The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-10-21

}2s - q ~ Y 49, ssas q
On an east-bound train I went into
the smoker and found Jefferson Peters
the only man with brain west of the
wabash River who can use his cere-
Drum, cerebellum, and medulla oblon-
gaia at the same time.
jeff is in the line of unillegal graft
He is not to be dreaded by widows and
orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage
His favorite disguise is that of the
targetbird at which the spendthrift or
the reckless investor may Shy a few
inconsequential dollars. He is readily
vocalized by tobacco; SO, with the aid
of two thick and easy-burning brevas.
I got the story of his latest Autolycan
adventure.
I'm my line of business said JEFF,
''the hardest thing is to find an up
right, trustworthy, strictly honorable
partner to work a graft with. Some of
the best men I ever worked with in a
swindle would resort to trickery at
times.
So, last summer, 1 thinks 1 will go
over into this section of country where
/ hear the serpent has not yet enter
ed, and see if I can find a partner
naturally gifted with a talent for crime
but not yet contaminated by success.
81 found a village that seemed to
show the right kind of a layout. The
inhabitants hadn't found out that Adam
had been dispossessed, and were
going right along naming the animals
and killing snakes just as if they were
in the Garden of Eden. They call this
town Mount Nebo, and it's up near the
spot where Kentucky and West Vir-
ginia and North Carolina corner to-
gether. Them States don't meet? Well,
1t was in that neighborhOod, anyway.
After putting in week proving
I wasn't a revenue officer, 1 went over
to the store where the rude fourflush-
ers of the hamlet lied, to see if 1 could
get a line on the kind of man I want
Sd.
Gentlemen said I, after we had
rubbed noses and gathered round the
dried-apple barrel, L don't suppose
there's another community in the
whole world into which sin and chi
canery has less extensively permeated
than this. Life here, where all the
women are brave and propitious and
all the men honest and expedient,
must, indeed, be an idol. 1t reminds
me- says I, of Goldstein's beautiful
ballad entitled 1.-THE Deserted Village"
which says:
Ill fares the land. to Fastening ills a
prey;
What art can drive it's charms away?
mother,
For I'm to be Queen of the May
why. yes, Mr.. Peters says the
storekeeper. I rech>n we air about as
moral and torpid community as there
be on the mounting, according to CEN
suses of opinion; but I reckon you amt
ever met Rufe Tatum.'
Why. no. says the town constable,
ne can't hardly have ever. That air
Rufe is shore the monstrousest scala
wag that has escaped hangin' on the
galluses. And that puts me in mind
that I ought to have turned Rufe out
of the lookup day before yesterday. !
The thirty days he got for KILN
Vance Goodloe was up then. A day or
two more won't hurt RUFF any though i
'Shucks, now says I, in the noun
tain idiom, don't tell me there's man
in Mount Nebo as bad as that
Worse, says the storekeeper. He
steals hogs
Il thinks will look up this Mr.. Ia
tum; so a day or two after the con-
stable turned him out I got acquainted
with him and invited him out on the
edge of twon to sit on a log and talk
business.
What I wanted was partner with
a natural rural makeup to play a
part in some little one-act outrages
that I was going to book with the
Pitfall & Gin circuit in some of the
Western towns; and this r. Tatum
was born for the role as sure as nature
cast Fairbanks for the stuff that kept
Eliza from sinking into the river.
He was about the size of a first
baseman: and he had ambiguous blue
eyes like the china dog on the mantel-
piece that Aunt Harriet used to play
with when she was child. His hair
waved a little bit like the statue OF
the dinkusthrower in the Vacation at
Rome. but the color of it remind you ]
Of the Sunset in the Grand Canyon, by
an American Artist that they hang {
over the stovepfpe holes in the salongs.
He was the Reub without needing a
touch. You'd have known him for one.
even If you'd seen him on the vaudeville
stage with one cotton suspender and a t
straw over his ear.
81 told him what l wanted, and found l
him ready to jump at the job.
% Overlooking such a trivial little l
peccadillo as the habit of manslaugh- .
err says I, what have you accom-
olished in the way of indirect brigand- ]
,ge or nonactionable thriftiness that You /
$780, Ssp q Z.