Elwyn," she cried again, "don't 
break my heart.  I am your wife--call my name once--just once.  I 
could see you dead rather than this way."

I unwound her arms respectfully, but firmly.

"Madam," I said, severely, "pardon me if I suggest that you accept 
a resemblance too precipitately.  It is a pity," I went on, with an 
amused laugh, as the thought occurred to me, "that this Bellford 
and I could not be kept side by side upon the same shelf like 
tartrates of sodium and antimony for purposes of identification.  
In order to understand the allusion," I concluded airily, "it may 
be necessary for you to keep an eye on the proceedings of the 
Druggists' National Convention."

The lady turned to her companion, and grasped his arm.

"What is it, Doctor Volney?  Oh, what is it?" she moaned.

"Go to your room for a while," I heard him say.  "I will remain and 
talk with him.  His mind?  No, I think not--only a portion of the 
brain.  Yes, I am sure he will recover.  Go to your room and leave 
me with him."

The lady disappeared.  The man in dark clothes also went outside, 
still manicuring himself in a thoughtful way.  I think he waited 
in the hall.

"I would like to talk with you a while, Mr. Pinkhammer, if I may," 
said the gentleman who remained.

"Very well, if you care to," I replied, "and will excuse me if I take 
it comfortably; I am rather tired."  I stretched myself upon a couch 
by a window and lit a cigar.  He drew a chair nearby.

"Let us speak to the point," he said, soothingly.  "Your name is not 
Pinkhammer."

"I know that as well as you do," I said, coolly.  "But a man 
must have a name of some sort.  I can assure you that I do not 
extravagantly admire the name of Pinkhammer.  But when one 
christens one's self suddenly, the fine names do not seem to 
suggest themselves.  But, suppose it had been Scheringhausen 
or Scroggins!  I think I did very well with Pinkhammer."

"Your name," said the other man, seriously, "is Elwyn C. Bellford.  
You are one of the first lawyers in Denver.  You are suffering from 
an attack of aphasia, which has caused you to forget your identity.  
The cause of it was over-application to your profession, and, 
perhaps, a life too bare of natural recreation and pleasures.  The 
lady who has just left the room is your wife."

"She is what I would call a fine-looking woman," I said, after a 
judicial pause.  "I particularly admire the shade of brown in her 
hair."

"She is a wife to be proud of.  Since your disappearance, nearly 
two weeks ago, she has scarcely closed her eyes.  We learned that 
you were in New York through a telegram sent by Isidore Newman, 
a traveling man from Denver.  He said that he had met you in a 
hotel here, and that you did not recognize him."

"I think I remember the occasion," I said.  "The fellow called me 
'Bellford,' if I am not mistaken.  But don't you think it about time, 
now, for you to introduce yourself?"

"I am Robert Volney--Doctor Volney.  I have been your close friend 
for twenty years, and your physician for fifteen.  I came with 
Mrs. Bellford to trace you as soon as we got the telegram.  Try, 
Elwyn, old man--try to remember!"

"What's the use to try?" I asked, with a little frown.  "You say you 
are a physician.  Is aphasia curable?  When a man loses his memory 
does it return slowly, or suddenly?"

"Sometimes gradually and imperfectly; sometimes as suddenly as 
it went."

"Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Doctor Volney?" I 
asked.

"Old friend," said he, "I'll do everything in my power, and wil have 
done everything that science can do to cure you."

"Very well," said I.  "Then you will consider that I am your patient.  
Everything is in confidence now--professional confidence."

"Of course," said Doctor Volney.

I got up from the couch.  Some one had set a vase of white roses 
on the centre table--a cluster of white roses, freshly sprinkled and 
fragrant.  I threw them far out of the window, and then laid myself 
upon the couch again.

"It will be best, Bobby," I said, "to have this cure happen suddenly.  
I'm rather tired of it all, anyway.  You may go now and bring Marian 
in.  But, oh, Doc," I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him on the shin
--"good old Doc--it was glorious!"








XIII

A MUNICIPAL REPORT


  The cities are full of pride,
    Challenging each to each--
  This from her mountainside,
    That from her burthened beach.

             R. KIPLING.


  Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville,
  Tennessee!  There are justthree big cities in the United States
  that are "story cities"--New York, of course, New Orleans, and, 
  best of the lot, San Francisco.  --FRANK NORRIS.


East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians.  
Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants 
of a State.  They are the Southerners of the West.  Now, Chicagoans 
are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they 
stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building.  
But Californians go into detail.

Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for 
half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy 
underwear.  But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for 
conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of 
the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World.  So far, as a 
matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary.  But, dear cousins 
all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay 
his finger on the map and say:  "In this town there can be no 
romance--what could happen here?"  Yes, it is a bold and a rash 
deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand 
and McNally.


  NASHVILLE--A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the 
  State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the 
  N. C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads.  This city is regarded 
  as the most important educational centre in the South.


I stepped off the train at 8 P.M.  Having searched the thesaurus in 
vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison 
in the form of a recipe.

Take a London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; 
dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of 
honeysuckle 15 parts.  Mix.

The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville 
drizzle.  It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as 
pea-soup; but 'tis enough--'twill serve.

I went to a hotel in a tumbril.  It required strong self-suppression 
for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation 
of Sidney Carton.  The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone 
era and driven by something dark and emancipated.

I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid 
it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure 
you).  I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about 
its old "marster" or anything that happened "befo' de wah."

The hotel was one of the kind described as 'renovated."  That 
means $20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights 
and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and 
a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms 
above.  The management was without reproach, the attention full 
of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service as slow as the progress 
of a snail and as good-humored as Rip Van Winkle.  The food was 
worth traveling a thousand miles for.  There is no other hotel in 
the world where you can get such chicken livers _en brochette_.

At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in 
town.  He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied:  "Well, 
boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all doin' after 
sundown."

Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle 
long before.  So that spectacle was denied me.  But I went forth 
upon the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.


  It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted 
  by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum.


As I left the hotel there was a race riot.  Down upon me charged a 
company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with--no, I saw with 
relief that they were not rifles, but whips.  And I saw dimly a 
caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, 
"Kyar you anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents," I reasoned 
that I was merely a "fare" instead of a victim.

I walked through long streets, all leading uphill.  I wondered how 
those streets ever came down again.  Perhaps they didn't until they 
were "graded."  On a few of the "main streets" I saw lights in 
stores here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy 
burghers hither and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of 
conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing 
from a soda-water and ice-cream parlor.  The streets other than 
"main" seemed to have enticed upon their borders houses consecrated 
to peace and domesticity.  In many of them lights shone behind 
discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly 
and irreproachable music.  There was, indeed, little "doing."  
I wished I had come before sundown.  So I returned to my hotel.


  In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against 
  Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas.  
  The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a 
  terrible conflict.


All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine 
marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-
chewing regions.  But in my hotel a surprise awaited me.  There 
were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors in 
the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed 
that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been 
able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant.  But, 
although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy 
had not suffered.  Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, 
they stood.  But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor--the 
beautiful tile floor!  I could not avoid thinking of the battle of 
Nashville, and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some 
deductions about hereditary marksmanship.

Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth 
Caswell.  I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from 
the sight of him.  A rat has no geographical habitat.  My old 
friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything:

  Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,
  And curse me the British vermin, the rat.

Let us regard the word "British" as interchangeable _ad lib_.  A rat 
is a rat.

This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that 
had forgotten where he had buried a bone.  He had a face of great 
acreage, red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like 
that of Buddha.  He possessed one single virtue--he was very 
smoothly shaven.  The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a 
man until he goes about with a stubble.  I think that if he had not 
used his razor that day I would have repulsed his advances, and the 
criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the 
addition of one murder.

I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when 
Major Caswell opened fire upon it.  I had been observant enough 
to percieve that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of 
squirrel rifles; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized 
the opportunity to apologize to a noncombatant.  He had the 
blabbing lip.  In four minutes he had become my friend and had 
dragged me to the bar.

I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner.  But I am not 
one by profession or trade.  I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, 
the Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by 
Sherman, and plug chewing.  When the orchestra plays Dixie I do 
not cheer.  I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, 
well, order another W"urzburger and wish that Longstreet had--but 
what's the use?

Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at 
Fort Sumter re-echoed.  When he fired the last one at Appomattox 
I began to hope.  But then he began on family trees, and 
demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin of a collateral 
branch of the Caswell family.  Genealogy disposed of, he took up, 
to my distaste, his private family matters.  He spoke of his wife, 
traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely denied any possible 
rumor that she may have had relations in the land of Nod.

By this time I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to 
obscure by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the 
chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them.  But when 
they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar.  
Then, of course, another serving was obligatory.  And when I had 
paid for that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more 
of him.  But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly 
of an income that his wife received, and showed a handful of silver 
money.

When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously:  
"If that man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to 
make a complaint, we will have him ejected.  He is a nuisance, a 
loafer, and without any known means of support, although he 
seems to have some money most the time.  But we don't seem to 
be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out legally."

"Why, no," said I, after some reflection; "I don't see my way clear 
to making a complaint.  But I would like to place myself on record 
as asserting that I do not care for his company.  Your town," I 
continued, "seems to be a quiet one.  What manner of entertainment, 
adventure, or excitement have you to offer to the stranger within 
your gates?"

"Well, sir," said the clerk, "there will be a show here next 
Thursday.  It is--I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up 
to your room with the ice water.  Good night."

After I went up to my room I looked out the window.  It was only 
about ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town.  The drizzle 
continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a 
cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange.

"A quiet place," I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling 
of the occupant of the room beneath mine.  "Nothing of the life here 
that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West.  
Just a good, ordinary, humdrum, business town."


  Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing 
  centres of the country.  It is the fifth boot and shoe market 
  in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing 
  city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale drygoods, 
  grocery, and drug business.


I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you the 
digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you.  I was 
traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission 
from a Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish 
a personal connection between the publication and one of its 
contributors, Azalea Adair.

Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting) 
had sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the 
editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon.  So 
they had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by 
contract his or her output at two cents a word before some other 
publisher offered her ten or twenty.

At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers _en 
brochette_ (try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into 
the drizzle, which was still on for an unlimited run.  At the first 
corner, I came upon Uncle Caesar.  He was a stalwart Negro, older 
than the pyramids, with gray wool and a face that reminded me of 
Brutus, and a second afterwards of the late King Cettiwayo.  He 
wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had seen or expect to 
see.  It reached to his ankles an had once been a Confederate gray 
in colors.  But rain and sun and age had so variegated it that 
Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale monochrome.  I 
must linger with that coat, for it has to do with the story--the story 
that is so long in coming, because you can hardly expect anything 
to happen in Nashville.

Once it must have been the military coat of an officer.  The cape of 
it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and 
tasseled magnificently.  But now the frogs and tassles were gone.  
In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some 
surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted 
common hempen twine.  This twine was frayed and disheveled.  It 
must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished 
splendors, with tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed 
faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs.  And, to complete 
the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone 
save one.  The second button from the top alone remained.  The 
coat was fastened by other twine strings tied through the 
buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side.  
There was never such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked 
and of so many mottled hues.  The lone button was the size of a 
half-dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine.

This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might 
have started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two 
animals hitched to it.  As I approached he threw open the door, 
drew out a feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in 
deep, rumbling tones:

"Step right in, suh; ain't a speck of dust in it--jus' got back from a 
funeral, suh."

I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra 
cleaning.  I looked up and down the street and perceived that there 
was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb.  
I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair.

"I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street," I said, and was about to 
step into the hack.  But for an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like 
arm of the old Negro barred me.  On his massive and saturnine 
face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment.  
Then, with quickly returning conviction, he asked blandishingly:  
"What are you gwine there for, boss?"

"What is it to you?" I asked, a little sharply.

"Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'.  Only it's a lonesome kind of part of 
town and few folks ever has business out there.  Step right in.  The 
seats is clean--jes' got back from a funeral, suh."

A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end.  I could 
hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the 
uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now 
further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of 
tar and oleander blossoms.  All I could see through the streaming 
windows were two rows of dim houses.


  The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets, 
  of which 137 miles are paved; a system of waterworks that cost 
  $2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains.


Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion.  Thirty 
yards back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove 
of trees and untrimmed shrubbery.  A row of box bushes overflowed 
and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept 
closed by a rope noose that encircled the gate post and the first 
paling of the gate.  But when you got inside you saw that 861 
was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence.  
But in the story, I have not yet got inside.

When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds 
came to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional 
quarter, feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so.  He 
refused it.

"It's two dollars, suh," he said.

"How's that?" I asked.  "I plainly heard you call out at the hotel: 
'Fifty cents to any part of the town.'"

"It's two dollars, suh," he repeated obstinately.  "It's a long ways 
from the hotel."

"It is within the city limits and well within them." I argued.  
"Don't think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee.  Do you 
see those hills over there?"  I went on, pointing toward the 
east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle); "well, I was 
born and raised on their other side.  You old fool nigger, can't 
you tell people from other people when you see 'em?"

The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened.  "Is you from the 
South, suh?  I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me.  They 
is somethin' sharp in the toes for a Southern gen'lman to wear."

"Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?" said I inexorably.

His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, 
returned, remained ten seconds, and vanished.

"Boss," he said, "fifty cents is right; but I _needs_ two dollars, 
suh; I'm _obleeged_ to have two dollars.  I ain't _demandin'_ it 
now, suh; after I know whar you's from; I'm jus' sayin' that I _has_ 
to have two dollars to-night, and business mighty po'."

Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features.  He had 
been luckier than he had hoped.  Instead of having picked up a 
greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance.

"You confounded old rascal," I said, reaching down to my pocket, 
"you ought to be turned over to the police."

For the first time I saw him smile.  He knew; _he knew_.  HE 
KNEW.

I gave him two one-dollar bills.  As I handed them over I noticed 
that one of them had seen parlous times.  Its upper right-hand 
corner was missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but 
joined again.  A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, 
preserved its negotiability.

Enough of the African bandit for the present:  I left him happy, 
lifted the rope and opened a creaky gate.

The house, as I said, was a shell.  A paint brush had not touched it 
in twenty years.  I could not see why a strong wind should not 
have bowled it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the 
trees that hugged it close--the trees that saw the battle of Nashville 
and still drew their protecting branches around it against storm and 
enemy and cold.

Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descendant of the 
cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the 
cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a 
queen's, received me.

The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing 
in it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, 
a cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa 
and two or three chairs.  Yes, there was a picture on the wall, 
a colored crayon drawing of a cluster of pansies.  I looked around 
for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket 
but they were not there.

Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be 
repeated to you.  She was a product of the old South, gently 
nurtured in the sheltered life.  Her learning was not broad, but was 
deep and of splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope.  
She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world 
was derived from inference and by inspiration.  Of such is the 
precious, small group of essayists made.  Whle she talked to me I 
kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them 
guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, 
Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne and Hood.  She was 
exquisite, she was a valuable discovery.  Nearly everybody 
nowadays knows too much--oh, so much too much--of real life.

I could perceive clearly that Azalea Adair was very poor.  A house 
and a dress she had, not much else, I fancied.  So, divided between 
my duty to the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists 
who fought Thomas in the valley of the Cumberland, I listened to 
her voice, which was like a harpsichord's, and found that I could 
not speak of contracts.  In the presence of the nine Muses and the 
three Graces one hesitated to lower the topic to two cents.  There 
would have to be another colloquy after I had regained my 
commercialism.  But I spoke of my mission, and three o'clock of 
the next afternoon was set for the discussion of the business 
proposition.

"Your town," I said, as I began to make ready to depart (which is 
the time for smooth generalities), "seems to be a quiet, sedate 
place.  A home town, I should say, where few things out of the 
ordinary ever happen."


  It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with 
  the West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity 
  of more than 2,000 barrels.


Azalea Adair seemed to reflect.

"I have never thought of it that way," she said, with a kind of 
sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her.  "Isn't it in the 
still, quiet places that things do happen?  I fancy that when God 
began to create the earth on the first Monday morning one could 
have leaned out one's window and heard the drops of mud splashing 
from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills.  What did the 
noisiest project in the world--I mean the building of the Tower of 
Bable--result in finally?  A page and a half of Esperanto in the 
_North American Review_."

"Of course," said I platitudinously, "human nature is the same 
everywhere; but there is more color--er--more drama and 
movement and--er--romance in some cities than in others."

"On the surface," said Azalea Adair.  "I have traveled many times 
around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings--print 
and dreams.  I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan 
of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had 
uncovered her face in public.  I have seen a man in Nashville tear 
up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face 
covered--with rice powder.  In San Francisco's Chinatown I saw 
the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling 
almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American 
lover again.  She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three 
inches above her knee.  At a euchre party in East Nashville the 
other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates 
and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter.  The 
boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart; but I wish you could 
have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to 
table.  Oh, yes, it is a humdrum town.  Just a few miles of red 
brick houses and mud and lumber yards."

Some one knocked hollowly at the back of the house.  Azalea Adair 
breathed a soft apology and went to investigate the sound.  She 
came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush 
on her cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders.

"You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said, "and a sugar 
cake."

She reached and shook a little iron bell.  In shuffled a small Negro 
girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with 
thumb in mouth and bulging eyes.

Azlea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a 
dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two 
pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper.  
It was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro--there was 
no doubt about it.

"Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy,"  she said, 
handing the girl the dollar bill, "and get a quarter of a pound of 
tea--the kind he always sends me--and ten cents worth of sugar 
cakes.  Now, hurry.  The supply of tea in the house happens to be 
exhausted," she explained to me.

Impy left by the back way.  Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet 
had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek--I was sure it was 
hers--filled the hollow house.  Then the deep, gruff tones of an 
angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and 
unintelligible words.

Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared.  
For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man's voice; then 
someting like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned calmly 
to her chair.

"This is a roomy house," she said, "and I have a tenant for part of 
it.  I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea.  It was 
impossible to get the kind I always use at the store.  Perhaps to-
morrow, Mr. Baker will be able to supply me."

I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house.  I 
inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave.  After 
I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea 
Adair's name.  But to-morrow would do.

That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this 
uneventful city forced upon me.  I was in the town only two days, 
but in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to 
be an accomplice--after the fact, if that is the correct legal 
term--to a murder.

As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of 
the ploychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the 
dungeony door of his peripatetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather 
duster and began his ritual:  "Step right in, boss.  Carriage is 
clean--jus' got back from a funeral.  Fifty cents to any--"

And then he knew me and grinned broadly.  "'Scuse me, boss; you 
is de gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'.  Thank you 
kindly, suh."

"I am going out to 861 again to-morrow afternoon at three," said I, 
"and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me.  So you know Miss 
Adair?" I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill.

"I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh," he replied.

"I judge that she is pretty poor," I said.  "She hasn't much money 
to speak of, has she?"

For an instant I looked again at the fierce countenance of King 
Cettiwayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old Negro 
hack driver.

"She ain't gwine to starve, suh," he said slowly.  "She has reso'ces, 
suh; she has reso'ces."

"I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip," said I.

"Dat is puffeckly correct, suh," he answered humbly.  "I jus' _had_ 
to have dat two dollars dis mawnin', boss."

I went to the hotel and lied by electricity.  I wired the magazine:  
"A. Adair holds out for eight cents a word."

The answer that came back was:  "Give it to her quick you duffer."

Just before dinner "Major" Wentworth Caswell bore down upon 
me with the greetings of a long-lost friend.  I have seen few men 
whom I have so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so 
difficult to be rid.  I was standing at the bar when he invaded me; 
therefore I could not wave the white ribbon in his face.  I would 
have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping, thereby, to escape another; 
but he was one of those despicable, roaring, advertising bibbers 
who must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent 
that they waste in their follies.

With an air of producing millions he drew two one-dollar bills 
from a pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar.  I looked once 
more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, 
torn through the middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue 
paper.  It was my dollar bill again.  It could have been no other.

I went up to my room.  The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary, 
eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless.  I 
remember that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of 
the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clew to 
a tremendously fine detective story of San Francisco) by saying 
to myself sleepily:  "Seems as if a lot of people here own stock 
in the Hack-Driver's Trust.  Pays dividends promptly, too.  
Wonder if--"  Then I fell asleep.

King Cettiwayo was at his post the next day, and rattled my bones 
over the stones out to 861.  He was to wait and rattle me back 
again when I was ready.

Azalea Adair looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had 
looked on the day before.  After she had signed the contract at 
eight cents per word she grew still paler and began to slip out of 
her chair.  Whitout much trouble I managed to get her up on the 
antediluvian horsehair sofa and then I ran out to the sidewalk and 
yelled to the coffee-colored Pirate to bring a doctor.  With a 
wisdom that I had not expected in him, he abandoned his team and 
struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value of speed.  In 
ten minutes he returned with a grave, gray-haired and capable man 
of medicine.  In a few words (worth much less than eight cents each) 
I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of mystery.  He 
bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the old Negro.

"Uncle Caesar," he said calmly, "Run up to my house and ask Miss 
Lucy to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half
a tumbler of port wine.  And hurry back.  Don't drive--run.  I 
want you to get back sometime this week."

It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the 
speeding powers of the land-pirate's steeds.  After Uncle Caesar 
was gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the doctor looked 
me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until 
he had decided that I might do.

"It is only a case of insufficient nutrition," he said.  "In other 
words, the result of poverty, pride, and starvation.  Mrs. Caswell 
has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she 
will accept nothing except from that old Negro, Uncle Caesar, who 
was once owned by her family."

"Mrs. Caswell!" said I, in surprise.  And then I looked at the 
contract and saw that she had signed it "Azalea Adair Caswell."

"I thought she was Miss Adair," I said.

"Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir," said the doctor.  
"It is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old 
servant contributes toward her support."

When the milk and wine had been brought the doctor soon revived 
Azalea Adair.  She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn 
leaves that were then in season, and their height of color.  She 
referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old 
palpitation of the heart.  Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa.  
The doctor was due elsewhere, and I followed him to the door.  I 
told  him that it was within my power and intentions to make a 
reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair on future 
contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased.

"By the way," he said, "perhaps you would like to know that you 
have had royalty for a coachman.  Old Caesar's grandfather was a 
king in Congo.  Caesar himself has royal ways, as you may have 
observed."

As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Caesar's voice inside:  
"Did he get bofe of dem two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?"

"Yes, Caesar," I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly.  And then I 
went in and concluded business negotiations with our contributor.  
I assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting 
it as a necessary formality in binding our bargain.  And then 
Uncle Caesar drove me back to the hotel.

Here ends all of the story as far as I can testify as a witness.  The 
rest must be only bare statements of facts.

At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll.  Uncle Caesar was at 
his corner.  He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his 
duster and began his depressing formula:  "Step right in, suh.  
Fifty cents to anywhere in the city--hack's puffickly clean, suh----
jus' got back from a funeral--"

And then he recognized me.  I think his eyesight was getting bad.  
His coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine 
strings were more frayed and ragged, the last remaining button--
the button of yellow horn--was gone.  A motley descendant of 
kings was Uncle Caesar!

About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front 
of a drug store.  In a desert where nothing happens this was 
manna; so I edged my way inside.  On an extemporized couch of 
empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of 
Major Wentworth Caswell.  A doctor was testing him for the 
immortal ingredient.  His decision was that it was conspicuous 
by its absence.

The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and 
brought by curious and ennuied citizens to the drug store.  The 
late human being had been engaged in terrific battle--the details 
showed that.  Loafer and reprobate though he had been, he had 
been also a warrior.  But he had lost.  His hands were yet clinched 
so tightly that his fingers would not be opened.  The gentle 
citizens who had know him stood about and searched their vocabularies 
to find some good words, if it were possible, to speak of him.  
One kind-looking man said, after much thought:  "When 'Cas' was about 
fo'teen he was one of the best spellers in school."

While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of "the man that 
was" which hung down the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and 
dropped something at my feet.  I covered it with one foot quietly, 
and a little later on I picked it up and pocketed it.  I reasoned 
that in his last struggle his hand must have seized that object 
unwittingly and held it in a death grip.

At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the 
possible exceptions of politics and prohibition, was the demise of 
Major Caswell.  I heard one man say to a group of listeners:

"In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by somme of these 
no-account niggers for his money.  He had fifty dollars this 
afternoon which he showed to several gentlemen in the hotel.  When 
he was found the money was not on his person."

I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was 
crossing the bridge over the Cumberland River I took out of my 
pocket a yellow horn overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent piece, 
with frayed ends of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it out 
of the window into the slow, muddy waters below.

_I wonder what's doing in Buffalo!_














XIV

PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER

If you are a philosopher you can do this thing:  you can go to the 
top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet 
below, and despise them as insects.  Like the irresponsible black 
waterbugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle 
about idiotically without aim or purpose.  They do not even move 
with the admirable intelligence of ants, for ants always know when 
they are going home.  The ant is of a lowly station, but he will 
often reach home and get his slippers on while you are left at your 
elevated station.

Man, then, to the housetopped philosopher, appears to be but a 
creeping, contemptible beetle.  Brokers, poets, millionaires, 
bootblacks, beauties, hod-carriers and politicians become little 
black specks dodging bigger black specks in streets no wider than 
your thumb.

From this high view the city itself becomes degraded to an 
unintelligible mass of distorted buildings and impossible 
perspectives; the revered ocean is a duck pond; the earth 
itself a lost golf ball.  All the minutiae of life are gone.  
The philosopher gazes into the infinite heavens above him, 
and allows his soul to expand to the influence of his new 
view.  He feels that he is the heir to Eternity and the child 
of Time.  Space, too, should be his by the right of his immortal 
heritage, and he thrills at the thought that some day his 
kind shall traverse theose mysterious aerial roads between planet 
and planet.  The tiny world beneath his feet upon which this 
towering structure of steel rests as a speck of dust upon a 
Himalayan mountain--it is but one of a countless number of such 
whirling atoms.  What are the ambitions, the achievements, the 
paltry conquests and loves of those restless black insects below 
compared with the serene and awful immensity of the universe that 
lies above and around their insignificant city?

It is guaranteed that the philosopher will have these thoughts.  
They have been expressly compiled from the philosophies of the 
world and set down with the proper interrogation point at the end 
of them to represent the invariable musings of deep thinkers on 
high places.  And when the philosopher takes the elevator down 
his mind is broader, his heart is at peace, and his conception 
of the cosmogony of creation is as wide as the buckle of Orion's 
summer belt.

But if your name happened to be Daisy, and you worked in an Eighth 
Avenue candy store and lived in a little cold hall bedroom, five 
feet by eight, and earned $6 per week, and ate ten-cent lunches 
and were nineteen years old, and got up at 6:30 and worked till 9, 
and never had studied philosophy, maybe things wouldn't look 
that way to you from the top of a skyscraper.

Two sighed for the hand of Daisy, the unphilosophical.  One was 
Joe, who kept the smallest store in New York.  It was about the 
size of a tool-box of the D. P. W., and was stuck like a swallow's 
nest against a corner of a down-town skyscraper.  Its stock 
consisted of fruit, candies, newspapers, song books, cigarettes, and 
lemonade in season.  When stern winter shook his congealed locks 
and Joe had to move himself and the fruit inside, there was exactly 
room in the store for the proprietor, his wares, a stove the size 
of a vinegar cruet, and one customer.

Joe was not of the nation that keeps us forever in a furore with 
fugues and fruit.  He was a capable American youth who was 
laying by money, and wanted Daisy to help him spend it.  Three 
times he had asked her.

"I got money saved up, Daisy," was his love song; "and you know 
how bad I want you.  That store of mine ain't very big, but--"

"Oh, ain't it?" would be the antiphony of the unphilosophical one.  
"Why, I heard Wanamaker's was trying to get you to sublet part of 
your floor space to them for next year."

Daisy passed Joe's corner every morning and evening.

"Hello, Two-by-Four!" was her usual greeting.  "Seems to me your 
store looks emptier.  You must have sold a pack of chewing gum."

Ain't much room in here, sure," Joe would answer, with his slow 
grin, "except for you, Daise.  Me and the store are waitin' for you 
whenever you'll take us.  Don't you think you might before long?"

"Store!"--a fine scorn was expressed by Daisy's uptilted nose--
"sardine box!  Waitin' for me, you say?  Gee! you'd have to throw 
out about a hundred pounds of candy before I could get inside of 
it, Joe."

"I wouldn't mind an even swap like that," said Joe, complimentary.

Daisy's existence was limited in every way.  She had to walk 
sideways between the counter and the shelves in the candy store.  
In her own hall bedroom coziness had been carried close to 
cohesiveness.  The walls were so near to one another that the paper 
on them made a perfect Babel of noise.  She could light the gas 
with one hand and close the door with the other without taking her 
eyes off the reflection of her brown pompadour in the mirror.  She 
had Joe's picture in a gilt frame on the dresser, and sometimes--but 
her next thought would always be of Joe's funny little store tacked 
like a soap box to the corner of that great building, and away 
would go her sentiment in a breeze of laughter.

Daisy's other suitor followed Joe by several months.  He came to 
board in the house where she lived.  His name was Dabster, and he 
was a philosopher.  Though young, attainments stood out upon 
him like continental labels on a Passaic (N. J.) suit-case.  
Knowledge he had kidnapped from cyclopedias and handbooks of 
useful information; but as for wisdom, when she passed he was left 
sniffling in the road without so much as the number of her motor 
car.  He could and would tell you the proportion of water and 
muscle-making properties of peas and veal, the shortest verse in 
the Bible, the number of pounds of shingle nails required to fasten 
256 shingles laid four inches to the weather, the population of 
Kankakee, Ill., the theories of Spinoza, the name of Mr. H. McKay 
Twombly's second hall footman, the length of the Hoosac Tunnel, 
the best time to set a hen, the salary of the railway post-office 
messenger between Driftwood and Red Bank Furnace, Pa., and the 
number of bones in the foreleg of a cat.

The weight of learning was no handicap to Dabster.  His statistics 
were the sprigs of parsley with which he garnished the feast of 
small talk that he would set before you if he conceived that to be 
your taste.  And again he used them as breastworks in foraging at 
the boardinghouse.  Firing at you a volley of figures concerning 
the weight of a lineal foot of bar-iron 5 x 2 3/4 inches, and the 
average annual rainfall at Fort Snelling, Minn., he would transfix 
with his fork the best piece of chicken on the dish while you were 
trying to rally sufficiently to ask him weakly why does a hen cross 
the road.

Thus, brightly armed, and further equipped with a measure of good 
looks, of a hair-oily, shopping-district-at-three-in-the-afternoon 
kind, it seems that Joe, of the Lilliputian emporium, had a rival 
worthy of his steel.

But Joe carried no steel.  There wouldn't have been room in his 
store to draw it if he had.

One Saturday afternoon, about four o'clock, Daisy and Mr. Dabster 
stopped before Joe's booth.  Dabster wore a silk hat, and--well, 
Daisy was a woman, and that hat had no chance to get back in its 
box until Joe had seen it.  A stick of pineapple chewing gum was 
the ostensible object of the call.  Joe supplied it through the open 
side of his store.  He did not pale or falter at sight of the hat.

"Mr. Dabster's going to take me on top of the building to observe 
the view," said Daisy, after she had introduced her admirers.  "I 
never was on a skyscraper.  I guess it must be awfully nice and 
funny up there."

"H'm!" said Joe.

"The panorama," said Mr. Dabster, "exposed to the gaze from the top 
of a lofty building is not only sublime, but instructive.  Miss 
Daisy has a decided pleasure in store for her."

"It's windy up there, too, as well as here," said Joe.  "Are you 
dressed warm enough, Daise?"

"Sure thing!  I'm all lined," said Daisy, smiling slyly at his clouded 
brow.  "You look just like a mummy in a case, Joe.  Ain't you just 
put in an invoice of a pint of peanuts or another apple?  Your stock 
looks awful over-stocked."

Daisy giggled at her favorite joke; and Joe had to smile with her.

"Your quarters are somewhat limited, Mr.--er--er," remarked 
Dabster, "in comparison with the size of this building.  I 
understand the area of its side to be about 340 by 100 feet.  
That would make you occupy a proportionate space as if half of 
Beloochistan were placed upon a territory as large as the United 
States east of the Rocky Mountains, with the Province of Ontario 
and Belgium added."

"Is that so, sport?" said Joe, genially.  "You are Weisenheimer on 
figures, all right.  How many square pounds of baled hay do you 
think a jackass could eat if he stopped brayin' long enough to keep 
still a minute and five eighths?"

A few minutes later Daisy and Mr. Dabster stepped from an elevator 
to the top floor of the skyscraper.  Then up a short, steep stairway 
and out upon the roof.  Dabster led her to the parapet so she could 
look down at the black dots moving in the street below.

"What are they?" she asked, trembling.  She had never before been 
on a height like this before.

And then Dabster must needs play the philosopher on the tower, 
and conduct her soul forth to meet the immensity of space.

"Bipeds," he said, solemnly.  "See what they become even at the 
small elevation of 340 feet--mere crawling insects going to and fro 
at random."

"Oh, they ain't anything of the kind," exclaimed Daisy, suddenly--
"they're folks!  I saw an automobile.  Oh, gee! are we that high 
up?"

"Walk over this way," said Dabster.

He showed her the great city lying like an orderly array of toys far 
below, starred here and there, early as it was, by the first beacon 
lights of the winter afternoon.  And then the bay and sea to the 
south and east vanishing mysteriously into the sky.

"I don't like it," declared Daisy, with troubled blue eyes.  "Say we 
go down."

But the philosopher was not to be denied his opportunity.  He would 
let her behold the grandeur of his mind, the half-nelson he had 
on the infinite, and the memory he had for statistics.  And then 
she would nevermore be content to buy chewing gum aat the 
smallest store in New York.  And so he began to prate of the 
smallness of human affairs, and how that even so slight a removal 
from earth made man and his works look like one tenth part of a 
dollar thrice computed.  And that one should consider the sidereal 
system and the maxims of Epictetus and be comforted.

"You don't carry me with you," said Daisy.  "Say, I think it's awful 
to be up so high that folks look like fleas.  One of them we saw 
might have been Joe.  Why, Jiminy! we might as well be in New 
Jersey!  Say, I'm afraid up here!"

The philosopher smiled fatuously.

"The earth," said he, "is itself only as a grain of wheat in space.  
Look up there."

Daisy gazed upward apprehensively.  The short day was spent and 
the stars were coming out above.

"Yonder star," said Dabster, "is Venus, the evening star.  She is 
66,000,000 miles from the sun."

"Fudge!" said Daisy, with a brief flash of spirit, "where do you 
think I come from--Brooklyn?  Susie Price, in our store--her 
brother sent her a ticket to go to San Francisco--that's only three 
thousand miles."

The philosopher smiled indulgently.

"Our world," he said, "is 91,000,000 miles from the sun.  There 
are eighteen stars of the first magnitude that are 211,000 times 
further from us than the sun is.  If one of them should be 
extinguished it would be three years before we would see its light 
go out.  There are six thousand stars of the sixth magnitude.  It 
takes thirty-six years for the light of one of them to reach the 
earth.  With an eighteen-foot telescope we can see 43,000,000 
stars, including those of the thirteenth magnitude, whose light 
takes 2,700 years to reach us.  Each of these stars--"

"You're lyin'," cried Daisy, angrily.  "You're tryin' to scare me.  
And you have; I want to go down!"

She stamped her foot.

"Arcturus--" began the philosopher, soothingly, but he was 
interrupted by a demonstration out of the vastness of the nature 
that he was endeavoring to portray with his memory instead of his 
heart.  For to the heart-expounder of nature the stars were set in 
the firmament expressly to give soft light to lovers wandering 
happily beneath them; and if you stand tiptoe some September night 
with your sweetheart on your arm you can almost touch them with 
your hand.  Three years for their light to reach us, indeed!

Out of the west leaped a meteor, lighting the roof of the skyscraper 
almost to midday.  Its fiery parabola was limned against the sky 
toward the east.  It hissed as it went, and Daisy screamed.

"Take me down," she cried, vehemently, "you--you mental arithmetic!"

Dabster got her to the elevator, and inside of it.  She was wild-
eyed, and she shuddered when the express made its debilitating 
drop.

Outside the revolving door of the skyscraper the philosopher lost 
her.  She vanished; and he stood, bewildered, without figures or 
statistics to aid him.

Joe had a lull in trade, and by squirming among his stock succeeded 
in lighting a cigarette and getting one cold foot against the 
attenuated stove.

The door was burst open, and Daisy, laughing, crying, scattering 
fruit and candies, tumbled into his arms.

"Oh, Joe, I've been up on the skyscraper.  Ain't it cozy and warm 
and homelike in here!  I'm ready for you, Joe, whenever you want 
me."










XV

A BIRD OF BAGDAD

Without a doubt much of the spirit and genius of the Caliph Harun 
Al Rashid descended to the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen 
Quigg.

Quigg's restaurant is in Fourth Avenue--that street that the city 
seems to have forgotten in its growth.  Fourth Avenue--born and 
bred in the Bowery--staggers northward full of good resolutions.

Where it crosses Fourteenth Street it struts for a brief moment 
proudly in the glare of the museums and cheap theatres.  It may yet 
become a fit mate for its high-born sister boulevard to the west, or 
its roaring, polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east.  It passes 
Union Square; and here the hoofs of the dray horses seem to thunder 
in unison, recalling the tread of marching hosts--Hooray!  But now 
come the silent and terrible mountains--buildings square as forts, 
high as the clouds, shutting out the sky, where thousands of slaves 
bend over desks all day.  On the ground floors are only little fruit 
shops and laundries and book shops, where you see copies of 
"Littell's Living Age" and G. W. M. Reynold's novels in the windows.  
And next--poor Fourth Avenue!--the street glides into a mediaeval 
solitude.  On each side are shops devoted to "Antiques."

Let us say it is night.  Men in rusty armor stand in the windows 
and menace the hurrying cars with raised, rusty iron gauntlets.  
Hauberks and helms, blunderbusses, Cromwellian breastplates, 
matchlocks, creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of 
dead-and-gone gallants gleam dully in the ghostly light.  Here 
and there from a corner saloon (lit with Jack-o'-lanterns or 
phosphorus), stagger forth shuddering, home-bound citizens, 
nerved by the tankards within to their fearsome journey adown 
that eldrich avenue lined with the bloodstained weapons of the 
fighting dead.  What street could live inclosed by these mortuary 
relics, and trod by these spectral citizens in whose sunken hearts 
scarce one good whoop or tra-la-la remained?

Not Fourth Avenue.  Not after the tinsel but enlivening glories of 
the Little Rialto--not after the echoing drum-beats of Union Square.  
There need be no tears, ladies and gentlemen; 'tis but the suicide 
of a street.  With a shriek and a crash Fourth Avenue dives headlong 
into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth and is never seen again.

Near the sad scene of the thoroughfare's dissolution stood the 
modest restaurant of Quigg.  It stands there yet if you care to view 
its crumbling red-brick front, its show window heaped with oranges, 
tomatoes, layer cakes, pies, canned asparagus--its papier-m^ach'e 
lobster and two Maltese kittens asleep on a bunch of lettuce--if you 
care to sit at one of the little tables upon whose cloth has been 
traced in the yellowest of coffee stains the trail of the Japanese 
advance--to sit there with one eye on your umbrella and the other 
upon the bogus bottle from which you drop the counterfeit sauce 
foisted upon us by the cursed charlatan who assumes to be our dear 
old lord and friend, the "Nobleman in India."

Quigg's title came through his mother.  One of her ancestors was a 
Margravine of Saxony.  His father was a Tammany brave.  On account 
of the dilution of his heredity he found that he could neither 
become a reigning potentate nor get a job in the City Hall.  So he 
opened a restaurant.  He was a man full of thought and reading.  
The business gave him a living, though he gave it little attention.  
One side of his house bequeathed to him a poetic and romantic 
adventure.  The other have him the restless spirit that made him 
seek adventure.  By day he was Quigg, the restaurateur.  By night 
he was the Margrave--the Caliph--the Prince of Bohemia--going about 
the city in search of the odd, the mysterious, the inexplicable, 
the recondite.

One night at 9, at which hour the restaurant closed, Quigg set forth 
upon his quest.  There was a mingling of the foreign, the military 
and the artistic in his appearance as he buttoned his coat high up 
under his short-trimmed brown and gray beard and turned westward 
toward the more central life conduits of the city.  In his pocket 
he had stored an assortment of cards, written upon, without which 
he never stirred out of doors.  Each of those cards was good at 
his own restaurant for its face value.  Some called simply for a 
bowl of soup or sandwiches and coffee; others entitled their bearer 
to one, two, three or more days of full meals; a few were for single 
regular meals; a very few were, in effect, meal tickets good for a 
week.

Of riches and power Margrave Quigg had none; but he had a Caliph's 
heart--it may be forgiven him if his head fell short of the 
measure of Harun Al Rashid's.  Perhaps some of the gold pieces in 
Bagdad had put less warmth and hope into the complainants among 
the bazaars than had Quigg's beef stew among the fishermen and 
one-eyed calenders of Manhattan.

Continuing his progress in search of romance to divert him, or 
of distress that he might aid, Quigg became aware of a fast-
gathering crowd that whooped and fought and eddied at a corner 
of Broadway and the crosstown street that he was traversing.  
Hurrying to the spot he beheld a young man of an exceedingly 
melancholy and preoccupied demeanor engaged in the pastime of 
casting silver money from his pockets in the middle of the 
street.  With each motion of the generous one's hand the crowd 
huddled upon the falling largesse with yells of joy.  Traffic 
was suspended.  A policman in the centre of the mob stooped 
often to the ground as he urged the blockaders to move on.

The Margrave saw at a glance that here was food for his hunger 
after knowledge concerning abnormal working of the human heart.  
He made his way swiftly to the young man's side and took his arm.  
"Come with me at once," he said, in the low but commanding voice 
that his waiters had learned to fear.

"Pinched," remarked the young man, looking up at him with 
expressionless eyes.  "Pinched by a painless dentist.  Take me 
away, flatty, and give me gas.  Some lay eggs and some lay none.  
When is a hen?"

Still deeply seized by some inward grief, but tractable, he allowed 
Quigg to lead him away and down the street to a little park.

There, seated on a bench, he upon whom a corner of the great 
Caliph's mantle has descended, spake with kindness and discretion, 
seeking to know what evil had come upon the other, disturbing 
his soul and driving him to such ill-considered and ruinous waste 
of his substance and stores.

"I was doing the Monte Cristo act as adapted by Pompton, N. J., 
wasn't I?" asked the young man.

"You were throwing small coins into the street for the people to 
scramble after," said the Margrave.

"That's it.  You buy all the beer you can hold, and then you throw 
chicken feed to--  Oh, curse that word chicken, and hens, feathers, 
roosters, eggs, and everything connected with it!"

"Young sir," said the Margrave kindly, but with dignity, "though I 
do not ask your confidence, I invite it.  I know the world and I 
know humanity.  Man is my study, though I do not eye him as the 
scientist eyes a beetle or as the philanthropist gazes at the objects 
of his bounty--through a veil of theory and ignorance.  It is my 
pleasure and distraction to interest myself in the peculiar and 
complicated misfortunes that life in a great city visits upon my 
fellow-men.  You may be familiar with the history of that glorious 
and immortal ruler, the Caliph Harun Al Rashid, whose wise and 
beneficent excursions among his people in the city of Bagdad 
secured him the privilege of relieving so much of their distress.  
In my humble way I walk in his footsteps.  I seek for romance and 
adventure in city streets--not in ruined castles or in crumbling 
palaces.  To me the greatest marvels of magic are those that take 
place in men's hearts when acted upon by the furious and diverse 
forces of a crowded population.  In your strange behavior this 
evening I fancy a story lurks.  I read in your act something deeper 
than the wanton wastefulness of a spendthrift.  I observe in your 
countenance the certain traces of consuming grief or despair.  I 
repeat--I invite your confidence.  I am not without some power to 
alleviate and advise.  Will you not trust me?"

"Gee, how you talk!" exclaimed the young man, a gleam of admiration 
supplanting for a moment the dull sadness of his eyes.  "You've got 
the Astor Library skinned to a synopsis of preceding chapters.  
I mind that old Turk you speak of.  I read 'The Arabian Nights' 
when I was a kid.  He was a kind of Bill Devery and Charlie 
Schwab rolled into one.  But, say, you might wave enchanted 
dishrags and make copper bottles smoke up coon giants all night 
without ever touching me.  My case won't yield to that kind 
of treatment."

"If I could hear your story," said the Margrave, with his lofty, 
serious smile.

"I'll spiel it in about nine words," said the young man, with a 
deep sigh, "but I don't think you can help me any.  Unless you're 
a peach at guessing it's back to the Bosphorous for you on your 
magic linoleum."

THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN AND THE HARNESS MAKER'S RIDDLE

"I work in Hildebrant's saddle and harness shop down in Grant 
Street.  I've worked there five years.  I get $18 a week.  That's 
enough to marry on, ain't it?  Well, I'm not going to get married.  
Old Hildebrant is one of these funny Dutchmen--you know the 
kind--always getting off bum jokes.  He's got about a million 
riddles and things that he faked from Rogers Brothers' great-
grandfather.  Bill Watson works there, too.  Me and Bill have to 
stand for them chestnuts day after day.  Why do we do it?  Well, 
jobs ain't to be picked off every Anheuser bush--  And then there's 
Laura.

"What?  The old man's daughter.  Comes in the shop every day.  
About nineteen, and the picture of the blonde that sits on the 
palisades of the Rhine and charms the clam-diggers into the surf.  
Hair the color of straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the 
best harness blacking--think of that!

"Me?  well, it's either me or Bill Watson.  She treats us both equal.  
Bill is all to the psychopathic about her; and me?--well, you saw 
me plating the roadbed of the Great Maroon Way with silver to-
night.  That was on account of Laura.  I was spiflicated, Your 
Highness, and I wot not of what I wouldst.

"How?  Why, old Hildebrandt say to me and Bill this afternoon:  
'Boys, one riddle have I for you gehabt haben.  A young man who 
cannot riddles antworten, he is not so good by business for ein 
family to provide--is not that--hein?'  And he hands us a riddle--
a conundrum, some calls it--and he chuckles interiorly and gives 
both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it.  
And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to 
his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party.  
And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she's naturally 
aching for a husband, and it's either me or Bill Watson, for old 
Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry somebody that'll 
carry on the business after he's stitched his last pair of traces.

"The riddle?  Why, it was this:  'What kind of a hen lays the 
longest?  Think of that!  What kind of a hen lays the longest?  
Ain't it like a Dutchman to risk a man's happiness on a fool 
proposition like that?  Now, what's the use?  What I don't know 
about hens would fill several incubators.  You say you're giving 
imitations of the old Arab guy that gave away--libraries in Bagdad.  
Well, now, can you whistle up a fairy that'll solve this hen query, 
or not?"

When the young man ceased the Margrave arose and paced to and 
fro by the park bench for several minutes.  Finally he sat again, 
and said, in grave and impressive tones:

"I must confess, sir, that during the eight years that I have spent 
in search of adventure and in relieving distress I have never 
encountered a more interesting or a more perplexing case.  I fear 
that I have overlooked hens in my researches and observations.  As 
to their habits, their times and manner of laying, their many 
varieties and cross-breedings, their span of life, their--"

"Oh, don't make an Ibsen drama of it!" interrupted the young man, 
flippantly.  "Riddles--especially old Hildebrant's riddles--don't 
have to be worked out seriously.  They are light themes such as 
Sim Ford and Harry Thurston Peck like to handle.  But, somehow, 
I can't strike just the answer.  Bill Watson may, and he may not.  
To-morrow will tell.  Well, Your Majesty, I'm glad anyhow that 
you butted in and whiled the time away.  I guess Mr. Al Rashid 
himself would have bounced back if one of his constituents had 
conducted him up against this riddle.  I'll say good night.  Peace 
fo' yours, and what-you-may-call-its of Allah."

The Margrave, still with a gloomy air, held out his hand.

"I cannot exppress my regret," he said, sadly.  "Never before have 
I found myself unable to assist in some way.  'What kind of a hen 
lays the longest?  It is a baffling problem.  There is a hen, I 
believe, called the Plymouth Rock that--"

"Cut it out," said the young man.  "The Caliph trade is a mighty 
serious one.  I don't suppose you'd even see anything funny in a 
preacher's defense of John D. Rockefeller.  Well, good night, Your 
Nibs."

From habit the Margrave began to fumble in his pockets.  He drew 
forth a card and handed it to the young man.

"Do me the favor to accept this, anyhow," he said.  "The time may 
come when it might be of use to you."

"Thanks!" said the young man, pocketing it carelessly.  "My name 
is Simmons."

*  *  *  *  *  *

Shame to him who would hint that the reader's interest shall 
altogether pursue the Margrave August Michael von Paulsen 
Quigg.  I am indeed astray if my hand fail in keeping the way 
where my peruser's heart would follow.  Then let us, on the 
morrow, peep quickly in at the door of Hildebrant, harness maker.

Hildebrant's 200 pounds reposed on a bench, silverbuckling a raw 
leather martingale.

Bill Watson came in first.

"Vell," said Hildebrant, shaking all over with the vile conceit of 
the joke-maker, "haf you guessed him?  'Vat kind of a hen lays der 
longest?'"

"Er--why, I think so," said Bill, rubbing a servile chin.  "I think so, 
Mr. Hildebrant--the one that lives the longest--  Is that right?"

"Nein!" said Hildebrant, shaking his head violently.  "You haf not 
guessed der answer."

Bill passed on and donned a bed-tick apron and bachelorhood.

In came the young man of the Arabian Night's fiasco--pale, 
melancholy, hopeless.

"Vell," said Hildebrant, "haf you guessed him?  'Vat kind of a hen 
lays der longest?'"

Simmons regarded him with dull savagery in his eye.  Should he 
curse this mountain of pernicious humor--curse him and die?  
Why should--  But there was Laura.

Dogged, speechless, he thrust his hands into his coat pockets and 
stood.  His hand encountered the strange touch of the Margrave's 
card.  He drew it out and looked at it, as men about to be hanged 
look at a crawling fly.  There was written on it in Quigg's bold, 
round hand:  "Good for one roast chicken to bearer."

Simmons looked up with a flashing eye.

"A dead one!" said he.

"Goot!" roared Hildebrant, rocking the table with giant glee.  "Dot 
is right!  You gome at mine house at 8 o'clock to der party."









XVI

COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON

There are no more Christmas stories to write.  Fiction is exhausted; 
and newspaper items, the next best, are manufactured by clever 
young journalists who have married early and have an engagingly 
pessimistic view of life.  Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we 
are reduced to very questionable sources--facts and philosophy.  
We will begin with--whichever you choose to call it.

Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope 
under a bewildering variety of conditions.  Especially when 
childish sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' end.  We 
exhaust our paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, 
sobbing, to sleep.  Then we grovel in the dust of a million years, 
and ask God why.  Thus we call out of the rat-trap.  As for the 
children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, 
and shepherd dogs.

Now comes the facts in the case of the Rag-Doll, the Tatterdemalion, 
and the Twenty-fifth of December.

On the tenth of that month the Child of the Millionaire lost her 
rag-doll.  There were many servants in the Millionaire's palace on 
the Hudson, and these ransacked the house and grounds, but without 
finding the lost treasure.  The child was a girl of five, and one 
of those perverse little beasts that often wound the sensibilities 
of wealthy parents by fixing their affections upon some vulgar, 
inexpensive toy instead of upon diamond-studded automobiles and 
pony phaetons.

The Child grieved sorely and truly, a thing inexplicable to the 
Millionaire, to whom the rag-doll market was about as interesting 
as Bay State Gas; and to the Lady, the Child's mother, who was all 
form--that is, nearly all, as you shall see.

The Child cried inconsolably, and grew hollow-eyed, knock-kneed, 
spindling, and corykilverty in many other respects.  The Millionaire 
smiled and tapped his coffers confidently.  The pick of the output 
of the French and German toymakers was rushed by special delivery 
to the mansion; but Rachel refused to be comforted.  She was weeping 
for her rag child, and was for a high protective tariff against all 
foreign foolishness.  Then doctors with the finest bedside manners 
and stop-watches were called in.  One by one they chattered futilely 
about peptomanganate of iron and sea voyages and hypophosphites 
until their stop-watches showed that Bill Rendered was under the 
wire for show or place.  Then, as men, they advised that the 
rag-doll be found as soon as possible and restored to its mourning 
parent.  The Child sniffed at therapeutics, chewed a thumb, and 
wailed for her Betsy.  And all this time cablegrams were coming 
from Santa Claus saying that he would soon be here and enjoining us 
to show a true Christian spirit and let up on the pool-rooms and 
tontine policies and platoon systems long enough to give him a 
welcome.  Everywhere the spirit of Christmas was diffusing itself.  
The banks were refusing loans, the pawn-brokers had doubled their 
gang of helpers, people bumped your shins on the streets with red 
sleds, Thomas and Jeremiah bubbled before you on the bars while you 
waited on one foot, holly-wreaths of hospitality were hung in windows 
of the stores, they who had 'em were getting their furs.  You hardly 
knew which was the best bet in balls--three, high, moth, or snow.  
It was no time at which to lose the rag-doll or your heart.

If Doctor Watson's investigating friend had been called in to 
solve this mysterious disappearance he might have observed on the 
Millionaire's wall a copy of "The Vampire."  That would have 
quickly suggested, by induction, "A rag and a bone and a hank of 
hair."  "Flip," a Scotch terrier, next to the rag-doll in the Child's 
heart, frisked through the halls.  The hank of hair!  Aha!  X, the 
unfound quantity, represented the rag-doll.  But, the bone?  Well, 
when dogs find bones they--Done!  It were an easy and a fruitful 
task to examine Flip's forefeet.  Look, Watson!  Earth--dried earth 
between the toes.  Of course, the dog--but Sherlock was not there.  
Therefore it devolves.  But topography and architecture must 
intervene.

The Millionaire's palace occupied a lordly space.  In front of it 
was a lawn close-mowed as a South Ireland man's face two days after 
a shave.  At one side of it, and fronting on another street was 
a pleasuance trimmed to a leaf, and the garage and stables.  The 
Scotch pup had ravished the rag-doll from the nursery, dragged it 
to a corner of the lawn, dug a hole, and buried it after the manner 
of careless undertakers.  There you have the mystery solved, and 
no checks to write for the hypodermical wizard of fi'-pun notes to 
toss to the sergeant.  Then let's get down to the heart of the thing, 
tiresome readers--the Christmas heart of the thing.

Fuzzy was drunk--not riotously or helplessly or loquaciously, as 
you or I might get, but decently, appropriately, and inoffensively, 
as becomes a gentleman down on his luck.

Fuzzy was a soldier of misfortune.  The road, the haystack, the 
park bench, the kitchen door, the bitter round of eleemosynary 
beds-with-shower-bath-attachment, the petty pickings and ignobly 
garnered largesse of great cities--these formed the chapters of his 
history.

Fuzzy walked toward the river, down the street that bounded one 
side of the Millionaire's house and grounds.  He saw a leg of 
Betsy, the lost rag-doll, protruding, like the clue to a Lilliputian 
murder mystery, from its untimely grave in a corner of the fence.  
He dragged forth the maltreated infant, tucked it under his arm, 
and went on his way crooning a road song of his brethrren that no 
doll that has been brought up to the sheltered life should hear.  
Well for Betsy that she had no ears.  And well that she had no eyes 
save unseeing circles of black; for the faces of Fuzzy and the 
Scotch terrier were those of brothers, and the heart of no rag-doll 
could withstand twice to become the prey of such fearsome 
monsters.

Though you may not know it, Grogan's saloon stands near the river 
and near the foot of the street down which Fuzzy traveled.  In 
Grogan's, Christmas cheer was already rampant.

Fuzzy entered with his doll.  He fancied that as a mummer at the 
feast of Saturn he might earn a few drops from the wassail cup.

He set Betsy on the bar and addressed her loudly and humorously, 
seasoning his speech with exaggerated compliments and endearments, 
as one entertaining his lady friend.  The loafers and bibbers 
around caught the farce of it, and roared.  The bartender gave 
Fuzzy a drink.  Oh, many of us carry rag-dolls.

"One for the lady?" suggested Fuzzy impudently, and tucked another 
contribution to Art beneath his waistcoat.

He began to see possibilities in Betsy.  His first-night had been 
a success.  Visions of a vaudeville circuit about town dawned upon 
him.

In a group near the stove sat "Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and 
"One-ear" Mike, well and unfavorably known in the tough shoestring 
district that blackened the left bank of the river.  They passed 
a newspaper back and forth among themselves.  The item that each 
solid and blunt forefinger pointed out was an advertisement headed 
"One Hundred Dollars Reward."  To earn it one must return the 
rag-doll lost, strayed, or stolen from the Millionaire's mansion.  
It seemed that grief still ravaged, unchecked, in the bosom of 
the too faithful Child.  Flip, the terrier, capered and shook his 
absurd whisker before her, powerless to distract.  She wailed 
for her Betsy in the faces of walking, talking, mama-ing, and 
eye-closing French Mabelles and Violettes.  The advertisement 
was a last resort.

Black Riley came from behind the stove and approached Fuzzy in 
his one-sided parabolic way.

The Christmas mummer, flushed with success, had tucked Betsy under 
his arm, and was about to depart to the filling of impromptu dates 
elsewhere.

"Say, 'Bo," said Black Riley to him, "where did you cop out dat 
doll?"

"This doll?" asked Fuzzy, touching Betsy with his forefinger to be 
sure that she was the one referred to.  his doll was presented to 
me by the Emperor of Beloochistan.  I have seven hundred others in 
my country home in Newport.  This doll--"

"Cheese the funny business," said Riley.  "You swiped it or picked 
it up at de house on de hill where--but never mind dat.  You want 
to take fifty cents for de rags, and take it quick.  Me brother's 
kid at home might be wantin' to play wid it.  Hey--what?"

He produced the coin.

Fuzzy laughed a gurgling, insolent, alcoholic laugh in his face.  
Go to the office of Sarah Bernhardt's manager and propose to him 
that she be released from a night's performance to entertain 
the Tackytown Lyceum and Literary Coterie.  You will hear the 
duplicate of Fuzzy's laugh.

Black Riley gauged Fuzzy quickly with his blueberry eye as a 
wrestler does.  His hand was itching to play the Roman and wrest 
the rag Sabine from the extemporaneous merry-andrew who was 
entertaining an angel unaware.  But he refrained.  Fuzzy was fat 
and solid and big.  Three inches of well-nourished corporeity, 
defended from the winter winds by dingy linen, intervened between 
his vest and trousers.  Countless small, circular wrinkles 
running around his coat-sleeves and knees guaranteed the quality 
of his bone and muscle.  His small, blue eyes, bathed in the 
moisture of altruism and wooziness, looked upon you kindly, yet 
without abashment.  He was whiskerly, whiskyly, fleshily 
formidable.  So, Black Riley temporized.

"Wot'll you take for it, den?" he asked.

"Money," said Fuzzy, with husky firmness, "cannot buy her."

He was intoxicated with the artist's first sweet cup of attainment.  
To set a faded-blue, earth-stained rag-doll on a bar, to hold mimic 
converse with it, and to find his heart leaping with the sense of 
plaudits earned and his throat scorching with free libations poured 
in his honor--could base coin buy him from such achievements?  You 
will perceive that Fuzzy had the temperament.

Fuzzy walked out with the gait of a trained sea-lion in search of 
other caf'es to conquer.

Though the dusk of twilight was hardly yet apparent, lights were 
beginning to spangle the city like pop-corn bursting in a deep 
skillet.  Christmas Eve, impatiently expected, was peeping over 
the brink of the hour.  Millions had prepared for its celebration.  
Towns would be painted red.  You, yourself, have heard the horns 
and dodged the capers of the Saturnalians.

"Pigeon" McCarthy, Black Riley, and "One-ear" Mike held a hasty 
converse outside Grogan's.  They were narrow-chested, pallid 
striplings, not fighters in the open, but more dangerous in their 
ways of warfare than the most terrible of Turks.  Fuzzy, in a 
pitched battle, could have eaten the three of them.  In a go-as-you-
please encounter he was already doomed.

They overtook him just as he and Betsy were entering Costigan's 
Casino.  They deflected him, and shoved the newspaper under his 
nose.  Fuzzy could read--and more.

"Boys," said he, "you are certainly damn true friends.  Give me a 
week to think it over."

The soul of a real artist is quenched with difficulty.

The boys carefully pointed out to him that advertisements were 
soulless, and that the deficiencies of the day might not be supplied 
by the morrow.

"A cool hundred," said Fuzzy thoughtfully and mushily.

"Booys," said he, "you are true friends.  I'll go up and claim the 
reward.  The show business is not what it used to be."

Night was falling more surely.  The three tagged at his sides to 
the foot of the rise on which stood the Millionaire's house.  There 
Fuzzy turned upon them acrimoniously.

"You are a pack of putty-faced beagle-hounds," he roared.  "Go 
away."

They went away--a little way.

In "Pigeon" McCarthy's pocket was a section of one-inch gas-pipe 
eight inches long.  In one end of it and in the middle of it was 
a lead plug.  One-half of it was packed tight with solder.  Black 
Riley carried a slung-shot, being a conventional thug.  "One-ear" 
Mike relied upon a pair of brass knucks--an heirloom in the 
family.

"Why fetch and carry," said Black Riley, "when some one will do 
it for ye?  Let him bring it out to us.  Hey--what?"

"We can chuck him in the river," said "Pigeon" McCarthy, "with a 
stone tied to his feet."

"Youse guys make me tired," said "One-ear" Mike sadly.  "Ain't 
progress ever appealed to none of yez?  Sprinkle a little gasoline 
on 'im, and drop 'im on the Drive--well?"

Fuzzy entered the Millionaire's gate and zigzagged toward the 
softly glowing entrance of the mansion.  The three goblins came up 
to the gate and lingered--one on each side of it, one beyond the 
roadway.  They fingered their cold metal and leather, confident.

Fuzzy rang the door-bell, smiling foolishly and dreamily.  An 
atavistic instrinct prompted him to reach for the button of his right 
glove.  But he wore no gloves; so his left hand dropped, embarrassed.

The particular menial whose duty it was to open doors to silks and 
laces shied at first sight of Fuzzy.  But a second glance took in 
his passport, his card of admission, his surety of welcome--the lost 
rag-doll of the daughter of the house dangling under his arm.

Fuzzy was admitted into a great hall, dim with the glow from 
unseen lights.  The hireling went away and returned with a maid 
and the Child.  The doll was restored to the mourning one.  She 
clasped her lost darling to her breast; and then, with the 
inordinate selfishness and candor of childhood, stamped her foot 
and whined hatred and fear of the odious being who had rescued her 
from the depths of sorrow and despair.  Fuzzy wriggled himself 
into an ingratiatory attitude and essayed the idiotic smile and 
blattering small talk that is supposed to charm the budding 
intellect of the young.  The Child bawled, and was dragged away, 
hugging her Betsy close.

There came the Secretary, pale, poised, polished, gliding in 
pumps, and worshipping pomp and ceremony.  He counted out into 
Fuzzy's hand ten ten-dollar bills; then dropped his eye upon 
the door, transferred it to James, its custodian, indicated the 
obnoxious earner of the reward with the other, and allowed his 
pumps to waft him away to secretarial regions.

James gathered Fuzzy with his own commanding optic and swept him 
as far as the front door.

When the money touched fuzzy's dingy palm his first instinct was 
to take to his heels; but a second thought restrained him from that 
blunder of etiquette.  It was his; it had been given him.  It--and, 
oh, what an elysium it opened to the gaze of his mind's eye!  He 
had tumbled to the foot of the ladder; he was hungry, homeless, 
friendless, ragged, cold, drifting; and he held in his hand the key 
to a paradise of the mud-honey that he craved.  The fairy doll had 
waved a wand with her rag-stuffed hand; and now wherever he might go 
the enchanted palaces with shining foot-rests and magic red fluids 
in gleaming glassware would be open to him.

He followed James to the door.

He paused there as the flunky drew open the great mahogany portal 
for him to pass into the vestibule.

Beyond the wrought-iron gates in the dark highway Black Riley and his 
two pals casually strolled, fingering under their coats the inevitably 
fatal weapons that were to make the reward of the rag-doll theirs.

Fuzzy stopped at the Millionaire's door and bethought himself.  
Like little sprigs of mistletoe on a dead tree, certain living green 
thoughts and memories began to decorate his confused mind.  He was 
quite drunk, mind you, and the present was beginning to fade.  Those 
wreaths aand festoons of holly with their scarlet berries making 
the great hall gay--where had he seen such things before?  Somewhere 
he had known polished floors and odors of fresh flowers in winter, 
and--and some one was singing a song in the house that he thought 
he had heard before.  Some one singing and playing a harp.  Of course, 
it was Christmas--Fuzzy though he must have been pretty drunk to have 
overlooked that.

And then he went out of the present, and there came back to him 
out of some impossible, vanished, and irrevocable past a little, 
pure-white, transient, forgotten ghost--the spirit of _nobless 
oblige_.  Upon a gentleman certain things devolve.

James opened the outer door.  A stream of light went down the 
graveled walk to the iron gate.  Black Riley, McCarthy, and 
"One-ear" Mike saw, and carelessly drew their sinister cordon closer 
about the gate.

With a more imperious gesture than James's master had ever used 
or could ever use, Fuzzy compelled the menial to close the door.  
Upon a gentleman certain things devolve.  Especially at the 
Christmas season.

"It is cust--customary," he said to James, the flustered, "when 
a gentleman calls on Christmas Eve to pass the compliments of the 
season with the lady of the house.  You und'stand?  I shall not 
move shtep till I pass compl'ments season with lady the house.  
Und'stand?"

There was an argument.  James lost.  Fuzzy raised his voice and 
sent it through the house unpleasantly.  I did not say he was a 
gentleman.  He was simply a tramp being visited by a ghost.

A sterling silver bell rang.  James went back to answer it, leaving 
Fuzzy in the hall.  James explained somewhere to some one.

Then he came and conducted Fuzzy into the library.

The lady entered a moment later.  She was more beautiful and holy 
than any picture that Fuzzy had seen.  She smiled, and said 
something about a doll.  Fuzzy didn't understand that; he 
remembered nothing about a doll.

A footman brought in two small glasses of sparkling wine on a 
stamped sterling-silver waiter.  The Lady took one.  The other was 
handed to Fuzzy.

As his fingers closed on the slender glass stem his disabilities 
dropped from him for one brief moment.  He straightened himself; 
and Time, so disobliging to most of us, turned backward to 
accomodate Fuzzy.

Forgotten Christmas ghosts whiter than the false beards of the 
most opulent Kris Kringle were rising in the fumes of Grogan's 
whisky.  What had the Millionaire's mansion to do with a long, 
wainscoted Virginia hall, where the riders were grouped around a 
silver punch-bowl, drinking the ancient toast of the House?  And 
why should the patter of the cab horses' hoofs on the frozen street 
be in any wise related to the sound of the saddled hunters stamping 
under the shelter of the west veranda?  And what had Fuzzy to do 
with any of it?

The Lady, looking at him over her glass, let her condescending 
smile fade away like a false dawn.  Her eyes turned serious.  She 
saw something beneath the rags and Scotch terrier whiskers that 
she did not understand.  But it did not matter.

Fuzzy lifted his glass and smiled vacantly.

"P-pardon, lady," he said, "but couldn't leave without exchangin' 
comp'ments sheason with lady th' house.  'Gainst princ'ples 
gen'leman do sho."

And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the 
House when men wore lace ruffles and powder.

"The blessings of another year--"

Fuzzy's memory failed him.  The Lady prompted:

"--Be upon this hearth."

"--The guest--" stammered Fuzzy.

"--And upon her who--" continued the Lady, with a leading smile.

"Oh, cut it out," said Fuzzy, ill-manneredly.  "I can't remember.  
Drink hearty."

Fuzzy had shot his arrow.  They drank.  The Lady smiled again the 
smile of her caste.  James enveloped and re-conducted him toward 
the front door.  The harp music still softly drifted through the 
house.

Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the 
gate.

"I wonder," said the Lady to herself, musing, "who--but there were 
so many who came.  I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing 
to them after they have fallen so low."

Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door.  The Lady called:  
"James!"

James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy waiting unsteadily, 
with his brief spark of the divine fire gone.

Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip 
on his section of gas-pipe.

"You will conduct this gentleman," said the lady, "Downstairs.  
Then tell Louis to get out the Mercedes and take him to whatever 
place he wishes to go."










XVII

A NIGHT IN NEW ARABIA

The great city of Bagdad-on-the-Subway is caliph-ridden.  Its 
palaces, bazaars, khans, and byways are thronged with Al Rashids 
in divers disguises, seeking diversion and victims for their 
unbridled generosity.  You can scarcely find a poor beggar whom 
they are willing to let enjoy his spoils unsuccored, nor a wrecked 
unfortunate upon whom they will not reshower the means of fresh 
misfortune.  You will hardly find anywhere a hungry one who has 
not had the opportunity to tighten his belt in gift libraries, nor 
a poor pundit who has not blushed at the holiday basket of celery-
crowned turkey forced resoundingly through his door by the 
eleemosynary press.

So then, fearfully through the Harun-haunted streets creep the 
one-eyed calenders, the Little Hunchback and the Barber's Sixth 
Brother, hoping to escape the ministrations of the roving horde 
of caliphoid sultans.

Entertainment for many Arabian nights might be had from the 
histories of those who have escaped the largesse of the army of 
Commanders of the Faithful.  Until dawn you might sit on the 
enchanted rug and listen to such stories as are told of the powerful 
genie Roc-Ef-El-Er who sent the Forty Thieves to soak up the oil 
plant of Ali Baba; of the good Caliph Kar-Neg-Ghe, who gave 
away palaces; of the Seven Voyages of Sailbad, the Sinner, who 
frequented wooden excursion steamers among the islands; of the 
Fisherman and the Bottle; of the Barmecides' Boarding house; of 
Aladdin's rise to wealth by means of his Wonderful Gasmeter.

But now, there being ten sultans to one Sheherazade, she is held too 
valuable to be in fear of the bowstring.  In consequence the art of 
narrative languishes.  And, as the lesser caliphs are hunting the 
happy poor and the resigned unfortunate from cover to cover in order 
to heap upon them strange mercies and mysterious benefits, too often 
comes the report from Arabian headquarters that the captive refused 
"to talk."

This reticence, then, in the actors who perform the sad comedies of 
their philanthropy-scourged world, must, in a degree, account for 
the shortcomings of this painfully gleaned tale, which shall be 
called

THE STORY OF THE CALIPH WHO ALLEVIATED HIS CONSCIENCE

Old Jacob Spraggins mixed for himself some Scotch and lithia water 
at his $1,200 oak sideboard.  Inspiration must have resulted from 
its imbibition, for immediately afterward he struck the quartered 
oak soundly with his fist and shouted to the empty dining room:

"By the coke ovens of hell, it must be that ten thousand dollars!  
If I can get that squared, it'll do the trick."

Thus, by the commonest artifice of the trade, having gained your 
interest, the action of the story will now be suspended, leaving you 
grumpily to consider a sort of dull biography beginning fifteen 
years before.

When old Jacob was young Jacob he was a breaker boy in a Pennsylvania 
coal mine.  I don't know what a breaker boy is; but his occupation 
seems to be standing by a coal dump with a wan look and a dinner-pail 
to have his picture taken for magazine articles.  Anyhow, Jacob was 
one.  But, instead of dying of overwork at nine, and leaving his 
helpless parents and brothers at the mercy of the union strikers' 
reserve fund, he hitched up his galluses, put a dollar or two in a 
side proposition now and then, and at forty-five was worth 
$20,000,000.

There now! it's over.  Hardly had time to yawn, did you?  I've seen 
biographies that--but let us dissemble.

I want you to consider Jacob Spraggins, Esq., after he had arrived 
at the seventh stage of his career.  The stages meant are, first, 
humble origin; second, deserved promotion; third, stockholder; 
fourth, capitalist; fifth, trust magnate; sixth, rich malefactor; 
seventh, caliph; eighth, _x_.  The eighth stage shall be left to 
the higher mathematics.

At fifty-five Jacob retired from active business.  The income of a 
czar was still rolling in on him from coal, iron, real estate, oil, 
railroads, manufactories, and corporations, but none of it touched 
Jacob's hands in a raw state.  It was a sterilized increment, 
carefully cleaned and dusted and fumigated until it arrived at its 
ultimate stage of untainted, spotless checks in the white fingers of 
his private secretary.  Jacob built a three-million-dollar palace on 
a corner lot fronting on Nabob Avenue, city of New Bagdad, and 
began to feel the mantle of the late H. A. Rashid descending upon 
him.  Eventually Jacob slipped the mantle under his collar, tied it 
in a neat four-in-hand, and became a licensed harrier of our 
Mesopotamian proletariat.

When a man's income becomes so large that the butcher actually 
sends him the kind of steak he orders, he begins to think about his 
soul's salvation.  Now, the various stages or classes of rich men 
must not be forgotten.  The capitalist can tell you to a dollar the 
amount of his wealth.  The trust magnate "estimates" it.  The rich 
malefactor hands you a cigar and denies that he has bought the P. 
D. & Q.  The caliph merely smiles and talks about Hammerstein and 
the musical lasses.  There is a record of tremendous altercation 
at breakfast in a "Where-to-Dine-Well" tavern between a magnate 
and his wife, the rift within the loot being that the wife calculated 
their fortune at a figure $3,000,000 higher than did her future 
_divorc'e_.  Oh, well, I, myself, heard a similar quarrel between a 
man and his wife because he found fifty cents less in his pockets 
than he thought he had.  After all, we are all human--Count Tolstoi, 
R. Fitzsimmons, Peter Pan, and the rest of us.

Don't lose heart because the story seems to be degenerating into a 
sort of moral essay for intellectual readers.

There will be dialogue and stage business pretty soon.

When Jacob first began to compare the eyes of needles with the 
camels in the Zoo he decided upon organized charity.  He had his 
secretary send a check for one million to the Universal Benevolent 
Association of the Globe.  You may have looked down through a 
grating in front of a decayed warehouse for a nickel that you had 
dropped through.  But that is neither here nor there.  The 
Association acknowledged receipt of his favor of the 24th ult. with 
enclosure as stated.  Separated by a double line, but still mighty 
close to the matter under the caption of "Oddities of the Day's 
News" in an evening paper, Jacob Spraggins read that one "Jasper 
Spargyous" had "donated $100,000 to the U. B. A. of G."  A camel 
may have a stomach for each day in the week; but I dare not venture 
to accord him whiskers, for fear of the Great Displeasure at 
Washington; but if he have whiskers, surely not one of them will 
seem to have been inserted in the eye of a needle by that effort of 
that rich man to enter the K. of H.  The right is reserved to reject 
any and all bids; signed, S. Peter, secretary and gatekeeper.

Next, Jacob selected the best endowed college he could scare up 
and presented it with a $200,000 laboratory.  The college did not 
maintain a scientific course, but it accepted the money and built 
an elaborate lavatory instead, which was no diversion of funds so 
far as Jacob ever discovered.

The faculty met and invited Jacob to come over and take his A B C 
degree.  Before sending the invitation they smiled, cut out the C, 
added the proper punctuation marks, and all was well.

While walking on the campus before being capped and gowned, 
Jacob saw two professors strolling nearby.  Their voices, long 
adapted to indoor acoustics, undesignedly reached his ear.

"There goes the latest _chevalier d'industrie_," said one of them, 
"to buy a sleeping powder from us.  He gets his degree to-morrow."

"_In foro conscientai_," said the other.  "Let's 'eave 'arf a brick 
at 'im."

Jacob ignored the Latin, but the brick pleasantry was not too hard 
for him.  There was no mandragora in the honorary draught of 
learning that he had bought.  That was before the passage of the 
Pure Food and Drugs Act.

Jacob wearied of philanthropy on a large scale.

"If I could see folks made happier," he said to himself--"If I could 
see 'em myself and hear 'em express their gratitude for what I done 
for 'em it would make me feel better.  This donatin' funds to 
institutions and societies is about as satisfactory as dropping 
money into a broken slot machine."

So Jacob followed his nose, which led him through unswept streets 
to the homes of the poorest.

"The very thing!" said Jacob.  "I will charter two river steamboats, 
pack them full of these unfortunate children and--say ten thousand 
dolls and drums and a thousand freezers of ice cream, and give 
them a delightful outing up the Sound.  The sea breezes on that 
trip ought to blow the taint off some of this money that keeps 
coming in faster than I can work it off my mind."

Jacob must have leaked some of his benevolent intentions, for an 
immense person with a bald face and a mouth that looked as if it 
ought to have a "Drop Letters Here" sign over it hooked a finger 
around him and set him in a space between a barber's pole and a 
stack of ash cans.  Words came out of the post-office slit--smooth, 
husky words with gloves on 'em, but sounding as if they might turn 
to bare knuckles any moment.

"Say, Sport, do you know where you are at?  Well, dis is Mike 
O'Grady's district you're buttin' into--see?  Mike's got de stomach-
ache privilege for every kid in dis neighborhood--see?  And if 
dere's any picnics or red balloons to be dealt out here, Mike's 
money pays for 'em--see?  Don't you butt in, or something'll be 
handed to you.  Youse d--- settlers and reformers with your social 
ologies and your millionaire detectives have got dis district in a 
hell of a fix, anyhow.  With your college students and professors 
rough-housing de soda-water stands and dem rubber-neck coaches 
fillin' de streets, de folks down here are 'fraid to go out of de 
houses.  Now, you leave 'em to Mike.  Dey belongs to him, and he 
knows how to handle 'em.  Keep on your own side of de town.  Are 
you some wiser now, uncle, or do you want to scrap wit' Mike 
O'Grady for de Santa Claus belt in dis district?"

Clearly, that spot in the moral vineyard was preempted.  So Caliph 
Spraggins menaced no more the people in the bazaars of the East 
Side.  To keep down his growing surplus he doubled his donations 
to organized charity, presented the Y. M. C. A. of his native town 
with a $10,000 collection of butterflies, and sent a check to the 
famine sufferers in China big enough to buy new emerald eyes and 
diamond-filled teeth for all their gods.  But none of these 
charitable acts seemed to bring peace to the caliph's heart.  He 
tried to get a personal note into his benefactions by tipping 
bellboys and waiters $10 and $20 bills. He got well snickered at 
and derided for that by the minions who accept with respect 
gratuities commensurate to the service performed.  He sought out 
an ambitious and talented but poor young woman, and bought for 
her the star part in a new comedy.  He might have gotten rid of 
$50,000 more of his cumbersome money in this philanthropy if he 
had not neglected to write letters to her.  But she lost the suit 
for lack of evidence, while his capital still kept piling up, and 
his _optikos needleorum camelibus_--or rich man's disease--was 
unrelieved.

In Caliph Spraggins's $3,000,000 home lived his sister Henrietta, 
who used to cook for the coal miners in a twenty-five-cent eating 
house in Coketown, Pa., and who now would have offered John 
Mitchell only two fingers of her hand to shake.  And his daughter 
Celia, nineteen, back from boarding-school and from being polished 
off by private instructors in the restaurant languages and those 
'etudes and things.

Celia is the heroine.  Lest the artist's delineation of her charms 
on this very page humbug your fancy, take from me her authorized 
description.  She was a nice-looking, awkward, loud, rather 
bashful, brown-haired girl, with a sallow complexion, bright eyes, 
and a perpetual smile.  She had a wholesome, Spraggins-inherited 
love for plain food, loose clothing, and the society of the lower 
classes.  She had too much health and youth to feel the burden of 
wealth.  She had a wide mouth that kept the peppermint-pepsin 
tablets rattling like hail from the slot-machine wherever she went, 
and she could whistle hornpipes.  Keep this picture in mind; and 
let the artist do his worst.

Celia looked out of her window one day and gave her heart to the 
grocer's young man.  The receiver thereof was at that moment 
engaged in conceding immortality to his horse and calling down 
upon him the ultimate fate of the wicked; so he did not notice the 
transfer.  A horse should stand still when you are lifting a crate 
of strictly new-laid eggs out of the wagon.

Young lady reader, you would have liked that grocer's young man 
yourself.  But you wouldn't have given him your heart, because 
you are saving it for a riding-master, or a shoe-manufacturer with 
a torpid liver, or something quiet but rich in gray tweeds at Palm 
Beach.  Oh, I know about it.  So I am glad the grocer's young man 
was for Celia, and not for you.

The grocer's young man was slim and straight and as confident 
and easy in his movements as the man in the back of the magazines 
who wears the new frictionless roller suspenders.  He wore a 
gray bicycle cap on the back of his head, and his hair was 
straw-colored and curly, and his sunburned face looked like one 
that smiled a good deal when he was not preaching the doctrine of 
everlasting punishment to delivery-wagon horses.  He slung 
imported A1 fancy groceries about as though they were only the 
stuff he delivered at boarding-houses; and when he picked up his 
whip, your mind instantly recalled Mr. Tacktt and his air with 
the buttonless foils.

Tradesmen delivered their goods at a side gate at the rear of 
the house.  The grocer's wagon came about ten in the morning.  
For three days Celia watched the driver when he came, finding 
something new each time to admire in the lofty and almost 
contemptuous way he had of tossing around the choicest gifts of 
Pomona, Ceres, and the canning factories.  Then she consulted 
Annette.

To be explicit, Annette McCorkle, the second housemaid who 
deserves a paragraph herself.  Annette Fletcherized large numbers 
of romantic novels which she obtained at a free public library 
branch (donated by one of the biggest caliphs in the business).  
She was Celia's sidekicker and chum, though Aunt Henrietta didn't 
know it, you may hazard a bean or two.

"Oh, canary-bird seed!" exclaimed Annette.  "Ain't it a corkin' 
situation?  You a heiress, and fallin' in love with him on sight!  
He's a sweet boy, too, and above his business.  But he ain't 
susceptible like the common run of grocer's assistants.  He never 
pays no attention to me."

"He will to me," said Celia.

"Riches--" began Annette, unsheathing the not unjustifiable 
feminine sting.

"Oh, you're not so beautiful," said Celia, with her wide, disarming 
smile.  "Neither am I; but he sha'n't know that there's any money 
mixed up with my looks, such as they are.  That's fair.  Now, I 
want you to lend me one of your caps and an apron, Annette."

"Oh, marshmallows!" cried Annette.  "I see.  Ain't it lovely?  It's 
just like 'Lurline, the Left-Handed; or, A Buttonhole Maker's 
Wrongs.'  I'll bet he'll turn out to be a count."

There was a long hallway (or "passageway," as they call it in the 
land of the Colonels) with one side latticed, running along the rear 
of the house.  The grocer's young man went through this to deliver 
his goods.  One morning he passed a girl in there with shining 
eyes, sallow complexion, and wide, smiling mouth, wearing a maid's 
cap and apron.  But as he was cumbered with a basket of Early 
Drumhead lettuce and Trophy tomatoes and three bunches of asparagus 
and six bottles of the most expensive Queen olives, he saw no more 
than that she was one of the maids.

But on his way out he came up behind her, and she was whistling 
"Fisher's Hornpipe" so loudly and clearly that all the piccolos in 
the world should have disjointed themselves and crept into their 
cases for shame.

The grocer's young man stopped and pushed back his cap until it 
hung on his collar button behind.

"That's out o' sight, Kid," said he.

"My name is Celia, if you please," said the whistler, dazzling him 
with a three-inch smile.

That's all right.  I'm Thomas McLeod.  What part of the house do 
you work in?"

"I'm the--the second parlor maid."

"Do you know the 'Falling Waters'?"

"No," said Celia, "we don't know anybody.  We got rich too quick--that 
is, Mr. Spraggins did."

"I'll make you acquainted," said Thomas McLeod.  "It's a strathspey--
the first cousin to a hornpipe."

If Celia's whistling put the piccolos out of commission, Thomas 
McLeod's surely made the biggest flutes hunt their holes.  He 
could actually whistle _bass_.

When he stopped Celia was ready to jump into his delivery wagon 
and ride with him clear to the end of the pier and on to the ferry-
boat of the Charon line.

"I'll be around to-morrow at 10:15," said Thomas, "with some 
spinach and a case of carbonic."

"I'll practice that what-you-may-call-it," said Celia.  "I can whistle 
a fine second."

The processes of courtship are personal, and do not belong to general 
literature.  They should be chronicled in detail only in advertisements 
of iron tonics and in the secret by-laws of the Woman's Auxiliary of 
the Ancient Order of the Rat Trap.  But genteel writing may contain 
a description of certain stages of its progress without intruding upon 
the province of the X-ray or of park policemen.

A day came when Thomas McLeod and Celia lingered at the end 
of the latticed "passage."

"Sixteen a week isn't much," said Thomas, letting his cap rest on 
his shoulder blades.

Celia looked through the lattice-work and whistled a dead march.  
Shopping with Aunt Henrietta the day before, she had paid that much 
for a dozen handkerchiefs.

"Maybe I'll get a raise next month," said Thomas.  "I'll be around 
to-morrow at the same time with a bag of flour and the laundry 
soap."

"All right," said Celia.  "Annette's married cousin pays only $20 a 
month for a flat in the Bronx."

Never for a moment did she count on the Spraggins money.  She knew 
Aunt Henrietta's invincible pride of caste and pa's mightiness 
as a Colossus of cash, and she understood that if she chose Thomas 
she and her grocer's young man might go whistle for a living.

Another day came, Thomas violating the dignity of Nabob Avenue 
with "The Devil's Dream," whistled keenly between his teeth.

"Raised to eighteen a week yesterday," he said.  "Been pricing flats 
around Morningside.  You want to start untying those apron strings 
and unpinning that cap, old girl."

"Oh, Tommy!" said Celia, with her broadest smile.  "Won't that be 
enough?  I got Betty to show me how to make a cottage pudding.  I 
guess we could call it a flat pudding if we wanted to."

"And tell no lie," said Thomas.

"And I can sweep and polish and dust--of course, a parlor maid 
learns that.  And we cold whistle duets of evenings."

"The old man said he'd raise me to twenty at Christmas if Bryan 
couldn't think of any harder name to call a Republican than a 
'postponer,'" said the grocer's young man.

"I can sew," said Celia; "and I know that you must make the gas 
company's man show his badge when he comes to look at the meter; 
and I know how to put up quince jam and window curtains."

"Bully! you're all right, Cele.  Yes, I believe we can pull it off on 
eighteen."

As he was jumping into the wagon the second parlor maid braved 
discovery by running swiftly to the gate.

"And, oh, Tommy, I forgot," she called, softly.  "I believe I could 
make your neckties."

"Forget it," said Thomas decisively.

"And another thing," she continued.  "Sliced cucumbers at night will 
drive away cockroaches."

"And sleep, too, you bet," said Mr. McLeod.  "Yes, I believe if I 
have a delivery to make on the West Side this afternoon I'll look in 
at a furniture store I know over there."

It was just as the wagon dashed away that old Jacob Spraggins struck 
the sideboard with his fist and made the mysterious remark about 
ten thousand dollars that you perhaps remember.  Which justifies 
the reflection that some stories, as well as life, and puppies 
thrown into wells, move around in circles.  Painfully but briefly 
we must shed light on Jacob's words.

The foundation of his fortune was made when he was twenty.  A poor 
coal-digger (ever hear of a rich one?) had saved a dollar or two 
and bought a small tract of land on a hillside on which he tried 
to raise corn.  Not a nubbin.  Jacob, whose nose was a divining-rod, 
told him there was a vein of coal beneath.  he bought the land from 
the miner for $125 and sold it a month afterward for $10,000.  
Luckily the miner had enough left of his sale money to drink himself 
into a black coat opening in the back, as soon as he heard the news.

And so, for forty years afterward, we find Jacob illuminated with 
the sudden thought that if he could make restitution of this sum of 
money to the heirs or assigns of the unlucky miner, respite and 
Nepenthe might be his.

And now must come swift action, for we have here some four thousand 
words and not a tear shed and never a pistol, joke, safe, nor bottle 
cracked.

Old Jacob hired a dozen private detectives to find the heirs, if any 
existed, of the old miner, Hugh McLeod.

Get the point?  Of course I know as well as you do that Thomas is 
going to be the heir.  I might have concealed the name; but why 
always hold back you mystery till the end?  I say, let it come near 
the middle so people can stop reading there if they want to.

After the detectives had trailed false clues about three thousand 
dollars--I mean miles--they cornered Thomas at the grocery and 
got his confession that Hugh McLeod had been his grandfather, 
and that there were no other heirs.  They arranged a meeting for 
him and old Jacob one morning in one of their offices.

Jacob liked the young man very much.  He liked the way he looked 
straight at him when he talked, and the way he threw his bicycle 
cap over the top of a rose-colored vase on the centre-table.

There was a slight flaw in Jacob's system of restitution.  He did 
not consider that the act, to be perfect, should include confession.  
So he represented himself to be the agent of the purchaser of the 
land who had sent him to refund the sale price for the ease of his 
conscience.

"Well, sir," said Thomas, "this sounds to me like an illustrated 
post-card from South Boston with 'We're having a good time here' 
written on it.  I don't know the game.  Is this ten thousand dollars 
money, or do I have to save so many coupons to get it?"

Old Jacob counted out to him twenty five-hundred-dollar bills.

That was better, he thought, than a check.  Thomas put them 
thoughtfully into his pocket.

"Grandfather's best thanks," he said, "to the party who sends it."

Jacob talked on, asking him about his work, how he spent his 
leisure time, and what his ambitions were.  The more he saw and 
heard of Thomas, the better he liked him.  He had not met many 
young men in Bagdad so frank and wholesome.

"I would like to have you visit my house," he said.  "I might help 
you in investing or laying out your money.  I am a very wealthy 
man.  I have a daughter about grown, and I would like for you to 
know her.  There are not many young men I would care to have call 
on her."

"I'm obliged," said Thomas.  "I'm not much at making calls.  It's 
generally the side entrance for mine.  And, besides, I'm engaged to 
a girl that has the Delaware peach crop killed in the blossom.  
She's a parlor maid in a house where I deliver goods.  She won't be 
working there much longer, though.  Say, don't forget to give your 
friend my grandfather's best regards.  You'll excuse me now; my 
wagon's outside with a lot of green stuff that's got to be delivered.  
See you again, sir."

At eleven Thomas delivered some bunches of parsley and lettuce 
at the Spraggins mansion.  Thomas was only twenty-two; so, as he 
came back, he took out the handful of five-hundred-dollar bills 
and waved them carelessly.  Annette took a pair of eyes as big as 
creamed onion to the cook.

"I told you he was a count," she said, after relating.  "He never 
would carry on with me."

"But you say he showed money," said the cook.

"Hundreds of thousands," said Annette.  "Carried around loose in 
his pockets.  And he never would look at me."

"It was paid to me to-day," Thomas was explaining to Celia outside.  
"It came from my grandfather's estate.  Say, Cele, what's the use 
of waiting now?  I'm going to quit the job to-night.  Why can't we 
get married next week?"

"Tommy," said Celia.  "I'm no parlor maid.  I've been fooling you.  
I'm Miss Spraggins--Celia Spraggins.  The newspapers say I'll be 
worth forty million dollars some day."

Thomas pulled his cap down straight on his head for the first time 
since we have known him.

"I suppose then," said he, "I suppose then you'll not be marrying 
me next week.  But you _can_ whistle."

"No," said Celia, "I'll not be marrying you next week.  My father 
would never let me marry a grocer's clerk.  But I'll marry you 
to-night, Tommy, if you say so."

Old Jacob Spraggins came home at 9:30 P. M., in his motor car.  
The make of it you will have to surmise sorrowfully; I am giving 
you unsubsidized fiction; had it been a street car I could have told 
you its voltage and the number of wheels it had.  Jacob called for 
his daughter; he had bought a ruby necklace for her, and wanted to 
hear her say what a kind, thoughtful, dear old dad he was.

There was a brief search in the house for her, and then came 
Annette, glowing with the pure flame of truth and loyalty well 
mixed with envy and histrionics.

"Oh, sir," said she, wondering if she should kneel, "Miss Celia's 
just this minute running away out of the side gate with a young 
man to be married.  I couldn't stop her, sir.  They went in a cab."

"What young man?" roared old Jacob.

"A millionaire, if you please, sir--a rich nobleman in disguise.  He 
carries his money with him, and the red peppers and the onions was 
only to blind us, sir.  He never did seem to take to me."

Jacob rushed out in time to catch his car.  The chauffeur had been 
delayed by trying to light a cigarette in the wind.

"Here, Gaston, or Mike, or whatever you call yourself, scoot around 
the corner quicker than blazes and see if you can see a cab.  If you 
do, run it down."

There was a cab in sight a block away.  Gaston, or Mike, with his 
eyes half shut and his mind on his cigarette, picked up the trail, 
neatly crowded the cab to the curb and pocketed it.

"What t'ell you doin'?" yelled the cabman.

"Pa!" shrieked Celia.

"Grandfather's remorseful friend's agent!" said Thomas.  "Wonder 
what's on his conscience now."

"A thousand thunders," said Gaston, or Mike.  "I have no other 
match."

"Young man," said old Jacob, severely, "how about that parlor 
maid you were engaged to?"


A couple of years afterward old Jacob went into the office of his 
private secretary.

"The Amalgamated Missionary Society solicits a contribution of 
$30,000 toward the conversion of the Koreans," said the secretary.

"Pass 'em up," said Jacob.

"The University of Plumville writes that its yearly endowment 
fund of $50,000 that you bestowed upon it is past due."

"Tell 'em it's been cut out."

"The Scientific Society of Clam Cove, Long Island, asks for 
$10,000 to buy alcohol to preserve specimens."

"Waste basket."

"The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls 
wants $20,000 from you to lay out a golf course."

"Tell 'em to see an undertaker."

"Cut 'em all out," went on Jacob.  "I've quit being a good thing.  I 
need every dollar I can scrape or save.  I want you to write to the 
directors of every company that I'm interested in and recommend a 
10 per cent. cut in salaries.  And say--I noticed half a cake of soap 
lying in a corner of the hall as I came in.  I want you to speak to 
the scrubwoman about waste.  I've got no money to throw away.  And 
say--we've got vinegar pretty well in hand, haven't we?'

"The Globe Spice & Seasons Company," said secretary, "controls 
the market at present."

"Raise vinegar two cents a gallon.  Notify all our branches."

Suddenly Jacob Spraggin's plump red face relaxed into a pulpy 
grin.  He walked over to the secretary's desk and showed a small 
red mark on his thick forefinger.

"Bit it," he said, "darned if he didn't, and he ain't had the tooth 
three weeks--Jaky McLeod, my Celia's kid.  He'll be worth a hundred 
millions by the time he's twenty-one if I can pile it up for him."

As he was leaving, old Jacob turned at the door, and said:

"Better make that vinegar raise three cents instead of two.  I'll be 
back in an hour and sign the letters."


The true history of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid relates that toward 
the end of his reign he wearied of philanthropy, and caused to be 
beheaded all his former favorites and companions of his "Arabian 
Nights" rambles.  Happy are we in these days of enlightenment, 
when the only death warrant the caliphs can serve on us is in the 
form of a tradesman's bill.













XVIII

THE GIRL AND THE HABIT

HABIT--a tendency or aptitude acquired by custom or frequent 
repitition.


The critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one.  
To that one we are driven for our moral theme.  When we levied 
upon the masters of old they gleefully dug up the parallels to our 
columns.  When we strove to set forth real life they reproached us 
for trying to imitate Henry George, George Washington, Washington 
Irving, and Irving Bacheller.  We wrote of the West and the East, 
and they accused us of both Jesse and Henry James.  We wrote from 
our heart--and they said something about a disordered liver.  We 
took a text from Matthew or--er-yes, Deuteronomy, but the preachers 
were hammering away at the inspiration idea before we could get 
into type.  So, driven to the wall, we go for our subject-matter 
to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable vade mecum--the 
unabridged dictionary.

Miss Merriam was cashier at Hinkle's.  Hinkle's is one of the big 
downtown restaurants.  It is in what the papers call the "financial 
district."  Each day from 12 o'clock to 2 Hinkle's was full of 
hungry customers--messenger boys, stenographers, brokers, owners 
of mining stock, promoters, inventors with patents pending--and 
also people with money.

The cashiership at Hinkle's was no sinecure.  Hinkle egged and 
toasted and griddle-caked and coffeed a good many customers; and 
he lunched (as good a word as "dined") many more.  It might be 
said that Hinkle's breakfast crowd was a contingent, but his 
luncheon patronage amounted to a horde.

Miss Merriam sat on a stool at a desk inclosed on three sides by 
a strong, high fencing of woven brass wire.  Through an arched 
opening at the bottom you thrust your waiter's check and the 
money, while your heart went pit-pat.

For Miss Merriam was lovely and capable.  She could take 45 cents 
out of a $2 bill and refuse an offer of marriage before you could
--Next!--lost your chance--please don't shove.  She could keep cool 
and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct 
change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you 
to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand 
in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkle's 
casters.
  
There is an old and dignified allusion to the "fierce light that 
beats upon a throne."  The light that beats upon the young lady 
cashier's cage is also something fierce.  The other fellow is 
responsible for the slang.

Every male patron of Hinkle's, from A. D. T. boys up to the 
curbstone brokers, adored Miss Merriam.  When they paid their 
checks they wooed her with every wile known to Cupid's art.  
Between the meshes of the brass railing went smiles, winks, 
compliments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, sighs, languishing 
looks and merry banter that was wafted pointedly back by the 
gifted Miss Merriam.

There is no coign of vantage more effective than the position of 
young lady cashier.  She sits there, easily queen of the court of 
commerce; she is duchess of dollars and devoirs, countess of 
compliment; and coin, leading lady of love and luncheon.  You 
take from her a smile and a Canadian dime, and you go your way 
uncomplaining.  You count the cheery word or two that she tosses 
you as misers count their treasures; and you pocket the change 
for a five uncomputed.  Perhaps the brass-bound inaccessibility 
multiplies her charms--anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, 
immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert--
Psyche, Circe, and Ate in one, separating you from your circulating 
medium after your sirloin medium.

The young men who broke bread at Hinkle's never settled with the 
cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment.  
Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints 
of theatre tickets and chocolate.  The older spoke plainly of 
orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by 
after-allusions to Harlem flats.  One broker, who had been 
squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more regularly than 
he ate.

During a brisk luncheon hour Miss Merriam's conversation, while 
she took money for checks, would run something like this:

"Good morning, Mr. Haskins--sir?--it's natural, thank you--don't be 
quite so fresh. . . Hello, Johnny--ten, fifteen, twenty--chase along 
now or they'll take the letters off your cap. . . Beg pardon--count 
it again, please--Oh, don't mention it. . . Vaudeville?--thanks; not 
on your moving picture--I was to see Carter in Hedda Gabler on 
Wednesday night with Mr. Simmons. . . 'Scuse me, I thought that was 
a quarter. . . Twenty-five and seventy-five's a dollar--got that 
ham-and-cabbage habit yet.  I see, Billy. . . Who are you addressing?
--say--you'll get all that's coming to you in a minute. . . 
Oh, fudge!  Mr. Bassett--you're always fooling--no--?  Well, maybe 
I'll marry you some day--three, four and sixty-five is five. . . 
Kindly keep them remarks to yourself, if you please. . . Ten cents?
--'scuse me; the check calls for seventy--well, maybe it is a one 
instead of a seven. . . Oh, do you like it that way, Mr. Saunders?--
some prefer a pomp; but they say this Cleo de Merody does suit 
refined features. . . and ten is fifty. . . Hike along there, buddy; 
don't take this for a Coney Island ticket booth. . . Huh?--why, 
Macy's--don't it fit nice?  Oh, no, it isn't too cool--these light-
weight fabrics is all the go this season. . . Come again, please--
that's the third time you've tried to--what?--forget it--that lead 
quarter is an old friend of mine. . . Sixty-five?--must have had 
your salary raised, Mr. Wilson. . . I seen you on Sixth Avenue 
Tuesday afternoon, Mr. De Forest--swell?--oh, my!--who is she? . . . 
What's the matter with it?--why, this ain't South America. . . Yes, 
I like the mixed best--Friday?--awfully sorry, but I take my jiu-
jitsu lesson on Friday--Thursday, then. . . Thanks--that's sixteen 
times I've been told that this morning--I guess I must be 
beautiful. . . Cut that out, please--who do you think I am? . . . 
Why, Mr. Westbrook--do you really think so?--the idea!--one--eighty 
and twenty's a dollar--thank you ever so much, but I don't ever go 
automobile riding with gentlemen--your aunt?--well, that's 
different--perhaps. . . Please don't get fresh--your check was 
fifteen cents, I believe--kindly step aside and let. . . Hello, 
Ben--coming around Thursday evening?--there's a gentleman going 
to send around a box of chocolates, and . . . forty and sixty is 
a dollar, and one is two . . ."

About the middle of one afternoon the dizzy goddess Vertigo--whose 
other name is Fortune--suddenly smote an old, wealthy and eccentric 
banker while he was walking past Hinkle's, on his way to a street 
car.  A wealthy and eccentric banker who rides in street cars 
is--move up, please; there are others.

A Samaritan, A Pharisee, a man and a policeman who were first on 
the spot lifter Banker McRamsey and carried him into Hinkle's 
restaurant.  When the aged but indestructible banker opened his 
eyes he saw a beautikful vision bending over him with a pitiful, 
tender smile, bathing his forehead with beef tea and chafing his 
hands with something frapp'e out of a chafing-dish.  Mr. McRamsey 
sighed, lost a vest button, gazed with deep gratitude upon his 
fair preserveress, and then recovered consciousness.

To the Seaside Library all who are anticipating a romance!  Banker 
McRamsey had an aged and respected wife, and his sentiments 
toward Miss Merriam were fatherly.  He talked to her for half an 
hour with interest--not the kind that went with his talks during 
business hours.  The next day he brought Mrs. McRamsey down to 
see her.  The old couple were childless--they had only a married 
daughter living in Brooklyn.

To make a short story shorter, the beautiful cashier won the hearts 
of the good old couple.  They came to Hinkle's again and again; 
they invited her to their old-fashioned but splendid home in one of 
the East Seventies.  Miss Merriam's winning loveliness, her sweet 
frankness and impulsive heart took them by storm.  They said a 
hundred times that Miss Merriam reminded them so much of their 
lost daughter.  The Brooklyn matron, n'ee Ramsey, had the figure 
of Buddha and a face like the ideal of an art photographer.  Miss 
Merriam was a combination of curves, smiles, rose leaves, pearls, 
satin and hair-tonic posters.  Enough of the fatuity of parents.

A month after the worthy couple became acquainted with Miss 
Merriam, she stood before Hinkle one afternoon and resigned her 
cashiership.

"They're going to adopt me," she told the bereft restaurateur.  
"They're funny old people, but regular dears.  And the swell home 
they have got!  Say, Hinkle, there isn't any use of talking--I'm on 
the `a la carte to wear brown duds and goggles in a whiz wagon, or 
marry a duke at least.  Still, I somehow hate to break out of the old 
cage.  I've been cashiering so long I feel funny doing anything else.  
I'll miss joshing the fellows awfully when they line up to pay for 
the buckwheats and.  But I can't let this chance slide.  And they're 
awfully good, Hinkle; I know I'll have a swell time.  You owe me 
nine-sixty-two and a half for the week.  Cut out the half if it hurts 
you, Hinkle."

And they did.  Miss Merriam became Miss Rosa McRamsey.  And she 
graced the transition.  Beauty is only skin-deep, but the nerves 
lie very near to the skin.  Nerve--but just here will you oblige 
by perusing again the quotation with which this story begins?

The McRamseys poured out money like domestic champagne to polish 
their adopted one.  Milliners, dancing masters and private tutors 
got it.  Miss--er--McRamsey was grateful, loving, and tried to 
forget Hinkle's.  To give ample credit to the adaptability of the 
American girl, Hinkle's did fade from her memory and speech most 
of the time.

Not every one will remember when the Earl of Hitesbury came to 
East Seventy---Street, America.  He was only a fair-to-medium earl, 
without debts, and he created little excitement.  But you will 
surely remember the evening when the Daughters of Benevolence 
haled their bazaar in the W---f-A---a Hotel.  For you were there, 
and you wrote a note to Fannie on the hotel paper, and mailed it, 
just to show her that--you did not?  Very well; that was the evening 
the baby was sick, of course.

At the bazaar the McRamseys were prominent.  Miss Mer--er--McRamsey 
was exquisitely beautiful.  The Earl of Hitesbury had been very 
attentive to her since he dropped in to have a look at America.  
At the charity bazaar the affair was supposed to be going to be 
pulled off to a finish.  An earl is as good as a duke.  Better.  
His standing may be lower, but his outstanding accounts are also 
lower.

Our ex-young-lady-cashier was assigned to a booth.  She was 
expected to sell worthless articles to nobs and snobs at exorbitant 
prices.  The proceeds of the bazaar were to be used for giving the 
poor children of the slums a Christmas din---Say! did you ever 
wonder where they get the other 364?

Miss McRamsey--beautiful, palpitating, excited, charming, radiant--
fluttered about in her booth.  An imitation brass network, with a 
little arched opening, fenced her in.

Along came the Earl, assured, delicate, accurate, admiring--admiring 
greatly, and faced the open wicket.

"You look chawming, you know--'pon my word you do--my deah," he said, 
beguilingly.

"Cut that joshing out," she said, coolly and briskly.  "Who do you 
think you are talking to?  Your check, please.  Oh, Lordy!--"

Patrons of the bazaar became aware of a commotion and pressed around 
a certain booth.  The Earl of Hitesbury stood near by pulling a pale 
blond and puzzled whisker.

"Miss McRamsey has fainted," some one explained.
















XIX

PROOF OF THE PUDDING

Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the _Minerva 
Magazine_, and deflected him from his course.  He had lunched in 
his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his 
office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal 
coquette.  Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in 
Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles 
in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks of budding 
Madison Square.

The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed 
a pastoral; the color motif was green--the presiding shade at the 
creation of man and vegetation.

The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a 
poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that 
had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn.  The 
bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had 
botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent 
dinner.  The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that 
ballroom poets rhyme with "true" and "Sue' and "coo."  The one 
natural and frank color visible was the ostensible green of the 
newly painted benches--a shade between the color of a pickled 
cucumber and that of a last year's fast-black cravenette raincoat.  
But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape 
appeared a masterpiece.

And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle 
concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion 
of the editor's mind.

Editor Westbrook's spirit was contented and serene.  The April 
number of the _Minerva_ had sold its entire edition before the 
tenth day of the month--a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that 
he could have sold fifty copies more if he had 'em.  The owners of 
the magazine had raised his (the editor's) salary; he had just 
installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was 
afraid of policemen; and the morning papers had published in full 
a speech he had made at a publishers' banquet.  Also there were 
echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his 
charming young wife had sung to him before he left his up-town 
apartment that morning.  She was taking enthusiastic interest in 
her music of late, practising early and diligently.  When he had 
complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly 
hugged him for joy at his praise.  He felt, too, the benign, tonic 
medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the 
wards of the convalescent city.

While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between the rows of park 
benches (already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless 
childhood) he felt his sleeve grasped and held.  Suspecting that he 
was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, 
and saw that his captor was--Dawe--Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost 
ragged, the genteel scracely visible in him through the deeper 
lines of the shabby.

While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight 
biography of Dawe is offered.

He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances.  
At one time they might have called each other old friends.  Dawe 
had some money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment 
house near Westbrook's.  The two families often went to theatres 
and dinners together.  Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became "dearest" 
friends.  Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just 
to amuse itself, ingurgitated Dawe's capital, and he moved to the 
Gramercy Park neighborhood where one, for a few groats per week, 
may sit upon one's trunk under eight-branched chandeliers and 
opposite Carrara marble mantels and watch the mice play upon the 
floor.  Dawe thought to live by writing fiction.  Now and then 
he sold a story.  He submitted many to Westbrook.  The _Minerva_ 
printed one or two of them; the rest were returned.  Westbrook 
sent a careful and conscientious personal letter with each rejected 
manuscript, pointing out in detail his reasons for considering it 
unavailable.  Editor Westbrook had his own clear conception of what 
constituted good fiction.  So had Dawe.  Mrs. Dawe was mainly 
concerned about the constituents of the scanty dishes of food that 
she managed to scrape together.  One day Dawe had been spouting to 
her about the excellencies of certain French writers.  At dinner 
they sat down to a dish that a hungry schoolboy could have 
encompassed at a gulp.  Dawe commented.

"It's Maupassant hash," said Mrs. Dawe.  "It may not be art, but I 
do wish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an 
Ella Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert.  I'm hungry."

As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked 
Editor Westbrook's sleeve in Madison Square.  That was the first 
time the editor had seen Dawe in several months.

"Why, Shack, is this you?" said Westbrook, somewhat awkwardly, for 
the form of his phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed 
appearance.

"Sit down for a minute," said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve.  "This 
is my office.  I can't come to yours, looking as I do.  Oh, sit 
down--you won't be disgraced.  Those half-plucked birds on the 
other benches will take you for a swell porch-climber.  They won't 
know you are only an editor."

"Smoke, Shack?" said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon 
the virulent green bench.  He always yielded gracefully when he 
did yield.

Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or 
a girl pecks at a chocolate cream.

"I have just--" began the editor.

"Oh, I know; don't finish," said Dawe.  "Give me a match.  You 
have just ten minutes to spare.  How did you manage to get past 
my office-boy and invade my sanctum?  There he goes now, throwing 
his club at a dog that couldn't read the 'Keep off the Grass' 
signs."

"How goes the writing?" asked the editor.

"Look at me," said Dawe, "for your answer.  Now don't put on that 
embarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don't get a 
job as a wine agent or a cab driver.  I'm in the fight to a finish.  
I know I can write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit 
it yet.  I'll make you change the spelling of 'regrets' to 
'c-h-e-q-u-e' before I'm done with you."

Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly 
sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression--the 
copyrighted expression of the editor beleagured by the unavailable 
contributor.

"Have you read the last story I sent you--'The Alarum of the Soul'?" 
asked Dawe.

"Carefully.  I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did.  It 
had some good points.  I was writing you a letter to send with it 
when it goes back to you.  I regret--"

"Never mind the regrets," said Dawe, grimly.  "There's neither 
salve nor sting in 'em any more.  What I want to know is _why_.  
Come now; out with the good points first."

"The story," said Westbrook, deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, 
"is written around an almost original plot.  Characterization--the 
best you have done.  Construction--almost as good, except for a few 
weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches.  
It was a good story, except--"

"I can write English, can't I?" interrupted Dawe.

"I have always told you," said the editor, "that you had a style."

"Then the trouble is--"

"Same old thing," said Editor Westbrook.  "You work up to your 
climax like an artist.  And then you turn yourself into a 
photographer.  I don't know what form of obstinate madness 
possesses you, but that is what you do with everything that you 
write.  No, I will retract the comparison with the photographer.  
Now and then photography, in spite of its impossible perspective, 
manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth.  But you spoil every 
d'enouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush 
that I have so often complained of.  If you would rise to the 
literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the 
high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, 
self-addressed envelopes at your door."

"Oh, fiddles and footlights!" cried Dawe, derisively.  "You've got 
that old sawmill drama kink in your brain yet.  When the man with 
the black mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to 
have the mother kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say:  
'May high heaven witness that I will rest neither night nor day till 
the heartless villain that has stolen me child feels the weight of 
another's vengeance!'"

Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency.

"I think," said he, "that in real life the woman would express 
herself in those words or in very similar ones."

"Not in a six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage," said 
Dawe hotly.  "I'll tell you what she'd say in real life.  She'd say:  
'What!  Bessie led away by a strange man?  Good Lord!  It's one 
trouble after another!  Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the 
police-station.  Why wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to 
know?  For God's sake, get out of my way or I'll never get ready.  
Not that hat--the brown one with the velvet bows.  Bessie must 
have been crazy; she's usually shy of strangers.  Is that too much 
powder?  Lordy!  How I'm upset!'

"That's the way she'd talk," continued Dawe.  "People in real life 
don't fly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises.  They 
simply can't do it.  If they talk at all on such occasions they draw 
from the same vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up 
their words and ideas a little more, that's all."

"Shack," said Editor Westbrook impressively, "did you ever pick up 
the mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of 
a street car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the 
distracted mother?  Did you ever do that and listen to the words of 
grief and despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?"

"I never did," said Dawe.  "Did you?"

"Well, no," said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown.  "But I can 
well imagine what she would say."

"So can I," said Dawe.

And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play the 
oracle and silence his opinionated contributor.  It was not for an 
unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes 
and heroines of the _Minerva Magazine_, contrary to the theories 
of the editor thereof.

"My dear Shack," said he, "if I know anything of life I know that 
every sudden, deep and tragic emotion in the human heart calls 
forth an apposite, concordant, conformable and proportionate 
expression of feeling.  How much of this inevitable accord between 
expression and feeling should be attributed to nature, and how 
much to the influence of art, it would be difficult to say.  The 
sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her 
cubs is dramatically as far above her customary whine and purr as 
the kingly and transcendent utterances of Lear are above the level 
of his senile vaporings.  But it is also true that all men and women 
have what may be called a sub-conscious dramatic sense that is 
awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion--a sense 
unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts 
them to express those emotions in language befitting their 
importance and histrionic value."

"And in the name of the seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius, 
where did the stage and literature get the stunt?" asked Dawe.

"From life," answered the editor, triumphantly.

The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently 
but dumbly.  He was beggared for words with which to formulate 
adequately his dissent.

On a bench nearby a frowzy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived 
that his moral support was due a downtrodden brother.

"Punch him one, Jack," he called hoarsely to Dawe.  "W'at's he 
come makin' a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gen'lemen 
that comes in the square to set and think?"

Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of 
leisure.

"Tell me," asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, "what especial faults 
in 'The Alarum of the Soul' caused you to throw it down?"

"When Gabriel Murray," said Westbrook, "goes to his telephone and is 
told that his fianc'ee has been shot by a burglar, he says--I do not 
recall the exact words, but--"

"I do," said Dawe.  "He says:  'Damn Central; she always cuts me off.'  
(And then to his friend) 'Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make 
a big hole?  It's kind of hard luck, ain't it?  Could you get me a 
drink from the sideboard, Tommy?  No; straight; nothing on the side.'"

"And again," continued the editor, without pausing for argument, 
"when Berenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that 
he has fled with the manicure girl, her words are--let me see--"

"She says," interposed the author:  "'Well, what do you think of 
that!'"

"Absurdly inappropriate words," said Westbrook, "presenting an 
anti-climax--plunging the story into hopeless bathos.  Worse yet; 
they mirror life falsely.  No human being ever uttered banal 
colloquialisms when confronted by sudden tragedy."

"Wrong," said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly.  "I say no 
man or woman ever spouts 'high-falutin' talk when they go up against 
a real climax.  They talk naturally and a little worse."

The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and 
inside information.

"Say, Westbrook," said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, "would you 
have accepted 'The Alarum of the Soul' if you had believed that the 
actions and words of the characters were true to life in the parts 
of the story that we discussed?"

"It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way," said the 
editor.  "But I have explained to you that I do not."

"If I could prove to you that I am right?"

"I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further 
just now."

"I don't want to argue," said Dave.  "I want to demonstrate to you 
from life itself that my view is the correct one."

"How could you do that?" asked Westbrook, in a surprised tone.

"Listen," said the writer, seriously.  "I have thought of a way.  It is 
important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized 
as correct by the magazines.  I've fought for it for three years, and 
I'm down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due."

"I have applied the opposite of your theory," said the editor, "in 
selecting the fiction for the _Minerva Magazine_.  The circulation 
has gone up from ninety thousand to--"

"Four hundred thousand," said Dawe.  "Whereas it should have been 
boosted to a million."

"You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet 
theory."

"I will.  If you'll give me about half an hour of your time I'll 
prove to you that I am right.  I'll prove it by Louise."

"Your wife!" exclaimed Westbrook.  "How?"

"Well, not exactly by her, but _with_ her," said Dawe.  "Now, you 
know how devoted and loving Louse has always been.  She thinks I'm 
the only genuine preparation on the market that bears the old 
doctor's signature.  She's been fonder and more faithful than ever, 
since I've been cast for the neglected genius part."

"Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion," agreed 
the editor.  "I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. 
Westbrook once were.  We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have 
such wives.  You must bring Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and 
we'll have one of those informal chafing-dish suppers that we used 
to enjoy so much."

"Later," said Dawe.  "When I get another shirt.  And now I'll tell 
you my scheme.  When I was about to leave home after breakfast--
if you can call tea and oatmeal breakfast--Louise told me she was 
going to visit her aunt in Eighty-ninth Street.  She said she would 
return at three o'clock.  She is always on time to a minute.  It is 
now--"

Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket.

"Twenty-seven minutes to three," said Westbrook, scanning his 
time-piece.

"We have just enough time," said Dawe.  "We will go to my flat at 
once.  I will write a note, address it to her and leave it on the table 
where she will see it as she enters the door.  You and I will be in 
the dining-room concealed by the porti`eres.  In that note I'll say 
that I have fled from her forever with an affinity who understands 
the need of my artistic soul as she never did.  When she reads it we 
will observe her actions and hear her words.  Then we will know which 
theory is the correct one--yours or mine."

"Oh, never!" exclaimed the editor, shaking his head.  "That would be 
inexcusably cruel.  I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelings 
played upon in such a manner."

"Brace up," said the writer.  "I guess I think as much of her as you 
do.  It's for her benefit as well as mine.  I've got to get a market 
for my stories in some way.  It won't hurt Louise.  She's healthy and 
sound.  Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch.  It'll 
last for only a minute, and then I'll step out and explain to her.  
You really owe it to me to give me the chance, Westbrook."

Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly.  And in 
the half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in 
all of us.  Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his 
place.  Pity 'tis that there are not enough rabbits and guinea-pigs 
to go around.

The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward 
and then to that south until they arrived in the Gramercy 
neighborhood.  Within its high iron railings the little park had 
put on its smart coat of vernal green, and was admiring itself in 
its fountain mirror.  Outside the railings the hollow square of 
crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in 
ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality.  
_Sic transit gloria urbis_.

A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again 
eastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but 
narrow flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated fa,cade.  
To the fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his 
latch-key into the door of one of the front flats.

When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, 
how meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished.

"Get a chair, if you can find one," said Dawe, "while I hunt up pen 
and ink.  Hello, what's this?  Here's a note from Louise.  She must 
have left it there when she went out this morning."

He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it 
open.  He began to read the letter that he drew out of it; and once 
having begun it aloud he so read it through to the end.  These are 
the words that Editor Westbrook heard:

"Dear Shackleford:

  "By the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away 
and still a-going.  I've got a place in the chorus of the Occidental 
Opera Co., and we start on the road to-day at twelve o'clock.  I 
didn't want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my own 
living.  I'm not coming back.  Mrs. Westbrook is going with me.  
She said she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, 
iceberg and dictionary, and she's not coming back, either.  We've 
been practising the songs and dances for two months on the quiet.  
I hope you will be successful, and get along all right!  Good-bye.

      "Louise."

Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, 
and cried out in a deep, vibrating voice:

_"My God, why hast thou given me this cup to drink?  Since she is 
false, then let Thy Heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become 
the jesting by-words of traitors and fiends!"_

Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor.  The fingers of one 
hand fumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his 
pale lips:

_"Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note?  Wouldn't that knock you 
off your perch, Shack?  Ain't it hell, now, Shack--ain't it?"_















XX

PAST ONE AT ROONEY'S

Only on the lower East Side of New York do the houses of Capulet 
and Montagu survive.  There they do not fight by the book of 
arithmetic.  If you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your 
opposing house you have work cut out for your steel.  On Broadway 
you may drag your man along a dozen blocks by his nose, and he 
will only bawl for the watch; but in the domain of the East Side 
Tybalts and Mercutios you must observe the niceties of deportment 
to the wink of any eyelash and to an inch of elbow room at the 
bar when its patrons include foes of your house and kin.

So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, 
drifted into Dutch Mike's for a stein of beer, and came upon 
a bunch of Montagus making merry with the suds, he began to 
observe the strictest parliamentary rules.  Courtesy forbade his 
leaving the saloon with his thirst unslaked; caution steered him 
to a place at the bar where the mirror supplied the cognizance of 
the enemy's movements that his indifferent gaze seemed to disdain; 
experience whispered to him that the finger of trouble would be 
busy among the chattering steins at Dutch Mike's that night.  
Close by his side drew Brick Cleary, his Mercutio, companion of 
his perambulations.  Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry Hill 
Gang and two fo the Dry Dock Gang, minding their P's and Q's so 
solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and 
the other on an open space beneath his bar in which it was his 
custom to seek safety whenever the ominous politeness of the rival 
associations congealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel.

But we have not to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the 
Dry Docks.  We must to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead 
branch of the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall bloom.

Overstrained etiquette at last gave way.  It is not known who first 
overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were 
immediate.  Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like 
swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane 
deck.  But McManus's simile must be the torpedo.  He glided in 
under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade 
between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser.  Meanwhile Brick 
Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter 
and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat to be 
waged by the light of gunfire alone.  Dutch Mike crawled from his 
haven and ran into the street crying for the watch instead of for 
a Shakespeare to immortalize the Cimmerian shindy.

The cop came, and found a prostrate, bleeding Montagu supported by 
three distrait and reticent followers of the House.  Faithful to 
the ethics of the gangs, no one knew whence the hurt came.  There 
was no Capulet to be seen.

"Raus mit der interrogatories," said Buck Malone to the officer.  
"Sure I know who done it.  I always manages to get a bird's eye 
view of any guy that comes up an' makes a show case for a hardware 
store out of me.  No.  I'm not telling you his name.  I'll settle 
with um meself.  Wow--ouch!  Easy, boys!  Yes, I'll attend to his 
case meself.  I'm not making any complaint."

At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lumber near an East 
Side dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug.  
Brick Cleary drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes 
later.  "He'll maybe not croak," said Brick; "and he won't tell, of 
course.  But Dutch Mike did.  He told the police he was tired of 
having his place shot up.  It's unhandy just now, because Tim 
Corrigan's in Europe for a week's end with Kings.  He'll be back 
on the _Kaiser Williams_ next Friday.  You'll have to duck out of 
sight till then.  Tim'll fix it up all right for us when he comes 
back."

This goes to explain why Cork McManus went into Rooney's one 
night and there looked upon the bright, stranger face of Romance 
for the first time in his precarious career.

Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt among Kings and 
Princes and hold up his big white finger in private offices, it was 
unsafe for Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang.  So he lay, 
perdu, in the high rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting 
sheets and cursing the slow paddle wheels of the _Kaiser 
Wilhelm_.

It was on Thursday evening that Cork's seclusion became intolerable 
to him.  Never a hart panted for water fountain as he did for the 
cool touch of a drifting stein, for the firm security of a foot-
rail in the hollow of his shoe and the quiet, hearty challenges 
of friendship and repartee along and across the shining bars.  But 
he must avoid the district where he was known.  The cops were 
looking for him everywhere, for news was scarce, and the newspapers 
were harping again on the failure of the police to suppress the 
gangs.  If they got him before Corrigan came back, the big white 
finger could not be uplifted; it would be too late then.  But 
Corrigan would be home the next day, so he felt sure there would 
be small danger in a little excursion that night among the crass 
pleasures that represented life to him.

At half-past twelve McManus stood in a darkish cross-town street 
looking up at the name "Rooney's," picked out by incandescent 
lights against a signboard over a second-story window.  He had 
heard of the place as a tough "hang-out"; with its frequenters 
and its locality he was unfamiliar.  Guided by certain unerring 
indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the stairs 
and entered the large room over the caf'e.

Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-
filled with Rooney's guests.  Waiters served drinks.  At one end 
a human pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic 
and furious unprecision.  At merciful intervals a waiter would 
roar or squeak a song--songs full of "Mr. Jonsons" and "babes" 
and "coons"--historical word guaranties of the genuineness of 
African melodies composed by red waistcoated young gentlemen, 
natives of the cotton fields and rice swamps of West Twenty-
eighth Street.

For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he 
receives, seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests.  He is 
twenty-nine.  He has Wellington's nose, Dante's chin, the 
cheek-bones of an Iroquois, the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett's 
foot work, and the pose of an eleven-year-old East Side Central 
Park Queen of the May.  He is assisted by a lieutenant known as 
Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who goes among the 
tables seeing that dull care does not intrude.  Now, what is 
there about Rooney's to inspire all this pother?  It is more 
respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens 
and bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a 
stein and a chat.  Even by gaslight the diversions are 
melancholy i' the mouth--drink and rag-time, and an occasional 
surprise when the waiter swabs the suds from under your sticky 
glass.  There is an answer.  Transmigration!  The soul of Sir 
Walter Raleigh has traveled from beneath his slashed doublet 
to a kindred home under Rooney's visible plaid waistcoat.  
Rooney's is twenty years ahead of the times.  Rooney has 
removed the embargo.  Rooney has spread his cloak upon the 
soggy crossing of public opinion, and any Elizabeth who 
treads upon it is as much a queen as another.  Attend to the 
revelation of the secret.  In Rooney's ladies may smoke!

McManus sat down at a vacant table.  He paid for the glass of beer 
that he ordered, tilted his narrow-brimmed derby to the back of his 
brick-dust head, twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and 
heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his 
innermost soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweetness to his 
taste.  The sham gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, 
the self-conscious, joyless laughter, the wine-born warmth, the 
loud music retrieving the hour from frequent whiles of awful and 
corroding silence, the presence of well-clothed and frank-eyed 
beneficiaries of Rooney's removal of the restrictions laid upon the 
weed, the familiar blended odors of soaked lemon peel, flat beer, 
and _peau d'Espagne_--all these were manna to Cork McManus, hungry 
for his week in the desert of the Capulet's high rear room.

A girl, alone, entered Rooney's, glanced around with leisurely 
swiftness, and sat opposite McManus at his table.  Her eyes rested 
upon him for two seconds in the look with which woman reconnoitres 
all men whom she for the first time confronts.  In that space of 
time she will decide upon one of two things--either to scream for 
the police, or that she may marry him later on.

Her brief inspection concluded, the girl laid on the table a worn 
red morocco shopping bag with the inevitable top-gallant sail of 
frayed lace handkerchief flying from a corner of it.  After she had 
ordered a small beer from the immediate waiter she took from her 
bag a box of cigarettes and lighted one with slightly exaggerated 
ease of manner.  Then she looked again in the eyes of Cork McManus 
and smiled.

Instantly the doom of each was sealed.

The unqualified desire of a man to buy clothes and build fires for 
a woman for a whole lifetime at first sight of her is not uncommon 
among that humble portion of humanity that does not care for 
Bradstreet or coats-of-arms or Shaw's plays.  Love at first sight has 
occurred a time or two in high life; but, as a rule, the extempore 
mania is to be found among unsophisticated cratures such as the 
dove, the blue-tailed dingbat, and the ten-dollar-a-week clerk.  
Poets, subscribers to all fiction magazines, and schatchens, take 
notice.

With the exchange of the mysterious magnetic current came to each 
of them the instant desire to lie, pretend, dazzle and deceive, 
which is the worst thing about the hypocritical disorder known as 
love.

"Have another beer?" suggested Cork.  In his circle the phrase was 
considered to be a card, accompanied by a letter of introduction 
and references.

"No, thanks," said the girl, raising her eyebrows and choosing her 
conventional words carefully.  "I--merely dropped in for--a slight 
refreshment."  The cigarette between her fingers seemed to require 
explanation.  "My aunt is a Russian lady," she concluded, "and we 
often have a post perannual cigarette after dinner at home."

"Cheese it!" said Cork, whom society airs oppressed.  "Your 
fingers are as yellow as mine."

"Say," said the girl, blazing upon him with low-voiced indignation, 
"what do you think I am?  Say, who do you think you are talking to?  
What?"

She was pretty to look at.  Her eyes were big, brown, intrepid and 
bright.  Uner her flat sailor hat, planted jauntily on one side, 
her crinkly, tawny hair parted and was drawn back. low and massy, 
in a thick, pendant knot behind.  The roundness of girlhood still 
lingered in her chin and neck, but her cheeks and fingers were 
thinning slightly.  She looked upon the world with defiance, 
suspicion, and sullen wonder.  Her smart, short tan coat was soiled 
and expensive.  Two inches below her black dress dropped the lowest 
flounce of a heliotrope silk underskirt.

"Beg your pardon," said Cork, looking at her admiringly.  "I didn't 
mean anything.  Sure, it's no harm to smoke, Maudy."

"Rooney's," said the girl, softened at once by his amends, "is the 
only place I know where a lady can smoke.  Maybe it ain't a nice 
habit, but aunty lets us at home.  And my name ain't Maudy, if you 
please; it's Ruby Delamere."

"That's a swell handle," said Cork approvingly.  "Mine's McManus
--Cor--er--Eddie McManus."

"Oh, you can't help that," laughed Ruby.  "Don't apologize."

Cork looked seriously at the big clock on Rooney's wall.  The girl's 
ubiquitous eyes took in the movement.

"I know it's late," she said, reaching for her bag; "but you know 
how you want a smoke when you want one.  Ain't Rooney's all right?  
I never saw anything wrong here.  This is twice I've been in.  
I work in a bookbindery on Third Avenue.  A lot of us girls have 
been working overtime three nights a week.  They won't let you 
smoke there, of course.  I just dropped in here on my way home for 
a puff.  Ain't it all right in here?  If it ain't, I won't come 
any more."

"It's a little bit late for you to be out alone anywhere," said Cork.  
"I'm not wise to this particular joint; but anyhow you don't want to 
have your picture taken in it for a present to your Sunday School 
teacher.  Have one more beer, and then say I take you home."

"But I don't know you," said the girl, with fine scrupulosity.  "I 
don't accept the company of gentlemen I ain't acquainted with.  My 
aunt never would allow that."

"Why," said Cork McManus, pulling his ear, "I'm the latest thing in 
suitings with side vents and bell skirt when it comes to escortin' 
a lady.  You bet you'll find me all right, Ruby.  And I'll give you 
a tip as to who I am.  My governor is one of the hottest cross-buns 
of the Wall Street push.  Morgan's cab horse casts a shoe every 
time the old man sticks his head out the window.  Me!  Well, I'm in 
trainin' down the Street.  The old man's goin' to put a seat on the 
Stock Exchange in my stockin' my next birthday.  But it all sounds 
like a lemon to me.  What I like is golf and yachtin' and--er--well, 
say a corkin' fast ten-round bout between welter-weights with 
walkin' gloves."

"I guess you can walk to the door with me," said the girl 
hesitatingly, but with a certain pleased flutter.  "Still I never 
heard anything extra good about Wall Street brokers, or sport who 
go to prize fights, either.  Ain't you got any other 
recommendations?"

"I think you're the swellest looker I've had my lamps on in little 
old New York," said Cork impressively.

"That'll be about enough of that, now.  Ain't you the kidder!"  
She modified her chiding words by a deep, long, beaming, smile-
embellished look at her cavalier.  "We'll drink our beer before 
we go, ha?"

A waiter sang.  The tobacco smoke grew denser, drifting and rising 
in spirals, waves, tilted layers, cumulus clouds, cataracts and 
suspended fogs like some fifth element created from the ribs of 
the ancient four.  Laughter and chat grew louder, stimulated by 
Rooney's liquids and Rooney's gallant hospitality to Lady 
Nicotine.

One o'clock struck.  Down-stairs there was a sound of closing and 
locking doors.  Frank pulled down the green shades of the front 
windows carefully.  Rooney went below in the dark hall and stood 
at the front door, his cigarette cached in the hollow of his hand.  
Thenceforth whoever might seek admittance must present a 
countenance familiar to Rooney's hawk's eye--the countenance of a 
true sport.

Cork McManus and the bookbindery girl conversed absorbedly, with 
their elbows on the table.  Their glasses of beer were pushed 
to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a 
thin white scum.  Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of 
Rooney's had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to 
the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets 
became stolen ones.  The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang 
of illegality; the mildest claret punch struck a knockout blow at 
law and order; the harmless and genial company became outlaws, 
defying authority and rule.  For after the stroke of one in such 
places as Rooney's, where neither bed nor board is to be had, drink 
may not be set before the thirsty of the city of the four million.  
It is the law.

"Say," said Cork McManus, almost covering the table with his 
eloquent chest and elbows, "was that dead straight about you 
workin' in the bookbindery and livin' at home--and just happenin' 
in here--and--and all that spiel you gave me?"

"Sure it was," answered the girl with spirit.  "Why, what do you 
think?  Do you suppose I'd lie to you?  Go down to the shop and 
ask 'em.  I handed it to you on the level."

"On the dead level?" said Cork.  "That's the way I want it; 
because--"

"Because what?"

"I throw up my hands," said Cork.  "You've got me goin'.  You're 
the girl I've been lookin' for.  Will you keep company with me, 
Ruby?"

"Would you like me to--Eddie?"

"Surest thing.  But I wanted a straight story about--about yourself, 
you know.  When a fellow had a girl--a steady girl--she's got to be 
all right, you know.  She's got to be straight goods."

"You'll find I'll be straight goods, Eddie."

"Of course you will.  I believe what you told me.  But you can't 
blame me for wantin' to find out.  You don't see many girls smokin' 
cigarettes in places like Rooney's after midnight that are like you."

The girl flushed a little and lowered her eyes.  "I see that now," she 
said meekly.  "I didn't know how bad it looked.  But I won't do it 
any more.  And I'll go straight home every night and stay there.  
And I'll give up cigarettes if you say so, Eddie--I'll cut 'em out 
from this minute on."

Cork's air became judicial, proprietary, condemnatory, yet sympathetic.  
"A lady can smoke," he decided, slowly, "at times and places .  Why?  
Because it's bein' a lady that helps her pull it off."

"I'm going to quit.  There's nothing to it," said the girl.  She flicked 
the stub of her cigarette to the floor.

"At times and places," repeated Cork.  "When I call round for you 
of evenin's we'll hunt out a dark bench in Stuyvesant Square and 
have a puff or two.  But no more Rooney's at one o'clock--see?"

"Eddie, do you really like me?"  The girl searchd his hard but 
frank features eagerly with anxious eyes.

"On the dead level."

"When are you coming to see me--where I live?"

"Thursday--day after to-morrow evenin'.  That suit you?"

"Fine.  I'll be ready for you.  Come about seven.  Walk to the door 
with me to-night and I'll show you where I live.  Don't forget, now.  
And don't you go to see any other girls before then, mister!  I bet 
you will, though."

"On the dead level," said Cork, "you make 'em all look like rag-
dolls to me.  Honest, you do.  I know when I'm suited.  On the 
dead level, I do."

Against the front door down-stairs repeated heavy blows were 
delivered.  The loud crashes resounded in the room above.  Only a 
trip-hammer or a policeman's foot could have been the author of 
those sounds.  Rooney jumped like a bullfrog to a corner of the 
room, turned off the electric lights and hurried swiftly below.  
The room was left utterly dark except for the winking red glow of 
cigars and cigarettes.  A second volley of crashes came up from 
the assaulted door.  A little, rustling, murmuring panic moved 
among the besieged guests.  Frank, cool, smooth, reassuring, could 
be seen in the rosy glow of the burning tobacco, going from table 
to table.

"All keep still!" was his caution.  "Don't talk or make any noise!  
Everything will be all right.  Now, don't feel the slightest alarm.  
We'll take care of you all."

Ruby felt across the table until Cork's firm hand closed upon hers.  
"Are you afraid, Eddie?" she whispered.  "Are you afraid you'll get 
a free ride?"

"Nothin' doin' in the teeth-chatterin' line," said Cork.  "I guess 
Rooney's been slow with his envelope.  Don't you worry, girly; I'll 
look out for you all right."

Yet Mr. McManus's ease was only skin- and muscle-deep.  With the 
police looking everywhere for Buck Malone's assailant, and with 
Corrigan still on the ocean wave, he felt that to be caught in a 
police raid would mean an ended career for him.  He wished he had 
remained in the high rear room of the true Capulet reading the 
pink extras.

Rooney seemed to have opened the front door below and engaged the 
police in conference in the dark hall.  The wordless low growl of 
their voices came up the stairway.  Frank made a wireless news 
station of himself at the upper door.  Suddenly he closed the door, 
hurried to the extreme rear of the room and lighted a dim gas jet.

"This way, everybody!" he called sharply.  "In a hurry; but no 
noise, please!"

The guests crowded in confusion to the rear.  Rooney's lieutenant 
swung open a panel in the wall, overlooking the back yard, 
revealing a ladder already placed for the escape.

"Down and out, everybody!" he commanded.  "Ladies first!  Less 
talking, please!  Don't crowd!  There's no danger."

Among the last, Cork and Ruby waited their turn at the open panel.  
Suddenly she swept him aside and clung to his arm fiercely.

"Before we go out," she whispered in his ear--"before anything 
happens, tell me again, Eddie, do you l--do you really like me?"

"On the dead level," said Cork, holding her close with one arm, 
"when it comes to you, I'm all in."

When they turned they found they were lost and in darkness.  The 
last of the fleeing customers had descended.  Half way across the 
yard they bore the ladder, stumbling, giggling, hurrying to place 
it against adjoining low building over the roof of which their only 
route to safety.

"We may as well sit down," said Cork grimly.  "Maybe Rooney will 
stand the cops off, anyhow."

They sat at a table; and their hands came together again.

A number of men then entered the dark room, feeling their way about.  
One of them, Rooney himself, found the switch and turned on the 
electric light.  The other man was a cop of the old regime--a big cop, 
a thick cop, a fuming, abrupt cop--not a pretty cop.  He went up to 
the pair at the table and sneered familiarly at the girl.

"What are youse doin' in here?" he asked.

"Dropped in for a smoke," said Cork mildly.

"Had any drinks?"

"Not later than one o'clock."

"Get out--quick!" ordered the cop.  Then, "Sit down!" he 
countermanded.

He took off Cork's hat roughly and scrutinized him shrewdly.  
"Your name's McManus."

"Bad guess," said Cork.  "It's Peterson."

"Cork McManus, or something like that," said the cop.  "You put a 
knife into a man in Dutch Mike's saloon a week ago."

"Aw, forget it!" said Cork, who perceived a shade of doubt in the 
officer's tones.  "You've got my mug mixed with somebody else's."

"Have I?  Well, you'll come to the station with me, anyhow, and be 
looked over.  The description fits you all right."  The cop twisted 
his fingers under Cork's collar.  "Come on!" he ordered roughly.

Cork glanced at Ruby.  She was pale, and her thin nostrils 
quivered.  Her quick eye danced from one man's face to the other 
as they spoke or moved.  What hard luck!  Cork was thinking--
Corrigan on the briny; and Ruby met and lost almost within an 
hour!  Somebody at the police station would recognize him, 
without a doubt.  Hard luck!

But suddenly the girl sprang up and hurled herself with both arms 
extended against the cop.  His hold on Cork's collar was loosened 
and he stumbled back two or three paces.

"Don't go so fast, Maguire!" she cried in shrill fury.  "Keep your 
hands off my man!  You know me, and you know I'm givin' you 
good advice.  Don't you touch him again!  He's not the guy you are 
lookin' for--I'll stand for that."

"See here, Fanny," said the Cop, red and angry, "I'll take you, too, 
if you don't look out!  How do you know this ain't the man I want?  
What are you doing in here with him?"

"How do I know?" said the girl, flaming red and white by turns.  
"Because I've known him a year.  He's mine.  Oughtn't I to know?  
And what am I doin' here with him?  That's easy."

She stooped low and reached down somewhere into a swirl of flirted 
draperies, heliotrope and black.  An elastic snapped, she threw 
on the table toward Cork a folded wad of bills.  The money slowly 
straightened itself with little leisurely jerks.

"Take that, Jimmy, and let's go," said the girl.  "I'm declarin' 
the usual dividends, Maguire," she said to the officer.  "You had 
your usual five-dollar graft at the usual corner at ten."

"A lie!" said the cop, turning purple.  "You go on my beat again 
and I'll arrest you every time I see you."

"No, you won't," said the girl.  "And I'll tell you why.  Witnesses 
saw me give you the money to-night, and last week, too.  I've been 
getting fixed for you."

Cork put the wad of money carefuly into his pocket, and said:  "Come 
on, Fanny; let's have some chop suey before we go home."

"Clear out, quick, both of you, or I'll--"

The cop's bluster trailed away into inconsequentiality.

At the corner of the street the two halted.  Cork handed back the 
money without a word.  The girl took it and slipped it slowly into 
her hand-bag.  Her expression was the same she had worn when she 
entered Rooney's that night--she looked upon the world with defiance, 
suspicion and sullen wonder.

"I guess I might as well say good-bye here," she said dully.  "You 
won't want to see me again, of course.  Will you--shake hands--
Mr. McManus."

"I mightn't have got wise if you hadn't give the snap away," said 
Cork.  "Why did you do it?"

"You'd have been pinched if I hadn't.  That's why.  Ain't that 
reason enough?"  Then she began to cry.  "Honest, Eddie, I was 
goin' to be the best girl in the world.  I hated to be what I am; 
I hated men; I was ready almost to die when I saw you.  And you 
seemed different from everybody else.  And when I found you liked 
me, too, why, I thought I'd make you believe I was good, and I was 
goin' to be good.  When you asked to come to my house and see me, 
why, I'd have died rather than do anything wrong after that.  But 
what's the use of talking about it?  I'll say good-by, if you will, 
Mr. McManus."

Cork was pulling at his ear.  "I knifed Malone," said he.  "I was 
the one the cop wanted."

"Oh, that's all right," said the girl listlessly.  "It didn't make 
any difference about that."

"That was all hot air about Wall Street.  I don't do nothin' but hang 
out with a tough gang on the East Side."

"That was all right, too," repeated the girl.  "It didn't make any 
difference."

Cork straightened himself, and pulled his hat down low.  "I could get 
a job at O'Brien's," he said aloud, but to himself.

"Good-by," said the girl.

"Come on," said Cork, taking her arm.  "I know a place."

Two blocks away he turned with her up the steps of a red brick house 
facing a little park.

"What house is this?" she asked, drawing back.  "Why are you going 
in there?"

A street lamp shone brightly in front.  There was a brass nameplate 
at one side of the closed front doors.  Cork drew her firmly up the 
steps.  "Read that," said he.

She looked at the name on the plate, and gave a cry between a moan 
and a scream.  "No, no, no, Eddie!  Oh, my God, no!  I won't let you 
do that--not now!  Let me go!  You shan't do that!  You can't--you 
mus'n't!  Not after you know!  No, no!  Come away quick!  Oh, my God!  
Please, Eddie, come!"

Half fainting, she reeled, and was caught in the bend of his arm.  
Cork's right hand felt for the electric button and pressed it long.

Another cop--how quickly they scent trouble when trouble is on the 
wing!--came along, saw them, and ran up the steps.  "Here!  What are 
you doing with that girl?" he called gruffly.

"She'll be all right in a minute," said Cork.  "It's a straight deal."

"Reverend Jeremiah Jones," read the cop from the door-plate with true 
detective cunning.

"Correct," said Cork.  "On the dead level, we're goin' to get married."










XXI

THE VENTURERS

Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the _Non Sequitur_ 
Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation 
car "_Raison d'^etre_" for one moment.  It is for no longer than to 
consider a brief essay on the subject--let us call it:  "What's Around 
the Corner."

_Omne mundus in duas partes divisum est_--men who wear rubbers and pay 
poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents.  There are no more 
continents to discover; but by the time overshoes are out of date and 
the poll has developed into an income tax, the other half will be 
paralleling the canals of Mars with radium railways.

Fortune, Chance, and Adventure are given as synonymous in the 
dictionaries.  To the knowing each has a different meaning.  
Fortune is a prize to be won.  Adventure is the road to it.  Chance 
is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.  The face of 
Fortune is radiant and alluring; that of Adventure is flushed and 
heroic.  The face of Chance is the beautiful countenance--perfect 
because vague and dream-born--that we see in our tea-cups at 
breakfast while we growl over our chops and toast.

The VENTURER is one who keeps his eye on the hedgerows and wayside 
groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune.  That is 
the difference between him and the Adventurer.  Eating the forbidden 
fruit was the best record ever made by  a Venturer.  Trying to prove 
that it happened is the highest work of the Adventuresome.  To be 
either is disturbing to the cosmogony of creation.  So, as bracket-
sawed and city-directoried citizens, let us light our pipes, chide 
the children and the cat, arrange ourselves in the willow rocker 
under the flickering gas jet at the coolest window and scan this 
little tale of two modern followers of Chance.


"Did you ever hear that story about the man from the West?" asked 
Billinger, in the little dark-oak room to your left as you penetrate 
the interior of the Powhatan Club.

"Doubtless," said John Reginald Forster, rising and leaving the 
room.

Forster got his straw hat (straws will be in and maybe out again 
long before this is printed) from the checkroom boy, and walked 
out of the air (as Hamlet says).  Billinger was used to having his 
stories insulted and would not mind.  Forster was in his favorite 
mood and wanted to go away from anywhere.  A man, in order to get 
on good terms with himself, must have his opinions corroborated 
and his moods matched by some one else.  (I had written that 
"somebody"; but an A. D. T. boy who once took a telegram for me 
pointed out that I could save money by using the compound word.  
This is a vice versa case).

Forster's favorite mood was that of greatly desiring to be a follower 
of Chance.  He was a Venturer by nature, but convention, birth, 
tradition and the narrowing influences of the tribe of Manhattan 
had denied him full privilege.  He had trodden all the main-traveled 
thoroughfares and many of the side roads that are supposed to relieve 
the tedium of life.  But none had sufficed.  The reason was that he 
knew what was to be found at the end of every street.  He knew from 
experience and logic almost precisely to what end each digression 
from routine must lead.  He found a depressing monotony in all the 
variations that the music of his sphere had grafted upon the tune 
of life.  He had not learned that, although the world was made round, 
the circle has been squared, and that it's true interest is to be 
in "What's Around the Corner."

Forster walked abroad aimlessly from the Powhatan, trying not to tax 
either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled.  
He would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he 
had no hope of that.  Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and 
call in the Greater City; but Chance is oriental.  She is a veiled 
lady in a sedan chair, protected by a special traffic squad of 
dragonians.  Crosstown, uptown, and downtown you may move without 
seeing her.

At the end of an hour's stroll, Forster stood on a corner of a broad, 
smooth avenue, looking disconsolately across it at a picturesque old 
hotel softly but brilliantly lit.  Disconsolately, because he knew 
that he must dine; and dining in that hotel was no venture.  It was 
one of his favorite caravansaries, and so silent and swift would be 
the service and so delicately choice the food, that he regretted the 
hunger that must be appeased by the "dead perfection" of the place's 
cuisine.  Even the music there seemed to be always playing _da capo_.

Fancy came to him that he would dine at some cheap, even dubious, 
restaurant lower down in the city, where the erratic chefs from 
all countries of the world spread their national cookery for the 
omnivorous American.  Something might happen there out of the 
routine--he might come upon a subject without a predicate, a road 
without an end, a question without an answer, a cause without an 
effect, a gulf stream in life's salt ocean.  He had not dressed 
for evening; he wore a dark business suit that would not be 
questioned even where the waiters served the spaghetti in their 
shirt sleeves.

So John Reginald Forster began to search his clothes for money; 
because the more cheaply you dine, the more surely must you pay.  
All of the thirteen pockets, large and small, of his business suit 
he explored carefully and found not a penny.  His bank book showed 
a balance of five figures to his credit in the Old Ironsides Trust 
Company, but--

Forster became aware of a man nearby at his left hand who was really 
regarding him with some amusement.  he looked like any business man 
of thirty or so, neatly dressed and standing in the attitude of one 
waiting for a street car.  But there was no car line on that avenue.  
So his proximity and unconcealed curiosity seemed to Forster to 
partake of the nature of a personal intrusion.  But, as he  was a 
consistent seeker after "What's Around the Corner," instead of 
manifesting resentment he only turned a half-embarrassed smile upon 
the other's grin of amusement.

"All in?" asked the intruder, drawing nearer.

"Seems so," said Forster.  "Now, I thought there was a dollar in--"

"Oh, I know," said the other man, with a laugh.  "But there wasn't.  
I've just been through the same process myself, as I was coming 
around the corner.  I found in an upper vest pocket--I don't know 
how they got there--exactly two pennies.  You know what kind of a 
dinner exactly two pennies will buy!"

"You haven't dined, then?" asked Forster.

"I have not.  But I would like to.  Now, I'll make you a proposition.  
You look like a man who would take up one.  Your clothes look neat 
and respectable.  Excuse personalities.  I think mine will pass the 
scrutiny of a head waiter, also.  Suppose we go over to that hotel 
and dine together.  We will choose from the menu like millionaires
--or, if you prefer, like gentlemen in moderate circumstances dining 
extravagantly for once.  When we have finished we will match with my 
two pennies to see which of us will stand the brunt of the house's 
displeasure and vengeance.  My name is Ives.  I think we have lived 
in the same station of life--before our money took wings."

"You're on," said Forster, joyfully.

Here was a venture at least within the borders of the mysterious 
country of Change--anyhow, it promised something better than the 
stale infestivity of a table d'h^ote.

The two were soon seated at a corner table in the hotel dining 
room.  Ives chucked one of his pennies across the table to Forster.

"Match for which of us gives the order," he said.

Forster lost.

Ives laughed and began to name liquids and viands to the waiter 
with the absorbed but calm deliberation of one who was to the menu 
born.  Forster, listening, gave his admiring approval of the order.

"I am a man," said Ives, during the oysters, "Who has made a 
lifetime search after the to-be-continued-in-our-next.  I am not 
like the ordinary adventurer who strikes for a coveted prize.  Nor 
yet am I like a gambler who knows he is either to win or lose a 
certain set stake.  What I want is to encounter an adventure to which 
I can predict no conclusion.  It is the breath of existence to me to 
dare Fate in its blindest manifestations.  The world has come to run 
so much by rote and gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any 
footpath of chance in which you do not find signboards informing 
you of what you may expect at its end.  I am like the clerk in the 
Circumlocution Office who always complained bitterly when any one 
came in to ask information.  'He wanted to _know_, you know!' was 
the kick he made to his fellow-clerks.  Well, I don't want to know, 
I don't want to reason, I don't want to guess--I want to bet my hand 
without seeing it."

"I understand," said Forster delightedly.  "I've often wanted the 
way I feel put into words.  You've done it.  I want to take chances 
on what's coming.  Suppose we have a bottle of Moselle with the 
next course."

"Agreed," said Ives.  "I'm glad you catch my idea.  It will increase 
the animosity of the house toward the loser.  If it does not weary 
you, we will pursue the theme.  Only a few times have I met a true 
venturer--one who does not ask a schedule and map from Fate when he 
begins a journey.  But, as the world becomes more civilized and wiser, 
the more difficult it is to come upon an adventure the end of which 
you cannot foresee.  In the Elizabethan days you could assault the 
watch, wring knockers from doors and have a jolly set-to with the 
blades in any convenient angle of a wall and 'get away with it.'  
Nowadays, if you speak disrespectfully to a policeman, all that is 
left to the most romantic fancy is to conjecture in what particular 
police station he will land you."

"I know--I know," said Forster, nodding approval.

"I returned to New York to-day," continued Ives, "from a three years' 
ramble around the globe.  Things are not much better abroad than they 
are at home.  The whole world seems to be overrun by conclusions.  The 
only thing that interests me greatly is a premise.  I've tried shooting 
big game in Africa.  I know what an express rifle will do at so many 
yards; and when an elephant or a rhinoceros falls to the bullet, I 
enjoy it about as much as I did when I was kept in after school to do 
a sum in long division on the blackboard."

"I know--I know," said Forster.

"There might be something in aeroplanes," went on Ives, reflectively.  
"I've tried ballooning; but it seems to be merely a cut-and-dried 
affair of wind and ballast."

"Women," suggested Forster, with a smile.

"Three months ago," said Ives.  "I was pottering around in one of 
the bazaars in Constantinople.  I noticed a lady, veiled, of course, 
but with a pair of especially fine eyes visible, who was examining 
some amber and pearl ornaments at one of the booths.  With her was 
an attendant--a big Nubian, as black as coal.  After a while the 
attendant drew nearer to me by degrees and slipped a scrap of paper 
into my hand.  I looked at it when I got a chance.  On it was 
scrawled hastily in pencil:  'The arched gate of the Nghtingale 
Garden at nine to-night.'  Does that appear to you to be an 
interesting premise, Mr. Forster?"

"I made inquiries and learned that the Nightingale Garden was the 
property of an old Turk--a grand vizier, or something of the sort.  
Of course I prospected for the arched gate and was there at nine.  
The same Nubian attendant opened the gate promptly on time, and 
I went inside and sat on a bench by a perfumed fountain with the 
veiled lady.  We had quite an extended chat.  She was Myrtle 
Thompson, a lady journalist, who was writing up the Turkish 
harems for a Chicago newspaper.  She said she noticed the New 
York cut of my clothes in the bazaar and wondered if I couldn't 
work something into the metropolitan papers about it."

"I see," said Forster.  "I see."

"I've canoed through Canada," said Ives, "down many rapids and 
over many falls.  But I didn't seem to get what I wanted out of 
it because I knew there were only two possible outcomes--I would 
either go to the bottom or arrive at the sea level.  I've played 
all games at cards; but the mathematicians have spoiled that sport 
by computing the percentages.  I've made acquaintances on trains, 
I've answered advertisements, I've rung strange door-bells, I've 
taken every chance that presented itself; but there has always 
been the conventional ending--the logical conclusion to the 
premise."

"I know," repeated Forster.  "I've felt it all.  But I've had few 
chances to take my chance at chances.  Is there any life so devoid 
of impossibilities as life in this city?  There seems to be a myriad 
of opportunities for testing the undeterminable; but not one in a 
thousand fails to land you where you expected it to stop.  I wish 
the subways and street cars disappointed one as seldom."

"The sun has risen," said Ives, "on the Arabian nights.  There are 
no more caliphs.  The fisherman's vase is turned to a vacuum bottle, 
warranted to keep any genie boiling or frozen for forty-eight hours.  
Life moves by rote.  Science has killed adventure.  There are no 
more opportunities such as Columbus and the man who ate the first 
oyster had.  The only certain thing is that there is nothing 
uncertain."

"Well," said Forster, "my experience has been the limited one of a 
city man.  I haven't seen the world as you have; but it seems that 
we view it with the same opinion.  But, I tell you I am grateful for 
even this little venture of ours into the borders of the haphazard.  
There may be at least one breathless moment when the bill for the 
dinner is presented.  Perhaps, after all, the pilgrims who traveled 
without scrip or purse found a keener taste to life than did the 
knights of the Round Table who rode abroad with a retinue and King 
Arthur's certified checks in the lining of their helmets.  And now, 
if you've finished your coffee, suppose we match one of your 
insufficient coins for the impending blow of Fate.  What have I 
up?"

"Heads," called Ives.

"Heads it is," said Forster, lifting his hand.  "I lose.  We forgot 
to agree upon a plan for the winner to escape.  I suggest that when 
the waiter comes you make a remark about telephoning to a friend.  
I will hold the fort and the dinner check long enough for you to get 
your hat and be off.  I thank you for an evening out of the ordinary, 
Mr. Ives, and wish we might have others."

"If my memory is not at fault," said Ives, laughing, "the nearest 
police station is in MacDougal Street.  I have enjoyed the dinner, 
too, let me assure you."

Forster crooked his finger for the waiter.  Victor, with a locomotive 
effort that seemed to owe more to pneumatics than to pedestrianism, 
glided to the table and laid the card, face downward, by the loser's 
cup.  Forster took it up and added the figures with deliberate care.  
Ives leaned back comfortably in his chair.

"Escuse me," said Forster; "but I though you were going to ring 
Grimes about that theatre party for Thursday night.  Had you forgotten 
about it?"

"Oh," said Ives, settling himself more comfortably, "I can do that 
later on.  Get me a glass of water, waiter."

"Want to be in at the death, do you?" asked Forster.

"I hope you don't object," said Ives, pleadingly.  "Never in my life 
have I seen a gentleman arrested in a public restaurant for swindling 
it out of a dinner."

"All right," said Forster, calmly.  "You are entitled to see a 
Christian die in the arena as your _pousse-caf'e_."

Victor came with the glass of water and remained, with the disengaged 
air of an inexorable collector.

Forster hesitated for fifteen seconds, and then took a pencil from 
his pocket and scribbled his name on the dinner check.  The waiter 
bowed and took it away.

"The fact is," said Forster, with a little embarrassed laugh, "I doubt 
whether I'm what they call a 'game sport,' which means the same as a 
'soldier of Fortune.'  I'll have to make a confession.  I've been 
dining at this hotel two or three times a week for more than a year.  
I always sign my checks."  And then, with a note of appreciation in 
his voice:  "It was first-rate of you to stay to see me through with it 
when you knew I had no money, and that you might be scooped in, too."

"I guess I'll confess, too," said Ives, with a grin.  "I own the hotel.  
I don't run it, of course, but I always keep a suite on the third floor 
for my use when I happen to stray into town."

He called a waiter and said:  "I s Mr. Gilmore still behind the desk?  
All right.  Tell him that Mr. Ives is here, and ask him to have my 
rooms made ready and aired."

"Another venture cut short by the inevitable," said Forster.  "Is 
there a conundrum without an answer in the next number?  But let's 
hold to our subject just for a minute or two, if you will.  It isn't 
often that I meet a man who understands the flaws I pick in existence.  
I am engaged to be married a month from to-day."

"I reserve comment," said Ives.

"Right; I am going to add to the assertion.  I am devotedly fond of 
the lady; but I can't decide whether to show up at the church or 
make a sneak for Alaska.  It's the same idea, you know, that we were 
discussing--it does for a fellow as far as possibilities are 
concerned.  Everybody knows the routine--you get a kiss flavored 
with Ceylon tea after breakfast; you go to the office; you come back 
home and dress for dinner--theatre twice a week--bills--moping 
around most evenings trying to make conversation--a little quarrel 
occasionally--maybe sometimes a big one, and a separation--or else 
a settling down into a middle-aged contentment, which is worst 
of all."

"I know," said Ives, nodding wisely.

"It's the dead certainty of the thing," went on Forster, "that keeps 
me in doubt.  There'll nevermore be anything around the corner."

"Nothing after the 'Little Church,'" said Ives.  "I know."

"Understand," said Forster, "that I am in no doubt as to my feelings 
toward the lady.  I may say that I love her truly and deeply.  But 
there is something in the current that runs through my veins that 
cries out against any form of the calculable.  I do not know what 
I want; but I know that I want it.  I'm talking like an idiot, I 
suppose, but I'm sure of what I mean."

"I understand you," said Ives, with a slow smile.  "Well, I think I 
will be going up to my rooms now.  If you would dine with me here one 
evening soon, Mr. Forster, I'd be glad."

"Thursday?" suggested Forster.

"At seven, if it's convenient," answered Ives.

"Seven goes," assented Forster.

At halft-past eight Ives got into a cab and was driven to a number 
in one of the correct West Seventies.  His card admitted him to the 
reception room of an old-fashioned house into which the spirits of 
Fortune, Chance and Adventure had never dared to enter.  On the 
walls were the Whistler etchings, the steel engravings by Oh-what's-
his-name?, the still-life paintings of the grapes and garden truck 
with the watermelon seeds spilled on the table as natural as life, 
and the Greuze head.  It was a household.  There was even brass 
andirons.  On a table was an album, half-morocco, with oxidized-
silver protections on the corners of the lids.  A clock on the mantel 
ticked loudly, with a warning click at five minutes to nine.  Ives 
looked at it curiously, remembering a time-piece in his grandmother's 
home that gave such a warning.

And then down the stairs and into the room came Mary Marsden.  She 
was twenty-four, and I leave her to your imagination.  But I must 
say this much--youth and health and simplicity and courage and 
greenish-violet eyes are beautiful, and she had all these.  She gave 
Ives her hand with the sweet cordiality of an old friendship.

"You can't think what a pleasure it is," she said, "to have you drop 
in once every three years or so."

For half an hour they talked.  I confess that I cannot repeat the 
conversation.  You will find it in books in the circulating library.  
When that part of it was over, Mary said:

"And did you find what you wanted while you were abroad?"

"What I wanted?" said Ives.

"Yes.  You know you were always queer.  Even as a boy you wouldn't 
play marbles or baseball or any game with rules.  You wanted to dive 
in water where you didn't know whether it was ten inches or ten feet 
deep.  And when you grew up you were just the same.  We've often 
talked about your peculiar ways."

"I suppose I am an incorrigible," said Ives.  "I am opposed to the 
doctrine of predestination, to the rule of three, gravitation, 
taxation, and everything of the kind.  Life has always seemed to 
me something like a serial story would be if they printed above 
each instalment a synopsis of _succeeding_ chapters."

Mary laughed merrily.

"Bob Ames told us once," she said, "of a funny thing you did.  It 
was when you and he were on a train in the South, and you got off 
at a town where you hadn't intended to stop just because the 
brakeman hung up a sign in the end of the car with the name of the 
next station on it."

"I remember," said Ives.  "That 'next station' has been the thing 
I've always tried to get away from."

"I know it," said Mary.  "And you've been very foolish.  I hope you 
didn't find what you wanted not to find, or get off at the station 
where there wasn't any, or whatever it was you expected wouldn't 
happen to you during the three years you've been away."

"There was something I wanted before I went away," said Ives.

Mary looked in his eyes clearly, with a slight, but perfectly sweet 
smile.

"There was," she said.  "You wanted me.  And you could have had me, 
as you very well know."

Without replying, Ives let his gaze wander slowly about the room.  
There had been no change in it since last he had been in it, three 
years before.  He vividly recalled the thoughts that had been in his 
mind then.  The contents of that room were as fixed in their way, as 
the everlasting hills.  No change would ever come there except the 
inevitable ones wrought by time and decay.  That silver-mounted album 
would occupy that corner of that table, those pictures would hang on 
the walls, those chairs be found in their same places every morn and 
noon and night while the household hung together.  The brass andirons 
were monuments to order and stability.  Herre and there were relics 
of a hundred years ago which were still living mementos and would be 
for many years to come.  One going from and coming back to that house 
would never need to forecast or doubt.  He would find what he left, 
and leave what he found.  The veiled lady, Chance, would never lift 
her hand to the knocker on the outer door.

And before him sat the lady who belonged in the room.  Cool and sweet 
and unchangeable she was.  She offered no surprises.  If one should 
pass his life with her, though she might grow white-haired and 
wrinkled, he would never perceive the change.  Three years he had been 
away from her, and she was still waiting for him as established and 
constant as the house itself.  He was sure that she had once cared for 
him.  It was the knowledge that she would always do so that had driven 
him away.  Thus his thoughts ran.

"I am going to be married soon," said Mary.


On the next Thursday afternoon Forster came hurriedly to Ive's hotel.

"Old man," said he, "we'll have to put that dinner off for a year or 
so; I'm going abroad.  The steamer sails at four.  That was a great 
talk we had the other night, and it decided me.  I'm going to knock 
around the world and get rid of that incubus that has been weighing 
on both you and me--the terrible dread of knowing what's going to 
happen.  I've done one thing that hurts my conscience a little; but 
I know it's best for both of us.  I've written to the lady to whom 
I was engaged and explained everything--told her plainly why I was 
leaving--that the monotony of matrimony would never do for me.  Don't 
you think I was right?"

"It is not for me to say," answered Ives.  "Go ahead and shoot 
elephants if you think it will bring the element of chance into your 
life.  We've got to decide these things for ourselves.  But I tell you 
one thing, Forster, I've found the way.  I've found out the biggest 
hazard in the world--a game of chance that never is concluded, a 
venture that may end in the highest heaven or the blackest pit.  It 
will keep a man on edge until the clods fall on his coffin, because 
he will never know--not until his last day, and not then will he 
know.  It is a voayge without a rudder or compass, and you must 
be captain and crew and keep watch, every day and night, yourself, 
with no one to relieve you.  I have found the VENTURE.  Don't bother 
yourself about leaving Mary Marsden, Forster.  I married her 
yesterday at noon."










XXII

THE DUEL

The gods, lying beside their nectar on 'Lympus and peeping over the 
edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities.  Although it 
would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small 
ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so.  
Studying the habits of ants frm so great a height should be but a 
mild diversion when coupled with the soft drink that mythology tells 
us is their only solace.  But doubtless they have amused themselves 
by the comparison of villages and towns; and it will be no news to 
them (nor, perhaps, to many mortals), that in one particularity 
New York stands unique among the cities of the world.  This shall be 
the theme of a little story addressed to the man who sits smoking 
with his Sabbath-slippered feet on another chair, and to the woman 
who snatches the paper for a moment while boiling greens or a 
narcotized baby leaves her free.  With these I love to sit upon the 
ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings.

New York City is inhabited by 4,000,000 mysterious strangers; thus 
beating Bird Centre by three millions and half a dozen nine's.  They 
came here in various ways and for many reasons--Hendrik Hudson, the 
art schools, green goods, the stork, the annual dressmakers' 
convention, the Pennsylvania Railroad, love of money, the stage, 
cheap excursion rates, brains, personal column ads., heavy walking 
shoes, ambition, freight trains--all these have had a hand in making 
up the population.

But every man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattan 
has got to fight.  He has got to fight at once until either he or his 
adversary wins.  There is no resting between rounds, for there are no 
rounds.  It is slugging from the first.  It is a fight to a finish.

Your opponent is the City.  You must do battle with it from the time 
the ferry-boat lands you on the island until either it is yours or 
it has conquered you.  It is the same whether you have a million in 
your pocket or only the price of a week's lodging.

The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New Yorker or 
turn the rankest outlander and Philistine.  You must be one or the 
other.  You cannot remain neutral.  You must be for or against--
lover or enemy--bosom friend or outcast.  And, oh, the city is a 
general in the ring.  Not only by blows does it seek to subdue you.  
It woos you to its heart with the subtlety of a siren.  It is a 
combination of Delilah, green Chartreuse, Beethoven, chloral and 
John L. in his best days.

In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man as long 
as you please.  You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, 
and be a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, 
and without rebuke.  You may become a civic pillar in any other 
town but Knickerbocker's, and all the time publicly sneering at 
its buildings, comparing them with the architecture of Colonel 
Telfair's residence in Jackson, Miss., whence you hail, and you 
will not be set upon.  But in New York you must be either a New 
Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy, concealed in the wooden 
horse of your conceited provincialism.  And this dreary preamble 
is only to introduce to you the unimportant figures of William 
and Jack.

They came out of the West together, where they had been friends.  
They came to dig their fortunes out of the big city.

Father Knickerbocker met them at the ferry, giving one a right-
hander on the nose and the other an upper-cut with his left, just 
to let them know that the fight was on.

William was for business; Jack was for Art.  Both were young and 
ambitious; so they countered and clinched.  I think they were from 
Nebraska or possibly Missouri or Minnesota.  Anyhow, they were out 
for success and scraps and scads, and they tackled the city like 
two Lochinvars with brass knucks and a pull at the City Hall.

Four years afterward William and Jack met at luncheon.  The business 
man blew in like a March wind, hurled his silk hat at a waiter, 
dropped into the chair that was pushed under him, seized the bill 
of fare, and had ordered as far as cheese before the artist had time 
to do more than nod.  After the nod a humorous smile came into 
his eyes.

"Billy," he said, "you're done for.  The city has gobbled you up.  
It has taken you and cut you to its pattern and stamped you with 
its brand.  You are so nearly like ten thousand men I have seen 
to-day that you couldn't be picked out from them if it weren't for 
your laundry marks."

"Camembert," finished William.  "What's that?  Oh, you've still 
got your hammer out for New York, have you?  Well, little old 
Noisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me.  It's giving me 
mine.  And, say, I used to think the West was the whole round 
world--only slightly flattened at the poles whenever Bryan ran.  
I used to yell myself hoarse about the free expense, and hang my 
hat on the horizon, and say cutting things in the grocery to little 
soap drummers from the East.  But I'd never seen New York, then, 
Jack.  Me for it from the rathskellers up.  Sixth Avenue is the West 
to me now.  Have you heard this fellow Crusoe sing?  The desert isle 
for him, I say, but my wife made me go.  Give me May Irwin or E. S. 
Willard any time."

"Poor Billy," said the artist, delicately fingering a cigarette.  
"You remember, when we were on our way to the East how we talked 
about this great, wonderful city, and how we meant to conquer it 
and never let it get the best of us?  We were going to be just the 
same fellows we had always been, and never let it master us.  It 
has downed you, old man.  You have changed from a maverick into a 
butterick."

"Don't see exactly what you are driving at," said William.  "I don't 
wear an alpaca coat with blue trousers and a seersucker vest on 
dress occasions, like I used to do at home.  You talk about being 
cut to a pattern--well, ain't the pattern all right?  When you're in 
Rome you've got to do as the Dagoes do.  This town seems to me to 
have other alleged metropolises skinned to flag stations.  According 
to the railroad schedule I've got in mind, Chicago and Saint Jo and 
Paris, France, are asterisk stops--which means you wave a red flag 
and get on every other Tuesday.  I like this little suburb of 
Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson.  There's something or somebody doing all 
the time.  I'm clearing $8,000 a year selling automatic pumps, and 
I'm living like kings-up.  Why, yesterday, I was introduced to 
John W. Gates.  I  took an auto ride with a wine agent's sister.  
I saw two men run over by a street car, and I seen Edna May play 
in the evening.  Talk about the West, why, the other night I woke 
everybody up in the hotel hollaring.  I dreamed I was walking on a 
board sidewalk in Oshkosh.  What have you got against this town, 
Jack?  There's only one thing in it that I don't care for, and 
that's a ferryboat."

The artist gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall.  "This 
town," said he, "is a leech.  It drains the blood of the country.  
Whoever comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel.  Abandoning the 
figure of the leech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which 
the innocence, the genius, and the beauty of the land must pay 
tribute.  Hand to hand every newcomer must struggle with the 
leviathan.  You've lost, Billy.  It shall never conquer me.  I hate 
it as one hates sin or pestilence or--the color work in a ten-cent 
magazine.  I despise its very vastness and power.  It has the poorest 
millionaires, the littlest great men, the lowest skyscrapers, the 
dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw.  It has caught you, old 
man, but I will never run beside its chariot wheels.  It glosses 
itself as the Chinaman glosses his collars.  Give me the domestic 
finish.  I could stand a town ruled by wealth or one ruled by an 
aristocracy; but this is one controlled by its lowest ingredients.  
Claiming culture, it is the crudest; asseverating its pre-eminence, 
it is the basest; denying all outside values and virtue, it is the 
narrowest.  Give me the pure and the open heart of the West country.  
I would go back there to-morrow if I could."

"Don't you like this _filet mgnon_?" said William.  "Shucks, now, 
what's the use to knock the town!  It's the greatest ever.  I 
couldn't sell one automatic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy 
O'Keefe's saloon, in Sacramento, where I sell twenty here.  And 
have you seen Sara Bernardt in 'Andrew Mack' yet?"

"The town's got you, Billy," said Jack.

"All right," said William.  "I'm going to buy a cottage on Lake 
Ronkonkoma next summer."

At midnight Jack raised his window and sat close to it.  He caught 
his breath at what he saw, though he had seen and felt it a hundred 
times.

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.  The 
irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep 
gulches and winding streams.  Some were mountainous; some lay in 
long, desert ca~nons.  Such was the background of the wonderful, 
cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city.  But into this 
background were cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles 
and squares through which glowed many colored lights.  And out of the 
violet and purple depths ascended like the city's soul sounds and 
odors and thrills that make up the civic body.  There arose the breath 
of gaiety unrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man 
can know.  There below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be 
brought from the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, 
thrill, enrich, despoil, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill.  Thus 
the flavor of it came up to him and went into his blood.

There was a knock on his door.  A telegram had come for him.  It came 
from the West, and these were its words:

  "Come back and the answer will be yes.
                                   "DOLLY."

He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply:  
"Impossible to leave here at present."  Then he sat at the window 
again and let the city put its cup of mandragora to his lips again.

After all it isn't a story; but I wanted to know which one of the 
heroes won the battle against the city.  So I went to a very learned 
friend and laid the case before him.  What he said was:  "Please 
don't bother me; I have Christmas presents to buy."

So there it rests; and you will have to decide for yourself.














XXIII

"WHAT YOU WANT"

Night had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as Bagdad-
on-the-Subway.  And with the night came the enchanted glamour 
that belongs not to Arabia alone.  In different masquerade the 
streets, bazaars and walled houses of the occidental city of 
romance were filled with the same kind of folk that so much 
interested our interesting old friend, the late Mr. H. A. Rashid.  
They wore clothes eleven hundred years nearer to the latest styles 
than H. A. saw in old Bagdad; but they were about the same people 
underneath.  With the eye of faith, you could have seen the 
Little Hunchback, Sinbad the Sailor, Fitbad the Tailor, the 
Beautiful Persian, the one-eyed Calenders, Ali Baba and Forty 
Robbers on every block, and the Barber and his Six Brothers, and 
all the old Arabian gang easily.

But let us revenue to our lamb chops.

Old Tom Crowley was a caliph.  He had $42,000,000 in preferred stocks 
and bonds with solid gold edges.  In these times, to be called a 
caliph you must have money.  The old-style caliph business as 
conducted by Mr. Rashid is not safe.  If you hold up a person nowadays 
in a bazaar or a Turkish bath or a side street, and inquire into his 
private and personal affairs, the police court'll get you.

Old Tom was tired of clubs, theatres, dinners, friends, music, money 
and everything.  That's what makes a caliph--you must get to despise 
everything that money can buy, and then go out and try to want 
something that you can't pay for.

"I'll take a little trot around town all by myself," thought old Tom, 
"and try if I can stir up anything new.  Let's see--it seems I've 
read about a king or a Cardiff giant or something in old times who 
used to go about with false whiskers on, making Persian dates with 
folks he hadn't been introduced to.  That don't listen like a bad 
idea.  I certainly have got a case of humdrumness and fatigue on 
for the ones I do know.  That old Cardiff used to pick up cases of 
trouble as he ran upon 'em and give 'em gold--sequins, I think it 
was--and make 'em marry or got 'em good Government jobs.  Now, 
I'd like something of that sort.  My money is as good as his was 
even if the magazines do ask me every month where I got it.  Yes, 
I guess I'll do a little Cardiff business to-night, and see how it 
goes."

Plainly dressed, old Tom Crowley left his Madison Avenue palace, 
and walked westward and then south.  As he stepped to the sidewalk, 
Fate, who holds the ends of the strings in the central offices of 
all the enchanted cities pulled a thread, and a young man twenty 
blocks away looked at a wall clock, and then put on his coat.

James Turner worked in one of those little hat-cleaning 
establishments on Sixth Avenue in which a fire alarms rings when 
you push the door open, and where they clean your hat while you 
wait--two days.  James stood all day at an electric machine that 
turned hats around faster than the best brands of champagne ever 
could have done.  Overlooking your mild impertinence in feeling a 
curiosity about the personal appearance of a stranger, I will give 
you a modified description of him.  Weight, 118; complexion, hair 
and brain, light; height, five feet six; age, about twenty-three; 
dressed in a $10 suit of greenish-blue serge; pockets containing 
two keys and sixty-three cents in change.

But do not misconjecture because this description sounds like a 
General Alarm that James was either lost or a dead one.

_Allons!_

James stood all day at his work.  His feet were tender and 
extremely susceptible to impositions being put upon or below 
them.  All day long they burned and smarted, causing him much 
suffering and inconvenience.  But he was earning twelve dollars 
per week, which he needed to support his feet whether his feet 
would support him or not.

James Turner had his own conception of what happiness was, just 
as you and I have ours.  Your delight is to gad about the world in 
yachts and motor-cars and to hurl ducats at wild fowl.  Mine is to 
smoke a pipe at evenfall and watch a badger, a rattlesnake, and an 
owl go into their common prairie home one by one.

James Turner's idea of bliss was different; but it was his.  He 
would go directly to his boarding-house when his day's work was 
done.  After his supper of small steak, Bessemer potatoes, stooed 
(not stewed) apples and infusion of chicory, he would ascend to 
his fifth-floor-back hall room.  Then he would take off his shoes 
and socks, place the soles of his burning feet against the cold bars 
of his iron bed, and read Clark Russell's sea yarns.  The delicious 
relief of the cool metal applied to his smarting soles was his 
nightly joy.  His favorite novels never palled upon him; the sea 
and the adventures of its navigators were his sole intellectual 
passion.  No millionaire was ever happier than James Turner 
taking his ease.

When James left the hat-cleaning shop he walked three blocks out 
of his way home to look over the goods of a second-hand 
bookstall.  On the sidewalk stands he had more than once picked 
up a paper-covered volume of Clark Russell at half price.

While he was bending with a scholarly stoop over the marked-down 
miscellany of cast-off literature, old Tom the caliph sauntered by.  
His discerning eye, made keen by twenty years' experience in the 
manufacture of laundry soap (save the wrappers!) recognized 
instantly the poor and discerning scholar, a worthy object of his 
caliphanous mood.  He descended the two shallow stone steps that 
led from the sidewalk, and addressed without hesitation the object 
of his designed munificence.  His first words were no worse than 
salutatory and tentative.

James Turner looked up coldly, with "Sartor Resartus" in one hand 
and "A Mad Marriage" in the other.

"Beat it," said he.  "I don't want to buy any coat hangers or town 
lots in Hankipoo, New Jersey.  Run along, now, and play with your 
Teddy bear."

"Young man," said the caliph, ignoring the flippancy of the hat 
cleaner, "I observe that you are of a studious disposition.  Learning 
is one of the finest things in the world.  I never had any of it worth 
mentioning, but I admire to see it in others.  I come from the West, 
where we imagine nothing but facts.  Maybe I couldn't understand 
the poetry and allusions in them books you are picking over, but I 
like to see somebody else seem to know what they mean.  I'm worth 
about $40,000,000, and I'm getting richer every day.  I made the 
height of it manufacturing Aunt Patty's Silver Soap.  I invented 
the art of making it.  I experimented for three years before I got 
just the right quantity of chloride of sodium solution and caustic 
potash mixture to curdle properly.  And after I had taken some 
$9,000,000 out of the soap business I made the rest in corn and 
wheat futures.  Now, you seem to have the literary and scholarly 
turn of character; and I'll tell you what I'll do.  I'll pay for your 
education at the finest college in the world.  I'll pay the expense 
of your rummaging over Europe and the art galleries, and finally set 
you up in a good business.  You needn't make it soap if you have any 
objections.  I see by your clothes and frazzled necktie that you are 
mighty poor; and you can't afford to turn down the offer.  Well, 
when do you want to begin?"

The hat cleaner turned upon old Tom the eye of the Big City, which 
is an eye expressive of cold and justifiable suspicion, of judgment 
suspended as high as Haman was hung, of self-preservation, of 
challenge, curiosity, defiance, cynicism, and, strange as you may 
think it, of a childlike yearning for friendliness and fellowship 
that must be hidden when one walks among the "stranger bands."  
For in New Bagdad one, in order to survive, must suspect whosoever 
sits, dwells, drinks, rides, walks or sleeps in the adjacent chair, 
house, booth, seat, path or room.

"Say, Mike," said James Turner, "what's your line, anyway--shoe 
laces?  I'm not buying anything.  You better put an egg in your 
shoe and beat it before incidents occur to you.  You can't work off 
any fountain pens, gold spectacles you found on the street, or trust 
company certificate house clearings on me.  Say, do I look like I'd 
climbed down one of them missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall?  
What's vitiating you, anyhow?"

"Son," said the caliph, in his most Harunish tones, "as I said, I'm 
worth $40,000,000.  I don't want to have it all put in my coffin 
when I die.  I want to do some good with it.  I seen you handling 
over these here volumes of literature, and I thought I'd keep you.  
I've give the missionary societies $2,000,000, but what did I get 
out of it?  Nothing but a receipt from the secretary.  Now, you are 
just the kind of young man I'd like to take up and see what money 
could make of him."

Volumes of Clark Russell were hard to find that evening at the Old 
Book Shop.  And James Turner's smarting and aching feet did not 
tend to improve his temper.  Humble hat cleaner though he was, he 
had a spirit equal to any caliph's.

"Say, you old faker," he said, angrily, "be on your way.  I don't 
know what your game is, unless you want change for a bogus 
$40,000,000 bill.  Well, I don't carry that much around with me.  
But I do carry a pretty fair left-handed punch that you'll get if 
you don't move on."

"You are a blamed impudent little gutter pup," said the caliph.

Then James delivered his self-praised punch; old Tom seized him 
by the collar and kicked him thrice; the hat cleaner rallied and 
clinched; two bookstands were overturned, and the books sent 
flying.  A copy came up, took an arm of each, and marched them 
to the nearest station house.  "Fighting and disorderly conduct," 
said the cop to the sergeant.

"Three hundred dollars bail," said the sergeant at once, 
asseveratingly and inquiringly.

"Sixty-three cents," said James Turner with a harsh laugh.

The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change 
amounting to four dollars.

"I am worth," he said, "forty million dollars, but--"

"Lock 'em up," ordered the sergeant.

In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating.  "Maybe 
he's got the money, and maybe he ain't.  But if he has or he ain't, 
what does he want to go 'round butting into other folks's business for?  
When a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it's the same as 
$40,000,000 to him."

Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face.

He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched 
himself out luxuriously, and placed his tortured feet against the 
cold bars of the cell door.  Something hard and bulky under the 
blankets of his cot gave one shoulder discomfort.  He reached under, 
and drew out a paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called 
"A Sailor's Sweetheart."  He gave a great sigh of contentment.

Presently, to his cell came the doorman and said:

"Say, kid, that old gazabo that was pinched with you for scrapping 
seems to have been the goods after all.  He 'phoned to his friends, 
and he's out at the desk now with a roll of yellowbacks as big as a 
Pullman car pillow.  He wants to bail you, and for you to come out 
and see him."

"Tell him I ain't in," said James Turner.